tbh, i was rooting for them out of the east, but im from detroit, hence my wings allegiance

lol.

Yeah, Asimov's nonfiction is fantastic, which is why he moved to it, heh.

But his short stories are something, too. Try them.

I do have to say, Ringworld was very much old school SciFi. Cool science and world building, half-ass writing. I kinda dig that on occasion. Heinlein, as mentioned, is a God among men.

so got promoted from intern to lackey/gopher/data entry monkey (they call it "staff assistant"). My salary and responsibilities don't change.


But I get health insurance and PTO.

So what's the difference between "staff assistant" and "administrative assistant"?

staff assistants work on the hill and require degrees from eithier top colleges or graduating at the top of your class from a college in the senator/representatives state. You also usually need lots of good extracurriculars and a couple months working there for free.

Administrative assistants work for private companies, require an associates or bachelors, and usually pay much better.

This made me lol

I'm pretty sure you are a scientologist.

I dunno what qualifies as oldschool, but John Wyndham wrote books a long time ago that are 1) awesome science fiction, 2) awesome writing, 3) as good an expression of the cold war as anything outside a very few of John le Carre's novels. Cruelly, cruelly underrated, and probably just because they aren't situated on a far off plant/space station.

Also Ursula le Guin. She has some seriously phenominal work of scifi, in addition to the obvious awesome earthsea books.

Yes, John Wyndham is fantastic as well. Definitely underrated. I always forget about him because I think space when I think SciFi. The Day of the Triffids is one of my all time favourite books nobody's ever heard of. You should've seen the look on my wife's face when I called her 9 foot sunflowers Triffids. She thought I'd finally cracked.

You got to put in some time before you start to get the perks.

However, eventually even the perks start to get old.

I read a lot of the foundation series, but like someone said, those books are dry as hell.

Once I found some better stuff, I put asimov down and have never picked him up again.

yup.

travel is the classic example. You fly business/first, stay in five star accommodation, earn massive airmiles, can eat in teh awesome restaurants, and yet still somehow doing it more than 2 weeks a year is soulcrushing.

thats because you're not actually visiting the places you're traveling to. You're staying in the same corporate/sterile environment, just at a different longitude and lattitude.

that's not really true in my experience, although there is something suffocating about staying in an expensive hotel for more than about 3 nights that made me quite want to commit acts of extreme perversity.

But only interacting in work relationships for 80%+ of the time gets tired quickly and i think that is what really killed it for me.

This is how it is in my industry.

We put on huge events for different corporations, that are taking place in some pretty exotic locations (Hawaii, Hong Kong, Monaco, Sydney, Puerto Rico, Cancun, etc.), but all we ever get to see is the inside of some ballroom for 14-18 hours a day. It could all be happening in Monaco or in Camden, NJ, it makes no difference.

That's why the wife and I would always tack on some extra time before and after an event to check out the locations and do some sightseeing.

there's a link to a youtube video in this weeks' b3ta newsletter where someone connects to wikipedia via linux and a circa 1964 300 baud modem. fairly interesting actually but i am a massive internet geek

how i missed that first quote, i dunno. but it took 2 hours to download the whole text of the paper.... wow. what we have come too today.

I'll second this.....The Day of the Triffids was made into an awesome miniseries by the BBC that I managed to see only 3 parts of back in the '80's and have never been able to see on TV or on DVD ever again. His books The Chrysalids and Stowaway to Mars are both very good IMHO as well. Chocky was the basis for a movie that I've forgotten the name of, but it may be 'Children of the Damned' I think not 100% sure on that one.

David Drake and Jerry Pournel are more into Military Sci-Fi and favorites of mine as well as standards like RAH, ACC, PA.

Good time and good reading if somewhat dated in some aspects. RAH became kind of weird towards the end of his life in his writing, but his stories were still pretty good.

My 2 pennies fwiw

only if you consider incest, orgies, incestuous orgies, homosexual incest, homosexual incestuous orgies, and traveling back in time to sex up your mother weird.

By cracky!! You hit the head of the nail bang on old chappie!!!!!!!

Cable Television?

the kraken wakes.

and the postapocalyptic one.

BTW, A humorist side to the subject of Sci-fi sex...

My Catholic High School library had a great Science Fiction section including many of Heinleins works... I read them all. Definitely not Catholic school material... LOLOL

What makes this more humorous is the fact that the school librarian would cut out all the racy Sports Illustrated magazine pictures. I guess she wasn't a big science fiction fan...

I propose that you — wait for it — move.

I am now in Chicago; perhaps unsurprisingly, I suggest that that might be a nice direction for you to head.

I am pretty sure my Catholic HS library had some books of some kind. I think.