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I'm most annoyed that he got the They Live quote wrong. Sure, he says it's an imperfect translation, but that's the Duke version, not They Live! You chew bubblegum and kick rear end, not the other way around! Unless you're Jon St. John, but he has bigger problems.
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Sep 12, 2020 22:00
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quantumfoam posted:-An PLAYBOY short story article called "Time Is Money" gets brought up and discussed. (2020 take: doing a moderate reworking of that idea circa 2020 might win you the 2020/2021 Prometheus Award aka the Hugo Award for Libertarians) You wouldn't be able to escape accusations of ripping off a Justin Timberlake movie.
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Sep 12, 2020 22:11
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mewse posted:Yeah that's what struck me about it. The bubblegum line from They Live is not gallows humour, even if it's in Chinese and before a major battle.  I don't think I've ever read any of their books and I suspect that's going to continue.
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Sep 12, 2020 23:23
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quantumfoam posted:
Didn't know about that one, there was a minor kerfuffle in Australia around terminator 2 with I think three lawsuits from a pair of producers, the writer they hired and James Cameron. The writer, bill green once tore bush snr's coat in a fight and intentionally sent a bad cheque when asked to cover the damages.
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Sep 12, 2020 23:55
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branedotorg posted:Didn't know about that one, there was a minor kerfuffle in Australia around terminator 2 with I think three lawsuits from a pair of producers, the writer they hired and James Cameron. Yeah, Ellison sued Cameron over similarities to Soldier Out of Time and an Outer Limits episode he wrote called Demon with a Glass Hand. Ellison settled for about $65k.
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Sep 13, 2020 01:08
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Yeah, Ellison sued Cameron over similarities to Soldier Out of Time and an Outer Limits episode he wrote called Demon with a Glass Hand. Ellison settled for about $65k. Ellison also sued the studio that made "In Time" that I mentioned above, claiming it ripped off "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman".* Bit sue-happy for a guy so prone to pissing off everyone around him. He was a creative consultant for Babylon 5, and he and JMS wanted to do an episode featuring the robot from "Demon With a Glass Hand", but never got around to it before the plot arc kicked off and took up all their time. * After the movie came out Ellison saw it and decided he didn't want to be associated with such a lousy picture, and dropped the suit.
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Sep 13, 2020 01:17
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Ernest Cline is a terrible writer. Armada was wonderful though because even the fans of RP1 thought it was garbage. The thing that makes me wonder about Cline's whole schtick is when he gets basic nerd things wrong. In RP1, for example, he says there were A and B-wings at the Battle of Yavin which is just bizarre so I think he might really just be a moron.
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Sep 13, 2020 01:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Neat interview with Susannah Clarke about her new book: Wow I didn't even know Clarke was working on a sequel to Strange and Norrell. I'm now even sadder she's got chronic fatigue. Really looking forward to her new book.
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Sep 13, 2020 04:18
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Ellison also sued the studio that made "In Time" that I mentioned above, claiming it ripped off "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman".* Oh yeah, one of my college professors at a 400 person satellite Penn state campus got a cease and desist letter from him because she gave us a hand out with one of his 8 page short stories.
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Sep 13, 2020 04:37
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quantumfoam posted:-Funny SF stories requests. Henry Kuttner gets recommended a bunch, especially Kuttner's "drunk inventor-genius" stories. Holy loving poo poo. I have been looking for a name to put to those stories for literally decades. My dad told me about these when I was a kid, and if he told me the authors name I'd forgotten it. I could never figure out who it was despite years of on-and-off search attempts, and suddenly out of nowhere, here it is. I don't keep up with this thread very well (today I read through something like 20 pages), had planned on thanking you for these SFL posts after getting caught up, and just as I did...  These summaries are interesting for a lot of different reasons, and this is a new one for me. I'm definitely going to have to give them a full re-read on the blog site.
