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You’re telling me a CiS tEeN built this chapel!?!?
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May 25, 2022 13:13
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gently caress
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May 25, 2022 13:13
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The agony and the ecstasy of a blown snipe.
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May 25, 2022 13:30
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Everyone posted:CiS isn't an acronym. According to Wikipedia Cis is derived from Latin and means something like "on this side of" while trans means "across from" or "on the other side of." Yeah, Cis and trans are common prefixes in academic terms. They crop up a lot in formal chemical names, for instance. My understanding is that cis- and transgender as terms started life as academic jargon in the 90s.
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May 25, 2022 13:59
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Kalman posted:The second series is decent enough, and I’d say it’s fairly different. The first cycle (Corwin’s books) is fundamentally a very 60s detective series; the second cycle (Merlin’s books) gets a little bit more of the 80s cyberpunk vibe going. I think some of the hate the Merlin books initially got was because there was a built-up Amber fandom from the first series that had settled around certain interpretations of the world and characters ... and then Zelazny took them in quite different directions in the second series. You know, "this new stuff does not match my head canon, therefore it is wrong and bad." Plus, after 20 years, there was a massive amount of fan hype for new Amber books, to the point where a letdown was inevitable. That said, yeah, the Merlin books aren't as good as Corwin's, but if you enjoyed the first I think you'll like the second. Do not, however, under any circumstances read John Gregory Betancourt's "Dawn of Amber" books. They aren't quite as much of a posthumous desecration as the Brian H./KJA Dune books, but they're still rotten. Selachian fucked around with this message at 14:18 on May 25, 2022 |
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May 25, 2022 14:07
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Haystack posted:Yeah, Cis and trans are common prefixes in academic terms. They crop up a lot in formal chemical names, for instance. My understanding is that cis- and transgender as terms started life as academic jargon in the 90s. They show up a lot in spaceflight, too -- e.g. cislunar vs. translunar trajectories.
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May 25, 2022 14:46
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die cisalpine scum 
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May 25, 2022 14:54
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ToxicFrog posted:They show up a lot in spaceflight, too -- e.g. cislunar vs. translunar trajectories. moon trans, so what
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May 25, 2022 14:55
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90s Cringe Rock posted:moon trans, so what Moon perfectly non-binary, excuse you.
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May 25, 2022 15:09
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Runcible Cat posted:Moon perfectly non-binary, excuse you. Can be trans enbie, no problem.
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May 25, 2022 15:37
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Jack Chalker and MZB sort of poisoned the well of trans-gender fiction for a while in the 1970's-1980's. Amber's first series flows more consistently when you realize the main character of them, Corwin, is concussed/stumbling around with brain damage throughout the entire series, and also that Roger Zelazny started writing them as a thinly disguised rip-off of P. J. Farmer's earlier "World of Tiers" fantasy-scifi series. The second Amber series flows more consistently when you realize the main character of them, Merlin, is doing a Fallout the cRPG series low intelligence run because of a) he's Hapsburg Jaw cousin loving cousin/sibling loving sibling inbred and b) Zelazny had no grand plan for the 2nd Amber series beyond writing cliffhanger chapter endings, and thought maybe 3 paragraphs ahead for each chapter/each book.
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May 25, 2022 17:26
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Yeah, Amber is *literally* Zelazny going "I am broke and need money, let's give a protagonist amnesia and see what happens". If you read carefully it's fairly easy to spot that it has literally no plan at all other than cool poo poo should keep happening every few hundred words. It's still Zelazny so it's still good but anyone who's read an Amber book and enjoyed it I BEG you to put Amber aside for now and go read any of Isle of the Dead A Night in the Lonesome October Lord of Light (Or if you want Cool Mode) Creatures of Light and Darkness You owe it to yourself to read the good stuff. You can go back to Amber afterwards. They're fine books. They're just like listening to Mozart tuning his piano when you could be listening to him playing.
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May 25, 2022 17:41
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Donnerjack.
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May 25, 2022 17:42
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, Amber is *literally* Zelazny going "I am broke and need money, let's give a protagonist amnesia and see what happens". If you read carefully it's fairly easy to spot that it has literally no plan at all other than cool poo poo should keep happening every few hundred words. Yeah I agree wholeheartedly. I actually think my expectations going into Amber were well tempered, having read other Zelazny and knowing that it was his money-maker series. I knew they wouldn't be great, but I also knew they'd probably be worth reading for the occasional Zelazny Moments where he pulls out a pretty good idea and executes it in an interesting way (and so far, that's been true!).
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May 25, 2022 17:46
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The descriptions of "traveling" in Amber are very cool.
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May 25, 2022 17:51
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Yeah you read Amber for the flashes of brilliance and because it's so casually constructed you can see how he did it, practically stream of consciousness. Maybe a better analogy would be Leonardo's cartoons instead of his paintings.
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May 25, 2022 17:52
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They do have a strong improvisational energy to them (for better or worse, probably mostly worse). Just start reading them imagining Zelazny said "Okay, so, what if this happened..."
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May 25, 2022 17:54
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The way the multiverse concept is presented is so cool I stole parts of it for a book (with a post-singularity twist). It's just too bad none of the worlds/timelines in Amber are very compelling.
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May 25, 2022 18:21
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Another good Zelazny book that tends to get overlooked is 'Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming' and to a lesser extant the follow up 'A Farce to be Reckoned With'. I dont think they've said so but you definitely see some inspiration for Good Omens in there.
