SF & F Mega-thread: I had to google 'spock pirate depilatory'

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Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Yeah I just started Gideon the Ninth and I just got spoilered pretty hard!

# ¿ Oct 20, 2019 00:47

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 17:16

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

coolusername posted:

Anyone have recs for books similar to Gideon in the vein of 'Snarky but not intolerable protagonist on an adventure with a buddy s/he has a complex relationship with?' in sci-fi or fantasy genre?

There's lots of snarky intolerable protagonists out there, I know, but so often there's a bunch of sexist jokes, constant male gaze, etc and stuff, so this was a nice change.

I'd recommend Wilhelmina Baird's Crash Course, Clipjoint and Psykosis which are a cyberpunk trilogy with some mild space opera characteristics. Very queer and very poly-friendly, ahead of its time in a way.

Chris Moriarty's Spin State and sequels I also enjoyed, though it's dark and heavy.

Oh, and of course the adventures of Miles Vorkosigan and his handsome but bumbling cousin Ivan in Lois McMaster Bujold's wonderful Barrayar novels. Cetaganda, et cetera.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2019 06:32

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

The guy who wrote the Johannes Cabal books also wrote a YA submarine thriller on a Russian-speaking colony planet, for maximum Red October.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13533670-katya-s-world

It was fun but not exceptional - he's improved his craft since then substantially, I do really like his work - and apparently he's finally writing the third book right now.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2019 05:00

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Ninurta posted:

Unrelated, but thank you for the reminder of Wilhelmina Baird. I had been trying to look up her books for a re-read starting with Crash Course's reality TV analog used to lure the poor and desperate into horrible situations. I was curious to see how the first book and sequels hold up 20 years later. I had read the 4th volume Chaos Come Again about 8 or so years ago and it was very, very different in scope with it's Transhumanism.

I loved it too, I should have included it on the list.

I feel like we missed a lifetime of great SF from her. It looks like she published a couple of SF stories back in the 60s (as Joyce Carstairs Hutchinson) then noped the gently caress out for thirty years, which... can you blame her?

# ¿ Oct 23, 2019 05:15

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

He is but it isn't obvious in his fiction the same way it is with Mieville. Good twitter follow though.

This is my periodic reminder to the thread that Steven Brust was kicked out of the 4th Street writers workshop for stalking and sexually harassing female writers. gently caress that guy.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2019 21:01

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

1/3 of the way through Steel Frame by Andrew Skinner. It's milSF with no obvious racism and no detectable male gaze thus far, which must make it some kind of unicorn. The technothriller-level of obsessive attention to operational detail for Gundams is neat as heck and makes me feel like the author reads the AIRPOWER/Cold War thread here or something.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2019 02:22

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

General Battuta posted:

I think knowing how fast you read is roughly on the same level as knowing your IQ

At least you can do party tricks with the first one?

# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 22:18

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Larry Parrish posted:

i read two necromancers, a bureaucrat, and an elf which was good and probably better than that

Did they walk into a bar?

As jokey titles go, I'm in.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2019 08:51

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Larry Parrish posted:

unfortunately no

They had one loving job

# ¿ Nov 27, 2019 09:28

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

StashAugustine posted:

Hey, asked an offsite for book recommendations for a present. Anyone read To Say Nothing of the Dog? It sounds like a good fit and I'd like impressions

It's one of my favorite comfort reads and happens to be a pretty charming romance novel.

Be sure and google a picture of the bishop's bird stump. It is a real thing that existed.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2019 04:09

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Mr Darcy posted:

Raises hand.

She's got a lot to answer for from my teenage years.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2019 19:29

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

90s Cringe Rock posted:

gently caress's sake Morgan, but at least Jeff's good.

It may not be a bone, it could be some awful new organ or something.

I believe you are referring to the lower horn.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2019 10:14

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

General Battuta posted:

I guess it's worth articulating, for anyone in the bleachers who's wondering why everyone yelled at the reddit guy, that 'biological sex is real' isn't the problem. Yes, there's a physical sex, and most people do fall in the XX or XY karyotopes. There are developmental consequences of these karyotopes which generally but not exclusively sort into two big heaps, 'male' and 'female'. Those wacky social justice warriors aren't denying this.

