Stonekettle Station’s Top Ten Science Fiction Short Stories

I love short stories.

A lot of authors, especially science fiction writers, play around with the format.

Short stories can be a real bitch to write well, and there’s no money in it. Short stories move the onus of imagination from the author to the reader. There’s little room for character development or world building - it’s story telling stripped down to the leanest elements.

But done well, short stories, vignettes, and novellas are my favorite form of science fiction. A collection of shorts by various authors is like a trip around the universe, it’s like the beer sampler tray at an exotic brew pub. You get a little bit of everything.

I own original hardcover copies of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame and a number of dog-eared and ragged paperback editions. Volume One was published in 1970 and edited by Robert Silverberg and it contains some of the most incredible short works of the genre ever written. Stories like Stanley Weinbaum’s A Martian Odyssey, Ted Sturgeon’s Microcosmic God, Murray Leinster’s First Contact, and Cyril Kornbluth’s The Little Black Bag. Volume Two, The Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time, edited by Ben Bova was even better, and contained some of my very favorites, such as John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There? and Robert Heinlein’s Universe (which later became Part One of Orphans of the Sky), E. M. Forster’s The Machine Stops and Fred Pohl’s The Midas Plague. Volume Two was actually published in two, er, volumes, A and B, and there were later volumes in the series containing stories of somewhat lesser quality. I recently picked up The New Space Opera, Volumes One and Two, containing more contemporary shorts by the likes of such writers as Kage Baker, Ken McCleod, and John Scalzi, and I’m looking forward to reading them though I haven’t got there yet.

Here are some of my very favorites. I’ve kind of fudged the numbers. The list contains ten authors, but with multiple stories listed for some. That’s because I couldn’t decide and because some authors, like Alice Sheldon, specialized in short stories and were masters of the format.

James Tiptree Jr. (the nom de plume of Dr. Alice B. Sheldon, AKA Racoona Sheldon): Houston Houston Do You Read? Sheldon was a brilliant but supremely unhappy woman. As a child she travelled darkest Africa on safari, she was a rich New York socialite as a teen, an Army officer in WWII, and one of the first people recruited into the CIA. She lived an amazing life, but one that gave her little joy. She fought against her demons for her entire life, but in the end the depression consumed her and she committed first murder and then suicide. She was an amazing writer however, and Houston is one of her best and most frightening works. As is The Screwfly Solution.

Greg Bear: Hardfought. A complex tale, brilliantly told, about an interstellar war that lasts many millennia and literally changes the very nature and evolution of mankind. It first appeared in Bear’s collection, The Wind from a Burning Woman and was later published as a Tor Doublestar with Timothy Zahn’s most excellent Cascade Point.

George R.R. Martin. Martin is probably best known for his massive incomplete multi-volume A Song of Fire and Ice, but he also a master of the short story. You could close your eyes and randomly pick from any of his collections and be astounded by The Sandkings, Nightflyers, Plague Star, The Way Of Cross and Dragon and The Glass Flower.

John Varley: Press Enter. I love everything Varley ever wrote. The man is simply a brilliant writer. Enter is a bit off the beaten path from the usual Varley, it is a tale of caution and technology gone amok and one poor sap caught in the middle.

James Blish: Surface Tension. Blish was one of the greatest voices of the genre, I read his Cities in Flight at a young age and the image of Manhattan Island ripping loose from the earth and flying away to the stars has haunted me ever since. Tension is one of his best short stories. It’s about a race of microscopic humans adapted by technology to live in the puddles of a distant world and the day they discover the nature of their universe.

Robert Heinlein: The Long Watch. As most of you know, I’m a huge Heinlein fan. I own everything he ever wrote and periodically reread the entire collection. His YA novel, Farmer in the Sky (first published as Star Scout and serialized in Boy’s Life) is the first science fiction book I ever read. Watch is pure golden age Heinlein at his very finest. The story never fails to leave me a bit misty eyed and feeling like I should raise a glass to Johnny Dahlquist who saved the Earth from tyranny.

Larry Niven: Grendal, Neutron Star, and especially Brenda. Niven is another writer who’s works I periodically reread. Brenda, set in his friend and collaborator Jerry Pournelle’s Co-Dominium universe, is, in my opinion, one of the finest short science fiction stories ever written. The story can be found in a number of places including Niven’s retrospective collection, N-Space.

Arthur C. Clarke: The Sentinel, The Nine Billion Names of God. Clarke had two modes of writing, one I liked, one I didn’t much care for. All of his works are full of incredible vision, the unbelievable vastness of the universe, the steadfast belief in science and the quest for knowledge with a healthy caution and respect for it too – but his characters were often two dimensional. At the end of Rendezvous with Rama I could hardly recall a single character. And yet, every once in a while, Clarke could write near poetry and characters that would astound you, such as The Nine Billion Names of God. The final line of that story has stuck with me since the day I read it.

Vernor Vinge: The Blabber. Vinge is another author I can’t get enough of. He writes in directions my brain would never go without help. He’s written four of my favorite novels ever, The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime, A Fire Upon the Deep, and A Deepness in the Sky. The Blabber is set in the same universe as the latter two and tells the story of an ordinary, yet extraordinary, young man with a very unusual pet.

Keith Laumer: Night of the Trolls. Laumer was a prolific writer who penned some of the best light hearted space opera of the 70’s. Tolls is the first of the Bolo stories and the best of the lot.

Well, there you have it. Stonekettle Station’s list of great short science fiction.

What short fiction do you enjoy?

Stonekettle Station’s Top Ten Classic Scifi Novels That…

…should be made into mini-series.

or

Things that Chap My Ass about the Stinking SyFy Channel

You know, when they first came out with the SciFi Channel, I, like many fans, thought “At last! Bawahahahaha, at last!”

A channel dedicated to just us. Us Science Fiction fans.

A channel just for geeks, freaks, and nerds.

A channel where Star Trek, The Next Generation wouldn’t be pre-empted for Monday Night football or some Bass Fishing Classic (seriously, how do you get to be a professional bass fisherman? No, really, what exactly do you major in at Fat Lazy Bastard University to prepare yourself?  Beer and hookers? Is there a Union? and more importantly, who the fuck watches two guys in a boat, fishing?)

A channel where they’d show endless repeats of Space 1999, and Star Trek, and, hell, maybe even the excretible Starlost. With movies of the week like the classic Forbidden Planet and maybe Destination Moon and even the hysterically bad Moon 02.

A channel where they’d show interviews with great authors, like a video version of John Scalzi’s The Big Idea.

A channel where they’d show sneak peaks of upcoming SciFi movies and interviews with the cast, crew, directors and writers – kind of a TV version of the old Starlog Magazine.

A channel where they’d make cool new science fiction series without having to dumb it down for the mundanes.

