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Children of Time (#1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DN8BQMD/ Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003RRXXMA/ Uprooted by Naomi Novik - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KUQIU7O/ Green Mars (Mars #2) by Kim Stanley Robinson - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QCS91E/ Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FHBV4ZX/ The Golden Globe (Eight Worlds #3) by John Varley - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AFVTSGG/ Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YK1K1YK/ Hyperion (#1) by Dan Simmons - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004G60EHS/ Recursion by Blake Crouch - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HDSHP7N/ The Neverending Story by Michael Ende - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FLP3XNP/ Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XD75HGV/ The World Jones Made by Philip K Dick - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LVR01A/ Peace on Earth (From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy #4) by Stanislaw Lem - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008533DBW/
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Sep 17, 2023 17:34
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For all 1.5 people in this thread who haven't read it: Jonathan Strange really is that good. Details if anybody wants them.
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Sep 17, 2023 18:03
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Arsenic Lupin posted:For all 1.5 people in this thread who haven't read it: Jonathan Strange really is that good. Details if anybody wants them. I must be the .5, I stopped halfway through. Didn't get along with that book at all.
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Sep 17, 2023 18:23
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You have to really buy into Johnathan Strange - the richness of the writing, the endless footnotes, the strange cruelty of the characters. If you're in, you're in for the entire brick. If you're not, well, she wrote something shorter for you instead.
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Sep 17, 2023 18:25
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Yeah, it sucks. Piranesi is wonderful though.
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Sep 17, 2023 18:30
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It reminded me of the boring old classics I had to read in school and didn’t enjoy.
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Sep 17, 2023 18:30
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smackfu posted:It reminded me of the boring old classics I had to read in school and didn’t enjoy. This is exactly it. I love Victorian literature, I don't find it boring, and JS&MN is exactly the same thing as those. It's a good version of it, but if you don't like that sort of thing it's not going to do anything for you.
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Sep 17, 2023 18:51
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HopperUK posted:This is exactly it. I love Victorian literature, I don't find it boring, and JS&MN is exactly the same thing as those. It's a good version of it, but if you don't like that sort of thing it's not going to do anything for you.  .
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Sep 17, 2023 19:01
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I liked the miniseries better. I refuse to be judged for this.
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Sep 17, 2023 19:11
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Captain Monkey posted:I liked the miniseries better. I've come to terms with people liking the movie/tv versions of books better, because hey. That way you've at least experienced the story. There's more if you want, and if not, that's ok!
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Sep 17, 2023 19:15
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Jonathan Strange didn’t do it for me either, don’t think I even finished it.
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Sep 17, 2023 19:19
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thotsky posted:Yeah, it sucks. Piranesi is wonderful though. pradmer posted:Peace on Earth (From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy #4) by Stanislaw Lem - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008533DBW/
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Sep 17, 2023 19:22
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I always confuse Jonathan Strange with Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
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Sep 17, 2023 19:23
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Chairman Capone posted:I always confuse Jonathan Strange with Jonathan Livingston Seagull. They are *quite* different. Jonathan Livingston Seagull is bird Jesus, and only does very limited magic. Man I read that as a little kid and was deeply, deeply confused.
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Sep 17, 2023 19:25
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For folks who struggle with Jonathan Strange but like the concept of it, try the audiobook. Victorian literature doesn't click with me, mostly because I don't care about the content but also because there is something about the "voice" it uses that doesn't work for my brain when it's print. I think it has something to do with how much is often left unsaid or implied, which becomes perfectly obvious if you're fluent in the culture of the time, or if you hear it spoken. It's like a magic trick and I'm doing a poor job of explaining it here, but suffice to say that I can't read JS&N in text, but it's one of the only > 20 hour audiobooks I've listened to multiple times, and will probably listen to again this year.
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Sep 17, 2023 19:25
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I liked the JS&MN TV adaptation, but the book didn't catch me. I gave up I want to say about 100 pages in? And I'm the kind of person who reads academic nonfiction for fun.
