Quote:
Originally Posted by daniellaaarisen
Well I'll pretend to not be embarassed and simply say that I am flattered-- thank you  It is honestly really nice to hear.
Dampier? Anderson? Are these recommendations that I have forgotten? |
The Dampier book is. It's "History of Science" by Sir William Cecil Dampier;
published by Cambridge University Press.
I think it's still in-print and it's REALLY good as far as that sort of thing goes;
and it's sorta considered to be *the* book for science history.
The REALLY "famous" one is History of Science by Rene Taton, but that just goes
on and on - like ME right NOW lol! - It's 4 volumes and thousands of pages. But it
all goes back to this guy named Sarton, he's the biggie.
But anyway long story short, yeah, I recommend the science history book by Dampier very highly. It's got a pretty good summary of what's gone down, in the past few hundred years.
Poul Anderson is my favorite science fiction author - he's just stunning in his abilities. The "big three" were "smarter" - Asimov had like a 180 I.Q. compared to Anderson's 160 or so - - - But Anderson LOVED learning SO much and he was learning ALL the time. His prose isn't necessarily top-rate in a "flowery" kind of way but he's just SO much fun to read and he gets a lot of ideas across without being preachy. He uses "gentle persuasion" in a fun, exciting way, and i.m.o. he was a master writer - BEST of the best!
Good books by him that are fairly short are "Fire Time" and "Ensign Flandry."
His "biggies" are the "Harvest of Stars" series (top-rate!) and "Boat of a Million Years."
Oh, and his really famous one is "Tau Zero," that got a lot of attention.
"Fire Time" was probably my favorite short novel by him. If I had to pick one,
that'd be the one I'd recommend.