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I read Cry Pilot at the qualified recommendation of some folks here and it's got mechs and some neat quirks to its setting, but most of the novel is spent in a pretty generic sf bootcamp, outside of mechs; the mechs don't show up again until close to the end. There are sequels, and I hope they finally get in the robots, but I haven't kept up.
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Oct 28, 2020 02:11
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buffalo all day posted:The Folding Knife - selfcontained and on the optimistic side of his work. I went to look at this on Amazon and it's on sale - $1.99: https://www.amazon.com/Folding-Knife-K-J-Parker-ebook/dp/B0035IICZO/ref=sr_1_26?dchild=1&keywords=the+folding+knife&qid=1603850969&sr=8-26 Guess that's my reading while I'm waiting for Dawnshard to drop.
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Oct 28, 2020 03:11
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DurianGray posted:There's also one mecha book I've read (a novella) which I could only recommend with A LOT of caveats because while I liked it, it's definitely not for everyone. It's Dreadnought by Gretchen Felker-Martin (it was published independently, but she just got picked up by Tor to publish her next horror novel, so don't let the Gumroad listing throw you off as far as quality at least). It's sort of like "what if Neon Genesis Evangelion dove even deeper into the hosed up mental states/circumstances of the characters and the system that forces them to pilot war machines?" ...so it's pretty bleak and there are content warnings for basically everything under the sun (and just to be clear, it's not Eva fanfic, but is definitely inspired by it). But if a story that's a very body-horror forward examination of how messed up it is to exploit mentally ill teen mech pilots sounds like your jam, it's there (and it's pay-what-you-want!). sort of like NGE? it's like reading gender-swapped evangelion fanfiction which veers into, well... ignoring that, the work definitely invites the question of what, exactly, you can call inspiration vs homage vs other things within the creative process. i personally feel it was coming far closer to 'inspiration' than i would ever risk in something i was taking money for, but that's a personal take. otherwise, it's okay, i suppose. i don't know if i'd say it 'dove deeper' as much as it just made everyone much more hosed up to the extent that it went from bleak to just kind of overwrought, which is probably not helped but it being so short and quick, making it feel like a cavalcade of rather maudlin torture porn. i can't help but wonder if this came before or after daniels' dreadnought novel, too, given that it deals with a lot of similar themes but i also can't be bothered to look it up. it's just way too close to evangelion to allow me to look at it on its own merits. 'the director is fem!gendo, glasses and all - this scene is like this bit, this bit is the evangelion-00 berserk test, this is...' even a lot of the technobabble jargon reads like it came from evangelion. Horizon Burning fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Oct 28, 2020 |
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Oct 28, 2020 03:12
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Darth Walrus posted:Has anyone ever done a good mecha novel? I know they're a highly visual sci-fi concept, but there must have been enough folks having a crack at the idea for some decent stuff to come out of it. What do you mean by good mecha novel, Darth Walrus? Give us some examples of what criteria you are using. War of the Worlds is of one of the earliest mecha stories and still sort of holds up. The first chapter of Stanislaw Lem's FIASCO has a Mecha segment that isn't terrible. And the rest of Lem's FIASCO is pretty good/worth reading too.
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Oct 28, 2020 03:25
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Groke posted:His stated reason for choosing "Parker": It is a pen name. 
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Oct 28, 2020 03:55
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Yeah her writing style/content is definitely not something I would recommend to most people. I didn't personally find it to be solely torture porn, but I also think that's a fair takeaway at the same time. I have a really high threshold for that kind of thing in fiction, at least when it's done with some degree of empathy, but it's not a happy book by any stretch of the imagination. As far as the NGE inspiration/homage aspects, I didn't think that took away from it, but it's definitely a matter of taste. (FWIW, I did happen to rewatch the original NGE series just a few months before I picked up Dreadnought, so it was pretty fresh in my head when I was reading the book. And I know Felker-Martin has been pretty up front about NGE being what she was playing off of with it, so it's not like it's a secret or anything.) It does look like the April Daniels book was published a few years earlier. I've never read her work, but other than using the same title and the fact that there are main characters who are trans women, I don't see too much else that's similar thematically, at least in the synopsis (but again, I haven't read it so maybe there's more there).
