Widening the angle

[firstlight]

Dear flist,

I'd really like some book recs. Anything you think might grab me. I've been reading a lot of sci-fi lately, so I'd be particularly interested in... you know... other things, but of course I love sci-fi so if there's something I absolutely have to read in that area then that's good too.

Pretty please?

Love,

Liz


(Today = tidying-up-fic day. Oh the pain.)

Comments

[annotated_em]

Hmm. I just finished Mary Gentle's ASH: A Secret History a couple of weeks ago. It kicks off a four-book thing, though, and I haven't read the other three yet. Premise: female mercenary captain, pretty gritty/realistic war fiction in 15thC(?) Burgundy. Only maybe it's not--maybe it's an alternate history, and she's an artefact from a different history. We (the reader and the translator framing narrative) can't tell.

What else... seconding the Connie Willis rec, if you haven't already read her. Louise Cooper? She does fantasy, mostly, and her worlds tend toward the darker. I'd recommend the Time Master trilogy (The Initiate, The Outcast, The Adept) and then if you like her, go for the Indigo books.

Pamela Dean? Patricia McKillip? Jeannette Winterson?

[annotated_em]

Since you're up for anything, uh, I can give you theory recs! Michel Foucault's always fun -- History of Sexuality, vol. 1. (Just remember he goes in circles: I'm telling you what I think, spinning this out over several pages. Now I'm telling you that everything I just said is actually wrong, and here's why. Now I'm telling you about the same thing again, but in a different register, from a different perspective.)

[giving-ground.livejournal.com]

*makes notes on all this* Thanks! :D I do read really random stuff sometimes, so this one might well come in useful... :)

[annotated_em]

You might also like Donna Haraway. Everyone rec's her Cyborg Manifesto, which is good, but her other stuff is pretty neat, too. She's a very science fictional theorist.

Both she and Foucault also really reward second and third readings.