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Jordan7hm posted:Is Carrion Comfort science fiction or fantasy? I dunno. I thought it was real loving good though. Definitely makes me want to read more Simmons. Be extremely careful reading anything by Simmons, 9/11 broke his brain and he went full racist. Which is a bummer because Hyperion has an extremely cool horror sequence in it.
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Jul 29, 2023 03:42
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Jordan7hm posted:Is Carrion Comfort science fiction or fantasy? I dunno. I thought it was real loving good though. Definitely makes me want to read more Simmons. It's horror, but I'd call it fantasy. Generally science fiction involves some kind of explanation. Like the hosed up psychic people are the way they are because mutant gluten kicked their midichlorian levels into overdrive. Fantasy can just say "It's basically magic. Just go with it." Which is pretty much the way CC did it, IIRC. Probably don't read anything published after September 11, 2001 because Simmons apparently goes bat-poo poo insane up his own rear end with hate for Muslims.
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Jul 29, 2023 04:19
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Dan Simmons post-Hyperion: The Terror is goodish, but catch the AMC show instead as the novel features Simmons' hatred of gay people. His next novel, Drood is weird and is hit or miss. Anything titled "Flashback" or published afterwards should be avoided like the plague. There was a book in between called Black Hills that I may have read, but have zero recollection of.
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Jul 29, 2023 05:28
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I personally think even pre-9/11 Simmons is extremely overrated. I actually went so far as to delete his books from my Kindle library because I couldn't imagine myself ever wanting to revisit them.
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Jul 29, 2023 08:13
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TOOT BOOT posted:I personally think even pre-9/11 Simmons is extremely overrated. I actually went so far as to delete his books from my Kindle library because I couldn't imagine myself ever wanting to revisit them. I think you could see the brainworms there already, for decades before. Song of Kali is super loving racist about India and that was written in the 80s. And yeah, I liked Hyperion but the second one was a step down and then all the Hyper Evil Catholic stuff in the 3rd book but without the camp you get in 40k or 2000AD… Actually I think there’s something in how hysterical or fevered he was in imagining his future church that carries through to his later xenophobias. EDIT: not to say that contempt for the Catholic church is the same as racism or homophobia, it’s just the way Simmons writes about it seems to come from a place of real fevered disgust, like he’s so mad that he’s about to break his pen. And that seems to characterise a bunch of his work, sometimes in the form of screeds, sometimes just in the emotion behind the screed leaking through. GhastlyBizness fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Jul 29, 2023 |
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Jul 29, 2023 09:45
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Awkward Davies posted:It’s not really the politics of it, I’m just not sure that an Obama endorsement indicates a sci fi book I want to read? Like it implies that it’s very important to read or something, which activates my innate knee jerk “nah” feeling. I’m looking for escapism at the moment, not something that someone might say is “relevant and timely”. Fair enough! I was being glib.
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Jul 29, 2023 14:03
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Awkward Davies posted:It’s not really the politics of it, I’m just not sure that an Obama endorsement indicates a sci fi book I want to read? Like it implies that it’s very important to read or something, which activates my innate knee jerk “nah” feeling. I’m looking for escapism at the moment, not something that someone might say is “relevant and timely”. George W. Bush really liked Babylon5. Babylon5 was still a good show.
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Jul 29, 2023 14:48
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Tony Blair's favorite song was War Pigs. That factoid has lived in me for 20 years
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Jul 29, 2023 14:53
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Everyone posted:George W. Bush really liked Babylon5. Babylon5 was still a good show. Sure, but if someone said “hey, you should watch Babylon 5. George W Bush loves it” wouldn’t that influence the way you saw the show?
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Jul 29, 2023 15:33
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politics posting ftl
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Jul 29, 2023 15:38
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Awkward Davies posted:Sure, but if someone said “hey, you should watch Babylon 5. George W Bush loves it” wouldn’t that influence the way you saw the show? It might but it probably shouldn't. Musk and Bezos both love the Culture books but Banks wouldn't have pissed on them if they were on fire. I get what you you mean, if it's Obama saying this is an Important Book, but like, ideas formed about the Culture books based on Musk and Bezos enjoying them would be pretty far off. Or Bush and Babylon 5. GhastlyBizness fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Jul 29, 2023 |
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Jul 29, 2023 15:43
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GhastlyBizness posted:It might but it probably shouldn't. Musk and Bezo both love the Culture books but Banks wouldn't have pissed on them if they were on fire. Ideas formed about the Culture books based on Musk and Bezos liking them would be pretty far off. I really didn’t like the culture book I tried to read so those endorsements track for me
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Jul 29, 2023 15:45
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Everyone posted:It's horror, but I'd call it fantasy. Generally science fiction involves some kind of explanation. Like the hosed up psychic people are the way they are because mutant gluten kicked their midichlorian levels into overdrive. Fantasy can just say "It's basically magic. Just go with it." Which is pretty much the way CC did it, IIRC. No, CC has a lengthy explanation involving neuroscience. It's still pretty fantastic but not any more than a lot of science fiction.
