|
mystes posted:that's so dumb wow It's gets better, the main character was copy pasted from a Jack Ryan novel and is the perfect individual to rebuild society because, despite living in a space travel capable post scarcity society prefers to larp as a feudal peasant. Over the course of the first book it's set up for feudalism to be the natural state of humanity, except for the Captain of the Watch who was a die hard Roman Legionaire re-enactor until he read about the US Marine Corp and decided that they were the perfect army and became a Drill Sergeant cosplayer. And I won't get into what happens to his ex-wife that convinces her she was a fool to ever leave him.
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 21:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 07:59 |
|
|
zoux posted:Showing up with the identical dog the very next day kind of gave it away. The PI just went to meet with the crazy cult lady, that's where I'm at, and it seems to me that he's setting it up so the kid is the antichrist, or is mistakenly so, but that there is indeed some supernatural apocalyptic poo poo going on  That drat dog in the Watchers.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 21:40
|
|
|
He's like, one of the maybe 3 authors I'd hug if I met him. He had a rough start in life but kicked rear end at it. Also: 
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 22:50
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:What is that haircut What will it be today Mr. Koontz /holds up phone  Say no more fam.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 23:21
|
|
|
NoneMoreNegative posted:What will it be today Mr. Koontz With a little Moe thrown in. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 02:08
|
|
|
branedotorg posted:Just finished reading Petition (Resonance Crystal Legacy Book 1) by Delilah Waan (hi!) Hello and thanks for giving my book a shot! I am currently slogging through the last stretch of alpha revisions so I'm hoooooping for a late 2023 release on the sequel. Operative word being "hoping" because I've pushed back the publication timeframe at least twice now because I couldn't get the ending working right.  Meanwhile The Wall of Storms and The Veiled Throne came in at my library and these books are BIG. Pretty sure I could duct tape them to the end of a rolling pin to make myself an excellent book mace.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 06:02
|
|
|
Ah, poo poo man. Amazon nuked Robert Bevan's account so no more caverns and creatures for a while at least. Apparently they said he had multiple accounts and this account was terminated for being related to another account that was terminated, then in another email said he was manipulating Kindle services on his main account somehow. Dude's 11 year career got nuked from orbit for basically no reason whatsoever. Hoping he lawyers up. Biggest WTF is then saying they aren't paying out any outstanding royalties they owe him for sales that they haven't paid yet. Since kdp pays every few months (once a quarter I think), he's hosed for sales made from the last quarter till now. I like Amazon as an idea but this kinda poo poo reminds me why I want to burn down capitalism in general.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 08:12
|
|
|
I only really know Koontz from midnight pals and really midnight pals is just a good and nice way to learn about good things. And sometimes awful things, but said funny.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 10:18
|
|
|
Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Ah, poo poo man. Amazon nuked Robert Bevan's account so no more caverns and creatures for a while at least. That's just Amazon. The company I work for branched out into Amazon and got their entire account nuked for "review manipulation" despite multiple requests from in house legal they wouldn't tell anyone what exactly they'd done or how to fix it. The company resorted to an outside third party that specialize in resolving these issues and they also got stonewalled and said they expect we were boned. On day 40, the final day of appeals the account was activated without warning, comment, or explanation. We're now selling again but with all the momentum for 8 months of ads and product being SEO optimized all gone. So that team is crawling back up and we're on the cusp of being fired some something they had no control over. Spoiler: the owner was absolutely committing review fraud and not telling anyone.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 13:54
|
|
|
Self publishing is freeing authors from corporate control
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 14:22
|
|
|
theblackw0lf posted:What are some good books that deal with first alien contact? Especially ones that explore the human response in interesting ways. The Remembrance of Earth series, particularly the second (The Dark Forest) and third (Death's End) books.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 15:02
|
|
|
graydon saunders was right
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 15:37
|
|
|
Freed from the clutches of the corporations, all I need is to engage a cutthroat PR agency and achieve a 98% unregretted microlike impression ratio on X, The Everything App
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 17:41
|
|
|
