|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Scalzi's later books in the Old Man's War series deconstruct a lot of the right-wing presumptions. I will check it the Doc Savage stuff. I've read and enjoyed the Old Man's War stuff.
|
#
?
May 3, 2012 22:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 13:43 |
|
|
Hedrigall posted:But now the fact that it's published by Baen is making me worry that I've really bought some right-wing milsf garbage. Has anyone read any Charles Sheffield books, particularly in this universe (The Heritage is the name of the series), and are they good? I really enjoyed the first three Heritage books, but they set up a Deep Mystery that was initially unresolved. The last two books released by Baen tie up the loose ends but...it's one of those things where the explanation isn't really worthy of the setup. Still, those books (and Summertide especially) are worth reading. I'm putting them on my reread list just from reading your post.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2012 00:29
|
|
|
I know it isn't sci-fi, but I can't help but think that anybody who is even considering reading Harrington should just read Hornblower. Why read mary-sue political axegrinding when you can get your adventure for boys in napoleonic form written by somebody with a real talent for the language.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2012 04:09
|
|
|
Slo-Tek posted:I know it isn't sci-fi, but I can't help but think that anybody who is even considering reading Harrington should just read Hornblower. Why read mary-sue political axegrinding when you can get your adventure for boys in napoleonic form written by somebody with a real talent for the language. I agree with this! If you haven't read Horatio Hornblower, don't waste your time with Weber's schlock. Unless you absolutely have to have space ships in your book Horatio Hornblower is way better.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2012 04:17
|
|
|
Everything is better in space, duh
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2012 04:28
|
|
|
Slo-Tek posted:I know it isn't sci-fi, but I can't help but think that anybody who is even considering reading Harrington should just read Hornblower. And then go on to Patrick O'Brian.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2012 06:01
|
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:But seriously, what the hell is it with Baen attracting the absolute most regressive far-right people possible to write for them? Hedrigall posted:But now the fact that [Sheffield is] published by Baen is making me worry that I've really bought some right-wing milsf garbage. Miss-Bomarc fucked around with this message at 06:51 on May 4, 2012 |
|
#
?
May 4, 2012 06:49
|
|
|
Miss-Bomarc posted:It's right there in the name. Jim Baen did his business based on personality, and the personalities that created working relationships with him generally had what you'd call "terrible right-wing views". With some notable exceptions, such as David Drake (who, to the extent that he has a definable political philosophy beyond sarcastic cynicism, seems to favor anarcho-syndicalism.) Drake at least has the good sense to keep his political philosophy mostly out of his books. Also Lois McMaster Bujold, who is as far as you can get from all the right-wing stuff of Baen. The Vorkosigan series is of course highly recommended, even if it isn't really an epic Space Opera (although set against a similar backdrop).
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2012 13:45
|
|
|
Decius posted:Also Lois McMaster Bujold, who is as far as you can get from all the right-wing stuff of Baen. The Vorkosigan series is of course highly recommended, even if it isn't really an epic Space Opera (although set against a similar backdrop). And Eric Flint who is actually a member of the Socialist Workers Party and boy does it show. (Unions are great and are pretty much the heroes of his time travel series with the bad guys being a CEO and evil but surprisingly competent band of Aristocrats)
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2012 16:20
|
|
|
What level of spoilers are there for Alastair Reynolds' Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days? If i've only read (and loved, btw) Revelation Space will I be alright, or will I get spoiled on the whole series?
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2012 16:26
|
|
|
Popular Human posted:What level of spoilers are there for Alastair Reynolds' Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days? If i've only read (and loved, btw) Revelation Space will I be alright, or will I get spoiled on the whole series?
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2012 19:11
|
|
|
notaspy posted:I've read through this threat to find a book or series I'm pretty sure doesn't exist. I'm wanting something with the following plot devices: I take it you've read Neal Asher's Polity stuff and Iain M. Banks' Culture books, right? Or if you're okay with something somewhat... anachronistic, there's always the Lensman books. They were scaling poo poo up to ludicrous levels before anime even existed. Seriously. Space Battles: yep, giant ships shooting all sorts of stuff at each other. Including weirdo relativistic and antimatter weapons and stuff. Ground Battles: power armour, super-heavy space-axes and beatings ahoy! Epic Scale: literally a clash of galactic proportions, and the technology level of each book eclipses the previous. Political intrigue: yep. Spoilers. Aliens: Evil aliens. With dangerous brain powers! No Kids. Er. Stop before you hit Children of the Lens. Kerbtree fucked around with this message at 23:54 on May 6, 2012 |
|
#
?