What people are rightly angry about is the use of this fact as a dogwhistle to justify hurting or outright killing trans people. It's very important to anti-trans rhetoric that everything be reduced to biological sex: that there be absolutely no way to decide whether you're a man or a woman except your karyotope. (This doesn�t work, since karyotope doesn�t translate cleanly to phenotype, but terfs are normative: they want to protect a core definition from all the edge cases, so they don�t care). If terfs don't have that reductionism to fall back on, they have to admit they just hate trans people. This means terfs will dodge any suggestion that your gender can be determined by anything but an XX or XY karyotope - despite mountains of empirical evidence to the contrary.

Being transgender, identifying as a gender different from your birth sex, is also a biological fact (and, hell, even if it was socially or environmentally determined, who cares? we go to enormous lengths to protect social constructs like marriage or banks; we see them as vital to society and individual freedom). Morgan went to bat for Rowling, who was going to bat for someone who believed trans people should, in essence, be erased: forcibly treated as if they were cis, with no regard to their own wiring or individual will, or to the clinical outcomes this treatment produces (suicide). Both research and basic ethics can tell you this is a terrible idea that harms and kills trans people.

The medically and ethically correct response to someone saying 'I am this gender' is to support their determination, just as the medically and ethically correct response to someone saying 'I am attracted to these (consenting adult) people' is to say 'go for it.' Any appeal to , to the notion that 'there are only two sexes and all else is delusion', is a dodge. It is a way to hide from the fact that trans people clearly do exist and clearly do benefit from transitioning.

Of course, even if there were only one trans person in the world, the first in history, it's easy to make a purely ethical argument that their identity should be recognized. But that's another post.

Can I quote this post on Facebook with (or if you prefer without) attribution?

# ¿ Dec 20, 2019 23:45

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

you'd think a transhumanist SFF writer would be more of a trans-friendly humanist but it so rarely seems to work out that way :sigh:

# ¿ Dec 22, 2019 23:00

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Cardiac posted:

I just found it easier to not give a poo poo about the gender of the author.
Why limit yourself?

When an explorer sails to unknown places, they "limit" themselves in the sense that they are cut off from the familiar. They lack their usual support and their usual resources, they cannot share a beautiful moment with a lover or tell a story to a friend. They do this because they understand that in exchange for this limitation, they have the opportunity to see something entirely new to their experience.

It is unwise to call this a limitation. It is accepting the cost of exchanging one set of opportunities (the comforting and familliar) for another (the new, the unexpected joy, the hidden wonder) by taking a risk.

The reward is knowledge.

This is why we boldly go.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2019 22:18

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Larry Parrish posted:

i was kind of with it until this post. congrats. you made me embarrassed to read genre fiction where seas of poorly written trash did not.

And glancing at your rap sheet and posting history is making me proud to have embarrassed you, friend. Goonspeed.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2019 02:03

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

NGL, sounds like you are trying to talk your girlfriend into trying anal.

"You just need to ignore your 'limitations' and think of it more of an 'opportunity' to experience joy, and let me boldly go, into your rear end in a top hat"

Have you guys just been at the eggnog tonight or what? I'm explaining why I find it valuable to read outside your comfort zone. You know how sometimes you add new rules to a game to make it more interesting? Like that. It's a choice. Nobody's making you. There will not be a test later.

Remember this conversation started when someone questioned the value of reading outside your comfort zone. Those of us who choose to do so are explaining why, as requested.

If you associate that with someone trying to cajole you into nonconsensual butt-touching, well... I can't help you.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2019 02:17

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:

Having to delve into someone's rap sheet because they posted a mean thing about you is very interesting

It's a great way to answer the question of "Is this person a perennial shithead or are they just having an off day?"

Also sometimes a person's post history just makes their rap sheet sound like it'll be funny reading.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2019 02:29

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

C.M. Kruger posted:

I think I would suggest Foreigner to somebody who likes stuff like the Vorkosigan books

Really? I'd go more prog rock, I think :dadjoke:

# ¿ Dec 25, 2019 08:48

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

For some reason the age-inappropriate thing I ran into as a kid was Illuminatus!

I'm not all that sorry about it, really?

# ¿ Dec 28, 2019 01:27

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Libertarian propaganda is not appropriate for any age.

Illuminatus! is Wobbly propaganda. The Libertarians decided to adopt it because they liked the anarchism and it sounded like a billionaire industrialist was the good guy if you didn't read closely.

occamsnailfile posted:

I read the Shroedinger�s Cat trilogy and I recall it being wildly leftist rather than libertarian, with stuff like UBI and dismantling the military-industrial complex and yes weird sex stuff and conspiracy ranting. It was very strange and I have no idea why our small town library had it.

This guy gets it.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2019 06:16

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Alec Eiffel posted:

Are there any worthwhile Star Wars books outside the Thrawn Trilogy? I'm looking for some light reading right now.

