Adarael:

I second your opinion on Friday. It's one of my favorite Heinlein novels, along with I Will Fear No Evil, and Starship Troopers. (For those of you who haven't seen the film version of the last, don't bother. Not only was it awful, but just about the only thing that it had in common with the book was the title, and the names of the key characters.)

When I was a kid (that is, sixteen or so), I thought that I Will Fear No Evil could be made into a film, possibly with George Burns as Johann Smith and Brooke Shields as Eunice Branca, although she would've been too young at the time.

As for Friday, Angelina Jolie would be perfect for the part--if, that is, they can pry her away from the TOMB RAIDER franchise long enough.


DocMortand:

I agree with you about Alistair MacLean. He's one of my favorite authors, and WHERE EAGLES DARE and ICE STATION ZEBRA were both great books, as well as films.

--Foreigner

IMO, Dogfight is the SINGLE best Cyberpunk short story ever written. I *LOVED* it. You can read it here:

http://project.cyberpunk.ru/lib/burning_chrome/

Just find Dogfight

It is awesome. All of Michael Swanwick's stuff that I've read thus far has been awesome.

~J

Have to jump in on the side of Heinlein. In some of his stories women are poorly portrayed, but in many they are the intelligent and confident people driving the world around them down the right path.

The biggest bone I have to pick with Heinlein was that he had the audacity to die before finishing his Lazarus Long tales. He was definitely going somewhere with them, and Number of the Beast read like the opening moves of the climactic finale.

His books generally (IMO) had two seperate threads running through them. The first would be an idea that I, as a young reader, found fascinating. Brain transplants and the residual soul, time travelers who were their own father, a man so old and revered that he wants his life to end but every time he tries to kill himself he is stopped by the people who see him as a miracle and the wisest man on the planet. Of course, he was only considered wise because he spoke his mind. Something only the heros of heinleins books did.

Heck, I can still go back and reread Stranger in a Strange Land every so often.

The other thread running through his books, especially towards the end, was that of a lecherous old man and his young hotties. I've never spoken to him (or anyone who would know) but it seems to me like he was poking a bit of fun at himself with those characters.

All that being said, I would point to the stories of Jack Chalker's GOD Inc. While they don't exactly have magic, they do have a good detective story wrapped around a sci-fi / fantasy world of parallel universes. That could be a pretty good start to a campaign,

I also liked Brian Daley's Doomfarers of Coramonde and the followup. An elite army squad gets pulled from our world (Korea or Vietnam IIRC) and into a world of magic, dragons, and demons. They kill a dragon by firing a grenade down its throat, and they even storm the gates of Hell. If you want shadowrun rules in a different world, that could be a really cool campaign.

Since we're looking at older novels, how about Patrick Tilley's Amtrak Wars series? The Amtrak Federation closely resemble a megacorporation, and the Mutes are very similar to the NAN, both culturally and in their use of powerful earth magic against their technologically advanced foes.