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MockingQuantum posted:John Gwynne's Malice is also a Kindle Daily Deal. Any opinions on it? The blurb sounds interesting, though it also seems like it could be kind of bland or cliched in execution. I tried to read it but lost interest super quick. Bland is definitely how I'd describe it.
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Mar 25, 2020 10:57
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Safety Biscuits posted:How do you read them? I've opened them with Winzip and now can't even see a file format. It looks like all the files are plain text. Lots of them don't have extensions, though. code:
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Mar 25, 2020 13:42
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Safety Biscuits posted:How do you read them? I've opened them with Winzip and now can't even see a file format. Open them with Notepad++ or something similar. The files are mostly raw text with Unix style formatting.
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Mar 25, 2020 14:52
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a foolish pianist posted:It looks like all the files are plain text. Lots of them don't have extensions, though. Who the gently caress is finding Burroughs unreadable? I read the original Barsoom trilogy just this year and they still stand up.
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Mar 25, 2020 15:07
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quantumfoam posted:Open them with Notepad++ or something similar. The files are mostly raw text with Unix style formatting. Notepad++ worked. I'm currently reading about Russians angry about SALT II say Battlestar Galactica is US Propaganda, the horrors of D&D, and whether Asimov's ever came out.
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Mar 25, 2020 15:47
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Jedit posted:Who the gently caress is finding Burroughs unreadable? I read the original Barsoom trilogy just this year and they still stand up. Agreed - I love the Barsoom books. That little section is part of a blurb from a 1989 bibliography someone name John Wenn wrote: quote:Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the all time classic pulp writers. As
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Mar 25, 2020 16:39
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I read Princess of Mars and thought the plotting and prose were OK at best, and I found it rather ideologically distasteful in the usual early-20th-century pulp ways. Unreadable does seem like an overstatement, though.
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Mar 25, 2020 20:08
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Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XD75HGV/ A bunch of non-Lord of the Rings books by JRR Tolkein - $2.99 each Beren and Lúthien https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MG2HOWD/ The Children of Húrin https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007978NKG/ The Silmarillion https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007978PGI/ The Fall of Gondolin https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CFKN31Z Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00796E7CA/ Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ZDK0NC/ This is the book everyone was making fun of. His first novel I believe.
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Mar 25, 2020 22:15
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"Everyone"
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Mar 25, 2020 22:29
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pradmer posted:Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 I'd say get the Silmarillion out of that lot, it's the best introduction to the expanded universe of LotR, and one hell of a fascinating read. Most of the other titles are expanded versions of the tales told in the Sil.
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Mar 25, 2020 22:31
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Is Rendezvous supposed to be the good Rama or are all of them kind of meh? I seem to remember discussion earlier in the thread, and all I can recall is that I tried reading the series when I was twelve or something.
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Mar 26, 2020 01:20
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Black Griffon posted:Is Rendezvous supposed to be the good Rama or are all of them kind of meh? I seem to remember discussion earlier in the thread, and all I can recall is that I tried reading the series when I was twelve or something. Rendezvous is the best one of the series because it's just dry as hell instead of being actively bad like the sequels.
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Mar 26, 2020 01:27
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8one6 posted:Rendezvous is the best one of the series because it's just dry as hell instead of being actively bad like the sequels. Does it work as a standalone novel?
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Mar 26, 2020 01:33
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Black Griffon posted:Does it work as a standalone novel? It is a standalone novel. And something of a classic of its type. The sequels were written many years later by someone who should never have been let near a word processor. (They're one of those "co-written" deals by a famous old author and some guy, where the famous old author at most contributed a few ideas and then collected his royalties and went back to whatever it was he actually cared about doing at the time.)
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Mar 26, 2020 01:47
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Groke posted:It is a standalone novel. And something of a classic of its type. The sequels were written many years later by someone who should never have been let near a word processor. (They're one of those "co-written" deals by a famous old author and some guy, where the famous old author at most contributed a few ideas and then collected his royalties and went back to whatever it was he actually cared about doing at the time.) Oh gently caress everything makes way more sense now. Thanks.
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Mar 26, 2020 02:02
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The best Rama is the 1996 Sierra puzzle game because it's based on the good parts of Rama II, fight me.
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Mar 26, 2020 03:00
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Black Griffon posted:Does it work as a standalone novel? No, and yes, respectively. I'm still reading the digests; it's 1980, The Empire Strikes Back has just come out, and people are speculating about the prequel trilogy. Imagine waiting 16 years for Jar Jar... And apparently Samuel R. Delany reviewed Star Wars. He liked it: https://sockrotation.com/2015/12/18/samuel-r-delanys-1977-review-of-the-original-star-wars/
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Mar 26, 2020 06:10
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8one6 posted:Rendezvous is the best one of the series because it's just dry as hell instead of being actively bad like the sequels. Rendezvous with Rama posted:CHAPTER ELEVEN - Men, Women and Monkeys I am not sure if "dry" is quite the word I would use... To be fair, the rest of the book isn't like this.
