Happy Birthday Leslie!
I hope you're having a marvelous day relaxing, not teaching, and enjoying yourself!


A little less than a year ago, I was on a quest to find some quality books to read. I came across the Science Fiction Book Club's list of the "most significant SF & fantasy books of the last 50 years, 1953-2002." [Here] So I printed it out, crossed off what I'd already read (#1,5,10,23,26,27,29,37,42,48) and found out which of these books were in A&M's library. One source of annoyance - A&M has a huge SF collection that isn't allowed to circulate. How annoying. But still, lots of these books were available to be checked out, so I got to work. I read Stranger in a Strange Land (#4) and The Colour of Magic (#16) and then promptly lost the list when I moved out of my apartment. I discovered it a while back but didn't start making the effort again until recently. I read Neuromancer last week and The Caves of Steel yesterday.

Impressions: SSL was really good until it started getting really weird. And it unnerves me that someone took that idea and made a real church out of it [The Church of All Worlds]. You grok? The Colour of Magic didn't really do anything for me. Neuromancer was pretty interesting, I managed to get into it, but it was also pretty confusing. This may stem from me really being more of a fantasy person rather than a SF person. However, The Caves of Steel, which I just finished last night, I loved. I'd never read Asimov before, but now I definitely want to read more.

So anyway, has anyone out there read these or any of the other books on the list and feel like commenting? I know several of you out there have read Snow Crash, which I will read as soon as the person who checked it out of the library returns it. Okay, anyway, time to get ready for school.