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Patrick Spens posted:I could genuinely feel my opinion of Last Jedi rising as I watched Rise of Skywalker. I've never had that happen before. Yeah. It was pretty to look at and that one guy acted his heart out but drat, was it dumb.
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Jun 21, 2021 18:08
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Solo and The Rise of Skywalker are the only Star Wars movies that I only ever saw once. Solo because it was disposable and probably didn't need to be made, Skywalker because it was so loving stupid that it made me angry and I don't need that kind of negativity in my life.
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Jun 21, 2021 18:17
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That might make em worth a reread. Not sure there's too much here other than one scene: quote:------------------------------ I was hoping there was more but those were the only Amber / Chandler references I see in 1996.
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Jun 21, 2021 18:29
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Aardvark! posted:id rather die than read about the star wars movies anymore Prepare for a fate worse than death, I suppose. Also Rise of the Skywalker ruled because it was hilarious and also really brought home the thesis, which was "let go of the past, kill it if you have to", if the past is actually Star Wars.
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Jun 21, 2021 19:28
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breadnsucc posted:its not like the galactic federation portrayed in the prequels in star wars represented any real form of democracy of the people so far as I could see it was a bunch of loving rich fucks on metropolitan worlds coming together to poo poo on working people out in the boonies and the state of all the colonies that are visited in the star wars universe at various times kind of shows how lovely it was either way imo star wars has one rich metropolitan core planet and everywhere else is just a level from a platform game. The metropole is also a platform game if you jump out of your hovercar for funsies
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Jun 21, 2021 19:47
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ahh, that's fair, yeah. Amber is pretty clearly "start with amnesia and roll with it and see what happens" the book.
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Jun 21, 2021 19:52
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Patrick Spens posted:I could genuinely feel my opinion of Last Jedi rising as I watched Rise of Skywalker. I've never had that happen before. It's amazing how Poe kills a bunch of his already in short supply fellow resistance members, multiple times, due to his arrogant stupidity and yet kept getting promoted despite being the absolute last kind of person who should hold a position of authority. Holdo should've shot him in TLJ before going and doing what the Resistance (and Rebels before them) apparently never thought to doliterally every time one of their fleets was trapped and in an unwinnable fight.
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Jun 21, 2021 20:32
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mewse posted:Just finished reading One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence last night. Completed the trilogy and the 2nd and 3rd books were much more enjoyable, particularly the third which wrapped up the trilogy in a very satisfying way. Revising my opinion of the first book to 3/5 and the others 4/5
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Jun 21, 2021 20:43
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Fantasy writers tended to be "conservative" at one time with respect to systems of authority and power but I'm hard pressed to look at someone like Max Gladstone or our good General Battuta's work and still feel that way. It's no more inherently true of fantasy than it is of science fiction. Tropes do not make the genre.
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Jun 21, 2021 21:02
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The Blade Itself (First Law #1) by Joe Abercrombie - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TOT9LDK/ Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) by Brian McClellan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0092XHPIG/ The Rage of Dragons (The Burning #1) by Evan Winter - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L2VKFP5/ Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06VTV9W39/
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Jun 21, 2021 22:49
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Aardvark! posted:id rather die than read about the star wars movies anymore
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Jun 22, 2021 00:01
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Drakyn posted:Can you please tell me the Science Fiction & Fantasy Mega-story behind your avatar. It's very nice. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3933568 enjoy 
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Jun 22, 2021 00:10
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Damned straight. Thank you.
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Jun 22, 2021 00:20
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Maybe GBS isn't so bad if they can appreciate a good permian synapsid.
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Jun 22, 2021 00:28
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Kesper North posted:Fantasy writers tended to be "conservative" at one time with respect to systems of authority and power but I'm hard pressed to look at someone like Max Gladstone or our good General Battuta's work and still feel that way. It's no more inherently true of fantasy than it is of science fiction. Tropes do not make the genre. There have always been books and authors that don't fit the mold, but that doesn't mean the mold isn't there.
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Jun 22, 2021 00:33
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DurianGray posted:I think the main thing I see when people say they don't read sci fi or fantasy because "every story is like X," is it really just tells me they've only been exposed to 'classic' stories in the genres by old (probably dead) white guys. This is my take on it. That Brin (lol) piece is discussing two stories written by relatively privileged white dudes, which is hardly representative of all of fantasy unless, I guess, you're David Brin.
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Jun 22, 2021 00:36
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DurianGray posted:I think the main thing I see when people say they don't read sci fi or fantasy because "every story is like X," is it really just tells me they've only been exposed to 'classic' stories in the genres by old (probably dead) white guys. I recently finished Erekos by A M Tuomala who uses non-standard pronouns and it was AMAZING and a great look at the intersection of multiple cultures, with attention paid to "what if the gods were real" and language and such. quote:In a land where gods walk beside men and witches defy death, war changes everything. Scholar and warrior, witch and king, priestess and corpse — all must come together to save their world from the ravages of the coming tempest. I love that it contained a queer couple but it wasn't about the romance? They were a pair of freedom fighters trying to get the invaders to gently caress off, out of their mountains.
