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Precambrian Video Games posted:Alastair Reynolds' books have some decent space combat (mainly the Revelation Space series). The Fall of Hyperion also ended with things exploding in space rather entertainingly IMO (I have heeded the warnings to stop there, though). Reynolds has extremely realistic (well what we think will be realistic anyway) combat, as does Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy and the Expanse, but I'm not sure it's great to read about. It's interesting and grim, for sure, but we like to see guys shouting orders about evasive patterns and space dogfighting between snub fighters. Given the speed of computers, the realities of things like acceleration and inertia, distances involved etc. space battle is faster than a human can think and would be over in the blink of an eye. The idea of human crewed starfighters are ridiculous in a hard sci fi setting. That being said: Reynolds' relativistic chase to Resurgam in Redemption Ark is one of the coolest sequences I've ever read and shows how Reynolds is so good at incorporating hard sci fi realities and making them assets to his storytelling rather than barriers that need to be ignored by Heisenberg compensators and push-button gravity.
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Mar 11, 2024 15:33
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I confess I've become a snob - if a book is self-published I'm going to be hyper-critical of it and even more unforgiving than I'd be if it went through the traditional publishers. Trad publishers have their problems, but I at least know an editor at least looked at the book and wanted to share it, whereas kindle unlimited is a free for all brawl.
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Mar 11, 2024 15:45
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StrixNebulosa posted:I confess I've become a snob - if a book is self-published I'm going to be hyper-critical of it and even more unforgiving than I'd be if it went through the traditional publishers. Trad publishers have their problems, but I at least know an editor at least looked at the book and wanted to share it, whereas kindle unlimited is a free for all brawl. I’ve become so hyper-critical I don’t even trust publishers anymore (after stumbling on too much aged-up YA poo poo being trad published as adult sff). So I read the first page of everything to pick up the tone and the most glaring problems are usually, helpfully, extremely obvious from go
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Mar 11, 2024 17:08
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yeah I mean if there's no smooching or isekai game mechanics by page 1 i'm out
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Mar 11, 2024 17:12
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Mar 11, 2024 17:39
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Stuporstar posted:I’ve become so hyper-critical I don’t even trust publishers anymore (after stumbling on too much aged-up YA poo poo being trad published as adult sff). So I read the first page of everything to pick up the tone and the most glaring problems are usually, helpfully, extremely obvious from go Yeah, I thought I would be safe from this if I stuck to stuff winning major awards, but it turns out no! "Aged-up YA poo poo" as you call it is winning nebulas.
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Mar 11, 2024 17:40
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Jimbozig posted:Yeah, I thought I would be safe from this if I stuck to stuff winning major awards, but it turns out no! "Aged-up YA poo poo" as you call it is winning nebulas. Could you post some examples that you've found? I'm reading sci fi again after a nearly 10 year period of being unable to concentrate on any book long enough to finish it, and I'm using the various awards nomination lists to build myself a reading list. It would be nice to skip the YA books that don't declare themselves as such
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Mar 11, 2024 17:51
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I've been picking up like 2% of the highly recommended stuff Pradmer posts and I have a queue that will take a year to go through if it stopped growing.
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Mar 11, 2024 18:35
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StumblyWumbly posted:I've been picking up like 2% of the highly recommended stuff Pradmer posts and I have a queue that will take a year to go through if it stopped growing. Narrator, "It will not stop growing."