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Jul 29, 2023 16:15
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Awkward Davies posted:I really didn’t like the culture book I tried to read so those endorsements track for me It's okay to not like a book but jeez, piling Banks with Musk and Bezos is harsh.
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Jul 29, 2023 16:22
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Gor comes highly recommended by Andrew Tate and the late Jeffrey Epstein.
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Jul 29, 2023 17:08
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GhastlyBizness posted:And yeah, I liked Hyperion but the second one was a step down and then all the Hyper Evil Catholic stuff in the 3rd book but without the camp you get in 40k or 2000AD… Actually I think there’s something in how hysterical or fevered he was in imagining his future church that carries through to his later xenophobias.
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Jul 29, 2023 20:14
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Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor #1) by Mark Lawrence - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IAUG6R2/
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Jul 29, 2023 20:53
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General Battuta posted:No, CC has a lengthy explanation involving neuroscience. It's still pretty fantastic but not any more than a lot of science fiction. Well, clearly I did not Recall Correctly. It's been 20 years since I last read the book. The only bits I really remember well are the Holocaust guy using self-hypnosis to bring in Holocaust "ghosts" and the creepy old psychotic psychic in the heads of the crew of a nuclear submarine (the Jimmy Carter) apparently getting ready to kick off WWIII for the lols.
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Jul 30, 2023 00:47
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Similarly to Musk and Bezos liking Culture, Ann Coulter is a deadhead and Paul Ryan has famously named Rage Against The Machine as his favorite band. Don’t let people of horrid political persuasions ruin artistic works for you (unless the politics of that artistic work are why the person likes it in the first place, of course).
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Jul 30, 2023 01:06
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Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:Similarly to Musk and Bezos liking Culture, Ann Coulter is a deadhead and Paul Ryan has famously named Rage Against The Machine as his favorite band. Don’t let people of horrid political persuasions ruin artistic works for you (unless the politics of that artistic work are why the person likes it in the first place, of course). Sometimes reactions to lovely political artistic works are entertaining enough to almost justify the works. https://twitter.com/i/status/1683542839270203392
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Jul 30, 2023 01:44
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i still think theres a difference between awful people liking a good thing and someone presenting an unfamiliar good thing to you while mentioning the endorsement of the lovely person
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Jul 30, 2023 02:01
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neongrey posted:i still think theres a difference between awful people liking a good thing and someone presenting an unfamiliar good thing to you while mentioning the endorsement of the lovely person Yeah that’s very fair. If someone handed me a book and was like, “Ben Shapiro raved about this on his podcast!” my instinctual response would be, “lol nope.”
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Jul 30, 2023 02:09
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Huge Tad Williams ebook bundle on Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/tad-williams-osten-ard-otherland-and-beyond-books I know that the multi-POV form influenced GRRM but are his books worth reading?
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Jul 30, 2023 02:50
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Not if you value your time.
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Jul 30, 2023 03:15
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I just reread Nova and there's some cool stuff, but the space opera plot is really unconvincing. Prince is all talk and no ability. It would have been more interesting if Delany let them capture Lorq, or some kind of setback in the text itself. And I have no idea what was so special about the Mouse. It's a shame because the writing is good. Babel-17 has a better plot but isn't thematically as interesting.fez_machine posted:Huge Tad Williams ebook bundle on Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/tad-williams-osten-ard-otherland-and-beyond-books It's really hard to work out how the books fit together there. Which books are there, which series are they in, and how do they fit together? Even if I were interested in Williams I'd probably be put off.
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Jul 30, 2023 06:17
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Lead out in cuffs posted:What it did to people and the environment. Luddism was more analogous to Brexit, with the minor difference that the Luddites were scared of losing what they currently had rather than wanting to get rid of something that didn't exist in order to regain something they never actually had.
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Jul 30, 2023 07:32
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I put Tad Williams in the same mental box of authors I haven't read as John Gwynne. "It's a regular old fantasy with some grimdark leanings, I guess."
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Jul 30, 2023 10:20
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I really liked Otherland, but I also read the second book first (and half a dozen times) before getting 1 & 3, and 4 several years later. Being a kid and relying on whatever was accessible was weird, especially combined with long holidays you couldn't take many books on.
