Margaret attwood

[marissab]

I adore handmaids tale. I love the futuristic 1984-ish bleak future themes. Are her other books along the same themes? I don't know whether they'll live up to HMT.

I think Heinlein went a bit doolally in his later books.

Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are wonderful- but Friday and its ilk are ghastly. So is a Time Enough For Love- can't remember whether that's a later one or not.

:) Stranger IAST is the only one of his I've read.

Well i just have to say this is the longest thread i ever started! But it has inspired me to look again at Attwood and i'll be definately giving her another go. I'll be surprised if i can beat HMT but you never know. How i love that book!

My Heinlein period was late teens, so can't say what I would think of his books now, but I loved SIASL, Time Enough For Love, and Friday. Even then I do remember thinking that he is a bit too far gone when I read To Sail Beyond The Sunset, I Will Fear No Evil etc.

Maybe he was impotent in his later years, hence the obsession with everyone having sex with everyone. Who knows what he would have written if he could get a few little blue pills?

Which one are you picking Marisa?

Thanks Cote. They only had Stranger IAST in the library today, but I did get, 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep' and, 'The Invisible Man' - am amazed I've never read these.

I love Margaret Atwood. I remember reading The Handmaid's Tale when I was about 16 and it blew me away.

Alias Grace is another favourite.

I added The Handmaid's Tale to my Kindle "wish list", after all these glowing recommendations. I'm quite curious, actually - I would love to discover a new sci-fi author I like.

Remus - I liked DADOES. Philip K Dick has written many books - one of the benefits of writing under the influence of amphetamines was that he wrote fast, apparently) but I can't think of any that I didn't really like. Some I thought were brilliant, and the rest surprisingly good, considering that he has written all this sci-fi back when there was no such thing as a PC or even a mobile phone.

My favourite Philip K Dick books are:
Martian Time Slip - Complete mind-bender. It gave me an exquisite headache as I tried to keep up with the story.
A Scanner Darkly - Not sci-fi, really, and quite different than the rest of his work. Dark and brilliant. The film was truly awful, though.

His books of short stories are also worth reading. Films such as Minority Report, Total Recall, Impostor, and Paycheck were based on his short stories and all feature Dick's trademark "Am I really here? Is this real?" kind of scenarios.

Cheers, Cote. Will let you know how I get on with it, once I've finished my latest Wilkie Collins (I LOVE that man!).

I loved the Blind Assassin. i took it on holiday with me a few years ago and couldn't put it down. It was beautiful, heartbreaking and quite haunting.

I loved the robber bride, I was alot younger when I read it
also loved alias grace (maybe love not the word for such a tale..)

I have to earth out some more

Alias Grace and Oryx and Crake were both very good. I started After The Flood about 6 months ago then put to one side to read something else for a while but never really got back into it. I have The Blind Assassin on my shelf waiting for a suitable moment - will hopefully give it a go soon.