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Jun 22, 2021 00:56
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jng2058 posted:Solo and The Rise of Skywalker are the only Star Wars movies that I only ever saw once. Solo because it was disposable and probably didn't need to be made, Skywalker because it was so loving stupid that it made me angry and I don't need that kind of negativity in my life. I think the reason I quite liked Solo was the same as one of the reasons I like the Mandalorian: it wasn't about saving the whole galaxy. It's OK - in fact it's much better - to just have an adventure in which the stakes are "low" because they only involve saving one or two characters.
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Jun 22, 2021 02:02
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freebooter posted:I think the reason I quite liked Solo was the same as one of the reasons I like the Mandalorian: it wasn't about saving the whole galaxy. It's OK - in fact it's much better - to just have an adventure in which the stakes are "low" because they only involve saving one or two characters. I get that, and I agree in principle. Indeed, it is a reason I enjoy The Mandalorian as well. My problem with Solo has to do with the movie's obsession with trying to explain literally everything about Han like they were going down a checklist. "Kessel Run, check. Jettisoned escape pod, check. Han's last name, check. Dice in the cockpit, check. Why the Falcon is the fastest ship around, check." On and on and on. I didn't really need all those things explained, and I dislike the idea that everything we'd known about Han pre-Episode IV all took place in one week of his life when he was 20.  Glover's performance as Young Lando was pretty close to perfect though, I will admit.
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Jun 22, 2021 02:59
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For sure. The fact that I had nil expectations and watched it on a plane probably also helped.
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Jun 22, 2021 03:04
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They did that in Indiana Jones too, didn't they? The Curse of Harrison Ford.
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Jun 22, 2021 03:12
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So I finally wrapped up the Five Gods trilogy and finished The Hallowed Hunt (God bless library e-book borrowing systems) and, big surprise, I enjoyed it. It really drove home how white this series is, though. Given that the Weald is a giant mashup of tribes, and Chalion nobility is claimed to be a great sampling of people from other lands, you’d think there would be at least one skin tone description that wasn’t pale or tanned. Really loved the political intrigues, it’s one of my favorite plot types and one of the reasons I liked Curse so much. I also really like the take on different types of worship to gods that are definitely there and the damage that colonization and cultural erasure do to people of a repressed religious minority. Well, at least I like that the themes were touched on, it’s not exactly handled as an in-depth theme. The Bastard also proved once again he’s still the best. Paladin is still probably mg favorite of the three and I wish that Bujold was still writing more novels in this world, since they’ve shown that they’re willing to just Star Wars it with this book.
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Jun 22, 2021 03:47
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if you wanna talk star wars in the SFF book thread, there are lots of star wars books to talk about. Like the one with zombies. I haven't read it but that's my favorite.
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Jun 22, 2021 04:03
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Any recommendations for a mil-scifi (or any scifi/fantasy book tbh) where the protagonist flies through the ranks/gets promoted a lot and gets more and more responsibilities etc? I like the childish spine tingling I get every time the main character of a book gets promoted, and I am in the mood for it. I am debating Kindle Unlimited shlock
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Jun 22, 2021 04:15
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Aardvark! posted:I like the childish spine tingling I get every time the main character of a book gets promoted, and I am in the mood for it. I am debating Kindle Unlimited shlock Have you read the Glynn Stewart Duchy of Terra series (KU schlock)?
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Jun 22, 2021 04:26
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ulmont posted:Have you read the Glynn Stewart Duchy of Terra series (KU schlock)? this is actually the exact one i downloaded as my KU fallback if i can't find something else. 
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Jun 22, 2021 04:28
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Aardvark! posted:Any recommendations for a mil-scifi (or any scifi/fantasy book tbh) where the protagonist flies through the ranks/gets promoted a lot and gets more and more responsibilities etc? Robert Asprin had a couple books that might be what you want, both pretty light. The Bug Wars is a short novel about space lizard people fighting space bug people from the point of view of a space lizard person. It follows his career from shocktrooper grunt to planetary commander. Phule's Company is about a playboy space heir who gets a commission to lead a ragtag bunch of misfits in the space mercenary army. To everyone's surprise, he ends up being an effective leader and the squad achieves great notoriety. There are a couple sequels, one in which they run security for a casino during a space heist. I haven't read either of these books since high school so if there are problematic elements I plead ignorance. Asprin just came up in this thread for his Myth books and the consensus held that he wasn't totally cancelled, right?