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Mar 11, 2024 18:42
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StumblyWumbly posted:I've been picking up like 2% of the highly recommended stuff Pradmer posts and I have a queue that will take a year to go through if it stopped growing. Hmm 29 pages of posts, yeah that should keep me going
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Mar 11, 2024 18:45
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Yeah this subforum costs me a lot of money
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Mar 11, 2024 18:53
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Tarnop posted:Could you post some examples that you've found? I'm reading sci fi again after a nearly 10 year period of being unable to concentrate on any book long enough to finish it, and I'm using the various awards nomination lists to build myself a reading list. It would be nice to skip the YA books that don't declare themselves as such I've just in the past couple of years or so come back to reading sci-fi after a bunch of time spent away, and I wanted to read new stuff in addition to the classics. I was finding that the classics have been much more interesting to me, but then again I think that's because I used to be tuned in enough to know who to avoid. I'm not reading Heinlein or Eddings or any of the other authors I know I wouldn't enjoy. I figured I could read new things that were winning awards, but it's been hit and miss. The Fifth Season and Network Effect were good and had sequels that kept me busy. Those were the hits. When I referred to "aged-up YA," Babel was primarily what I was referring to - it's not a bad book, but it's too YAish for my tastes and I think it's strange that it would win a nebula (and it might have won the hugo too, if not for some weird censorship poo poo around Worldcon). I picked it up because it was compared to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and I think that's just insulting - that book has complex and beautiful prose. I was also not into This is How You Lose the Time War. It got praise for its writing, but I did not enjoy it. For a novel with two characters narrating, their voices were very hard to distinguish - which is WEIRD because the book had two authors and they each wrote a different character. Yet they STILL managed to write them in the same voice! (How??) It's also got a very low reading level, but because of the style of the prose I wouldn't necessarily call it YAish. In the end, I got sick of it because each chapter seemed the same as the last. It's not even very long and managed to become tiresome. (How??) This book should have been a hit for me - I love time travel and time loops and that sort of weirdness, but it somehow was just a complete miss. Anyway, I've started reading stuff based on this thread's recommendations and had better success. Blindsight was very good - I'd say great except for some notable weaknesses that bring it down a bit. Too Like the Lightning was great. Gnomon was even better.
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Mar 11, 2024 19:41
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Jimbozig posted:Gnomon was even better. Harkaway's The Gone Away World is also very good. Not to be confused with the also excellent the Gone World by Tom Sweterlich. The former is kind of funny and ironic, the latter is True Detective meets 12 Monkeys.
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Mar 11, 2024 19:44
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Appreciate the effortful response, thank you!
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Mar 11, 2024 19:45
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Anyone have an idea of where to start with Neal Asher? This is what got me interested.quote:Asher's main characters are usually acting to preserve social order or improve their society (rather than disrupt a society they are estranged from),
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Mar 11, 2024 19:59
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Yeah, with his twitter account, so you won't read his books The social order his characters work so hard to preserve are authoritarian
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Mar 11, 2024 20:05
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I have a sudden long flight tonight due to my mother’s emergency hospitalization, and it’s not looking good. I also have the complete Pratchett from the Humble Bundle, and I’ve only read a couple of his books so far. Does anyone have the “reading order” chart by series to post, and is the consensus that the Guards thread is the best? TIA
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Mar 11, 2024 20:06
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Mrenda posted:Anyone have an idea of where to start with Neal Asher? This is what got me interested. Asher is a fascist Iain Banks. I believe even a mask-off fascist Iain Banks by this point though I don’t read his Twitter
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Mar 11, 2024 20:06
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General Battuta posted:Asher is a fascist Iain Banks. I believe even a mask-off fascist Iain Banks by this point though I don’t read his Twitter He's a hardish sci fi guy that doesn't believe in climate change. I can't take the man's work seriously. I read a bunch of his stuff too, but it began to dawn on me that his views and protagonists always sided with the state-run AIs and how people need to stop fighting them and let them run everything
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Mar 11, 2024 20:08
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Kalman posted:A Passage at Arms, also by Glen Cook. And if you’re willing to do the A-M thing and treat the sea as sci-fi, submarine books are a good shout - Run Silent, Run Deep is one of the classics in the genre (and was written in the 50s about WWII so just be aware, 50s Navy officer as author), as is Das Boot; there’s also Frank Herbert’s Dragon in the Sea, and of course Hunt for Red October. Hmm, I recall Dragon in the Sea being a very 50s Cold War psychological novel with uncomfortable metaphors involving birthing canals and not much in the way of actual submarine fighting.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:10
