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StrixNebulosa posted:Has anyone in here heard of or read Wyrm by Mark Fabi? I fired up Cyberpunk 2077 and now my brain is clamoring for good cyberpunk so I'm reading Virtual Light (Gibson is an artist, goddamn) and looking for other titles. I'm not expecting anything as good as Gibson but it's fun to look and find the weird stuff... like Wyrm. It has a handful of reviews on goodreads and I can't find anyone else on the internet talking about it. You’ve probably read it, but my fav Cyberpunk book is “When Gravity Fails” by George Alec Effinger.
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Apr 24, 2022 18:02
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Something I wish more fantasy authors would do. https://mobile.twitter.com/Iron_Spike/status/1518275872905699329
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Apr 24, 2022 18:30
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HopperUK posted:Douglas Adams was close with the Python crew, there's a lot of cross-pollination there. He also adored Doctor Who and wrote a story for it. He wrote several, the first of which was rejected so he turned it into the third Hitch-Hikers book.
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Apr 24, 2022 18:32
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Jedit posted:He wrote several, the first of which was rejected so he turned it into the third Hitch-Hikers book. Yeah, you're right, I forgot, I was only thinking about City of Death. I've seen Shada and everything.
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Apr 24, 2022 18:38
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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0865TSTWM/ Guards! Guards! (Discworld #8) by Terry Pratchett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000UVBT7M/ A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2) by Becky Chambers - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CNLOZ3G/ The City of Brass (Daevabad #1) by SA Chakraborty - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06VXWPMV5/ Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC130E/ Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QGJHS7N/ Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077WXP3KG/ The Futurological Congress (From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy #3) by Stanislaw Lem - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008IGK68O/ World War Z by Max Brooks - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JMKQX0/ Sunreach (Skyward Flight #1) by Brandon Sanderson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FYV1V4Z/ Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC11A6/ Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000TO0TDK/
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Apr 24, 2022 18:38
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GreenBuckanneer posted:I am not sure what "Last Chance to See" by Douglass Adams is about but it sounds compelling. It's hilarious and sad. Some of his best work imo.
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Apr 25, 2022 00:56
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Can’t waste the moment while everyone’s talking about extinction stories to mention The Ugly Chickens by Howard Waldrop. It’s in a few of his collections I think and he’s a joy to read.
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Apr 25, 2022 03:45
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I open a cyberpunk novel written in the mid 80s. It opens with NATO at war with a Russia run by a dictator. It goes on to explain that Greater Russia has invaded Eastern Europe because global warming/climate change has hosed up food production, so Russia is starving. It also has a mechanical robot spy-bird being operated by NATO. "So far, it was a world war that hadn't gone nuclear." (book is John Shirley's Eclipse and it's so prescient it might as well have read some headlines from 2022)
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Apr 25, 2022 03:49
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StrixNebulosa posted:I open a cyberpunk novel written in the mid 80s. The Eclipse books are great. Wait until you get to the Second Alliance, and then compare to some of the poo poo Blackwater got up to in Iraq.
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Apr 25, 2022 04:27
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General Battuta posted:It’s an absolutely calculated airport crime thriller stretched over a deeply horrific SF backdrop which was, I guarantee, the author saying “man I wish True Detective had really veered HARD into the cosmic horror.” As someone who also wishes this, that's going on my TBR list
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Apr 25, 2022 05:04
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idiotsavant posted:Can’t waste the moment while everyone’s talking about extinction stories to mention The Ugly Chickens by Howard Waldrop. It’s in a few of his collections I think and he’s a joy to read. Seconded. It’s googleable if anyone wants to read it.
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Apr 25, 2022 05:18
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McCoy Pauley posted:As another cyberpunk recommendation, " The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner. A super-hacker is on the run from the government creche that raised him, and still trying to save the world. Eerily prescient in spots.
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Apr 25, 2022 05:35
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Ccs posted:Something I wish more fantasy authors would do. I have to resist the urge to angrily shout out my rejection whenever I hear this. Sociological storytelling is my heroin.
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Apr 25, 2022 06:11
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I will always feel a little annoyed when I see writing advice posed as The Right Way. There's a lot of nuance to writing, and depending on your prose style, setting, character, POV etc it's almost never the case that there is one Correct Path and all others are wrong. Even exposition dumps; they're easy to make into boring slogs, that doesn't mean there is no way to present a significant amount of exposition without endless suffering.
