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PupsOfWar posted:it's not weird that people's hackles would be raised immediately when they saw it as the title of a story Sure, but the idea is to then actually read the story
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Dec 7, 2021 01:45
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PsychedelicWarlord posted:I'm sorry about your circles but other people were able to read the story in good faith instead of acting like offense-seeking guided missiles at trans women.  Neither disliking a story, nor liking a story but thinking it has a lovely title, are "acting like offense-seeking guided missiles at trans women" and I have no idea how you even make that leapFall did not deserve any of the harassment she got over it and it sucks poo poo that she did, but also, acting like transphobia is the only possible reason to dislike that story is gross as hell, as is trying to conflate "going out and harassing the author" with "saying 'wow, I really didn't like that' to your friends in private" Danhenge posted:The trans people who I discussed this with all liked it. Guess what, trans people aren't a monolith! We can like and dislike different things, even things by trans creators! It's not like you become part of some trans hivemind when you start HRT, what the gently caress ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Dec 7, 2021 |
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Dec 7, 2021 01:47
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Please stop
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Dec 7, 2021 01:47
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Sorry, didn't see the last few posts, and apparently I'm feeling kind of combative tonight! I'll drop it. In other news, between Graydon Saunders, Seanan McGuire, and a recent rec on IRC for Nor Crystal Tears, I have a big SF/F backlog that I'm not getting around to because my daughter keeps assigning me reading homework -- I just finished the Dragon Slippers trilogy by Jessica Day George and she's immediately told me I need to read Castle Glower by the same author next so she can talk about it with me. I can't wait until she's old enough to dig into the main library here, if for no other reason than that it'll make it easier to keep her supplied with books...
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Dec 7, 2021 01:54
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The Amazon top 100 LGBTQ books list is full of provocative titles, often containing slurs. I find it strange that the title of all things is what a queer readership would react badly to; it's practically convention.
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Dec 7, 2021 01:57
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Tars Tarkas posted:Cherryh just flooding my to-read list, regret sleeping on her back when I was younger and had more time to read I've never really understood why Cherryh's fantasy novels seem so disliked online yeah Fortress etc are slow, but fantasy readers archetypally have enormous patience for huge slow-moving unwieldy books
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Dec 7, 2021 02:05
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PupsOfWar posted:I've never really understood why Cherryh's fantasy novels seem so disliked online It's not just an online thing; most of people I know IRL who are big into Cherryh either dislike her fantasy, or haven't read it because they've had it disrecommended to them. For my part, I love her SF, but even with that motivation and multiple recommendations (some of them ITT), it took me like four tries to get into Fortress in the Eye of Time over a period of two decades. Even by fantasy doorstopper standards the opening to that book is just a slog. Once I got past it into the part where there are actual characters and conversations and things happening, I enjoyed it immensely, but getting there was tricky. Apart from that, The Dreaming Tree and The Paladin were ok but I'm probably never going to reread them, I DNFed Rusalka, and that leaves, I think, The Goblin Mirror and Faery Moon, neither of which I've read. And I don't think any of those are as high-profile as Fortress; I would guess (based, admittedly, on very little evidence) that Fortress is most people's introduction to her fantasy, and while it's my favourite of her fantasy books it's a high wall to climb before you get to the good parts. There's also the fact that she's just not nearly as prolific in fantasy; on the SF side she's written, what, three dozen books, plus the Foreigner series, plus a bunch of short stories? So the odds of finding something in there that'll have you going "gently caress yes!" are a lot higher; her fantasy is a much smaller pool.
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Dec 7, 2021 02:20
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ToxicFrog posted:It's not just an online thing; most of people I know IRL who are big into Cherryh either dislike her fantasy, or haven't read it because they've had it disrecommended to them. The first ~third or so of Fortress is honestly some of my favorite stuff in her whole bibliography, but maybe you've gotta be in the right mood for it, the same way you've gotta be in the right mood for the first third of Fellowship of the Ring
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Dec 7, 2021 02:32
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General Battuta posted:Please stop
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Dec 7, 2021 02:46
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Sooner or later I'm gonna crack and reread Fortress in the Eye of Time again. Fuckin' love that novel. The way it seamlessly balances the weird/fae and medieval-esque politics is just amazing.
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Dec 7, 2021 02:53
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PupsOfWar posted:I've never really understood why Cherryh's fantasy novels seem so disliked online I used to have enormous patience for long books, but after reading just two novellas back to back, I'm suddenly incapable of getting through the very good 160,000 word fantasy I'm reading now. It's like I have to reprogram my whole brain to stop it from shouting 'when are they gonna get to the fireworks factory???' at the end of every chapter.
