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TheAardvark posted:just found out that Ready Player Two comes out in 3 weeks Kinda feel that RP1's moment came and went with the movie. Everyone who needed the nostalgia fill up got it done and moved on. And besides pure undiluted nostalgia there really wasn't anything else to RP1. 
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Nov 2, 2020 18:20
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Maybe for RP2 he'll have an editor that can explain to him what gallows humour is
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Nov 2, 2020 18:24
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:God dammit, Rachel Caine died. Yeah. She’s been really sick for awhile and had being going downhill fast these past couple of months. It’s really sad.
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Nov 2, 2020 20:26
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Nae posted:Good morning, SFF goons! I recently finished writing an adult dark fantasy and I'm on the hunt for people willing to look at the first three chapters, and Hieronymous Alloy gave me the thumbs-up to 95k is too much for me to read right now but I can take a look at your first few chapters if you post the google doc link here! In other news I'm very slowly making my way through Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco. The beginning didn't grab me. After the navigator guy gets killed but resurrected in the even further future on a journey to an inhabited planet, the story picks up. But it's still filled with very long technical descriptions and indistinguishable characters arguing over their pet theories, or rather descriptions of that happening, in a way that distances the reader from any of the action. The most gripping part of the story happened when the protagonist read an excerpt from a tawdry novel about an adventurer stealing an object from a termite mound that attracts all insects to him. I'm sure that story is supposed to connect with the themes of the book as a whole but I haven't made the connection yet. Ccs fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Nov 2, 2020 |
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Nov 2, 2020 21:04
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in here. I'm happy to provide a link if anyone's interested, and as a show of good faith, you can all feel free to tear apart the pitch:
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Ccs posted:95k is too much for me to read right now but I can take a look at your first few chapters if you post the google doc link here! You got it, poster. https://docs.google.com/document/d/12KWt5e9l5ri8NBjh5P8ibyo2Ubgd_7cwSvaX64rmUlQ/edit?usp=sharing
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Nov 2, 2020 21:26
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As per the mech books posting a few pages back, one of the people I follow on twitter (Xiran Jay Zhao) has a 2021 book coming out that's pitched as quote:Iron Widow
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Nov 2, 2020 21:43
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Tars Tarkas posted:As per the mech books posting a few pages back, one of the people I follow on twitter (Xiran Jay Zhao) has a 2021 book coming out that's pitched as I'm looking forward to this one. Her threads/videos about both versions of Mulan were fascinating.
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Nov 2, 2020 21:55
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The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0011UJM48/ Emergency Skin by NK Jemisin - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VFMFPP4/
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Nov 2, 2020 23:26
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Nae posted:Good morning, SFF goons! I recently finished writing an adult dark fantasy and I'm on the hunt for people willing to look at the first three chapters, and Hieronymous Alloy gave me the thumbs-up to Main point of feedback is I would like the other chapters please. Really efficiently wove in a ton of history/hinted at potential future plot points, definitely curious to see where everything goes. I think I could use slightly more descriptions of where they are — I was sometimes a bit lost in terms of their physical setting during the performance parts/ending confrontation. Having a little trouble visualizing the surroundings. Overall tho I thought it was quite good! If I get a chance tmr I can leave more specific comments, but honestly I feel like this is a strong beginning to the novel. E: also I like the POV character 👍🏻 wouldn’t mind tagging along in their head for a book
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Nov 3, 2020 06:45
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Nae posted:You got it, poster. Just echoing that this is really good, pm'd with other comments but would also be up for reading the whole thing. All the chapter endings have such compelling hooks for reading the next one.
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Nov 3, 2020 08:10
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RIP ZEEZ
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Tars Tarkas posted:As per the mech books posting a few pages back, one of the people I follow on twitter (Xiran Jay Zhao) has a 2021 book coming out that's pitched as Oh yeah, I'm genuinely kind of hyped for that. Nine-tailed fox mecha! Nine-tailed fox mecha!