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Sep 17, 2023 19:37
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I hated Victorian literature in school but loved Strange & Norrell. I should probably read some Victorian fiction as an adult. I’ve been reading lots of random SF lately, and really liked this story (Ginungagap) from a Nebula anthology: https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1596061781/1596061781___3.htm It’s a first contact / exploration story, about souls and cloning, kind of. It’s by Michael Swanwick, who I had never even heard of but is definitely on my radar now.
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Sep 17, 2023 20:08
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Jordan7hm posted:I hated Victorian literature in school but loved Strange & Norrell. You should try his Iron Dragon's Daughter. It's strange and I've read nothing like it. quote:The Iron Dragon's Daughter is a 1993 science fantasy novel by American writer Michael Swanwick. The story follows Jane, a changeling girl who slaves at a dragon factory in the world of Faerie, building part-magical, part-cybernetic monsters that are used as jet fighters. The plot of her story takes the form of a spiral, with events and characters constantly recurring in new settings.
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Sep 17, 2023 20:09
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Oh swanwick is the poo poo. Read vacuum flowers or the iron dragons daughter, or stations of the tide. Rich, strange stuff.
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Sep 17, 2023 20:10
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I want to say I originally heard about the Iron Dragon's Daughter from a book list by China Miéville on amazon when anyone could create and share book lists on amazon, which was pretty cool
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Sep 17, 2023 20:16
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That seems way up my alley. Will keep my eyes out.
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Sep 17, 2023 20:17
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StrixNebulosa posted:You should try his Iron Dragon's Daughter. It's strange and I've read nothing like it. Yeah; just remember to cut down, not across. This is the book where the main character tries but fails to destroy the universe, and this is a sad ending
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Sep 17, 2023 20:37
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rohan posted:I also have a soft spot for Gateway despite its more problematic elements, since it was (hurr) my gateway into science fiction growing up. The dread and anxiety of the central premise is handled so well, imo. I liked them. They're weird, the main character eventually gets over most of his poo poo, and the big mysteries of the setting are revealed. They are very self-referential and up their own rear end, but that's kind of a feature in a series with so much emphasis on black hole physics. Jordan7hm posted:I should probably read some Victorian fiction as an adult. A very good gateway is the Master and Commander series. It's a mix of very good Victorian literature when they're on land, and then absolutely first rate adventure fiction at sea. Another would be to read the Vorkosigan Saga - which you should anyway - until you get to A Civil Campaign. That book is 100% pure distilled Regency-era literature.
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Sep 17, 2023 20:51
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I think my love of Piranesi and also the Master and Commander books helped keep me interested in Jonathan Strange. Most books feel like a race: Start at one point and follow the main character through the plot as things speed up to the finish. Jonathan Strange felt like a meandering walk through Victorian England with a vague idea of the destination. Overall I enjoyed it but it took forever to get through with my limited reading time.
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Sep 17, 2023 21:43
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Just to be pedantic, technically aren't the A-M books Regency rather than Victorian?
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Sep 17, 2023 21:46
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Doobie Keebler posted:I think my love of Piranesi and also the Master and Commander books helped keep me interested in Jonathan Strange. Most books feel like a race: Start at one point and follow the main character through the plot as things speed up to the finish. Jonathan Strange felt like a meandering walk through Victorian England with a vague idea of the destination. Overall I enjoyed it but it took forever to get through with my limited reading time. If I hadn't been reading JS&MN on an airplane crossing the ocean, I'm not sure I would have finished it. I adored the first third, but it lost steam in the second third and dragged in the last third.
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Sep 17, 2023 22:27
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Iron Dragon’s Daughter is good but not a pleasant read. It’s pitch black, almost outright nihilist. JS&MN is a masterpiece though, both in its style and its atmosphere, very little that does magic as eerily as it does (maybe Lud-in-the-Mist, which is also seems to be in dialogue with). Goes beyond the loose regency pastiches you see elsewhere, not least in getting the Austenesque dry humour just right, as well as being a good and non-stereotypical rendition of the north of England. It’s nice to see some fantasy that isn’t all London/Home Counties-centric and that’s really digging into English identity. Also does some really compelling stuff with the literally silenced madwoman and the black servant character being the real heroes of the book while the titular magicians are just sort of tooling around like idiots. And Childermass owns, love the dynamics between him and his supposed employer. By contrast Piranesi was, to me, fun but surprisingly lightweight? The Platonic forms stuff was fun but overall it came off like a thriller-y sort of thing, way heavier on the plot and action than I’d been hoping for from initial descriptions.
