Dune is a book that I think I can comfortably say I hate. I've read it four times in a desperate attempt to figure out why people love it so much. The characters are very difficult to relate to as their actions are barely those of a human. Ive decided most people like the lore. It's a very well thought out setting and baron harkonen is an excellent antagonist. But I just don't care about the other characters. The most human and relatable character is Duke Leto and he's only there for a moment. Lady Jessica is absolutely a machiavellian monster. I think that's my chief complaint with science fiction in general. Sometimes they get lost in the sauce and you end up with unrelatabke, alien characters. Another famous example for me is Ender in Enders game.
@@pacer2310 I think the reason it is so popular is that it uses the 'chosen one' or 'messiah' architype, just like Star Wars, Harry Potter, ect. Its an architype that has been around forever but never gets old. Just out of curiosity, what are some examples of SF that you do like?
I thought about your previous video this evening for some reason and checked in. I see you removed it, which is not my place to question. I can only hope things get easier for you and you continue to find time to do the things you enjoy. Thanks for the new video.
That video simply started getting more attention than i was comfortable with. I really value the positive comments on it but i thought it best to take it down after awhile. Thankyou though, and thanks for watching!
Hi Matt, love Clark Ashton Smith's work. I would recommend the 5 volume set of his works which Night Shade Books brought out a few years back - a really very nice set.
I wish only strength for you and your wife - thank you for coming on to enlighten us with some 'reads'! Your collection of books is so wonderful to look at. I yearn for that scent of ink on paper but I gave away all my books a long time ago for reasons I can't explain - I do regret it. That being said, I will keep watching your videos and hope to get a good recommendation one day, but for now? the stories in that library of yours make me feel good. Keep reading, xo Alyssa and my three cats - Oliver (who fixed my laptop today by lying on it), Prudence, and Frankie!
I'm pretty sure I gave you an elevator pitch for CAS in the comments a few years ago. Really happy you've gotten to it. I find them strangely soothing, like a balm. (palliative?) I hesitate to use the term purple prose with him because (unlike Lovecraft) you get the distinct impression he does not rely on a thesaurus, but that such words just flow from him. If you had unlimited time I'd write you a small essay on some pronunciations of his original words, and how the British usually get them wrong (having little to no experience in the Native languages of Northern California and Southern Oregon.) But for right now it's great to hear you're reading & have a wee break coming up. Enjoy Summer
You're totally right. In this case i guess its not purple prose at all. His writing is really something else, the elegant prose somehow transcends the subject matter, which is far from elegant lol. I do recall someone or multiple someone's urging me to check him out sometime. I'm glad i finally have!
@@sciencefictionreads It's very nice of you to say. Anyway credit is not important. I just think you'll really enjoy "A Captivity at Serpens" as being remarkably cinematic, action-oriented, "ray guns a blastin'," yet still clearly engaging his prose. It's a trip. (I would also be the one suggesting the Elric books to you as they appeared in the back room.)
Hi Matt, I too am busy finding Eric Brown books, not read anything by him yet. As you say, hard sf slash space opera. For Ian MacDonald, i think you'd really enjoy the Luna books. Desolation Road is his first book, i think, it's quite a ride. There is a sequel too, Ares Express. Glad to see you resding and haulin' again. Good luck at the book store! Cheers, Jon.
The CAS short story “The Isle of the Torturers” was the first story i’ve read by him and it blew me away! I think Gene Wolfe was influenced by it in Book of the New Sun.
I love Clark Ashton Smith. He’s like Lovecraft if Lovecraft was a good writer. I must check out that documentary. He was a sculptor and painter as well.
I have yet to read Lovecraft other than a single story years ago. I look forward to checking him out as well but I’ve always felt like I’d like Smith more. His art and sculptures are shown and discussed in the documentary as well from what I rememberer!
@@sciencefictionreads Lovecraft is great, I do enjoy his stuff and read every story but his prose is a bit silly and he’s not great with character development. I think Smith is really underrated in comparison even though he was influenced by Lovecraft.
Hey, Matt. I was lucky, years ago. Found Zothique, and Hyperborea, both in great shape, at a Used bookstore. I only needed Zothique for a ‘100 Best Fantasy’ list requirement, but Hyperborea of course went along with me too. Del Rey editions, great cover on Zothique. Some years later, I also found a Panther paperback of Out of Space and Time, Vol. 2. So I’ve been around the block with this great writer a few times, glad you have enjoyed the experience. ‘It’s not like you actually have to refer to the Map.’. Story of my life. James P. Hogan! I very much enjoyed The Proteus Operation, and RealTime Interrupt. I also loved EngineMan. I’m not sure, but I think that novel got re-tooled at some point. I would have read whatever constitutes the original version. If anything you find out argues against EngineMan ever being modified at some point, then don’t mind me. I’m off in the wilderness somewhere. Stowaway to Mars decided to be somewhat cringe-y, until the Mars arrival, IMO. Overall, I liked it - with ruminations. I need to order Garbage World, to satisfy a recommendation in the SF reading guide called Yesterday’s Tomorrows. I have to remember not to accidentally order Mall World. I am a huge, huge fan of The Silicon Man by Platt, and will be happy to get to him again. The City Dwellers was sort of average, but fix-up novels are a real problem for me, even the high-profile ones, I would say. Keep well. Enjoy your vacation.
