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Rand Brittain posted:It looks like Google Play has The Found and the Lost collection by Ursula K. LeGuin for $1.99 for today only. Big fan of the cover art for The Found and the Lost, it would look great as a big coffee table book.  I’m about 3/4 of the way through 1Q84 and it’s been a long, frustrating ride. The mystery is interesting enough, but the main characters are all pretty hosed up in off-putting ways. Any opinions on whether it’s worth finishing?
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Mar 29, 2022 03:10
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the second serpent gates book came out but i haven't read it yet
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Mar 29, 2022 04:01
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Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters.
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Mar 29, 2022 04:31
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Another Dirty Dish posted:I’m about 3/4 of the way through 1Q84 and it’s been a long, frustrating ride. The mystery is interesting enough, but the main characters are all pretty hosed up in off-putting ways. Any opinions on whether it’s worth finishing?
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Mar 29, 2022 04:34
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. Avram Davidson's Vergil Magus series is great for this. Huge amounts of alchemy theory. It's set in Rome as it was imagined and understood by the Medieval/Renaissance folk lore and scholarship. So Virgil, rather than being statesman and writer we understand him as now, is instead a magician and alchemist. I highly recommend reading his Adventures in Unhistory, which is a non-fictional attempt at treating the fantastic as if it was valid, first as it'll help you understand what he's doing in some of the more digressive chapters (and the Virgil Magus books get very digressive).
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Mar 29, 2022 05:02
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pradmer posted:Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson - $2.99 Always a classic. I can't remember how libertarian cancelled KSM is but its a good book if you ignore some problems.
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Mar 29, 2022 06:26
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algebra testes posted:Always a classic. I can't remember how libertarian cancelled KSM is but its a good book if you ignore some problems. Haven't got around to this one because it received pretty tepid reviews, but... since when is KSM either a libertarian or cancelled?
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Mar 29, 2022 06:43
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Kim Stanley Robinson posted:I have never read a definition of the word “libertarian” that makes any sense to me, nor sounds attractive as a principle, so I avoid that word as much as I can. Maybe “democratic socialism” is the better term for me — the idea being that people in democracies would elect representatives that would then pass laws based on socialist principles. (Mars trilogy's kinda boring though) Foxfire_ fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Mar 29, 2022 |
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Mar 29, 2022 07:05
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Danhenge posted:The first link from google might throw you off like it did me. Oh, awesome. Thanks for correcting me! (Plus the other posters above you) I will edit my post so others don't get confused. Gonna pick this up today.
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Mar 29, 2022 07:34
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The Ministry for the Future is kind of a liberal wish-fulfillment fantasy, for the protagonist only and there's a late-book reveal that her chief of security has been quietly murdering people to make it all possible.
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Mar 29, 2022 08:39
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman.
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Mar 29, 2022 09:34
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. Unquenchable Fire by Rachel Pollack
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Mar 29, 2022 10:57
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pradmer posted:
YES!! I enjoyed the sample very much and had made a note to come back to the full book but then I forgot. This makes up for not being able to get the LeGuin book on Google Play.
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Mar 29, 2022 12:27
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. Philip Jose Farmer's short story "Sail On! Sail On!" is about Columbus exploring a flat world in 1492 (yes, he sails off the edge.)
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Mar 29, 2022 12:42
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. “Point of Hopes" and sequels by Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett? (Astrology is true)
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Mar 29, 2022 13:27
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Foxfire_ posted:(Mars trilogy's kinda boring though) Agree to disagree.  Still mad 25 years later that Arkady dies in the first book. I want my giant, red bearded, red blooded communist cosmonaut!pseudorandom name posted:The Ministry for the Future is kind of a liberal wish-fulfillment fantasy, for the protagonist only and there's a late-book reveal that her chief of security has been quietly murdering people to make it all possible. It's so pollyanna-ish that it convinced me we're all doomed from climate change. Still a good book. Also, the Children of Kali were pretty obvious from the start in murdering oligarchs and billionaires, there were chapters about it. The reveal was about the Ministry itself helping the CoK. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Mar 29, 2022 |
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Mar 29, 2022 14:00
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. Everything written by Herodotus. He's an ancient Greek who thought he was writing history so it can be pretty dry. It also has giant gold digging ants, though. I haven't read it, but maybe Newton's Cannon? Temeraire is Horatio Hornblower + dragons. It's very much a fantasy adventure series rather than speculative sci-fi though. Try googling for speculative science-fiction. A lot of these kinds of what-if stories end up as short stories or novellas in parts of larger collections. Christopher Anvil has one short story in the Interstellar Patrol collection where they (briefly) visit a world where magic is real. The punchline is that they think science is a myth because everyone can influence test results with their minds so there's no such thing as reproducible results or repeatable tests.
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Mar 29, 2022 14:37
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. You are going to love reading James P Hogan's Inherit the Stars series. It's alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories all the way down.
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Mar 29, 2022 14:37
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. The Orthogonal books by Greg Egan. Instead of 3D space and a 1D time there are 4 fundamentally identical dimensions. Not really an alternative theory as such but definitely interesting, think it gets pretty intense with the alternate physics however so probably not a light read!
