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StrixNebulosa posted:Slowly, SLOWLY unboxing and putting together bookshelves and getting my library together, here's a progress shot: I don't know why, but I don't like the way it looks when the books are flush with the shelf. I keep a VHS cassette case (some movie with Mastroianni I think) in the study for the express purpose of pushing all the books back an even distance from the edge. Thanks for reading you may now add "COMPLETE loving PSYCHO??" next to my name in posters.xlsx.
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Jun 6, 2022 22:34
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radmonger posted:Regency novels are set between 1811 and 1820, Literary novels are set between perhaps 1911 and 2007 at latest. A character in a literary novel cannot do more than speculatively muse about global warming any more than they can use an iPhone. Anything after that is either science fiction (e.g. those works of William Gibson that contained no uninvented technology) or some genre that hasn’t been defined and labeled yet. What does this post mean? Is this a thread joke I’ve missed?
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Jun 6, 2022 22:57
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Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos #1) by Dan Simmons - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004G60EHS/ Eon by Greg Bear - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J3EU5RC/ The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance #1) by NK Jemisin - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ZDJZO2/ Life After Life by Kate Atkinson - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008TUQ60G/
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Jun 6, 2022 23:01
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pradmer posted:Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos #1) by Dan Simmons - $1.99 Some book fairy must be listening because this has been on my TBR for a while. Biffmotron posted:Speaking of climate fiction, I just read Our Shared Storm by Andrew Dana Hudson, and it was really good. The conceit is the same story told five times, the same set of characters meeting at COP60 in Buenos Aires 2054, but each story is set in a different IPCC climate-modeling scenario, and the dramatic conflict and their perspectives shift. I stayed up way past any sensible bedtime finishing it, which is about the strongest endorsement fiction can get. This sounds fascinating and is getting added to my list next.
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Jun 6, 2022 23:19
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Stuporstar posted:Oh definitely, and that book sounds interesting. There are way more humanizing stories yet to be written about climate disasters on a non-world-ending level. Like a whole town being wiped out by a flood or forest fire and how people try to keep getting on when it happens every year (hello, British Columbia). Amitav Ghosh spends a lot of time talking about how hosed Mumbai would be if hit by a major cyclone, and there’s a need for fiction that asks, “But what if that ends up the norm and people keep grinding on?” people already live like this in the Caribbean and other places that have been feeling the brunt of the increasingly energetic storm systems
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Jun 6, 2022 23:32
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The Windup Girl and The Water Knife by Paulo Bacigalupi are the books I think when this topic comes up. The latter is probably more well-known but the former is truly excellent. Weird economies of physically stored energy in springs, ancient orders of monks dedicated to preserving seed banks, hundreds-foot seawalls keeping coastal regions in bizarre pocket-cities. It's sad and definitely contains sexual violence, like The Water Knife, but I'd highly recommend it for an alt take on the climatepunk genre.
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Jun 6, 2022 23:33
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Larry Parrish posted:people already live like this in the Caribbean and other places that have been feeling the brunt of the increasingly energetic storm systems Well yeah, and that whole essay is taking lit fic to task for ignoring that. I think I’ve read more fantasy and horror fiction drawn from Hurricane Katrina, because the folktale nature of those genres is just a more apt way to express how it feels to have nature turn your life upside down. Here’s another good quote from it: quote:“Climate change is inherently uncanny: Weather conditions, and the high-carbon lifestyles that are changing them, are extremely familiar and yet have now been given a new menace and uncertainty.”
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Jun 7, 2022 00:19
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Still not really sorting as I need to get authors together (I own more than 2 Glen Cooks for example) but more shelving in progress: 3D Megadoodoo posted:I don't know why, but I don't like the way it looks when the books are flush with the shelf. I keep a VHS cassette case (some movie with Mastroianni I think) in the study for the express purpose of pushing all the books back an even distance from the edge. I don't understand this but I'm happy you're happy with your shelves.
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Jun 7, 2022 01:11
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a foolish pianist posted:What does this post mean? Is this a thread joke I’ve missed? I've seen several variants of people noting that a creator stopped making fiction set in the present the year the iPhone came out.
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Jun 7, 2022 01:44
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StrixNebulosa posted:Still not really sorting as I need to get authors together (I own more than 2 Glen Cooks for example) but more shelving in progress:  E: oh gently caress shoulda chosen a less shameful shelf. Oh well 
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Jun 7, 2022 01:55
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Leng posted:Some book fairy must be listening because this has been on my TBR for a while. You probably already bought it, and I don't begrudge you at all, because I bought it myself the last time it was 3 dollars, but I should inform you that Dan Simmons is worse than Orson Scott Card in terms of his politics being at odds with the humanity of his writing.
