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sebmojo posted:watts has been despairingly grim since forever, he's sci fi cassandra oh i know, but i'm worried he's going from "despairingly grim" to "ideologically grim".
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Mar 16, 2020 02:31
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I did read that bit by Watts and it didn't strike me as wrong, exactly, but it was weird that he was writing coronavirus off as being weak because the death toll is around 1%. In the USA alone that's 3.3 million people dead.
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Mar 16, 2020 02:46
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I thought it was more he's surprised that's all it took to disrupt the world.
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Mar 16, 2020 03:02
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freebooter posted:I did read that bit by Watts and it didn't strike me as wrong, exactly, but it was weird that he was writing coronavirus off as being weak because the death toll is around 1%. In the USA alone that's 3.3 million people dead. In context, that's weak compared to the worst-case scenario or figures that had already been reported, and "measly" was clearly hyperbole.
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Mar 16, 2020 03:21
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I mean it's the duty of any responsible person to talk down hopepunk.
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Mar 16, 2020 04:04
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Peter Watts's thing is writing misery porn, being extremely online, and accidentally self-infecting himself with mystery diseases/infections/travel bans. Sometimes Watts brings up good points, sometimes Watts shitposts hard, figured "Peter Watts on COVID-19" was worth linking to in this thread. The Strugatski brothers had a amusing thing in their Noonverse stories, 99.99995% of humanity was injected with the "Captain America super-serum" during natal care. Iain Banks Culture books had nano-machines and glanding fighting off diseases/infections. Stanislaw dabbled on both sides of the infection/immunity storytelling trope, at least one Lem-ian Robots story had an entire Robot civilization being taken out by dead human bacteria-fungi. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Mar 16, 2020 |
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Mar 16, 2020 04:52
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pradmer posted:Forward (individual novellas collection) by NK Jemisin, Blake Crouch, Andy Weir, etc. - $0.99 each or $2.94 for all six I've read the N.K. Jemisin one, it's good.
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Mar 16, 2020 05:18
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Krazyface posted:Aurora was the book that got me into the right headspace to like KSR's books, always bounced off them before that. For me it was Red Moon, but "exploring and building and overcoming problems with SCIENCE!" is absolutely my thing. I'd be totally happy with just "we're building a colony on mars and here's a problem and here's how we scienced it and repeat until the book is done". If you've ever read The Martian and said "the prose and characters are terrible, who could possibly like this?" then I am sad to say that the answer is me. 
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Mar 16, 2020 06:22
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quantumfoam posted:Peter Watts's thing is writing misery porn, being extremely online, and accidentally self-infecting himself with mystery diseases/infections/travel bans. You were absolutely right to link it, friend. I'm historically a big fan of his, fwiw.
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Mar 16, 2020 08:02
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https://twitter.com/apocrobot/status/1239468944043446273 https://twitter.com/apocrobot/status/1239468952759263232
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Mar 16, 2020 09:51
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I posted a couple of the Japanese edition Honor Harrington covers in the MilSF thread and decided to go look up other western SFF:       The Space Dandy style suits it, from what I remember of reading it back as a teenager.   Malazan! Doesn't appear to have found a niche since it looks like only the first four books were translated with the last in 2011. There doesn't appear to be a Japanese edition of the Black Company books, a search just shows up stuff about actual black companies and a isekai manga about a black company in fantasyland.    The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard, the same cover as the English edition but a different execution.  Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray, a YA book.  Ancillary Justice, looking about the same.  Starship Troopers, still using the same power suit design for the first Japanese edition of the book.     Looks like the Bobiverse books also got translated for some reason, don't you have enough lovely light novels already, Japan? And as an aside, the novels mentioned as influences by Tsutomu Nihei in the Blame! and so on artbook: quote:Great Sky River by Gregory Albert Benford (Cibo)
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Mar 16, 2020 10:48
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StrixNebulosa posted:https://twitter.com/apocrobot/status/1239468944043446273 Steel Frame good
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Mar 16, 2020 10:51
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I really liked the setting in Steel Frame, I hope he writes more in that universe.
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Mar 16, 2020 10:59
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C.M. Kruger posted:I posted a couple of the Japanese edition Honor Harrington covers in the MilSF thread and decided to go look up other western SFF: This is amazing
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Mar 16, 2020 11:08
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Nippashish posted:I really liked the setting in Steel Frame, I hope he writes more in that universe. Yeah, I knew I was in love when I read "The gods of old Steyr and ancient Raytheon, of powder-makers and wars that never end." in the first few pages. It's so wonderfully oppressive and grim, but in a way that feels way more relatable than the near parodic qualities of grimdark. The descriptions of time, volume, mass and distance is almost lovecraftian (occasionally not even almost).
