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ToxicFrog posted:The Big Meow? Yeah, it started out in online serialization, then she did some kind of crowdfunding thing to expand it into an actual book. It had a long and troubled history and I still haven't read it -- maybe I should do that this year. It's a really good culmination of the previous two books in the series and has a lot of Good Stuff in it in its own right. I say do it ! e. Buboni-virtual Con is Saturday, free and online ! PDF of the program here, times appear to be Mountain time (1 hr ahead of Pacific, 2 behind Eastern, UTC-6): http://www.bubonicon.com/wp-content...AmWSf-iOUwO6MQ8 Thread favorite Becky Chambers will be reading and answering questions at 3:30 and on a panel at 6pm. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Aug 29, 2020 |
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Aug 28, 2020 19:55
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I'd decided not to bother with William Gibson's Agency based on negative reviews here and my own poor opinion of Gibson as a tedious centrist Twitter liberal, but it turned out it was on my wait list at the library so I read it anyway. Pleasantly surprised (since my expectations were so low); it's certainly not his best book and is quite a step down from The Peripheral, but it was fast-paced and readable and compelling enough even if it never ends up going anywhere interesting. One thing that's just weird though: correct me if I'm wrong, but it taking place in an alternate late 2010s where Clinton won is... entirely pointless? And the nuclear crisis with a fictional country in the Middle East is entirely pointless? It gets mentioned a handful of times and has no bearing on the plot. Given Gibson's baby boomer Russiagate politics I assumed it would be a much bigger deal. Supposedly he had to rewrite the book after Trump won and I don't see how that could be the case at all.
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Aug 29, 2020 06:34
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General Battuta posted:Anyone have any good cosmic horror or (even better) deep space horror that's not Blindsight, Revelation Space or Ship of Fools/Unto Leviathan? Similar vibes welcome, I'm looking for a nice break from 2020. I just finished The Last Astronaut, which was pretty fun. First contact novel with a Gravity/the Martian flavour and enough cosmic horror to keep it interesting.
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Aug 29, 2020 14:24
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freebooter posted:I'd decided not to bother with William Gibson's Agency based on negative reviews here and my own poor opinion of Gibson as a tedious centrist Twitter liberal, but it turned out it was on my wait list at the library so I read it anyway. Pleasantly surprised (since my expectations were so low); it's certainly not his best book and is quite a step down from The Peripheral, but it was fast-paced and readable and compelling enough even if it never ends up going anywhere interesting. Agency isn't a great book, but I look forward to the last book in the series. From my understanding that fork in the timeline with Clinton as President resulted in an earlier Apocalypse, this one Nuclear in origin. In the main, Peripheral timeline Trump was elected and the Kleptocracy kept on chugging until the end. No idea why he would need to rewrite the plot, it's not like Stross's Atrocity Archives where he had to redo it whole cloth because his country went crazy.
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Aug 29, 2020 15:38
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Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive #2) by Brandon Sanderson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DA6YEKS/ Half Way Home by Hugh Howey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XL81G6P/ Don't know anything about this. By the guy who wrote Wool. The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J5X5LVQ/
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Aug 29, 2020 17:57
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freebooter posted:I'd decided not to bother with William Gibson's Agency based on negative reviews here and my own poor opinion of Gibson as a tedious centrist Twitter liberal, but it turned out it was on my wait list at the library so I read it anyway. Pleasantly surprised (since my expectations were so low); it's certainly not his best book and is quite a step down from The Peripheral, but it was fast-paced and readable and compelling enough even if it never ends up going anywhere interesting. The rewrite came because he didn't plan on it being a sequel to The Peripheral until after Trump won. Then, instead of rewriting the background story to be about Trump, he decided to frame the whole thing as a stub. I don't think the Clinton stuff was ever center stage. Ninurta posted:Agency isn't a great book, but I look forward to the last book in the series. From my understanding that fork in the timeline with Clinton as President resulted in an earlier Apocalypse, this one Nuclear in origin. In the main, Peripheral timeline Trump was elected and the Kleptocracy kept on chugging until the end. No idea why he would need to rewrite the plot, it's not like Stross's Atrocity Archives where he had to redo it whole cloth because his country went crazy. Yeah, the stub that much of Agency takes place was made by the sociopathic guy who tries to accelerate and escalate crises to see how people in those stubs invent new ways to kill each other. I'm also looking forward to the third one as well because while Agency wasn't great, it wasn't any worse than the sequels to Pattern Recognition, and there's a great deal of potential in connecting Eunice with the Server.