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Jun 7, 2022 06:01
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FPyat posted:You probably already bought it, and I don't begrudge you at all, because I bought it myself the last time it was 3 dollars, but I should inform you that Dan Simmons is worse than Orson Scott Card in terms of his politics being at odds with the humanity of his writing. I don't know, seemed like he only had 1 or 2 chapters per book with Muslim bloodbaths. Of course, that was before 9/11.
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Jun 7, 2022 06:25
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FPyat posted:You probably already bought it, and I don't begrudge you at all, because I bought it myself the last time it was 3 dollars, but I should inform you that Dan Simmons is worse than Orson Scott Card in terms of his politics being at odds with the humanity of his writing. He wrote some pretty excellent books but yeah unfortunately he suffered some kind of existential soul collapse after 9/11 after which he progressively got crazier and shittier. Hyperion is one of my favorite books of all time but the mind that wrote it is long, long gone.
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Jun 7, 2022 06:43
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pradmer posted:Eon by Greg Bear - $2.99 Good stuff.
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Jun 7, 2022 12:20
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FPyat posted:I've seen several variants of people noting that a creator stopped making fiction set in the present the year the iPhone came out. I’m fascinated by the way ‘the phone dump’ is required in movies/tv/books and how it’s executed.
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Jun 7, 2022 12:34
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Sinatrapod posted:He wrote some pretty excellent books but yeah unfortunately he suffered some kind of existential soul collapse after 9/11 after which he progressively got crazier and shittier. Hyperion is one of my favorite books of all time but the mind that wrote it is long, long gone. I've always wondered how a guy who wrote Flashback (a book in which Obama destroys America) or those weird blog posts (in which he time traveled back to visit himself and warn against the future caliphate) copes with the passage of time. Like, Obama came, Obama went, America's still here. The global caliphate hasn't materialized. How do you rationalize this stuff? I guess Flashback is set in 2034 so we have another 12 years to discover that climate change is fake, sell the government to the Japanese, yield the southwest to Mexican supergangs and establish global caliphate. Keep it up Dan
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Jun 7, 2022 15:14
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General Battuta posted:I've always wondered how a guy who wrote Flashback (a book in which Obama destroys America) or those weird blog posts (in which he time traveled back to visit himself and warn against the future caliphate) copes with the passage of time. Like, Obama came, Obama went, America's still here. The global caliphate hasn't materialized. How do you rationalize this stuff? "My daring and evocative speculative fiction was monumental enough to change the course of history" 
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Jun 7, 2022 15:19
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General Battuta posted:I guess Flashback is set in 2034 so we have another 12 years to discover that climate change is fake, sell the government to the Japanese, yield the southwest to Mexican supergangs and establish global caliphate. Keep it up Dan
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Jun 7, 2022 15:19
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General Battuta posted:I've always wondered how a guy who wrote Flashback (a book in which Obama destroys America) or those weird blog posts (in which he time traveled back to visit himself and warn against the future caliphate) copes with the passage of time. Like, Obama came, Obama went, America's still here. The global caliphate hasn't materialized. How do you rationalize this stuff? Any Day Now is a pretty powerful belief, no matter what it's attached to.
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Jun 7, 2022 15:21
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tokenbrownguy posted:The Windup Girl and The Water Knife by Paulo Bacigalupi are the books I think when this topic comes up. The latter is probably more well-known but the former is truly excellent. Weird economies of physically stored energy in springs, ancient orders of monks dedicated to preserving seed banks, hundreds-foot seawalls keeping coastal regions in bizarre pocket-cities. Both are great and so are the three Shipbreaker books. They're marketed as YA but I cannot understand why. Sometimes you pick up a YA book, say Steelheart, and within 20 pages you're like "oh this is written for children" and sometimes you pick up a YA book, say The Knife of Never Letting Go, and the themes and language and "sensitive material" are indistinguishable from anything you'd read in a novel "for adults". I have no idea what qualifies a book as YA but I imagine it has to do with marketers cramming a whole bunch of unlike novels into a very hot genre.
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Jun 7, 2022 15:39
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General Battuta posted:I've always wondered how a guy who wrote Flashback (a book in which Obama destroys America) or those weird blog posts (in which he time traveled back to visit himself and warn against the future caliphate) copes with the passage of time. Like, Obama came, Obama went, America's still here. The global caliphate hasn't materialized. How do you rationalize this stuff? People heeded his warning and didn't let Obama destroy America, the book saved the day you see.
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Jun 7, 2022 18:12
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Opopanax posted:People heeded his warning and didn't let Obama destroy America, the book saved the day you see. Yep, by getting Americans to elect Donald Trump, his boo- Sorry, can't type any more as I'm too busy throwing up in my mouth.
