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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:All of the original five (or so) books of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ending with Mostly Harmless. They were all contained in a single volume I bought from Barnes and Noble a month ago. yeah he died a decade or two ago
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Apr 9, 2019 04:45
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Bilirubin posted:yeah he died a decade or two ago May 11, 2001 to be specific.
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Apr 9, 2019 05:07
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The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie. It's enjoyable, the second person voice was fun, the mechanics of the gods were compelling. After the world building extravaganza that was the Ancillary series, I had hoped for more of that; it had some, but it was less of the everyday mundane (like the gloves and tea in Ancillary), and more monster manual descriptions.
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Apr 9, 2019 06:08
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:I'd like to read more Hitchhiker books if they exist. I really enjoyed the originals.
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Apr 9, 2019 11:42
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:All of the original five (or so) books of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ending with Mostly Harmless. They were all contained in a single volume I bought from Barnes and Noble a month ago. Stream the original BBC radio broadcasts of HHGTH, the first two or three series are just different enough from the books to be worth listening through. And I want to say that the original HHGTH radio broadcasts came before/lead to Adams getting his HGGTH book deal. The final BBC radio HGGTH series is 97% identical to the last HGGTH book(came out a few after the book) but the ending is slightly different and incorporates things Douglas Adams may/may not have intended as a followup "final" HGGTH book. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Apr 9, 2019 |
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Apr 9, 2019 13:33
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The Rib from Which I Remake The World I loved this book. Its a sort of noir book set during WW2 about a traveling circus, a small town, and Satan. Really well written, engrossing story line and I think I finished it in 2 days. I wish I knew better how to explain it and get more recommendations of like wise books. I can't recommend this book enough.
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Apr 9, 2019 13:48
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Another one does exist; it was written by the Artemis Fowl guy and isn't supposed to be very good.
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Apr 9, 2019 14:59
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:All of the original five (or so) books of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ending with Mostly Harmless. They were all contained in a single volume I bought from Barnes and Noble a month ago. Though not set in the Hitchhiker's universe there is Starship Titanic which was written by Terry Jones based on Douglas Adam's idea/PC game/outline/whatever. It is extremely similar in tone and sci-fi shenanigans faced by a group of people, some alien some from Earth. If Jones' name wasn't on the cover I would have thought it was straight Douglas Adams.
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Apr 10, 2019 01:14
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Turbinosamente posted:Though not set in the Hitchhiker's universe there is Starship Titanic which was written by Terry Jones based on Douglas Adam's idea/PC game/outline/whatever. It is extremely similar in tone and sci-fi shenanigans faced by a group of people, some alien some from Earth. If Jones' name wasn't on the cover I would have thought it was straight Douglas Adams. The game is an absolute bastard, by the by.
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Apr 10, 2019 13:24
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Thanks for the suggestions; I'll check them out! Is the Hitchhiker's movie worth watching?
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Apr 10, 2019 15:46
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Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers is a modest, enjoyable book that probably isn't going to change anyone's mind about the author's work. If you don't know, Becky Chambers' Wayfarers books are a science fiction series that puts more focus on interpersonal relationships and cultural differences than stakes and action. This book in particular looks at a communal society of humans who still live on the spaceship fleet their ancestors used to flee Earth, and that fleet's relationship with rest of the galaxy, both human and non, through the perspective of five different humans on the fleet and a visiting alien making a documentary. Almost all of it plays out through conversations; the death of one of the main characters, which in other books would be an inciting incident, casts a pall over everybody's lives, impacting some of them more than others. They talk about the merits of charity and trade with other societies versus the risk of dependence on stronger, wealthier powers; why people would want to leave or immigrate to the fleet, which offers guaranteed food and housing at the expense of being a more hermetic and insular society; the benefits of automation weighed against people's attachments to jobs it makes obsolete; and sometimes less impactful things that make them feel like real people whose lives are worth following. It's much more reminiscent of the first Wayfarers book than the second, which had higher emotional stakes and two tightly-integrated perspectives, one of which changes in prose as the character ages from child to adult. That's my favorite of the three, but this one was still enjoyable, and I value the series for filling a niche in sci-fi that I don't see getting much attention, if at all. Not gonna lie, it was frustrating to see "Ew, Becky Chambers" in this thread. There's room for improvement, to be sure; this book had quite a few corny moments that worked for me because it showed how comfortable the characters are in their relationships, but I can see them annoying someone like parts of D.O.D.O. annoyed me. Plus, aside from the aforementioned part of the second book, none of the prose stood out for me, which means some people here will flat-out hate it. But I'm glad someone is writing books like this, and science fiction is richer for their presence. Luckily for me I was already working on this book before it got a Hugo nomination. Next on the ballot is Valente's Space Opera.