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Aug 29, 2020 19:14
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mllaneza posted:It's a really good culmination of the previous two books in the series and has a lot of Good Stuff in it in its own right. I say do it ! That's good to know, I didn't like To Visit the Queen nearly as much as I did The Book of Night with Moon so I've been a bit shy of opening the last book. Maybe I'll check it out after I finish Agyar?
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Aug 29, 2020 23:03
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Is there a good re-read or chapter summary of The Monster Baru Cormorant? I'm about to start Tyrant but my memory is in desperate need of a refresher, and rereading the prior book isn't in the cards at the moment.
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Aug 30, 2020 00:31
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Has anyone here read The Guns Above: A Signal Airship Novel? I picked it up in the library on a whim a year or so ago, and now see that there's a sequel. I found it to be pretty rough, and full of "new writer syndrome", but it had just enough promise that I might consider continuing. Any thoughts?
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Aug 30, 2020 00:54
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Sheriff Falc posted:I just finished The Last Astronaut, which was pretty fun. First contact novel with a Gravity/the Martian flavour and enough cosmic horror to keep it interesting. Seconding this. One of the better first contact "oh gently caress poo poo got weird" novels I have read.
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Aug 30, 2020 01:15
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Kestral posted:Is there a good re-read or chapter summary of The Monster Baru Cormorant? I'm about to start Tyrant but my memory is in desperate need of a refresher, and rereading the prior book isn't in the cards at the moment. Here you go: https://www.tor.com/2020/08/11/what-you-need-to-know-before-reading-seth-dickinsons-the-tyrant-baru-cormorant/
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Aug 30, 2020 01:36
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tildes posted:Here you go: https://www.tor.com/2020/08/11/what-you-need-to-know-before-reading-seth-dickinsons-the-tyrant-baru-cormorant/ Wow, thank you! This is even more exactly what I needed than I could have possibly known, because I experienced Traitor and Monster via audiobook, and so had no idea about this: Tor posted:Within that empty space she imagines Tain Hu, her would-be hostage, occasionally speaking to her in right-justified text and reminding her of their plan. That's, uh, kind of a big deal and now I wonder if I might have to put off book three until I can read it in text format.
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Aug 30, 2020 08:59
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pradmer posted:The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner - $1.99 Get right the gently caress on this, it's a great novel and one of the most prescient works of science fiction ever written.
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Aug 30, 2020 10:03
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Kestral posted:That's, uh, kind of a big deal and now I wonder if I might have to put off book three until I can read it in text format.
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Aug 30, 2020 10:16
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Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004J4WKUQ/ Foundation by Isaac Asimov - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1PWA/
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Aug 30, 2020 18:56
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pradmer posted:Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - $2.99 Ready Player One isn't worth reading if you're being paid to do so; it's definitely not worth paying for.
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Aug 30, 2020 19:47
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Only halfway through book three but it isn't a big enough deal to be worth putting off, I think. On kindle, at least, the spoilers-via-text-justification all worked completely fine.
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Aug 30, 2020 22:32
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Ceebees posted:On kindle, at least, the spoilers-via-text-justification all worked completely fine. I'm not sure they even bothered with them in the audiobook version, which wouldn't surprise me since they also apparently got the pronunciation of every single name wrong. Xate Yawa is "Ex-ate Yah-wah" to me for all time. Actually, now I'm curious. Would someone mind posting a chapter where it happens? I'd like to see if the audiobook managed it and I just didn't pick up on it somehow.
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Aug 30, 2020 23:25
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I just finished the 6th powder mage book and I don't know where to talk about it. It's a bunch of okish ideas in the worst wrapping ever, every single storyline conclusion is out of the left field and rushed. Also both trilogies the main villain has 0 presence and the "good guys" spend 90% of the time just engaging in random field battles. I guess it says something about me that I listened through all 6 of them but I work nights and had spare audible credits.
