|
so ive been reading the black company books, which i heard of before but i always assumed they were a warhammer thing, and the first three are pretty good but man almost all of the returning characters in the silver spike get done dirty like 5 pages from the end of the book i guess just for grimdark reasons except raven, he got what he deserved i was a little annoyed in the white rose when like three quarters of the way through the book they reveal that everybody in the black company apparently has the hots for darling which wasnt hinted at before at all
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 15:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 02:28 |
|
|
So, thanks to this thread I picked up Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time" series, and... oh my god. Devoured all 550+ pages of each book ( Children of Time and Children of Ruin, with Children of Memory to go ) in a day each. 10/10, absolutely recommended. It has cured any lingering arachnophobia I may have had. And We are going on an adventure! TLM3101 fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Nov 5, 2023 |
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 16:49
|
|
|
His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire #1) by Naomi Novik - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GCFBQA/
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 17:43
|
|
|
Jordan7hm posted:Burned through a couple older SF books the last few days. The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester goes like a mile a minute and deals in Big Ideas. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and unlike the last book I read with a terrible protagonist (Gateway) this one didn’t bother me as much probably because he was so clearly not a real person but rather a vehicle for Bester to get his ideas to the reader. I also thought the world was really cool, Bester did a good job explaining how jaunting would completely flip society on its head and because of that it felt pretty modern. Stars is wild. How much Bester gets across in such a short novel is truly impressive. The new aristocracy, the labyrinths people create to avoid being jaunted upon, the techno luddites, the people who remove their pain receptors, jaunting itself. All could be its own sci Fi story and Besters just tossing 'em off willy nilly. If you haven't read it The Demolished Man is almost as good. A man wants to commit a murder in a world where mind reading is common.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 18:14
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:Stars is wild. How much Bester gets across in such a short novel is truly impressive. The new aristocracy, the labyrinths people create to avoid being jaunted upon, the techno luddites, the people who remove their pain receptors, jaunting itself. All could be its own sci Fi story and Besters just tossing 'em off willy nilly. But he never wrote any novels other than those two. It's very important you remember this. HE DIDN'T.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 19:10
|
|
|
Remulak posted:Hate the way the publishing business runs, there have been wildly complementary quotes on Tor.com for like a year, why bother giving away free ones and delaying the actual release? Lemme pay money and buy the damned book!  This is also assuming a physical book, which does need substantial lead time even in these electronic days.pradmer posted:His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire #1) by Naomi Novik - $1.99
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 19:38
|
|
|
I started A Player of Games recently and I feel like it's just gonna be "look how dumb and evil this thinly veiled equivalent to modern society is! Doesn't it make you think?" Like, I want to know more about the games and the Culture, I don't need a book to tell me that capitalism, racism, and sexism is bad.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 21:46
|
|
|
0 rows returned posted:i was a little annoyed in the white rose when like three quarters of the way through the book they reveal that everybody in the black company apparently has the hots for darling which wasnt hinted at before at all I swear there’s a scene early on where Croaker is dreaming of being in bed with two underage girls, which kinda sets the stage.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 22:00
|
|
|
I don't think it gets that bad but I too have a slight hesitation in most Culture books. Say the Affront have a horrific society based on genetic mutilation and deliberate cruelty - it's that Banks might just be waiting behind a bush to go "aha, got you, this society is actually exactly the same as the United Kingdom in the year 2013, furthermore..." the affront are absolutely an eton dining club
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 22:02
|
|
|
Runcible Cat posted:But he never wrote any novels other than those two. It's very important you remember this. HE DIDN'T. I honestly had no idea he had written anything besides, I figured the man got his payday and moved on from the genre.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 22:02