A channel where they’d cover the conventions, live and in color.

A channel where they’d utilize modern technology to blog and plurk and twitter and connect us all.

Man, I was all kinds of excited.

Hell, if it was up to me, I would have gotten the rights to exclusively broadcast NFL football – and then preempt the game with about ten minutes to go. Up yours, jock douche bag knuckle draggers, how you like it? You may now pucker up and kiss my ass. La Dee Da, Bitches, name all the Planets of the Federation and maybe we’ll broadcast the rest of the game - at 11:30PM.  (You may, if you like, visualize me gleefully giving the finger to professional televised sports at this point).

 

Yeah.

 

Boy, it sure didn’t take long for that dream to die a small whimpering death, did it?

Instead of a SciFi channel, what we got was SyFy, which mostly consists of ECW wrestling and unbelievably bad movies like Mansquito and Snakehead Fish Monsters of Venus (or whatever it was called, like it actually matters), and Jennifer Love Hewitt hunting ghosts or some silly nonsense (seriously, the girl is nine kinds of funny, why she’s doing this crap is beyond me).

Every once in a while, they manage to pull a decent science fiction series out of their corporate sphincters, Farscape and BSG come to mind.  So it is possible for those running SyFy not to actually shit all over the only people who watch their wretched channel.

Now that BSG has proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that there is great profit to be made in quality Science Fiction, and that a great number of people like me actually prefer intelligent fare over the tractor-pull retarded nonsense of the ECW, and that a science fiction show can actually be referred to as “the best hour on television” by mainstream media, I’d like to suggest that those who run the SyFy Channel pull their collective heads out of their aforementioned sphincters and turn to some classic science fiction novels for inspiration.

In this day and age of relatively cheap and excellent special effects, a decent science fiction series can be done that would have been beyond conception even ten years ago.  And while I’d dearly love to see some of my favorite novels come to life on the big screen, few Hollywood blockbusters could do justice to them.  No, for them to be done right, they need to be a well made mini-series, done with the same dedication and passion as series like Firefly or the BSG reboot. That’s what the SyFy channel should be all about.

Take the following for example:

The World of Tiers, by Philip José Farmer. Specifically the first book in the series, The Maker of Universes.  Set in an artificial universe, upon an artificial planet built by godlike beings to resemble a world-sized  wedding cake, The World of Tiers is filled with strange creatures, odd and wildly varied civilizations, godlike creatures, Indians, knights, steamboats, long extinct animals, evil, good, and many things in between.  It’s a quest and a voyage of discovery – and the ending is both predictable and startling.

Ringworld, by Larry Niven. Louis Wu and his motley crew crash land on an Enormous Big Thing - a sun girdling ring more than a million millions wide. As Niven himself says, the Ringworld is an intermediate step between a planet and a Dyson Sphere.  They find mystery and adventure, floating cities and flying castles, betrayal and trust, old enemies and new friends, immortality, and the ruins of ancient star-faring civilizations beneath the light of the heaven spanning Arch. 

Starship Troopers, by Robert Anson Heinlein. A coming of age story that follows Johnny Rico from callow youth to seasoned and respected officer in the star spanning Mobile Infantry. The classic military scifi tale – and the only way to do this novel correctly is as a mini-series, ideally by the same folks who did Band of Brothers.

The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov.  Still considered one of the cornerstones of Science Fiction and written on the scale of Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Foundation Series spans the final centuries of a slowly dying Empire and the aftermath of its collapse. Possibly one of the greatest works ever.  Ideally, a mini-series would devote each season to each specific epoch in the series.

Rendezvous with Rama, by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Explorers intercept and explore an enormous world sized ship as it transits the Solar System.  They attempt to unlock its secrets and are only marginally successful. Supposedly a movie adaption of Rama, led by Morgan Freeman, has been in the works for over a decade – but that movie is unlikely to be made. 

Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank.  The classic post apocalyptic survival tale set in small town Florida, often imitated over the years, but rarely duplicated.  Ideally, I’d like to see this told exactly as Frank wrote it, set in late 1950’s America, complete with segregation, and Soviets, and poverty, and the moldering remains of the Gentile South.

The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman.  Another coming age tale and a conflict that spans centuries.  Less about war, than about the toll it takes on those who fight it and the civilization they leave behind - and how their war shapes that very civilization.  This novel was born out of Haldeman’s experience as a soldier in Vietnam, and ideally it would be filmed in the same manner as the classics of that conflict. Apocalypse Now and Platoon come to mind.

The Peace War, by Vernor Vinge.  Vinge’s breakout novel. Set in a world built upon the ruins of our own, controlled by descendents of scientists who ended war and imposed peace upon the world – at the cost of freedom, scientific progress, and the lives of millions.  In this world of ironclad dictatorship an old man who once discovered the technology used to rule the world, a women out of time who was once his love, and a young mathematical genius set out to destroy tyranny.  Along the way they discover a startling secret, turn it into a weapon, and change the world.

Pern, by Anne McCaffery.  (Technically, this is a fantasy, but what the hell). Technology has finally reached the point where the dragons of Pern could be brought to life realistically.  This is a classic tale of discovery and bravery and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds. For twenty years I’ve carried in my head the opening scene to this series:  The great dragons and their riders soaring low over the exotic coastline of Pern with the Red Star flaming like an eye in the heavens above and reflecting on the dark waters below, and then rising up through jagged dark peaks just as the sun breaks above the horizon and Ruatha Hold appears against the Ramparts.  The Voice, by The Moody Blues is the theme song.

Titan, by John Varley.  Ringmaster, the first manned ship to Saturn, discovers and is destroyed by an ancient and insane world sized creature, Gaia.  The captain, Cirocco Jones, and her crew awaken scattered and shattered inside Gaia. The living world is built like an enormous Stanford torus. Stranded and alone, some altered beyond recognition, some damaged, and some changed in terrible ways, the people from Earth seek each other out and attempt to solve the mysteries of this inside out world and its bizarre inhabitants. Eventually, some of them storm heaven to confront the godlike Gaia herself.

 

Bonus picks:

The Blue World, by Jack Vance. A vast oceanic world with no land, populated by the descendents of shipwrecked criminals who live on giant sea plants and battle the mighty King Kraken himself. Just because, seriously, this would be so freakin’ cool.

World out of Time, by Larry Niven.  A cryogenically preserved man from the 1970’s awakens in the far future into the body of a brain-wiped criminal.  He has no rights, no citizenship. He’s a slave, and nothing more.  He is trained as a ramship pilot and sent to seed mankind among the stars. Along the way he escapes his fate and finds a way into the future. He returns more than a million years later to a vastly changed and dangerous Earth.

Hell, I’d even suggest David Gerrold’s Chtorr series, maybe that would get him to finish it.