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Dec 7, 2021 03:15
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i snagged the short novel/novella Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky today ($3.99 US Kindle, dunno how long for) because I read the synopsis and went "oh dang that's like a fully developed version of an idea for story that I had!" so I'm excited to see how it works to basically do "fantasy that is in reality sci-fi" in almost exactly the way I was thinking of doing it.
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Dec 7, 2021 03:17
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Nae posted:I used to have enormous patience for long books, but after reading just two novellas back to back, I'm suddenly incapable of getting through the very good 160,000 word fantasy I'm reading now. It's like I have to reprogram my whole brain to stop it from shouting 'when are they gonna get to the fireworks factory???' at the end of every chapter. I am absolutely this way now. In my teens I could read anything forever, now I lose patience for books too quickly. The only thing that works for me is to just treat long books like long books-- I kind of have to accept it'll take me a while to get through them, and read them in smaller chunks. I enjoy them a lot more that way because I focus less on "oh my god when's the next plot point" and just enjoy whatever it is I'm reading. I've been reading Book of the New Sun and The Once and Future King off and on for a couple of months whenever I'm in the mood, in between other books. I think I've enjoyed both more that way than if I "made" myself sit down and power through them or whatever.
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Dec 7, 2021 03:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:Sooner or later I'm gonna crack and reread Fortress in the Eye of Time again. Fuckin' love that novel. The way it seamlessly balances the weird/fae and medieval-esque politics is just amazing. When I finally read it through I was a bit distracted from having just re-read Foreigner, because there are a lot of parallels and I kept waiting for the Ilisidi-analogue to show up Bayham Badger posted:i snagged the short novel/novella Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky today ($3.99 US Kindle, dunno how long for) because I read the synopsis and went "oh dang that's like a fully developed version of an idea for story that I had!" so I'm excited to see how it works to basically do "fantasy that is in reality sci-fi" in almost exactly the way I was thinking of doing it. "fantasy that is actually sci-fi under the hood" is very much my poo poo, I will have to check this out. In my copious free time. 
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Dec 7, 2021 04:14
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MockingQuantum posted:I am absolutely this way now. In my teens I could read anything forever, now I lose patience for books too quickly. The only thing that works for me is to just treat long books like long books-- I kind of have to accept it'll take me a while to get through them, and read them in smaller chunks. I enjoy them a lot more that way because I focus less on "oh my god when's the next plot point" and just enjoy whatever it is I'm reading. I've been reading Book of the New Sun and The Once and Future King off and on for a couple of months whenever I'm in the mood, in between other books. I think I've enjoyed both more that way than if I "made" myself sit down and power through them or whatever. I think that's what I have to do now, if for no other reason than reading too long through the night gives me a headache. I'm getting old :~(
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Dec 7, 2021 04:38
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Bayham Badger posted:i snagged the short novel/novella Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky today ($3.99 US Kindle, dunno how long for) because I read the synopsis and went "oh dang that's like a fully developed version of an idea for story that I had!" so I'm excited to see how it works to basically do "fantasy that is in reality sci-fi" in almost exactly the way I was thinking of doing it. Rocannon's World by LeGuin did the same thing.
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Dec 7, 2021 05:15
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oh dang that sounds great as well, thanks!
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Dec 7, 2021 05:56
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Oh hey the sequel to Mask of Mirrors is out! I enjoyed the heck out of the first one.
