sylvar: (Default)
sylvar ([personal profile] sylvar) wrote2006-06-02 10:03 am

Addictive reading

It's been a long time since I picked up a book and read it in one sitting. The last one I can remember for sure was Ender's Game, and I read that around 10 years ago.

But last night I got Spider Robinson's Night of Power from the library, and read it until 11pm. I went out for a bite, returning at midnight, and began to watch the spelling bee. I went to sleep at 2am, tired but quite entertained.

Night of Power was written in the mid-80s and set in the mid-90s. We didn't have in-car navigation systems then, but of course we have them now, so that didn't even seem like science fiction. But I'm looking forward to the multimedia performances of "the Juice", a band that is to flash music what the Grateful Dead were to rock.

Highly recommended. Ben-Bob says check it out.

[identity profile] h-postmortemus.livejournal.com 2006-06-04 01:20 am (UTC)(link)
I remember reading that when I was on a Spider Robinson kick. My first reaction to it was "Wow, does this ever suck". I think the anti-racism message was just too heavy-handed for me.

Robinson has done some good work but he's too much of a Heinlein fanboy. He decided at some point to just write as much like Heinlein as possible...

[identity profile] sylvar.livejournal.com 2006-06-04 05:04 am (UTC)(link)
He definitely has his motifs, but I like 'em. So what do you consider his good work?

[identity profile] h-postmortemus.livejournal.com 2006-06-05 12:15 pm (UTC)(link)
One of the first books of his I read was a collection of short stories called "Antinomy".
"Telempath" was good mainly because it was a pretty original concept for the storyine and setting (at the time it was written)
Most of the earlly Callahan's short stories (i.e. the ones from the first collection).

The whole "stardancer" series is just noxious. :P

[identity profile] sylvar.livejournal.com 2006-06-05 12:59 pm (UTC)(link)
The whole "stardancer" series is just noxious.

Bah, we're just going to be disagreeing on that. That's probably my very favorite stuff he's ever done.

Night of Power

[identity profile] danasdream.livejournal.com 2006-06-13 03:28 pm (UTC)(link)
I enjoyed this book when I read it (maybe 20 years ago). It was made more interesting by the fact that I was in a serious interracial relationship at the time.

I think Spider has written some good stuff. Some of his Callahan stories are very good.

I think he does better when he doesn't try to imitate RAH, though I loved most everything RAH wrote.

Dana