May 6, 2012 23:44
|
|
|
Kerbtree posted:Or if you're okay with something somewhat... anachronistic, there's always the Lensman books. Warning: the Lensman books' characterization of women is...extremely poor, at best.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2012 00:15
|
|
|
Kerbtree posted:I take it you've read Neal Asher's Polity stuff and Iain M. Banks' Culture books, right? I always joked with my friends about Lensman being the perfect series for an anime. Then I found out that I had been beaten to the idea by at least a decade and a half. Also, it's been a while, but I think the Skylark series by Smith might fit what he's looking for, too. I haven't read them in years but I think a few of those criteria are met by it.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2012 01:57
|
|
|
ulmont posted:Warning: the Lensman books' characterization of women is...extremely poor, at best. To be fair, it was first written in the 30s. And published in a periodic serial format. Not the most enlightened age, and the format isn't conducive for character development.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2012 08:08
|
|
|
Ferrosol posted:And Eric Flint who is actually a member of the Socialist Workers Party and boy does it show. (Unions are great and are pretty much the heroes of his time travel series with the bad guys being a CEO and evil but surprisingly competent band of Aristocrats) Eric Flint also put his money where his mouth is and started giving away his ebooks. He made money from it in increased sales of his back catalog and that's why Baen has the first couple of books from every series it publishes available for free. And it took a socialist to lead them.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2012 08:35
|
|
|
Fried Chicken posted:To be fair, it was first written in the 30s. And published in a periodic serial format. Not the most enlightened age, and the format isn't conducive for character development. And Clarissa has a book centering on her later in the series.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2012 14:11
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:Eric Flint also put his money where his mouth is and started giving away his ebooks. He made money from it in increased sales of his back catalog and that's why Baen has the first couple of books from every series it publishes available for free. And it took a socialist to lead them.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2012 04:41
|
|
|
Miss-Bomarc posted:Baen had been giving away free books for a while, it wasn't just Eric Flint. The whole "Baen Free Library" thing was Flint's baby to begin with, though. See the announcement from 2000: http://www.baen.com/library/home.htm Lots of good stuff there. Lots of poo poo also, but hey.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2012 11:18
|
|
|
I just finished Hamilton's Night Dawn trilogy. I had heard (in here) that it ended in a Deus ex Machina, like the Void trilogy. I didn't think Void's DeM was bad, and worked within the story, and that Night Dawn's was similarly overblown. But, holy poo poo, that was the largest and most literal Deus ex Machina I've ever seen. A dozen different groups and plot threads in the book, and half of them are reaching some sort of climax, although the most fundamental problems in the trilogy are still present and there's no inkling of how they're going to be solved. It almost seems like Hamilton needs another 1200 pages to wrap poo poo up. Then Joshua finds the title of the book, and poof, effective reset button. Hamilton even went as far as to fix Earth's environment with Joshua's reset. And the Kiint are there to nanotech away all the physical problems of the post-possessed Confederation. Happy endings all around, except for the poor bastards in the melange. Now, I like happy endings, but this was just too drat neat for the previous 3200 pages of trilogy. I'd still read another Confederation book set in the new isolated 800-planet community Joshua magicked up; there's all sorts of interesting story possibilities there, and the post-possessed humanity has a lot of change ahead. Plus, Joshua said he had a 'small ongoing change' in his DeM that I don't think was elaborated on. Now I'm on to Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson, which doesn't really qualify as Space Opera. Interesting concept of time and space laid out in the first couple hundred pages, though.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 08:10
|
|
|
With regards to the end of Night's Dawn, the little change, unless I'm misremembering, is that he made himself telepathic.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 18:57
|
|
|
