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Science Fantasy worlds

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prophet224:
Just to throw this into the pot... L.E. Modesitt's Order/Chaos series.  The first few were excellent, but he's into the double digits now and it is getting old.

There's actually one whole book where you find out that the basis for much of the O/C world's civilization is from a ship that jumped dimensions... from one of his other series'.  Amusing... (that one was the best book, btw).

And I know it was already mentioned, but the Coldfire trilogy was a personal favorite of mine.

Kristine:
I don't know if this qualifies but all the Books of Swords by Fred Saberhagen (has a good Dracula series as well) but you have to read the prequels, which are all together in the book, Empire of the East.  It shows how this fantasy world is actually post apocalyptic - sort of.

prophet224:
You know, the Wheel of Time books indicate pretty strongly throughout them that they are set in a far future of our world.

Uilos:
I've always enjoyed the Dune universe. Herbert had such a terrific way of showing exactly the inner connectedness of all the planets involved, even the minor ones. You knew who was with who and everything in between

Spectacular Sameth:

--- Quote from: neurovore on May 01, 2007, 08:31:43 PM ---Science, done in the real world, has as an absolute fundamental axiom the assumption that new things are worth knowing, be that because they are fun or cool or interesting or are going to let you build more stuff or whatever.

The basic assumptions of Crichton's work are that new things are scary and dangerous and have to be stamped out because otherwise they will have inevitable terrible consequences, and that people who work to find out new things are at best irresponsible and more likely malevolent. (I do not think this assumption is absolutely essential for making a technothriller work, though I'm having a hard time seeing where the technothriller values of preserving the status quo could fit with a geniune SFnal attitude to new ideas; horror seems pretty much defined by the Other being horrible and dangerous and scary, but I don't think the question of whether something is horror or not is in the same direction as whether it's SF or fantasy or mainstream, it's possible to be horror or not-horror in any of those spaces.)

As somebody who works in real-world science, I take major umbrage at Crichton's assumption.

--- End quote ---

As a fan of Crichton, I take umbrage to your assumption that that is the point that he's trying to get across. Crichton has no hidden agenda. There's nothing to read between the lines. His books are meant to tell a story. That is all.

Think of it this way, when someone makes a movie and they depict the villain as being a Russian radical, are they condemning ALL of Russia? Hell no. What about movies about the American revolution and the bad guys are British? Are they condemning England and the other British countries? Again, no. Except for State of Fear (and possibly Next), Crichton had no hidden agenda in his telling of his story. That was all he was trying to do. Tell a story. He finds something cool and writes about it. If anything, I think he's making the public aware that we might have these capabilities or something similar. Nothing more.

Okay, what about an example from his work? Ever read Sphere? Sphere has nothing to do with technology malfunctioning. The underwater habitat never malfunctioned until it was hit by a squid several times and had an electrical surge. That one, Crichton exploits the human race and their minds being dangerous given the power of manifestation combined with fear. So is he condemning us? No.

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