Re: (review) Disgraced Return of The Kap's Needle by Renan Bernardo

On Wed, 18 Jun 2025 16:50:30 +0000, quadibloc wrote:

Which explains very well your nontraditional choice of material to
review, so instead of complaining about it I should wish you good luck.

The Big Three of science-fiction are usually Clarke, Asimov, and
Heinlein.
But while they are all of merit, I've tended to feel that, for me, at
least, Clarke rises above the other two in what I seek from a
science-fiction story.
In fact, thinking about it, I wonder if, in a "critic's choice" version,
one might get a different Big Three. Say Clarke, Bradbury, and Simak,
perhaps? Maybe #3 would be someone else; my memory isn't great enough to
know offhand all the best science fiction authors.
But Clarke didn't write that much science fiction.
In any case, though, it seems to me that it *ought* to be possible for
someone to write science fiction of such merit that it would blow even
Clarke out of the  water. The future is where we will, after all, live
the rest of our lives, as someone once said.
Ah, well. C. P. Snow may have explained why it's hard to find authors
with the right overlapping skill sets - the "Two Cultures" of the arts
and the sciences.
Oh, wait a moment. 1984 is science fiction, among other things. So a
science fiction novel of great and profound literary merit _has_ already
been written. (And Bradbury with Fahrenheit 451, and Heinlein with If
This Goes On... took stabs in that direction too which did very well.)
John Savard