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Oct 28, 2020 03:59
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quantumfoam posted:What do you mean by good mecha novel, Darth Walrus? Give us some examples of what criteria you are using. Lol come on man. This is not what he is looking for. I like TWOTW but it’s first contact / aliens in big ships not Mechas. You might as well recommend Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books because dragonriding is basically the same thing as piloting a big robot. Maybe starship troopers? The faceless grunts use power armor not giant robots though.
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Oct 28, 2020 04:22
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DurianGray posted:As far as the NGE inspiration/homage aspects, I didn't think that took away from it, but it's definitely a matter of taste. (FWIW, I did happen to rewatch the original NGE series just a few months before I picked up Dreadnought, so it was pretty fresh in my head when I was reading the book. And I know Felker-Martin has been pretty up front about NGE being what she was playing off of with it, so it's not like it's a secret or anything.) yeah, to me it's not a matter of being up front. i just don't enjoy books where the inspiration is very clear and very loud. it just feels like moments from NGE stitched together to the extent that it was really quite distracting. the problem with such a heavy influence is that it just invites comparison. i'd hit bits in the book and my brain would go 'this is the part where they botch unit 00's sync test and it breaks free from the wall and- yep, there it goes.' it felt like felker-martin took evangelion's cast, world, set pieces, etc and and bolted a thematic construct of trans people, body dysmorphia, feminine symbolism, etc onto it and it never really came together into a whole that felt neat because of it. eg: 'insertion slit' instead of 'entry plug.' i gather that a lot of writers these days do these things as a learning process, especially if they've come from ff.net or ao3, but i feel like it's the sort of thing you should leave behind as, like, training wheels. an author can wink at me all they like and claim to be upfront (the bad guys are called lilim, you say? oh, i get it...) but it just doesn't sit right with me as a reader. i just kept seeing a best of evangelion summary which would every so often veer into, well, the stuff you mentioned about content warnings, etc. and even some of those, like the awkward masturbation scene made me go 'hey, i remember that, too.' Horizon Burning fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Oct 28, 2020 |
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Oct 28, 2020 04:35
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muscles like this! posted:Yes, Steel Frame is a good novel about mechs/mech pilots. Andrew Skinner is great at writing exciting cinematic action scenes. The Old Gods of Raytheon and Steyr 
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Oct 28, 2020 05:29
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buffalo all day posted:Lol come on man. This is not what he is looking for. I like TWOTW but it’s first contact / aliens in big ships not Mechas. You might as well recommend Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books because dragonriding is basically the same thing as piloting a big robot. The martian Tripods from the War of the Worlds novel sure do seem like mecha, but maybe that's just me. And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand... Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body. Anyway, I agree with most of the other mecha recommendations given.
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Oct 28, 2020 05:31
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Groke posted:His stated reason for choosing "Parker": It is a pen name. Having read quite a lot of his comedic work, that's exactly what I would expect.
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Oct 28, 2020 08:50
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Read Dead Lies Dreaming, and the ending was happier than I expected. I don't object, but I was quite surprised at a late-Laundry novel where bad things mainly happened to people who deserved it.
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Oct 28, 2020 14:36
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dreamless posted:I read Cry Pilot at the qualified recommendation of some folks here and it's got mechs and some neat quirks to its setting, but most of the novel is spent in a pretty generic sf bootcamp, outside of mechs; the mechs don't show up again until close to the end. There are sequels, and I hope they finally get in the robots, but I haven't kept up. I read it and was annoyed by the boot camp thing. Then I got the sequel because after the bootcamp stuff it was good and somehow the sequel starts out with another god drat training thing. Why
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Oct 28, 2020 14:49
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buffalo all day posted:The Folding Knife - selfcontained and on the optimistic side of his work. On the other hand, if you want self-contained and on the grimdark side of Parker's work, I recommend The Hammer.