I managed to win a Hyperborea collection on Ebay so very much looking forward to those stories as well! And funny you mention Mall World as i was just holding it the other day, considering giving it a look. Still haven't gotten to James Hogan but hopefully soon. Being a mood reader i feel i have little to no control over when i read something😆
I read The Gamesman by Barry Malzberg. Very unique way of showing life in the US based on what we are promised and what life really is. All told in a form of a game. Dry but not a bad read.
Eric Brown is not really hard sf, even though he did collaborate with Stephen Baxter on a slim collection of stories called Space Time Pit Plus Two. He writes more gentle soft sf in the mode of Michael Coney. Good intro into his work is collection Deep Future, or his novel lenght works like Helix and Serene Invasion. He also collaborated a lot with Keith Brooke. Their collection The Paralax View, with introduction by Baxter, is excellent.
Hello! I’ve really only read non fiction and I don’t want to go into the world of fantasy so I love what you’re mentioning here! Clark Ashton Smith sounds like a great author to start with. I welcome darkness hehe. What author or read do you recommend as a beginner?
Hello! I always recommend short story collections to anyone interested in checking out Science Fiction for the first time. Anthologies with different authors are a great way to be introduced to lots of different voices in the genre. If i were to recommend a couple authors that are themselves an easy entry to SF I'd suggest people like John Scalzi (Old Mans War) or Emma Newman (Planetfall). Two authors and books that were some of the first i encountered when first discovering SF.
Knowing you love C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and other early authors of a time when Fantasy and SF were Siamese twins*, you were bound to come across and like Clark Ashton Smith. Lovecraft and Howard come to mind as well as William Hope Hogdson, Seabury Quinn, Edmond Hamilton, Frank Belknap Long, etc. *All these authors were published in one magazine that is the elephant in this room, a magazine as important as Astounding or Amazing Stories: It's WEIRD TALES which started publication in 1925 and without which none of these authors would have had an outlet for their work. In Weird Tales, SF and Fantasy were joined at the hip like Siamese Twins, Dwellers in the same Weird House.. Without short stories there would not have been a Science-Fiction explosion that sparked a literary universe of boundless imagination. Without the pulp magazines of yesteryear there would not have been a market for so many short stories as we have inherited. End of rant 😁 Congrats You found a copy of Half Past Human! I would give up a useless part of my body for a copy of it ( tonsils, appendix, but not an arm..) It is a book that shook my reality and showed me the Future when I was still a teen, like Ira Levin's This Perfect Day, books you can never forget. Yes, it comes before The God Whale. Stellar find. Enjoy your time off and the bookstore visit! 7🪐
Clark Ashton Smith is a great writer I got turned on to him through H P Lovecraft an Robert E Howard thay wres all writing friends apart of the Lovecraft circle 👍👍👍👍👍👍
I only know of Clark Ashton Smith as a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft. I think i will check him out. Besides Terry Pratchett, Lovecraft is the author Ive read the most of. I know he's an acquired taste and it's not so popular to like him due to his well documented views on race. I have an unpopular opinion, and that's that his xenophobia helped his writing in this case. Much of his work is about fear of the unknown and the unknowable. Fear of change. Once you've read enough of him it's very easy to imagine him writing his stories and watching life go by from the safety of his window. I think those fears and anxieties he had of people he didn't know absolutely informed his writing. When taken into the greater context of his life and how it developed, I think it paints a tragic, lonely figure whose reaction to things unfamiliar and not within the realm of his interests was often revulsion.
Great video! I have recently gotten back into Sci-Fi myself, and am currently reading Dune. I might have to read all 6.
They are all great and worth reading.
Dune is a book that I think I can comfortably say I hate. I've read it four times in a desperate attempt to figure out why people love it so much. The characters are very difficult to relate to as their actions are barely those of a human. Ive decided most people like the lore. It's a very well thought out setting and baron harkonen is an excellent antagonist. But I just don't care about the other characters. The most human and relatable character is Duke Leto and he's only there for a moment. Lady Jessica is absolutely a machiavellian monster. I think that's my chief complaint with science fiction in general. Sometimes they get lost in the sauce and you end up with unrelatabke, alien characters. Another famous example for me is Ender in Enders game.
