A Great Picture…
Not sure where it was taken recently. At one convention or another, but it came across Facebook and I was stunned at what a great picture it was of four of the greatest writers in science fiction.
And how we had all aged. (We all used to look young, honest.)
David Brin (on the right) is almost exactly my age. Greg Bear (on the left) is a year younger. Vernor Vinge in the blue jacket is six years older than me and Gregory Benford is nine years older than I am.
And they all started publishing in the middle to late 1960s except for David who started in the 1970s. (I sold my first two short stories in 1974.)
Over the years I have been very lucky to have spent a lot of hours with these wonderful and talented men. Very, very lucky.
But since I don’t go to conventions much anymore, it has been many, many years, sadly, that I have shared a meal or time with any of them.
So I thought I would share this wonderful picture of David’s. (Mostly for me because it brought back great memories.)
(If you don’t like one of their books, please keep it to yourself, but if you want to recommend any of their work in a positive manner, feel free to post it in a comment for others to find.)
I wish you were in the pic too, Dean, maybe where the carafe is, across from Brin.
I wish. It would have been a great conversation. As normal, I would have mostly listened.
Woow. I really loved David Brin’s “Earth” when I first read it. I was camping out at Palouse Falls, and spent most of the weekend reading in the campsite because of that book! And, when I got around to it, was kind of ticked off at some of the bad press “The Postman” got. It was very solid. Greg Bear’s “Darwin’s Radio” is still one of my favorites. He did some really cool things in there that took me back to the hopeful future that I liked about Star Trek and the books “2001” and “2010”.
Not only have I read multiple books by each of these authors, but each of them has at least one that nailed itself into my psyche decades ago, and remained.
You want to know what powerful, thoughtful, thought-provoking writing looks like? It looks like this table.
The Postman. Blood Music. Fire Upon the Deep.Timescape.
Just read Brin’s “Existence.” So many ideas crammed into such a tiny space, I was lucky the book didn’t achieve nuclear fission.
I saw that on David’s Facebook the other day too. What a great pic of the Killer B’s.
I, too, loved The Postman when I read it; it doesn’t in any way deserve the bad rap it got after the movie came out. And Brin’s “Thor Meets Captain America” short story/novella is definitely worth a look as well.
Brin’s Uplift Wars books, especially the Uplift Storm trilogy, starting with Brightness Reef. Brin is a master at creating aliens, right up there with Larry Niven.
I also loved The Practice Effect. It didn’t get a lot of attention, but I thought it was brilliant. 🙂
Angie
Ooh, “The Uplift War”!! That was a great one. I loved the ideas of what happens when you have infinite libraries, as well as the uplift theme.
What a great picture and what an amazing group of authors! Brin’s Uplift War and Startide Rising remain two of my most favorite works to this day. Also I loved The Postman enough that I have a signed first edition, a signed ARC and another first edition plus a number of reading copies I give away regularly. His novel The Practice Effect is also at the top of my lists for creativity and originality. David Brin and Gregory Benford collaborated on an amazing work called Heart of the Comet that I have re read many times. My favorite Greg Bear work has to be Eon. And I am shamefully short read on Vernor Vinge but I remember enjoying The Children of the Sky immensely. Each of these gentlemen have sparked my imagination in a big way. I would love to meet them Dean😎
Nice to see the source. Contributors to my dreams, my expectations, my education.