 

And there you have it, Stonekettle Station’s Top Ten SciFi Novels that should be made into outstanding and captivating mini-series.

 

What books do you think would make a great science fiction series?

The Mystery of Science

What would life be without a little mystery?

Who cares?

Really?

Not science, that’s for sure.

That question didn’t even make the top ten.  See, LiveScience lists what the boys in coke bottle glasses consider the top ten greatest mysteries in science.  And as I read through the list, something occurred to me – scientists really need to get out more often. 

Seriously folks, I knew the answers to all of these so-called stumpers:

- What drives evolution?

Stupidity.  Evolution is a natural process for weeding stupid people out of the gene pool.  Do you see anybody poking a Tyrannosaurus Rex with a pointy stick nowadays? No, you do not. All of those giggling idiots got recycled into the ecosystem as dinosaur crap a long, long time ago. Of course, without stupid stick poking people, eventually the T-Rexes starved to death, and we had to start all over. 

- What happens inside an earthquake?

Apparently anybody can be a scientist.  What happens inside an earthquake? Well, there’s a whole lotta shakin going on in there. Hell, even Jerry Lee Lewis knew that, and he was from Louisiana.

- Who are you? I.e. what is the nature of consciousness?

Science Dudes, seriously, how stoned are you right now?

- How did life arise on Earth

Not one of you watched the Battlestar Galactica Finale I take it?

- How does the brain work?

Beer + Boobies, mostly. Well, that’s how my brain works anyway.

- Where is the rest of the universe?

Did you look under the sofa cushions?  That’s where it was the last time.

- What causes gravity?

Pillows. Seriously, there are some mornings where the gravity is so strong, I really don’t think I have the strength to lift my head off the pillow.  The gravitational attraction of pillows is an invisible force that reaches right through other objects – for example, the couch pillows are pulling at me right now with an almost irresistible tidal attraction.  The force has already fastened both cats securely to the couch. You can’t fight gravity, folks, don’t even try.

- Is there a theory of everything?

Yes, Buttermilk. Honestly, how many times do I have to go over this?

- Does alien life exist?

Actually it’s here, right now, watching us, cleverly disguised as William Shatner’s hair.

- How did the universe begin?

If I have to explain it to you, you’ll never understand the answer.  Let’s just say that it involves Jennifer Love Hewitt, a vat of lime jelly, and a rip in space-time and let it go at that, shall we?

 

Now seriously, folks, this was the best scientists could do? This list? 

How about some tough questions? How about questions science can’t answer?

Questions like:

Who the hell buys a Honda Element on purpose? No, really.

Does anybody, anywhere, think Ben Stiller is funny – besides Ben’s mom?

What is Tofu and why would you put it in your mouth?

If you are an attractive busty blonde, is it even possible that you won’t get tapped for the TSA’s new full-body X-ray vision machine?

Why is Keith Richards not dead?

Will George R.R. Martin finish the Song of Fire and Ice before the Earth is frozen solid by the heat death of the universe?

Why are Pop Tarts so bad… and yet so very, very good?

Why can’t California drivers comprehend the basic concept of “Left Lane Fast, Right Lane Slow?”

Could Rush Limbaugh be a bigger asshole?

Why oh why doesn’t Hollywood make more movies with Kate Beckinsale in tight black vinyl and fangs?

Stonekettle Station’s Top SciFi Movie Lines…

and how to use them in everyday life.

I was talking to an old friend the other day, and we were reminiscing about the ‘70’s – and one of us said, “remember how everybody used to say, ‘and may the force be with you?’ after Star Wars came out?”

Even people who had never even seen Star Wars, and wouldn’t be caught dead watching that silly Buck Rogers stuff, used may the force be with you on a regular basis.

My wife and I still use that phrase upon occasion, usually when one of us is about to engage on some damn fool quixotic enterprise – like stuffing the cats into their travel box for a trip to the vet (and believe me, force is exactly the correct word for such an endeavor. Really).

It got me thinking about this week’s Ten Top SciFi list, specifically phrases from science fiction or fantasy movies that should be used in everyday life.

See, the idea is to use a line from a science fiction movie who’s meaning is immediately obvious even to someone who hasn't seen the picture.

Like so:

That’s no moon! That’s a space station!

Origin: Star Wars. Obi Wan’s exclamation upon spying the enormous menacing bulk of the Death Star for the first time.

Meaning: Jesus Christ! Run for your lives!

How to use it in real life:

Hey! Check it out. Isn’t that Rush Limbaugh at the donut counter?

That’s no moon! That’s a space station!

Out of the way, Peck!

Origin: Willow. Airk Thaughbaer to Willow Ufgood. Airk is marching to a battle where his men will be slaughtered, he doesn’t have time for questions from little people.

Meaning: I’m an asshole.

How to use it in a sentence:

Excuse me, Mr. Bush, but we found one of your waterboarding memos and …

Out of the way, Peck!

Study your math! Key to the universe.

Origin: The Prophecy. The Archangel Gabriel giving a little cowbell to Katherine Henley.

Meaning: You’re doomed.

How to use it in a sentence:

Wow! This is so cool. We just sign right here and we don’t have to pay anything but the interest on our new house for five years! How did you guys at Countrywide come up with this? You guys are the best!

Study you math! Key to the universe.

Get to the choppa!

Origin: Predator, of course. Dutch’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) command to the survivors of his special forces team to get to the rescue helicopter before the alien predator kills them all.

Meaning: We’re doomed.

How to use it in everyday life:

Mr. Madoff! Mr. Madoff! There are federal regulators at the front desk!

Shit! Call my lawyer in the Hamptons and hold ‘em off while I get to da choppa!

Boy oh boy, I wish I’d taken the blue pill

Origin: The Matrix. Cypher’s line to Neo, after Neo figures out that reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Meaning: Dude, what the hell was I thinking?

How to use it in everyday life:

Senator McCain, in retrospect how do you feel about about your selection of Sarah Palin as your running mate?

Boy oh boy, I wish I’d taken the blue pill, Larry!*

*Note: there is more than one possible meaning here. For extra credit, see how many you can find.

Oh, noooo! It’s the Queen Bitch of the universe!

Origin: The Abyss. Chris Elliot’s line upon spying Lindsey arriving onboard board the Benthic Explorer.

Meaning: Oh No! It’s the Queen Bitch of the universe!

How to use it in everyday life:

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce the Secretary of State…

[It’s OK, folks, we can say it, it's Bill's pet name for her]

That son of a bitch took my pants!

Origin: The Terminator.

Meaning: You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

How to use it in everyday life:

Today Exxon posted record profits for the third year in a row…

Bloody hell! That son of a bitch took my pants!

Then we’re stupid and we’ll die.

