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I’m about 2/3 through God Emperor and still enjoying them, plus I’d say Children was my favourite so far.
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Aug 13, 2022 02:14
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fez_machine posted:Just reading the Taking Flight synopsis when I was doing some digging inspired by this thread set off a bunch of red flags. Ex Machina
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Aug 13, 2022 03:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, sorry, Taking Flight is probably the outright worst book in the entire series, and so I haven't read it in probably twenty years, and I couldn' tell you what happens in it at all off the top of my head apart from "that's the bad one with the bird person." I think every time I've re-read the series I skipped it. Sorry, that's my bad and I should've warned you, hope you didn't start with that one. I did finish Taking Flight and it wasn't awful or vile in any sense once you get right down to it. The premise is essentially "a few people travel together for a while and then eventually stop traveling together." It was actually kind of cool to get to check in with Valder and Irideth after The Misenchanted Sword. Mostly I guess I was expecting something along the lines of a more grounded version of Discworld and not "eternal 15 year old girl who is also sexually active". That kind of caught me off guard. Meanwhile among the books I got were three more Ethshar novels: The Sorcerer's Widow, Relics of War and Stone Unturned.
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Aug 13, 2022 05:28
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I remember blood of the dragon being not a good book. I think it was because it was boring, but honestly once I file a book mentally under the "nope" category I kinda forget about it other than the title and a vague description. I think taking flight was just kinda weird and pointless, but it's definitely not one of the books I'd recommend to anyone who might want to try the series.
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Aug 13, 2022 05:34
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The rule of thumb with the Dune series is to keep reading until you reach a point where you say "this is stupid." Where that point is will be different for everyone, but once you reach that point, it will never get better for you.
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Aug 13, 2022 05:52
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It is never too early to stop reading Dune.
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Aug 13, 2022 05:57
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Read them all. Don't be a quitter
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Aug 13, 2022 05:58
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One of the most valuable lessons I learned is that you can stop reading a book if you don't like it.
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Aug 13, 2022 06:00
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DNF = (A) Decision (that is) Nice & Fine
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Aug 13, 2022 09:31
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Every time I've forced myself to finish a book it's been worse than the time before.
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Aug 13, 2022 09:36
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VostokProgram posted:Should I read any other Dune books besides the original? “Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'" Kalman posted:Read until you don’t want to keep going or until you’ve finished Chapterhouse. Under no circumstances read anything Dune that wasn’t written by Frank.
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Aug 13, 2022 10:32
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Just finished A Prayer for the Crown-Shy and it was great, a nice little slice of life story about a monk who meets a robot in the woods and travels to twee little villages to ask the big question: what do humans need? The stakes are nice and low, and it’s pretty short - a good summer afternoon read. Also read Slaughterhouse-Five, which is basically an anti-war novel with a light sci-fi window dressing (guy gets unstuck in time, living his life out of order). Funnier than I thought it would be, though it’s kind of a dry humour. All Quiet on the Western Front definitely isn’t a sci-fi novel, but if you’re into military sci-fi/fantasy you should give it a shot. A teenager fights in WWI, a bunch of people he grew up with dies, and then he has to go back to his hometown and hear all the old men talk about the war like it was a football game. Also read The God is Not Willing (nice to see a new Malazan novel, glad we got this instead of another dreary Tiste-whatever slog) and the Ravenor Omnibus (pretty good grimdark W40k adventure, wish it had more of the Eisenhorn-style side stories).