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Apr 10, 2019 15:49
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Is the Hitchhiker's movie worth watching?
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Apr 10, 2019 16:04
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Is the Hitchhiker's movie worth watching? The casting is good. The musical numbers are good. The cinematography, set designs and some of the gags are good. Jim Henson's puppets are great. But overall, it feels kind of empty.
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Apr 10, 2019 16:09
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Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack. The book is basically this:
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Apr 10, 2019 17:58
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Alhazred posted:Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack. The book is basically this: I read the Wikipedia plot summary and it reads like Go Ask Alice  I just finished Bad Blood, on the Theranos debacle, and it was pretty interesting. There’s a podcast that I think is a little more captivating because the people seem more human, being able to hear them. some of the players in the book tend to run together but overall I liked it. Evidence that just because a person is smart, powerful, or rich does not mean they have immaculate common sense.
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Apr 10, 2019 18:45
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areyoucontagious posted:I read the Wikipedia plot summary and it reads like Go Ask Alice It's honestly more like Springbreakers (a white girl comes to an area mainly populated by black people, causes havoc and faces no consequences whatsoever).
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Apr 10, 2019 19:05
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Solitair posted:Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers I stopped reading that Angry Red Planet book about a third of the way through because I could not stand the pithy, catty, gimmicky dialogue and one-dimensional characterization. It was almost as bad as Scalzi where all the characters are essentially just the same person but this one has fins and is a sexy lizard and that one lives in an orb of hydrogen. It reads like an author having a witty repartee with themselves in their head. Is this one more of the same? I agree with you that character-driven Sci Fi is great to have around and I think Blindsight and Anathem are great examples of current works, but not like this. Never like this. I don’t think they’re actually morally wrong books or anything though. It’s ok to like a novel!
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Apr 10, 2019 20:54
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tuyop posted:I stopped reading that Angry Red Planet book about a third of the way through because I could not stand the pithy, catty, gimmicky dialogue and one-dimensional characterization. It was almost as bad as Scalzi where all the characters are essentially just the same person but this one has fins and is a sexy lizard and that one lives in an orb of hydrogen. It reads like an author having a witty repartee with themselves in their head. I'm gonna say probably. A Close and Common Orbit had less of that as far as I can remember.
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Apr 11, 2019 08:20
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Thanks for the suggestions; I'll check them out! Is the Hitchhiker's movie worth watching? Sure. It’s got some differences from the book that was apparently penned by Adams, but other than that it’s a fairly well done adaption of a difficult book to adapt. It’s not a must see film or anything though. I don’t think anyone mentioned the Dirk Gently books yet, which are worth checking out. I think Adams originally planned for them to be Doctor Who episodes, but rewrote them to feature an original character instead.
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Apr 11, 2019 10:47
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Gave up on Space Opera, so read breaking and entering: the extraordinary story of a hacker called "alien". b&e was overall a low-key resume expanded out into a book/"hire me, I am a badass computer person skilled at everything computer related" that was leagues better than clint waters similar resume expanded out into a book named "messing with the enemy" that I read a few weeks ago. The main difference between messing with the enemy + breaking and entering was that b&e took the entire book to illustrate the persons background + growing skills/knowledge levels whereas messing with the enemy condensed the authors background into a tight 5.75 pages before going into full humble-brag mode about everything they did as a govt employee/private milgov contractor/political consultant for the rest of the book. The second major difference between the two books was that the person featured in 'breaking and entering' the book was smart enough to social engineer a journalist into writing an entire book about them in 2nd person humble-brag mode without the journalist ever catching on. Just for that epic tier of social engineering, I give 'Breaking and Entering: the extraordinary story of a hacker called "alien"' top honors and recommend other people run out + buy it instantly.
