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PriorMarcus posted:Can anyone recommend a book to me that's has a plausible but fun exploration of alien life in it? I was thinking Children of Time (not actually aliens, I know) but how propulsive is it? Is it quite a slow read? I thought Children of Time had great pacing when I read it zoux posted:Children of Time is perfect.
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Dec 12, 2023 17:16
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Is it as propulsive as the medieval Jack Reacher vampire knight novel series I'm reading? No, nothing is. I think the secret to pacing is "cut out all the chapters where your characters are travelling somewhere. Just say they went there."
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Dec 12, 2023 17:25
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I just finished Rubicon, recommended by someone in this thread. I thought it was…fine? Up until the end I would have said good, but the ending really soured me on it. It was disappointing that the whole thing led back to West. It made the plot and the threat feel smaller, in a way. Also, obviously, the rezone and suddenly she is West now? Total bullshit, did not like.
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Dec 12, 2023 17:35
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I finished up the last two released Fred the Vampire Accountant books, and I was right. The series is really starting to run out of steam, and should probably finish up in a book or two. There is just too much power creep, and it lost the charm that made the premise amusing in the first place. I read Robopocalypse. Its sort of ok? It sort of reminds me of World War Z (which is not a good thing), but the writing is less hamfisted. The characters are all still pretty one dimensional. I wouldn't really recommend it to anybody, but its at least readable. I have zero interest in reading the sequels. Only reason I read it is because I heard Steven Spielberg was slated to direct an adaptation of it at one point.
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Dec 12, 2023 18:09
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PriorMarcus posted:Can anyone recommend a book to me that's has a plausible but fun exploration of alien life in it? I was thinking Children of Time (not actually aliens, I know) but how propulsive is it? Is it quite a slow read? Cj cherryh, her chanur books.
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Dec 12, 2023 19:00
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FPyat posted:Oh hey, the first copies of Battuta's new Exordia are out! Quoting a twitter user, "This is a very different book than Baru, but Seth’s evocative prose and dark humor is familiar from page one, and the laser focus on defamiliarizing real world injustices is again the core of the work." This has been a book I've been looking forwards to since it was announced. Honestly, nothing can top this as a book jacket blurb: Daniel M. Lavery posted:Exordia is a comprehensive taxonomy of violence at every level, from the subcellular to the intergalactic[...]
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Dec 12, 2023 19:10
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sebmojo posted:Cj cherryh, her chanur books. SF & F Mega-thread: Cj cherryh, her chanur
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Dec 12, 2023 19:12
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RoboCicero posted:This has been a book I've been looking forwards to since it was announced. Honestly, nothing can top this as a book jacket blurb: I got very excited and checked my pre-order but alas I have to wait until Jan 24. This is an outrage!!!
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Dec 12, 2023 19:28
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I just finished Tchaikovsky's Final Architecture. It was good, though Book 1 dragged kinda hard I found I got drawn in more and more once I started Book 2 and then Book 3 was mostly payoff. I do however wish he wouldn't do the thing where a character finds out some piece of revelatory information but doesn't tell the reader for a few pages/chapters thing, It's a pet peeve when it's done too often in a third person omniscient narrator style where it stays with the character who discovered it. But it only happened just enough times for me to notice it, and the wait was usually pretty short.
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Dec 12, 2023 19:36
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PriorMarcus posted:Can anyone recommend a book to me that's has a plausible but fun exploration of alien life in it? I was thinking Children of Time (not actually aliens, I know) but how propulsive is it? Is it quite a slow read? brunner's crucible of time, dragon's egg by robert l forward, children of time wasn't a slow read for me, it was quite the pageturner. the sequel as well. the third one didn't grab me, except for the parts with the corvids.
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Dec 12, 2023 20:25
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Startide Rising has great aliens.
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Dec 12, 2023 21:14
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zoux posted:Startide Rising has great aliens. Remember the girlboss matriarch alien who strangles underlings with her mating claw (it shoots out of her Sorussy). Man I loved that book
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Dec 12, 2023 21:44
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zoux posted:Is it as propulsive as the medieval Jack Reacher vampire knight novel series I'm reading? No, nothing is.
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Dec 12, 2023 22:32
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City of Last Chances (Tyrant Philosophers #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BNQG974T/ Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WQQXSGL/ The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DCGJ6XQ/
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Dec 13, 2023 00:08
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I don't know if I would really call Last of the Wine sci-fi or fantasy given that it's a historical epic with no fantasy or sci-fi elements, but it's an excellent novel and I highly recommend it.
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Dec 13, 2023 02:15
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Chairman Capone posted:I don't know if I would really call Last of the Wine sci-fi or fantasy given that it's a historical epic with no fantasy or sci-fi elements, but it's an excellent novel and I highly recommend it. It was Book of the Month in 2014! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3647305
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Dec 13, 2023 02:29
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Chairman Capone posted:I don't know if I would really call Last of the Wine sci-fi or fantasy given that it's a historical epic with no fantasy or sci-fi elements, but it's an excellent novel and I highly recommend it.
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Dec 13, 2023 02:35
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pradmer posted:Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks - $2.99 This is a fun little romp
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Dec 13, 2023 03:53
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Harold Fjord posted:This is a fun little romp Can confirm. It's light reading, but fun. ***** This botched scan that doesn't know what a lowercase 'l' looks like has finally gone from infuriating to hilarious.   I cannot imagine how this ever passed quality control.