|
|
|
Hiro Protagonist posted:I started A Player of Games recently and I feel like it's just gonna be "look how dumb and evil this thinly veiled equivalent to modern society is! Doesn't it make you think?" Like, I want to know more about the games and the Culture, I don't need a book to tell me that capitalism, racism, and sexism is bad.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 22:14
|
|
|
Hiro Protagonist posted:I started A Player of Games recently and I feel like it's just gonna be "look how dumb and evil this thinly veiled equivalent to modern society is! Doesn't it make you think?" Like, I want to know more about the games and the Culture, I don't need a book to tell me that capitalism, racism, and sexism is bad. Yeah, player of games is neat but it doesn't have much actual culture stuff going on, and I think people suggest it as an entry point because of that. I don't remember it being overly moralistic in the sense of people learning Important Lessons or anything, but there's a lot (which you've already seen) about this one culture guy (who is himself a weirdo by Culture standards) just seeing people being jerks and not getting it. There's one overarching culture question it gets into, particularly at the end: What is even the point of people in the AI driven society? In player of games, it becomes clear that the AIs wanted Jerk City to fall apart, so they picked one person out of their unthinkably huge society, and manipulated and managed him over the course of years into knocking that society apart. Any anxiety or personal growth was just some friction in this larger machine, which the main character doesn't really care about, he was just there to play a game.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 22:58
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:I honestly had no idea he had written anything besides, I figured the man got his payday and moved on from the genre. You're right. He didn't. I was mistaken. Look! Squirrel! vvv Absolutely. He wrote some terrific short stories. vvv Runcible Cat fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Nov 5, 2023 |
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 23:03
|
|
|
Runcible Cat posted:But he never wrote any novels other than those two. It's very important you remember this. HE DIDN'T. I do recommend his shorts though, both Starburst and Dark Side of the Earth have some stories that have stuck with me for a long time (coupled with a bunch of duds, but oh well that's what short stories are for) 5,271,009 / Flowered Thundermug / Oddy and Id / The Men Who Murdered Mohammed all have the manicness of Stars My Destination in a tighter package.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 23:16
|
|
|
TLM3101 posted:So, thanks to this thread I picked up Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time" series, and... oh my god. Devoured all 550+ pages of each book ( Children of Time and Children of Ruin, with Children of Memory to go ) in a day each. I absolutely devoured the entire trilogy. Pick up the first book in his other series, Shards of Earth, and woof. I'm 30% into the book and I don't like many of the characters and came specifically to this thread to see if it gets any better. If someone has read this book, does it get more interesting?
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 00:09
|
|
|
Someone asked me if Lem’s Memoirs of a Space Traveller was the book that inspired Tarkovsky’s Solaris. So close and yet so far…
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 00:14
|
|
|
Optimus_Rhyme posted:I absolutely devoured the entire trilogy. Pick up the first book in his other series, Shards of Earth, and woof. I'm 30% into the book and I don't like many of the characters and came specifically to this thread to see if it gets any better. The book does get more interesting and ends up one hell of a crazy ride as soon as the Essiel show up, and the next books get even better from there. Also all the characters grew on me over time. Yes, even Ollie. Especially Ollie 
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 00:21
|
|
|
StumblyWumbly posted:Yeah, player of games is neat but it doesn't have much actual culture stuff going on, and I think people suggest it as an entry point because of that. The Player of Games is the best Culture novel because it has the least of the Culture in it. The Culture as a society is not something that stands up to close examination because as utopian liberals they're inevitably completely up themselves.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 00:39
|
|
|
Or rather the sort of culture citizens who are worth the attention of Contact who are therefore are in the story are yeah insufferable blowhards of a sort entirely consistent with rich British crust punks
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 01:16
|
|
|