@@pacer2310 I think the reason it is so popular is that it uses the 'chosen one' or 'messiah' architype, just like Star Wars, Harry Potter, ect. Its an architype that has been around forever but never gets old.
Just out of curiosity, what are some examples of SF that you do like?
I thought about your previous video this evening for some reason and checked in. I see you removed it, which is not my place to question. I can only hope things get easier for you and you continue to find time to do the things you enjoy. Thanks for the new video.
That video simply started getting more attention than i was comfortable with. I really value the positive comments on it but i thought it best to take it down after awhile. Thankyou though, and thanks for watching!
Hi Matt, love Clark Ashton Smith's work. I would recommend the 5 volume set of his works which Night Shade Books brought out a few years back - a really very nice set.
I wish only strength for you and your wife - thank you for coming on to enlighten us with some 'reads'!
Your collection of books is so wonderful to look at.
I yearn for that scent of ink on paper but I gave away all my books a long time ago for reasons I can't explain - I do regret it.
That being said, I will keep watching your videos and hope to get a good recommendation one day, but for now? the stories in that library of yours make me feel good.
Keep reading,
xo Alyssa and my three cats - Oliver (who fixed my laptop today by lying on it), Prudence, and Frankie!
Thankyou. And thankyou for watching! And a hello from my cats - Purslane, Ilia and Meroka!🐈⬛
Definitely some interesting sounding books. Love the old spaces out covers. I also prefer mass market over bulky hardcovers !
Just picked up a great book haul of Frank Herbert and Ron Goulart. Happy reading to you.
Both authors i need to check out more of! Thanks for watching!
I'm pretty sure I gave you an elevator pitch for CAS in the comments a few years ago. Really happy you've gotten to it. I find them strangely soothing, like a balm. (palliative?) I hesitate to use the term purple prose with him because (unlike Lovecraft) you get the distinct impression he does not rely on a thesaurus, but that such words just flow from him.
If you had unlimited time I'd write you a small essay on some pronunciations of his original words, and how the British usually get them wrong (having little to no experience in the Native languages of Northern California and Southern Oregon.)
But for right now it's great to hear you're reading & have a wee break coming up.
Enjoy Summer
You're totally right. In this case i guess its not purple prose at all. His writing is really something else, the elegant prose somehow transcends the subject matter, which is far from elegant lol. I do recall someone or multiple someone's urging me to check him out sometime. I'm glad i finally have!
@@sciencefictionreads
It's very nice of you to say.
Anyway credit is not important. I just think you'll really enjoy "A Captivity at Serpens" as being remarkably cinematic, action-oriented, "ray guns a blastin'," yet still clearly engaging his prose.
It's a trip.
(I would also be the one suggesting the Elric books to you as they appeared in the back room.)
I just got a different copy of Half Past Human. Garbage World, lol. Cheers Matt, have a great vacation.
Eric Brown wrote Kethani which is actually a collection of shorts all in the same universe which I loved.
That could be a good place for me to start with his work. Thanks!
Hi Matt, I too am busy finding Eric Brown books, not read anything by him yet. As you say, hard sf slash space opera. For Ian MacDonald, i think you'd really enjoy the Luna books. Desolation Road is his first book, i think, it's quite a ride. There is a sequel too, Ares Express. Glad to see you resding and haulin' again. Good luck at the book store! Cheers, Jon.
Thanks Jon!
Finally put Clark Ashton Smith in my TBR pile. It’s a big pile, so it probably won’t be until next year before I get to him.
The wait will be worth it!
The CAS short story “The Isle of the Torturers” was the first story i’ve read by him and it blew me away! I think Gene Wolfe was influenced by it in Book of the New Sun.
That one was one of my favorites!
I love Clark Ashton Smith. He’s like Lovecraft if Lovecraft was a good writer. I must check out that documentary. He was a sculptor and painter as well.
I have yet to read Lovecraft other than a single story years ago. I look forward to checking him out as well but I’ve always felt like I’d like Smith more. His art and sculptures are shown and discussed in the documentary as well from what I rememberer!
@@sciencefictionreads Lovecraft is great, I do enjoy his stuff and read every story but his prose is a bit silly and he’s not great with character development. I think Smith is really underrated in comparison even though he was influenced by Lovecraft.
Hey, Matt.
I was lucky, years ago. Found Zothique, and Hyperborea, both in great shape, at a Used bookstore. I only needed Zothique for a ‘100 Best Fantasy’ list requirement, but Hyperborea of course went along with me too. Del Rey editions, great cover on Zothique. Some years later, I also found a Panther paperback of Out of Space and Time, Vol. 2. So I’ve been around the block with this great writer a few times, glad you have enjoyed the experience.