Strategic Tea posted:Freed from the clutches of the corporations, all I need is to engage a cutthroat PR agency and achieve a 98% unregretted microlike impression ratio on X, The Everything App Nowadays, or so I hear from my friends in the trenches, major houses often expect you to show evidence of a solid social-media presence and following before they even offer on a first novel. The bestseller-or-don't-bother model is endemic.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 18:09
|
|
|
Thanks to whoever mentioned Peter Watts’ Starfish. Pretty cool book. I don’t know if the science holds up exactly 25 years after publication but I’d say it’s aged reasonably well.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 18:56
|
|
|
Nothing better than floating motionless in the black void of the deep, imo I tried with the sequels but I think watts is better at stuff set in a confined space with limited scope than when he stretches out.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 19:11
|
|
|
Re-reading Children of Time, and Quote from the first Portia chapter: "The male spider there ... is not just prey/mate/irrelevant. There is an invisible connection strung between them. Portia does not quite grasp that he is something like her, but her formidable ability to calculate strategies has gained a new dimension. A new category appears that expands her options a hundredfold: ally." This sounds like humans had an empathy virus all this time, even before the events of the book. If they valued empathy high enough so their colonization efforts depended on it, I don't understand why they didn't immediately infect themselves with it. A missed opportunity that could save the entire civilization. ... or maybe they wanted the uplifted species to become empathetic, saving the humans all the troubles of working together for a common goal, and letting them reap the benefits of an empathetic servant species... Dunno, in the next couple of paragraphs there is a mention of a poisonous spider (aren't they venomous?), so maybe I'm reading too much into the setup of a trilogy.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 19:25
|
|
|
zoux posted:I tried with the sequels but I think watts is better at stuff set in a confined space with limited scope than when he stretches out.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 19:36
|
|
|
ringu0 posted:Re-reading Children of Time, and The virus itself was cutting-edge academic research (this gets mentioned in the second book), and its use to uplift species was so controversial that it led to the war that ended human civilisation. Also, the people who created it were hubristic assholes who probably never thought to apply it to humans. I'm pretty sure the "empathetic servant species" idea gets explicitly mentioned as a goal in one or more of the Avrana Kern chapters. After that, there wasn't anyone left among the survivors who understood it or even knew it existed. It's kind-of a major plot point (the major plot point?) that it takes the uplifted Portiids to understand and adapt the empathy virus, and then use it to assimilate the surviving humans. And it's kind-of a major theme that the humans keep loving themselves over due to their egos.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 20:11
|
|
|
Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Ah, poo poo man. Amazon nuked Robert Bevan's account so no more caverns and creatures for a while at least. It’s got me horribly pissed off. I got a new tablet and now I can’t download the books I own. The audiobooks seem to still be available though, for the time being.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 20:32
|
|
|
Since we're discussing CoT, I'd like to take this opportunity to shout out Fabian, the absolute king of fictional spiders.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 20:37
|
|
|
BetterLekNextTime posted:Thanks to whoever mentioned Peter Watts’ Starfish. Pretty cool book. I don’t know if the science holds up exactly 25 years after publication but I’d say it’s aged reasonably well. Starfish was great, but the sequels went in a direction I wasn't so fond of.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 21:06
|
|
|
A very long time ago Amazon allowed people to list and sell their used stuff directly to other customers, sort of like Ebay. I used it a lot in college to sell games One time I had to cancel and refund two orders in a row because they came in while I was out of state for my uncle's funeral, and this tripped some automated ban feature. This resulted in a permanent black mark on my account that persists through this day and occasionally crops up when I sign up for some new Amazon service I tried making a new account but both it and my old account were banned 6 months later for having duplicate accounts, and it took a multi day effort with support to reinstate my old one. I've been too scared to try again lol Amazon cares about very little, but they'll burn your house to the ground if inadvertently mess something up they do care about
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 21:16
|
|
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:Nowadays, or so I hear from my friends in the trenches, major houses often expect you to show evidence of a solid social-media presence and following before they even offer on a first novel. This is only true if you're writing non-fiction. Certainly, it can help if a prospective fiction author has, say, a huge and organic following on TikTok or whatever, but it is absolutely not a requirement. Publishers still buy your book if you have no social media or connections at all (at least in SFFH).