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Mar 16, 2020 11:16
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Black Griffon posted:Steel Frame good Not emptyquoting.
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Mar 16, 2020 12:03
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Steel Frame good. Japanese covers good.
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Mar 16, 2020 12:20
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Those Japanese Bujold covers are especially sweet.
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Mar 16, 2020 13:11
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Steel Frame good. Japanese covers good. But also, about Steel Frame directly: The real strength of the story is the pressure it presents - here are these fallible, squishy humans who are constantly in danger from things larger and older than themselves. The book was incredibly good at generating that particular brand of anxiety, and then surprise, zombies from beyond the stars. I'd have taken even a plain old BDO story over space robot zombies in general, but it's especially a shame given how taut the book is otherwise.
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Mar 16, 2020 16:35
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Oh yeah the scale of things - just, at one point, the scale of their own ship's armour plates and the spaces behind them iirc was wonderful. So big and old and and lovely. I'd happily have read more of that and no actual plot at all.
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Mar 16, 2020 16:41
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Steel Frame was very good for a first time author, however I feel Steel Frame got hamfisted and pretty deus ex machina'y towards the 80% mark. Alastair Reynolds repeatedly falls back onto "spaceship chase" as a framing device or content filler in a-lot of his stories. Sometimes it's the basis of the entire story or book series (Galactic North, Revenger series, Chasm City, etc just to name a few) or it will occur multiple times in a series or book. Skim some of his stories, once you notice it, it is hard not to see, like the Fedex logo arrow. Reynolds House of Suns and Redemption Ark both have it happening multiple times in-book. House of Suns wins out though, because in addition to alot of content-filler, it happens 3 times in-book to the same loving character.
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Mar 16, 2020 19:04
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quantumfoam posted:Steel Frame was very good for a first time author, however I feel Steel Frame got hamfisted and pretty deus ex machina'y towards the 80% mark. It makes me really excited for whatever he writes next - especially since I liked the ending!
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Mar 16, 2020 19:35
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Dune by Frank Herbert - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B7NPRY8/ A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought #2) by Vernor Vinge - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002H8ORKM/ The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W9399S/ Is his first book even worth getting? Sword of Destiny (Witcher) by Andrzej Sapkowski - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W22J07S/
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Mar 16, 2020 22:49
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pradmer posted:The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett - $1.99
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Mar 16, 2020 22:51
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They're a quick read though, and if you're planning on getting into Discworld they can be nice to have in your back pocket.
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Mar 16, 2020 23:00
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anilEhilated posted:Not unless you're a massive fan. The first two books are basically just parodies of fantasy conventions and other books; most of the jokes are dated and unlike his later books the stories don't really stand on their own. I hesitate to speak here because I’ve read most of Pratchett and where I stalled out was reading Going Postal: Which I saw the movie of before I was a big reader of his. Maybe take a pass on reading Colour of Magic and watch the thing starring Sean Astin and Tim Curry. Then read some of the excellent stuff he’s written featuring Vimes, Magrat, or Susan. Sometimes it’s just easier to watch the thing but I’m all out of wack because I can’t finish Going Postal. I’m a completist and won’t get to the stuff fans complain he wrote when he was slipping for a while because of this.
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Mar 16, 2020 23:11
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I really liked going postal, and both thud and wintersmith (which came after) are excellent imo.
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Mar 16, 2020 23:32
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sebmojo posted:I really liked going postal, and both thud and wintersmith (which came after) are excellent imo. Learning that Iain Banks and Terry Pratchett won’t be with us anymore made me find excuses to work through their catalogues a little more slowly. It’s easy to binge these things, I did with Pratchett for sure.
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Mar 16, 2020 23:39
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Without the bottom text VALIS is like... the fourth, maybe fifth? PKD book that I'd guess this cover was for. I mean I loving love it but it's definitely got a more The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch vibe even, with the asymmetric eyes on the right one (although the lips are perfect so it's clearly not that book)
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Mar 17, 2020 00:08
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One good thing about the Discworld books is you can read them in pretty much any order.
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Mar 17, 2020 00:56
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pradmer posted:The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett - $1.99 TCoM is Pratchett at his zaniest and least serious. I rather like it, and it also happens that this book and the book after it covers in most detail the whole 'giant turtle' part of the setting.
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Mar 17, 2020 01:13
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anilEhilated posted:Not unless you're a massive fan. The first two books are basically just parodies of fantasy conventions and other books; most of the jokes are dated and unlike his later books the stories don't really stand on their own. Disagree on almost every point; the first books stand alone fine, and while the later books have self-contained plots they start to get pretty linear in following the same few casts of characters as the world develops around them. They're all worth reading though.
