|
Safety Biscuits posted:That reviewer is weak, way worse stuff happens. Yeah I think neverness is an uncomplicated recommend, and the sequel trilogy is as well, unless "this but quite a lot more so in every conceivable dimension" strikes you as a bad thing
|
#
?
May 8, 2024 07:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 11:51 |
|
|
Nuclear Tourist posted:I have a red eye flight across the Atlantic coming up and I need some (maybe literal) airport fiction to keep me from wishing for the sweet release of death as I endure the headache inducing unpleasantness that is modern air travel. I was thinking maybe The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. Any other suggestions? HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (this is horror but supernatural horror is technically fantasy  )Daemon by Daniel Suarez Nexus by Ramez Naam
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2024 13:07
|
|
|
Anansi Boys (American Gods #2) by Neil Gaiman - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FCKENQ/
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2024 22:27
|
|
|
tildes posted:New Gareth Hanrahan novel, The Sword Unbound is out. The sequel to his previous book about a hero 20 years after the world was saved. I liked the previous one. These were quite good. I particularly liked everyone around Alf desperately trying to get him to be even a little be subtle about absolutely anything.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2024 23:37
|
|
|
WarpDogs posted:
Thanks. Yes, I am digging this one a lot more than The Dying Earth short stories or Rhialto the Magnificient. And you're right, it is loving weird. In a good way.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 14:14
|
|
|
Safety Biscuits posted:That reviewer is weak, way worse stuff happens. I was too embarassed to ask this the first time, but I will now - what does "SF D.H. Lawrence" mean? The gist I get from wikipedia is that he wrote about sex at a time it was taboo?
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 14:15
|
|
|
Lotta science fiction films and games I enjoy use the ancient aliens and abandoned megaliths bits. Any good suggestions for stories where the ancient progenitors or hyper advanced species are still alive and active alongside the protagonist humans/human stand-ins? Or should I just read the Culture books.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 14:39
|
|
|
Arc Hammer posted:Lotta science fiction films and games I enjoy use the ancient aliens and abandoned megaliths bits. Any good suggestions for stories where the ancient progenitors or hyper advanced species are still alive and active alongside the protagonist humans/human stand-ins? Book of the New Sun
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 15:03
|
|
|
Arc Hammer posted:Or should I just read the Culture books. I'm re-reading the Culture books now (I got as far as Look to Windward last time and I'm planning on making this a full read through of the series) and I'm enjoying them immensely
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 15:48
|
|
|
Ramrod Hotshot posted:I was too embarassed to ask this the first time, but I will now - what does "SF D.H. Lawrence" mean? It means you don't want your wife or servants reading him.* Serious reply: What I meant was that Zindell heavily prioritises immediate emotional, sensual, and mystical experiences (over, for instance, received wisdom, class structure, traditional morality, and cliché) over abstract speculation, and that he does so in the service of a radical awareness of life and its meaning. Not that Zindell is stupid or anti-intellectual; there's plenty of thought, even scientific thought, but it's harnessed to this deeper quest for the ineffable flame. Also, it's Freudian as gently caress. If you're interested in Zindell, this is about the only interview with him I've ever seen - from years ago in Interzone when his fantasy series was first appearing. Pro click. https://www.davidzindell.com/storms-of-numbers-chalices-of-light-an-interview-by-nick-gevers/ *IDK how famous this line is these days, but when Penguin was prosecuted for obscenity because they published Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, the prosecutor went down in history for asking if you would want your wife or servant to read it. Arc Hammer posted:Lotta science fiction films and games I enjoy use the ancient aliens and abandoned megaliths bits. Any good suggestions for stories where the ancient progenitors or hyper advanced species are still alive and active alongside the protagonist humans/human stand-ins? Neverness fits here, too!
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 17:10
|
|
|
Arc Hammer posted:Lotta science fiction films and games I enjoy use the ancient aliens and abandoned megaliths bits. Any good suggestions for stories where the ancient progenitors or hyper advanced species are still alive and active alongside the protagonist humans/human stand-ins? Off the top of my head, Baxter's Xeelee series, the Presger in Leckie's Radch books, definitely read the Culture books (Excession in particular, for your interests), Brin's Uplift books, Benford's Galactic Center series, Saberhagen's Berserkers (kinda).