Origin: Bladerunner. Pris, realizing that she and her friends are stupid - and about to die.

Meaning: Because the terrorists will win!

How to use it in everyday life:

Mr. Cheney, how to you feel about Obama’s closing of the Gitmo facility?

Then we’re stupid and we’ll die!

What the hell are you saying?

Origin: The Thirteenth Warrior. Ahmed, sitting comfortably enjoying a fine meal and a great party, to his translator upon learning that life has just dealt him an unexpected blow.

Meaning: Holy shit! What am I gonna do? I just bought a new Gulfstream III! Fuck!

How to use it in everyday life:

Mr. Wagner, I’m afraid that in order for the Fed to agree to yet another GM bailout, the President of the United States has personally requested your resignation as CEO.

What the hell are you saying?

And there you have it. Stonekettle Station’s list of great Science Fiction movie phrases and how to use them in everyday life. Practice a few in front of the mirror and dazzle your friends.

Now that I’ve got you started, feel free to suggest a few lines of your own in the comments.

Stonekettle Station’s List of SciFi Movies…

…that should never have been made.

Now I’m not talking about B-movies.

Oh, sure, there are plenty of crappy scifi B-movies that probably shouldn’t have been made – basically anything starring shlock scifi movie king, Michael Pare, other than maybe The Philadelphia Experiment for example – but those movies were never expected to be anything special. Hey, if you’re Stuart Gordon and you crank out Space Truckers, where Battle Beyond the Stars meets Billy Ray Cyrus, you never expected it to do anything but go straight to video. The MST3K guys will lampoon it, the critics will ignore it, it’s good for a few laughs, it didn’t cost diddly, and the studio makes a few bucks.

Those movies are a different post altogether.

No, what I’m talking about here are movies that cost millions, that starred big time Hollywood names – and made direhard scifi fans like me run from the theater holding their noses from the stench. What I’m talking about here are movies that the genre (and the world) would have been better off without. I’m talking about movies that when the idea was shopped to a major studio you have to wonder why in the hell nobody stood up and yelled for security. You have to wonder if there was some mind altering drug in the water during the pitch meeting with the producers. I’m talking about movies that may actually have hastened the heat death of the universe and lowered the collective IQ of the human race by a significant fraction.

Yeah, those.

I’ll bet you scifi fans can guess the first one.

- It’s the ultimate in cinematic disasters: Battlefield Earth. Remember all those Irwin Allen epic disaster movies of the 70’s? Battlefield Earth is like being trapped the Towering Inferno wearing a polyester one piece disco suit – you want to jump flaming from the upper windows and splatter on the pavement below just to make the pain stop. This movie was supposed to be a triumphant telling of L. Ron Hubbard’s novel – but it’s just like cooking folks, you can’t make Cordon Bleu from rotten ingredients. The novel is a thousand pages of endless suck, but it is brilliance personified compared to the movie. Battlefield Earth is the perfect storm of suck. The script sucks. The acting sucks almost beyond belief. The dialog, which mostly consists of Travolta’s maniacal laughter, Ahahaaaa Ahahahahaa Ahhaaha, brings suck to a whole new level of sucktastic. The cinematography sucks. The special effects suck. But with the force of the Church O Scientology behind it, directing it, acting in it, writing it, producing it, and advertising it nobody bothered to say, Hey waitaminute, this just plain sucks! This is why incest is a bad idea – eventually you’re going to end up with a hydrocephalic, hemophilic, cross-eyed, six-toed, retarded trick baby that looks a lot like John Travolta’s character in Battlefield Earth. The production company went bankrupt, hell they couldn’t even give the DVD away to scientologists. And Travolta? Well, see he thought it was going to be such a hit that he planned a sequel, two of them actually. Be damned grateful those never saw the light of day.

- Starship Troopers: Scifi fandoms needs to take out an open ended restraining order against Paul Verhoeven, a binding legal document that prevents him from ever getting within a thousand yards of another Robert Heinlein book, or one of Phillip K. Dick’s either for that matter. Ever. Don’t get me wrong, Verhoeven has done some decent, if not particularly profound, work. But, Troopers is like being forced to watch your beloved sister get raped to death by a gang of drunken Hollanders.

- Nightflyers: Most of you have probably never heard of this movie. Good for you. No really, good for you. Because it stinks. Based on one of my favorite George R.R. Martin tales, Nightflyers was supposed to be a summer blockbuster in 1987 – instead The Bobs, Robert Collector (director) and Robert Jaffe (screenplay) turned it into Zombies In Spaaaaace!

Unnecessary Sequels: Some sequels are great, better than the original – especially if you can get James Cameron to make them. But as soon as you start calling the idea a “franchise” the quality goes downhill fast.

The Star Wars Prequels: Lucas needs somebody to stand behind him with a mallet and smack him on top of the head every time he gets the urge to fiddle. George, seriously here buddy, go check out what happened with Frank Herbert’s Dune series, that’s you, Jar Jar. Please don’t let your kid start writing sequels. Thanks.

Alien Resurrection: Question, how in the hell did the producers of this piece of shit live with themselves? No, seriously. After watching Alien and Aliens and then seeing this and knowing I was responsible for it, I think I’d let the facehugger kill me. Alien 3: Alien Chicks in Prison, was bad enough, but at least it preserved most of the aspects of the originals, even if the GCI creature was a major letdown and the love scene with flea infested bald Sigourney Weaver made you want to barf up your jujubees. At least it had the fantastic Pete Postlethwaite in it. Resurrection? Resurrection should have been flushed out the airlock before a single frame was filmed. My pal, Eric, is right. Josh Whedon is overrated.

The Matrix Sequels, The Matrix Regurgitated and The Matrix Revolted. P.T. Barnum said, “Always leave ‘em wanting more.” Great advice from a master showman, and a formula that has worked for centuries. Too bad the Wachowski brothers never heard of it.

The X-files: I want to belive there’s a couple of bucks more we can squeeze out with this turd. To bad Chris Carter never heard of old P.T. either.

Terminator Rise of the Machines. Wouldn’t it have been easier and cheaper to let the guys from Jackass the Movie drive around LA in a firetruck and a cement mixer? Was there actually a plot to this movie?

Star Trek Generations. Three words: Oh God, why? Say the first two words like a man just punched in the stomach, and the last one around a horrified sob.

- Johnny Mnemonic: Even Dina Meyer naked couldn’t save this, just as Dina Meyer naked couldn’t save Starship Troopers up there in position two. And really, if Dina Meyer naked doesn’t offset the level of suck in your movie, you should seriously consider a straight to DVD release. Straight to the dumpster would have been better for this abomination.

