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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: What should be your FIRST sf book ???
Message-ID: <78@l5.uucp>
Date: Sun, 8-Sep-85 07:51:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5.78
Posted: Sun Sep  8 07:51:20 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Sep-85 04:09:25 EDT
References: <3538@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco
Lines: 36

I would opt for a good collection of short stories by a variety of authors.
This is how I got my father (long time science fiction hater) hooked. There
is much more variation between science fiction stories than, say, mysteries,
and it is difficult to predict what sort of science fiction someone is going
to like. My father turns out to be a great fantasy lover who can tolerate 
not-hard science fiction -- but how to know that?

I ended up being lucky -- we were stuck on a 12 hour plane flight and he
was out of reading material and so started on mine -- beginning with a
collection of Fritz Leiber short stories. Since he loved that, I gave him
the Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings, and The Eternal Champion and...

If I had to select, though, I would get a Conklin collection. Ihave friends who
love science fiction ala Hogan, Niven and Asimov who have never managed to
see what I saw in Fafrd and the Grey Mouser. I would want a collection that
spans both the fantasy and the hard sf end of the spectrum.

Also, I think that short fiction is more technically brilliant than long 
fiction (on the whole! not in every instance!) because there is no room to
screw up in short ficiton and recover -- either it is great or it flops.

Lord of Light is one of my favourite books, but it took me three times to
actually get down and read it -- the level of confusion hit a certain point
before it all was put together and I wasn't patient enough until ... goodness!
I finally read that ont he same plane trip I mentioned before! Weird...

Okay, question time. Of the people out there who have read both Lord of
Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness -- how many of you liked the first
one you read (whatever that was, unless you read them at the same time)
better? So far every single person I know who has read both of them likes
the first one they read better. I don't know why.......

-- 
Laura Creighton		(note new address!)
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa