Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers

Recto, I would recommend also : Dune Saga by Frank Herbert and Hyperion by Dan Simmons! Additionally, books written by brothers Strugacki are awesome! I.e. Roadside picnic.
MJF - thanks for thread. I love SF and Fantasy books.
Gruchaa: I am glad that you like the thread. I hope to do a few more pieces in due course but it takes a lot of time and research. It would be good if others wanted to chip in with pieces on well known writers and what may have motivated them to write their stories.
 
Thank you for all these suggestions ! And you are right the only way to find out if they match my taste is to try them myself. So, let's get to work ! :lkj:
Recto: I discovered an earlier thread on the Forum titled 'Old Paperbacks from the 1960's and 1970's'. The comments on the thread mainly relate to science fiction works with various people giving their recommendations. It may be worth a look to see if any of these books take your fancy. I noted that quite a few of the books cited were turned into films or TV series, such as Ray Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles', which I remember watching in the 1980's.
 
This group of words is neither German nor English but a unintelligible mixture of both. See here, where they unraveled some of it:
UFO Base In Antarctica

Also related:
Mysterious Mount Untersberg: Nazis and Time Anomalies
Palinurus: Thank you for directing me to these two threads. I have in fact viewed the second thread before but not the first. I think Lilies in depth analysis in the 'UFO Base in Antartica' thread is fascinating and is probably very close to the mark.

One thing I did take away from his analysis is that one of his possible explanations for "Yie Arie" was "The Aryan Eye Machine that can see into the depths of time". This made think of a 'looking glass', which I commented on in both this thread and the 'Atlantis' thread in relation to Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass and the ALICE device used at CERN. It also makes me think of the crystal balls that fortune tellers claim allows them to see into the future. Of course, Die Glocke was a large machine or device by comparison, according to eye witness accounts.

Staying with a science fiction theme here, an ''Eye Machine'' also makes me think of the old 1960's American TV show 'The Time Tunnel', which was a machine that could allow viewers to see (or travel) backwards and forwards in time. Who knows, that show may have been an indirect leaking of what could have been going on at Montauk in the late 1960's in a similar way to 'Stranger Things', a more modern show that some also think refers to the experiments conducted at Montauk back in the 1970's? There is a separate thread for Stranger Things on the Forum.
 
Since writing my piece on Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Emma Hardinge Britten, I came across something the C's said, which I think sheds new light on what the Orphic Circle may have been up to. In my article I said:

"I am also attaching an extract I found in an academic work by Robert Mathieson on Emma Hardinge Britten, which comments on her links with the Orphic Circle and Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton. If Lewis Carroll was a Rosicrucian and member of the Orphic Circle, as many have suggested, he would have known Bulwer-Lytton well and would almost certainly have come into contact with Emma Harding Britten, possibly during some of her trance sessions for the Circle. Mathieson also makes reference to Frederick Hockley, a Rosicrucian who was the most well known English occultist of the first half of the 19th Century. Mathieson shows that Emma Hardinge Britten knew Hockley well and was even allowed to use his 'sacred mirrors' for vision trances to contact guiding spirits (who in her own words were extraterrestrial and not human).

If Britten used a mirror to gain the information that Carroll and Bulwer-Lytton subsequently used in their books, this may make sense of the C's statement "You are dancing on the 3rd density ballroom floor. "Alice likes to go through the looking glass" at the Crystal Palace".

What it look as though the Orphic Circle were doing was using a special mirror as a Psychomantium and having a highly psychic person such as Emma Hardinge Britten act as a conduit to gain the information they wanted. Here is what the C's said about psychomantiums:

Extracts from Session 17 January 1997

A: Time to consider construction of psychomantium.

Q: (Laura) What is a 'psychomantium?'

A: Chamber for viewing other realms, possible futures and entities residing in other densities. Need clear depth... such as large polished mirror on stand, which can be adjusted as to angle... walls must be completely covered in black, so as to eliminate reflection... soft, low, indirect lighting.

Q: (Laura) Wasn't it Dr. Moody that did the life-after-death thing? (Terry) He's got a room with the mirror with the balck velour walls and the comfortable chair that you can look in the mirror without seeing yourself...

A: Yes, and it is real and it works. In the clear depths, you can even see us, on occasion!

Q: (Terry) This psychomantium, isn't it in essence a way of opening up a doorway to other realities and other levels and densities?

A: Yes.

Q: (Terry) It's going to vary from person to person... (Laura) OK, what advantage is there to using a psychomantium to using the board, I mean, is it going to replace the board?

A: No. Visualizations clarify and unite images.

