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withak posted:No worries, Brandon Sanderson will be able to finish it. Honestly, if he dies I'd expect his wife to finish it - she's a published author in her own right, and has been his sole research assistant on the LBJ books from day one.
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Jul 10, 2023 02:53
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My audiobook slot is currently taken up by Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, and it is glorious. I've started following along with the Book of the Month thread discussion of it from a couple years back, and the commentary from posters there is adding a great deal. You can absolutely see the genetics of this in Tolkien and Jacques. I wish we could get more books like this that are: 1) Ostensibly written for kids, but without talking down to them, and thus are interesting to adults as well 2) So loving joyful oh my god this is a romp. Everyone's having a blast all the time, and Robin and his band are just so much fun to "be around" Can highly recommend as something to insert between the heavy stuff that we're so fond of in this thread.
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Jul 10, 2023 02:57
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Finished the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik. A lot of fun apart from hitting a bit of a drag in the middle of book 2. Finished out pretty good, though.
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Jul 10, 2023 03:51
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Armauk posted:What’s the appeal for reading The Power Broker? I find this a mind-boggling question: it's a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of one of the most influential people in American history relatively few have heard of. Incidentally I'd ever heard of Robert Moses till I watched Edward Norton's Motherless Brooklyn. after that I found this book and devoured it. Armauk posted:but this is a tome. feels like this thread of any should appreciate extremely well-written long books. Armauk posted:Interesting a good e-book doesn’t exist. Took me about a month to listen to the audiobook and I enjoyed it immensely.
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Jul 10, 2023 18:50
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Kestral posted:
Definitely worth reading. I think every book in the series gets better personally. It's one of those books I wish there was a good audiobook reading of the series but they only ever did the first one.
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Jul 10, 2023 19:52
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Kestral posted:My audiobook slot is currently taken up by Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, and it is glorious. I've started following along with the Book of the Month thread discussion of it from a couple years back, and the commentary from posters there is adding a great deal. You can absolutely see the genetics of this in Tolkien and Jacques. I wish we could get more books like this that are: Have you read Ivanhoe?! It has a huge chunk of deeply unfortunate anti-semitism and is otherwise typical of the time but it's a similar sort of feeling to me.
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Jul 10, 2023 20:14
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Kestral posted:My audiobook slot is currently taken up by Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, and it is glorious. I've started following along with the Book of the Month thread discussion of it from a couple years back, and the commentary from posters there is adding a great deal. You can absolutely see the genetics of this in Tolkien and Jacques. I wish we could get more books like this that are: I'm so glad people are still enjoying that thread. Genuinely my favorite book and probably the best set of posts I've made on this forum.
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Jul 10, 2023 20:15
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Can he really do it justice? I have to imagine LBJ's presidency saw some story-important loving. but on the other hand, depending on how Sanderson feels about "bunghole" and "down where your nuts hang" we might lose important lore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zNMo8kl7Ac
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Jul 10, 2023 20:16
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBKJML5M Norman Spinrad is selling an unfinished novel on Amazon, in an attempt to find a publisher. So unfinished, in fact, that he couldn't even be bothered to proofread the blurb, which reads like a parody of new wave science fiction. I guess it could be worth checking out if you are a huge Norman Spinrad fan (yes, it is really him. He posted it on the SFWA forums.)
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Jul 10, 2023 21:45
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SimonChris posted:So unfinished, in fact, that he couldn't even be bothered to proofread the blurb, which reads like a parody of new wave science fiction. quote:The two main characters are a man and a woman who are citizens of a New York which is more second online electronic life than "real' and likewise their personalities. They don't like each other. Neither of them quite believe that the other one is real. They leave a second life party in a car, which is wrecked, and they find themselves bouncing threw a series of discontented realities trying to return to the Big Apple which is always in the far distance. Everything is real? Or is nothing real?