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Nov 3, 2020 10:21
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Tars Tarkas posted:As per the mech books posting a few pages back, one of the people I follow on twitter (Xiran Jay Zhao) has a 2021 book coming out that's pitched as Huh, a girl I went to highschool with got a book published this year called Rebelwing, with Chinese characters piloting mecha. Otherwise the similarities aren't that big but I wonder if they know about each other. I don't know of too many other books about mecha.
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Nov 3, 2020 16:49
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tildes posted:Main point of feedback is I would like the other chapters please. Really efficiently wove in a ton of history/hinted at potential future plot points, definitely curious to see where everything goes. I think I could use slightly more descriptions of where they are — I was sometimes a bit lost in terms of their physical setting during the performance parts/ending confrontation. Having a little trouble visualizing the surroundings. Overall tho I thought it was quite good! If I get a chance tmr I can leave more specific comments, but honestly I feel like this is a strong beginning to the novel. Sweet, thanks for the feedback! I've had other people make the same point with the visual descriptions, so I'm going to work on pumping those up a bit. I'm actually going to send out the full later this week to a couple other people who requested it, so I'll keep your name in my head. An actual SFF q for the thread: Are there any good standalone books that have come out this year that stick to one POV? I've bounced off quite a few books this year because they either got into too many POVs too soon, or they were clearly set up to be part of a sweeping series. I used to have the energy for that kind of stuff, but nowadays, when even November 4th seems like an impossibility, I'm looking for books with complete stories told from one (or two) perspectives. Is this kind of thing out there, or is this the dream of a ridiculous poster?
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Nov 3, 2020 18:28
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https://twitter.com/ShepJoel/status/1323418476334129152 really good series, and unlike many authors the sequels are prompt
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Nov 3, 2020 20:59
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Ccs posted:Huh, a girl I went to highschool with got a book published this year called Rebelwing, with Chinese characters piloting mecha. Otherwise the similarities aren't that big but I wonder if they know about each other. I don't know of too many other books about mecha. I just checked and they are twitter mutuals, and that lead me to find Axie Oh who wrote the Rebel Seoul series which is another mecha series now on my to-read list
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Nov 3, 2020 21:23
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Nae posted:Sweet, thanks for the feedback! I've had other people make the same point with the visual descriptions, so I'm going to work on pumping those up a bit. I'm actually going to send out the full later this week to a couple other people who requested it, so I'll keep your name in my head. IIRC The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson sticks with the POV of the main character. As far as I can tell it's a one-shot and was a good book that's very much worth reading. PawParole posted:https://twitter.com/ShepJoel/status/1323418476334129152 I liked this series at first but it seemed like every book introduced at least two new alien cultures: one to be the ally, and one to be the mysterious big(ger) bad. I got lost and gave up keeping up with that. Did it ever stop? Riot Carol Danvers fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Nov 3, 2020 |
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Nov 3, 2020 21:46
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Riot Carol Danvers posted:
Not really, doubled down on it if anything. Really like it for a self published series.
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Nov 4, 2020 08:21
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Read 4 SFF novellae this week, with varying degrees of success. Red Dust by YOSS - A dangerous alien with the power to manipulate probability escaped, and it's down to our protagonist, Raymond to find him. He's not really equipped to, as he's only a positronic android who works as security at the big space station out by Saturn. Billed as a detective story, this mentions Raymond Chandler in the blurb, so was clearly going to be disappointing. Generally, too much exposition dumping. I don't often mind it, but at <175 pages it'd be far better to focus on the story and not specifics of how tall all the alien races are. Not enough detecting. Not awful, sort of pretty OK. Eh. Silver in the Wood and The Drowned Country by Emily Tesh - A duology. The first is about a man, Silver, who buys a house in an old wood, mostly to get away from his mother and learn the local folklore of the woods, chiefly about the Wild Man of the woods and the Lord of Summer. Also he meets up with Tobias Finch, the Wild Man of the woods. Does Silver know it? What will he learn about Tobias and his history? The Drowned Country is the sequel, where Silver and Tobias try to save a girl from a vampire. Or do they? I enjoyed these. They've got a real sense of old folklore type magic. The sort of magic you get from ancient woods and places of power. The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo - This is mostly an old woman, Rabbit, telling the story of her service to the exiled Empress. The central relationship is good, and the story itself is interesting. It looks like this may be the first of series. I'll almost certainly read the rest.