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Apr 25, 2022 06:39
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Ccs posted:Something I wish more fantasy authors would do. Bullshit. The best part of Fantasy is looking out the windows at the scenery going by.
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Apr 25, 2022 06:47
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Sinatrapod posted:I will always feel a little annoyed when I see writing advice posed as The Right Way. There's a lot of nuance to writing, and depending on your prose style, setting, character, POV etc it's almost never the case that there is one Correct Path and all others are wrong. Even exposition dumps; they're easy to make into boring slogs, that doesn't mean there is no way to present a significant amount of exposition without endless suffering. Then it's good that the twitter thread starts with "Your Milage May Vary" and it's just something the author is trying for herself, rather than some gospel handed down from up high. But all it really is doing is asking yourself if the work you do is contributing to your end goal, whether that's having fun writing, telling the right story, or making the most amount of money off of it.
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Apr 25, 2022 06:51
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Hel posted:Then it's good that the twitter thread starts with "Your Milage May Vary" and it's just something the author is trying for herself, rather than some gospel handed down from up high. That's good context to have!
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Apr 25, 2022 07:24
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quote:why do elves have suburbs. Of course if you're talking about hippy dippy wood elves that only exist in small tribes that's a different story.
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Apr 25, 2022 07:56
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Sinatrapod posted:I will always feel a little annoyed when I see writing advice posed as The Right Way. There's a lot of nuance to writing, and depending on your prose style, setting, character, POV etc it's almost never the case that there is one Correct Path and all others are wrong. Even exposition dumps; they're easy to make into boring slogs, that doesn't mean there is no way to present a significant amount of exposition without endless suffering. I get weirded out when people treat "exposition dumps" as some exotic thing that only turbonerd genre writers do and not something that is so commonplace that it is near-universal in the world of nonfiction writing.
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Apr 25, 2022 08:30
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FPyat posted:I get weirded out when people treat "exposition dumps" as some exotic thing that only turbonerd genre writers do and not something that is so commonplace that it is near-universal in the world of nonfiction writing. *cough* Moby Dick *cough*
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Apr 25, 2022 08:59
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I started listening to Unsouled after seeing people posting about the kickstarter on here. It's actually... really good for what it is? The videogame-style elements are present enough to be entertaining but not cringey, and the prose is much tighter than any web serial I've read. I'm not surprised it's been so successful. Not sure if I have the stamina to go through all 10 books though.
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Apr 25, 2022 09:14
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Unsouled is generally considered to be the weakest entry in the series, but yeah the author is definitely much more skilled than your average web serial/progfantasy writer, and it shows. Unfortunately, pretty much everything else in the genre is worse than Cradle. quote:Not sure if I have the stamina to go through all 10 books though.
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Apr 25, 2022 09:19
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Patrick Spens posted:Bullshit. The best part of Fantasy is looking out the windows at the scenery going by.
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Apr 25, 2022 09:30
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Sinatrapod posted:I will always feel a little annoyed when I see writing advice posed as The Right Way. There's a lot of nuance to writing, and depending on your prose style, setting, character, POV etc it's almost never the case that there is one Correct Path and all others are wrong. Even exposition dumps; they're easy to make into boring slogs, that doesn't mean there is no way to present a significant amount of exposition without endless suffering. This is perfectly fair, but I think it's also fair to say that SFF, in general, has a lot of writers who expend too many words on extraneous worldbuilding. You can certainly do worldbuilding "exposition dumps" that are great - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is probably the classic example - but that's the exception rather than the rule. There's a reason SFF novels tend to be doorstoppers and the word bloated gets thrown around a lot. So it's good advice to be putting out in general. Speaking of which: I just finished Sean McMullen's 1999 dying earth post-apoc/fantasy novel Souls in the Great Machine which would have been much better if it was half the length and didn't spend every other page banging on in faux technical babble about the technologies of his world. Instead it became a tedious slog that I was glad to be done with, with no intention of ever reading the rest of the trilogy. It's really frustrating to see writers who have good imaginations, who are also capable of writing good sentences, let their unrestrained instincts lead them down the garden path and end up with a mess of a novel.
