[Graham]

Originally Posted by Anonymouse

A 'bit' different? A BIT?

Calm down, you'll have a coronary!

The character of Rico was utterly butchered by Verhoeven! For a start, the Rico in the novel would never have done something as stupid as allowing a member of his squad to remove his helmet during a live fire exercise!

Well, there was a touch of irony in my comment, but yes, you're right.

And them walking along a valley in a nice neat column? No one on point, no one up high to scout the flanks and, "oh, look, falling rocks. We'll look at them suspiciously, but not do anything about it"

Or what about "before this girl even gets to pilot the Starship, she does some insanely dangerous manouevres around the space station, then when she gets into the pilot's chair she does some more really stupid stuff, but instead of her getting a new a$$hole ripped into her, it's 'wow, wasn't that well done'"!!

Or how about "let's send massed infantry onto this planet with no armour or air support and then be surprised when they get butchered".

And talking of which, massed infantry??? Where the hell were the armoured suits of the novel which allowed a squad of men to fight with the effectiveness of an armoured brigade?

Apart from a couple of bits of dialogue and good effects, the whole thing was a waste of time.

Anyway. What am I reading? Well, I read a lot. Heinlein (duh!), Clarke, Asimov, Pratchett, Holt, Rankin, Dick, Adams...my bedroom is more like a library. Over 700 books, collected over 30+ years.

I've only got about 300 at the moment, but I cleared out a lot of stuff that I hadn't read for ages and didn't want to read again when I moved.

A lot of it matches your list, apart from Holt and Rankin who I just can't get into as mentioned earlier in the thread.

One author I recently discovered, though, totally took my breath away: Richard Morgan. His books so far are Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Market Forces and Woken Furies.

Not heard of him, but the review sounds interesting.

Have you tried Allen Steele: Orbital Decay, Lunar Descent, Clarke County Space etc? I found his stuff very readable and good "hard" SF.

Not only that, you can, if you're very rich, have updates to backup copies of yourself broadcast to a storage facility every few hours - so even if someone torches your head off in an attempt to permanently kill you (termed Real Death, as opposed to the faux, impermanent death you experience if your stack is intact), all you lose is a few hours of your life.

Useful!

There was a terrific joke in the novel, too; one character, a cop, wears a T-shirt saying 'You Have The Right To Remain Silent - Why Don't You Try It For A While?'

Nice one!