- The Bicentennial Man: Somebody, and I don’t care who, should have gone to jail for this. Show of hands, how many of you think Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy (and I’m not even going to mention Pluto Nash, no I won’t) should retire and open a bar or a bike rental stand in Key West? Actually, you know, it occurs to me that this just might be the sequel Travolta had in mind for Battlefield Earth.

Movies based on Video Games: and most especially movies made from video games that star Saffron Burrows, say like Wing Commander. Doom also comes to mind here.

- The Core: I’m in this movie. Yep. In the final scene, when the Navy comes to rescue the Terranauts stranded on the bottom of the ocean after returning from the center of the earth in their unobtainium ship. That’s the Constellation Strike Group. I’ve got the deck on the bridge of USS Valley Forge. I’m so ashamed.

- A Scanner Darkly: First rule of special effects: if the special effects are the whole movie, you don’t have a movie. You have a music video. And in this case A-ha did it better with Take On Me two decades ago. With a much cuter girl.

- Solaris: This movie should be sent to our enemies. I swear on Issac Asimov’s polished yellowed skull (I got it on eBay), if this movie doesn’t suck the soul right out of your body and destroy your will to live, I don’t know what will.

- Saturn 3: They spent millions on this for one little reason and one tiny little reason only, as vehicle to show fading pin-up girl Farrah Fawcett’s tit. And just to rub salt in the wounds, you got a ten minute, ulp, love scene between Fawcett and Kirk Douglas’ old wrinkled ass. Seriously, it was fifteen years before I could watch 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea again.

and last, movies based on comic books: Look not all of them are X-men,

some are Judge Dredd.

And some, well, some, my friends,

…are this.

Stonekettle Station’s Top Ten Perfect Scenes in SciFi

You know, it’s Friday.

Let’s talk Science Fiction Movies, shall we?

I tend to think science fiction, more than any other genre, produces some of the very best, and some of the very worst, movies ever made. No other genre produces such a wide spectrum. From watershed movies like Forbidden Planet that no amount of GCI and Will Smith magic could ever improve on, to unintended humor like Moon Zero Two to utter dreck like Space Truckers to stomach churning abominations such as Battlefield Earth. Not westerns, not war movies, not love stories, not mysteries, not thrillers, or even horror movies – though the later comes closer than the rest.

Some movies, while maybe less than stellar overall, have some truly great moments, scenes where everything just lines up exactly right. The acting, the lighting, the mood, the score – all reach a state of gravitational equilibrium to produce the perfect scene.

These are the scenes that stick with you.

The following list is comprised of ten scenes I think are perfect, they are all from reasonably decent, or maybe even great, movies.

10) Star Wars: Episode 23b(1) Revision 5 (or whatever the hell Lucas renamed it to). I’m talking about Star Wars, the Star Wars. The first one. You know, Episode IV, A New Hope: The scene on Tatooine where Luke is standing on that little rise above the homestead, watching the twin suns set over the desert, and that lonely and poignant John Williams Skywalker theme is playing in the background.

You can damned near feel the sand and wind and the wanderlust and the fading light of those alien stars. Man I loved that scene, the rest of the movie is pure swashbuckling Saturday morning adventure – but that scene strikes right at your emotional core. That scene tells you more than words who Luke is and what drives him. This is the last peaceful night he will know. All around him, under that huge sky and just beyond the horizon, war and revolution flame. The universe is vast, unknown and filled with strangeness. Duty binds him to the farm, but it won’t for much longer, far worlds are tugging at him with strange gravity and some day very soon he’ll follow the pull of that tide and find his place in the universe and damn the consequences. That scene speaks to every person who has ever stood on the edge of the ocean and wished for adventure on distant shores.

9) 2010, Odyssey II: Curnow and Max repelling down the spine of tumbling Discovery.

Overall, 2010 is a meticulously crafted movie, it’s a decent sequel - without the shear gob smacking awe of its predecessor. There are a lot of terrific scenes, Leonov aerobraking through Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, the camera panning across the alien swamp on Europa and coming to rest on the monolith as Thus Spake Zarathustra begins to play, any scene with Helen Mirren. But it’s the scene of Curnow and Max, repelling in space suits down the backbone of the ghostly, abandoned Discovery while wheeling among the stars that brings it all home for me. The details are perfect, the puffs of yellow sulfur dust ballooning around their boots, apparent gravity increasing as they drop further and further from the center of revolution and tension increasing on the lines step by step. The immense globe of Jupiter and the stormy volcanic moon Io swirling around the sky - the sickening vertigo is unbelievable. Curnow’s panicked breathing as the soundtrack. If they lose their grip, if the line breaks, if they slip, they’ll be flung outward toward to stars, beyond rescue, lost forever. Two tiny humans, climbing down the largest spacecraft ever built, beneath the light of old Jove himself and not knowing what they’ll find when they get to the airlock.

8) Alien: Nostromo crew approaching the wrecked Alien spacecraft.

Yeah, yeah. The chest burster. That goddamned cat. Dallas in the air ducts. Sigorney Weaver fighting the alien while wearing the universe’s most idiotic and unflattering underwear. All great scenes. But remember that scene where Dallas, Kane, and Lambert first sight the alien spacecraft? Bundled in spacesuits like something created by Carhartt, with the howl of frozen poisonous wind echoing over the scene, lousy communications and fogged visors and that huge crescent shaped ship from H.R. Giger’s nightmares rises out of the murk. You know it’s big – but then the camera pulls back, and pulls back, and pulls back until the astronauts’ helmet lights are only specks against that weird utterly alien hulk. And suddenly you realize just how tiny men are against the vast and terrible universe.

7) The Abyss: The SEALs jumping from the helicopters on to the deck of the Benthic Explorer.

Classic Cameron. The military snare drums. The SEALs exiting the H3 as if they had done it a thousand times, big, deadly, professional men utterly in control. Cameron lingers on their boots hitting the nonskid deck, just slightly overcranked so the scene plays out with ominous gravity. It’s an invasion, a harbinger of terrible things to come…and then a perfect shapely ankle and stylish high-heel enters the frame. The camera pans up and across the severe beauty of Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio. There’s this jarring disconnect. And the scene jumps to the bridge and you hear, in Chris Elliot’s disgusted tones, “Oh noooo. It’s the queen bitch of the universe.”

6) The Matrix: Morpheus’ Rescue

The entire scene from the moment in the lobby when the metal detector goes off, to when Neo rescues Trinity and the abandoned helicopter slams into the side of the building and the shock waves ripple outward. That six minutes is one of the best action scenes ever filmed.

5) Blade Runner: Roy Batty in the elevator.

I don’t give a shit what anybody says, Blade Runner is hands down the best damned scifi flick ever made, and one of the best movies ever made in any genre. You will not convince me otherwise, so don’t try.