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Jun 22, 2021 04:56
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minema posted:Started reading Red Mars - are the weirdly focused paragraphs about Arabs a thing that continues through the book? I can't tell yet if it's meant to be weird because it's from the characters PoV or if KSR is just explaining his thoughts. When one of the characters is traveling around Mars meeting different people at one point he joins some traveling dervish. I found that to be one of the most beautiful parts of the book. I think KSR can b emany things, but racist and xenophobic aren't one of them.
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Jun 22, 2021 05:37
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Aardvark! posted:Any recommendations for a mil-scifi (or any scifi/fantasy book tbh) where the protagonist flies through the ranks/gets promoted a lot and gets more and more responsibilities etc? Frontlines by Mario Kloos. You gotta make it past the first description of the riots to the point where it gets more nuanced though. Also on unlimited.
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Jun 22, 2021 05:37
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wizzardstaff posted:Phule's Company is about a playboy space heir who gets a commission to lead a ragtag bunch of misfits in the space mercenary army. To everyone's surprise, he ends up being an effective leader and the squad achieves great notoriety. There are a couple sequels, one in which they run security for a casino during a space heist. I just re-read the Phule’s books and while there’s one basically blaxploitation level character and some very dated/male gaze descriptions of some of the female characters, it’s no worse than your average book from the era and it isn’t a “women can’t do things” book, given the number of women in the unit who do things quite well. He never gets promoted, though, so if you have to have promotion, it’s not what you want.
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Jun 22, 2021 06:08
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DreamingofRoses posted:So I finally wrapped up the Five Gods trilogy and finished The Hallowed Hunt (God bless library e-book borrowing systems) and, big surprise, I enjoyed it. It really drove home how white this series is, though. Given that the Weald is a giant mashup of tribes, and Chalion nobility is claimed to be a great sampling of people from other lands, you’d think there would be at least one skin tone description that wasn’t pale or tanned. Now do the Penric novellas ! Most of them are heavy on the intrigue, we get an outsider's view into temple structure, and the Bastard is very much the Bastard.
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Jun 22, 2021 06:32
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Hey thread, the first Baru in audiobook form is on sale for five bucks, https://www.chirpbooks.com/audiobooks/the-traitor-baru-cormorant-by-seth-dickinson As well as some others, such as the first two Malazan books for $2 and $3 here https://www.chirpbooks.com/authors/steven-erikson-audiobooks
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Jun 22, 2021 08:25
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project hail mary is some kind of reddit-brained 'i loving love science' abomination lmao, some of the worst prose i can remember reading. come on, you're selling this as a hard sci-fi book but your ad copy is written by ernest 'vr 80s lmao' cline? come off it
Horizon Burning fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 09:53
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Mr. Nemo posted:When one of the characters is traveling around Mars meeting different people at one point he joins some traveling dervish. I found that to be one of the most beautiful parts of the book. Yeah my fears were completely unfounded, I've read the whole book now and it was just that PoV character's thoughts and not repeated again, when seen from other characters PoV it's much more balanced
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Jun 22, 2021 11:54
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mllaneza posted:Now do the Penric novellas ! Most of them are heavy on the intrigue, we get an outsider's view into temple structure, and the Bastard is very much the Bastard. I continue with my good luck! My library has the set on Hoopla, although they’re numbered wrong in the series. I’m starting today.
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Jun 22, 2021 14:15
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Aardvark! posted:Any recommendations for a mil-scifi (or any scifi/fantasy book tbh) where the protagonist flies through the ranks/gets promoted a lot and gets more and more responsibilities etc? You can't always get what you want. But if you try some times...you just might find...you get what you need...
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Jun 22, 2021 14:23
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Aardvark! posted:Any recommendations for a mil-scifi (or any scifi/fantasy book tbh) where the protagonist flies through the ranks/gets promoted a lot and gets more and more responsibilities etc? I mean if you want absolute poo poo, Honor Harrington will jerk that itch as much as you want there are a few other attempts to rewrite either Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin in space but none of them are "good," some are just less bad than others. Read Aubrey/Maturin if you want something in that vein but good.
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Jun 22, 2021 14:26
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I'm sure if I roll through the thread I'd find this answer somewhere, but oh well, lazy posting keeps the thread alive?! Are there any goon recommended Sci-Fi/Fantasy books that were written in the last year or two? I realize I've kept my reading in those genres almost exclusively to like pre-80s and I want to shake that up! Double points if they aren't over 400 pages. Also, are any of those Star Trek/Star Wars novels actually worth my time?
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Jun 22, 2021 14:43
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Zurtilik posted:I'm sure if I roll through the thread I'd find this answer somewhere, but oh well, lazy posting keeps the thread alive?! The Freeze-Frame Revolution was published three years ago. Does that make the cut?
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Jun 22, 2021 14:45
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How Much For Just The Planet? is an ancient Star Trek novel that's great if you don't viscerally react to the word "filk." It's a musical comedy, there are romantic mix-ups and a pie fight. It's not recent, but I interpreted that as a separate question.
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Jun 22, 2021 14:45
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