"Tales From Jabba's Palace", "Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina", "Tales Of The Bounty Hunters". They're short story anthologies set in the Star Wars universe written between 1995 and 1997. Basically a bunch of SF authors with names you might know - Barbara Hambly, Daniel Keyes Moran, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, and of course Timothy Zahn, among many others - wrote short stories about the random characters you see in the background of big scenes. A lot of the shorts are really good, and some of them went on to inform at least Dave Filoni's work on Clone Wars, etc.

I also enjoyed L. Neil Smith's Lando Calrissian Adventures and Brian Daley's Han Solo adventures, too. Those were published well ahead of the Thrawn trilogy and kind of come from a different era, but you'll still see a lot to recognize. The Lando Calrissian Adventures show a game of sabacc for the first time anywhere and do a really good job with it.

I liked Chuck Wendig's recent Star Wars books but haven't read much further. James S. A. Corey did one and it actually was awful, to my surprise? At least I thought it felt very flat.

Kesper North fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Dec 28, 2019

# ¿ Dec 28, 2019 22:52

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Kchama posted:

The Honorverse's main villain nation for the first half of the series are evil because they have welfare.

Full stop, that's their entire Villain Reason, that they spend on welfare and thus they are required to constantly conquer to make more money because no state can have welfare without it consuming the entire budget and also it literally makes people bloodthirsty evil monsters to the point that the hereditary politicians fearfully refer to people on welfare as The Mob.

"The abolishment of the Basic Living Stipend and the Economic Bill of Rights saw the revival of the Havenite industrial infrastructure as the Dolists were required to work for their survival. Axel Lacroix stated that his parents had regained their self-respect. (HH11)"

https://honorverse.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_Pierre

From the Honorverse wiki entry for one of the leaders of said main villain nation, who was named Rob S. Pierre. :nallears:

# ¿ Jan 1, 2020 01:16

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

StrixNebulosa posted:

IIRC this is the entire point of the opening of Player of Games

And all the human-focused parts of Excession, for that matter.

sebmojo posted:

Calvino is just insanely good

Not emptyquotin'

Kchama posted:

It may surprise you but they eventually turn into literally Soviet France during the Terrors where they decide the only way to break the evil hold of WELFARE!!! on the nation is to nuke the government and institute the Terrors and established Commisars and also everyone calls each other Comrade.

Sadly it doesn't. There was a time, and I am not proud to admit this, but there was a time when Baen ebooks were about all the SF you could find in ebook format, and... well, folks got real bored in those days, so...

# ¿ Jan 1, 2020 10:40

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

New Craig Schaefer book out! WOOPWOOP

The kind of good news that comes only three or four times a year!

I'm excited about his upcoming "Greek myth and mass surveillance" book, too.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2020 21:37

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

freebooter posted:

I read the first one yesterday and it was fine but forgettable. Not sure what the fuss is.

I haven't forgotten how much I paid, jesus christ. I feel like goons must get kickbacks for those reviews.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2020 21:30

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

NikkolasKing posted:

Are there any good scifi or fantasy books that prominently feature a hivemind entity/race? For those of you who have played System Shock 2, I am new to it and realized that The Many greatly interest me and I'd like to see more of the same or similar. I am no good at FPSes so Halo and the Flood are out. Besides, as much as love me some video games, nothing beats a good book with regards to bizarre alien lifeforms.

I've gotten some great recs in the past in here and was hoping for more of the same. Thanks in advance.

Peter Watts has written a lot of this:

The Things (John Carpenter's The Thing, but from the Thing's perspective: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ )

Blindsight (one of my picks for 'best First Contact novel': https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003K15EKM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 )

Echopraxia (a tragically inferior sidequel to Blindsight: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IHCBDJ0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 )

The ants in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time might count, sorta? Not really.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2020 00:00

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

pseudorandom name posted:

Shout outs to one of my favorite posters, General Battuta, who�s having a very rough time of it. Please get well, we care about you.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2020 08:46

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

A great blow to hobbitists and professionals alike.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2020 21:08

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Black Griffon posted:

what in the world are you trying to say here

I think maybe he's a veteran of the Psychic Wars from the other side, they called it something different

# ¿ Jan 17, 2020 16:43

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

What's really confusing the gently caress out of me is that - somewhat atypically - all my SF-reading trans friends have said they really loved the story and that it spoke to them and their experience, even to the point of showing it to family members and partners to provide basis for discussion. I also had a number of female friends comment that they felt it was absolutely written true to a female voice. I'm not gonna pretend I have the basis to understand what the issues are with the story, but the trans community itself seems remarkably divided on it, and I haven't actually seen the side that hates the story present what their problems with it are. Is that something anyone here might be willing to lay out for me?