Specifically though, if I have to choose one perfect scene it is Roy Batty in the elevator after murdering Tyrell and Sebastian. It’s over. He’s done everything. He’s explored every possibility. There are no more options. His destiny cannot be changed, he will die and soon. And in that moment you truly understand the horror of his life, how bleak his existence is, the chains that bind him and the sword that hangs over his head. He has stormed heaven and killed his maker and exacted his revenge and it changed nothing. He stares out over the city and that weird electronic score plays and then, suddenly, he scowls as only Rutger Hauer can do – and that very dangerous, very menacing expression says clearly that Batty is not done yet – there is still one thing left to do. And then the camera pulls back and the elevator drops away.

4) The Thing: The final scene

MacReady and Childs sitting in the ruins of the burning Antarctic station. Night is coming. Cold that no man can survive. No hope of rescue. If they are men, they’ll die. If one of them is the Thing, humanity will die. Then that eerie heartbeat music starts. Dump, dump dump. Dump, dump dump…

3) Dark City: The battle of wills

Everything lines up perfectly in the climatic scene between Murdock and the Others. The lighting, the music, the unleashed primal forces of raw creation, Murdock and Mr. Hand rising up as the structure of the world comes crashing down around them and the very fabric of reality is torn asunder and it just keeps getting more and more and more intense until you think your head is going to explode.

2) The Thirteenth Warrior: The scene on the stairs

Don’t try to tell me that The Thirteenth Warrior isn’t scifi. It was penned by Michael Crichton. It had Vikings meeting Arabs during the dark ages. It had Neanderthals. Scifi, Q.E.D. It’s also one of my very, very favorite movies of all time. If you don’t get this movie, or you see it as nothing but a bloodbath, well nothing I can say will change your mind. But it is far more than a bloodbath and not nearly as bloody as either Alien or The Thing. It’s a quest movie and a coming of age story and a hero’s tale.

The heroes have killed the Wendoh’s evil mother and are trapped by her terrible children far below ground. Buliwyf the hero king is mortally wounded. Herger the Joyous leads them down a stairway deeper underground pursued by the wendoh. The Vikings know they are trapped, soon they will die - and they make jokes (How deep in the earth are we? Deep enough to fall out the bottom). They are men without fear. Warriors who believe firmly and completely in destiny. They laugh in the face of their own death, literally. They live only for the quest, for battle, for adventure.

Or so they would have you believe.

One of the warriors, Skeld, can run no further. He sits down on a rock and waits for the enemy. Ibn Fahdlan must leave him behind. Fahdlan hesitates, and then turns to descend the stairs. Moments later, he meets Herger The Joyous. Herger sees that Fahdlan is alone and says one word, “Skeld?” The Arab shakes his head. And just for a moment, for a bare brief moment, there is a look of utter sorrow on Herger’s face. Then he turns away and dashes down the stairs. It’s like a door opening and then closing, giving you only a glimpse inside the room beyond. It’s an incredibly subtle moment and perfectly executed.

1) And finally, The Fifth Element: LeeLoo’s swan dive from the top of the sky scraper.

It’s about 6 minutes and thirty seconds in.

Perfect, just perfect.

Stonekettle Station’s List Of Acclaimed Movies That Actually Sucked

I just got back from the Post Office.

As always, that little chore has put me in a foul mood.

There were over a hundred people in line waiting on the slug-like postal employees of the Palmer, Alaska Post Office and it took over an hour to pick up one lousy package. (Actually, in retrospect, that comment is an insult – to slugs. Slugs have a purpose, they’ve got a plan, they’re motivated and they’re doing the best they can. Compared to the Palmer Postal Employees, slugs could be considered speedy)

So, anyway, I was in line. For a long time.

A couple of folks behind me were loudly discussing what they considered to be great movies. I had to bite my tongue to keep from joining in, because this group of people were just plain goofy.

What’s that you’re saying, Jim? I hear you ask in the whiny tone that just annoys the hell out of me. People, you say, are entitled to their opinions when it comes to entertainment. So they like something different than you, what’s it to ya? Art, it’s in the eye of the beer holder and etcetera and so on and so forth. Blah blah.

You’re wrong.

Listen, remember that parable about the con artist, the magic cloth, and the parade with the naked King? Exactly. It’s bad enough when our political leaders wander around naked (Think Cheney. Yeah. Now you’ve got that image in your head. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself, I warned you I was in a foul mood). But seriously, way too many good flicks aren’t getting made, because studios keep green-lighting movies about naked kings. These movies are loved by the snobby critics, and they’re touted by the entertainment industry – and they trick people into spending gobs of money on movie tickets and DVD’s and that, my friends, is the real reason for the economic decline. People know these movies suck, but they’re too embarrassed to admit it.

Well, I’m not going to take it any more. That’s right, I’ll say it.

The emperor has no clothes.

Now I’m not talking about movies that suck, and everybody knows they suck – like say Battlefield Earth, which basically defined an entirely new level of horrifying sucktastic. Or movies that suck and nobody cares, like say Sunshine. Or movies that are all hyped up and cost enough millions to feed all the starving brokers on Wall Street, but everybody knows are going to suck anyway, like say The Mummy: Tomb of the Franchise. No I’m talking about movies that people gush over in line at the post office with total strangers. I’m talking about movies that win awards, Academy awards, Sundance awards, and especially awards from that festival in Cannes. Frankly, it’s a pretty good bet that if coked-up Hollywood stars and beret wearing Frenchmen like the movie, well, it sucks.

Let’s start with this piece of crap, shall we?

Cloverfield: “Scary, Delivers the Thrills!” “A terrific movie filled with spectacle and humor.” “A heart racing experience.” Seriously? Cloverfield was 84 minutes of dark, jiggling blurs and lousy sound – the only part that scared me was how much I spent and the thought that it would never end. The director, J.J. Abrams, could have gotten the same, exact, movie by downing a couple of six-packs and wandering through a frat party with a handycam dangling forgotten from a strap around his wrist. The screams and moans from the upstairs bedrooms are the same, the blurry explosions from the frat boys out back recreating scenes from Jackass the Movie are the same. Scary? I’ll tell you what’s scary about this monstrously sucky piece of celluloid, the 1998 Matthew Broderick remake of Godzilla is actually decent entertainment compared to Cloverfield.

300: “This is Spaaaaaaaarta!” Please. No it’s not. Not even close. The Battle at the Hot Gates, i.e. the Battle of Thermopylae, is one of the greatest, most noble, most heroic, and most studied of the ancient epics. What’s more, it’s a true story. 300 isn’t that story. 300 is some kind of bizarre semi-erotic fantasy for teenaged boys who learn history from comic books. I don’t demand that my movies be accurate representations of history, but Jesus H. Christ is it too much to ask for some plotting? Or maybe acting? or a coherent storyline? 300 is a ninety minute animated comic book, once you get past the artwork and the effects – there’s really nothing else. As to the effects, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow did it better.