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Mar 26, 2020 09:26
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SimonChris posted:I am not sure if "dry" is quite the word I would use... To be fair, the rest of the book isn't like this. Eww. I didn't remember that particular passage, but I read it with a bunch of other 60s and 70s scifi, so I may have just remembered it as not as bad on that front as some of the other stuff. Sorry.
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Mar 26, 2020 09:46
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xcheopis posted:"Everyone" Mr. Shivers was an ok first novel, and Jackson has improved since then with his City of X trilogy. There was just a strange, Goony lynch mob that hated anything he wrote and forced him out of this forum.
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Mar 26, 2020 11:10
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Ninurta posted:Mr. Shivers was an ok first novel, and Jackson has improved since then with his City of X trilogy. There was just a strange, Goony lynch mob that hated anything he wrote and forced him out of this forum. they wrote p funny parodies and laughed at those and pretended he wrote them for some reason. his actual stuff seemed fine imo, if a little self-consciously gritty
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Mar 26, 2020 12:17
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Ninurta posted:Mr. Shivers was an ok first novel, and Jackson has improved since then with his City of X trilogy. There was just a strange, Goony lynch mob that hated anything he wrote and forced him out of this forum. Hence my use of "everyone"; because it wasn't "everyone" then and it's just some weirdo going on about it now.
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Mar 26, 2020 13:24
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SimonChris posted:I am not sure if "dry" is quite the word I would use... To be fair, the rest of the book isn't like this. Mind you, Clarke was gay af in real life so whenever he tried to write something from a hetero pov it's reasonable that the results ended up a little strange.
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Mar 26, 2020 14:38
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So what you’re saying is to mentally rewrite that passage to be about dongs flopping around in zero gravity?
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Mar 26, 2020 15:18
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that's what you're supposed to do with all fiction in general
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Mar 26, 2020 15:47
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Black Griffon posted:that's what you're supposed to do with all fiction in general We've had that for centuries.
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Mar 26, 2020 16:19
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CHAPTER ELEVEN Some men, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their shafts that were too drat distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless, loose under the uniform jumpsuit and idly half-erect; blood flowed easily in zero gravity. But when they started to move, and the inertia of their pipe drifted behind each turn like a lazy python dangling from a car window, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction after some young stallion thrust himself feet-first through the hatch into the control habin, loudly slapping his drifting hang against his spacer-perfect abs. He had once mentioned this theory to Surgeon-Commander Laurence Ernst, without revealing who had inspired this particular vein of thought. There was no need; they knew each other much too well. On Earth, years ago, in a moment of mutual loneliness and depression, they had once made love. Probably they would never repeat the experience (but could one ever be quite sure of that?) because so much had changed for both of them. Yet whenever the well-endowed Surgeon slithered into the Commander's cabin, twitching with the routine Kegels required to preserve muscle in zero gravity, Norton felt a fleeting echo of an old passion, Laurence saw that he felt it, and everyone was happy.
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Mar 26, 2020 17:21
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now we're talkin'
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Mar 26, 2020 17:32
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In space, no one can hear you cream...
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Mar 26, 2020 17:37
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It might be time to change the thread title text to "Science Fiction Fantasy MegaThread 3: SF-LOVERS in every way"
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Mar 26, 2020 17:46
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General Battuta posted:CHAPTER ELEVEN 
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Mar 26, 2020 17:51
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General Battuta posted:like a lazy python dangling from a car window That simile really gets you.
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Mar 26, 2020 18:13
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General Battuta posted:CHAPTER ELEVEN Thank you for this early excerpt from Baru Cormorant 4.
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Mar 26, 2020 18:31
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The Dangler Baru Cormorant
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Mar 26, 2020 19:10
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Thanks to whichever mod/admin updated the thread title. Updating the thread OP with the SF-LOVERS archival link. /sflovers/tv + sflovers/books/misc/ is where I've spent most of my time. alternate-histories, jewish, machine-intelligence, moon-man, nanotechnology-in-sf, novels-made-into-movies/books-into-films are the standouts so far.
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Mar 26, 2020 19:24
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I've put The Dawnhounds up for free for a week, if anybody wanted a quarantine read and/or a plague book with a hopeful ending https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YSBKKGG
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Mar 26, 2020 21:47
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read dawnhounds you cowards
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Mar 26, 2020 22:06
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Black Griffon posted:read dawnhounds you cowards
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Mar 26, 2020 22:10
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Black Griffon posted:read dawnhounds you cowards Can't understand why they won't.
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Mar 26, 2020 22:19
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i started reading dawnhounds last week then i got too sick to read, im feeling a little better today though so maybe i can start back up soon
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Mar 26, 2020 22:22
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