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Aug 30, 2020 23:54
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Stranger in a stranger land. So apparently there are two vesions, one shorter one that may have been due to censorship. But Heinlein called it better. The long version published after his death was said to be the best one by his agent, who obviously wanted people to buy it again. Anyone has any opinion on this? The completionist in me says go for the long version. I'm not even sure if they are both easily availably commercially, but I'm interested on what people think.
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Aug 31, 2020 00:49
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Kestral posted:I'm not sure they even bothered with them in the audiobook version, which wouldn't surprise me since they also apparently got the pronunciation of every single name wrong. Xate Yawa is "Ex-ate Yah-wah" to me for all time. Bottom of page 74, 3/4 through chapter 5 (note: don't click on this if you haven't read book 1). Most of them aren't that long, just a stray line on the side. I also listened to the first two audiobooks, and I only learned about these parts when someone mentioned them in here. I never went back and re-listened but they never stood out to me in any way the first time through. Be neat if they made the audio mono for those snippets... IIRC my main pronunciation annoyance was in book 1 when she pronounced duchy wrong the whole time. Great narrator otherwise though! I've recommended the auidobooks to people despite the hiccups. NmareBfly fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Aug 31, 2020 |
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Aug 31, 2020 01:02
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socialsecurity posted:I just finished the 6th powder mage book and I don't know where to talk about it. It's a bunch of okish ideas in the worst wrapping ever, every single storyline conclusion is out of the left field and rushed. Also both trilogies the main villain has 0 presence and the "good guys" spend 90% of the time just engaging in random field battles. I guess it says something about me that I listened through all 6 of them but I work nights and had spare audible credits. Yeah I wasn’t that taken by the first book. It had some cool ideas but there’s one character in particular, the laundress, that has no arc for an entire volume. Her POV would pop in and not advance things. I feel justified in not having finished the series if all the promising setup just fizzled out.
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Aug 31, 2020 02:02
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Mr. Nemo posted:Stranger in a stranger land. So apparently there are two vesions, one shorter one that may have been due to censorship. But Heinlein called it better. The long version published after his death was said to be the best one by his agent, who obviously wanted people to buy it again. Go with the shorter one. I like Heinlein, but Stranger works better as a strange book, shifting in tone and focus pretty wildly three or so times over to course of the book; re-adding cut content doesn't do it any favors.
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Aug 31, 2020 02:06
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NmareBfly posted:Bottom of page 74, 3/4 through chapter 5 (note: don't click on this if you haven't read book 1). Most of them aren't that long, just a stray line on the side. Doooooochy. God help me, that was painful. But yeah, great narrator other than that and the names. Thanks for the link! I went back to my audiobook version just now and, wonder of wonders, it is there! It's read in a voice that's veeeeery slightly different, quieter and flatter, and so out-of-left-field that I suspect I just blanked out on. Nowhere near the same effect as it has on the written page, for sure, but it's nice to see that they put it in there.
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Aug 31, 2020 02:24
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Ccs posted:Yeah I wasn’t that taken by the first book. It had some cool ideas but there’s one character in particular, the laundress, that has no arc for an entire volume. Her POV would pop in and not advance things. I feel justified in not having finished the series if all the promising setup just fizzled out. Weirdly enough her character was the only one I really liked and went somewhere, although it took an incredibly long time.
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Aug 31, 2020 04:52
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Mr. Nemo posted:Stranger in a stranger land. So apparently there are two vesions, one shorter one that may have been due to censorship. But Heinlein called it better. The long version published after his death was said to be the best one by his agent, who obviously wanted people to buy it again. The stuff that was cut was the stuff that should’ve been cut, basically more of Heinlein’s creepy old man paternalistic sex poo poo. And hopefully it also cut the line where “if a woman gets raped she’s basically asking for it” gets put in the mouth of one of his female characters. It’s basically the handbook on what went wrong with the hippie’s free love movement. And by handbook I mean literally, a bunch of hippies read that poo poo and went, “I grok that, maaan. All women should stop being prudes put out for me.” If this makes you want to skip the book altogether, all you’re missing out on is gawking at a mildly historical trash fire. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Aug 31, 2020 |
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Aug 31, 2020 16:22
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Yeah Stranger in a Strangeland sucks out loud.
