Science fiction reading update again: Ray Bradbury and William Gibson

The last two books I've read have been I Sing the Body Electric (a short story compilation that goes by the title of one of the stories in it) by Ray Bradbury and Count Zero by William Gibson. Oh, and I got a copy of Greg Bear's Legacy, so now I can finally complete that "The Way" trilogy (technically it's a book, its sequel, and its prequel), but I'm not going to do that just yet, because I already have library books and I'm taking a break from Greg Bear anyway. My next two books are another "Black Company" volume and a nonfiction work, so that's it on the science fiction for the moment.

I grabbed I Sing the Body Electric because I couldn't find anything else at the library and I didn't have much time. Also, hey, I got around to reading some more Bradbury, after he totally died earlier this year right as I was looking for science fiction books (that might be an exaggeration).

It turned out that I'd forgotten that I'd already read the title story at some point. It must have been a long time ago, but I recognized it from the first paragraph. However, I hadn't read all of the stories in the compilation (I think there were only two others I recognized), so it wasn't a re-read. Overall, it was pretty good and having short stories was a nice change of pace for the sort of reading I've been doing (on trains and buses, mostly). So I might try to pick up some more of this stuff later. I don't think I finished The Toynbee Convector and I also said once upon a time that I'd give The Martian Chronicles a second chance.

A while back, I was introduced to the fact that Bradbury was somewhat demonized by other people in science fiction way back whenever, and I was a bit baffled by that. This book got me thinking about that and gave me what I take to be some insight, although of course I'm not going to bother following up on the issue. Bradbury was definitely an "idea writer" and perhaps the epitome of that concept. Many of his stories look like they could be thought of as, "Hey, what if this happened?" And he makes it work because he writes characters very well and is able to play with emotions. In the golden age of science fiction, Bradbury's style was probably sneered at as lacking substance. He doesn't spend much effort describing gadgets or expounding on how futuristic gadgets might change people's lives. Instead he writes a story that's basically, "Hey, what if globalization created a trend that had people migrating toward warmer climates? What if the whole island of Britain was eventually abandoned? What would the last holdouts be like? What would the last man in Britain do?"

Bradbury was, and still is (he might have died, but his work lives on), a non-science fiction reader's science fiction writer. He's the #1 science fiction author I'd suggest to someone that disliked science fiction, but had to read some anyway. And a corollary to this is that some hardcore science fiction fans are not going to like him. Well, I think his short stories are great. I haven't been as impressed with his novels, though. Maybe I should give those another chance too.

As for Count Zero, I don't have as much to say. I read it because of Neuromancer. And it's not quite as good as Neuromancer, but that's not saying much in detraction of it. Basically, it's very, very good. Weirdly prophetic, but everyone always says that about Gibson's stuff.

Addendum 7/7/2014: For reasons unknown to me, this post attracts a lot of spam. The vast majority of the comments that the spam filter is catching are going to this post. Since this post is rather old now and since I'm tired of getting emails every day about spam comments, I'm disabling comments for now. If you actually have something to say about the content of this post, feel free to comment on another post of mine and I'll probably figure it out.