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Thank you for the explanations! Being able to change tone like that is a nice skill. I don't know if I can finish Saturn's Children; it's just... Not what I usually go for in Sci-fi? Accelerando is though. Btw... The latest Weir novel, Project Hail Mary is outstanding, if you're into that style, eg if you liked his previous novels. It's my favorite of the 3.
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Jul 13, 2021 16:30
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BananaNutkins posted:I wish there was a full novel behind the final part of Seveneves. There was enough there for a full book, but I guess Eighteves doesnt roll off the tongue. The problem was there really wasn't much of plot to drive an actual story. It was more of a "where are they now" stretched out over 60k (100k) words.
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Jul 13, 2021 16:32
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The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087C3G2T3/ The Dragon's Path (The Dagger and the Coin #1) by Daniel Abraham - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047Y16LC/
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Jul 13, 2021 16:42
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SFL Archives 1997 is when people are finally feeling brave enough to say that Orson Scott Card & Dan Simmons have been sucking for awhile. SFL Archives 1997 is also when LeVar Burton's 1997 SF novel got some longtime SFL posters to self-out themselves as racists and/or fake-woke people. And now SFL Archives 1997 tantalizingly got onto a hard science debate thanks to a SLIDERS tv episode involving neutron stars vs the solar system. And for someone who hates SLIDERS for denying George RR Martin his own tv-show, Gharlane of Eddore sure does religiously hate-watch SLIDERS. Oh yeah Gharlane also spouted off this unprovoked and out the blue about an actress appearing on SLIDERS in 1997, quote:The gal moves
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Jul 13, 2021 17:23
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quantumfoam posted:SFL Archives 1997 is when people are finally feeling brave enough to say that Orson Scott Card & Dan Simmons have been sucking for awhile.
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Jul 13, 2021 17:29
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anilEhilated posted:Really? For some reason I kept thinking that Simmons cracked after 9/11... Endymion was a pretty drastic fall off from Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion and that came out roughly the same time period - I think early? 1997
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Jul 13, 2021 17:33
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anilEhilated posted:Really? For some reason I kept thinking that Simmons cracked after 9/11... He's never been able to finish a series competently but he *also* went off the deep end post 911. Before that he was a decent short fiction guy.
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Jul 13, 2021 17:48
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As a piece of 70s-style shlock I actually really like CARRION COMFORT, it's really meaty and hosed up.
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Jul 13, 2021 18:11
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anilEhilated posted:Really? For some reason I kept thinking that Simmons cracked after 9/11... adaz posted:Endymion was a pretty drastic fall off from Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion and that came out roughly the same time period - I think early? 1997 I am firmly in the camp that Simmons Hyperion is vastly overrated; while Simmons Fall of Hyperion fell into strongly dumb and hokey and terrible territory for me. So I'm not a perfect or accurate gauge of when Dan Simmons started sucking as an author. Anytime a SF-F author inserts classic big-name English authors/poets like Keats or Byron or Shelley etc as actual interactable characters into their SF-F stories is an almost sure sign I won't enjoy the story. Mostly because the SF-F authors that I have read who do that seem to over-use that gimmick throughout their career because they are empty of any ideas by themselves.
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Jul 13, 2021 18:26
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Finished up Project Hail Mary...
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Jul 13, 2021 18:47
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Simmons' Science Fiction is his weakest writing (Hyperion aside.). His horror is fine, his historical+supernatural books are often quite good, his mysteries are perfectly adequate. If you stay away from the Sci Fi you'll be okay. Especially Flashback. Don't even read the back cover of Flashback.
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Jul 13, 2021 19:15
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I made the mistake of reading Ilium and you will never find a more self-aggrandizing wankfest of a "novel."
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Jul 13, 2021 19:40
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packetmantis posted:I made the mistake of reading Ilium and you will never find a more self-aggrandizing wankfest of a "novel." You can kinda see the exact moment when 9/11 broke his brain and he went full racist in Ilium/Olympos when he suddenly turns to talking about the muslim-created robots that hunted down all the jewish people on earth and the muslim submarines that carried planet-destroying black-hole bombs.
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Jul 13, 2021 20:17
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^^^ I started that and was like oh this is kind of going to be like Lord of Light with the obligatory Simmons fest around ancient authors then BAM full on crazy real fast quantumfoam posted:I am firmly in the camp that Simmons Hyperion is vastly overrated; while Simmons Fall of Hyperion fell into strongly dumb and hokey and terrible territory for me. So I'm not a perfect or accurate gauge of when Dan Simmons started sucking as an author. I love Hyperion but it was definitely more of a light touch of "Sci-fi author loves classic english lit" compared to the later stuff. Nowadays I recommend folks just read Hyperion and skip everything else in the Cantos since it gets Real bad, Real fast and the Keats stuff wears on me too.
