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Walh Hara posted:So while reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow I ended up thinking "I bet this author is a woman" despite that Alix is a male name in my country. Robert Silverberg posted:It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing.
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Nov 16, 2020 17:58
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It's basically just down to whether and how they describe boobs.
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Nov 16, 2020 18:03
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Ben Nevis posted:It's basically just down to whether and how they describe boobs. /r menwritingwomen is pretty great.
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Nov 16, 2020 18:15
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Ben Nevis posted:It's basically just down to whether and how they describe boobs. If they say they're like bags of sand its a dead giveaway.
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Nov 16, 2020 19:16
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Oh wow, I got curious and I just took a look at the 40 or so SFF books I've read this year and maybe only about 4 of them were written by cishet men? Mostly new titles but a good amount of older stuff too (I finally read some Ursula K. Le Guin after meaning to for a few years now).
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Nov 16, 2020 20:26
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I wouldn't say I like books written by women more, but they are definitely a breath of fresh air. They frequently go down less traveled paths, breaking away from some of the more common tropes. The main character is less likely to just happen to be a 6'4" special ops dude named Max Power, but if he is, he'll still probably have a unique personality. When characters are The Chosen One, it's generally at least in a new and interesting way. I also definitely think women authors had to be flat out better to get any recognition until pretty recently in sci-fi. It was a lot harder for a mediocre woman writer to gain any traction, meaning the ones that did were usually a cut above the majority of authors at the time and couldn't skate by on only being good at one thing like so many of the "big ideas" male authors did.
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Nov 17, 2020 01:03
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Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XFYIE2/ Borne by Jeff VanderMeer - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M98T0J7/
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Nov 17, 2020 01:29
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Just finished the audiobook of Piranesi. It's read by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and he did an amazing job.
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Nov 17, 2020 02:23
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Sheriff Falc posted:I'm in the mood for some grimdark fantasy. Richard K Morgan's A Land Fit For Heroes was pretty loving grimdark and I enjoyed it.
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Nov 17, 2020 03:19
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Just finished the audiobook of Piranesi. It's read by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and he did an amazing job. Seconding this in a big way. I'm nearing the end of the audiobook as well and it's been fantastic. Also, weirdly, a good companion to Cultist Simulator if anyone else enjoyed that game's take on dreamlike otherworldly spaces.
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Nov 17, 2020 03:39
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pradmer posted:Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor - $4.99 This is a good book if you haven't read it.
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Nov 17, 2020 04:36
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Lois McMaster Bujold and Ursula LeGuin exist, just to name two. You've got to reach really hard to outmatch those two grandmasters.
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Nov 17, 2020 04:55
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mllaneza posted:Lois McMaster Bujold and Ursula LeGuin exist, just to name two. You've got to reach really hard to outmatch those two grandmasters. C.J. Cherryh too.
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Nov 17, 2020 07:05
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Okay going back to Authority for a bit my impression was Ghost Bird was hypnotizing Control during their one on ones. I have not seen anyone mention this ever which leads me to believe I am in fact the wrong one?
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Nov 17, 2020 07:16
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First 4 of the Occult Assassin series by William Massa is free for a bit on kindle. It's sort of like if the Punisher got hired to be a ghostbuster, from what I understand.
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Nov 17, 2020 11:00
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OK got the burning God, let's see how this ends
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Nov 17, 2020 14:24
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I'd somehow never heard of this before but it certainly reinforces my vague view that Harlan Ellison was a gigantic arsehole
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Nov 17, 2020 14:52
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Qwertycoatl posted:I'd somehow never heard of this before but it certainly reinforces my vague view that Harlan Ellison was a gigantic arsehole I don't think that's ever been in dispute even by the people who were still his friends after he sexually assaulted Connie Willis on stage for a "laugh".
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Nov 17, 2020 14:55
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The Chad Jihad posted:Okay going back to Authority for a bit my impression was Ghost Bird was hypnotizing Control during their one on ones. I have not seen anyone mention this ever which leads me to believe I am in fact the wrong one? the hypnosis is definitely happening through the phone calls with his handlers, i don't think Ghost Bird is related to it iirc
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Nov 17, 2020 16:44
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The Chad Jihad posted:Okay going back to Authority for a bit my impression was Ghost Bird was hypnotizing Control during their one on ones. I have not seen anyone mention this ever which leads me to believe I am in fact the wrong one? The only hypnosis going on there is titties
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Nov 17, 2020 17:44
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Qwertycoatl posted:I'd somehow never heard of this before but it certainly reinforces my vague view that Harlan Ellison was a gigantic arsehole Went down the rabbit hole a bit on this, what a douchebag. Just off the top of my head I'm pretty sure GRRM has organized compilations and he wouldn't do something like delay the project for 45 years and then die before releasing it, what a monumentally lovely thing to do to colleagues
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Nov 17, 2020 20:35
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mewse posted:Went down the rabbit hole a bit on this, what a douchebag. Just off the top of my head I'm pretty sure GRRM has organized compilations and he wouldn't do something like delay the project for 45 years and then die before releasing it, what a monumentally lovely thing to do to colleagues If you want to learn even more, Christopher Priest (the British horror writer who did The Prestige, not the American comics writer best known for Black Panther) wrote The Book on the Edge of Forever to document Ellison's repeated failures to bring TLDV to print.