Q: (Laura) Ok, what images would we wish, or would be suggested to unite and clarify, and particularly in the term unite? You've used the term 'unite' on a number of occasions, and in unusual ways.

A: Anything and everything in transcripts, for example... and all else.

Q: (Laura) Okay, so we would be able to see all of the things told about in the transcripts. Would we also be able to, by seeing a 4th density reality, be able to generate some sort of unification between ourselves, in some sense, and this new reality?

A: Yes.

Q: (Laura) Is this part of the way and means of bonding oneself to 4th density reality.

A: Helps.

Q: (Laura) Can one also use this to visit other parts of the globe in real time?

A: Yes.

Q: (Terry) Visit the past and the future?

A: Yes.


*********************************************************************

It is a horrifying thought that the Orphic Circle may by these means have been able to see glimpses of the future and then steer their present to bring that future about. It is also worth remembering that the C's have said that the Rosicrucians are the Illuminati and some members of the Orphic Circle were reputed to be rosicrucians including Lewis Carroll.
 
I have always liked science fiction for some reason. It seems to stir something within, maybe some sort of memory of earlier lifetimes or possibly even "future selves" or "parallel selves". Or simply the sense that life is full of wonders and can be much more than we are told.

One of my favorites is "Dune" which depicts the world 10,000 years in the future. It extrapolates from what we have now in creative and interesting ways. Also, the spiritual transformation process is depicted quite realistically in some ways, especially in the first book.

Among the famous science fiction authors, I like the books of Heinlein the most, such as "Friday" or "The Cat Who Walked Through Walls". They have a fascinating, light and endearing quality to them that is difficult to describe.

As far as creativity goes, the "Demon Princes" series by Jack Vance is quite unsurpassed, even by "Dune". It also depicts a possible future of humanity that has colonized a part of the galaxy, with wildly different cultures developing on different planets over time. The "demon princes" are sort of like criminal cabal bosses that the protagonist goes after.
Jack Vance is also one of my favorites- I have read and re-read his Tschai novels ( hence my web name) the exploits of Adam Reith a star scout stranded on the planet Tschai orbiting the star Carina 4269, 412 light years from Earth. The books take you through Reith’s adventures and interactions with various people and aliens as he attempts to find a space ship to return to Earth. Never tire of reading them.
 
I really enjoyed Hyperion Cantos and Ilium/Olympos series by Dan Simmons when I used to read SF. They are epic!
Haven't read the former, but I did enjoy the latter. I recall Odysseus being quite the badass. But my favorite SFF author is Guy Gavriel Kay. He's considered "fantasy", but his stuff is more like historical fiction, inspired by real history but fictionalized and with slight details and names changed (as if taking place in an alternate reality very much like our own, but not quite): Chinese Tang and Song dynasties, medieval Spain, Renaissance Italy, Byzantium, the Albigensian Crusade...
 
Seeing these two series titles mentioned together, I suddenly remembered the existence of this old thread (2007; six pages):

Anyone know any good new SF writers?

As for Antarctica, I stumbled upon this one while searching for other stuff:

About Antarctica
Palinurus, since starting this thread I have become aware of the old 2007 SF thread. This current thread is more aimed at what might have motivated the SF and fantasy writers to write their works (e.g., Thor's Pantheum). I was not aware of the Antartic thread though and will read it with interest. I guess with a Forum as large as this one, some duplication of effort is inevitable.
 
I really think SciFy is just as capable of changing ones view of reality as romance novels- it certainly has been a major factor in the way I see things, and opens the mind to new ideas. It paved the way here by allowing me to accept the possibility of other realities and the “what if”- A lot of what was once science fiction is now a reality, like cell phones and computers. When I was in school we didn’t even have calculators- now they are common place- which someone dreamed of and someone else decided yeah, we can do that for real-but it was science fiction first There are numerous reasons an author writes, some want to send a message- perhaps to alert us to the dangers of society like Aldous Huxley, or possibly the over dependence on AI like Issac Asimov’s Robot series. Some want to shock you, some to blur the lines between fact and fiction and some just want to tell a darn good story. There can be romantic themes in SyFy as well and tragedy, lost loves- real emotional, tear jerker stuff. So yes, I think SyFy can be every bit as reality shaping as Romantic novels. Works for me anyways.
 