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Jul 13, 2021 20:18
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quantumfoam posted:Anytime a SF-F author inserts classic big-name English authors/poets like Keats or Byron or Shelley etc as actual interactable characters into their SF-F stories is an almost sure sign I won't enjoy the story. Mostly because the SF-F authors that I have read who do that seem to over-use that gimmick throughout their career because they are empty of any ideas by themselves. I have a similar pet peeve about Arthur, Lancelot, etc., qua Arthur, i.e. not a figure or allegory or reference but Arthur and Lancelot Themselves, showing up in anything that isn't, in fact, set in post-Roman Britain. It's like a giant waving banner emblazoned "THIS BOOK IS poo poo AND THE AUTHOR HAS NO IDEAS" in letters of fire five feet tall.
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Jul 13, 2021 20:42
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Was Arthur immortal in The Dark is Rising or was that time travel.
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Jul 13, 2021 20:54
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pseudorandom name posted:Was Arthur immortal in The Dark is Rising or was that time travel. From what I recall it's both, but importantly, there's no Arthur in The Dark is Rising itself, which is why it is better than the rest of that series Other notable sinners in this vein are the Fionavar Tapestry books and That Hideous Strength.
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Jul 13, 2021 21:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:From what I recall it's both, but importantly, there's no Arthur in The Dark is Rising itself, which is why it is better than the rest of that series Regarding Arthur - yeah it's both. Arthur has a time and place that Will and Merriman travel to for Old One shenanigans, but he is also part of the High Magic and therefore has an identity outside of time. At the end of Silver on the Tree, the Lady explains what's up when Bran is given the choice to stay or get on the ship with the
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Jul 13, 2021 22:27
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Dominoes posted:What are you comparing to? I ask because while you could certain throw spears at plausibility and hand-waving at many parts of it, It's harder scifi than most of what I've come across. Mostly his Martian novel. The only thing he really goofed up in that was the storm in the beginning, and even he admitted it needed to happen for the plot to go on. I didn't read his other novel so no idea if it's good or bad.
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Jul 13, 2021 22:33
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Artemis was my least favorite of the three, but all 3 had a similar writing style, and emphasis on solving problems in a way that makes me want to play along with the protagonist, and solve it before he or she does. The Hiro?. I think Project Hail Mary was less of a hard-scifi book because it was far more ambitious than the Martian. I can't think of any story that includes interstellar travel, and sentient aliens that does a better job in the hard-scifi area. For example, Neal Stephenson deliberately doesn't tackle those concepts, because he doesn't believe (as he stated in an interview at MIT) it's feasible for humans as we know it. There are many scifi books, films etc I'm not familiar with - do any do a better job tackling the spoilered concepts than PHM? I'm not asking to debate; I want to know what to read next! --- Tangent This is what I love about sci fi - I want to work through the problems with Grace and Watney, knowing the solution's not Deus ex machina. I want to toy with the ideas in a Stephenson novel, evaluate why they don't exist, and what it would take to make them exist. When I read something like Saturn's Children, none of it comes close enough to making sense to do this. For example, look at a Watney or Grace problem and how he solves it - then look at how the Saturn's Children hero gets out of the traintrack situation. In the former, you can come up with the solution, something close, or a clever idea that isn't the one used. In the latter, she makes some poo poo up using abilities we know nothing about. Dominoes fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 22:45
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I really like the aliens in Children of Time.
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Jul 13, 2021 22:52
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For the second of the two, Arrival (movie)/Story of Your Life (Chiang) or Embassytown (Mieville) would be where I’d go.
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Jul 13, 2021 22:53
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I loved Arrival! One of my favorite films. Adding those books to the top of my reading list.
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Jul 13, 2021 22:54
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Now that I think about it, Contact, both film and book, did an outstanding job in both categories.
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Jul 13, 2021 22:57
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adaz posted:Endymion was a pretty drastic fall off from Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion and that came out roughly the same time period - I think early? 1997 Rise of Endymion is 1997. I distinctly remember that because there's several hundred pages of self-indulgent bloat in the middle about his Tibetan-themed planet, and I didn't think it was a coincidence it came out the same time as Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet, when Western fascination with the country was at its zenith. (FWIW I really enjoyed the first three books in the series and think Rise of Endymion is the only bad one.)