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Dec 13, 2023 04:23
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Getting every single error out of a scanned manuscript is surprisingly labor-intensive, and most companies doing them are not putting that level of effort into it.
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Dec 13, 2023 05:02
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ClydeFrog posted:I got very excited and checked my pre-order but alas I have to wait until Jan 24. This is an outrage!!! Big same on both counts.
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Dec 13, 2023 05:24
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Kestral posted:Can confirm. It's light reading, but fun. Wrong will be right, when Asian comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
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Dec 13, 2023 05:33
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Rand Brittain posted:Getting every single error out of a scanned manuscript is surprisingly labor-intensive, and most companies doing them are not putting that level of effort into it. Similarly, students scanning parts of their textbook to paste into an essay are also not labor-intensively minded. sebmojo posted:Wrong will be right, when Asian comes in sight, 
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Dec 13, 2023 05:47
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Rand Brittain posted:Getting every single error out of a scanned manuscript is surprisingly labor-intensive, and most companies doing them are not putting that level of effort into it. Man ain’t that the truth. This is pretty egregious stuff though, because there are errors like that on literally every page, usually more than one, all because the letter L was apparently too much to handle. Asian Aslan is merely the funniest example.
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Dec 13, 2023 06:17
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Kestral posted:Man ain’t that the truth. This is pretty egregious stuff though, because there are errors like that on literally every page, usually more than one, all because the letter L was apparently too much to handle. Asian Aslan is merely the furriest example.
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Dec 13, 2023 18:24
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I know the threat title just changed, and the current one feels very fitting, but man "Asian Aslan is merely the furriest example" is a great subtitle too
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Dec 13, 2023 19:03
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PriorMarcus posted:Can anyone recommend a book to me that's has a plausible but fun exploration of alien life in it? I was thinking Children of Time (not actually aliens, I know) but how propulsive is it? Is it quite a slow read? *crashing through several zones of thought* have you read Vernor Vinge?
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Dec 13, 2023 19:46
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Every page snipe should be recommending that people who read and liked a Children of ___ book by Tchaikovsky should read Vernor Vinge, and vice versa.
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Dec 13, 2023 19:51
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Finished Daughter of the Empire since it got recommended a lot ITT. Good book, I had a great time watching Mara pull off all those schemes in spite of how lovely her situation was. Some of the prose felt a little dry/stilted at times, but the plot was good enough that I didn't mind too much. I'll read the sequels some other time, but I think I want to read something that has really good action scenes now. Any recommendations?
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Dec 13, 2023 20:30
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MockingQuantum posted:I know the threat title just changed, and the current one feels very fitting, but man "Asian Aslan is merely the furriest example" is a great subtitle too I mean, we could just acknowledge that the Sex Computer was a weird, transgressive, extreme example of what was possible in the Strange Libertarian Future of The Diamond Age and then just change the thread title immediately.
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Dec 13, 2023 21:13
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I have mostly fond memories of the Diamond Age; those memories lack even a trace of a sex computer. Might have to check my paperback copy to see if those pages were secretly razor bladed out by my guardian angel.
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Dec 14, 2023 02:07
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Honestly y'all should be complaining about the heteronormativity of The Drummers.
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Dec 14, 2023 03:29
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Whirling posted:Finished Daughter of the Empire since it got recommended a lot ITT. Good book, I had a great time watching Mara pull off all those schemes in spite of how lovely her situation was. Some of the prose felt a little dry/stilted at times, but the plot was good enough that I didn't mind too much. I'll read the sequels some other time, but I think I want to read something that has really good action scenes now. Any recommendations? Read some Matthew Stover star wars books
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Dec 14, 2023 03:38
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Diamond Age had great worldbuilding and then took a sharp turn when Stephenson, yet again, felt the need to have his young female character get sexually assaulted for no good reason except that it was edgy I guess. He seemingly just cannot help himself and it's a real bad look.
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Dec 14, 2023 03:46
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General Battuta posted:Read some Matthew Stover star wars books Heroes Die is 90s as gently caress but the action is great.
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Dec 14, 2023 04:42
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General Battuta posted:Read some Matthew Stover star wars books I was going to say that Traitor is basically just two people discussing the morality of the Force for 200 pages, but then I remembered I was forgetting the Ganner segment!
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Dec 14, 2023 05:46
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Whirling posted:Finished Daughter of the Empire since it got recommended a lot ITT. Good book, I had a great time watching Mara pull off all those schemes in spite of how lovely her situation was. Some of the prose felt a little dry/stilted at times, but the plot was good enough that I didn't mind too much. I'll read the sequels some other time, but I think I want to read something that has really good action scenes now. Any recommendations? The stuff Stackpole wrote when he did the X-Wing books had good action from what I remember, and I remember them being fun reads too. The new Thrawn series from Timothy Zahn is fun too, but not as much action. More art appreciation from Thrawn, though.
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Dec 14, 2023 06:49
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Chairman Capone posted:I was going to say that Traitor is basically just two people discussing the morality of the Force for 200 pages, but then I remembered I was forgetting the Ganner segment! I remember Traitor must be 15 years or something since I read it... But I remember I liked it, it was a different book to most other star wars books. I thought it was very cool. I didn't read any of the following books but I recall reading other people discussing the books and apparently they invalidated the whole book and went in a real dumb direction.
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Dec 14, 2023 07:48
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Star fighters of Adumar (x-wing 9) by Aaron Allston is the single best SW book ever written.
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Dec 14, 2023 08:26
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I think you misspelled wraith squadron, and meant to say Michael stackpole...
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