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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm never going to read anything by Piers Anthony ever again: what's so bad about the Barn story? As a thirteen year old Xanth fan I thought In the Barn had something interesting to say about animal rights. But mostly it's just grotesque. The main character is exploring a alternate universe/timeline where all dairy is produced from eugenic'd and lobotomized humans. the women and men are both insanely proportioned. the main character fucks the local "cow" version of a coworker.
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Sep 12, 2021 04:13
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Harold Fjord posted:As a thirteen year old Xanth fan I thought In the Barn had something interesting to say about animal rights. But mostly it's just grotesque. The main character is exploring a alternate universe/timeline where all dairy is produced from eugenic'd and lobotomized humans. the women and men are both insanely proportioned. the main character fucks the local "cow" version of a coworker.  Okay I know this is hypocritical when I just bought some Jack L Chalker novels but: which editor thought it would be a good idea to put the fuckin' weird fetish erotica in the fantasy anthology? e: Wait lmao it was Harlan Ellison himself who put the collection together. WHY.
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Sep 12, 2021 04:15
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StrixNebulosa posted:Web of the Chozen, Lilith, Midnight at the Well of Souls, and Cybernetic Walrus. I made sure to get a proper spread so I can try his different series. The Four Lords of the Diamond is Jack Chalker at his most hosed up, while The Wonderland Gambit is Chalker at his least hosed up. Which is not to say Wonderland doesn't have some hosed up sex and body swapping stuff, because that's Chalker, but it's also really loving good. I read The Four Lords of the Diamond when I was like 14 and found it in my high school library. I really doubt anybody had read it but me.
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Sep 12, 2021 04:20
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What page were the ‘cozy fantasy’ recs on? I want to find the title of the sewing one.
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Sep 12, 2021 06:21
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I'm ~2 pages late on Dune chat, but I also saw the new movie trailer and that was the kick I needed to finally read the book. Absolutely blown away at how modern it feels compared to scifi of a similar era.
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Sep 12, 2021 06:35
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StrixNebulosa posted:
The whole point of Dangerous Visions and its sequel, ADV, was that they was meant to be full of transgressive stories that only the cutting edge of SF could handle, man. From what I remember, that mostly meant edgelord-y stories about incest.
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Sep 12, 2021 06:40
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Kraps posted:Is Axiom's End by Ellis good? She has a sequel coming out. it's absolute garbage that was published because someone saw dollar signs. the most highly liked review on goodreads is a one star one.
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Sep 12, 2021 09:00
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Finished the Two of Swords by KJ Parker. I actually liked how it ended, and the main conceit of the story being told from a bunch of different pov early on was cool. Of course it necessarily narrowed down the pov later. Now on to Between Two Fires
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Sep 12, 2021 09:18
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NinjaDebugger posted:I read The Four Lords of the Diamond when I was like 14 and found it in my high school library. I really doubt anybody had read it but me.
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Sep 12, 2021 11:23
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Hobnob posted:The whole point of Dangerous Visions and its sequel, ADV, was that they was meant to be full of transgressive stories that only the cutting edge of SF could handle, man. From what I remember, that mostly meant edgelord-y stories about incest. Ah, fanficiton.
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Sep 12, 2021 11:25
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Harold Fjord posted:As a thirteen year old Xanth fan I thought In the Barn had something interesting to say about animal rights. But mostly it's just grotesque. The main character is exploring a alternate universe/timeline where all dairy is produced from eugenic'd and lobotomized humans. the women and men are both insanely proportioned. the main character fucks the local "cow" version of a coworker. That is a disturbingly common fetish in some circles, btw.
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Sep 12, 2021 12:48
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StrixNebulosa posted:
The only Chalker remember strongly is the 'Soul Rider' series. From what I remember (plus a quick google search), the main difference between those and 'In the Barn' is that in the latter the sex slaves were not previously established characters who got transformed.
