I was just amusing myself.

You all take everything soooo seriously.

it's a sign of...a sf (SF) geek.


:p

I didn't make you take up the assignment, baby. You coulda just brought a doctor's note.

I agree with what beestie wrote.

proof: Ender's Game imagines the 'nets' 20 years before they become the politics forum on the cellar.

I expect Demosthenes and Locke to register any time.....

I don't think the book Lessing won for is Science Fiction. :headshake

I'm reading this with my 9 year old girl right now, and she loves the idea of Demosthenes and Locke. She giggled with delight when the Wiggins father was quoting Demosthenes at the dinner table to his children.

OK, this is weird.. I've written two replies to this thread and neither one appeared. I was pretty sure I got distracted and left without clicking "post" on the first one. The second one?? Maybe I'm going crazy. (I'm also trying out Google Chrome FWIW.)

Anyway. Bri--why don't you make a recommendation from some people of "literature" I should read. Something relatively new I'm not likely to have heard of--not classics.

Ah, i've been made to feel like a snob when all I was trying to do was have a bit of fun. :rolleyes:

I like stupid mainstream stuff anyway - nothing relevatory. bit of a bore, I guess.

I don't know what you have and haven't read or heard of, but how about

The Kite Runner

and then A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini

Life of Pi?

Yann Martel

Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides

You betcha! I wanted to point that out, but . . . I didn't need any more nerd points.

We should change the name of The Cellar to A Confederacy of Dunces.

I took a SF literature course back in college. The prof had a difficult time coming up with a reading list because he figured anyone taking the class would have already read a lot of SF. So he was looking for obscure but good books. Most were really good reads, so I figured I'd list them here for anyone who might be interested. Off the top of my head, I can recall:

Canticle for Leibowitz by Miller. I liked it a lot.

Where Softly Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Wilhelm. I liked it a lot.

Childhood's End by Clarke. Good read.

The Forever War by Haldeman. Excellent.

The short story The Star Thrower by Eisley. Not a fun read, but the kind of thing you would expect to be given to read in college. Weighty.

There was another Clarke book in there. It think it was Rendezvous with Rama. Not one of his better novels, but worth reading.

I think the prof might have given us Neuromancer too, which was not obscure at that time. Neuromancer is an important book, because it predicts a lot, but I never liked it that much. It's had a lot of influence in pop culture though.

There were about 5-6 more, but I can't remember which ones they are. I've read so many on my own.

The Time Traveller's Wife (can't recall the author).