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Oct 28, 2020 15:43
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:The only parker I can remember reading was something about an alchemist who learned how to make a non work/material intensive version of blue dye for ink/paint. Wasn't grimdark that I can remember. These are both stories in Academic Exercises and Father of Lies. Those tend to end happier than his novel length stories. I really enjoyed the short stories because it's fun to try to figure out if they're all happening in the same world, or what relation the stories have with each other. He's very good at leaving certain things about the supernatural up for interpretation.
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Oct 28, 2020 18:06
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DurianGray posted:There are a couple upcoming titles I know of that I'm keeping an eye out for because I really love mecha stories but would love for more non-anime options. Top of my looking-forward-to-it list is The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang (formerly wrote as JY Yang -- they wrote the Tensorate series of novellas). The basic pitch is 'Joan of Arc but queer and with giant robots.' It's not slated to be published until 2022 though. Hey this is a great post and thank you for reccing Dreadnought, I bought it last night and I'm 65% through it now and it's the closest I've ever seen anyone get to Porpentine's writing but somehow even grosser and I love it. It wears its influences on its sleeve and blasts through them and everything is awful and I would love to read more takes on NGE but hosed up. e: 95% holy poo poo that took OFF, what a novella e2: lmao special thanks to the creator of Evangelion and Porpentine, that makes so much sense. What a hosed up little story, I loved it. StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Oct 28, 2020 |
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Oct 28, 2020 18:26
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StrixNebulosa posted:Hey this is a great post and thank you for reccing Dreadnought, I bought it last night and I'm 65% through it now and it's the closest I've ever seen anyone get to Porpentine's writing but somehow even grosser and I love it. It wears its influences on its sleeve and blasts through them and everything is awful and I would love to read more takes on NGE but hosed up. I'm glad you liked it! I recently read Psycho Nymph Exile and I didn't expect to run into someone else who'd read both it and Dreadnought (and enjoyed them) anytime soon. Porpentine has such a fascinating approach to writing, too. If you liked Felker-Martin's writing and want something more medieval-horror-fantasy themed, I actually liked her book Ego Homini Lupus even more than Dreadnought. (The content/themes continue to be crushingly bleak of course, but the monster in it is really cool imo. If you'd want any content warnings beforehand I'm happy to provide.)
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Oct 28, 2020 19:32
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DurianGray posted:I'm glad you liked it! I recently read Psycho Nymph Exile and I didn't expect to run into someone else who'd read both it and Dreadnought (and enjoyed them) anytime soon. Porpentine has such a fascinating approach to writing, too. I didn't really get into Psycho Nymph Exile - porpentine's best works are her interactive fiction, and if you haven't, PLEASE read Eczema Angel Orifice, almost anything in that collection is soul-shattering. It's on sale now for 2.50$ at itch.io and 5$ at steam. Can you summarize Ego Homini Lupus for me? I snagged it and the other novella on her gumroad but they don't have as exciting premises as giant robots piloted by sad teenagers so I need more selling on them before they can jump the line on my kindle. Speaking of: I've been reading Wolfhound Century and I'm 60% into it and hot drat, this is the alternate history Soviet Union but magic and dead angels mystery / revolution in progress that I've been wanting to read my whole life. The concept of two realities trying to overwrite each other while demonstrators get shot in the streets is incredibly vivid and compelling.
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Oct 28, 2020 19:40
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StrixNebulosa posted:I didn't really get into Psycho Nymph Exile - porpentine's best works are her interactive fiction, and if you haven't, PLEASE read Eczema Angel Orifice, almost anything in that collection is soul-shattering. It's on sale now for 2.50$ at itch.io and 5$ at steam. Ah yes, I have read some of Eczema Angel Orifice and played around with her hypertext stuff too! I loved her interactive stuff which was why I got Psycho Nymph in the first place hah. I'm not sure if I can summarize it well since the really interesting stuff is spoiler-rich, but... Ego Homini Lupus is about the daughter of a 12th-century English lord who basically sells her off to be married to a destitute knight and work as his servant as much as his wife. He hunts wolves to pay his tax to the king and makes her skin and process the pelts by herself. There's a monster that lives in the woods nearby with connections to the knight, his dead brother and his horrible sister-in-law. There's also plenty of creepy bone magic involved (circles of bones, chapels of bones, lots of bones!), a feral bastard daughter who lives with them when she isn't eating bugs in the woods, and lots of self-loathing. The monster and magic really pick up in (from what I remember) the second half or so of the book. So very different from Dreadnought as far as setting, but still a lot of interesting body horror. I hadn't heard of Wolfhound Century before but that description and some others I'm seeing definitely have my attention. I might need to add that to my TBR.