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Sep 12, 2021 13:32
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Hobnob posted:The whole point of Dangerous Visions and its sequel, ADV, was that they was meant to be full of transgressive stories that only the cutting edge of SF could handle, man. From what I remember, that mostly meant edgelord-y stories about incest. If I remember correctly the point of Dangerous Visions was for Ellison to insert long, rambling introductions before each story, rabbiting on about the minutiae of conventions and panels that took place forty years previously, which were sometimes (no joke) longer than the actual stories they were ostensibly introducing
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Sep 12, 2021 13:56
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Idly reading old Emerald City reviews and found this fascinating passage:quote:So what did I make of the book? Well Juliet doesn't yet have the skills of a George Martin or Tad Williams, but she recognises that and does very well with the abilities that she has. The net result is that she has written the sort of highly entertaining but relatively unchallenging book that normally sells in truckloads to the fantasy-buying public. Furthermore, she has done so without resorting to mindless sentimental pap, odious WASP politics, S&M fantasies or mind-numbing detail that we get with most best selling fantasy writers. (And I leave it to you to work out to whom I am referring in the previous sentence.) http://www.emcit.com/emcit063.shtml#Adventure
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Sep 12, 2021 18:33
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The Wall of Storms (Dandelion Dynasty #2) by Ken Liu - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BKR14LK/ Deliverer (Foreigner #9) by CJ Cherryh - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004IATBY4/
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Sep 12, 2021 19:10
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StrixNebulosa posted:Idly reading old Emerald City reviews and found this fascinating passage: I assume the S&M fantasies are Robert Jordan's?
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Sep 12, 2021 19:26
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Goodkind is my guess.
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Sep 12, 2021 19:28
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Silver2195 posted:I assume the S&M fantasies are Robert Jordan's? I immediately thought of S M Stirling.
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Sep 12, 2021 19:31
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https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1436589493855801347
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Sep 12, 2021 19:34
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Finished Axiom's End and it was fine. Not great, but not terrible. I think it's interesting that that's pretty much Lindsay Ellis' opinion too and that the she, according to herself, learned a lot about how not to write a novel during the process.
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Sep 12, 2021 19:38
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This guy got really mad at the Baru books because he thought they were goldbug anti-fiat-currency screeds.
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Sep 12, 2021 19:59
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General Battuta posted:This guy got really mad at the Baru books because he thought they were goldbug anti-fiat-currency screeds. Noah posts on twitter approx 50,000 times per day so half of his takes are absolute nonsense.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:13
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Didn't Noah get recently outed as a board member for some pedophilia legalisation organisation? Or am I thinking of someone else?
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Sep 13, 2021 00:17
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freebooter posted:Didn't Noah get recently outed as a board member for some pedophilia legalisation organisation? Or am I thinking of someone else? That's Noah Berlatsky.
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Sep 13, 2021 00:30
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Harold Fjord posted:As a thirteen year old Xanth fan I thought In the Barn had something interesting to say about animal rights. But mostly it's just grotesque. The main character is exploring a alternate universe/timeline where all dairy is produced from eugenic'd and lobotomized humans. the women and men are both insanely proportioned. the main character fucks the local "cow" version of a coworker.  What the hell is wrong with people?
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Sep 13, 2021 00:33
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Harold Fjord posted:As a thirteen year old Xanth fan I thought In the Barn had something interesting to say about animal rights. But mostly it's just grotesque. The main character is exploring a alternate universe/timeline where all dairy is produced from eugenic'd and lobotomized humans. the women and men are both insanely proportioned. the main character fucks the local "cow" version of a coworker. I haven't read it, but this sounds very similar to the plot of Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, which came out last year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tender_Is_the_Flesh quote:Tender is the Flesh portrays a society in which a virus has contaminated all animal meat. Because of the lack of animal flesh, cannibalism becomes legal. Marcos, a human meat supplier, is conflicted by this new society, and tortured by his own personal losses. Somehow the plot also revolves him loving one of the cow people. Crashbee fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 00:42
