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Selachian posted:As the local Tanith Lee fan: So starting the author with this book wouldn't be a terrible introduction, and would be a fair representation?
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Apr 8, 2020 00:26
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pseudorandom name posted:Hugo nominees were announced today: https://conzealand.nz/blog/2020/04/08/hugo-and-retro-hugo-finalists-announced Hahahaha, holy poo poo. Rise of Skywalker got a nom?
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Apr 8, 2020 00:57
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Riot Carol Danvers posted:He posted a similarly themed cum story in gip too. She. guess I should go check CC...
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Apr 8, 2020 01:04
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Patrick Spens posted:Hahahaha, holy poo poo. Rise of Skywalker got a nom? Hugo media categories tend to be pretty lousy.
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Apr 8, 2020 01:07
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pseudorandom name posted:Hugo nominees were announced today: https://conzealand.nz/blog/2020/04/08/hugo-and-retro-hugo-finalists-announced Here's hoping Gideon the Ninth takes it, though the Light Brigade is very good too. Although I usually put a hard warning to anyone with any combat relayed PTSD before reading that one, because it is just a slog of acts of brutality and horrors of war.
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Apr 8, 2020 01:13
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Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) by Ann Leckie - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BAXFDLM/ The Magician's Apprentice (Black Magician #1) by Trudi Canavan - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001RTKITG/ Germline (Subterrene War #1) by TC McCarthy - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047Y16NU/ Two Powder Mage Side Stories by Brian McClellan Murder at the Kinnen Hotel - Free https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PX4C5HO/ Return to Honor - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q38OFB8/
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Apr 8, 2020 01:26
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Riot Carol Danvers posted:Here's hoping Gideon the Ninth takes it, though the Light Brigade is very good too. Although I usually put a hard warning to anyone with any combat relayed PTSD before reading that one, because it is just a slog of acts of brutality and horrors of war. Gideon was going to have the home-field advantage, so to speak, but now WorldCon is online who knows? I'm still going to vote for it (though I started reading The City In The Middle Of The Night this morning and I'm enjoying it well enough so far. Probably not going to knock Gideon off my top spot, but we'll see.)
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Apr 8, 2020 01:28
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Has anyone finished The City in the Middle of the Night? The premise is interesting, but so was the premise for All the Birds in the Sky, and that's the only book I've put down unfinished in a decade. Although, Birds may soon be joined by an unlikely partner: Gormenghast. I loved Titus Groan, but picking up the sequel a year later, I quickly remembered that I hate Steerpike with a violent passion. Spoil something for me, Gormenghast goons: how much screen time does that bastard have this time around, and does he get his just desserts? I cannot endure an 18+ hour audiobook, however beautifully written and well narrated, in which that son of a bitch gets what he wants.
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Apr 8, 2020 02:00
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pseudorandom name posted:Hugo nominees were announced today: https://conzealand.nz/blog/2020/04/08/hugo-and-retro-hugo-finalists-announced do these clowns keep up with anything that isn't made or distributed by a giant company
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Apr 8, 2020 02:08
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StrixNebulosa posted:Movies take too long to watch and I'm not enthused by the summary so I'm going to pass on Blazing Saddles. Sorry. Try reccing me a book instead? Poe's Law has utterly ruined enjoying that movie in the years since it was made, yeah. I mean, I've encountered people that think it's a tragedy film and that Sherriff Bart is the villain (& they weren't joking). Maaaaaybe the campfire beans gag still scans as funny? Satire is dead as hell, though.
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Apr 8, 2020 02:15
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cptn_dr posted:Going up against Ted Chiang will be hard, but I reckon This Is How You Lose The Time War has a fighting chance. Pretty strong novella lineup in general though. Chambers has a good shot too. To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a great story that hit me hard, and she's got good buzz from her early novels. It's got astronauts, exobiology, and space-related feels, how can it lose ?
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Apr 8, 2020 02:21
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Kestral posted:Has anyone finished The City in the Middle of the Night? The premise is interesting, but so was the premise for All the Birds in the Sky, and that's the only book I've put down unfinished in a decade. The culmination of Steerpike's arc is one of the most deeply satisfying moments in literature, as is the gradual revelation of his crimes and it's purely because of all the thousands and thousands of pages that lead up to it. edit - also, the actual physical setpiece leading up to that, this enormous storm that (minor spoilers) floods the castle is tremendous. Peake was such an unfathomably gifted writer.