Eh, I really like Look to Windward and I'd argue it's the most Culture book because its just a bunch of (non-Culture) folks farting around in Culture Utopia, but just being in Utopia doesn't mean their problems are solved, but it does mean that the idea of "accomplishment" is very different.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 01:21
|
|
|
Optimus_Rhyme posted:I absolutely devoured the entire trilogy. Pick up the first book in his other series, Shards of Earth, and woof. I'm 30% into the book and I don't like many of the characters and came specifically to this thread to see if it gets any better. I loved the trilogy and thought Shards was dumb all the way through, for what it’s worth. The characters did not improve. Wish I’d just given up.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 01:48
|
|
|
ulmont posted:I swear there’s a scene early on where Croaker is dreaming of being in bed with two underage girls, which kinda sets the stage. It's not Croaker, it's another character, but yeah, it's a... thing. I can't remember his name, but he's a minor character that I believe gets offed later in the book. [fake edit]: I went back and checked Wikipedia and you're probably remembering Smeds in the Silver Spike.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 03:03
|
|
|
Nah Croaker dreams about underage threesomes in the first book.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 03:56
|
|
|
Finished Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer and loved it. First time I've finished a book in a few days in years probably. Was really badass when it clicked who the dude on the cover of the book is and really adds to why people in the book find him intimidating if not downright terrifying. For the curious it's the book cover from on of my recent posts.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 04:23
|
|
|
Mustang posted:Finished Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer and loved it. First time I've finished a book in a few days in years probably. Was really badass when it clicked who the dude on the cover of the book is and really adds to why people in the book find him intimidating if not downright terrifying. For the curious it's the book cover from on of my recent posts.  Gotta get those Japanese Covers
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 04:40
|
|
|
TLM3101 posted:[fake edit]: I went back and checked Wikipedia and you're probably remembering Smeds in the Silver Spike. Found it. Croaker in the Black Company, page 284/320 in the version I have: They sent Goblin to waken me. I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams. Not that they didn’t deserve disturbing. They were foul. I was doing unspeakable things with a couple of girls who could not have been more than twelve, and making them love it. It’s disgusting, the shadows that lurk in the mind.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 05:29
|
|
|
Optimus_Rhyme posted:I absolutely devoured the entire trilogy. Pick up the first book in his other series, Shards of Earth, and woof. I'm 30% into the book and I don't like many of the characters and came specifically to this thread to see if it gets any better. I liked Shards of Earth a lot, but if they've arrived in the Essiel worlds and it's still not grabbing you it might not ever.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 05:38
|
|
|
Optimus_Rhyme posted:I absolutely devoured the entire trilogy. Pick up the first book in his other series, Shards of Earth, and woof. I'm 30% into the book and I don't like many of the characters and came specifically to this thread to see if it gets any better. I had a really hard time with it up until the last 40% or so, but it grew on me. It's definitely a slower read than the Children books. I'm about 20% into book 2 now.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 06:17
|
|
|
On the second book of the latest Ken MacLeod (Lightspeed) trilogy, I'd recommend the series to anyone who felt he kinda dropped off after the Fall Revolution books - interesting premise too
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 06:18
|
|
|
StumblyWumbly posted:Yeah, player of games is neat but it doesn't have much actual culture stuff going on, and I think people suggest it as an entry point because of that. I don't remember it being overly moralistic in the sense of people learning Important Lessons or anything, but there's a lot (which you've already seen) about this one culture guy (who is himself a weirdo by Culture standards) just seeing people being jerks and not getting it. Huh I only actually got just now that he is a game piece and the player of games is actually the culture itself and the game he cheats on is a metaphor for the entire book
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 06:34