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Apr 11, 2019 20:47
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The Road. I cried.
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Apr 12, 2019 22:58
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Thanks for the suggestions; I'll check them out! Is the Hitchhiker's movie worth watching? It's okay, makes some interesting differences from the books. I think many people are more nostalgic for the old BBC miniseries which you could also look into. And as some one else mentioned there is the Dirk Gently series as well. I personally didn't really get into them but iirc the first book is a rewrite of the Doctor Who episode "Shada" that Adams wrote and got shafted during filming because of some strike and was never finished. Content: Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto. Nicely woven mystery/crime book that begins with a unidentified murdered man found under a train in the railyard in 1950s Japan. Definetly comes down on the police procedural side of things, lots of leg and paperwork are completed. It felt like the titular inspector was only able to piece things together from coincidences and gut feelings that all these corpses piling up are connected though (because you can't just have one mysterious dead body in your book). But even so I enjoyed reading how it all played out even if it felt like lucky coincidence. First time reading a Japanese author and it was a nice change of pace. I don't know if the economical story telling is a product of the author or of the translation, place descriptions were bare bones and repetitive for example.
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Apr 13, 2019 17:14
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The Talon of Horus by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. I haven't read a ton of Warhammer 40 K novels, but I've read a handful and this was easily up there with my favourite, Eisenhorn. Death metal space opera at its finest.
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Apr 14, 2019 01:13
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Turbinosamente posted:It's okay, makes some interesting differences from the books. I think many people are more nostalgic for the old BBC miniseries which you could also look into. There's plusses and minuses. Mos Def was a surprisingly good Ford and his casting was - perhaps unintentionally - a nod towards Ford's unexpurgated Guide article on the Earth, and Martin Freeman is of course perfectly serviceable as Arthur. Sam Rockwell is more like book Zaphod than Mark Wing-Davey was, but not so good on screen. Zooey Deschanel, on the other hand, is a much better Trillian than Sandra Dickinson. But Stephen Fry had the wrong style to be a good Voice of the Book (IMO even Billy Boyd did it better) and Helen Mirren was an awful Deep Thought.
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Apr 14, 2019 01:15
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Robot Wendigo posted:The Talon of Horus by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. I haven't read a ton of Warhammer 40 K novels, but I've read a handful and this was easily up there with my favourite, Eisenhorn. Death metal space opera at its finest. Have you read Ravenor? It’s also quite good.
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Apr 14, 2019 02:06
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An after-market Sherlock Holmes novel called The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. Turns out that while everyone thought that Holmes was dead and then came back and it was all due to Moriarty, what actually happened was Watson realized Holmes was doing too much coke, making him rave about his old maths tutor who he saw as a criminal mastermind. With the help of Mycroft he cons Holmes into coming to Vienna where Sigmund Freud cures him of addiction. Then at the last moment It's not a bad read, or more to the point, it's not any worse than the original stories, but unlike most of them it's novel-length. There are a few allusions to period-appropriate real and fictional poo poo every here and there but not so much as to make it Alan Moore levels of unfun.
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Apr 14, 2019 19:16
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Jerry Cotton posted:An after-market Sherlock Holmes novel called The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. So that's what the plot was. like all Sherlock Holmes fan fiction books (let's call them what they are) I forget about it when I'm done reading. Probably the only one I remember some of was The Stuff of Nightmares by James Lovegrove because lol the villain has a transforming train mecha. It's one where the author went full steampunk.
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Apr 14, 2019 22:19
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Turbinosamente posted:So that's what the plot was. like all Sherlock Holmes fan fiction books (let's call them what they are) I don't really subscribe to the notion that Only Originals are True - whether it be in literature or any other form of art. But the book is ultimately forgettable. Going to read an Ellery Queen novel next, which was neither written by Ellery Queen nor features Ellery Queen.