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Sep 13, 2020 05:06
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Beef Hardcheese posted:Holy loving poo poo. I have been looking for a name to put to those stories for literally decades. My dad told me about these when I was a kid, and if he told me the authors name I'd forgotten it. I could never figure out who it was despite years of on-and-off search attempts, and suddenly out of nowhere, here it is. I don't keep up with this thread very well (today I read through something like 20 pages), had planned on thanking you for these SFL posts after getting caught up, and just as I did... The drunk inventor-genius stories appeared originally under the shared pen-name Lewis Padgett Here's some clarification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Padgett
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Sep 13, 2020 05:22
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StrixNebulosa posted:Ya know I think this goes in here too: Mike Brooks is a new Warhammer 40k author and so far he is very good. His first full length novel was all about Navigators and followed a Navigator house after it's patriarch died and the ensuing struggle for leadership. It was the first 40k fiction ever focused on Navigators and now Black Library is giving him the first full length ork POV novel. I have high hopes. The problem with orks is that reading their dialogue gets really old fast. Brooks wrote an Ork short story where it is somehow less annoying so I am hoping he can pull a full length novel off. Black Griffon posted:Ooh, have they finally dropped the "rule" that novel-length 40k books shan't be written from the alien POV? They have. There is also a full length Necron novel coming out in October. Black Griffon posted:Yeah, there's plenty of god emperor awful novels about space marines which make the universe even dumber if you force yourself to consider them canon, so they've really got nothing to lose letting writers write from whatever perspective they want. Games Workshop came under new management 4-5 years ago and since then things have started to change for the better. There are still plenty of "bolter porn" novels, what you are describing here, but they've opened up the doors for authors to explore a lot of other aspects of the universe. They even brought Guilleman back to life! If you haven't read a 40k book in a while I suggest you pop over the Black Library thread and read the last couple of pages where I recommend some of the books you should read that have come out in the last two years. Some really great inquisition novels, chaos POV novels, etc. 40k lore is super interesting when you start branching out beyond space marines so I am glad it is getting explored now. In one of the latest novels, Avenging Son, a POV character is a palace scribe in the imperial palace on Terra. You get to see the incredibly byzantine structure of a bureaucracy charged with recording and potentially taking action on everything happening on a million plus worlds, all on paper. Positions are hereditary and some have been passed parent to child for thousands of years. The policies and procedures are so ingrained after such a vast span of time they are almost religious in nature. There are millions (more likely billions) of palace scribes because everything is so inefficient and there is soooo much data. They form into clans and raid each other for parchment. At one point she enters a vast hall miles long completely filled with stacks of paper tens of feet high. She meets a prospector who has literally dug a mining tunnel into the paper looking for mistakes. If he finds one he can turn it in for a bounty and the offending scribe, if still alive, is burned at the stake. He considers himself very successful as he has found three such mistakes over 35 years. Stuff like that and navigator houses used to get throwaway mentions in codexes but is now getting explored in depth and it is extremely my poo poo. D-Pad fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 07:26
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My very short trip report on The Traitor Baru Cormorant was that it was incredible and I've gone straight on to book two. I very rarely mainline a series of books; there's too much else to read and not enough time, so consider this a strong recommendation. Dickinson has a great turn of phrase on occasion - some moments of beautiful prose, some absolutely metal statements. He really balances badass fantasy with being at least somewhat grounded in realism and I've fell pretty hard for it. I look forward to joining the rest of you in not being about to read book four...
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Sep 13, 2020 12:03
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D-Pad posted:*snip* Fantastic. You've got me really pumped for 40k again, so I'll head over and figure out where to start. Thanks!
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Sep 13, 2020 12:05
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Bit sue-happy for a guy so prone to pissing off everyone around him. Ellison was notoriously litigious. I'm sure settlements made up a substantial portion of his lifetime earnings.