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Nov 4, 2020 18:38
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Uh so I've got Rhythm of War, new Stormlight Archives, on pre-order,and my kindle app just popped a notification that said read this free sample while you wait for your physical copy. So I downloaded it and it appears to be the entire book. The release date isn't even until the 17th. Did somebody at Amazon gently caress up? Can they take it back off my device? Edit: ok sorry I jumped the gun it does not appear to be the entire book but it's a drat big chunk of it looks like D-Pad fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Nov 4, 2020 |
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Nov 4, 2020 21:17
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Humble have a new 'stars of sci-fi and fantasy' bundle up which includes the entire Tek-Wars series and a bunch of stuff I've never heard of https://www.humblebundle.com/books/...tent=hero_image
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Nov 4, 2020 22:37
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Crashbee posted:Humble have a new 'stars of sci-fi and fantasy' bundle up which includes the entire Tek-Wars series and a bunch of stuff I've never heard of https://www.humblebundle.com/books/...tent=hero_image There's a whole lot of nonsense there, but the Jane Yolen books are good (and if you view it as paying $15 just for the trilogy it's still saving $6 vs amazon)
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Nov 5, 2020 01:50
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D-Pad posted:Edit: ok sorry I jumped the gun it does not appear to be the entire book but it's a drat big chunk of it looks like they released a free chapter a week for the last... 18 weeks, so it's probably just an ebook version of those combined together
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Nov 5, 2020 02:17
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fritz posted:There's a whole lot of nonsense there, but the Jane Yolen books are good (and if you view it as paying $15 just for the trilogy it's still saving $6 vs amazon) It’s too bad you can’t use those pay sliders to pay Jane Yolen $X and Piers Anthony $0.
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Nov 5, 2020 02:34
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fritz posted:There's a whole lot of nonsense there, but the Jane Yolen books are good (and if you view it as paying $15 just for the trilogy it's still saving $6 vs amazon) Between the Bio of a Space Tyrant series (possibly Anthony's grossest non-Firefly work) and TekWar, I wouldn't pay a fistful of pocket lint for this stuff. That said, Yolen is good and I remember The Book of Kells as being decent. Paingod is mostly a bunch of lesser Ellison stories, plus "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman," which you can find in hundreds of anthologies.
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Nov 5, 2020 02:39
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Selachian posted:Between the Bio of a Space Tyrant series (possibly Anthony's grossest non-Firefly work) and TekWar, I wouldn't pay a fistful of pocket lint for this stuff. lol quote:Chronicles Hope's years as a migrant laborer and 15-year career in the Navy, largely under his sister Spirit's guidance. One of the stranger aspects of the Navy is the Tail, a militarily administered bordello all servicemen are required to use.
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Nov 5, 2020 02:54
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eke out posted:they released a free chapter a week for the last... 18 weeks, so it's probably just an ebook version of those combined together That makes sense. When I saw the notification I just figured it was a chapter or two but when I saw the size I thought it must be a fuckup. Very excited for the full book, this is Sanderson's best series in my opinion and the first book remains one of my all time favorites. Speaking of I did the kickstarter for the limited edition of Way of Kings and am excited to get that to add to my collection. It was really successful so I hope he does the rest of the series.
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Nov 5, 2020 03:36
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Oh believe me, that is not even the twelfth grossest thing in Bio of a Space Tyrant.
