> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as quik.clara.co.uk> declared:
>
>

>>As to _SR_, yeah, Ok, with hindsight it doesn't look as good. At the
>>time I (and others) thought the series was going somewhere and we were
>>going to get a great backstory and an even better continuation. Boy was
>>I sold a bill of goods .. 8<,

>
>
> I wasn't going to raise the sequels -- I think that even
> considered on its own merits, Startide Rising hasn't fared
> as well as (sequel-free) Blood Music.
>
> NB: I may be biased on this -- I was just asked to write an
> intro for a new German translation of Blood Music, so of
> course had to re-read it for the first time in some years.
> (And was blown off my feet by how well it holds up.)

> Jon Schild xmission.com> wrote in news:fpr12d$ime$2
> @news.xmission.com:
>
>

>>>STRANGER IS A STRANGE LAND, of course. But you have to

>>

> admit that it's
>

>>>a fascinating book in many ways. And very influential, if

>>

> perhaps not
>

>>>always for good. And, to be honest, the other choices that

>>

> year
>

>>>weren't obviously brilliant.

>>

> ...

> Well, one of the problem with the voting may be that

> the Hugo voting crowd tends to have its own semi-literary

> -- there are going to be some general more popular

> influence the vote, and one of them would strongly argue

> horror. *I* certainly would not vote for just about ANY

> the top pick over any other decent book -- at least, not

> actually effective in engendering horror.

> If that was Starship Troopers' competition, clearly the

> Charlie Stross antipope.org> wrote:

>> To be fair, the novelette of BLOOD MUSIC had scooped the
>> awards in 1983/84 ... but I maintain that, with 20+ years of
>> hindsight, BLOOD MUSIC was a far more significant novel than
>> STARTIDE RISING. SR was fun, I will concede, but while it's
>> a fast, plot and character driven space opera that did much
>> to cement David Brin's reputation, it wasn't shatteringly
>> brilliant.

>
> I'd say that _Startide Rising_ is the best of the Uplift series, and the
> Uplift series in general is significant for putting the word "uplift"
> into the SF lexicon. Brin may not have invented the concept, but he
> defined it. That counts for something in my book.

> I don't have an opinion on _Startide Rising_'s value as opposed to
> _Blood Music_--I read the short story that the latter is based on and
> didn't care much for it, so I've never read the book--but I don't see
> the selection of _SR_ as embarrassing in any way.

> Sea Wasp sgeObviousinc.com> wrote in
> news:47C18E3A.6090500@sgeObviousinc.com:
>
>

>>If that was Starship Troopers' competition, clearly the

>
> best book won.
>
> What is good about Troopers? The armor?
>

> Sea Wasp sgeObviousinc.com> wrote in
> news:47C18DBB.7070006@sgeObviousinc.com:
>
>

>> Well, one of the problem with the voting may be that

>
> -- even though
>

>>the Hugo voting crowd tends to have its own semi-literary

>
> pretensions
>

>>-- there are going to be some general more popular

>
> attitudes that
>

>>influence the vote, and one of them would strongly argue

>
> against ...

> I would presume that much of what I find good you find to

> Sea Wasp sgeObviousinc.com> wrote innews:47C18E3A.6090500@sgeObviousinc.com:
>

>> If that was Starship Troopers' competition, clearly the

>
> best book won.
>
> What is good about Troopers? The armor?

> The problem with being ahead of your time is that your work tends to
> be dismissed as lunatic ravings. In the field of database research,
> one of the major conferences runs a 10-years-later award, with the
> intention of recognizing papers that in retrospect turned out to be
> influential. I suspect such an award would do SF some real good. It
> would certainly be better than all those outdated awards for short
> fiction.