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quantumfoam posted:David Brin is a baby boomer generation contrarian rear end in a top hat that has been coddled his entire professional life. Glory Season is interesting because it's clearly written to be part of / inspired by the hainish cycle. And it's garbage, the answer to "what if Ursula Le Guin couldn't plot a book and was also poo poo at writing and an all around creepy guy". It's one of the few books I have actively hate read to the end just to make sure I hated it the exact right amount. My point is that if you put me in charge of eugenics David brin would be on my list of dudes to sterilize and probably organ harvest. Dunno why he's so gung ho to establish a master race when he's one of the last people that would be included. RDM fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Aug 15, 2022 |
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Aug 15, 2022 22:39
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American Gods by Neil Gaiman - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YW4L5K/ The Eye of the World (Wheel of Time #1) by Robert Jordan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002U3CCYM/ A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld #32) by Terry Pratchett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000R4LGMA/ Blood of Elves (Witcher #1) by Andrzej Sapkowski - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00276HAEY/ Age of Ash (Kithamar #1) by Daniel Abraham - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0976XDNF2/
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Aug 15, 2022 22:41
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quantumfoam posted:David Brin is a baby boomer generation contrarian rear end in a top hat that has been coddled his entire professional life. Should have known to search 770 first. It seems like most of the stories involves in-person stuff, which means you have to dig through various blogs for the details. Here he is getting a drink dumped on him back in 2003: https://web.archive.org/web/20050219010352/http://www.livejournal.com/users/papersky/35050.html And more commentary: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002513.html
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Aug 15, 2022 22:55
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moonmazed posted:he's like a jigsaw puzzle factory that always uses the same pattern, no matter what's painted on it
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Aug 15, 2022 22:58
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Tezer posted:"I know interspecies marriages are for business. It’s just, well — Aw, I thought this was sweet. They’re consenting adult humanoids.
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Aug 15, 2022 23:02
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If the concept of the Uplift universe still sounds sort of interesting to anyone after the past page of posts, skip David Brin entirely and go to the original source, which is: Cordwainer Smith's Underpeople that appear in a bunch of his Instrumentality of Mankind series stories. Underpeople in the Cordwainer Smith definition are animals physically and mentally uplifted to be near-human in body shape and near-human in intelligence. Underpeople exist as servants for humankind in Smith's universe setting, some Underpeople look really close to humans (the cat-people basically), other Underpeople are essentially slave-labor doing things technology couldn't do perform back when these stories were originally written in the 1950's/1960's. Just be aware that Cordwainer Smith isn't called the godfather of the furry movement for nothing, and that the origin story of the Instrumentality setting is 175% Nazi white-washing in the best Operation Paperclip sense.
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Aug 15, 2022 23:06
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I really like Startide Rising, I think it’s great.
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Aug 15, 2022 23:20
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I thought the idea that "creating" intelligent life is what separates the men from the boys on the galactic stage was kind of a novel idea when I first read the uplift books. Humans barely avoiding being conquered, and now being on the low end of the totem pole in a galactic community is clearly something that has influenced a lot of other authors since too. That's also a thing in the aforementioned small angry planet book. That said, I don't remember if I finished the series. I doubt it, since I don't remember much aside from the general concept, a bunch of political intrigue and a lot of surprise attacks. I think I just got a whole pile of the pocketbooks dropped in my lap at worldcon by a well-meaning elder fan.
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Aug 15, 2022 23:21
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i like tales of a Jump space accountant or whatever it's called. there's 4 or 5 of them about a brilliant but martially incompetent accountant/intelligence operative in his barely-holding-on space colony that hasn't been contacted by any jumpships or the greater Empire in generations
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Aug 15, 2022 23:40
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General Battuta posted:Aw, I thought this was sweet. They’re consenting adult humanoids. More wholesome cross-species romance, please. The gayer the better.
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Aug 15, 2022 23:42
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It doesn't look like Graydon is reopening the email list, so perhaps we should reopen the Commonweal thread?
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Aug 16, 2022 00:29
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ToxicFrog posted:I just found it amusing that Tezer had Brin at the top of the "aliens don't gently caress" list when one of the main things I remember about his books, a decade+ on, is how horny they are. It was a revealing look at a huge reading blind spot I have. The quote was just to hammer home how wrong I was. Also, I thought the set-up reminded me of junky erotica, business turning to pleasure, etc. etc.
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Aug 16, 2022 00:32
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cultureulterior posted:It doesn't look like Graydon is reopening the email list, so perhaps we should reopen the Commonweal thread? We already made a new one: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4006013&perpage=40&pagenumber=1&noseen=1
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Aug 16, 2022 00:49
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cultureulterior posted:It doesn't look like Graydon is reopening the email list, so perhaps we should reopen the Commonweal thread? There's a new thread we've been using.