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Jul 10, 2023 21:53
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Deptfordx posted:Definitely worth reading. I think every book in the series gets better personally. Fair warning to anyone picking it up, from a 2023 perspective there are some eye wateringly uh problematic aspects, Julian has some herbertesque views on the gender dynamic and there's a lot of psychic space rape elves
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Jul 10, 2023 22:01
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Kestral posted:Speaking of bizarre 80s SF/F, finished The Many-Colored Land and man is that a trip. The dialogue is still godawful, but the premise of psychic alien colonizers of prehistoric Earth enslave time-traveling human exiles from the far future, and thereby becomes the basis for Welsh / Celtic / Breton mythology is so goddamn good that I'm going to have to at least read the second one. For the Pliocene Exile enjoyers in the thread, what's the structure of the series like? I got the impression from the afterword of Many-Colored Land that it's sort of a duology with Golden Torc, but I know there's four books in the series. These are some of my fave books of all time. Just a sucker for the sheer number of very distinctly drawn minor characters who show up and weave their way through the first four books, and there are so many great scenes that I'll happily pull off the shelf and flick through again. Definitely a set where you have no idea You have four books set in the past, and four books set in the Galactic Milieu (the other end of the time gate that you got fascinating glimpses of in the first books) - the second set have a focus on a particular family's history and don't go quite so ridiculous but I really enjoyed the aliens and it's one of those settings that's well-drawn enough that I'd like to live there. sebmojo posted:Fair warning to anyone picking it up, from a 2023 perspective there are some eye wateringly uh problematic aspects, Julian has some herbertesque views on the gender dynamic and there's a lot of psychic space rape elves Also later on a lot of this particular set of cultures are scientifically! more dynamic than others. - but at least people disagreeing with that in the fiction drives the plot.
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Jul 10, 2023 22:41
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Also probably lucky that these books came out just early enough that nobody's tried to draw fan-art of the alien Gi.
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Jul 10, 2023 22:50
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xiw posted:Also probably lucky that these books came out just early enough that nobody's tried to draw fan-art of the alien Gi. I'm sure there's some in a fanzine or twenty somewhere...
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Jul 10, 2023 22:59
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Dune Messiah (Dune #2) by Frank Herbert - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0011UGNDG/ Oryx and Crake (Maddaddam #1) by Margaret Atwood - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1BNI/ Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08F43JYDN/ Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC11A6/ Against All Gods (Age of Bronze #1) by Miles Cameron - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09K78SJV3/ Coraline by Neil Gaiman - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1192/ The Sandman: Book of Dreams by Neil Gaiman - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XMTN71L/ The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PI181JI/
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Jul 10, 2023 23:23
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HopperUK posted:Have you read Ivanhoe?! Anti-semitism, but on the part of the characters rather than the author, surely? Isaac and Rebecca are unambiguously not villains in the story and much of the plot is driven by their persecution, which is historically accurate.
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Jul 11, 2023 00:52
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DACK FAYDEN posted:how bad could it... I read part of the sample because I like Spinrad, and good Lord. To be fair, it's an unedited first draft so of course it's going to suck, but it barely qualifies as readable. (edit:) Okay, I finished reading the sample because I'm a masochist and it's just ... sad. It feels like self-parody. And I thought He Walked Among Us was the lowest Spinrad was ever going to hit. Selachian fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 01:08
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How old is spinrad now?
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Jul 11, 2023 01:13
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:How old is spinrad now? 83 in a couple of months.
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Jul 11, 2023 01:44
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SimonChris posted:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBKJML5M Bought immediately, no idea who this dude is but that blurb reads like fiction as told by an inebriated Zuckerburg.
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Jul 11, 2023 01:47
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Danhenge posted:I liked it pretty well, enough that I'd read more by the same author, but not enough that it'll be on my list of favorites for the year. I think the ending kind of dragged a little. That said, I suspect other posters might enjoy it more than I did! It does a pretty nice job of painting a picture that implies a weirder and more complex world than we see. For instance (minor spoiler, not super plot relevant)it seems like the story takes place on a colony world where there used to be some sort of space station orbiting the planet that a lot of people lived on. It's not totally relevant to the plot, but there are oblique hints a few times. I'm about 500 pages in (its 900+ on my reading app) and man I think I am going to have to give up and try again later. I think I read through the earlier chapters too fast because I was like "Ok and then what?? and then what????" constantly, the world is super super intriguing and the main character is an endearing poo poo who only kind of knows what's going on and is pissed his ex is allowed to talk to his new boyfriend. But yeah, I think I read it too fast so now I have no idea what the gently caress is going on. Very good book.
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Jul 11, 2023 03:32
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pradmer posted:Against All Gods (Age of Bronze #1) by Miles Cameron - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09K78SJV3/ Artifact Space also looks like it's on sale (at least on Kobo), and is also really good
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Jul 11, 2023 03:48
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big dyke energy posted:I'm about 500 pages in (its 900+ on my reading app) and man I think I am going to have to give up and try again later. I think I read through the earlier chapters too fast because I was like "Ok and then what?? and then what????" constantly, the world is super super intriguing and the main character is an endearing poo poo who only kind of knows what's going on and is pissed his ex is allowed to talk to his new boyfriend. But yeah, I think I read it too fast so now I have no idea what the gently caress is going on. Very good book. To its credit, there's a lot happening in the book and it never really infodumps (except maybe near the end?) so a lot of what's happening has to be inferred from context.
