Conference noted::sf

I believe that "DownBelow Station" won both the Hugo and Nebula. It's
great stuff, although quite conventional for Cherryh.  Basically, people
have gone out to the stars and found very few habitable planets.  Civilization
is carried on in space stations.  Now the outer stations are breaking away
from Earth's control.  The Earth Company has outfitted a Fleet to combat
them.  After decades of war the Fleet is losing, and retreating back to
Earth.  They decide to make a final stand at Pell, the largest and richest
of stations because it orbits an almost habitable planet.  The people of
Pell are not wild about the idea.
    There are several books set in the same universe, although not with
overlapping locales or characters:
"Merchanter's Luck" - about interstellar trader/nomad clans
"Voyager in the Night" - strange alien ship inducts people into its computers
"Forty Thousand in Gehenna" - Aliens baffle a colony of clones

They're all good, but "Downbelow Station" is the best.  Let me also recommend
"Wave Without a Shore" by Cherryh.  It's about a planet that has taken
existentialism to an extreme.  A master artist there plans a sculpture that
will so affect the populace that they will all be taken into his worldview.
Unfortunately, there are things on the planet outside of their tidy philosophy,
like the aliens that walk their streets.  There's some nice discussion of
perception versus reality, coming down solidly on the side of reality (Rah!). 

/jlr

Didn't "Pride of Chanur" win something?????????

In any case, it is well worth reading.

Nigel

re:.1
	I, on the other hand, did not find anything recommendable about
DOWNBELOW STATION. I found it annoying dense, like wading through mollasses.
I couldn't get beyond about the first 100 pages. I don't offhand recall
what novels were running against it, but it seems to me that *one* of them
was clearly better than DS.

The only other Cherryh books I've read so far are the Morgaine books, HUNTER
OF WORLDS (which reminded me a lot of Jack Vance's work), and BROTHERS OF
EARTH (which I thought was *excellent*).

--- jerry

  I've read her dying earth Trilogy. (Lessee, They were... Kutath, Kesrith, and
Shon'jir not necessarily in that order.)  I thought they were very good.  It's
been a while since I read them so it's hard for me to think of specifics.  But,
I liked the Mri.  The Mri are a people similar in philosophy and harshness to
the fremen of Dune but Cherryh developes them more thouroughly.  This is def-
inately not for everybody, but if you like stories with complex characters 
you'll probably like these.

tlh

  Oops!  Make that Faded Sun trilogy not Dying earth.  

Brain on vacation,
  tlh

I have to agree with Jerry's estimate of DownBelow.  "Dense" is a good word
for it.  I'm reading it now, sort of.  (When I run out of whatever else
I've got, I go back and read a chapter or two.)  The potential is there,
but it's a really SLOW read.

- tom]

... And yet, for at least me, an excellent one.		- Bill

       Well, I'm awfully late into this discussion but I just finished
       "Downbelow Station" and I liked it. I agree that it was a slow
       read at first and I too tended to read a chapter and then neglect
       it for a day or two. But I really liked the ending. I gained a
       lot of respect for Signy who totally surprized me with her
       actions. I saw a book named "CYTEEN" that seems to be in the same
       universe also. liesl

    re:.8
    
    A good number of her books are set in a common universe.
    
    --- jerry

    re .8
    
    Read _40,000_In_Gehenna_ before _Cyteen_.  The events in it have an
    impact on the charaters in _Cyteen_.
    
    Merryl

    
    	I too dismissed "Downbelow Station" as not worth reading. I
    also dismissed the author on the strength of one book! Thanks to
    all those who have recommended better ones.
    
    		Ian G.
                                              

    I've just about finished "Cyteen: the Betrayal", and it's vintage
    Cherryh.  A great deal of attention played to characterization,
    set against a plausible future history.  I also liked the "Faded
    Sun" series and the "Chanur" series (gawd, she's prolific).
    
    Does anybody know the derivation of "azi" in the Gehenna and Cyteen
    stories?
    
    len.
     

    I'm not sure why I didn't like "Downbelow Station" all that much,
    but it sure was a disappointment for my first Cherryh, Hugo Award
    or no.
    
  --Simon
    

    How do you pronounce "Cherryh"?

    Pronounced "Cherry".  The "h" is silent.  She just wanted to avoid
    the "Cherry" jokes for her first books and the "h" just stayed with
    her.

    re:.15
    
    From what I've heard, the "h" was the idea of Don Wollheim
    (founder and original editor of DAW Books). Cherryh's actual
    name is Carolyn J. Cherry.
    
    --- jerry

    Replying to HANZI::SIMONSZETO -
    
    	I've noticed that a lot of people didn't take a shine to 
    _Downbelow_Station_.  It could be that it has a few too many characters
    in too many locations, so that it doesn't flow well.  Quite unlike
    most of her books, which are real page-turners.
    
