At the thrift store, the way the future was..

[Fumesucker]

Been picking up my reading material from thrift stores, flea markets and yard sales so these days I'm reading mostly older SF and it's really kind of interesting going back over some of the older stuff..

In the last six months or so I've read Hawksbill Station, Little Fuzzy, Earth Made of Glass, The Merchant's War, Bova's Mars, Honor Among Enemies, Wyrd Sisters, Sight of Proteus, Heirs of Empire, Xenocide, Count Zero, Furious Gulf and a couple of anthologies, Godlike Machines and The Year's Best SF 1992 (Dozois).

I've learned that H Beam Piper was probably a socialist, in Little Fuzzy the baddies are corporatists and their patsies and the good guys are a crusty old prospector and mostly government agents of one sort or another, it's still a cute read.

David Weber is a right wing nut but his characters are often interesting enough to make you overlook it and he does have the miltech babble down very nicely and his books are well paced and plotted.

Card is preachy (and is now a right wing nut) but his world of Path subplot in Xenocide was compelling to me all over again.

Gibson of course is Gibson but some of the lingo is starting to date rather badly.

Pohl improved quite a bit from the time he wrote The Space Merchants to The Merchants' War, I liked the latter book substantially more and the first one wasn't bad to start with, biting satire that's still relevant today, maybe even more than when it was written.

Sheffield didn't seem as good as I found his stuff when I first read it, maybe it was just this particular book but it didn't do much for me.

The Silverberg book was really odd to read from thirty years in the future of some of the story and a billion years from most of the rest of it, Silverberg's future history is almost disconcertingly inaccurate but the story of the prison camp in the Cambrian age is still powerful.

I used to like Benford, now I had a hard time finishing Furious Gulf and I'm not sure why, his imagery is just not as compelling to me as it used to be, again maybe it's just this particular story.

[MrModerate]

1. Ever since I converted to Kindle . . .

I've been wallowing in older stuff, most of which is available for free. I'm particularly enjoying series I originally read piecemeal, as the books came out, and now can read them all at once. Vernor Vinge's "Deep" series, Connie Willis' leadup to "Blackout," a goodly chunk of the Dune library, Gene Wolfe's New Sun series etc., etc.

I asked myself whether I wanted to dive into the Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson "Wheel of Time," but concluded that life is too short.

[dem644555il]

11. +1

[FloridaJudy]

2. So much of Silverberg's really good early stuff is out of print

"Downwards to the Earth", "Dying Inside", "Book of Skulls".

If those are available on Kindle, I probably should invest in one. Too bad I'm boycotting Amazon right now for their sweat-shops and unethical marketing practices.

[CaliforniaHiker]

3. A little less convenient

But if you download the Kindle software you can read any kindle book on your computer. They can also be read on iphones and ipads with the correct app.

[Fumesucker]

4. I think "Dying Inside" is one of the most depressing books I've ever read..

It would be hard to choose between that and John Brunner's "Total Eclipse".

[friendly_iconoclast]

6. Try Mordecai Roshwald's "Level Seven", or Shute's "On The Beach"

You'll want to fix yourself a nice cup of cyanide afterwards.

[iris27]

10. Yeah, "On The Beach" is pretty fucking brutal. n/t

[Hayabusa]

5. I've gotten a lot of books this year

thanks to garage sales, thrift stores and used bookstores. Discovered the Song of Ice and Fire books thanks to them, as well as finally getting to read Starship Troopers.

[Odin2005]

7. We have a HUGE sci-fi book section at my thrift store

Lots of classics (as in, anything before I was born in 1986, LOL) that I haven't seen in bookstores. Like every book of Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Darkover" novels.

[Fumesucker]

8. I'm jealous..

I have to sift through thousands of romance novels and Left Behindish trash to find anything worthwhile.

Your thrift store sounds like heaven..

[Odin2005]

9. We are overflowing with the romance novels and religious trash, too, LOL.

Fortunately I organize the books by topic and genre and limit the space the Romance and religious books get, the excess is building up in my office!