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Sep 17, 2023 23:13
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:My uncle gifted me a box full of Philip K Dick novels. It’s not every single one of them, but it’s a lot. i wouldn't personally, other than to read it as a document illustrating the author's psychosis, it's polarising, there are some fans but there's few fence sitters on this one. dick was so prolific and wrote in the serialisation area so there's a a huge quality range across his bibliography. The Man in the High Castle, Frolix 8, Flow my tears and a scanner darkly are the best ones imo but if there's any short story collections they'll be the gold.
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Sep 17, 2023 23:21
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Just to be pedantic, technically aren't the A-M books Regency rather than Victorian? absolutely they are Georgian with the majority of them in the regency sub set of that era, four fat mad Germans named George, one named William. Regency being the period the prince of Wales, the future George IV acted for his father who was suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness, rumoured at the time to be syphilitic but possibly bipolar or similar.
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Sep 17, 2023 23:33
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I meant to compare JS&MN to literature written in Victorian times, not set in Victorian times.
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Sep 17, 2023 23:37
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Jordan7hm posted:I hated Victorian literature in school but loved Strange & Norrell. I have a degree in Victorian Studies and Strange & Norrell is one of my very favourite books. HG Wells still holds up imo - and Stephen Baxter wrote pretty good 'authorised sequels' to The Time Machine (titled The Time Ships) and The War of the Worlds (The Massacre of Mankind), as well as Anti-Ice, which is an alt-history/steampunk novel about the British Empire gaining access to anti-matter.
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Sep 18, 2023 02:36
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The Island of Dr. Moreau is pretty good.
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Sep 18, 2023 02:38
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branedotorg posted:absolutely they are Georgian with the majority of them in the regency sub set of that era, four fat mad Germans named George, one named William. Regency being the period the prince of Wales, the future George IV acted for his father who was suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness, rumoured at the time to be syphilitic but possibly bipolar or similar.
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Sep 18, 2023 03:08
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Absurd Alhazred posted:The Island of Dr. Moreau is pretty good. Tenuously connected, but I highly recommend “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau”, which is a documentary about the movie version directed by John Frankenheimer, with Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis and Fairuza Balk. The making of that movie was wild.
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Sep 18, 2023 03:18
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Awkward Davies posted:Tenuously connected, but I highly recommend “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau”, which is a documentary about the movie version directed by John Frankenheimer, with Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis and Fairuza Balk. The making of that movie was wild. Oh, I'm a sucker for these things. Absolutely loved Jodorowsky's Dune.
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Sep 18, 2023 03:22
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Children of Ruin feels like it's responding to/playing off of Peter Watts' work with its portrayal of non-human cognition.
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Sep 18, 2023 04:06
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Oh, I'm a sucker for these things. Absolutely loved Jodorowsky's Dune. Actually never seen that, I put it on my list.
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Sep 18, 2023 04:13
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:My uncle gifted me a box full of Philip K Dick novels. It’s not every single one of them, but it’s a lot. I agree that the short stories are better. I have the five (?) volume paperback set and crushed them all gvibes fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Sep 18, 2023 |
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Sep 18, 2023 04:31
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Crashbee posted:HG Wells still holds up imo Wells was a very prescient thinker, is why. Every SF author tries to write the future as they envision it, but he got it closer than almost anyone. In one of Simon Hawke's Time Wars novels time travellers from the 27th century keep Wells under close observation to make sure that he hasn't been contaminated by meeting people from the future, only to end up doing it themselves. It's a hoot.
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Sep 18, 2023 14:07
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No other thinker of that time predicted the world ending with crabs
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Sep 18, 2023 14:28
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