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Jul 11, 2023 04:28
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Kestral posted:I read a book in the exact middle of this series when I was like eight after picking it up randomly at a library because its cover looks like this: Oh we talking about whacky 80s SF/F pulp? Let me introduce you to my favorite, The Ayes of Texas trilogy by Daniel Da Cruz. Set in a future in which the USSR is kicking the United State's rear end in the Cold War, Texas secedes and takes matters into their own hands. In the first book a good ol' boy oil tycoon arms a battleship to the teeth with modern weapons and mans it with disabled veterans and sends it off to kick commie rear end and things only escalate from there. The best way I can pitch this series is by describing a scene from the third book: The Soviet's launch a massive land invasion of Texas, landing a fuckton of tanks out of the gulf. A massive force of tanks is moving through a huge flat area when they start to bog down a bit. They come to the stop and the commander gets out to have a look. As he is investigating the mud he realizes it isn't water, it's oil! At that moment a motherfucking dude on a white horse dressed as the lone ranger appears on a nearby hill and pulls out a bow, lights an arrow on fire, and shoots it into the field immolating the entire tank force. It's fuckin' rad and everybody should read it.
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Jul 11, 2023 05:44
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Selachian posted:I read part of the sample because I like Spinrad, and good Lord. To be fair, it's an unedited first draft so of course it's going to suck, but it barely qualifies as readable. Apparently his latest publication was a novella in Asimov's, starring brilliant entrepreneur "Elon Tesla", who monologues about how he saved humanity with his Mars rockets. How the mighty have fallen.
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Jul 11, 2023 07:54
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Leng posted:I ended up starting on In the Shadow of Lightning. Read six chapters before dinner and it's been kind of eh. The opening isn't as strong as Promise of Blood and the constant use of "glass_____" or "____glass" got grating fast. We get female POVs though, and so far those are much improved! But every time a battle-hardened veteran shouts "glassdamn" or "piss and poo poo" as a swear (which was often) made me eyeroll so I read the third Sanderson secret project instead Leng posted:The book opens, by the way, with "A Brief Glossary of Common Godglass" (14 types listed, with such names as "auraglass", "cureglass", "dazeglass", "fearglass", "omniglass", and "hammerglass"). The glass mages are called "glassdancers". At one point I was reading about a glassdancer drinking whisky out of a glass saying "glassdamnit" while making the glass bottles behind the bar explode in a fit of rage because the dodgy bartender couldn't supply him with any skyglass after which he says "glassdamn" because when he leaves, he runs into somebody from his past who convinces him to get into a private carriage stamped with a silic symbol and pours said glassdancer a glass of sherry. Glass glass glass glass glass. I have now finished In the Shadow of Lightning. The use of "glass", "piss" and "piss and poo poo" as the only in-world fantasy swears does not get better. If anything, it gets worse, with phrases like "bloody as piss" just thrown in there where I'm like...okay, I see what you're trying to do here but it's just a stretch too far because piss, generally, isn't bloody so my brain has to go through several rounds of acrobatics to consider things like "well maybe that's the point, the point is that piss isn't normally bloody and if it's bloody like piss it's bloody like there's something wrong with your kidneys and you're pissing blood which is Not Good" and by the time my brain's done that, I'm completely out of the story. The plot is fairly by the numbers. There are twists but the kind of twists where 9 in 10 times I read a line and go "aha, this is the traitor/object/method/etc" and not in a "that was a puzzle that took me a while to piece together so I really, really want to be proved right" way. There is a romantic subplot in there that I don't buy because of the lack of chemistry between the two characters in question but it doesn't detract from the main plot so I wasn't too bothered by its presence (other than the brief "...why?" that crossed my mind). The final reveal of oh hey, it was Overall a very eh read. I don't plan on continuing with the series. I've now moved on to The Burning God and I don't immediately hate anything so far, so yay? I am apparently 67 of 124 reserves for Yellowface which is a crazy long line of reserves for my library. I wonder if it'll be the book that finally convinces me of the RF Kuang hype.
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Jul 11, 2023 09:17
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Gaius Marius posted:Bought immediately, no idea who this dude is but that blurb reads like fiction as told by an inebriated Zuckerburg. His best book is probably The Iron Dream which is a satire that exposes much of the latent fascist underbelly of pulp Science Fiction by being a completely in-universe Hugo winning book by Adolf HItler if had emigrated and become an SF writer rather than a dictator.