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Jun 7, 2022 18:17
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General Battuta posted:I've always wondered how a guy who wrote Flashback (a book in which Obama destroys America) or those weird blog posts (in which he time traveled back to visit himself and warn against the future caliphate) copes with the passage of time. Like, Obama came, Obama went, America's still here. The global caliphate hasn't materialized. How do you rationalize this stuff? I think it's always pretty easy to just say "well I got some of the details wrong but the spirit of the thing was correct."
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Jun 7, 2022 19:22
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Finished my Blindsight reread. Just a marvelous novel that is so densely packed with ideas about intelligence, consciousness, the nature of self, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, etc. A masterpiece. Now I'm reading a book about uplifted spiders? It kicks rear end. Speak of uplift, which Brin book do you prefer Startide Rising or Uplift War zoux fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jun 7, 2022 |
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Jun 7, 2022 20:59
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zoux posted:Both are great and so are the three Shipbreaker books. They're marketed as YA but I cannot understand why. Sometimes you pick up a YA book, say Steelheart, and within 20 pages you're like "oh this is written for children" and sometimes you pick up a YA book, say The Knife of Never Letting Go, and the themes and language and "sensitive material" are indistinguishable from anything you'd read in a novel "for adults". I have no idea what qualifies a book as YA but I imagine it has to do with marketers cramming a whole bunch of unlike novels into a very hot genre. It is almost completely marketing. Though sometimes it is just "this was written for children but also has horrifying sensitive material," like the Animorphs is explicitly marketed to children (Published by Scholastic, who only deals with children's books), but the very first book alone involves a group of children watch a noble hero be literally eaten alive in front of them, and their brave attempt to save prisoners end up with almost all of them dying, most of them burned to death by a flamethrower monster in front of their eyes. I cherished those books.
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Jun 7, 2022 22:34
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The Knife of Never Letting Go made me weep during my lunch break at the bookstore I used to work at. I couldn't deal with that series as it went on, too harrowing.
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Jun 7, 2022 22:40
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todd?
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Jun 7, 2022 22:44
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moonmazed posted:todd? 
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Jun 7, 2022 22:47
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I just finished the Revelation Space series and I'm triply impressed by Reynolds' world building. But the ending left me a bit hanging. Is there a book of him that maybe provides some closure? Wiki tells me Inhibitor Phase is the natural sequel, but the cover reads more like a standalone novel like Chasm City. A short scour of the net recommends Galactic North but I'm a bit afraid of spoilering myself by checking the synopsys. Is this the go to book to get some sense of connecting loose ties and some semblence of an ending?
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Jun 7, 2022 22:52
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General Battuta posted:I've always wondered how a guy who wrote Flashback (a book in which Obama destroys America) or those weird blog posts (in which he time traveled back to visit himself and warn against the future caliphate) copes with the passage of time. Like, Obama came, Obama went, America's still here. The global caliphate hasn't materialized. How do you rationalize this stuff?
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Jun 7, 2022 22:52
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"Hyperion" made it pretty obvious Simmons was a weird creep. It's just that with fantasy authors the charts are way different to normal people.
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Jun 7, 2022 23:12
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Uprooted by Naomi Novik - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KUQIU7O/ Theft of Swords (Riyria Revelations #1) by Michael J Sullivan - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XWBUKK/
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Jun 7, 2022 23:47
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Kchama posted:A lot of Turtledove's issues is that he doesn't know poo poo about history, thinks he knows history, and also writes as if his massive alterations in history he uses to do his alt-history stories would change literally nothing. Saying that he doesn't know poo poo about history is going too far - he is a professional historian with a doctorate in Byzantine history. A lot of what he gets completely wrong is from bad sources, while most of the rest is screwups that you have to be a specialist (or specifically fact-checking him) to really notice. The Shakespeare book in particular has a lot of errors of that sort - he conflates the Church of England with the later Puritan movement, has Shakespeare performing plays that were not written yet at the time, and show him writing plays that a Spanish occupier would probably have prohibited. But it is hardly fair to expect somebody to know the fine details of a schism in an entirely different religion from theirs, the timeline of when the great plays of Shakespeare were written is incredibly fuzzy, and the subtext that would offend the Spanish in that setting is something you have to analyze the works in great detail to notice. Most of his divergences from history, however, are more basic - he ignores things that don't make the story work.
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Jun 7, 2022 23:48
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Kchama posted:It is almost completely marketing. And the age of the protagonist. I don't think I've seen a YA without a teen or pre-teen protagonist. That said, Shipbreaker really tackles some tough issues and I'd be hesitant to recommend it to a kid the age of the protagonist. I seem to remember there was a moderate amount of drug addiction, child abuse, child soldiers committing atrocities, etc.