# ¿ Jan 17, 2020 19:06

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

ToxicFrog posted:

Some of the tweets linked from the F770 post earlier in this thread do a better job of laying it out than I will here, but the tl;dr is:
- the story is full of stuff that's right out of common TERF rhetoric like "scientists are transing your children", persistent confusion between gender and sexuality, etc
- it also falls flat in a few ways (the supposedly post-gender, post-binary society that enabled the basic conceit is undermined by stuff like the paragraph that talks about how easy it is to figure out someone's gender based on what they're wearing; the amount of dysphoria you would experience when you're not a helicopter is barely touched on) which make it seem like the TERF talking points are the point of the story and the rest was just backfilled to support them
- there's also a weird aside where it basically says "are you a trans person fighting for your rights? well this is your fault"
- the title immediately primes people to read all of the above in the worst possible light

I'm willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt when she says this was a well-intentioned attempt to reclaim the meme that went badly wrong, and I hope she's doing ok, but I'm not at all surprised that a lot of people found it unpleasant or hurtful, or were concerned that it was just giving ammo to shitheads.

Thanks! I read that thread but you laid it out in a much more ingestible way.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2020 20:55

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

You know what's near Acheron? LV-426. Dust off now and nuke the site from orbit...

# ¿ Jan 19, 2020 04:14

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

cptn_dr posted:

Is Greatcoats any good? I had someone passionately trying to convince me that once I read it I'd realise my previous love for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was all wrong and I'd see that I should be loving Greatcoats instead. He also tried to explain that Strange & Norrell is bad because it doesn't have a well defined magic system.

Is your friend by any chance fond of having stats for fictional characters regardless of whether they come from an RPG property?

# ¿ Jan 28, 2020 23:08

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

my bony fealty posted:

at least she doesn't have a terminal case of liberal centrist boomerism like William Gibson and Jeff Vandermeer seem to

Gibson usually seems like he's making fun of or outright critiquing liberal centrist boomerism to me.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 02:02

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

biracial bear for uncut posted:

Dude, the sequel to that, "a closed and common orbit" is an amazing follow up. Talk about character development.

It follows the Lovelace AI and dives deep into Pepper's backstory, and I'm not ashamed to admit there were several near-tear inducing moments in it.

I'm surprised at how much I enjoy scifi books about interpersonal drama and basic coming of age in crazy settings. You'd think apocalyptic conflict was necessary, but it really isn't.

Check out "Up Against It" by MJ Locke. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004K1ERZO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 05:25

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Clark Nova posted:

It appears that The Market has spoken so I'm going to have to add several paragraphs of exposition to my upcoming mil-scifi project explaining how thanks to the advent of fishbowl helmets, men in the 27th century no longer have to be afraid of spermjacking in public restrooms

ftfy

# ¿ Feb 16, 2020 03:30

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

occamsnailfile posted:

gently caress FYAD and good riddance.

Bennett improved even in the space from American Elsewhere to the Divine Cities trilogy, he's still in the 'buy on sale or trade for' level for me but definitely readable.

Meanwhile I've been reading a weird one, Yarn by Jon Armstrong. It's about an elite tailor in a surreal dystopian fashion-dominated hypercommercial future dominated by corporate warfare. But it's not about that in the usual--it is mostly, constantly, about clothes and how they make you and how they are made. The author manages to create a lot of jargon and slang that's comprehensible but still sounds exotic, and it travels at a pretty brisk pace. It's a world that's hypersexualized and commercialized, where people talk in brand-coded riddles. I don't know if I'm going to keep it when I'm done but it's been an interesting ride so far.

That sounds kinda fun. I don't suppose they are a plain and simple tailor...?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2020 22:04

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Seconding Craig Schaefer urban fantasy rec. He keeps getting both more ambitious and more character-driven with his stories as he gains experience, and the narratives between his series interweave really well without requiring you to read every book. (Which I have, because they're good.) Definitely Hollywood movies in book form, but quirky and introspective ones with great throughlines.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2020 04:42

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 17:16

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Working on my new rock opera, Reverend Horton Hears The Who

(sorry, I blame the Lorax)

# ¿ Feb 18, 2020 22:30

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > SF & F Mega-thread: I had to google 'spock pirate depilatory'

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