I've heard great things about that book, but I've never really cared for Neil Gaiman

Maybe you have too many books.











Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

Too little space, and there is something eerie about the disappearances.

He is friends with a friend of mine, and also likes Chesterton. My daughter has spoken to him, though I have not.

For all that, I've not read much of his work.

At least Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke) and Gateway (Pohl).

I had not heard of Ancillary Justice but I've read The Dispossessed. It's not my sort of book (and neither is Le Guin's other Hugo- and Nebula Award winner, The Left Hand of Darkness). If you like Le Guin then you might like it. The only other Le Guin I've read is The Beginning Place, which I liked at the time I read it but which I now realize is completely inappropriate for a "young adult" book.

Well, I suspect when you read the Robot novels you'll see it! Without giving anything away, The Caves of Steel takes place on an Earth that very much reflects the majority-Christian American society of the time in which it was written. That is absent from the later Robot novels of the 80s.

The only other sequel I could think of where you see this kind of societal change is The Gripping Hand - the sequel to The Mote in God's Eye. Ironically, in this case, it makes the sequel seem more dated than the original work, which is still not dated after 44 years in print.

I read WIZARD OF EARTHSEA and maybe the first sequel, some short stories. But as what her themes and attitudes were became clear, I left her to her admiring critics.

I had an intense aversion on the first reading of HAND. But rereading showed that it had improved or I had mellowed.

Still nothing wrong with EYE.

I don't dislike it but I don't really like it, either. It doesn't really break any new ground.

That's odd given that the society in 'Mote' is very conservative and traditional. I remember being a little shocked by the scene where Lady Fowler is talking to the 'Moties' and tells them bluntly that 'respectable women' never have sex before marriage and never use contraception. I was shocked not by the sentiment but by the fact that it was being expressed in a science fiction novel written in the 1970's after the sexual revolution.

Of course, another way in which this book is very conservative and traditional is that it makes it clear that there is still a nobility and a respect for authority expresses through a hierarchy. But then when I looked up Jerry Pournelle and saw that he was a very conservative and traditional guy.

I've thought about trying to read the entire 'CoDominion' series, but when I look it up, it seems so huge that it's a little intimidating and I'm not sure where to start.

I'm already missing Dr. Jerry. He corrected a misprint in my MOTE.

Let's see if Peregrinator has any ideas. Meanwhile, there's this

http://www.chronology.org/pournelle/

For CoDominium, basically Falkenberg’s Legion, Prince of Mercenaries, Go Tell the Spartans, Prince of Sparta, which is how I did it (actually I did The Mercenary and West of Honor, too, before getting the omnibus Legion) or The Prince, which is the easy way.

Mote is a Pournelle book with Niven overtones. Hand is a Niven book with Pournelle overtones. I like Pournelle better; I am therefore a much bigger fan of Mote.

Concur.

But I am a Niven fan, in Known Space, etc.

OUTIE is a Pournelle book, not by that Pournelle.

Someone once said that 'good science fiction predicts the automobile, but great science fiction predicts the traffic jam.'

I've been told that that is what Larry Niven does really well, he doesn't just predict new technology, he predicts the problems that the new technology will create, for example, if something like the Star Trek transporter was created, you'd suddenly have a problem with people randomly appearing in your home, or you'd be at a place like the Grand Canyon and suddenly 10,000 people show up out nowhere and overcrowd the place, you'd have no privacy at all, men would be transporting themselves directly into the showers in a locker room for cheerleaders or whatnot.

Well, it seems reasonable that societal mores would be cyclical, doesn't it? And especially after a period of collapse, some might appreciate the stability of a conservative and traditional society.


Start with Falkenberg's Legion (which is an omnibus of West of Honor and The Mercenary), and go on from there. GKC mentioned The Prince which is an omnibus of a bunch of the CoDominium books but I don't think that's in print any more - though it might be worth picking up used. Then you can read King David's Spaceship, The Gripping Hand, and Outies. The War World anthologies are strictly optional, in my opinion, but some of the stories are good.

I think it's obvious that some characters are Pournelle's while others are Niven's. Kevin Renner is very obviously a Niven character, so a book focusing on him will necessarily have a lot of Nivenry in it.

Mote is so much better than any of Pournelle's solo works (the ones I've read, anyway -- not to detract from any of them) that I hesitate to call it a "Pournelle book with Niven overtones". Then again, it's also better than any of Niven's books and any of Pournelle's other collaborations with Niven.

That is to say, it's better than anything else written by Pournelle, or Niven, or Niven and Pournelle together, or either in collaboration with anyone else, good as all these works may be and often are.

Which is is say, it's a pretty decent book.

Yes, something along those lines