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Oct 28, 2020 20:03
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Thanks for the AJ Parker discussion, I just chewed through Prosper's Demon and 16 Ways and it's gotten me out of a reading slump. Time to burn through everything else he's done while I have momentum. For some reason I'd bucketed Tom Holt in the 'basically not funny' pile with people lke Craig Shaw Gardner but now that I think about I don't think I'd read anything of his except Grailblazers to come to that conclusion.
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Oct 29, 2020 07:31
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Can anyone who has made it through to sleep in a sea of stars let me know if they recommend buckling down and pushing through the middle bit? I’m pretty stalled out at 60% and not sure if it’s worth finishing.
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Oct 29, 2020 07:49
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Darth Walrus posted:Has anyone ever done a good mecha novel? I know they're a highly visual sci-fi concept, but there must have been enough folks having a crack at the idea for some decent stuff to come out of it. Full Metal Panic started as a novel series. J-Novel Club picked up the license and is re-releasing them with a new translation.  buffalo all day posted:Maybe starship troopers? The faceless grunts use power armor not giant robots though. SST is mostly a political polemic about fascism with a couple of battle scenes, however it's short and forms the basis for so much of milSF writing it'd be worth reading just to get out of the way and see how much it's been copied by other authors. (in both story beats and in support for fascism) And certainly pair it with Armor by John Steakley. For contemporary authors though, Linda Nagata's The Red series is probably a better pick for power armor infantry action, or Marko Kloos' Frontlines series for the whole general "bootcamp to hero to burnout with PTSD" milSF story. All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka was fairly decent IIRC. There's also Yukikaze by Chohei Kambayashi which is about fighter pilots with AI enhanced jets fighting aliens from another dimension over Antarctica. StrixNebulosa posted:Speaking of: I've been reading Wolfhound Century and I'm 60% into it and hot drat, this is the alternate history Soviet Union but magic and dead angels mystery / revolution in progress that I've been wanting to read my whole life. The concept of two realities trying to overwrite each other while demonstrators get shot in the streets is incredibly vivid and compelling. I'm glad to see someone else reading it, I went through the series a couple years back and liked it. Though it's more like, the Soviet Union of another world, I remember there's a fair amount of stuff in the internal timeline that was more a "rhyme" than a reference/allusion to real events.
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Oct 29, 2020 10:05
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xiw posted:
I did read a lot of Tom Holt (writing as Tom Holt) books back in the day, and yeah, they never rose up above mildly entertaining at best. His Parker stuff is way better. As is funnily enough, as are his historical fiction books under his other pseudonym of Thomas Holt*. Check out the Walled Orchard or Olympiad. *Although if you pick up a recent edition. I think they're rebranded back to 'Tom Holt' now.
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Oct 29, 2020 10:27
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DurianGray posted:Ah yes, I have read some of Eczema Angel Orifice and played around with her hypertext stuff too! I loved her interactive stuff which was why I got Psycho Nymph in the first place hah. Hmmm, that sounds good but not yet what I'm in the mood for. It's up the to-read list but not at the top yet. Thank you though, I look forward to reading it! Thank you again for the mecha recs too, when the new stuff drops I'll be all over it. C.M. Kruger posted:SST is mostly a political polemic about fascism with a couple of battle scenes, however it's short and forms the basis for so much of milSF writing it'd be worth reading just to get out of the way and see how much it's been copied by other authors. (in both story beats and in support for fascism) And certainly pair it with Armor by John Steakley. I thought the Red was mostly about troopers getting filmed, so that's exciting to hear. On the list it goes! Also yeah, it's not a 1:1 fantasy Soviet Union but close enough that it's just fantastic to read. The Vlast is awesome and awful and I love reading about it.