‘It’s not like you actually have to refer to the Map.’. Story of my life.
James P. Hogan! I very much enjoyed The Proteus Operation, and RealTime Interrupt.
I also loved EngineMan. I’m not sure, but I think that novel got re-tooled at some point. I would have read whatever constitutes the original version. If anything you find out argues against EngineMan ever being modified at some point, then don’t mind me. I’m off in the wilderness somewhere.
Stowaway to Mars decided to be somewhat cringe-y, until the Mars arrival, IMO. Overall, I liked it - with ruminations.
I need to order Garbage World, to satisfy a recommendation in the SF reading guide called Yesterday’s Tomorrows. I have to remember not to accidentally order Mall World. I am a huge, huge fan of The Silicon Man by Platt, and will be happy to get to him again. The City Dwellers was sort of average, but fix-up novels are a real problem for me, even the high-profile ones, I would say.
Keep well. Enjoy your vacation.
I managed to win a Hyperborea collection on Ebay so very much looking forward to those stories as well! And funny you mention Mall World as i was just holding it the other day, considering giving it a look. Still haven't gotten to James Hogan but hopefully soon. Being a mood reader i feel i have little to no control over when i read something😆
I read The Gamesman by Barry Malzberg. Very unique way of showing life in the US based on what we are promised and what life really is. All told in a form of a game. Dry but not a bad read.
Eric Brown is not really hard sf, even though he did collaborate with Stephen Baxter on a slim collection of stories called Space Time Pit Plus Two. He writes more gentle soft sf in the mode of Michael Coney. Good intro into his work is collection Deep Future, or his novel lenght works like Helix and Serene Invasion. He also collaborated a lot with Keith Brooke. Their collection The Paralax View, with introduction by Baxter, is excellent.
Thankyou for the info! I'm looking forward to checking him out!
Hello!
I’ve really only read non fiction and I don’t want to go into the world of fantasy so I love what you’re mentioning here! Clark Ashton Smith sounds like a great author to start with. I welcome darkness hehe.
What author or read do you recommend as a beginner?
Hello! I always recommend short story collections to anyone interested in checking out Science Fiction for the first time. Anthologies with different authors are a great way to be introduced to lots of different voices in the genre. If i were to recommend a couple authors that are themselves an easy entry to SF I'd suggest people like John Scalzi (Old Mans War) or Emma Newman (Planetfall). Two authors and books that were some of the first i encountered when first discovering SF.
Knowing you love C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and other early authors of a time when Fantasy and SF were Siamese twins*, you were bound to come across and like Clark Ashton Smith. Lovecraft and Howard come to mind as well as William Hope Hogdson, Seabury Quinn, Edmond Hamilton, Frank Belknap Long, etc.
*All these authors were published in one magazine that is the elephant in this room, a magazine as important as Astounding or Amazing Stories:
It's WEIRD TALES which started publication in 1925 and without which none of these authors would have had an outlet for their work. In Weird Tales, SF and Fantasy were joined at the hip like Siamese Twins, Dwellers in the same Weird House..
Without short stories there would not have been a Science-Fiction explosion that sparked a literary universe of boundless imagination.
Without the pulp magazines of yesteryear there would not have been a market for so many short stories as we have inherited. End of rant 😁
Congrats You found a copy of Half Past Human! I would give up a useless part of my body for a copy of it ( tonsils, appendix, but not an arm..) It is a book that shook my reality and showed me the Future when I was still a teen, like Ira Levin's This Perfect Day, books you can never forget. Yes, it comes before The God Whale. Stellar find.
Enjoy your time off and the bookstore visit! 7🪐
I actually found some William Hope Hogdson and Weird Tales related books while on vacation. They will appear in a video soon!
Clark Ashton Smith is a great writer I got turned on to him through H P Lovecraft an Robert E Howard thay wres all writing friends apart of the Lovecraft circle 👍👍👍👍👍👍
I only know of Clark Ashton Smith as a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft. I think i will check him out. Besides Terry Pratchett, Lovecraft is the author Ive read the most of. I know he's an acquired taste and it's not so popular to like him due to his well documented views on race. I have an unpopular opinion, and that's that his xenophobia helped his writing in this case. Much of his work is about fear of the unknown and the unknowable. Fear of change. Once you've read enough of him it's very easy to imagine him writing his stories and watching life go by from the safety of his window. I think those fears and anxieties he had of people he didn't know absolutely informed his writing. When taken into the greater context of his life and how it developed, I think it paints a tragic, lonely figure whose reaction to things unfamiliar and not within the realm of his interests was often revulsion.
Well said. I haven't read much Lovecraft but plan to, and now you've got me even more curious to check him out!