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Aug 31, 2020 16:43
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At the time the "sex outside of marriage is ok" message was fairly groundbreaking, as was using SF to do social criticism of American society. It has aged like it drank from the wrong grail.
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Aug 31, 2020 16:45
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Thanks y'all. Having finished my re-read, my pet theory is that Harrow might actually be John's daughter too (and Gideon's half sister). John talked about how Harrow's conception was like a resurrection. What if Wake had carried the two dummy fetuses or whatever they were with her in the shuttle. She dies on landing or whatever, bringing Gideon and the two dummy fetuses. Harrow's parents, being pretty good necromancers themselves recognize the necromantic potential of the fetuses. Since they've been having a poo poo time conceiving, they decide to try and resurrect one of the fetuses and raise it as the heir to the Ninth. Once she passes the blood wards to the tomb (which, perhaps the parents know about as current leaders of the Ninth) they realize the enormity of what they've done and decide to off themselves. Seems not-inconsistent with the story so far if the two end up being related, since they're basically siblings in practice.
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Aug 31, 2020 18:08
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Look to Windward (A Culture Novel Book 6) by Iain M. Banks - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001D20270/ I added this to my ebook wishlist in March 2017, and this is the first time I've seen it get a discount.
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Aug 31, 2020 18:47
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Fart of Presto posted:Look to Windward (A Culture Novel Book 6) by Iain M. Banks - $1.99 Yeah don't pass this up, good book. I had that wishlisted for ever and bought it when I had a promo credit long ago, otherwise it was much more expensive than the other ebook Culture novels available and I don't remember ever seeing it have a discount either. I assume because this is a different publisher than the others. And why the heck hasn't Excession gotten a digital version? Once I finish an ebook I usually delete it off my device soon after, but I kept that one on for a while to re-read some lines that hit me hard at the end.
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Aug 31, 2020 19:26
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There's so much Culture and I haven't even read the first one. Really ought to get started on that.
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Aug 31, 2020 19:30
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Black Griffon posted:There's so much Culture and I haven't even read the first one. Really ought to get started on that. as usual the Culture Caveat exists: the first book, Consider Phlebas isn't really indicative of the series as a whole. More action hero-y(?) than the rest of them, which are a lot more about exploring civilizations and stuff. If you bounce off it there is zero issue skipping to Player of Games or really any other book in the series. I still liked Phlebas a lot, and it does get in to the world that the rest of the series is based on, just not really the same.
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Aug 31, 2020 19:49
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Fart of Presto posted:Look to Windward (A Culture Novel Book 6) by Iain M. Banks - $1.99 This was my first Culture novel, which people say it shouldn't be, but I loved it anyway. Very melancholy and lonely and lingering.
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Aug 31, 2020 19:58
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General Battuta posted:This was my first Culture novel, which people say it shouldn't be, but I loved it anyway. Very melancholy and lonely and lingering. It is my favourite of the Culture series for pretty much the above reasons.
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Aug 31, 2020 20:08
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Look to Windward is the best culture novel and one of my favourite novels of all time. It does benefit from having read Consider Phlebas first though. God I wish Banks was still around, theres so much good sci-fi out there but nothing that scratches the same itch that he did.
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Aug 31, 2020 20:36
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You can get Excession outside the USA so it must be a rights thing.
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Aug 31, 2020 20:44
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Rand Brittain posted:You can get Excession outside the USA so it must be a rights thing. I've never read any of his non culture stuff because it's all unavailable in the US. I posted earlier ITT this problem has seemingly become worse lately, for some reason. Loads of books I've wanted to try from non-US authors in the last year or so have shown as only available through used paperbacks.
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Aug 31, 2020 20:53
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Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AYIN78A/ Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by KJ Parker - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078W5M7DB/
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Aug 31, 2020 23:25
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It's almost time for another SFL archives update post(hit 75% completion in SFL archives Volume 10), but I have to ask. Should I continue posting SFL-Archives summaries in this thread? I've gotten zero feedback on them and why keep mentioning poo poo no-one cares about?
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