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 21:19
|
|
|
Some pretty good books on StoryBundle, as curated by Lavie Tidhar: https://storybundle.com/trilogies The theme is trilogies, i.e. book 1 of each is in the first pricing tier and the rest higher up but still a decent deal. You've got Yoon Ha Lee's 'Machineries of Empire' books, Aliette de Bodard's Aztec-noir 'Obsidian and Blood' trilogy, and Cassandra Khaw's fun, gory 'Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef' series.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 21:25
|
|
|
WarpDogs posted:Amazon cares about very little, but they'll burn your house to the ground if inadvertently mess something up they do care about They're also so loving arbitrary, my wife is completely banned from posting reviews, doesn't know why and support says don't know why and they'll fix it but never can.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 21:31
|
|
|
How Long 'Til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FSLQXY8/ The Mechanical (Alchemy Wars #1) by Ian Tregillis - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IRIR85M/
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 22:46
|
|
|
Remulak posted:They take Kindle Unlimited manipulation very seriously, but this wasn't the case here so wtf? The company I'm working for had their vendor account banned. Amazon still bought stuff from us and sold it themselves, but our fulfilled by Amazon and direct sell stuff was shut down. Told us it was due to review manipulation. All the appeals were stonewalled, even the one from in house legal counsel. Even spending 5k for a third party "we'll unfuck your account" got nothing and they said they'd never seen such a lack of response before. On day 40, the final day of the appeal timeline, the account was reinstated without any notice. No one at Amazon would ever tell us specifics, thought given the owner once sent out an email telling everyone to give 5 stars to our products on Walmart (but to it from home because we did it from the office a few years ago and they caught us and deleted the reviews and told us to stop it) then I'm positive the owner did exactly what amazon says we did. That being said, amazon does not give a poo poo. The owner here was like "but they make money when we make money" we make them in the thousands, singular, the don't give a flying gently caress. And until something comes along that can eat their lunch, the won't give a poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 00:38
|
|
|
I've heard of similar thing happening with Amazon vendors, but its usually related to their algorithm identifying a 3P item that's selling well so they can make their own version and bury the competitions.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 04:45
|
|
|
Spoilers below are for Children of Time/RuinsLead out in cuffs posted:
Yeah, so far that's my general impression as well, and the idea of "empathetic servant species" is definitely from one of the earlier pages. Can't wait to get to the second book where I was skimming most of the third perspective chapters until their importance was explicitly explained, and I felt like an idiot. Haven't read the final book yet.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 16:27
|
|
|
Recently reread Watt’s Freeze Frame Revolution, and I wish it integrated a few of the short stories (available free on his website) set in the same universe. Primarily Hotshot, which sets the stage for the whole scenario. Anyways, here’s hoping we get a sequel at some point. Between Two Fires is the best thing I’ve read this year. I went in blind and assumed it was a Joan of Arc-themed escort quest across 14th-century France, then all kinds of wild poo poo starts happening. Not sure it nailed the ending, but the journey to get there is definitely worth it. Bailed on Mexican Gothic after a few chapters- it just wasn’t grabbing me. Might try again once we’re closer to spooky season.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 18:58
|
|
|
is neuromancer supposed to be kind of hard to follow on the first read?
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 20:08
|
|
|
Finished Eversion last night. Thought it was very good, probably the best Reynolds I've read since Chasm City and I like that it was all self-contained. Good fun.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 20:17
|
|
|
ringu0 posted:Spoilers below are for Children of Time/Ruins I mean, being halfway through book two right now on my first read-throhgh, one of the funniest developments is how the humans end up being the second-class citizens to the portiids, rather than vice versa.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 20:25
|
|
|
Carrier posted:Finished Eversion last night. Thought it was very good, probably the best Reynolds I've read since Chasm City and I like that it was all self-contained. Good fun. Is it in the Inhibitor universe or a new setting?
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 20:41
|
|
|
actionjackson posted:is neuromancer supposed to be kind of hard to follow on the first read? Gibson is a stylist, and he writes kind of clipped, but the plot isn't that complicated. What aren't you clear on?
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 20:43
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:Gibson is a stylist, and he writes kind of clipped, but the plot isn't that complicated. What aren't you clear on? Maybe he's Gen Z and doesn't know what the color of a TV tuned to a dead channel is
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 20:45
|
|
|
Or understand how valuable three meg of hot RAM might be
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 20:47
|
|
|
Lead out in cuffs posted:I mean, being halfway through book two right now on my first read-throhgh, one of the funniest developments is how the humans end up being the second-class citizens to the portiids, rather than vice versa. Interesting, I'm yet to get there. Haven't read the books back to back, and my first read-through of the second book was mostly excitement about going on an adventure.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 21:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 07:59 |
|
|
ringu0 posted:Interesting, I'm yet to get there. Haven't read the books back to back, and my first read-through of the second book was mostly excitement about going on an adventure. I mean, it's more structural racism than outright servitude, but it's made pretty clear that the portiids see themselves as the adults in the room. It's a fun inversion of the David Brin uplift novels, which the books are very clearly referencing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 21:40
|
|