Heresy

[hirez]

Thanks to the quercus mobile library, I'm 30 pages into Niven's Ringworld. Thus far, I have put up with clodhopping sexism, amusing one-dimensional aliens with bizarre-physiology-for-the-sake-of-it (including some cheerily stereotypical 'noble savage' types who act like Klingons but have 'learned to respect US human firepower'. Still I suppose this was written mid-Vietnam), spacecraft-porn and eugenics off-hand enough to make me consider hoofing the book through the (closed) window.

Does it get better, or should I be content in the realisation that I've become one of those annoying lit-snobs who sneer at all genre fiction, but especially the 'nude alien totty having sex with machinery' stuff?

If so, four-fifths of my books are going to have to find a better home...

(That's yer hyper-bowl, that is. No-one's getting near the Ballards or the Wyndhams without a fight. I would also imagine that the only easier targets would have been Doc Smith, Piers Anthony or Lionel Fanthorpe. Oh, and Martin Amis. Jesus. 'London fields' was just bloody grim)

Comments

[feyeleanor.livejournal.com]

I can't remember the author of the Crusading Knights in space off hand, but I do have a copy of Ares magazine (#15 I think) with that info in as well as a fun boardgame based on the book(s). Unfortunately it's packed away in a box in the attic right now...

I seem to recall there was a really cool article in the same issue on the economics of space travel and how the only likely reasons for interstellar trade would be food and works of art as everything else was far too expensive to lift into orbit. Then again, that was pre Marshall Savage and the Millenium Foundation (or whatever they're calling themselves these days) and their plan for us all to live in cute, inexpensive space bubbles orbiting the sun like a low-density ring-foam (which sorta comes back to Niven).

I'm sure it was also the issue with the fluffy article on Dyson spheres as well...

My how the world has changed in the last twenty years...