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Sep 13, 2020 14:29
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Ninefox Gambit (Machineries of Empire #1) by Yoon Ha Lee - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EBE05X2/ Sword of Destiny (Witcher) by Andrzej Sapkowski - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W22J07S/ Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor #1) by Mark Lawrence - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IAUG6R2/ Bloody Rose (The Band #2) by Nicholas Eames - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074M6KW1X/
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Sep 13, 2020 17:19
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Black Griffon posted:Fantastic. You've got me really pumped for 40k again, so I'll head over and figure out where to start. Thanks! Here is the post with my specific recommendations for the last two years. Feel free to ask any questions in thread you have. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3494493&pagenumber=674&perpage=40#post507952763 Edit: I forgot to mention Rites of Passage in that post. Don't skip it. It's the really good Navigator house succession drama. The lead character is basically all four golden girls combined and dropped into the grimdark that is 40k and given a ton of power. As a further recommendation to this thread: Black Library just started a new Warhammer Crime series. All books in the series will take place in one continent spanning hive city that all the authors got together and created deep lore for. There are no space Marines, the vast majority of citizens have very little idea about the wider imperium. The two releases so far are very very good. Basically bladerunner detective novels. You don't have to be into 40k or know anything about the universe to enjoy them. They are just good sci fi. Bloodlines is the first novel, written by Chris Wraight one of the best authors writing for BL and the other is a short story anthology called No Good Men that is also excellent. I highly recommend anybody who likes sci fi crime stories check them out regardless of your feelings or lack thereof about 40k. D-Pad fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 19:22
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D-Pad posted:Black Library just started a new Warhammer Crime series. All books in the series will take place in one continent spanning hive city that all the authors got together and created deep lore for. There are no space Marines, the vast majority of citizens have very little idea about the wider imperium. The two releases so far are very very good. Basically bladerunner detective novels. You don't have to be into 40k or know anything about the universe to enjoy them. They are just good sci fi. Bloodlines is the first novel, written by Chris Wraight one of the best authors writing for BL and the other is a short story anthology called No Good Men that is also excellent. I highly recommend anybody who likes sci fi crime stories check them out regardless of your feelings or lack thereof about 40k. Oh man, this is extremely my poo poo.
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Sep 13, 2020 19:58
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I'm further into Deadhouse Gates, the second Malazan book and jesus christ there's a lot of rape. Every time Erikson needs to illustrate that people are bad, he just goes straight to sexual violence, sometimes even just casually introducing raped women's corpses in remote areas before never mentioning them again. Then there's the bit where men are gutted, then a bunch of women and girls are raped then strangled with the mens' intestines, which I think might also be the cover art to a Cannibal Corpse album. This isn't even mentioning the teenager girl who gets sent to fantasy Dachau to get turned into an overseer's sex slave and addicted to fantasy opium. The first book was pretty fun - crazed mages in weird bodies, tall anime elves with magic swords, a flying rock fortress, political intrigue. The second just seems focused on misery (and rape).
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Sep 14, 2020 00:28
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"All I know is ball, and good..... and rape."
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Sep 14, 2020 08:17
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:"All I know is ball, and good..... and rape." Get out of here, Handbanana.
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Sep 14, 2020 09:07
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quantumfoam posted:-SFLers note that Jack Chalker's stories all seeming to have involuntary species + gender swaps for main characters and the subsequent kinky sex that happens due to species/gender changes makes me very happy I have only read one of Jack Chalker's stories (it was notable for the extreme speed of the plot movement vs modern fantasy books) and nothing more.
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Sep 14, 2020 11:01
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I don't think there's anything wrong with writing kinky on main, but Jack Chalker c'mon shake it up, put some variety in there, you clearly have a great imagination and can exercise it so give us some more wild kinks. /bangs table
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Sep 14, 2020 12:56
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Lemniscate Blue posted:You wouldn't be able to escape accusations of ripping off a Justin Timberlake movie. See also this from 1987: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRurZ7TlACc
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Sep 14, 2020 15:14
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Mister Kingdom posted:See also this from 1987: THANK YOU! I have been looking for this for years, but I could not remember the title.