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Jun 7, 2022 23:54
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The majority of YA readers are in their 20s and 30s, so the name of the genre really refers to the protagonist's age and related themes (coming of age, first romance, etc)
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Jun 8, 2022 00:18
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FPyat posted:You probably already bought it, and I don't begrudge you at all, because I bought it myself the last time it was 3 dollars, but I should inform you that Dan Simmons is worse than Orson Scott Card in terms of his politics being at odds with the humanity of his writing.  I honestly haven't made up my mind on where I stand with these kinds of things. But no, I have been procrastinating and not yet bought said book and so...pradmer posted:Uprooted by Naomi Novik - $1.99 ...I might get this instead. I really enjoyed Spinning Silver.
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Jun 8, 2022 00:39
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zoux posted:Finished my Blindsight reread. Just a marvelous novel that is so densely packed with ideas about intelligence, consciousness, the nature of self, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, etc. A masterpiece. It's not even a contest, Startide is leagues better because dolphins > chimps Mikojan posted:A short scour of the net recommends Galactic North but I'm a bit afraid of spoilering myself by checking the synopsys. Is this the go to book to get some sense of connecting loose ties and some semblence of an ending? Galactic North doesn't really spoil anything, since there's nothing to spoil between the epilogue of Absolution Gap and the ending of Galactic North. It will give you closure in the sense of, here's how it all turns out. It probably won't give you emotional closure. Inhibitor Phase fits between the last chapter of Absolution Gap and the epilogue of Absolution Gap. It's more of a sequel to Redemption Ark than it is to Absolution Gap, since it picks up a bunch of threads from Ark - Clavain, the people left behind on Ararat, how to actually fight the Inhibitors. It's better if you've read Galactic North first because it digs into some Nestbuilder stuff.
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Jun 8, 2022 00:45
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Gnoman posted:Saying that he doesn't know poo poo about history is going too far - he is a professional historian with a doctorate in Byzantine history. Knowing about Byzantine history doesn't mean you know poo poo about, say, English history, or the Civil War. And that is where you get a lot of "don't know poo poo"ness, since you can easily fool yourself into thinking your knowledge in one specific subject is broadly applicable. I do dispute that you'd have to be a specialist or specifically fact-checking him to notice as even with my basic high-school rear end knowledge of stuff I noticed a lot of the mistakes related to Shakespeare. It wasn't even really the timeline of when they were written, but the fact that they were suppose to have been written with the Spanish as the audience, seemingly unchanged. And yaknow, if I was writing a story where the plot hinged on historical knowledge of a specific thing, I'd prolly do a lil research on that topic. I might not be able to research everything and make no mistakes, but one should be able to tell that the Puritans had lost power and prestige considering it is a common idea that the Puritans came to America seeking 'religious freedom'. You don't leave to another country for 'freedom' if you are the dominant faction. Xenix posted:And the age of the protagonist. I don't think I've seen a YA without a teen or pre-teen protagonist. That said, Shipbreaker really tackles some tough issues and I'd be hesitant to recommend it to a kid the age of the protagonist. I seem to remember there was a moderate amount of drug addiction, child abuse, child soldiers committing atrocities, etc. Yeah that's part of the marketing these days. Pre-teen seem pretty common to me, though. And yeah, Animorphs was totally into that stuff, too. It's a series about constant fear and paranoia and they commit more than a few atrocities and become war criminals as child soldiers, and I ate it up as a kid. Kchama fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 01:21
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I liked Activation Degredation by Marina J. Lostetter, pretty sure I got it from a thread rec here when it was on sale It was sort of a hornier Murderbot with a meat robot character literally just born and sent to fight aliens by a handler who they soon discover is not telling the robot a lot. It's more learning and communicating than murder but there are action sequences. A lot of the communication stuff is backed into the narrative because of the initial terms the robot uses and then later changes as it learns. Trying to be vague on purpose though you can probably already figure out one of the initial twists just by how vague I am being lol. 
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Jun 8, 2022 01:22
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The Knife of Never Letting Go is YA because the perspective character is a teenager. Or about to be, at the start. Animorphs is middle grade because it's written simply and has a lot of TSSSSEEEEWWWW TSSSSEEEEEEEEWWWW sound effects. If there's a bit where a character excitedly recounts the time she got dismembered in battle and started using her severed arm as a club to her horrified... science fiction different personality clone, it's still middle grade. That's fine. Also I think Scholastic had stopped actually reading the books before they published them at that point. I've also heard that YA books don't have more than one plotline going on at once, but I'm not sure about that one.
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Jun 8, 2022 01:48
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