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I really think SciFy is just as capable of changing ones view of reality as romance novels- it certainly has been a major factor in the way I see things, and opens the mind to new ideas. It paved the way here by allowing me to accept the possibility of other realities and the “what if”- A lot of what was once science fiction is now a reality, like cell phones and computers. When I was in school we didn’t even have calculators- now they are common place- which someone dreamed of and someone else decided yeah, we can do that for real-but it was science fiction first There are numerous reasons an author writes, some want to send a message- perhaps to alert us to the dangers of society like Aldous Huxley, or possibly the over dependence on AI like Issac Asimov’s Robot series. Some want to shock you, some to blur the lines between fact and fiction and some just want to tell a darn good story. There can be romantic themes in SyFy as well and tragedy, lost loves- real emotional, tear jerker stuff. So yes, I think SyFy can be every bit as reality shaping as Romantic novels. Works for me anyways.
I agree with you that SciFy writers have certainly opened us up to new possibilities, some good and some bad. As one example, Arthur C Clarke is considered to be the father of modern satellites. Even though he did not actually work on them, it was he who helped to visualise them in the first place.

Like you, I can also remember when calculators were first introduced and the sense of wonder they induced in we school children. It certainly made my slide rule redundant overnight. My late father, who was a professional engineer who worked on cutting edge stuff, was an avid science fiction reader in his younger days. He was born in 1926 and grew up watching the old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials at the cinema. I remember him saying that people dreamed of being able to communicate over long distance face to face. He never dreamed it would be a reality in his lifetime though. He would marvel at the way he could see his daughter in Seattle face to face in realtime through Skype before he died. BTW my father was the guy who invented the bleeper used by doctors in hospital and others. As a government boffin, he never made a penny out of it. He also worked on the aircraft 'Black Box' project. He was a really clever inventive guy. Sadly, I didn't inherit those genes so I never followed him into engineering.
 
I really think SciFy is just as capable of changing ones view of reality as romance novels
I believe that you really do think that, tschai. However, you are not Laura, nor the Cs who are suggesting that we read these books for a very specific reason.

Here's what Laura has to say:

This particular genre, by virtue of the fact that it is predicated on "historical" periods and events, gives the necessary framework for working out issues from the PAST by way of the present (as just described, conscience, etc.). Sci-fi future oriented novels do not have this framework and are thus much less suitable for our purposes here. We are trying to learn the lessons of 3D, not anticipate what we might do/experience in a 4D future that we can hardly imagine.
She, then, goes on to say:
I've had my issues with the quality of writing of some of these stories, as have others, but one thing I have learned is that, when the story and the dynamics are of interest, I can set that aside and mentally correct for the author. I think that there is a certain amount of "channeling" going on with these books, even if the authors are not always masters of syntax and grammar. So, I've learned to set those problems aside and look specifically at the story, the dynamics, the INFORMATION that is being conveyed in the scenarios, and to use my own imagination to get inside the heads of the characters. Naturally, when I do that, my characters use better grammar and small historical inaccuracies are corrected! I may resonate so much with a particular story that I imagine that I have re-written it and improved it.
Getting inside of the heads of the characters is so very important to learning the lessons that are there for everyone to see.
The best thing about these books is the internal dialogue that we are permitted to witness. Many times, I've suggested that members read books such as "Inside the Criminal Mind" etc in order to get a sort of caricatured version of the kind of Internal Considering that everyone is subject to. But it is hard to really reduce that to what goes on in a normal person's mind, even if it follows a similar dynamic. But then, I realized that these books do exactly what is needed for just about anyone to "get it".
She continues:
If a person has a good associative thinking ability (which is not true of everyone), they can easily see the relationship between Samenow's construction and the Internal Considering that we witness in the characters in the romance novels. More importantly, everyone can learn exactly what Internal Considering actually is by reading these stories! If you were wondering, finding it hard to understand what is meant by this label, then wonder no more! Just read!

The examples of false personalities and Internal Considering vs true essence and External Considering are remarkable.
I realize that there are some men who may think that it's not "manly" to read these sissy effeminate books. However, through the last 16 or so years, I have discovered that real men are secure in their manliness and in touch with their feminine side so much so that these silly labels for the books are not even in their minds. Especially the books recommended by Laura. If one has faith in Laura knowing what she's talking about, and we have all seen that she does, then, there is no reason to not try out a few books before making a choice of to continue or not.

I am a fairly huge sci-fi fan, and was never even remotely interested in Romance novels. To me, they were the true "fantasy" novels. But I decided that Laura doesn't just suggest things willy-nilly and if I wanted to learn more about simple teaching and karmic lessons, then reading these books is what I would do.

I can say, now, without a doubt, I have found that these books really do have a lot to teach us. And, I am enjoying myself to boot.

However, it has been said that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. (BTW, this is so very true, I know.) So we will each do as we choose. It's just that those who don't read these books are missing out on a lot of knowledge to be gained on many different levels.
 
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