    Merryl
    

    Yeah, add me to the list of those who didn't like _Downb_etc._,
    but do like lots else she wrote.
    
    Re: .15, .16
    
    Thanksh forh theh infoh.
    
    Bruceh

    Jerry, I've seen her "real" name also listed as Carol Janice Cherry.
    I guess we'll need to see her birth certificate.  :-)
    
    (While your at it, find out who's idea it was to use the title 
    "THE KIF STRIKE BACK" and tell'em this ain't Hollywood.)  :-)2
                                                                  
    							Don
    

    Here's a vote strongly in favor of "DownBelow Station".  I even 
    went to the trouble of finding it in hardback, since it's a book 
    worth rereading years later.  This is a defining example of epic
    SF, of heroism  in the face of enormous events of history, set in
    an alien time  and place.  The characters are caught up in vast
    events: the inexorable advance of the slave state of Union, the
    dying spasms of the Company Fleet, the destruction of  Station
    civilization, and the birth of a true space-going culture.   It
    could be the last days of Byzantium, but it's set in a wholly 
    strange environment.  You're plunged immediately into station
    life. It's disorienting, but that's the sort of
    vertigo,  the shock of the new, that SF is supposed to provide. 
    There are  a dozen different groups tugging at the plot, but
    that's the sort of  complexity that occurs at inflection points of
    history.  It's only by riding that complexity that the hero is
    able to save Pell Station.
    
    I grant that Cherryh sometimes goes overboard on plot complications.
    I never could figure out what was going on between the Chanur and 
    the Kif, and after three books I didn't care.  Nothing much 
    seemed to be at stake there, whereas the future of humanity is
    getting decided in DBS.  Cherryh has used the same environment 
    many times in later books, but never with the same kind of moral 
    force, the same grandeur of theme.  Its awards were well-deserved.
    
    /jlr

    RE: -1
    
    Ah, but the future of humanity *is* being decided in the Chanur
    novels -- part of the tension is whether Pyanfar (?) will be able
    to hold the Chanur empire together long enough to keep the Kif from
    going to Sol and tromping over all the humans there.  But it is
    very hard to know what's going on in human space, since Tully has
    such a hard time communicating.  They're much more difficult novels,
    and I think Cherryh practiced the whole non-human viewpoint character
    in _Cukoo's_Egg_ (correct me if I've got that wrong) to bear in order
    to make the complicated plot elements come through.  _Pride_of_Chanur_
    was much simpler -- we didn't *need* to know whether Tully was Terran
    or Merchanter there.

    All in the HO of,
    Merryl

    I have just joined this notes file so my comments are a little late.
    Downbelow station was the first SF book I and I'm glad it was. It
    still is one of the few SF books where the story has had me on the
    edge of my seat, all the way to the last chapter. Cherryh managed
    to write an ending that could not be predicted until it happened.
    An art which in my opion quite a few SF authors could do with learning.
    Overall I enjoyed the book and I certianly though that it was worth
    the hugo award.
    
    Ace.

    _Forty_Thousand_In_Gehenna_ 
    
    This is my third Cherryh SF novel, after _Downbelow_Station_ and
    _Cyteen_.  Although it may have been better if I read this before
    reading _Cyteen_, I don't think it mattered that much, since these are
    really independent stories.  I think I'm getting to like her more
    conventional SF like these than her fantasy, even though I did have a
    tough time with _Downbelow_Station the first time.  (One of these days
    I guess I'll go back and re-read it, and expect to enjoy it better.)
    
    In _Forty_Thousand_In_Gehenna_ there's really a number of novellettes
    in one novel.  The first part dealt with the colonization of Gehenna,
    the first generation colonists including both azis and born-men [sic]
    (of both genders).  The next part dealt with the next two or three
    generations, and I view that section as an interlude toward the final
    and most interesting part of the story.  In the last section we have
    two quite different settlements, Styx Towers and Cloud Towers,
    developing distinctly different cultures, and each with their resident
    exobiologists having their own rivalry.
    
    The major statement in this novel is really that we shouldn't determine
    what's intelligent life by anthropocentric biases.  Even concepts of
    analogy and logic may be examples of these biases.
    
    --Simon
    

    
    
      This is probably the wrong place for this, so feel free to move it.
    What was _Cyteen_ about and was it any good. I've read the Morgaine
    series and enjoyed it and was wondering if this is anything like it.
    
    
    
    Chaos
    

    Hmmm...
    
    a "dir/title=cyteen" reveals a discussion of the book in note 782.*
    

    re .24,.25:  SHOW KEYWORD/FULL CYTEEN was a much quicker way to find
    topic 782.
    
    --Simon