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Nov 17, 2020 21:21
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The text for that was originally written under the title The Last Deadloss Visions sometime around 1987, and it used to be posted online for a while. Fortunately, it was on a site the Internet Archive managed to catalogue, so you can read it here if you want. https://web.archive.org/web/20000902203835/http://sf.www.lysator.liu.se/sf_archive/sf-texts/Ansible/Last_Deadloss_Visions,Chris_Priest
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Nov 17, 2020 22:42
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I am firmly in the "Ellison deliberately held LVD back at first, then got screwed by daytime soap operas" camp. By the late 1970's most of the risque themes in the 2 earlier Dangerous Visions collections were being broadcast for free on a weekly/daily basis on daytime TV soap operas. Plus the power trip of locking away his direct competitors best stories must have been epic for a hyper-thin skinned person like Harlan Ellison that thrived on spite and issuing lawsuits. mllaneza posted:Lois McMaster Bujold and Ursula LeGuin exist, just to name two. You've got to reach really hard to outmatch those two grandmasters. Andre Norton easily matched those two. Although like Damon Knight, most of the things in Andre Norton's work have become common fantasy & sci-fi tropes. Right now, Knight's & Norton's stories are very predictable and boring, however back when they were first written they were top-notch.
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Nov 17, 2020 22:46
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Sheriff Falc posted:I'm in the mood for some grimdark fantasy. I mean, Robert E. Howard. The first three books of the Black Company series by Glenn Cook. For a deep cut, Charles Edward Wagner's Kane series.
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Nov 17, 2020 22:54
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eke out posted:the hypnosis is definitely happening through the phone calls with his handlers, i don't think Ghost Bird is related to it iirc General Battuta posted:The only hypnosis going on there is titties gently caress, I specifically thought that and dismissed it. He was getting roped in so easily! He couldn't be that horny on main in my cosmic horror!?
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Nov 17, 2020 23:33
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Marshal Radisic posted:The text for that was originally written under the title The Last Deadloss Visions sometime around 1987, and it used to be posted online for a while. Fortunately, it was on a site the Internet Archive managed to catalogue, so you can read it here if you want.  hehGeorge RR Martin in The Last Deadloss Visions posted:There's no doubt in my mind that the lengthy delay of TLDV has been a tragedy--a tragedy for readers like myself who have been looking forward to the book, a tragedy for the field that badly needs a shot of the sort of literary adrenaline the previous DV volumes have supplied, a particular tragedy for the writers involved, and especially a tragedy for Harlan himself. I can only hope that, somehow or other, this tragedy will turn out to have a happy ending. Despite everything, you know, I'd still like to read the book, and so would a lot of other people.
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Nov 18, 2020 07:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The first three books of the Black Company series by Glenn Cook. Even if you're only recommending the first three in the series, throw in The Silver Spike which is an excellent take on a noir swords & sorcery tale. If Dashiel Hammett wrote S&S, it'd look like this. Not to say that the rest of the series isn't properly grimdark - it's some of the best of the breed - it's just that at the end of the first trilogy, people split into two groups and Silver Spike wraps up one group's story there's even a happy ending for a couple of people. Follow the other group for the rest of the series and a much, much smaller proportion of the characters has a happy ending.
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Nov 18, 2020 07:26
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Thanks for the recommendations everyone. Going to pick up a few (Janny Wurts seems cool) and see if they're my kind of thing. Ccs posted:I'm assuming you've already read Joe Abercrombie' stuff? He's kind of the poster child for grimdark though I find his work so funny that it doesn't strike me as too grim. I have tried to get through The Blade Itself a few times and bounced off it pretty hard, which sucks because I want to like it but there's something in there that I'm just not vibing with. I don't think they're bad books or anything, maybe they're just not my thing. Maybe it's the grin-dark black humour stuff you mentioned. Abercrombie has a new series out (well, published in 2018), and I picked up the first book in that today which I will also take a shot at. I think his style in a slightly different setting with different characters could gel with me. Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean, Robert E. Howard. I have read the first Black Company book what feels like decades ago. Funnily enough, it was recommended in the afterward of one of the ASOIAF books and that was good enough for me at the time, because in 2007 GRRM was absolutely The poo poo if you were into fantasy. I found Cook's writing to be fun, if not super compelling. I kind of ruined the series for myself (perhaps even on these here forums? cant remember) by reading weird spoilers from the later books which seemed all kinds of off the rails. I think I will give it a re-read and the series another shot. I'm assuming it's like Dune where the best approach is to read books 1-3 and pretend there are no further sequels?