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Apr 14, 2019 22:24
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Jerry Cotton posted:I don't really subscribe to the notion that Only Originals are True - whether it be in literature or any other form of art. But the book is ultimately forgettable. Going to read an Ellery Queen novel next, which was neither written by Ellery Queen nor features Ellery Queen. It's not so much that I subscribe to that what Doyle wrote is the one true Holmes, it's that I have yet to run across any post Doyle Holmes that measures up to it. Plus the character has been through the wringer so much over the past 100 years, up against everyone and everything from Arsene Lupin to frigging Cthulhu. I'm complaining about there being way too much chaff and not much wheat. Makes a lot of it feel rather fan fiction-y.
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Apr 14, 2019 22:46
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Turbinosamente posted:Makes a lot of it feel rather fan fiction-y. I wouldn't know 
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Apr 14, 2019 22:58
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areyoucontagious posted:Have you read Ravenor? It’s also quite good. I have it on my To Be Read pile! Looking forward to it.
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Apr 15, 2019 00:41
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Read, or rather finished reading 3 books over the weekend. The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans & Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity by Amy Webb. Overall a mixed verdict on this book. The Author convincingly made the case that today's AI systems all running on the Google/Baidu/Microsoft frameworks will be the legacy systems of the future that all major AI systems of the future will be based on. After that the book became a warning screed about China stealing everyone's lunch regarding AI systems, and the need for major continued government funding of AI research, and was capped off by a long awkward chapter about future guessing the state of the world/state of AI systems in 2 yrs/5yrs/10yrs/15/yrs/etc until 50+ years out. Burning the Page: the ebook revolution and the future of reading by Jason Merkoski. Written by the project manager of the original amazon kindle device, the book was (mostly) what the title implied. 30% of the book was detailed recollections of Amazon/Jeff Bezos/early amazon startup culture, while the other 70% of the book covered books in such topics as: Production, Readability(Formatting), Virtuality, Physicalness, Sharing/Duplication of, Communities About, etc. Worth reading if you stumble across a copy of this book in a library or if you are desperate to bone up on Amazon culture before going through one of Amazon's day-long multiple person interviews. Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole. Mentioned I was reading this book in the Fantasy-SciFi mega thread. Overall, this was a great book if you enjoy the horror genre, and full of interesting things. Literally have 25+ additional items added to my reading list/movie watching list because of this book. If you enjoy the subject matter (horror), Definitely grab this book if you come across it at a library.
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Apr 15, 2019 19:56
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Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente is a book that immediately lets you know if you'll hate it, and takes a bit longer to indicate if you'll like it. It's Eurovision by way of Douglas Adams; Valente leans very hard on the kind of memorable analogies Adams loved making in the Hitchhiker books, and the entire premise follows the same "everything about life is cruelly absurd or absurdly cruel" bent. As someone who hasn't read the old Hitchhiker series in a while and whose opinion on it has cooled down over time, I don't particularly care if Valente nails the voice, though I do wish she had tried a bit less hard. Instead, my biggest problem with the book is that it takes too long to get to the best parts. (I don't blame NoNostalgia for giving up on this book at all.) I estimate that first act takes up about half the book, though so much of it is interspersed with worldbuilding interludes about previous space Eurovisions and alien worlds and species that it's hard to tell, a lot of which could have just been inferred from when the human characters finally get to meet most of those species. And that's a shame, because there are some shining moments in this book, including: Every stupid made-up genre mashed up from real-life ones, as well as the dumb puns on existing songs. I'm an easy mark for this sort of thing and I smiled every time I saw one. Humanity's shock and horror at alien life and the prospect of annihilation giving way to disbelief and disgust at the aliens' taste in Earth music. The English government's disbelief and scorn that the chosen representatives of humanity aren't white and straight enough for their taste. Going whole hog on using gentrification imagery with the sapient zombie plague species. (They make such good coffee, guys!) One of the most sympathetic alien characters makes the mistake of manifesting as Microsoft Clippy and triggers a hilarious outburst from one of the humans. The defining tragic moment of the main character's life is recounted twice, and the second time adds a heartbreaking new detail that changes the context of the entire event. Why couldn't all of the redundant exposition have been reincorporated this way? An unintentional bit of hilarity comes when contrasting the scene where the cat comically fails the aliens' sapience test to Valente's dedication to her recently deceased cat. I've been through that and I sympathize with her, but it just goes to show how hard it is to keep up the Adams :nothingmatters: pose in real life. My favorite parts of Space Opera were all too brief, and the climax was kind of a letdown even in comparison to the letdown climaxes I remember Adams using, but my experience still evens out to being positive. I didn't like it as much as the other two Valente stories I've read (Radiance and "Planet Lion," if you're curious), but I prefer it to Mostly Harmless or the Rick and Morty episode everyone compares this book to. Next up on this year's Hugo tour is Rebecca Roanhorse's Trail of Lightning. Solitair fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Apr 17, 2019 |
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Apr 17, 2019 05:45
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The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom A story about what is wrong with people who have things wrong with them and how to make sure you are not one of those people in the way you approach life and see other people and yourself. Totally useless in my opinion, especially in its assumption we all function in the same way.