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Apr 25, 2022 10:13
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Cyberpunk-adjacent (or probably postcyberpunk I guess), Ribofunk by Paul Di Filippo got an ebook release after a long time in the 'find a copy secondhand / read a bad pdf scan' wasteland; it was a fun read, but certain bits of the biopunk ickiness might be unsettling for some. Seconding Hardwired as a good fast cpunk read, I posted this back in 2018 quote:hardwired is good, I read it not long back for the first time and it’s like a more actiony b-movie Gibson.
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Apr 25, 2022 10:47
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freebooter posted:Speaking of which: I just finished Sean McMullen's 1999 dying earth post-apoc/fantasy novel Souls in the Great Machine which would have been much better if it was half the length and didn't spend every other page banging on in faux technical babble about the technologies of his world. Instead it became a tedious slog that I was glad to be done with, with no intention of ever reading the rest of the trilogy. It's really frustrating to see writers who have good imaginations, who are also capable of writing good sentences, let their unrestrained instincts lead them down the garden path and end up with a mess of a novel. Heh, even as an avowed Exposition Liker there is definitely a point where an author should think about maybe not writing novels and work on crafting RPG settings instead.
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Apr 25, 2022 11:01
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StrixNebulosa posted:I open a cyberpunk novel written in the mid 80s. If you're reading the 2017 Dover edition, one reason why it seems so prescient is that it was revised and updated in 2015-16. I need to check out the rest of that trilogy, but I'm kind of torn between finding original editions or just continuing with the Dover editions. Also, if you're still looking for cyberpunk recommendations and you've yet to read Synners by Pat Cadigan or Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling, those are my suggestions for your next picks.
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Apr 25, 2022 15:36
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:If I wanted regressive worldviews, I'd look out the window, not at escapist fiction. ... don't read books like that then op.
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Apr 25, 2022 15:54
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freebooter posted:This is perfectly fair, but I think it's also fair to say that SFF, in general, has a lot of writers who expend too many words on extraneous worldbuilding. You can certainly do worldbuilding "exposition dumps" that are great - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is probably the classic example - but that's the exception rather than the rule. There's a reason SFF novels tend to be doorstoppers and the word bloated gets thrown around a lot. So it's good advice to be putting out in general. This topic always makes me ponder if I should just footnote my stories all to hell for the few turbonerds who might give a poo poo and then somehow make clear the footnotes are optional, because pulling all my bullshit out and quarantining it in footnotes is the only way I can control the goddamned impulse 
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Apr 25, 2022 16:23
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PeterWeller posted:If you're reading the 2017 Dover edition, one reason why it seems so prescient is that it was revised and updated in 2015-16. Oh, neat! Do you have any idea what was changed with the revisions? Synners is in my stack on my desk, but Islands in the Net is sadly in a box at my parent's place. It was not retrieved during the last great book migration, but hopefully in the next one!
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Apr 25, 2022 16:35
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:If I wanted regressive worldviews, I'd look out the window, not at escapist fiction. Ok?
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Apr 25, 2022 16:39
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freebooter posted:This is perfectly fair, but I think it's also fair to say that SFF, in general, has a lot of writers who expend too many words on extraneous worldbuilding. You can certainly do worldbuilding "exposition dumps" that are great - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is probably the classic example - but that's the exception rather than the rule. There's a reason SFF novels tend to be doorstoppers and the word bloated gets thrown around a lot. So it's good advice to be putting out in general. Spending too many words on extraneous worldbuilding is my number one thing that will attract me towards a book I've never heard of before. freebooter posted:Speaking of which: I just finished Sean McMullen's 1999 dying earth post-apoc/fantasy novel Souls in the Great Machine which would have been much better if it was half the length and didn't spend every other page banging on in faux technical babble about the technologies of his world. Instead it became a tedious slog that I was glad to be done with, with no intention of ever reading the rest of the trilogy. It's really frustrating to see writers who have good imaginations, who are also capable of writing good sentences, let their unrestrained instincts lead them down the garden path and end up with a mess of a novel. My favorite GoodReads reviewer gave it five stars and gushed over its qualities. Now I'm interested in reading it, given that there are rather few times when I would wish a novel would have less technical description of machines.