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Jul 30, 2023 12:27
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I thought Otherland was an enjoyable doorstopper series when I read it in the early aughts. Definitely his best work IMO. Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn was an above average epic fantasy series. I haven't read any of his stuff for some time, though.
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Jul 30, 2023 17:25
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The only Tad Williams I've read is the standalone Tailchaser's Song, which started off as cats doing cat things and talking cat mythology, then turned into a horror story. It was worth reading so I finished it, but not so good that it convinced me to check out his series which I've heard is lengthy and slow-moving.
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Jul 30, 2023 17:43
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I liked Otherland fine back in the day but oh boy there's a lot of it.
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Jul 30, 2023 17:44
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I remember liking Williams' short story from the Legends anthology that originally had "The Sea and Little Fishes."
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Jul 30, 2023 18:04
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I'm currently rereading Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and I'm honestly enjoying it a lot more having already read it and being able to pay more attention to the themes, setting, foreshadowing, and atmospheric vibes. It's hella dated at this point, plodding, and comes off as kinda quaint when compared to more modern stuff, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a starting point in the genre, but I still love it.  I'm just a huge Tad Williams fan - his stories tend to get overlong and unravel and get away from him (like with Shadowmarch) but I really like how he does atmosphere and prose. And he's also a super nice and chill dude.Also, rereading MS&T while knowing how heavily it influenced ASOIAF is loads of fun. Like there's everything from the entire "human factions squabbling over a throne while a supernatural threat looms in the frozen north" premise to smaller similarities like a creepy red priest, a main character with "snow" in their name whose mysterious parentage ends up being important, a cool pet wolf, etc. And speaking of Tad Williams, I literally just found my long lost copy of The War of the Flowers that I bought back in high school and didn't get around to reading before I left for college. So adding that to my pile of things to read.
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Jul 30, 2023 19:04
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I really liked Otherland, but I also read the second book first (and half a dozen times) before getting 1 & 3, and 4 several years later. I did the same thing! Started with the second book first because it's what Borders had. I don't remember anything about that series except one of the guys gets stuck in a WWI trench simulation for feels like several hundred pages and it ruled.
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Jul 30, 2023 19:50
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The Martian by Andy Weir - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EMXBDMA/ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SEGTI0/ Ender's Game (#1) by Orson Scott Card - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003G4W49C/ The Three Body Problem (#1) by Cixin Liu - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IQO403K/ Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs #1) by Richard K Morgan - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBFMZ2/ Foundation (#1) by Isaac Asimov - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1PWA/ God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4) by Frank Herbert - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001F0WXX6/ Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I1W23IG/ Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007UH4D3G/
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Jul 30, 2023 19:59
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pradmer posted:God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4) by Frank Herbert - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001F0WXX6/ What is the story with these sales? Did some Amazon algorithm see that a lot of people were stopping at Dune #3 and decide to try to push people forward? Do the publishers feel this is the book that will be better appreciated right now? It is just 40% random because it is free money to sell a Kindle book?
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Jul 30, 2023 22:00
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StumblyWumbly posted:What is the story with these sales? Did some Amazon algorithm see that a lot of people were stopping at Dune #3 and decide to try to push people forward? Do the publishers feel this is the book that will be better appreciated right now? It is just 40% random because it is free money to sell a Kindle book? If there's any logic to it then I certainly haven't seen it. Some books go on sale multiple times per month, others never. First in a series goes on sale much more regularly than the rest.
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Jul 31, 2023 00:50
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StumblyWumbly posted:What is the story with these sales? Did some Amazon algorithm see that a lot of people were stopping at Dune #3 and decide to try to push people forward? Do the publishers feel this is the book that will be better appreciated right now? It is just 40% random because it is free money to sell a Kindle book? The first three were on sale this week last year. (I know because that's when I picked them up) algorithm is probably deciding enough people that bought it on sale then are getting close enough to warrant the fourth book being on sale.
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Jul 31, 2023 07:05
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I'm looking for some solid science fiction recommendations. I read Children of Time a few years ago and enjoyed it. Apart from that, the only other scifi book I can recall reading (and enjoying!) is Hyperion by Dan Simmons (aaaages ago). In terms of things that I'm looking for:
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Jul 31, 2023 07:23
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neurotech posted:I'm looking for some solid science fiction recommendations. I read Children of Time a few years ago and enjoyed it. Apart from that, the only other scifi book I can recall reading (and enjoying!) is Hyperion by Dan Simmons (aaaages ago). Culture series by Iain M Banks maybe? As noted upthread, probably avoid any more recent Dan Simmons, unless you're the kind of person who likes to get their news and views from Fox News.
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Jul 31, 2023 08:07
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