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Asher wrote about a guy that had such high divorced UKIP guy energy he brexited the planet rather than let the UN turn him woke.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:10
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Yeah Asher went far off the deep end. Interesting books (at least initially) but they’re ultimately about how Great Men (and maybe wömen, but mostly men) need to take up arms and violently reject the poor choices big government/socialists make for them. This allows these great men to, if not save humanity, at least free themselves from the restrictions society place to keep everyone equally mediocre.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:13
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Asher wrote about a guy that had such high divorced UKIP guy energy he brexited the planet rather than let the UN turn him woke. I want to cough this sentence back out of my brain like a hairball
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Mar 11, 2024 20:16
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What's with the snobbery over YA fic and "aged up YA fic"?. I love me some YA fic. It's like how sometimes when you're hungry you just want to smash some maccas, you know? I'm not going to act all guilty for reading those Rebecca Yarros books. ("Aged up YA" is a whole genre now, people call it "new adult" fiction)
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Mar 11, 2024 20:17
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People have started using "YA" to mean "books I don't like" instead of "books that are stored on one side of the children's section of your library" and they get really mad at you if you point this out.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:25
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Admiralty Flag posted:I have a sudden long flight tonight due to my mother’s emergency hospitalization, and it’s not looking good. I also have the complete Pratchett from the Humble Bundle, and I’ve only read a couple of his books so far. Does anyone have the “reading order” chart by series to post, and is the consensus that the Guards thread is the best? TIA I’d suggest chronologically but this link has a list in different formats. Guard is probably my favourite, yeah. https://www.discworldemporium.com/reading-order/
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Mar 11, 2024 20:29
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pseudorandom name posted:People have started using "YA" to mean "books I don't like" instead of "books that are stored on one side of the children's section of your library" and they get really mad at you if you point this out. Ender's Game is YA.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:33
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Velius posted:Yeah Asher went far off the deep end. Interesting books (at least initially) but they’re ultimately about how Great Men (and maybe wömen, but mostly men) need to take up arms and violently reject the poor choices big government/socialists make for them. This allows these great men to, if not save humanity, at least free themselves from the restrictions society place to keep everyone equally mediocre. Cool, thanks. This isn't what his wikipedia suggests at all.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:35
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RDM posted:If it's not The Chosen One But They're A Teenager In School, it's not YA. Yeah I suppose I should have been more specific in that it's this particular story archetype that I'm pretty burned out on, so I'm building a reading list of sci fi and fantasy books that aren't that. No snobbery intended
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Mar 11, 2024 20:36
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voiceless anal fricative posted:What's with the snobbery over YA fic and "aged up YA fic"?. I love me some YA fic. It's like how sometimes when you're hungry you just want to smash some maccas, you know? I'm not going to act all guilty for reading those Rebecca Yarros books. pseudorandom name posted:People have started using "YA" to mean "books I don't like" instead of "books that are stored on one side of the children's section of your library" and they get really mad at you if you point this out. I have nothing against good young adult fiction. In fact one of my favorite books I read last year To Shape a Dragon’s Breath was YA. Bad YA however is the kinda crap with self-insert generic teenagers, typically written in shallow first person, loaded with snarky quips that undercut every moment and flatten the tone to a long faaaaaaaaart And there’s shitloads enough of it that people shorthand it to YA in general So what I mean by aged-up YA has become a specific tone and genre tropes (see above) that were generally confined to lovely YA until the demand grew for “more like that but with swearing and loving.” It means the characters still act like snarky teens whose dialogue can be translated entirely to, “gently caress you, you’re not my dad,” even though they’re supposedly in their 20s. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 20:41
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voiceless anal fricative posted:What's with the snobbery over YA fic and "aged up YA fic"?. I love me some YA fic. It's like how sometimes when you're hungry you just want to smash some maccas, you know? I'm not going to act all guilty for reading those Rebecca Yarros books. I actually have nothing against it at all. I'm the same way and will read YA when I feel like it. I read the first Percy Jackson book since my kids are into it, although that's middle grade, not YA. (It turns out that Percy Jackson is absolute trash writing, but that's independent of it being middle grade.) I just don't appreciate being sold a book as being like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and then finding out that it's written like Harry Potter and the Evils of British Colonialism - it's just not what I signed up for and it's not the kind of YA I would choose to read anyway. If I want a book about the evils of colonialism, I want something more nuanced. And when I choose to read YA, I want silly escapism, like you said. I posted a bunch more about Babel right after I read it, with I think plenty of nuance in my review. Anyway, I don't mean to come off as a snob. I'm just trying to give useful advice to someone who in their own words wants to avoid "aged-up YA poo poo."