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Aug 13, 2022 17:22
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I wrote my A Level English lit coursework on Slaughterhouse Five not being a sci fi novel at all and just about a guy having a disassociative experience to rationalise his wartime trauma and I stand by that
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Aug 13, 2022 17:34
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No Dignity posted:I wrote my A Level English lit coursework on Slaughterhouse Five not being a sci fi novel at all and just about a guy having a disassociative experience to rationalise his wartime trauma and I stand by that always weird to me that he hit it so big as a "mainstream" author when he feels so SF (in a good way)
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Aug 13, 2022 17:36
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Dr Futurity by Philip K Dick - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008LQ1EUK/
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Aug 13, 2022 18:30
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No Dignity posted:I wrote my A Level English lit coursework on Slaughterhouse Five not being a sci fi novel at all and just about a guy having a disassociative experience to rationalise his wartime trauma and I stand by that DACK FAYDEN posted:Eh, Vonnegut had plenty of stuff that's unambiguously SF in genre (Sirens of Titan, for instance), I think it might legitimately be about a dude who's unstuck in time. That’s what’s great about that novel. It can be read either way and both readings are totally valid
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Aug 13, 2022 21:05
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Eh, Vonnegut had plenty of stuff that's unambiguously SF in genre (Sirens of Titan, for instance), I think it might legitimately be about a dude who's unstuck in time. Every Vonnegut novel is about a dude unstuck in time. Sometimes it's for a good reason, like being bombed in Dresden or in the middle of a planetary time quake, but sometimes it's just because they got caught dating a teaching assistant.
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Aug 13, 2022 21:13
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Eh, Vonnegut had plenty of stuff that's unambiguously SF in genre (Sirens of Titan, for instance), I think it might legitimately be about a dude who's unstuck in time. That's why Niven and Pournelle had Vonnegut in hell in their Inferno -- they were pissed that he was writing stuff using SF tropes while rejecting the label of "SF writer." Oh, and the comics adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five is excellent, too.
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Aug 13, 2022 21:47
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Selachian posted:That's why Niven and Pournelle had Vonnegut in hell in their Inferno -- they were pissed that he was writing stuff using SF tropes while rejecting the label of "SF writer." Charles Lippincott posted:LosCon is where I was heckled off the stage by writer Jerry Pournelle [after giving a presentation on the upcoming film Star Wars]. He really gave me a tough time, saying things like, "This is space opera. It's not science fiction."
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Aug 13, 2022 22:23
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Everything's genre until someone decides it's too good to be genre. Vonnegut is a fantastic writer though. More people should read mother night and breakfast of champions
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Aug 13, 2022 23:11
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I read Slaughterhouse Five as a sort of 3rd person autofiction once it became clear in the introduction that he wanted to write about what he saw and just couldn't, and had to tell about it through a person who had gotten the alien/time traveler perspective on death so he wouldn't be totally wrecked by it all. I haven't read Niven & Pournelle's Inferno but from what I have read from both of them I would have guessed it was because he said war is, like, bad, man.
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Aug 13, 2022 23:25
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I read Breakfast of Champions for the pictures.
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Aug 14, 2022 00:12
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*
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Aug 14, 2022 00:15
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It's funny to see Harlan Ellison make the same exact claim that sci-fi is a ghetto beneath him -- despite being more directly a creator in the science fiction genre while passive aggressively insulting his (more) accomplished peers.
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Aug 14, 2022 01:20
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Vienna Circlejerk posted:I read Slaughterhouse Five as a sort of 3rd person autofiction once it became clear in the introduction that he wanted to write about what he saw and just couldn't, and had to tell about it through a person who had gotten the alien/time traveler perspective on death so he wouldn't be totally wrecked by it all. I haven't read Niven & Pournelle's Inferno but from what I have read from both of them I would have guessed it was because he said war is, like, bad, man. They also had a circle of hell that was just stereotypical gay guys being run over with cars iirc
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Aug 14, 2022 01:50
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sebmojo posted:They also had a circle of hell that was just stereotypical gay guys being run over with cars iirc The people being run over by cars were polluters; gay people were in a desert of burning sand with fire raining on them. (And the authorial insert main character, faced with this, remembers his gay neighbors - “Quiet neighbors, friendly middle-aged people like any married couple without children” - and thinks that the punishment is totally inappropriate.)