A History of Violence: “You won’t know what hit you!” Yeah. I’d say that about sums up this movie. Violence = Bad. Got it. Of course, that’s why people went to see it, for the violence. Oooow, violence is terrible - now, show us some more! Listed as the “Best movie of the year” by Entertainment Weekly. Makes you wonder what the other choices were.

Children of Men: "Gripping Thriller!” Yeah. Gripping. “Magnificent…a unique and totally original vision.” Totally original if you haven’t actually read any post-apocalyptic science fiction, that is. More handheld camera work, apparently nobody knows how operate a steadycam in the future. And then there’s the endless long shot. Christ, I felt like I needed a pair of binoculars.

Lost in Translation: You know, I miss Bill Murray, I do. I miss the old funny Bill Murray, the guy from Meatballs, Stripes and Scrooged. Hell, I even miss the Bill Murray from The Razor’s Edge. I miss his dry wit and subtle everyman humor. What the hell happened to him? I couldn’t even watch this movie. I kept falling asleep. I don’t even know what this movie was about, unless it was intended to cure insomnia.

Solaris: Please, God, do not ever let George Clooney wear the batman suit with the nipples again, or act in a Science Fiction movie. If there is anything more boring than Lost in Translation, it’s Solaris. Good God! 90 minutes of introspection with George Clooney. I wanted to gouge my eyes out. People claim this piece of crap is powerful and thought provoking – the only thoughts it provoked in me were powerful thoughts of suicide.

War of the Worlds: Great, great depiction of the Martian tripods – which did not in any way make up for that squealing kid. Be honest, how many of you would have fed Dakota Fanning to the Martians? Tom Cruise too. I swear to God, an hour into the movie I was cheering the Martians and shouting at the screen “Over there! You stupid tree frogs! They’re hiding in the basement! Over there! Get ‘em.”

The Constant Gardener: Two hours of constant boredom. Is it just me, or does anybody else find Rachel Weisz annoying? She was OK in the Mummy movies, cute and endearing even, but seriously in anything else her voice and unblinking doe-eyed stare is like a fork on a blackboard to me. I can’t buy her in anything, she always seems completely miscast to me, Enemy at the Gates, The Fountain, Constantine (and seriously here, when Keanu Reeves has more emotional depth of expression, you might want to think about backing off on the Botox).

The Golden Compass: Holy freakin’ crap, for all the hoopla about atheism, I can’t even remember what the hell this movie was about. There were blimps, I remember blimps – but that’s about it. If Christians are threatened by this piece of shit, well, maybe they should go watch Narnia some more.

V for Vendetta: Yeah, brainwashing. It’s like cheering for Tania, ur, sorry Patty Hearst. At least they blow up Hugo Weaving in the end.

And finally, by far the biggest piece of crap I’ve been suckered into in a long, long time:

No Country for Old Men: And here you have the actual Emperor of Naked Parades. Every person who got hoodwinked into seeing this turd wants to claim that they ‘get it.’ It’s supposed to be a deep, deep movie that trumpets the brilliance of the brothers Coen. Ask ‘em what it means though, and they raise one eyebrow archly and say, “if you don’t get it, then you’re just stupid.” Ok, outline the plot then. “If you don’t get it, you’re just stupid.” Ok, I’m stupid, tell me what the ending, or lack of ending, means. “If you don’t get it…” Yeah, if you can’t see the Emperor’s new suit, you’re an uncouth heathen. I’ve heard the same thing about blobs of paint thrown at a canvass. When a kindergartener does it, it’s amusing, when Jackson Pollock does it – well, it’s supposed to be art. Truthfully though, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. And it’s the same here, the difference between the horribly violent Country and Robert Rodriguez films like Desperado, is that Desperado actually had a plot and fairly decent acting. It was also amusing. It was also entertaining. It also had a fucking ending. (it also had Selma Hayek, yozer!) The ending of Country isn’t deep. It isn’t clever. It isn’t brilliant. It’s crap. It’s a cop out. It’s the fact that the Coen brothers can’t actually write. It’s not that I don’t get it, I do – I just don’t think it’s particularly earth shaking.

Anyway, there you have it. Stonekettle Station’s top ten acclaimed movies that actually sucked.

Now, tell me why I’m wrong – because I know you will.

Go ahead, but I warn you, I’ve been to the Post Office and I’m not in a good mood.

Stonekettle Station's Top Ten Sci-Fi Novels of All Time

I'm sick of politics and I don't have any funny cat stories today.

A while back I asked if there was anything you wanted me to talk about, and the overwhelming response (OK, two people) was: Books, talk to us about books, Jim.

And it's been a while since I published a "Top Ten List" and as you know, the unwritten blogohedron bylaws require a Top Ten at least once a month.

Additionally, I've been a science fiction fan since I was old enough to read and over the years I've amassed a seriously large library of speculative fiction (really, that's the real reason I had to get out of the Navy, I couldn't afford to move all of those books again). I tend to reread my favorites on a fairly regular basis, and some I've read dozens of times.

It's almost as if you can see the lines of destiny converging on this one blog post, can't you?

In order to make my top ten list, novels have to meet certain personal criteria. First they have to grab me right from the very first line, and they have to rivet my attention throughout no matter how many times I've read them. I tend to love space opera and tales that paint the smallness of mankind against a vast and terrible backdrop. In order to make my top ten list, the story must contain characters who I can connect to, who I can believe in, even if they don't do what I would have done in similar circumstance. I want my sci-fi to contain all the things that were the hallmarks of John W. Campbell's' Golden Age, i.e. spaceships, aliens, ray guns, manly men and fair lasses - and I want my aliens to be alien, not the author's cat dressed up in a funny costume. The book must combine style and story, both are equally important to me. The following list contains old and dear friends, novels that I cannot live without, books that I own multiple copies of and when I find a dog eared copy in a version I don't own in a used book store somewhere I happily buy yet another copy of.

In order:

1) Nova, Samuel Delany: Love, hatred, incest, betrayal, friendship, honor, cyborg studs and exploding stars. Space Opera at its very finest. For me Nova is the perfect melding of style and substance. Delany's tersely unique and intense style paints a vivid and distant future where politics, economics, and culture are locked in struggle between powerful families. Star travel is ancient and easy, cyborgs are ubiquitous - indeed those without direct neural interface to the machines are pariahs and unemployable, and the book mentions the persecution of gypsies who eschew such technology for exactly that reason - political power rests in the hands of ancient and formidable families and the book's plot is based on the struggle between the scions of two of the most powerful, Lorq Von Ray and Prince Red, and their race to acquire the most valuable substance in the universe from the heart of an exploding star. The book centers around an unlikely anti-hero, Mouse, a gypsy, musician, and wandering cyborg-stud starship crewman, but it tells the ultimately tragic tale of Lorq Von Ray, a man old before his time, driven by the ultimate quest, and by a woman - the sister of his sworn enemy - that he will never, ever, have.