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Nov 5, 2020 06:17
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Selachian posted:Oh believe me, that is not even the twelfth grossest thing in Bio of a Space Tyrant. Haven't even read that poo poo but I did read a fair few Piers Anthony books way back in the 80s and early 90s. Just thinking about them now makes me feel like I need a hot shower with extra-good scrubbing.
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Nov 5, 2020 09:54
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Orbital decay / Allen Steele is ok. I wouldn't buy that bundle. Shatner's TekWar is pretty bad, although the first one is the best of them. Grimy cyberpunk meets Nancy Reagan drugs are bad.
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Nov 5, 2020 10:13
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branedotorg posted:Shatner's TekWar is pretty bad, although the first one is the best of them. Grimy cyberpunk meets Nancy Reagan drugs are bad. I can't get over the fact that Shatner (or his ghostwriter) thought 'Jake Cardigan' was a cool future cop name. Does he hang out with his buddies Colin Anorak and Keith Slippers? Crashbee fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Nov 5, 2020 |
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Nov 5, 2020 10:50
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Crashbee posted:I can't get over the fact that Shatner (or his ghostwriter) thought 'Jake Cardigan' was a cool future cop name. Does he hang out with his buddies Colin Anorak and Keith Slippers? Cardigan is a real name, though.
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Nov 5, 2020 11:03
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Jedit posted:Cardigan is a real name, though. I mean the article of clothing is literally named after a dude. Its like saying Sandwich isn't a real name because of the food.
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Nov 5, 2020 14:13
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I think it's a hilarious name for a tough cop character and I would applaud it if I thought Shatner was intentionally subverting the expectation. Jake Cardigan is a very comfy name, I'm gonna name a character in a romance novel Jake Cardigan and feel real cozy.
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Nov 5, 2020 14:20
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Just started Rage of Dragons because it's been on my Kindle recommendation list for ages so thought I'd test how good Amazon's algorithms are. I'm about 20% in and wondering if anyone confirm, does it at any point take a look and say "Hey, maybe us invading this country and trying to kill all the natives and steal their land is bad????"
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Nov 5, 2020 14:38
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Selachian posted:Oh believe me, that is not even the twelfth grossest thing in Bio of a Space Tyrant. As I recall it starts out relatively non-gross. I mean, exploited workers, migrant boat people, etc etc and then the whole Amber storyline. Which is seriously really bad. Like worse than you're imagining if you've not read it.
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Nov 5, 2020 15:37
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feedmegin posted:I mean the article of clothing is literally named after a dude. Its like saying Sandwich isn't a real name because of the food. Yeah but I didn't say it wasn't a real name.
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Nov 5, 2020 16:20
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team overhead smash posted:Just started Rage of Dragons because it's been on my Kindle recommendation list for ages so thought I'd test how good Amazon's algorithms are. I think by the end of the book it's pretty clear that the people in charge really aren't so great.
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Nov 5, 2020 17:24
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Ben Nevis posted:As I recall it starts out relatively non-gross. I mean, exploited workers, migrant boat people, etc etc and then the whole Amber storyline. Which is seriously really bad. Like worse than you're imagining if you've not read it. I read this when I was 14 so maybe I misremember. But I distinctly recall the phrase 'if there's grass on the field, you can play' used in total seriousness at one point.
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Nov 5, 2020 17:37
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Copernic posted:I read this when I was 14 so maybe I misremember. But I distinctly recall the phrase 'if there's grass on the field, you can play' used in total seriousness at one point. As I recall, it doesn't literally say that. Once he's tyrant, like book 4 maybe, they remove age of consent and go towards a "passed puberty" model, because once people have adult parts, they should be treated like adults. So yeah, basically. And that's still not the worst stuff in there.
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Nov 5, 2020 17:42
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team overhead smash posted:Just started Rage of Dragons because it's been on my Kindle recommendation list for ages so thought I'd test how good Amazon's algorithms are.
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Nov 5, 2020 18:27
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