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Jul 13, 2021 23:00
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I'm trying to remember the name of a book where they have FTL, and comparing telescope readings between faraway stars is how they find proof of alien life. Ringing any bells? E: It was the Commonwealth Saga AARD VARKMAN fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 23:01
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Dominoes posted:Now that I think about it, Contact, both film and book, did an outstanding job in both categories. Now read Blindsight 
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Jul 13, 2021 23:06
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Sixteen Ways to Imagine You Are Siri Keeton
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Jul 13, 2021 23:11
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I tried to read Hyperion because my boyfriend really loved it and I couldn't get more than a few chapters in because I loving hated everyone except the robots, and I didn't want to spend a whole book getting mad that I wasn't reading about the robots. I think that was Hyperion, anyway.
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Jul 13, 2021 23:12
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Nah, that's one of the other ones. Hyperion has hardboiled detective ladies who wanna gently caress Keats and some priests and a poet and electric trees and spaceships made of (non-electric) trees and a planet with dolphins (I think?) Very few robots.
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Jul 13, 2021 23:46
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DurianGray posted:Nah, that's one of the other ones. Hyperion has hardboiled detective ladies who wanna gently caress Keats and some priests and a poet and electric trees and spaceships made of (non-electric) trees and a planet with dolphins (I think?) Very few robots. Man I have no idea what I read then. But I didn't like it! Oh was it the Olympos/Ilium ones? God I don't even care enough to look it up. Sorry thread.
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Jul 14, 2021 00:07
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It was probably the Ilium/Olympos ones and yeah they suck rear end.
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Jul 14, 2021 00:26
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Dominoes posted:There are many scifi books, films etc I'm not familiar with - do any do a better job tackling the spoilered concepts than PHM? I'm not asking to debate; I want to know what to read next! I haven't read PHM so hard to say if it is better, but maybe Encounter with Tiber, by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes. Aside from the spoilered concepts it does a generally great job of depicting modern astronauts and NASA bureaucracy, which is to be expected given who the author is.
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Jul 14, 2021 01:53
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Regarding Hyperion and its sequels, I can really only recommend the first. It's great big-brain weirdness in the vein of Dune that presents this strange and wonderful world through a familiar narrative structure. The sequels are just heroic sci-fi adventures set in that world.
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Jul 14, 2021 02:07
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PeterWeller posted:Regarding Hyperion and its sequels, I can really only recommend the first. It's great big-brain weirdness in the vein of Dune that presents this strange and wonderful world through a familiar narrative structure. The sequels are just heroic sci-fi adventures set in that world. I wanna see your reading list because with the kind of books i usually read, a space tree teleporting around to deliver a virus that kills the immortality-granting parasites distributed by the catholic church and created by AI to steal our bodily fluids/cpu cycles is pretty weird. If you ask me to describe Rise of Endymion in one word I'll say "weird". Three words and I'll say "weird and boring", so I dunno about recommending it, but still. Weird.
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Jul 14, 2021 03:54
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Urcher posted:I haven't read PHM so hard to say if it is better, but maybe Encounter with Tiber, by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes. Aside from the spoilered concepts it does a generally great job of depicting modern astronauts and NASA bureaucracy, which is to be expected given who the author is.
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Jul 14, 2021 08:42
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Some time around my third attempt to read The Fall of Hyperion, I got out of a taxi and left my copy of the book on the seat behind me. As the taxi pulled away and I realised what'd I done I had a moment of clarity, and I gave it a big wave goodbye forever... Also, thanks for the huge amount of recommendations / reviews / discussions in this thread that have resulted in new books I've read, that I possibly wouldn't have bothered with otherwise.
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Jul 14, 2021 16:47
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The Collapsing Empire (Interdependency #1) by John Scalzi - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F20E7CO/ The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut #1) by Mary Robinette Kowal - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0756JH5R1/ Middlegame by Seanan McGuire - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HF2ZK75/ New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KT7YTO6/ The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FJZDJ8Y/ Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GV95CWZ/
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Jul 14, 2021 17:19
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Aardvark! posted:
i don't like hamilton that much in the grand scheme of thing, but i will always respect the commonwealth saga for paying due respect to the mighty Train
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Jul 14, 2021 17:53
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I finally finished reading the Daevabad trilogy over vacation. For those who are interested in Arabic fantasy, Djinn's and a pretty decent story I'd recommend it! The only real trying part was a uh, very long love triangle between the 3 main characters and the end book had a whole lot of REDEMPTION ARK in it. It was still a pretty good yarn though. It also made me hungry as the author (S. A Chakraborty ) is a fine cook herself based on her twitter and there's a lot of food smells and imagery in the book and all I wanted to do was bury my head in mediterrean/Egyptian cooking after reading it.
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Jul 14, 2021 19:44
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