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Mar 17, 2020 01:54
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I started re-reading all the Discworld books after he died (still slowly working through them, only just recently finished Carpe Jugulum) and I was actually really pleasantly surprised by The Colour of Magic precisely because it's so different from the later books. It's particularly interesting to see Ankh-Morpork not as a sort of Shakespearean/Dickensian London (which it becomes by Guards! Guards!, if not earlier) but instead as a sort of vaguely Central Asian/Conan the Barbarian hive of scum and villainy which primarily exists as a quest-giving hub for Dungeons & Dragons adventurers. I also remember the trip to the edge of the Disc being great, both in its genuinely impressive visual imagery and on a comedic level, as the troll they meet there keeps ominously adding "here ON THE EDGE" to all of his sentences, to Rincewind's increasing distress.
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Mar 17, 2020 02:11
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wizzardstaff posted:They're all worth reading though. Just edited your post a bit. But also watch the movies!
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Mar 17, 2020 02:42
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Krazyface posted:Aurora was the book that got me into the right headspace to like KSR's books, always bounced off them before that. Aurora annoyed me a little because there were a lot of points where it felt more like Kim Stanley Robinson was trying to prove a thesis than write a compelling story, and it all felt a little flat and hollow. Overall I love the book, but I think that might be because I agree with Robinson's big thesis about environmentalism and space colonization and that colored my perspective a bit. It just felt like the novel would have served its purpose better with about 10% more poetic writing and about the same amount of three-dimensional characters. If you haven't yet you aught to listen to Will Minaker's (the main Chapo Trap House guy) interview that he did with KSM for some other podcast. It's really endearing. KSM apparently does all of his writing and research sitting outside on his patio, surrounded by nature, and has a lot to say on the subject. He's basically the cool atheist eco-hippy granddad we'd all love to have.
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Mar 17, 2020 03:17
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anilEhilated posted:Not unless you're a massive fan. The first two books are basically just parodies of fantasy conventions and other books; most of the jokes are dated and unlike his later books the stories don't really stand on their own. I loved them, but I also read them immediately after Pyramids and Mort...and as a 15-ish year old boy in the early 90s. YMMV is what I'm trying to say here.
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Mar 17, 2020 03:25
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Terry Pratchett's Color of Magic set the stage for all the future Discworld series, unless you're subversive and think Terry Pratchett's Strata aka Discworld book #0 is the true Discworld origin book. Both Pratchett books are worth checking out honestly. Also noticed that one of the Strugatsky Brothers Noon Universe books with a English translation got finally got re-published after 43 years of being out-of-print. The Inhabited Island aka Prisoners of Power. Also worth checking out. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1613735979/ quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Mar 17, 2020 |
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Mar 17, 2020 04:03
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I've been reading Philip K. Dick and I've noticed that "what is reality and does it matter if something isn't real?" is a running theme. In Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said the main character discovers that no one knows who he is and he starts questioning if he's real.Turns out that he was part of some drug trip that alters reality. He didn't take it but it's so potent that everybody is affected by it In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? almost everything is fake. But the fakes are so good that they're for all intents and purposes are real. Deckard has a fake sheep, but considering that everyone thinks it's real, does that matter? He also questions why the androids have to die, if they're identical to humans why can't they live? The religion that everyone follows also turns out to be fake but nobody cares because it still gives a real sense of comfort. Then in the The Penultimate Truth groups of people are being told that WW III still rages so that they can build robot servants to the rich. The book ends with people being told that the war is over and the lie is maintained because the truth would be too hard to bear Then in The Man in the High Castle the reality they live in is fake but the book that claims to tell what really happened, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, doesn't really tell the real story either. The main character is someone that fakes antiques. But if the fakes are so good that everyone agrees that they're real, doesn't that mean that they stop being fake? Alhazred fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Mar 17, 2020 |
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Mar 17, 2020 11:07
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ulmont posted:I loved them, but I also read them immediately after Pyramids and Mort...and as a 15-ish year old boy in the early 90s. YMMV is what I'm trying to say here. But I'm honestly not a fan of Rincewind stories in general, the humor feels too slapstick-y to me. e: Regarding PKD, I'd say his biggest theme was paranoia; the one that hammers it home the most is probably VALIS. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Mar 17, 2020 |
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Mar 17, 2020 11:35
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PKD had mental illness problems exacerbated by serious drug use. I doubt he had a clear confidence in there being a single observable reality.
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Mar 17, 2020 13:36
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