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:Huh I only actually got just now that he is a game piece and the player of games is actually the culture itself and the game he cheats on is a metaphor for the entire book quote:What is even the point of people in the AI driven society? That's actually answered in Use of Weapons. The strategic decisions moving Zakalwe and his handler around aren't being made entirely by Minds. Out of, I'm vague on the numbers but this is close, 17 trillion human-standard people in the Culture, about a dozen can make strategic forecasts with a higher success rate than any Mind. Maybe it's still strictly utilitarian on the part of the Minds, where keeping 17 trillion pets is worth the effort to get the dozen prodigies, but I hold that it means we are still valued. After all, they can't know in advance which dozen in each generation it will be.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 07:05
|
|
|
Also, they both (usually) legitimately like humans, and hold them to have moral worth, so.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 07:07
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:Stars is wild. How much Bester gets across in such a short novel is truly impressive. The new aristocracy, the labyrinths people create to avoid being jaunted upon, the techno luddites, the people who remove their pain receptors, jaunting itself. All could be its own sci Fi story and Besters just tossing 'em off willy nilly. If you like this kind of thing I recommend The Zen Gun which I just finished. Very much in the style of "a dozen-odd brilliant ideas crammed into a tiny book". The first chapter alone has a galactic empire that extracts tribute by abducting writers and artists to supplement its own cultural decay; military space cruisers that are also nonstop drug parties (because pleasure is considered a basic human right); and robots who've been on strike for 100 years to gain recognition as sentient beings. In some ways it feels like a parody of the Culture novels despite being written before them.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 07:07
|
|
|
0 rows returned posted:so ive been reading the black company books… the first three are pretty good but… which wasnt hinted at before at all Chairman Capone posted:This is a really fun collection. Really all of Martin’s space operas are great. Highly recommend Dying of the Light and Windhaven also. Tuf Voyaging is great, I just bought it and read it for the first time since I think middle school. I remembered it being light an amusing, but is it? I’m till not sure and I finished it a few hours ago. It’s billed as a novel though! I really miss that “fix-up” style when sci-fi was sold as short stories then incorporated into novels rather than sold as trilogies that keep authors in the same style for a decade. I grew up reading my father’s voluminous sci-fi magazine* and paperback collection collection, and a most of my favorites were in the same fix-up form as Tuf Voyaging, stories sold one-at-a-time to magazines then pieced together into a novel. The Stainless Steel Rat and other Harrison stuff, Vance, Lieber, v on Vogt, Riverworld, early (good) Niven and a bunch of others stuff I can’t think of since it’s been 30 years. It’s basically a predecessor of pretentious TV; shorter satisfying stories that are part of the larger arc of the novel proper. Just realized what it was about Aetheria by goon S. Hutson Blount that made me SO HAPPY; despite not actually being a fix-up and being contemporary in style the rhythm is that of a fix-up. *Astounding/Analog editor John Campbell, well known as a racist that got retroactively blamed for among others Heinlein’s racist fix-up novels was such an AMAZING sucker, everybody knows about Dianetics but his multiyear plugging of the reactionless Dean Drive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_drive) was unbelievable even to 12-yo me.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 07:11
|
|
|
ulmont posted:Found it. Croaker in the Black Company, page 284/320 in the version I have: Welp! I had completely scrubbed that from my mind! And now I'm going to do it again. Augh.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 07:37
|
|
|
TLM3101 posted:Welp! I had completely scrubbed that from my mind! And now I'm going to do it again. Augh. It's worth keeping in your mind, because it's one of a few times in Black Company where Croaker is telling the reader that the reality of the Company is different from the text we're reading. Remember, these books are part of their historical records, and the chroniclers are unreliable: they omit some important details, embellish others, probably straight-up lie about some. Croaker has these occasional moments where he wants to let the reader know, "Hey, these people I'm doing my best to portray in a positive light? There's a reason they're in the Black Company, and it's probably not a great reason." Meanwhile, turns out I had Dark Eden in my Kobo already from god knows when, and it was a quick read, so after it being recommended re: alien ecosystem books I knocked that out over the weekend. I am... Conflicted, on this one. The pitch for the setting is great: a tiny technologically-regressed human society trapped on an alien world in permanent darkness, which has developed a bioluminescent ecosystem that is in the process of terraforming an ice world from