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Aug 16, 2022 00:53
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ToxicFrog posted:More wholesome cross-species romance, please. The gayer the better. I just read How to Get a Girlfriend When You're a Terrifying Monster, because it was written by a New Zealand author, which was wholesome and sweet and quite gay. Very light and fanficcy, in that sort of ineffable way that Winter's Orbit and A Marvelous Light are, but I enjoyed it well enough. I mean, it's a romance novella written by a romance writer, so don't expect high literature, but it was cute and fun. Edit: A link for people who don't want to order a physical book to be shipped from NZ for some reason cptn_dr fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Aug 16, 2022 |
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Aug 16, 2022 01:22
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I get why Vonnegut wouldn't classify himself as an SF writer. Genre stuff is dumb and it inevitably leads to pointless arguing, but here goes anyway. Usually he's doing outright satire and poking fun at genre tropes, while at the same time using them in poignant ways. His books are always character focused with the SF ideas used as a tool to examine human behavior. I know other SF has always done this, but rarely to the degree Vonnegut did it in his day. He rarely lingers on the coolness or awe factor of the technology, except maybe in Unready to Wear. He's always placing his humans in ludicrous situations that give him an opportunity to look at some aspect of present society (Vonnegut's era) so that he can allow the story to make didactic points without it feeling like he's ramming his opinions down your throat. Sometimes this is very offensive and I think it's supposed to be. Look at Welcome to the Monkey House and it's concept of overpopulation and "corrective rape", or the way society falls apart at the end of Player Piano as a response to the SF genre's generally utopian visions of automation, and Harrison Bergeron as a response to social equality. These stories are shocking in ways that most SF never tries to be. Some people might argue that they weren't shocking back in the day, but I don't think that's true. Vonnegut always crosses the line if he can find it. I think he knew exactly what buttons he was pushing, and offending reader sensibilities is what defines his writing.
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Aug 16, 2022 01:26
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cptn_dr posted:I just read How to Get a Girlfriend When You're a Terrifying Monster, because it was written by a New Zealand author, which was wholesome and sweet and quite gay. Very light and fanficcy, in that sort of ineffable way that Winter's Orbit and A Marvelous Light are, but I enjoyed it well enough. I mean, it's a romance novella written by a romance writer, so don't expect high literature, but it was cute and fun.
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Aug 16, 2022 05:12
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Finished up The Warrior by Stephen Aryan, the sequel to The Coward. Was a pretty good, if weird book, but the ending is just so sudden and deus ex machina that it kinda sucks. It really feels like he was working for a big story and got told to make it a two parter a few weeks before the book was due. Worth a read if you liked The Coward. Stupid_Sexy_Flander fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Aug 16, 2022 |
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Aug 16, 2022 06:46
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MartingaleJack posted:I get why Vonnegut wouldn't classify himself as an SF writer. Genre stuff is dumb and it inevitably leads to pointless arguing, but here goes anyway. Usually he's doing outright satire and poking fun at genre tropes, while at the same time using them in poignant ways. I don't know man, this just reads like pointless snobbery. "He'd be a science fiction writer, except the stuff he writes is good, therefore it's not science fiction." "other science fiction does character focused and has always done it, but he did it more, except for the rare times when others also did it to the same degree?" "he doesn't linger on the cool tech, except sometimes, and also maybe in this one book when he does?" like I mean I get it, I wouldn't want my sharply satirical, transgressive, and pessimistic yet humanist book about how war is horrible, meaningless, and creates trauma that shapes a person's entire life to be lumped in with Isaac Asimov's No Characters Allowed, Technical Solutions Only writing club. but you sure don't see, say, Ursula le Guin feeling like she needs to say "oh no I'm not writing science fiction, that's for peasants, I'm better than that". To be clear, I like Kurt Vonnegut, but this oh-me?-i'm-not-like-other-girls business is embarrassing.
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Aug 16, 2022 07:22
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The way Ellison puts it, the genre thing is mostly to do with marketing and having his books next to covers with "a woman getting molested by a space monster" at the book store. Yet there is always a tinge smugness about his explanation.
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Aug 16, 2022 08:57
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Whale Vomit posted:The way Ellison puts it, the genre thing is mostly to do with marketing and having his books next to covers with "a woman getting molested by a space monster" at the book store. Yet there is always a tinge smugness about his explanation. Ellison was an awful human being lmao
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Aug 16, 2022 09:35
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If you want a really upsetting cross-species romance then Paul Park's Coelestis/Celestis is a good pick.
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Aug 16, 2022 10:46
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sebmojo posted:Ellison was an awful human being lmao am I still not over learning about the delany/nambla thing? who knows
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Aug 16, 2022 12:37
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:man if that's a disqualifying factor say goodbye to like half the golden age If you want to kill off any remaining enthusiasm for Delany, google Delany + Hogg. Harlan Ellison was definitely a terrible human being to the point where only Hollywood producers and self-aggrandizing BigName sci-fi authors that awarded each other with Hugo and Nebula and Locus Awards in an endless cycle would willingly deal with him. On the other hand, Ellison had solid grounds for loathing scifi-fans, as per his Xenogenesis open letter/statement to sci-fi fandom. In regards to Vonnegut and being unable to classify him as pure sci-fi or pure mainstream fiction re: SFWA, Thomas Pynchon never seemed to engender those same feelings.