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 20:41
|
|
|
56% of the way through Rogue Moon, and I can't remember the last time I felt so bait-and-switched by a book. Premise: there's a million-year-old structure on the moon that kills anyone who enters it in horrible ways if they don't puzzle out and obey its bizarre rules, so we're going to clone and teleport people over and over into its maw to brute-force the puzzle until we figure out what the hell is going on. Reality: a weirdly ahead of its time and fairly explicit exploration of toxic masculinity that just drags and drags from one snippy conversation to another. This is one of the few times I saw that a book was published in 1960 and thought it might be a good thing, because I figured it would focus on the Big Dumb (Malicious) Object instead of human drama, but no, it's just about how much of a piece of poo poo the explorer is. For people who've read this, is there anything in the back half of this book that's worth reading if what I want is more of a focus on the, y'know, Rogue Moon and less of Barker being insufferable for pages at a time? Really I just want a book-length Diamond Dogs, or a book that's just the first part of Origin Complex but like 400 pages, or an Aching God where the dungeon with a hideous mind in its walls is more than the last 50 pages or so.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 21:12
|
|
|
The Book of Jhereg (Vlad Taltos #1) by Steven Brust - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018WXBHRG/ The Cloven Viscount (Our Ancestors #1) by Italo Calvino - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ALJH6JI/ The Nonexistent Knight (Our Ancestors #3) by Italo Calvino - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ALJH6ZC/
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 22:33
|
|
|
Safety Biscuits posted:It means you don't want your wife or servants reading him.* that's better put than I could have! for me it's just a vibe, like someone leaning in and sort of asmr talking in your ear with a borderline uncomfortable level of detail and in extremely beautiful prose about what things look, and feel and smell like, but in a way that's also very vivid and compelling. I will say my recommendation does not extend to his lightstone fantasy series, that is awful (absolute chalk and cheese, something about the way his style interacts with deliberately generic fantasy elements is repellent for me). He has a free book of short stories that you can get from here: https://www.davidzindell.com/free-book/sign-up/ IIRC Shanidar is the precursor to Neverness, and should give you a good idea of his style.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 22:38
|
|
|
Kestral posted:56% of the way through Rogue Moon, and I can't remember the last time I felt so bait-and-switched by a book. I just read Rogue Moon on a recommendation from the thread, and I felt very similar coming out of it. It has such a great concept at the heart of the story, but it's also so melodramatic. I don't know if its the right way to say it, but it sort of felt like a stage play? Like all the main characters deliver these long monologues that I cannot imagine someone in real life saying. And all the main characters are pretty unpleasant in their own ways. I'd still recommend finishing it out, it's not very long and there's certainly some good stuff near the end that's more in the exploring implications of the sci-fi stuff over the character drama. As someone in this thread said (spoiler if you haven't finished it I think) the exploration of creating a clone that has no reason not to think it's the so-called real version and the ethics surrounding that have been done a ton in the time since, like in the Prestige, or even with Tom Riker in TNG, but this is an early example of it. I also enjoyed the bits about error handling when trying to clone, and how do you know if something did go wrong when combined with the issues of human memory itself.. Don't expect too much in the way of a resolution though.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2024 23:20
|
|
|
Mass market paperback books need to die. That is all. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 00:04
|
|
|
A Sneaker Broker posted:Mass market paperback books need to die. That is all. Why?
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 00:46
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:Really liked this book, the audiobook was a delight. Couldn't get into Song of Achilles but this one did it for me! Just finished this audiobook of Circe and liked it a lot, thanks. Now I need to find another one.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 00:51
|
|
|
A Sneaker Broker posted:Mass market paperback books need to die. That is all. Joke's on you, books as an industry are dying
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 00:53
|
|
|
Kesper North posted:Joke's on you, books as an industry are dying https://www.statista.com/statistics/422595/print-book-sales-usa/
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 01:07
|
|
|
Kesper North posted:Joke's on you, books as an industry are dying Nah. As long as these big companies in the VGC, Movies, and TV Shows keep putting off effort, Books will be rising.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 01:10
|
|
|
I'm afraid this is paywalled and I can't see the chart
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 01:31
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 01:33
|
|
|
cool, thanks so publishing is not dying. it feels like the authors are though! i'm curious what caused the huge trough in that graph around 2012 interesting spike in 2020-2021, i can guess what caused that one also: this does not appear to differentiate between fiction and nonfiction, curious if there's a significant difference between the two, if anyone knows?
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 01:42
|
|
|
Kesper North posted:cool, thanks Ereaders/phones and then people figuring out that they preferred to read physical is the common explanation
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 01:49
|
|
|
Kesper North posted:i'm curious what caused the huge trough in that graph around 2012 Maybe Borders declaring bankruptcy and closing hundreds of stores and laying off over 10,000 employees in 2011 but then the first front-lit ereader hit the market in September 2012 so things started rebounding? edit: didn't realize that was for print books only. fermun fucked around with this message at 01:54 on May 10, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 01:52
|
|
|
yeah that tracks
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 02:00
|
|
|
Kalman posted:Off the top of my head, Baxter's Xeelee series, the Presger in Leckie's Radch books, definitely read the Culture books (Excession in particular, for your interests), Brin's Uplift books, Benford's Galactic Center series, Saberhagen's Berserkers (kinda). I was going to mention the Uplift books. Humanity stumbles out into the stars and finds a vast, ancient, multi-galaxy civilization. Shenanigans ensue.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 02:16
|
|
|
pradmer posted:The Book of Jhereg (Vlad Taltos #1) by Steven Brust - $2.99 This is among the earliest fantasy-noir books, and very good. The characterization in later books goes weird places on account of his apparently writing about his friends and lovers. Ick. If you like noir that is bleak and painful, do try this, and if you like it you'll probably like more of the series. I gave up a decade or so ago, but I blame that on my short attention span.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 05:24
|
|
|
After reading some Dan Egan I switched to something lighter with Project Hail Mary. I gotta say it was a nice change of pace, it was a much faster reader. Is ‘popcorn reading’ a term? Still explored some interesting ideas while being lighthearted. Is there anything else like it you’d all recommend?