within. But because it's all told from the first-person perspectives of natives who don't know anything is unusual about their environment, we get precious few details about what any of this actually looks like, or how it's weird and different from Earth norms. And the strangeness of the world ultimately doesn't matter, because it's actually a story about The Most Incestuous Society Possible (all 500+ peoplee are descended from the same man and woman) and the consequences of a terrifyingly small gene pool. It could have taken place anywhere as long as the people involved were sufficiently isolated. I am admittedly kind of a prose snob, so take this with a grain of salt because I'm probably being overly critical, but man, for a veteran social worker and "manager of a children and families social work team for ten years," Beckett seems to have no idea how to write dialogue for kids and teens, which is kind of a problem when nearly the entire cast is 15 or less. You could argue that it's because every character is borderline-to-actually-intellectually-disabled thanks to 160 years of turbo-incest, but if that was the intent, it reads less like that and more like mediocre YA dialogue / internal monologues. All that said, it's a quick read and there are some neat SF ideas in there. Started on The Night Lands tonight and, uh, wow. Yeah, I can see why someone might fall in love with this story but decide to write it from scratch. This is very likely going to defeat me in the original version, but if it does I'll give Stoddard's rewrite a shot. I'm convinced that the devs of Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours read this, and if they haven't, they need to.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 08:17
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:
Is that "Terminus Est" in katakana? Awesome! Kestral posted:Started on The Night Lands tonight and, uh, wow. Yeah, I can see why someone might fall in love with this story but decide to write it from scratch. This is very likely going to defeat me in the original version, but if it does I'll give Stoddard's rewrite a shot. I'm convinced that the devs of Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours read this, and if they haven't, they need to. Yeah, once you get into the rhythm of the prose it's great, but if you can't...
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 10:39
|
|
|
FPyat posted:Someone asked me if Lem’s Memoirs of a Space Traveller was the book that inspired Tarkovsky’s Solaris. So close and yet so far…
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 13:01
|
|
|
Sailor Viy posted:If you like this kind of thing I recommend The Zen Gun which I just finished. Very much in the style of "a dozen-odd brilliant ideas crammed into a tiny book". The first chapter alone has a galactic empire that extracts tribute by abducting writers and artists to supplement its own cultural decay; military space cruisers that are also nonstop drug parties (because pleasure is considered a basic human right); and robots who've been on strike for 100 years to gain recognition as sentient beings. Oh, it's by Barry Bailey, that explains that. Runcible Cat posted:2 & 5 are the weakest, with 8 a probable runner-up, but yeah 3 is amazing, 4 is hilarious and appalling picaresque with a protagonist who may or may not be learning to be a better person than Cugel by the end, 6/7 are my favourites because Shabble. And Codlugarhia. And Empress Justina. And terrifying therapists lurking underground. And my unholy love of footnotes. Chronicles of an Age of Darkness is terribly even but the best bits are amazing, really some of the best sword and sorcery around, as undisciplined as it's brilliant. Even the weakest aren't bad, just not Cook pushing himself. And can I be the only person in the world who enjoyed The Wormlord and the Werewolf? Here's my favourite description of them: https://web.archive.org/web/20150926102726/http://eithin.com/cirw/2010/02/17/chronicles-of-an-age-of-darkness/ fez_machine posted:Hugh Cook's self-published work is also worth checking out. To Find and Wake the Dreamer is perhaps the best response to 9/11 and The War On Terror that Fantasy produced. Ignore the copy that says how edgy the book is and how triggered you'll get. The book is fine, it just deals with some tough subject matter. Cook was very very bad at selling himself. I'm surprised his stuff's still available. He was an awful salesman, though, makes the book sound precisely on the nose and unimaginative.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 15:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 02:28 |
|
|
Safety Biscuits posted:I'm surprised his stuff's still available. He was an awful salesman, though, makes the book sound precisely on the nose and unimaginative. I think it's on Lulu only out of inertia now; god alone knows where any money goes to. And he was terrible with titles too, viz his W&W obsession, though I admit I can't think of any better ones.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 15:37
|
|