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Aug 16, 2022 14:12
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cptn_dr posted:I just read How to Get a Girlfriend When You're a Terrifying Monster, because it was written by a New Zealand author, which was wholesome and sweet and quite gay. Very light and fanficcy, in that sort of ineffable way that Winter's Orbit and A Marvelous Light are, but I enjoyed it well enough. I mean, it's a romance novella written by a romance writer, so don't expect high literature, but it was cute and fun. To save anyone else the search: the ebook version appears to be amazon-exclusive.  fez_machine posted:If you want a really upsetting cross-species romance then Paul Park's Coelestis/Celestis is a good pick. "really upsetting" is kind of the opposite of what I'm after, generally.
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Aug 16, 2022 14:13
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One final kick versus David Brin. I'd like to re-bring up the time back in 1992 where David Brin preemptively melted the hell down over the upcoming release of a Hollywood movie called Cool World because Ralph Bakshi was involved with it.
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Aug 16, 2022 14:21
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Recently finished Comeuppance Served Cold by Marion Deeds. It was a fun little magical heist set in Seattle in 1929. I know some folks enjoy heists, and others like different magical settings, so yeah. Give it a shot (probably from the library).
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Aug 16, 2022 14:43
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quantumfoam posted:One final kick versus David Brin. If I remember a rant that was included in one of Brin's short story collections, he mostly hated "Wizards". I've never seen it, so I don't remember why. Something about the supposed good guys being nazis? Also Bakshi was kind of notorious for ripping off other people's work without permission.
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Aug 16, 2022 15:50
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https://twitter.com/prawn_meat/status/1559361445779107840 Ok is anyone going to fess up?
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Aug 16, 2022 15:53
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drat they found admiral zex's tablet
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Aug 16, 2022 15:58
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I was about to say that's mine.
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Aug 16, 2022 16:33
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NoneMoreNegative posted:https://twitter.com/prawn_meat/status/1559361445779107840 I've got similar levels of paranormal romance bullshit on mine, but I don't go for the alien abductions so sorry, not mine. e: I also use cover mode because it's neat to judge books by their covers
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Aug 16, 2022 16:37
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no chuck
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Aug 16, 2022 16:39
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NoneMoreNegative posted:https://twitter.com/prawn_meat/status/1559361445779107840 Sorry, I prefer my alien sex to be consentual from the start, so not mine
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Aug 16, 2022 17:03
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No Spar? They're not a true SF fan.
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Aug 16, 2022 17:20
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RDM posted:Glory Season is interesting because it's clearly written to be part of / inspired by the hainish cycle. And it's garbage, the answer to "what if Ursula Le Guin couldn't plot a book and was also poo poo at writing and an all around creepy guy". It's one of the few books I have actively hate read to the end just to make sure I hated it the exact right amount. The only redeeming part of Glory Season is how mad Brin got when it wasn't nominated for an Otherwise award (then still named Tiptree): http://www.lysator.liu.se/sf_archive/authors/B/Brin,David.mbox quote:HSF: Is there any particular reason why you think that feminist
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Aug 16, 2022 17:36
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General Battuta posted:I really like Startide Rising, I think it’s great. First grown up scifi book I ever read and it turned me into a life long fan of the genre.
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Aug 16, 2022 18:03
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General Battuta posted:I really like Startide Rising, I think it’s great. It's certainly a fun book but there's a lot about it that makes me go hmm. Like all the action and stuff is good, and the uplift setting is interesting but I feel like "the universe is ruled by alien forces who are unstoppably superior to us technologically and often in military skill, and have a very different value set than ours, and who are actively conspiring to prevent us from acquiring technology" should really be an occasion for genuine dread rather than the exasperation, which is all that any of the human characters in Uplift ever seem able to feel about the any of the Galactics. The thing that always feels missing from uplift is the idea that these incredibly powerful alien civilizations might have a point, and that just giving into them and being absorbed into their culture might be on the whole better for us.
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Aug 16, 2022 18:39
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FBH991 posted:It's certainly a fun book but there's a lot about it that makes me go hmm. Like all the action and stuff is good, and the uplift setting is interesting but I feel like "the universe is ruled by alien forces who are unstoppably superior to us technologically and often in military skill, and have a very different value set than ours, and who are actively conspiring to prevent us from acquiring technology" should really be an occasion for genuine dread rather than the exasperation, which is all that any of the human characters in Uplift ever seem able to feel about the any of the Galactics. It's definitely very "humanity gently caress yeah" and "humans are super duper cool and special" which was grating all the way through the three books of the series I read.
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Aug 16, 2022 18:49
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What are you guys, aliens or something? I mean you are literally welcoming our new insect overlords.
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Aug 16, 2022 18:51
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