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Apr 25, 2022 16:43
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StrixNebulosa posted:Oh, neat! Do you have any idea what was changed with the revisions? I mainly noticed pop culture things that postdated the original publication. The rock musician character mentions some artists and bands from the 1990s. There's mention of social media platforms by name. I think some RW media personalities get namechecked in the exposition about the fascist movement taking over America. I'm sort of interested in getting an original copy and comparing them, but I think I'd rather just finish the trilogy first and then decide if I want to go back and see how it's changed. Oh, and I forgot to also mention Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix as a good cyberpunk novel. It's really wild post-human cyberpunk, I suspect one of the main inspirations for the Eclipse Phase RPG. BlankSystemDaemon posted:If I wanted regressive worldviews, I'd look out the window, not at escapist fiction. I don't think "worldbuilding is neat actually" counts as a regressive worldview.
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Apr 25, 2022 16:51
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Does anyone actually believe that "dark road" stuff? To me that just sounds like the author did not bother to prepare their world and only establish points once they are acutely relevant. I'd be a bit weirded out by a book which, after half the story went "And then the Gods bestowed a gift onto the hero. Oh, yeah by the way, there are Gods in this world and they do that sometimes. It's not that uncommon, but it didn't really come up yet, since it wasn't relevant to the story before." Of course I prefer deeply immersive stories with complex political and social structures instead! cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Apr 25, 2022 17:22
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I do the dark road thing, but I do believe the cultural and political context falls inside the headlight beams. Like your headlighst might fall upon a narrow defile through which you must drive. But that defile implies some big mountains to either side and maybe a river or some kind of seismic event that made it and the opportunity for this defile to be a toll station or ambush point and a natural site for some big historical battles and a shelter from the sun and maybe its a big yonic metaphor or a pinch point into which a wide plain of choices are constrained down to a narrow decision to go forward or turn back and yall see what I'm saying. I rarely read worldbuilding-for-the-sake-of-worldbuilding that doesn't bore me. It usually makes too much sense. Reality is larger than one mind can synthesize or grasp; therefore a truly 'built world' should seem at least a little incomplete and inexplicable to a reader encountering it. I hate it when worldbuilding tucks away all the loose ends and carefully matches a cause to every effect. poo poo be wild out there. Live a little, get crazy.
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Apr 25, 2022 17:34
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Its a fine line and, I assume, very influenced by personal preference. For me there is nothing I like more in a book than an offhand remark or side mention of something in the greater world that doesn't influence the current story in any way but instead just makes you feel like you the world is alive with history beyond what you are currently reading. Crucially though I rarely want to actually know anything about these things. If e.g. a sci-fi book mentions some mysterious oceans on a distant planet, but the current story is about a war between two megacorporations secretly serving as a proxy war for two competing AIs, I really don't want the author to dive too much into the details of the mysterious oceans if its not plot relevant. One of my biggest peeves is when a big sci-fi novel has all sorts of interesting ideas and fun worldbuilding and then the sequels tie up all the loose ends and explain all the fun mysteries. Mystery is half the fun of reading sci-fi for me and often spoiled by exposition.
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Apr 25, 2022 17:49
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Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City (Siege #1) by KJ Parker - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078W5M7DB/ The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087C3G2T3/ Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0831QRN8T/ Dragonflight (Dragonriders of Pern #1) by Anne McCaffrey - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBFOCI/ Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OA63YO/
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Apr 25, 2022 17:55
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Speaking for myself, I'm a fan off less exposition and world-building than more. I think that's part of the reason e.g. The Road or Waiting for the Barbarians are so powerful. The setting doesn't get in the way of the story and the characters. That said, I also think that great prose can smooth over bumpy exposition. Whole sections of It and The Tommyknockers are nothing but town history, and King is great at making the backstory compelling. But that caliber of writing is hard to find.
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Apr 25, 2022 18:24
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Stuporstar posted:This topic always makes me ponder if I should just footnote my stories all to hell for the few turbonerds who might give a poo poo and then somehow make clear the footnotes are optional, because pulling all my bullshit out and quarantining it in footnotes is the only way I can control the goddamned impulse Put the small amusing bits in footnotes and the massive worldbuilding tome in appendices, IMO.
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Apr 25, 2022 18:29
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Stuporstar posted:This topic always makes me ponder if I should just footnote my stories all to hell for the few turbonerds who might give a poo poo and then somehow make clear the footnotes are optional, because pulling all my bullshit out and quarantining it in footnotes is the only way I can control the goddamned impulse It’s a fictional memoir of a man who was a general to a 25th century Alexander the Great. The memoir contains information that is directly at odds with how the official history is portrayed, and it is heavily footnoted by a 26th century professor who drank the historical Kool-Aid and believes the writer is lying.
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Apr 25, 2022 18:30
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