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Oct 29, 2020 14:25
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dreamless posted:I read Cry Pilot at the qualified recommendation of some folks here and it's got mechs and some neat quirks to its setting, but most of the novel is spent in a pretty generic sf bootcamp, outside of mechs; the mechs don't show up again until close to the end. There are sequels, and I hope they finally get in the robots, but I haven't kept up. Yeah, I gave up on Cry Pilot when it became clear that it would never/take forever to get back to the actually interesting part and that the majority of the book was just going to be a bland milsf boot camp. I don't know why so many milsf authors are obsessed with boot camp stories when they almost all play out exactly the same.
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Oct 29, 2020 14:54
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C.M. Kruger posted:SST is mostly a political polemic about fascism.. The government in SST is not fascist, and depiction isn't endorsement anyways.
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Oct 29, 2020 15:08
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Somebody let me know when this latest incarnation of the SST/fascism eternal argument dies down again so I can skip to that page, thanks.
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Oct 29, 2020 15:10
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tildes posted:Can anyone who has made it through to sleep in a sea of stars let me know if they recommend buckling down and pushing through the middle bit? I’m pretty stalled out at 60% and not sure if it’s worth finishing. wish i could help you but lol, I quit at 62%
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Oct 29, 2020 15:40
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xiw posted:Thanks for the AJ Parker discussion 
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Oct 29, 2020 15:40
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muscles like this! posted:Yeah, I gave up on Cry Pilot when it became clear that it would never/take forever to get back to the actually interesting part and that the majority of the book was just going to be a bland milsf boot camp. I don't know why so many milsf authors are obsessed with boot camp stories when they almost all play out exactly the same. Because everybody else does it?  Ground based MilSF just does that. Probably the Starship Troopers influence, I guess. I suppose it's also the MilSF version of the coming of age story. You start as a naïve civilian, go to boot, come out a hardened soldier ready to kick rear end, etc. etc. Wouldn't be so bad if they all didn't hit the same story beats, though. Boot bully becomes your buddy, weak recruit needs encouragement/protection from the protagonist, bastard drill sergeant turns out to have a heart of gold, and so on and so forth. Maybe that's why everyone does it, because its so well known that every MilSF writer can write in in his/her sleep. At least naval MilSF doesn't usually boot camp, though those have their own set of clichés they like to roll through. 
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Oct 29, 2020 15:42
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Sixteen Ways To Defend A Report Card
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Oct 29, 2020 15:44
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In the interest of helping the thread not descend into Starship Troopers hell, here is a full list of what I am reading: A Lick of Frost by LKH (Merry Gentry 6) - Porn with plot, I love the take on fae but there's so much porn oh my god. I love this series but can't recommend it unless I know the friend likes reading f/m/m/m/m/m/m style orgies. Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins - already described, actually great fantasy about a not!Soviet Union with dead angels, two realities trying to collide and one poor out of town cop brought in to find a revolutionary. Kitty and the Silver Bullet by Carrie Vaughn - werewolf radio host coping with her friend in jail for killing monsters, her partner still being a new werewolf, and vampires on the prowl. Surprisingly great urban fantasy imho. Night Film by Marisha Pessl - horror/thriller about a disgraced reporter trying to find out why the daughter of an extremely weird/reclusive director would commit suicide. Very long but fascinating with great atmosphere. Aliens vs Predator Omnibus by Steve Perry and others - Aliens and Predators collide on a ranching colony and everything goes to hell and it's great SPQR by Marry Beard - Rome! A good layman history of Rome with enough depth to make me feel extra educated and smart. This goes well with the Fall of Rome podcast I finished recently. Dracula - Dracula - haven't read since high school, time to revisit it and see the original vampire superstar. Pairs well with: Interview with the Vampire - also haven't read since high school, it's super overwrought but super compelling. These vampires are great and sad and I'm enjoying the fever dream nature of the book. Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand - this is also a fever dream, it's about cults and a moon goddess and college students at a weird magical college and I understand little about it. Space Marine by Ian Watson - 40k fun! Baroque prose, fun to read. Final Girls by Riley Sager - horror/thriller, a bunch of girls who survived horror movie slashers - aka the Final Girls - are beginning to die. Why? Also a great look at PTSD imho. An Artificial Night - more fae, this time with no sex. Third in the October Daye series and this is a slow start but I enjoy nibbling at it. Children are going missing and they're gonna find out why. Anita Blake - Anita Blake. I'm up to the Harlequin and god I love this series, I don't even mind the porn. I'm a sucker for LKH's writing. And more, but that's the big list of what I'm focusing on at the moment. I love my kindle, I can read stacks without horrifying my boyfriend.