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Jul 11, 2023 12:08
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Even that is a great idea with mediocre execution.
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Jul 11, 2023 12:27
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StrixNebulosa posted:RIGHT we also missed this big release: This was pages ago but oh poo poo this sounds fantastic, I'm in.
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Jul 11, 2023 12:43
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Quorum posted:This was pages ago but oh poo poo this sounds fantastic, I'm in. Yeah I did look that one up and then I saw it was like £16 for the paperback and decided not to spring for it right now
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Jul 11, 2023 12:46
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anilEhilated posted:Even that is a great idea with mediocre execution. Yeah, it's not worth actually reading.
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Jul 11, 2023 13:06
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Megazver posted:Yeah, it's not worth actually reading. It's great that it exists and it has some fab covers but yeah, it's a really good imitation of lovely racist pulp sf so...
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Jul 11, 2023 13:39
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https://michellesagara.com/full-cover-another-indigo-promotion/ https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/shards-of-glass-a-novel/9780778305224-item.html  Cover reveal / summary for Michelle Sagara's latest novel! quote:
500+ pages, seems to be set in her Cast in [x] series but works as a standalone. I'm excited!
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Jul 11, 2023 16:17
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fez_machine posted:His best book is probably The Iron Dream which is a satire that exposes much of the latent fascist underbelly of pulp Science Fiction by being a completely in-universe Hugo winning book by Adolf HItler if had emigrated and become an SF writer rather than a dictator. I might need to check that out. I think the only Spinrod book I've read was Pictures at 11
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Jul 11, 2023 17:03
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In the tiny forum thread, the goons post endlessly, relentlessly.
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Jul 11, 2023 18:45
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fez_machine posted:His best book is probably The Iron Dream which is a satire that exposes much of the latent fascist underbelly of pulp Science Fiction by being a completely in-universe Hugo winning book by Adolf HItler if had emigrated and become an SF writer rather than a dictator. I wouldn't call it his best book -- I'd put Little Heroes, The Void Captain's Tale, Pictures at 11, and even Bug Jack Barron over it. As others have noted, The Iron Dream is just one idea -- retelling the events of Hitler's rise to power as if they were a SF story -- and once you've gotten the joke, there's not much else to it. (Ursula Le Guin's review says it much better.) Selachian fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 19:03
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HopperUK posted:Have you read Ivanhoe?! Oh man, Ivanhoe! I read it when I was 11 or 12 and loved it, but it might be time for a reread - still have the Easton Press copy on my bookshelf. Good call! D-Pad posted:Oh we talking about whacky 80s SF/F pulp? Let me introduce you to my favorite, The Ayes of Texas trilogy by Daniel Da Cruz. Set in a future in which the USSR is kicking the United State's rear end in the Cold War, Texas secedes and takes matters into their own hands. In the first book a good ol' boy oil tycoon arms a battleship to the teeth with modern weapons and mans it with disabled veterans and sends it off to kick commie rear end and things only escalate from there. The best way I can pitch this series is by describing a scene from the third book: The Soviet's launch a massive land invasion of Texas, landing a fuckton of tanks out of the gulf. A massive force of tanks is moving through a huge flat area when they start to bog down a bit. They come to the stop and the commander gets out to have a look. As he is investigating the mud he realizes it isn't water, it's oil! At that moment a motherfucking dude on a white horse dressed as the lone ranger appears on a nearby hill and pulls out a bow, lights an arrow on fire, and shoots it into the field immolating the entire tank force. Holy poo poo lol, what an incredible pitch. I wonder if anyone is still writing gloriously insane pulp these days.
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Jul 11, 2023 21:15
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In His Majesty's Service: Three Novels of Temeraire (#1-3) by Naomi Novik - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002T18VD6/ The Color of Magic (Discworld #1) by Terry Pratchett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W9399S/ Kushiel's Chosen (Kushiel's Legacy #2) by Jacqueline Carey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FA5QCC/ Kushiel's Avatar (Kushiel's Legacy #3) by Jacqueline Carey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003ENPHY4/ The Simulacra by Philip K Dick - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LVQZKW/
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Jul 12, 2023 00:12
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Everyone posted:I might need to check that out. I think the only Spinrod book I've read was Pictures at 11 just google image search the title and enjoy, the book itself can't live up to the variety of cover art 
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Jul 12, 2023 01:15
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I rather like Rowena's fey leatherboy Hitler for the 1980s edition:  This is the edition I have, though. And yes, the heroes of the book do wield metal truncheons that look like massive fists. Spinrad thinks subtlety is for wimps. 
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Jul 12, 2023 01:37
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