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Apr 8, 2020 02:22
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Patrick Spens posted:Hahahaha, holy poo poo. Rise of Skywalker got a nom? Look, there aren't very many scifi movies...
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Apr 8, 2020 03:08
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I do like the idea of Jeanette Ng just endlessly winning awards for one acceptance speech after another.
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Apr 8, 2020 04:14
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RIP ZEEZ
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Gnoman posted:So starting the author with this book wouldn't be a terrible introduction, and would be a fair representation? I'd say so, yeah. Lee was insanely prolific, so she worked in a lot of different styles, but this sort of Gothic horror/romance is what she's best known for.
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Apr 8, 2020 04:29
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pseudorandom name posted:Hugo nominees were announced today: https://conzealand.nz/blog/2020/04/08/hugo-and-retro-hugo-finalists-announced I am pulling for Memory of Empire, if for no other reason than it scratches my Space Aztec itch left over from The Sixth Sun trilogy by Thomas Harlan. That, and it's a drat fine book.
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Apr 8, 2020 08:43
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I've read four of the six best novel nominees (The City in the Middle of the Night, Gideon the Ninth, A Memory Called Empire, and The Ten Thousand Doors of January), and I'd be happy with any one of them being the winner, although I think I'm leaning towards The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Or maybe Gideon the Ninth. This is How You win the Time War was good, but nobody competes with Ted Chiang.
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Apr 8, 2020 08:53
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It's interesting that plenty of award winning literary fiction books are being put out by small presses these days, but the prestigious sci fi awards are absolutely dominated by giant publishers. Seems like something someone should look into in more detail.
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Apr 8, 2020 09:26
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A human heart posted:It's interesting that plenty of award winning literary fiction books are being put out by small presses these days, but the prestigious sci fi awards are absolutely dominated by giant publishers. Seems like something someone should look into in more detail. Especially if you're not American and not able to operate on an American scale. A successful indie title in New Zealand moves 300 units, which is well under the threshold for SFWA acceptance. We moved around 800 and we still don't qualify. I imagine a lot of other countries run into similar problems; the Americans run the big awards and design everything around the American market, but nobody else can really compete on numbers so it's a bit pointless. The common wisdom here in NZ is that you either publish with a big-5 US publisher or don't bother with any of the big awards. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Apr 8, 2020 |
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Apr 8, 2020 10:22
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If you're upset about those membership requirements then join the club, but with the proliferation of self-pub (and the awards scene's attitude towards it), getting them to lower the bar is basically impossible.
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Apr 8, 2020 10:38
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:It's not necessarily a conspiracy, it's just that—to qualify for the Hugos—the author needs to be an active SFWA member.. http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-faq/#What%20works%20or%20persons%20are%20eligible? Uh, they absolutely don't. I don't know where you are getting this idea. Even the Nebulas only require you to be a SFWA member to vote, not to be nominated. The Hugos are a worldwide award handed out by the WSFS, so it would be odd for them to require membership of an American association.
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Apr 8, 2020 10:42
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Another factor for Hugos in particular is that they are nominated and voted for by fans so it becomes a question of marketing as well, they need to be books with some exposure.
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Apr 8, 2020 10:42
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SimonChris posted:http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-faq/#What%20works%20or%20persons%20are%20eligible? Somebody was either wrong or trying to get us to gently caress off.
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Apr 8, 2020 10:44
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Huh, our team got explicitly told we needed SFWA membership to qualify. Well, you need to be a WSFS member to nominate works and vote. Maybe someone got things mixed up?
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Apr 8, 2020 10:51
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Whatever happened, it's a massive pain in the rear end. We never would've got it (we were on the Nebula reading list but afaik never even made the awards longlist; I doubt the Hugos would've gone better) but I dunno, it would've been nice to try. I sorta wrote the Hugos off because there was no way we were breaking the American threshold, based on something we got told over a year ago. I wonder if this happens a lot.
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Apr 8, 2020 10:55
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Surreptitious Muffin, I hope you didn't pay anything for this "advice"...A human heart posted:It's interesting that plenty of award winning literary fiction books are being put out by small presses these days, but the prestigious sci fi awards are absolutely dominated by giant publishers. Seems like something someone should look into in more detail. The "prestigious" sf awards are mostly voted for; the lesser known ones tend to be juried and have more exciting lists. It's that simple.
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Apr 8, 2020 11:23
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Nah, it wasn't formal or anything; it came from another writer who I thought had experience with these things.