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Mar 29, 2022 14:41
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LLSix posted:Everything written by Herodotus. He's an ancient Greek who thought he was writing history so it can be pretty dry. It also has giant gold digging ants, though. The gold-digging ants were real-ish, though.
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Mar 29, 2022 14:47
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LLSix posted:Everything written by Herodotus. He's an ancient Greek who thought he was writing history so it can be pretty dry. It also has giant gold digging ants, though. Herodotus was compiling a history from oral records, but he also liked a good story. He snuck any number of things that he knew weren't true but thought were cool into his books with the disclaimer "I am bound to tell what I have been told, but I do not in all cases believe it".
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Mar 29, 2022 15:03
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. Missile Gap by Charles Stross https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/spring_2007/fiction_missile_gap_by_charles_stross/ is a flat earth story.
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Mar 29, 2022 15:12
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Carrier posted:The Orthogonal books by Greg Egan. Instead of 3D space and a 1D time there are 4 fundamentally identical dimensions. Not really an alternative theory as such but definitely interesting, think it gets pretty intense with the alternate physics however so probably not a light read! I've complained about Egan a lot in this thread, but I think Orthogonal is his best-worst. Best, in that it's the purest distillitation of his "what if" ideating, and worst in that the narrative is a pretty thin veneer over the science that he really wanted to explore and write about. It's kind of like instead of Neal Stephenson infodumping for dozens of pages about some particular niche of history, it's a sock puppet character lecturing about or experimenting to discover the implications of 4 dimensions of unified space-time.
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Mar 29, 2022 15:18
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I generally alternate reads between SF and non-SF, and I feel like I've spent years putting my latest SF book down thinking "that was alright," wishing either the prose or the ideas had reached a little further. At least that's how it was until this past January, when I finished Embassytown by China Mieville. It's the book I had been dreaming about. It ignited my imagination, filled me with hope and dread, and kept me reading late at night. In lesser hands its exploration of linguistics would be a total slog to get through, but the ideas are elegantly housed inside an intergalactic horror adventure that I could not put down. I've been thinking about it for months. I'm reading NK Jemisin's The Obelisk Gate now and it's really good but my subconscious is unjustly scoffing at it because it's simply not Embassytown.
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Mar 29, 2022 15:21
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Embassytown has been on my to-read list for a while, thanks for the reminder. I heard it involves George Lakoff's metaphor theories, which sounds really interesting. Thanks everyone for the recs! Vergil Magus sounds especially interesting; those should keep me busy a while. And if you like Herodotus, I recommend The Travels of Sir John Mandeville for more fantastical accounts of far-off lands and their inhabitants. He also recounts the giant ant story. Happiness Commando posted:I've complained about Egan a lot in this thread, but I think Orthogonal is his best-worst. Best, in that it's the purest distillitation of his "what if" ideating, and worst in that the narrative is a pretty thin veneer over the science that he really wanted to explore and write about. It's kind of like instead of Neal Stephenson infodumping for dozens of pages about some particular niche of history, it's a sock puppet character lecturing about or experimenting to discover the implications of 4 dimensions of unified space-time. I've read some Egan including Orthogonal, and I'm inclined to agree. I liked the alien biology stuff, but the physics lectures were a big slog. I preferred Dichronauts, which features a modified space-time in the opposite way to Orthogonal-- instead of all dimensions being "space-like," two of them are time-like, which makes it impossible for anything to rotate and for light to travel in some directions.
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Mar 29, 2022 15:42
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. Not SF, but along the lines you're looking for is Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before. It's about a dude stranded alone on a ship in the 1600s and his musings about the nature of the globe and the Flood. Foxfire_ posted:(Mars trilogy's kinda boring though) I enjoyed it until the third book became about some old gently caress getting a BJ.
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Mar 29, 2022 16:22
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PeterWeller posted:Not SF, but along the lines you're looking for is Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before. It's about a dude stranded alone on a ship in the 1600s and his musings about the nature of the globe and the Flood. I read this not long ago, and I loved how absolutely everyone, including the narrator, was 100% full of poo poo. Basically one giant pisstake on Enlightenment thinking. Every character walking on with a big speech about life, the universe, and everything, then dying of hubris was  Also the translation of the German Jesuit who spoke terrible Italian with German grammar intermixed with Latin was masterful. Not my favorite Emberto Eco book, but it was up there.
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Mar 29, 2022 16:36
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Is there anything else quite like Embassytown? That book was loving special.
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Mar 29, 2022 17:54
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LLSix posted:Temeraire is Horatio Hornblower + dragons. It's very much a fantasy adventure series rather than speculative sci-fi though. Just to quibble, Temeraire is a book and a half of Hornblower With Dragons, and then four or five of a world tour of 'what if empire and colonialism, but it didn't work right because dragons.'