sparrowling fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Apr 17, 2019 |
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Apr 17, 2019 23:20
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How Long 'Till Black Future Month? by N. K. Jemisin I thought this was a very enjoyable collection of short stories by a very imaginative, creative author with a unique voice in the genre of sci-fi/fantasy. Some of the story ideas were completely new to me and it was a delight to encounter them. She still seems to be growing as a writer and I can't wait to see what she can do once she hits her stride
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Apr 18, 2019 04:45
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Ubik, Phillip K. Dick Well that was weird. The initial premise was interesting, but then it just became a fever dream about reality, like trying to make sense of a false awakening nightmare, I haven't had those since I was a kid but I remember how terrifying they were. The Freeze Frame Revolution, Peter Watts Guess I gotta read more of the Sunflower Cycle, the hidden message was clever and I learned something new about cryptography. Griftopia, Matt Taibbi A little bit more of my faith in the future faded after this. Taibbi is pissed off, and understandably so, but looking at it in hindsight with the failure of Occupy Wall Street just made me more depressed.
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Apr 19, 2019 13:56
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Finished Black Leopard, Red Wolf yesterday. I liked it. I don't know if I loved it. The good bits - Tracker's identity and values, the sick monsters and unique fantastical setting, the well-developed and wide cast of characters - were really good. The plot is weird in that the large majority of the novel reads almost like a shaggy dog story. What everything eventually resolves to by the end felt kind of random and ends as a much more personal story than expected. I think the pacing is to blame here; Tracker spends page after page playing detective and saying the same things to different people and generally being dense. The narrative framing didn't work great for me either - once you learn how Tracker is going to tell his stories, it becomes predictable and maybe tedious how things will be revealed. Probably some of this is because it's the first book in a planned trilogy, so a lot of what's set up will matter more later. Tracker is kind of a lovely petulant child most of the time so I hope he gets less annoying. In spite of this it's an awesome book and really worth the read. James has big ideas and has created a really cool narrative to communicate them. I'll probably reread it before the next one comes out, maybe the plot will feel more coherent then.
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Apr 19, 2019 15:48
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I think he's said the next two books are the same story told from someone else's point of view. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/17/marlon-james-interview-black-leopard-red-wolf
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Apr 19, 2019 21:39
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my bony fealty posted:Finished Black Leopard, Red Wolf yesterday. I liked it. I don't know if I loved it. The good bits - Tracker's identity and values, the sick monsters and unique fantastical setting, the well-developed and wide cast of characters - were really good. maybe the book isn't really about 'plot'? startling stuff but you're actually allowed to do that in this big tradition we call the novel.
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Apr 20, 2019 01:26
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A human heart posted:maybe the book isn't really about 'plot'? startling stuff but you're actually allowed to do that in this big tradition we call the novel. Wow, aggressive much? I too had problems with this book- I thought it dragged a fair bit but maybe it’s because I’m just not educated enough, huh? Edit: oh, I see, you’re just an rear end all the time.
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Apr 20, 2019 01:29
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