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Apr 8, 2020 11:49
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https://twitter.com/NatureFutures/status/1247857976276377601 I have a story in Nature this week. If you need a five-minute diversion from reality, give it a shot  .
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Apr 8, 2020 13:08
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freebooter posted:About 200 pages into the uncut edition of The Stand. Really enjoying it and yes, it is very topical, particularly the chapter in which King describes how an infected Texas cop infects an insurance salesman he pulls over, which then creates a "chain letter" of death, every interaction multiplying exponentially and immediately sending it beyond any hope of quarantine. There's one particular sentence which is chilling precisely because it's summary, not scene, and we never really get a first hand view of the grisly work at the coalface beyond what the half dozen main characters witness: "Captain Trips brought bedrooms with a body or two in each one, and trenches, and deadpits, and finally bodies slung into the oceans on each coast and into quarries and into the foundations of unfinished houses. And in the end, of course, the bodies would rot where they fell." I think The Stand was the first huge fiction novel I ever read, and I still love it, warts and all.
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Apr 8, 2020 13:47
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Kestral posted:Has anyone finished The City in the Middle of the Night? The premise is interesting, but so was the premise for All the Birds in the Sky, and that's the only book I've put down unfinished in a decade. Gormenghast is the decline and fall of Steerpike, and freebooter is right, it's one of the best payoffs I've seen in a book. Solitair fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Apr 8, 2020 |
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Apr 8, 2020 13:53
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pseudorandom name posted:Hugo nominees were announced today: https://conzealand.nz/blog/2020/04/08/hugo-and-retro-hugo-finalists-announced Solitair posted:I picked up A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine on a whim after seeing some people in the SFF thread talk it up. I don't remember why; the book was engaging enough but felt insubstantial and familiar. It's a book of political intrigue where the protagonist is thrown into the deep end on an unfamiliar planet and has to piece together the conspiracy already in progress. There's an interesting technological conceit, where she has her predecessor's mind implanted into her brain and has to merge personalities with him in exchange for all of his expertise. Said implant is on the fritz for most of the book so there can be suspense, so it has to cede focus to the cultural differences between the protagonist's home station and the planet where she's assigned, banter, and coded poetry, which is a neat idea that I also wish got a closer look. Everything else on the list is new to me, so I guess I'm gonna be plenty busy during the next few months.
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Apr 8, 2020 14:09
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StrixNebulosa posted:Movies take too long to watch and I'm not enthused by the summary so I'm going to pass on Blazing Saddles. Sorry. Try reccing me a book instead? https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=40429784
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Apr 8, 2020 20:16
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Solitair posted:Everything else on the list is new to me, so I guess I'm gonna be plenty busy during the next few months. I'm a pretty fast reader but Memory called empire was a total slog for me. The main character does basically nothing for the entire book. I think someone else in the thread pointed out - she's completely passive. I loved the plot hook - diplomat investigating her predecessor's death under mysterious circumstances - but it all just ends up being so drat boring.
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Apr 8, 2020 20:46
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Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota #1) by Ada Palmer - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015MP6WPY/ First sale since 2017 so grab it if you're interested.
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Apr 8, 2020 23:08
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Patrick Spens posted:Hahahaha, holy poo poo. Rise of Skywalker got a nom? And Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance was totally snubbed
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Apr 9, 2020 01:15
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Magnus Archives Season 4 was robbed.
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Apr 9, 2020 01:25
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The Stand update - holy poo poo Stephen King has skirted up against some weird racist stuff in the past but the uncut edition has a scene where, as society is crumbling, a bunch of black soldiers wearing loincloths publicly execute a bunch of white soldiers.
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Apr 9, 2020 03:12
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SimonChris posted:https://twitter.com/NatureFutures/status/1247857976276377601 this was a pleasant little read, thanks for sharing!
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Apr 9, 2020 05:37
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freebooter posted:The Stand update - holy poo poo Stephen King has skirted up against some weird racist stuff in the past but the uncut edition has a scene where, as society is crumbling, a bunch of black soldiers wearing loincloths publicly execute a bunch of white soldiers. King is really very not good at dealing with race at all like every black character in a King book is either a feral savage, noble savage, or magic negro
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Apr 9, 2020 06:45
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Isn't Stephen King pretty much solely to blame for at "magic negro" trope becoming a trope?
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Apr 9, 2020 11:10
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