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 05:28
|
|
|
frogbs posted:...something lighter... SA turned me into an asteroid-mining nerd 20 years ago, and Delta-V fits that bill and should be light enough to do the job
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 06:06
|
|
|
common BookTok W Seriously, that's impressive given its been alongside growth in subscription services and audiobooks. Most of the people I know who read fiction actually listen to audiobooks now.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 07:33
|
|
|
voiceless anal fricative posted:common BookTok W BookTok (The Non-Porn Side) has been heavily investing in all things books. E-Books, Audiobooks, Paperback, Deluxe editions. Hell, there's even a cult dedicated to buying the Juniper WoT collection.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 07:40
|
|
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:This is among the earliest fantasy-noir books, and very good. The characterization in later books goes weird places on account of his apparently writing about his friends and lovers. Ick. It's also witty and fast-paced noir, which I like. The, now, 17 book series takes a lot of weird turns, jumps around in the chronology and does a ton of world building and character development for Vlad. The story I heard and believed about books 4 & 5 is that the disintegration of Vlad's marriage parallels how Brust's marriage collapsed. He wasn't consciously picking up on what was going on in his real life but he had enough awareness of hat was going on to use it for his protagonist's experiences in the books. Kinda sad, really. Immediately after those two books we get Athyra, which shows Vlad from an outsider's perspective and he does not come out looking like a decent human being. I'm pretty sure that was written after Brust got a cold dose of reality in the form of divorce papers and did some introspection. Then in Orca, Vlad and Keira the Thief team up. They fight crime. No, seriously. Vlad and Keira team up and fight crime. There are some mild qualifiers to that, but yeah, that's a broadly accurate version of what happens. If the Phoenix + Athyra run put you off the series because it was depressing as hell, which it was, Orca is a reward for sticking with it and Then there's the Khaavren Romances, which are the result of Brust thinking "Nobody writes like Alexandre Dumas anymore. I should fix that." But that's another post. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 08:38 on May 10, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 08:35
|
|
|
Somebody recommended Daniel M Fords The Warden book some pages back and I picked it up. Yeah it's pretty solid. Doesn't break any new ground in fantasy fiction, but I liked the worldbuilding and i found the protagonist engaging.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 13:22
|
|
|
Arc Hammer posted:Lotta science fiction films and games I enjoy use the ancient aliens and abandoned megaliths bits. Any good suggestions for stories where the ancient progenitors or hyper advanced species are still alive and active alongside the protagonist humans/human stand-ins? this is a big part of the revelation space series
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 14:47
|
|
|
The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 2) by Margaret Atwood - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002PXFYKG/
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 15:28
|
|
|
Arc Hammer posted:Lotta science fiction films and games I enjoy use the ancient aliens and abandoned megaliths bits. Any good suggestions for stories where the ancient progenitors or hyper advanced species are still alive and active alongside the protagonist humans/human stand-ins? Andrew Bannister's Spin Trilogy is very Culture-like and has some of this. Notably it flips the Culture-norm where we see the advanced people point of view dealing with the scrubs, and it very much about the scrubs while the advanced race looks on and sighs a lot. I thought it was an interesting take, although it doesn't quite fit your definition because the advanced peeps aren't really front and centre. They do scratch a Culture itch though, and have been enjoyable post-Culture reading.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 19:04
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:The story I heard and believed about books 4 & 5 is that the disintegration of Vlad's marriage parallels how Brust's marriage collapsed. In addition a communist organizer friend of Brust’s was killed by a mob hit man, after which writing the wacky adventures of a mob hit man wasn’t as much fun.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 20:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 11:51 |
|
|
dunno if I've had bad luck or if standards are changing for some publishers, but I feel like quality has really dropped off a cliff for newer mass markets. Pages are super thin, and in some cases the print is angled or the cut itself is wrong I used to be a physical-only guy with a smattering of Kindle stuff here and there, but I'm almost exclusively Kindle these days with the occasional splurge on a nice physical version or used book outing
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2024 20:26
|
|