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Sep 14, 2020 15:16
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Lemniscate Blue posted:You wouldn't be able to escape accusations of ripping off a Justin Timberlake movie. Mister Kingdom posted:See also this from 1987: All these previous works and adaptations makes it MORE likely that a moderate reworking of "Time Is Money" might win you the 2020/2021 Libertarian Hugo Award. Original ideas are toxic to Libertarians. Ripping off other Libertarian authors slash libertarian works is de rigueur slash shows you know your source material (Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein, etc). Also, the more I learn about the Libertarian Hugo Award (aka the Prometheus Award), the funnier it becomes. 1986 SFLers have been discussing L. Neil Smith, the founder of the Prometheus Award(and 3 time Prometheus Award winner btw), and let me just quote the bit where L. Neil Smith had his Libertarian hero characters time travel to defeat Jane Fonda. ------------------------------ Date: 11 May 86 08:59:05 GMT From: jacob@renoir.berkeley.edu (Jacob Butcher) Subject: Re: Cute SF tie-ins discussing tie-ins in Buck Rogers & Star Trek with traditional SF stories. Well,... In Jack Chalker's _And_the_Devil_Will_Drag_You_Under_, there was a scene in a somewhat fantasyish dimension, where I (think) the woman was trying to steal a gem from a dangerous castle or something of that ilk. At one point Chalker briefly describes a whole slew of strange characters. When I was rereading the book in a fit of boredom (NEVER, NEVER, reread anything by Chalker -- it can't handle the scrutiny. Likewise Hogan. [And anything of Foster's which could handle the scrutiny of the first reading.]) I suddenly realized that one pair of characters sounded an awful lot like Fafrhd and the Mouser. And, hey, this guy could be Conan, and him over here, somebody else famous but obviously not famous enough for me to remember him, and, and, well, I never did figure out who they all were and wouldn't mind being told. But it was fun pondering the surprise. L. Neil Smith wrote a slightly neat book once called _The_Probability_Broach_, which is extremely Libertarian. What makes it less neat is that he keeps rewriting it -- he even went so far as to write a book which was totally unrelated until about halfway through when he wimped out and tied it back in to his standard universe. (Although he did write the Bucketeers book, which was unrelated.) Anyway, the latest that I've seen is about the usual characters going back in time to stop an insidious plot to change history by one "Edna Janof". Now, at a couple of points [uh, oh, deja vu, have I mentioned this before?] she is described as wearing tights, leg-warmers, and a red & black striped body-suit. Sound familiar? I'll give you a hint: Edna Janof is an anagram for Jane Fonda. What would Smith have against the Fondoid? I can't believe this is a coincidence. (Of course, I can't believe HAL was a coincidence either, no matter what Clarke or Kubrick say.) Who is "cargo master Dane Thorson"? jacob ------------------------------ quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 18:28
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a foolish pianist posted:I'm further into Deadhouse Gates, the second Malazan book and jesus christ there's a lot of rape. Every time Erikson needs to illustrate that people are bad, he just goes straight to sexual violence, sometimes even just casually introducing raped women's corpses in remote areas before never mentioning them again. Then there's the bit where men are gutted, then a bunch of women and girls are raped then strangled with the mens' intestines, which I think might also be the cover art to a Cannibal Corpse album. This isn't even mentioning the teenager girl who gets sent to fantasy Dachau to get turned into an overseer's sex slave and addicted to fantasy opium. It seems to be an unpopular opinion here, but I regret wasting my time on Malazan. I found they were interesting through The Bonehunters (with the exception of Midnight Tides which was bearable but not great) then dropped off precipitously in terms of being enjoyable. The last 2 books were nothing but a bore with a terrible payoff. Virtually every non-Bridgeburner/Bonehunter story threads end without having any bearing on the main thrust of the series in the most limp-dicked manner. I didn't expect everything to be tied up neatly in a bow, but goddamn, talk about a disappointment.
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Sep 14, 2020 21:56
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I'm reading Ringworld Engineers and Larry Niven apparently cannot stop having his characters gently caress everything.
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Sep 14, 2020 22:04
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Kings of the Wyld (The Band #1) by Nicholas Eames - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KT7YTXW/ Eragon (The Inheritance #1) by Christopher Paolini - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBJCK8/ Red Country by Joe Abercrombie - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0076DEJMO/
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Sep 14, 2020 22:06
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Xenix posted:It seems to be an unpopular opinion here, but I regret wasting my time on Malazan. I found they were interesting through The Bonehunters (with the exception of Midnight Tides which was bearable but not great) then dropped off precipitously in terms of being enjoyable. The last 2 books were nothing but a bore with a terrible payoff. Virtually every non-Bridgeburner/Bonehunter story threads end without having any bearing on the main thrust of the series in the most limp-dicked manner. I didn't expect everything to be tied up neatly in a bow, but goddamn, talk about a disappointment. It happens. I vastly prefer the shorter Bauchelain & Korbal Broach stories set inside the Malazan multi-verse over the main Malazan series books, Malazan prequels, or anything by ICE.
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Sep 14, 2020 22:39
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Ben Nerevarine posted:I'm reading Ringworld Engineers and Larry Niven apparently cannot stop having his characters gently caress everything. I'd always thought that's why it was called Ringworld.