2) Ringworld, Larry Niven: The classic enormous big thing novel. The story is simple, a small mixed group of explorers crash on an ancient, unknowably vast artificial world - a ring that completely encircles a star at the distance of 1Au. They search for help and finally rescue themselves through their own ingenuity and resourcefulness. Along the way they discover many strange and wondrous things beneath the light of the world spanning arch. Niven does a masterful job of easing the reader into the shear vastness of his vision, stepping the reader bit by bit into a larger and larger framework - and yet still surprises you with the enormity of the Ringworld at every turn of the page. As I said, on surface the story itself is a simple tale of survival in an alien environment, but the real story is in the sub plots that weave together the various mysteries of Niven's Know Space series. The book stands on its own, but for fans of Know Space, it is the cornerstone the ties twenty years of Niven's work together.

3) Orphans of the Sky (Universe), Robert Heinlein: I'll admit right up front that I am a huge RAH fan. I don't care much for his more famous adult novels, e.g. Stranger in a Strange Land, but by God I love his Young Adult stuff. The guy could tell a story. For me, he was a hell of a raconteur and his "juveniles" spoke directly to my teenaged brain. You may be surprised that I would list Orphans over Starship Troopers, but for me this novel is the epitome of everything I love about Heinlein's writing and golden age science fiction in particular. Again the story is simple, long after a failed mutiny, the descendents of a starship's crew have forgotten Earth and their origins. They live within the giant steel confines of their ship, believing it to the be the entire universe. The protagonist, Hugh Hoyland, discovers the truth and tries to change the fate of his people. He is only marginally successful.

4) The Forever War, Joe Haldeman: Starship Troopers told through the eyes of a Vietnam combat veteran. SST's may have been first, and may have inspired Haldeman, but TFW is for me the ultimate science fiction war novel. SST is often condemned, and TFW is often praised - because, I suspect, that Heinlein's character, Johnny Rico came to love the military and found honor, glory, and a home. Haldeman's character, William Mandela, purely hates the army, though ultimately he reluctantly chooses to make it his life. The two are very, very different novels, though most seem to miss this. SST is a book of honor, courage, and coming of age. TFW speaks only slightly of honor and courage, and speaks far more eloquently of the horrors of combat and the toll it takes from the men who fight it.

5) A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge: A truly horrifying story. Intelligent spiders. The ultimate pitiless form of rape and enslavement. Betrayal on a scale so vast that it nearly defies description. Lifespans measured across time so large that entire civilizations rise and fall and disappear from the universe. Ramscoops and flying worlds. And the ultimate battle for survival between the forces of evil and a reluctant good. Vinge is a guy that gave us some of the very best novels and sort stories of the genre - The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime, Apartness, Just Peace, A Fire Upon the Deep, and The Blabber to name but a few - and Deepness is the best of the bunch.

6) The City and the Stars, Arthur C. Clarke: The shear, incredible poetry of Clarke's writing never ceases to astound me, and nowhere is it better than in this novel. The story is a tale told over billions of years on a scale so vast that you have to marvel at Clarke's ability. This is the ultimate coming of age story. Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? These are the questions any coming of age story asks, and they are the questions we each ask ourselves, but for Alvin, the story's protagonist, these questions are far more than passing curiosity - and asking them is the very reasons he exists at all. These questions drive him from the safety of Diaspar, the last, greatest, and ultimate expression of man's technology, across the galaxy. Alvin was made to discover the answers to these questions - and to ensure that the billionth generation descendents of man remember their history and realize their ultimate destiny.

7) The Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: The ultimate first-contact novel. This book is the very, very best of two absolute masters of the genre and I don't say that lightly. The Niven and Pournelle collaboration has produced some of my very favorite books, and I could have easily just listed their bibliography instead of going through the effort of compiling my own list. And frankly for me it is a toss up between Mote and the Legacy of the Herot, which I simply can't read enough times and because I probably identify with Legacy's Cadman Weyland more than any other character in any novel, of any genre, I've ever read. I finally settled on Mote though, because it is one of the very few, if not the only, science fiction novel that portrays a truly believable space navy, both the force structure and the technology - and that, of course, shapes everything else. Both the moties, the alien civilization, and the human Empire are incredibly complex and richly believable constructs.

8) The Dying of the Light, George R. R. Martin. No other author, of any genre, evokes in me the shear shivering sense of the implacably vast and ancient alien strangeness of the universe. Light is the story of death, both large and small. The death of star spanning empires, the death of worlds - and one, Worlon, in particular - the death of civilizations, the death of relationships, the death of honor and glory and an ancient way of life, and the personal death of men. But it is also, and always, about rebirth, and life, and how we live it. In Martin's tale, space is vast and unknown and ancient. The aliens are alien and they do things for their own inscrutable alien reasons and you may never, never, understand them. But men are still men, even after ten thousand years of travel, even after Earth has become a legend, even after a war that has lasted a thousand years and scattered the children of men across the stars and turned them into things barely recognizable. Light is filled with legend and mystery and history so thick you keep looking over your shoulder.

9) Starhammer, Christopher Rowley. No, you've never heard of this novel and you may never have heard of Chris Rowley - and that's a shame. Rowley wrote only three books set in this universe, the universe of the terrifying parasitic Vang, and that too is a shame. I love Starhammer for almost exactly the same reasons I love George Martin's work - it tells the tale of a vast and terrible universe, a universe where man is a tiny, insignificant - and in this case, enslaved - species in a much, much larger tapestry. This is a brutal novel, with some truly horrifying paragraphs, but in the end honor, courage, and perseverance win the day.

10) The Stars Are Ours! (Ad Astra), Andre Norton. What can you say about Norton? You can close your eyes and pick one of her books at random, and be instantly transported into a strange and mysterious world and always unfailingly be entertained. Norton is like a mind expanding drug without the side affects. This is one of her few straight science fiction novels without any touches fantasy. It's a coming of age novel, a quest novel, and a novel of exploration.

Honorable Mentions:

Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank. Long dated, but still one of the very best tales of average people struggling to survive in a post holocaust world.

Casca the Eternal Warrior, Barry Sadler. Fantasy, to be sure, but how can you not be fascinated by the story of the eternally damned Roman Legionnaire who stabbed Christ to death on the cross?

Logan's Run, William Nolan. Seriously, if you saw the piece of shit 70's movie and think you've seen Nolan's vision, you're wrong. Read the book, it's incredible.

Well, there you have it, Stonekettle Station's top ten best science-fiction novels of all time.

And you? What novels would you list, and why?