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Aug 14, 2022 03:04
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Vienna Circlejerk posted:I read Slaughterhouse Five as a sort of 3rd person autofiction once it became clear in the introduction that he wanted to write about what he saw and just couldn't, and had to tell about it through a person who had gotten the alien/time traveler perspective on death so he wouldn't be totally wrecked by it all. I haven't read Niven & Pournelle's Inferno but from what I have read from both of them I would have guessed it was because he said war is, like, bad, man. yeah it's absolutely a way to work through PTSD like Hammers Slammers was for David Drake
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Aug 14, 2022 04:51
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Finished the Book of the New Sun last night after failing to get through the first few chapters many years ago. I don't think I've ever been quite so confused and satisfied at the same time. What a masterpiece.
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Aug 14, 2022 15:51
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Including urth?
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Aug 14, 2022 15:56
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Gaius Marius posted:Including urth? Not yet, still need to get my hands on a copy. Is it that necessary? As a matter of fact, are the short sun/long sun books good?
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Aug 14, 2022 17:03
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They're different. I didn't like any of them as much as the New Sun but they're worth reading if you enjoy Wolfe in general. Has anyone written anything like the New Sun recently?
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Aug 14, 2022 17:30
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Whale Vomit posted:It's funny to see Harlan Ellison make the same exact claim that sci-fi is a ghetto beneath him -- despite being more directly a creator in the science fiction genre while passive aggressively insulting his (more) accomplished peers. of couse, Philip K. Dick insisted that Stanislaw Lem did not exist and was a Communist construct
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Aug 14, 2022 19:58
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Chas McGill posted:Has anyone written anything like the New Sun recently?
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Aug 14, 2022 20:48
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Carrier posted:Not yet, still need to get my hands on a copy. Is it that necessary? As a matter of fact, are the short sun/long sun books good? It's a full sequel that makes what is very vague explicit while adding a whole lot more questions. Long and Short sun are fantastic, quite a few people will tell you Short sun is the best of the whole Solar Cycle, I don't know if I'll go that far, but I lean that way. The Long/Short sun is in form a sort of examination of different genres e.g Detective Fiction, Crime Fiction, Revolutionary Fiction, Natural disaster fiction, an Odyssey like journey, a disastrous expedition. Compared to New Sun being a sort of biblical project, it's also written in a very different style with each of the hundreds of characters talking in distinctive speech and written with some slang but a lot less archaic words. Silk is also just a huge breath of fresh air after dealing with the interesting but still weird as hell Severian. Silk just seems like a really nice dude who I want to hang out with and die in the service of.
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Aug 15, 2022 00:45
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silk is really boring imo, i much prefer severian
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Aug 15, 2022 00:53
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I can't stand what I've read of long sun fwiw, it's just endless scenes of people speculating about what the plot might be. I really fall off Wolfe after Soldier of arete, though that's not a common view so take it with a grain of salt.
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Aug 15, 2022 01:05
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sebmojo posted:I can't stand what I've read of long sun fwiw, it's just endless scenes of people speculating about what the plot might be. I really fall off Wolfe after Soldier of arete, though that's not a common view so take it with a grain of salt. How far did you get into it? By the third novel poo poo is happening so fast that I was really hoping they'd pump the breaks for a minute so I could catch up
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Aug 15, 2022 01:35
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anilEhilated posted:Closest I got to that feeling was Jeffrey Ford's Well-built City trilogy. Mind you, it's a lot less obtuse.
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Aug 15, 2022 01:50
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sebmojo posted:I can't stand what I've read of long sun fwiw, it's just endless scenes of people speculating about what the plot might be. I really fall off Wolfe after Soldier of arete, though that's not a common view so take it with a grain of salt. I feel like Wolfe is more an author's author than he is a reader's author. His stuff is technically brilliant and intricate and he's always doing neat things, but he often quite literally loses the plot and his books are often a lot more puzzle than they are story. I've read pretty much everything he's written. I respect his work. I doubt I'll read any of it again.
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Aug 15, 2022 01:56
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Gaius Marius posted:How far did you get into it? By the third novel poo poo is happening so fast that I was really hoping they'd pump the breaks for a minute so I could catch up Probably 2/3 of the way through book 2, so maybe that's the issue! I also didn't like wizard Knight or soldier of Sidon, so I gave up trying at that point.
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Aug 15, 2022 01:58
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