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Sep 14, 2020 22:43
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pradmer posted:Kings of the Wyld (The Band #1) by Nicholas Eames - $2.99 Both very solid books, would recommend checking out the former if you want a pleasant story about adventurers as rock bands, and a bunch of retirees going on a reunion tour. The latter is space opera with an interesting technology system based on calendars, and some interesting character stuff that kind of reminded me of ancillary justice.
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Sep 14, 2020 22:53
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RIP ZEEZ
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The European SF Society has published its nominations for award in 2020, if that's of interest to anyone.
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Sep 15, 2020 00:13
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I'm about 40 pages into Adrian Tchaikovsky's Cage of Souls and sort of enjoying it but also feeling like he needs a better editor. Like, a sentence-by-sentence editor. Dude knows how to waffle.
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Sep 15, 2020 10:53
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One of my favorite teachers at school in Colorado was L. Neil Smith's neighbor, and regarded him as a friend and fellow traveler. So I accidentally read almost everything he wrote by the age of 14, as it was tucked away in the school library, and that didn't really help me in my personal growth at all. (His Lando Calrissian stories were actually pretty charming, I thought, but I haven't reread since I was a regrettable teenager.) This teacher who was friends with L. Neil (I always suspected L. Neil was trying to evoke L. Ron) was also actually an excellent teacher. Absolutely also every bit as Libertarian and weird, but she did actually teach me how to "do the research" that (eventually, I was a truly regrettable teenager) led me to conclude that nonmutualist tit-for-tat zero-sum philosophies where the Prisoner always resolves the Dilemma by loving over the other guy are catastrophically dangerous to, like, civilization, and are super lovely places to live in practicality. I do wonder where she has fallen out on all this, philosophically, as she seemed like a person who could actually think. But I never check, because I hate being disappointed about people.
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Sep 15, 2020 11:42
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Ben Nevis posted:I'd always thought that's why it was called Ringworld. I introduce the series to people as "Ringworld, or, The Erotic Adventures of Louis Wu".
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Sep 15, 2020 12:10
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Xenix posted:It seems to be an unpopular opinion here, but I regret wasting my time on Malazan. I found they were interesting through The Bonehunters (with the exception of Midnight Tides which was bearable but not great) then dropped off precipitously in terms of being enjoyable. The last 2 books were nothing but a bore with a terrible payoff. Virtually every non-Bridgeburner/Bonehunter story threads end without having any bearing on the main thrust of the series in the most limp-dicked manner. I didn't expect everything to be tied up neatly in a bow, but goddamn, talk about a disappointment. agreed, only I'd add reaper's gale to the interesting ones
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Sep 15, 2020 13:04
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So I'm almost done with Baru 3: Too Many Cormorants and while there's a lot going on my two favorite and least consequential items are the beginning of chapter 20, which I assume is taking a shot at audio book pronunciation issues and also imagining GB trying to research circumstances in which might sunburn their balls. Which is not to say the rest is not good. I'm hoping to finish tonight.
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Sep 15, 2020 17:14
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a foolish pianist posted:I'm further into Deadhouse Gates, the second Malazan book and jesus christ there's a lot of rape. Every time Erikson needs to illustrate that people are bad, he just goes straight to sexual violence, sometimes even just casually introducing raped women's corpses in remote areas before never mentioning them again. Then there's the bit where men are gutted, then a bunch of women and girls are raped then strangled with the mens' intestines, which I think might also be the cover art to a Cannibal Corpse album. This isn't even mentioning the teenager girl who gets sent to fantasy Dachau to get turned into an overseer's sex slave and addicted to fantasy opium. You may want to know that this gets much, much worse in a scene towards the very end of the series that's so bad had I known about it before getting 8000 pages in, I probably would have bailed on the entire series. I had very mixed feelings on the series but I still get mad when I think about it. It's the 'hobbling' if you want to google it
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Sep 15, 2020 17:22
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I really liked Malazan way back when I read it but in the time since then my taste has changed and I don't think I'd enjoy it like I did before. Erikson had a theme of convergence and the way he'd weave plot threads over a book or multiple books to come together was always cool when the connection got made, but between the gratuitousness mentioned here and I remember his philosophizing in later books really needing editing down it may be too much for me now.Yarrington posted:You may want to know that this gets much, much worse in a scene towards the very end of the series that's so bad had I known about it before getting 8000 pages in, I probably would have bailed on the entire series.
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Sep 15, 2020 17:58
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