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Dec 7, 2021 18:38
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I missed this last month but David Drake has announced he's retiring due to his ongoing health issues. https://david-drake.com/2021/newsletter-123-the-last-one/
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Dec 7, 2021 20:32
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Recent reads: The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh - A family of lion aliens get a new stowaway - a human male, who is on the run from the rat aliens who grabbed him. They must learn to communicate and navigate through the gigantic mess the man escaping from one of the rat alien warlords has caused in this sector where humans are unknown and the alliance of local powers is fragile and filled with beings who don't communicate the same way. Wonderfully atmospheric where the conflicts are more communication than action, looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Zenith Rand - Planet Vigilante by Richard Tooker - three pulp tales collected in an ebook I picked up featuring the adventures of the Galactic Patrol of the 50th century, whose job seems to be massacring random alien natives by the hundreds while running around on their planets. Zenith Rand is the top Patrol guy because he is the best at killing aliens, but another story introduces a guy who they look down on because he kills even more aliens (he turns out to be the villain because he is jealous of Rand's girlfriend) Rand dates the top female Patrol agent, the women are called the Valkyrie and they do the same jobs just their uniforms get torn a lot, and she saves him as often as him her. Complete junk pulp that I would only recommend if you are into junk pulp. Transit to Scorpio by Kenneth Bulmer (as Alan Burke Akers) - the first of the Dray Prescott planetary romance novels, set on Antares, there are like 50+ in the whole set and I'm not even sure the last few are translated to English (from German) Perfectly functional as planetary romance, Dray Prescott is not particularly interesting and the prose seems to skip a lot of descriptions and occasionally plot as a few chapters found Prescott somewhere else completely at the start. Women who are love interests have no personality beyond saying "Dray Prescott" every few minutes, which is weird because before Delia of the Blue Mountains was a love interest she had a personality. As is planetary romance rules, Dray Prescott has no idea these women who moan his name constantly are into him, thus creating artificial drama. Prescott gets captured and enslaved often and kicked off of Antares back to Earth often. I honestly was not that into it due to the lack of creative descriptions for large portions of the novel (lots of monster and weird guys running around but they barely describe any of it!) , but it sort of picked up in the end. May continue eventually but not in any hurry to go more into this series.
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Dec 7, 2021 21:35
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Tars Tarkas posted:The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh - A family of lion aliens get a new stowaway - a human male, who is on the run from the rat aliens who grabbed him. They must learn to communicate and navigate through the gigantic mess the man escaping from one of the rat alien warlords has caused in this sector where humans are unknown and the alliance of local powers is fragile and filled with beings who don't communicate the same way. Wonderfully atmospheric where the conflicts are more communication than action, looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Heads up, the next book isn't so much a "book 2 in the series" as it is a "book 1 of a trilogy", with Pride of Chanur working as a prequel. And it's less a trilogy and more one giant book chopped into three, so make sure you have all three on hand for when you read them. ....also strap in, you're in for some of my favorite books of all time, up there with Cyteen as Cherryh's best work. 
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Dec 7, 2021 21:43
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StrixNebulosa posted:Heads up, the next book isn't so much a "book 2 in the series" as it is a "book 1 of a trilogy", with Pride of Chanur working as a prequel. And it's less a trilogy and more one giant book chopped into three, so make sure you have all three on hand for when you read them. I came here to post exactly this but I wasn't fast enough  Maybe I should reread the Chanur books over the holidays, it's been years.
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Dec 7, 2021 22:07
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The Chain of Chance by Stanislaw Lem - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008F0ON4G/
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Dec 8, 2021 00:14
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chanur is great, cherryh really lets loose there has anyone read Michael J. Sullivan? I remember getting very bored with his first riyra book which I thought was cliche-ridden, dropping it and ignoring him altogether, but the other day a guy I know praised him as a good by-the-numbers fantasy writer. does he improve eventually?
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Dec 8, 2021 01:10
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StrixNebulosa posted:Heads up, the next book isn't so much a "book 2 in the series" as it is a "book 1 of a trilogy", with Pride of Chanur working as a prequel. And it's less a trilogy and more one giant book chopped into three, so make sure you have all three on hand for when you read them. Ages ago, I had an "omnibus" edition which collected the first three Chanur novels. Yeah, Pride of Chanur and the first 2/3 of that trilogy. Publishers, man.
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Dec 8, 2021 06:35
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lol I saw that trilogy edition and thought it meant the first three were a trilogy, not, 2,3, and 4! Good to know reality! Will probably chain read the whole series when I can just to minimize problems and because I'm still excited for it.
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Dec 8, 2021 08:35
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Doctor Jeep posted:has anyone read Michael J. Sullivan? I remember getting very bored with his first riyra book which I thought was cliche-ridden, dropping it and ignoring him altogether, but the other day a guy I know praised him as a good by-the-numbers fantasy writer. does he improve eventually? 'Cliche-ridden' and 'good by-the-numbers fantasy writer' are not mutually exclusive conditions, and I think you're both right. It's a paint-by-numbers fantasy story with generally competent execution. Nothing particularly special, nothing particularly terrible, pretty forgettable.
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Dec 8, 2021 10:54
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Doctor Jeep posted:has anyone read Michael J. Sullivan? I remember getting very bored with his first riyra book which I thought was cliche-ridden, dropping it and ignoring him altogether, but the other day a guy I know praised him as a good by-the-numbers fantasy writer. does he improve eventually? I've read his "Legends of the First Empire" series, they're decent.. sort of pulpy.. but also he seems to write himself into a corner and come up with silly plot resolutions. There's this door in elf-land in the books that's shrouded in mystery and he doesn't come up with an explanation for it until the end of one of the trilogies, and then it's pretty contrived. His writing output is good though, he's been doing 1 book/year for several years.