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Nov 18, 2020 08:25
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Sheriff Falc posted:I'm assuming it's like Dune where the best approach is to read books 1-3 and pretend there are no further sequels? Some people really like the later ones, but I'm not personally going to recommend them.
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Nov 18, 2020 09:29
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Neat, for the 5 people who read the old thread and remember the Tim Reaper series by Sean cummings, I just found out the second book got released a while back! There's some short stories as well.
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Nov 18, 2020 09:54
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Sheriff Falc posted:I have read the first Black Company book what feels like decades ago. Funnily enough, it was recommended in the afterward of one of the ASOIAF books and that was good enough for me at the time, because in 2007 GRRM was absolutely The poo poo if you were into fantasy. I found Cook's writing to be fun, if not super compelling. I kind of ruined the series for myself (perhaps even on these here forums? cant remember) by reading weird spoilers from the later books which seemed all kinds of off the rails. I think I will give it a re-read and the series another shot. I'm assuming it's like Dune where the best approach is to read books 1-3 and pretend there are no further sequels? It's like Dune in that you read until you hit a book that makes you say "gently caress it, I'm out", whichever book that happens to be.
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Nov 18, 2020 10:16
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Khizan posted:It's like Dune in that you read until you hit a book that makes you say "gently caress it, I'm out", whichever book that happens to be. But really, isn't every series like that? If the series ends before you say gently caress It, that's a victory.
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Nov 18, 2020 10:39
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lol while rereading "the man in the high castle", I noticed that someone IRL has actually published a book called "the grasshopper lies heavy" pulling the same alternate world/war history trope (the reviews for it are pretty bad). are there other examples of a third party actualizing a fictional piece of fiction?
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Nov 18, 2020 11:34
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jng2058 posted:But really, isn't every series like that? If the series ends before you say gently caress It, that's a victory. Sometimes a series will have one bad volume in the middle before returning to form.
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Nov 18, 2020 11:47
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:For a deep cut, Charles Edward Wagner's Kane series. Just to help anyone searching, it's Karl Edward Wagner.
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Nov 18, 2020 13:03
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Sheriff Falc posted:Thanks for the recommendations everyone. Going to pick up a few (Janny Wurts seems cool) and see if they're my kind of thing. You might enjoy Elric of Melnibone it's not exactly grimdark but it's definitely not overly pleasant and is almost anti-Tolkein. Moorcock was literally pretty anti-tolkein, and he has a funny name.
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Nov 18, 2020 14:07
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shrike82 posted:lol while rereading "the man in the high castle", I noticed that someone IRL has actually published a book called "the grasshopper lies heavy" pulling the same alternate world/war history trope (the reviews for it are pretty bad). This was Philip Jose Farmer's entire sideline during the 60's & 70's. Farmer operated under the principles that Dead authors can't sue, and live authors rarely can afford to sue (except for Harlan Ellison). SFL Archives 1988: George RR Martin is being discussed, and for 1988 SFLer's GRRM is currently best known for being the script-editor and producer for the 1980's Beauty and the Beast tv series starring Linda Hamilton & Ron Perlman
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Nov 18, 2020 14:42
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pseudanonymous posted:You might enjoy Elric of Melnibone it's not exactly grimdark but it's definitely not overly pleasant and is almost anti-Tolkein. Moorcock was literally pretty anti-tolkein, and he has a funny name. Moorcock owns (do NOT quote me out of context!) I was addicted to the Hawkmoon books as a kid, as well as Elric. Was such a difference from the easy YA fantasy I was reading. It was also fun, as a brit, reading about the evil dark empire of GranBretan which was definitely the first time I got exposed to the idea that maybe GB wasn't so swell after all. EDIT: Wikipedia description of GranBretan: quote:The inhabitants of Granbretan are renowned for their cruelty, and for their practice of wearing masks at all times. well he got it 50% right! EDIT 2: quote:The "terrifying ancient gods of Granbretan who were said to have ruled the land before the Tragic Millennium" are based on The Beatles: Jhone, Jhorg, Phowl and Rhunga. 
Carrier fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Nov 18, 2020 |
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Nov 18, 2020 14:47
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jng2058 posted:But really, isn't every series like that? If the series ends before you say gently caress It, that's a victory. It's not uncommon for a long-running series to start out kind of wobbly before the author finds their feet (Discworld is commonly described this way, to the extent that some people will recommend skipping the first several books entirely) or have a mediocre book or two in the middle of a series that otherwise starts and finishes strong. The reason people recommend that you "stop when you stop enjoying it" for Dune specifically is that it's all downhill. If you hit a book you don't enjoy, well, the next book is no better, and probably worse. Personally, I liked all the Black Company books and thought that it absolutely stuck the landing, but a lot of people seem to dislike the later books, and I think it probably is true that if you start disliking them you probably won't start liking them again before the end.
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Nov 18, 2020 15:21
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