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Mar 29, 2022 18:09
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Yeah, Temeraire is originally set up as 'What if the Napoleonic Wars had dragons' with implications that history is proceeding mostly as it did in our world outside of that. Then you go on a world tour outside of Europe and basically everywhere else on Earth is so drastically different due to the presence of dragons it doesn't make a ton of sense that there would even have been a veneer of 'our' history playing out. Especially when you have poo poo like Africa/North America driving out the colonizers during the events of the books which they uh should probably have done during the preceding centuries based on everything we know in the books. It also goes kinda nuts in some wild ways, like Napoleon getting into a political marriage with the Incan Empress in exchange for dragon support from them. And the series ends with her acting as regent for their underage son as Emperor of the Inca and France after she manipulates events to force Napoleon's surrender and exile.
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Mar 29, 2022 18:25
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ScienceSeagull posted:Rec me some sci-fi/fantasy that's set in a world where alternative/obsolete/pseudoscientific theories are actually true, e.g. the Earth is in fact flat and 6000 years old, alchemy and humor theory are valid models, etc. Such as some of Ted Chiang's stories, and Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Shea & Wilson is very much this. It's dense and it was written in the 70s so there's a lot of counter-culture satire stuff but it's literally about some detectives who get drawn into a web of conspiracies. Wilson also later wrote the Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy too in a similar vein. They've both aged a bit as you expect but they were pretty big there was a musical a GURPS game etc. Also a little off piste but maybe Robert Rankin, who wrote extremely British urban fantasy usually involving conspiracy theories and brussels sprouts. I loved the Armageddon the Musical series as a teenager, about a time traveling Elvis and a magic brussels sprout; or the book of ultimate truths series. He's a contemporary of Pratchett & Tom Holt (before he jokered into K J Parker) so there's a lot of densely layered humour although it's often quite puerile. branedotorg fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Mar 30, 2022 |
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Mar 29, 2022 22:20
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I, Robot by Isaac Asimov - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1PW0/ Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0077FC55Y/ The Boy on the Bridge (Girl with All the Gifts #2) by MR Carey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LL8BX9Q/
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Mar 29, 2022 22:45
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Harold Fjord posted:Is there anything else quite like Embassytown? Mievielle has quite a few other books, though YMMV. I've only read Kraken and Iron Council, and while I really liked Kraken, I found Council pretty hard to get through
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Mar 29, 2022 23:03
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Opopanax posted:Mievielle has quite a few other books, though YMMV. I've only read Kraken and Iron Council, and while I really liked Kraken, I found Council pretty hard to get through My favorite of his is the city and the city, though at that point he's calling it weird fiction more than anything scifi or fantasy.
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Mar 30, 2022 02:15
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It's been a couple of years since I read the Orthogonal books, but I think even the biologist plotline in the second book was a lot more interesting than the physicist plotline. I can remember several actual conflicts the biologists are involved with, but all I remember the physicists doing is standing around in their lab going "Suppose..." for the entire book. The physics were actually pretty cool to me, but more in the effect they have on the characters' biology and society than their exact mechanics. Love reading about some weird aliens.
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Mar 30, 2022 02:23
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habeasdorkus posted:Agree to disagree. At the time I was also annoyed that he killed off the series' three most interesting characters in the first book. But I remember reading a piece ages later examining how it was a deliberate decision to remove the three big alpha males early on, who were all vocally and violently advocating for Martian independence in their owns ways, and then leave the rest of the series for female characters or less politically-minded characters like Sax. I don't know, it's been ages since I read either the trilogy or that piece, but it shifted my thinking a bit. I agree that Arkady rocked (although of him, John and Frank, he was the one who thematically most needed to go out in a blaze of revolutionary martyrdom). Sibling of TB posted:My favorite of his is the city and the city, though at that point he's calling it weird fiction more than anything scifi or fantasy. Mine too. Masterclass in taking a completely nonsensical idea and just somehow making it work. And doing it so well that the moment when the protagonist deliberately chooses to violate the rules by chasing-but-pretending-not-to a perp, and then shooting him, which at the beginning of the book feel silly, by that point feels genuinely shocking and transgressive.
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Mar 30, 2022 03:33
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freebooter posted:At the time I was also annoyed... Oh, I agree with all of that. But I can't help myself, I still miss him in particular. Goddamned capitalists!
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Mar 30, 2022 03:38
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Greg Egan has 80,000 words on his website explaining the physics of Orthogonal. It's even more obvious than usual that the physics is why he wrote the books
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Mar 30, 2022 09:23
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Sibling of TB posted:My favorite of his is the city and the city, though at that point he's calling it weird fiction more than anything scifi or fantasy. The City And The City blew my mind when I read it. It was my first Mieville and it's still one of my favourite books. The number of levels it works on - it's a fantastic police procedural novel that makes you question everything about what you have learned not to see in your own life. https://amp.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jul/20/book-for-the-beach-city-and-city-china-mieville
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Mar 30, 2022 12:03
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Qwertycoatl posted:Greg Egan has 80,000 words on his website explaining the physics of Orthogonal. It's even more obvious than usual that the physics is why he wrote the books Yeah, that sounds like Greg Egan being as Greg Egan as possible. I don't know of any other author that does the exact thing he does, certainly not to the same degree.
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Mar 30, 2022 12:11
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