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May 25, 2022 18:59
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Leng posted:After I saw your post, I decided to give the rest of the book (Jenn Lyons' The Ruin of Kings) the benefit of the doubt and pushed through to the end... There's stuff that's been throughout the whole series that really irritated me reading the final book in 2022, but that I didn't mind in 2019. Couldn't really tell you why, other than that maybe there's a way of writing the characters (protagonists in particular) that maybe wasn't as common in 2019 but I've seen a lot of over the past three years. Not sure. Some of that stuff is more plot-intentional than it may seem, but other bits of it are just kind of how the setting works. Like I said, if you start to hate Ruin of Kings or any of the sequels at any point I'd just put it down. You won't like it better as it goes on.
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May 25, 2022 19:32
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Another good Zelazny book that tends to get overlooked is 'Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming' and to a lesser extant the follow up 'A Farce to be Reckoned With'. Zelazny was such a huge influence on Gaiman that an entire volume of _Sandman_ was explicitly based on zelazny's funeral.
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May 25, 2022 19:37
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I'm about 90% done with The Legion of Stars and I gotta say it is absolutely horror. Cronenburg himself would cover his eyes.
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May 25, 2022 20:15
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Went to look that up, did you mean stars are legion?
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May 25, 2022 22:19
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Just the usual body horror of being a woman, and giving birth to a big fleshy cog which rolls off to go plug into whatever gear system its needed for when it gets old enough.
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May 25, 2022 22:41
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The Red Knight (Traitor Son #1) by Miles Cameron - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007ZFPUL2/
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May 25, 2022 23:06
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I'd recommend Zelany's "To Die In Italbar" over "A Night in the Lonesome October" in HA's Roger Zelazny must-read list. Italbar is so unlike other Zelazny stories that it's a refreshing read if you are burned out Zelazny's corpus of work, plus Italbar is a extremely indirect sequel to Isle of the Dead. Disavowed works by fantasy & scifi authors are usually interesting. For example, M John Harrison has disavowed his earliest written short stories and they have wild ideas and concepts in them, if you can ignore the Michael Moorcock influence.
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May 25, 2022 23:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Zelazny was such a huge influence on Gaiman that an entire volume of _Sandman_ was explicitly based on zelazny's funeral. This seems unlikely considering not only was The Wake pre-planned as far back as 1992, Sandman #70 was published August 1st 1995 and so with lead time must have been written while Zelazny was still alive. Fake edit: a Google search says that Gaiman said in his notes to The Wake - which I've never read, owning the original issues - that he lifted a few of the sentiments expressed at Zelazny's service and put them in the story as tribute. But it's hardly "an entire volume based on his funeral".
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May 26, 2022 00:08
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Subnautica? https://www.sethdickinson.com/2022/05/24/i-am-now-working-on-subnautica/
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May 26, 2022 01:51
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Congrats General, that's really cool! I have like forty hours in the original Subnautica but have never reached the end because the deep ocean is too scary, so I may never be able to read what you write for them, but still! Cool!!
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May 26, 2022 02:09
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Went to look that up, did you mean stars are legion? Yes and it’s a goddamn masterpiece.
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May 26, 2022 02:13
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I just started the PCVR version. Don't screw this up, Battuta! Didn't he work on the original Destiny 1 world-building codex, or was that someone else?
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May 26, 2022 03:10
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Remulak posted:Yes and it’s a goddamn masterpiece. Ah, cool. Got it in my TBR pile. Great news GB! I'm probably not going to read it but that's because underwater first person stuff scares the gently caress outta me. I had the chance to play it in vr and NOPE. The ocean can stay mysterious.
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May 26, 2022 03:12
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Looking forward to more solipstic psychopathic squid gods in Subnautica II.
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May 26, 2022 03:28
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TOOT BOOT posted:Subnautica? Oh drat, Subnautica was excellent and I can't wait to see what GB does with it.
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May 26, 2022 03:48
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Metis of the Hallways posted:Congrats General, that's really cool! I have like forty hours in the original Subnautica but have never reached the end because the deep ocean is too scary, so I may never be able to read what you write for them, but still! Cool!! If you thought the deep ocean was scary before, well. It could always be worse.
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May 26, 2022 03:54
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TOOT BOOT posted:Subnautica? Oh poo poo, it's loving on now! This is super exciting. Hope they treat you better than Bungo did, Battuta.
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May 26, 2022 03:58
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I love the subnautica games and so do my kids, this is great news.
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May 26, 2022 05:21
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Everyone posted:You'll get to it if you stick with it, but the Silver Empire was kind of like a way more psychotic version of the Empire from Warhammer fantasy. It's not that they didn't believe in magic so much as they thought they'd pretty well witch-hunted it out of existence but they were wrong. I did finish it but didn't particularly like it, outside the Cthulhu mythos, something I'm surprised hasn't been in fantasy more often. I thought the characters were very 2d and I found the constant rapes and brutality committed by the 'baddies' to be both gratuitous and cartoony branedotorg fucked around with this message at 05:40 on May 26, 2022 |
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May 26, 2022 05:34
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Reading Richard Swan's justice of kings, based of an algorithmic recommendation - he's written some space opera stuff I'd never heard of and this is his debut fantasy novel. I'm surprisingly enjoying it, it's a low fantasy detective novel set in an empire of disparate states that are only recently conquered. The major characters are a traveling judge with some magical compulsion ability and his two offsiders. About 25% in.
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May 26, 2022 05:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, Amber is *literally* Zelazny going "I am broke and need money, let's give a protagonist amnesia and see what happens". If you read carefully it's fairly easy to spot that it has literally no plan at all other than cool poo poo should keep happening every few hundred words. I enjoyed Creatures of Light and Darkness a whole lot, and Lord of Light is still one of my favorite books of all time. Guess I have to check the others.
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