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I've been reading Fred Saberhagen's Swords books lately (as well as the related Empire of the East). I think I first heard them via the Magic ex Libris books; I thought the idea of the Swords sounded cool, so I read them, beginning with the one appropriately titled The First Book of Swords. (I went back and read Empire of the East somewhere in the middle.) They’re pretty good so far (the Empire of the East books somewhat less so); I’m on the seventh book of eleven and they’ve maintained by interest pretty much continuously. (It helps that the individual books are pretty short – was that the norm for fantasy pre-Wheel of Time?) The Swords series revolves around twelve magical swords, each with a unique power, created by Vulcan as part of a mysterious “game” played by the gods. (For some reason he’s always Vulcan rather than Hephaestus, despite most of the other gods being referred to by their Greek names. I guess the idea is that they were called into existence by humans based on half-forgotten classical mythology, so they just end up being called by whatever name is easier for people to remember.) The setting is somewhat similar to Jack Vance’s Dying Earth; it’s the distant future of our world, magic and demons exist as well as some poorly-understood advanced technology, there’s a lot of petty feudal rulers fighting each other, and there’s a fair number of rear end in a top hat wizards. (One distinctive quirk of the setting is that everyone uses the metric system – the Swords are repeatedly described as “a full meter long,” for instance – instead of the leagues and fathoms, or at least miles and feet, expected in fantasy. I guess this is meant to remind us that the setting is actually the future of our world.) In general magic in this setting is more restrained than in the Dying Earth stories, however, so the powers of the twelve Swords are enough to shake up the balance of power as people fight over them. Saberhagen has a lot of fun, especially in the later books, exploring the different possible uses of the Swords’ powers, as well as the frequently tragic results. We see how Stonecutter, for instance, can be used to rob underground treasure vaults, make difficult terrain easier to traverse, cut diamonds, or make marble sculptures. Other Swords, being swords, are useful mainly for killing, and there’s frequently some kind of “catch” likely to get the user killed too. Farslayer can be thrown to kill your enemy even if they’re on the other side of the world – but there’s nothing stopping the buddy of the person you killed from retrieving it from the corpse and throwing it right back. Almost all of the Swords create interesting enough plots to carry the book or so of focus most of them get; a couple aren’t especially interesting (like Dragonslicer, which…kills dragons), but Saberhagen wisely doesn’t give them the same amount of focus, and even those are used in better ways than expected (dragons in this setting have wonderfully complicated life cycles, and killing them in their largest stages is an amusingly grotesque process). I’ve gotten pretty far in this post without saying anything about the characters. The main character, Mark, is a bit bland (I’m not sure how to describe him beyond “a good guy but willing to use violence if necessary”), although he becomes somewhat more interesting as he gains a family and political power and has to deal with conflicting responsibilities. Fortunately, there are a fair number of interesting supporting characters (most of them somewhat more morally flawed) who sometimes take center stage. (In Stonecutter’s Tale the previously established characters, including Mark, are almost entirely absent as the genre temporarily shifts to Sherlock Holmes/Judge Dee pastiche.) The outright villains are less compelling; I like the evil duke in the first book, as well as another evil-ish ruler who gets a redemption arc of sorts, but the main villains end up being evil wizards called the Dark King and the Ancient One (seriously) trying to take over the world just because, I guess. (The Ancient One previously appeared in the third book of Empire of the East, but he had even less characterization there.) I guess the Ancient One is interesting on a purely plot level, though, as a Sword-hunting antagonist who also has non-Sword-related powers and allies to fall back on. Also, these books are weirdly horny at times, sometimes in unintentionally funny ways. Like when Saberhagen needs to constantly remind us how sexy a secondary villainess is every time she shows up. One more complaint: while Saberhagen’s prose is generally good, his poetry is pretty bad. The Song of Swords, an in-universe song explaining the Swords’ powers, is just cringey. Song of Swords posted:Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, how d'you slay? My thoughts on Empire of the East probably belong in a separate post.
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Sep 13, 2021 00:54
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fritz posted:The only Chalker remember strongly is the 'Soul Rider' series. From what I remember (plus a quick google search), the main difference between those and 'In the Barn' is that in the latter the sex slaves were not previously established characters who got transformed. Also that In the Barn is about how cool it is to have sex slaves and the other is about transformation and how the slavery part is loving awful. That's a pretty big difference. Chalker's always pretty clear about "this is poo poo people do to others and it's loving horrible look at it"
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Sep 13, 2021 01:17
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I'm doing a reread of Talion: Revenant by Michael J. Stackpole. It's late 80s as gently caress. Is it fantastic? No. It's not. But neither is a solid bar steak. It's fine and meaty and scratches that good itch.
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Sep 13, 2021 01:48
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NinjaDebugger posted:Also that In the Barn is about how cool it is to have sex slaves and the other is about transformation and how the slavery part is loving awful. That's a pretty big difference. Chalker's always pretty clear about "this is poo poo people do to others and it's loving horrible look at it" What are you even talking about? In the Barn is explicitly about how farming and slavery is evil.