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Mar 11, 2024 20:43
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pseudorandom name posted:People have started using "YA" to mean "books I don't like" instead of "books that are stored on one side of the children's section of your library" and they get really mad at you if you point this out. Babel isn't stored in the children's section, but it absolutely could be. That it's not is purely a marketing choice by the publisher. The writing level is around 5th grade. Shelving books written at a 5th grade level alongside books written for adults is exactly the thing people complain about. I like reading YA books sometimes and would like to find them in the YA section. When I find them in the adult section, it's annoying.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:52
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Reading level doesn't have anything to do with it, the categories are based on the age of the intended audience.
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Mar 11, 2024 21:09
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zoux posted:Yeah this subforum costs me a lot of money
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Mar 11, 2024 21:27
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pseudorandom name posted:Reading level doesn't have anything to do with it, the categories are based on the age of the intended audience. I know you’re not arguing with me here, but what do we call the intended audience when they amount to “people who physically aged out of YA but haven’t mentally, so they wanna read people with teenage brains loving but with the fig leaf of claiming they’re in their 20s”?
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Mar 11, 2024 21:43
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voiceless anal fricative posted:What's with the snobbery over YA fic and "aged up YA fic"?. I love me some YA fic. It's like how sometimes when you're hungry you just want to smash some maccas, you know? I'm not going to act all guilty for reading those Rebecca Yarros books. It's bad. Like isekai was bad for anime and manga bad.
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Mar 11, 2024 21:44
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Flips the "Days since the thread debated YA" counter back to 0. Anyway, I'm almost 1/4th into Exordia now and I have been delighted the whole time. Especially refreshing since I just finished a very popular book that did not work for me at all.
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Mar 11, 2024 21:58
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I'm just curious about what's YA about This is how you lose the time war? The closest novel I can think of to it is The first fifteen lives of Harry August. It very clearly seemed aimed at more of a literary/LitSF audience.
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Mar 11, 2024 22:04
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I'd assume it's more about marketing than accurate literary taxonomy.
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Mar 11, 2024 22:04
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StrixNebulosa posted:I confess I've become a snob - if a book is self-published I'm going to be hyper-critical of it and even more unforgiving than I'd be if it went through the traditional publishers. Trad publishers have their problems, but I at least know an editor at least looked at the book and wanted to share it, whereas kindle unlimited is a free for all brawl. Conversely, I tend to be much more critical of tradpub stuff, because allegedly, publishers exist to (among other things) provide trained experts for editing, proofreading, typesetting, and whatnot. I'm much more forgiving of selfpub stuff with typos or jarringly infelicitous sentence construction or ebook formatting disasters, all of which I have seen in tradpub as well. (The latter of those is if anything more common there than in selfpub!) With selfpub I'm much more likely to let minor issues slide if I'm otherwise enjoying the work, because, well, it was probably checked over by one or two people who aren't the author and who also aren't professional editors or proofreaders, at best. And most of the time, if I report those issues to the author, it'll get fixed! With tradpub there's less excuse and also they will never, ever publish a fixed edition. Mrenda posted:Anyone have an idea of where to start with Neal Asher? This is what got me interested. lmao  I don't remember anything about Cowl or the Sable Keech books, but in the Polity series the protagonist is a government agent who gets increasingly disillusioned with their methods, so his solution in the climax of the series is to use space magic to murder the government and then tell their successors "I'll be watching you" before loving off into nowhere. And the first Owner book, which is where Asher really goes off the rails, features a super-genius polymath inventor/master martial artist/badass sniper who deliberately engineers the complete collapse of earthbound civilization so that he can run away and found Space Libertopia, all because the government wanted him to use his vast abilities to maybe help improve society somewhat. This is presented as a good thing. That's also the one where the narration includes a diss track against early-21st-century socialized medicine, something entirely irrelevant and wildly anachronistic within the setting of the novel. E: to be clear, I did actually mostly enjoy his pre-Owner stuff. But I enjoyed it very much as "mindless action flick/ooo, cool nanotech" style books, and I also have no idea how someone ended up with the quoted description of his books. Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Asher wrote about a guy that had such high divorced UKIP guy energy he brexited the planet rather than let the UN turn him woke. Aah, I see you read it too. ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 22:07
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