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Dec 8, 2021 16:12
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Groke posted:Ages ago, I had an "omnibus" edition which collected the first three Chanur novels. Yeah, Pride of Chanur and the first 2/3 of that trilogy. Publishers, man. Yeah, IIRC the publisher did that unilaterally and when Cherryh found out about it she yelled at them until they stopped. I read a thing somewhere that compared it to "publishing a Tolkien omnibus that collects (only) The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers", which is pretty apt.
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Dec 8, 2021 19:34
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Thanks to whoever recommended zone one the other day. I liked it. As someone with more than two braincells to rub together but unfortunately still a complete moron, books like that make me feel smart without requiring me to be smart. Anyway it really is pretty good.
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Dec 8, 2021 20:11
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New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KT7YTO6/
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Dec 9, 2021 00:09
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ToxicFrog posted:Yeah, like, among my social circles the reaction was something like 60% "gross that Clarkesworld is uncritically publishing TERF poo poo now" vs. 40% "this is probably a trans author Working Through Some Stuff but it would be nice if they could find a way to do that that didn't involve putting transphobic '''jokes''' in the loving table of contents". From what I've seen this is pretty typical. Now, a lot of people, including me, were probably primed to read it in the least charitable light because of the title (and some probably didn't read it at all), but that doesn't make their reactions any less genuine. All my trans friends really loved the helicopter story and said it spoke to them on a pretty deep level. One of them is a trans activist with about 18K twitter followers; they posted a link to a Wayback Machine copy of the story on their feed and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive.
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Dec 9, 2021 00:29
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Kesper North posted:One of them is a trans activist with about 18K twitter followers; they posted a link to a Wayback Machine copy of the story on their feed and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. And that means that their opinion is the Most Correct.
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Dec 9, 2021 00:33
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Oh god please don’t resume this unless you can bring something new to the table
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Dec 9, 2021 00:34
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StrixNebulosa posted:Yeah, I don't feel that we're treading any new ground here. Whatever your feelings on the story, the fact that the author was harassed out of being an author loving sucks. General Battuta posted:Please stop
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Dec 9, 2021 01:11
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I am reading Hogfather tonight and lol I need more books where someone hires an assassin in a fantasy setting.
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Dec 9, 2021 01:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:I am reading Hogfather tonight and lol I need more books where someone hires an assassin in a fantasy setting. Mr. Teatime is one of my favorite characters in Discworld
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Dec 9, 2021 01:29
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whatever
Endorph fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Dec 9, 2021 |
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Dec 9, 2021 06:43
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see above
Endorph fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Dec 9, 2021 |
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Dec 9, 2021 06:46
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Could the two or three people in this thread that keep actively trying to start poo poo in here or continually derail this thread with "I'm-woker-than-thou" sniper posts finally get threadbanned? Their non-aggro mode posts add little to this thread and it's always a matter of time (hours/days/weeks) before they revert back to aggro posting, and honestly I'm loving sick of it all. actual SF&F thread chat: Finally watched V the Miniseries (1983), V the Final Battle Miniseries (1984), and V the Series (1984). The "V" SF franchise explains so so much about science-fiction tv-shows and SF movies and SF/mil-scifi books that came out after it. Lots of tv-series tried to recapture V's success or aped elements in it over and over again. Despite being almost forty years old, that franchise aged extremely well. Some thoughts on the series. -Despite it coming out in 1983-1984, the V series captured 1980's fashion & huge 1980's hair styles pretty well. Almost every actor/actress that wasn't bald or Michael Ironside or Mickey Jones had at least a can of hairspray applied at all times. -The "V" franchise's overt "Nazi's and fascism are bad" message definitely got missed by some SF/mil-scifi authors when it came out. Instead those folks focused on the Visitors spaceships/weapons/advanced cures for human diseases. -I give the "V" franchise a big thumbs up for casting people of all races and ages and sexualities in it's three 1980's incarnations. However I also have to give V the Series (1984) a thumbs-down for getting rid of all the redhaired and balding people near the halfway point of the tv series, and adding more blonde pretty people in their places. -Forget my earlier statement here or in the old SFF megathread about Species 1 the movie being inspired by a 1970's sf-book. Hollywood people and Hollywood scriptwriters don't read. No, Sil and her inception and massively accelerated aging definitely came from V the Final Battle and V the Series (1984), especially episodes 1 & 9 of the 1984 tv-series.
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Dec 9, 2021 10:35
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