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Sep 13, 2021 02:25
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Patrick Spens posted:What are you even talking about? In the Barn is explicitly about how farming and slavery is evil. That's good at least!
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Sep 13, 2021 02:29
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Would be kinda cool if there were more stories that had crazy shapeshifting stuff without it being a sex fetish thing. Might be interesting seeing someone live past the initial "inject T-virus, turn into a crazy giant tumor squid" boss fight and then have to actually figure out what they are going to do with their lives. I guess Adrian Tchaikovsky might have dipped into it a bit? Children of Time and the sequel considered some radical transhuman concepts, including how people deal with a radical shift in the nature of humanity on a big scale.
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Sep 13, 2021 05:31
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I'd love to read something like that. The closest I've seen so far was in one of the resident evil cgi movies the bad guy transformed into this giant fuckoff doomsday looking dude and was just like "I'll kill that guy I wanna kill, and then just get killed by the army or whoever". Fatalistic as hell but at least he had some foresight to actually kinda plan.
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Sep 13, 2021 05:38
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avoraciopoctules posted:Would be kinda cool if there were more stories that had crazy shapeshifting stuff without it being a sex fetish thing. Might be interesting seeing someone live past the initial "inject T-virus, turn into a crazy giant tumor squid" boss fight and then have to actually figure out what they are going to do with their lives. Maybe Sisyphean by Dempow Torishima? Jeff VanderMeer liked it IIRC. quote:Even after the world and humanity itself have been rendered nearly unrecognizable by genetic engineering, a day in the office can feel… Sisyphean.
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Sep 13, 2021 08:01
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avoraciopoctules posted:Would be kinda cool if there were more stories that had crazy shapeshifting stuff without it being a sex fetish thing. Might be interesting seeing someone live past the initial "inject T-virus, turn into a crazy giant tumor squid" boss fight and then have to actually figure out what they are going to do with their lives. Sheri S. Tepper's True Game series, and the related book, Mavin Many-Shaped. Handles shape shifting in an interesting way (has a sex fetish bit, but constrained, small part of the text, but we'll explained and makes sense).
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Sep 13, 2021 11:01
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GrandmaParty posted:I'm doing a reread of Talion: Revenant by Michael J. Stackpole. It's late 80s as gently caress. Is it fantastic? No. It's not. But neither is a solid bar steak. It's fine and meaty and scratches that good itch. Dang, I remember this one. Stackpole was OK when he wasn't crapping out 4 or 5 licensed novels a year for Star Wars or BattleTech.
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Sep 13, 2021 12:28
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His xwing series was pretty great, but the rest of his star wars books were kinda ranging from "meh" to actively lovely.
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Sep 13, 2021 12:40
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avoraciopoctules posted:Would be kinda cool if there were more stories that had crazy shapeshifting stuff without it being a sex fetish thing. Might be interesting seeing someone live past the initial "inject T-virus, turn into a crazy giant tumor squid" boss fight and then have to actually figure out what they are going to do with their lives. Dietmar Dath’s Abolition of Species is entirely about this. I’ll do a write up when I’m awake.
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Sep 13, 2021 12:52
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Dietmar Dath's Abolition of Man: a book written in german translated to English, I found it in a used bookstore and have never seen it anywhere else (until last week when I found it has a kindle edition). It's fuckin' weird and I love it. The concept is, bioengineering advanced to the point that the "gente" were able to rise out of humanity - they spliced themselves into animal-esque creatures, armed with a scent... internet? Scent is POWERFUL in this novel, allowing conversation and everything almost instantly, from long distances. So humanity is going extinct (there are leftover rebel forces here and there) and the gente are left to reinvent themselves and build culture and be themselves, and it's...weird. There's a discussion early on in the novel where they decide to take care of some human pockets of resistance by tainting their water with a poison that will get rid of their thumbs. There's nanotechnology, and consciousness diffused through that, and many different types of gente, and a potential AI thing in South America, and it's been too long since I read it. It's just so weird and full of ideas I'd never run into before, expressed in ways I could barely understand. The translation is very good, it's just that the book is so high-concept. You should check it out, it's bonkers and neat.
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Sep 13, 2021 13:57
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:His xwing series was pretty great, but the rest of his star wars books were kinda ranging from "meh" to actively lovely. Talion is a b plus. It's got some fun to it and it's better-written than 99 percent of KU.
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Sep 13, 2021 14:22
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