You got her invited to an academic conference? Wow, that’s great! May I ask what it was?

No, no, silly Ignobility — it’s Gene Autrey who would have legal standing to sue! (Yes, I know he’s dead. And I’m old.)

Qetesh, thanks for the recommendations… I actually wandered away from sf shortly after DOWNBELOW STATION, which I loved, and need to look for her more recent work. And also Sherri Tepper, because I have enjoyed her mysteries (which she published as B.J. Oliphant and… damn this Alzheimers… A.J. Orde, I believe).

Atheist, I have been in awe of Octavia Butler’s talents since PATTERNMASTER, and also greatly mourned her death. One of my proudest feats was getting Butler invited to a genuine academic conference, at which I was too chicken to introduce myself to her. But I heard later that she’d quite enjoyed the experience, so I can still make myself happy claiming the credit.

Dear Anne:

I highly recommend Octavia E. Butler’s “Xenogenesis Series”, which is composed of “Dawn”, “Adulthood Rites”, and “Imago”, and is also gathered together in one volume as “Lillith’s Brood”. That series Rocked My Socks. It was sad when Butler died recently, as she was just coming off of a sort of decade-long dry spell, during which she wrote only one book, and was starting to really write again. Fate can be cruel.

As for recommendations, I think you can’t got past some C. J. Cherryh. She’s created some interesting permutations on social structures (human and not), and can write space opera that’s fun and also makes you think. She also has a gift for exploring the human experience, and I’d recommend different books depending on what other sorts of stuff you like. Downbelow Station is excellent and won a Hugo (I think), although fairly heavy. The Cyteen trilogy has some great ideas but takes a few reads through to get the hang of. The ones I re-read most often are the Foreigner series (six books in all): one of the things I love about them is that they show up the difficulties of translation of language and culture, and how fraught is the interface between cultures. I think all foreign relations students and aspiring politicians should be forced to read it.

You might also like to have a go at some Sherri S. Tepper. If you read a lot of hers in one go you’ll get the feeling she’s got a couple of bees in her bonnet (about women and religion respectively), but she’s creative and crafts a good yarn. My favourite of hers is The Gate To Women’s Country, which I think is one of her less well known.

Which is why I don’t read Stephen King (or Clive Cussler, any more) — I couldn’t stand trying to read something and seeing the same damn adjectives used three or four times in one chapter… Or trying to read something that had sentence fragments that started with the word ‘but’.

Also, what I remember of reading Ender’s Game was that it was good, but it would have worked much better as a novella or short story — there was a big chunk of the middle I’d have cut out because it told, rather than showed. Gaaaaah.

Another possibility is that he’s not being edited as well as he once was. Successful “authors” who bring the big contracts get treated a lot more gently by their agents and buyers than scrappy new writers trying to find a foothold. Especially in a publishing market where “important” is measured by the pound, the quantifiable value of an Established Name too often takes the lead out of the blue pencils. And, of course, OSC’s handlers can tell themselves that the target audience for EMPIRE adores every single overwrought adjective and improbable D&D plot-line.

One of my local acquaintances is starting a book club because so many of us “used to love sf” but now we’re middle-aged & busy & just can’t keep up with drinking from the current sci-fi firehose. Any suggestions as to worthy authors or particular works would be much appreciated.

What I was told is that Dennis Miller was entertaining when he had good writers working for him. Then he had an epiphany about how he was the *real* talent, and parted ways with the good writers, at which point Miller’s career headed straight into the dumpster. Fortunately for him, NineElevenChangedEverything opened a marketing niche for a certified Smart Guy Librul who was willing to renounce his sinful ways and act as the teevee face of the new white middle-class suburban paranoia. Now his material sucks 17 kinds of ass, but that’s okay with his new “friends” and paymasters, because sucking ass is a state with which they are very very comfortable.

Orson Scott Cardboard wrote a couple of well-put-together variations on the particular adolescent alienation/torture/sexual fantasy theme previously owned by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Anne McCaffery’s Dragonrider books. There’s always a market for publishable versions of “Everybody hates me because I’m SPECIAL, which is why they do nothing but torture me, but that’s okay, because one of these days my crysalid G*E*N*I*U*S will burst upon a bedazzled universe, and then I’ll torture them (but only for their own good, and to prove how special & unique I really am)… “ and the sf/fantasy niche was in particular need of a manly, midwestern, deeply heterosexual writer to service all the pimply male adolescents who didn’t want to catch “girl cooties”. OSC’s been mining that vein with great success for the past 25 years; after all that time, even the most dedicated performer must either prospect for new material, start recycling his own tailings, or dig so vigorously at his old seam as to become, well, mechanical…

But I don’t think it’s fair to say that OSC’s leaden recent work is, at its core, substantially different than the stuff he got awards for. He’s more like Bill Maher — he didn’t change, but his audience did. And just as Maher has moved from “vaguely right-wing libertarian” to “labelled left-wing progressive” without much changing his own act, OSC has moved from “sci-fi writer” to “techno-historical spokesman for neocons and other adolescent fantasists” without moving from his original warm, damp niche.

Thanks for that link. That hit the spot with this tired activist!

Although I’d maintain that military ‘solutions’ leave us at less than zero. But that’s just me!

Card’s been a shitty writer since he first put pen to paper. That Ender’s Game came out as well as it did was a real fluke; Songmaster was already offensively stupid, morally-twisted garbage back in 1980. He’s a one-trick pony: he always, always wants to put his characters through deep and profound moral crises, and he always, always loads the dice in his world-building so that the only “moral” solution in the end is the one that just happens to conform to his blatant religious prejudices. He never goes beyond his own dogma, although he sometimes does a clever job hiding that.

Basically, he’s always been more of a propagandist than a novelist.

This posting, I think, says it all: Orson Scott Card Has Always Been An Asshat.

Of course, those of us who live in THIS universe recognize the inherent limitations in military power. You can wreck things with it. You can dismantle the extant power structure. You can kill, and you can punish. When you have completed these things that the military actually DOES, you are left at zero. Now most people would recognize that at that point the military has served it’s purpose, and you put them back in their box and use your other assets – economic, political, diplomatic, etc. But with bush/cheney/rumsfeld, when you’re done bombing ‘em, you – um, yeah, bomb them again!!

mikey