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Oct 29, 2020 15:44
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tildes posted:Can anyone who has made it through to sleep in a sea of stars let me know if they recommend buckling down and pushing through the middle bit? I’m pretty stalled out at 60% and not sure if it’s worth finishing. It's about the same all the way through so if you're not feeling it you can probably give up now. I finished it and I can't quite recall the plot or how it ended.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:01
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I just finished the new Yoon Ha Lee. Overall I really liked it. Was interesting to have a novel where the main character just straight up wants nothing to do with a war. It ends with a sequel hook but I'm assuming this will play out like Lee's previous series where the viewpoint character will be a different person in the next one.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:14
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StrixNebulosa posted:In the interest of helping the thread not descend into Starship Troopers hell, here is a full list of what I am reading: I got this confused with the merrily watkins series and was wondering how the gently caress I misread the description of a book series that bad...
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Oct 29, 2020 17:00
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StrixNebulosa posted:Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand - this is also a fever dream, it's about cults and a moon goddess and college students at a weird magical college and I understand little about it. I found Waking the Moon fascinating. I read it back when I was barreling through a lot of modern not quite urban fantasy before the actual urban fantasy hit it big. Books like Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and pretty much anything by Charles de Lint, off the top of my head. I was never able to find anything else by Hand I liked as much, though it was hard to find anything in my area pre-Amazon, and Wikipedia says she's written a lot since then like Generation Loss. I was going to read Mira Grant's scary mermaid book for Halloween but it turns out I bought book 2 in a sale and don't have book 1 yet. So I'm just killing time until Peter Fehervari's Reverie comes out this weekend (Warhammer 40k horror novel). I finished reading his Requiem Infernal the other day and it was pretty vividly cinematic in its descriptive weirdness. I hope he gets to keep doing his oppressively atmospheric take on 40k, it makes for a nice change from the bolter porn and space opera types.
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Oct 29, 2020 17:17
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I bought too many discworld books
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Oct 29, 2020 17:28
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Harold Fjord posted:I bought too many discworld books
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Oct 29, 2020 17:31
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90s Cringe Rock posted:christmas is coming, you can give the duplicates as pressies This reminds me: We need someone to step up and run the TBB secret Santa, Safety Biscuits can't this year
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Oct 29, 2020 17:36
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muscles like this! posted:Yeah, I gave up on Cry Pilot when it became clear that it would never/take forever to get back to the actually interesting part and that the majority of the book was just going to be a bland milsf boot camp. I don't know why so many milsf authors are obsessed with boot camp stories when they almost all play out exactly the same. Boot camp stories need to be added to the Mil-Scifi writers merit badge. I think of the Mil-scifi merit badge as the Baen Logo, inverted with Chevrons: 1a-Have a mil-scifi story published that is Xenophon's Long March or a thinly disguised reworking of Xenophon's Long March (tin chevron) 2b-Have a mil-scifi story published that is about Belisarius the Byzantine empire General or is a thinly disguised reworking of Belisarius (pewter chevron) 3c-Have a mil-scifi story published that is about going through boot camp or a series of boot camp stories (brass chevron) All the chevrons snap into the Mil-scifi merit badge lego block style, and stack lego block style. Certain authors would have mountain looking mil-scifi merit badges Having all 3 different chevrons gets you the full mil-scifi writers merit badge,. More seriously, boot camp stories seem easy to research/write and sell well enough for book publishers to keep releasing them.
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Oct 29, 2020 18:07
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