Pyroclastic posted:I just finished Hamilton's Night Dawn trilogy. Funny timing, I finished the same about a week ago. This But, holy poo poo, that was the largest and most literal Deus ex Machina I've ever seen. was like exactly my thoughts. When I read here it was bad, I was thinking "well maybe the connection between the Beyond and real world will be magically severed, and then the Confederation will have to figure out how to clean everything up." But nope, not even that. Overall, I was pretty disappointed in the books. So many embarrassing and obnoxious parts (Al Capone... in spaaaaace!, sadistic evil doctor hermaphrodite, in the first book lots of gratuitous sex with minors!), but the few parts that were good were pretty interesting (for some reason, Erick Thrakar (sp?) fighting off the possessed in the lounge/ship was really cool to me). I'm about 1/3 through the first Revelation Space book, and holy poo poo is it far far better. I shouldn't be surprised, as House of Suns was really good, but it really puts into perspective how stupid lots of Night's Dawn was. Edit: And now having just finished Revelation Space (spoilered for ending of it and Night's Dawn)... is there some fad for making black holes into gods? At least it wasn't nearly as bad as Night's Dawn, but magically keeping all the main characters alive is dumb, too. Other than that little nitpicking, I liked it quite a bit, and onto the next one! sourdough fucked around with this message at 23:34 on May 29, 2012 |
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 19:02
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Honor Harrington I basically ignored all of the politics, which just got worse and worse as the series went on. I found the take on space battles to be decent, and, ignoring politics again, an enjoyable read. This of course required that I glossed over Honor's Mary Sue-ness quite a bit. Pyroclastic posted:I just finished Hamilton's Night Dawn trilogy. I enjoyed the series, but the whole dead people coming back to life thing seemed kinda out of place.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2012 03:28
|
|
|
I recently listened to both Galactic North and Chasm City while on a cross-country move, and they were both pretty amazing in their own ways. Galactic North was really cool because it added a lot of framework for the novels, I think. The short stories span from a couple hundred years from now, when humanity is still just in the solar system, to a few millenia in the future. Chasm City had a really interesting twist that can really only happen in science fiction stories. The twist was also actually two twists, one that's easy to figure out, and then a second twist that hits you a bit later and completely changes the nature of one of the characters. I also liked how it takes place in the weird time gap in Revelation Space between when Silveste leaves Yellowstone, and when Khouri leaves.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2012 04:21
|
|
|
oTHi posted:I basically ignored all of the politics, which just got worse and worse as the series went on. I found the take on space battles to be decent, and, ignoring politics again, an enjoyable read. This of course required that I glossed over Honor's Mary Sue-ness quite a bit. Turtledove and Weber ought to co-author a book. Turtledove handles the politics and Weber the battle scenes.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2012 06:08
|
|
|
Unsure if this is the correct thread for it, but I just finished the Takeshi Kovacs tirology by Richard Morgan after starting off with his fantasy stuff, and it was a pretty loving good read. Also quite enjoyed one of his stand alone novels, Market Forces.
ed balls balls man fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Jun 7, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2012 19:06
|
|
|
ed balls balls man posted:Unsure if this is the correct thread for it, but I just finished the Takeshi Kovacs tirology by Richard Morgan after starting off with his fantasy stuff, and it was a pretty loving good read. Also quite enjoyed one of his stand alone novels, Market Forces. Man, I still need to read the third one. I really enjoyed the first two. Although the whole alien ghosts thing in the second book really seemed out of place in the usually-hard-sci-fi setting the books typically occupy. Does the third one have more of that or does it get back onto the straight sci-fi path?
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2012 19:16
|
|
|
Shnakepup posted:Man, I still need to read the third one. I really enjoyed the first two. Although the whole alien ghosts thing in the second book really seemed out of place in the usually-hard-sci-fi setting the books typically occupy. Does the third one have more of that or does it get back onto the straight sci-fi path? No more psychic bollocks, all back to a pure tech standpoint with the usual politics and such. ed balls balls man fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Jun 7, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2012 19:37
|
|
|
Hughlander posted:(Or as I call it, War of Honor) Is that book ten? boy was that a book I enjoyed the hell out of the Honor Harrington series, but there's really no reason to read past book 12. After that the space battles disappear entirely and every book after it is "space politics with light speed lag: a novelization". a star government learns some news and then talks about the news, and then the other star government learns about the news and then talks about the news later, and this keeps happening until your brain melts out your ears and you die. So don't read past book 12. That said, though, I'm all for super right-wing fascist horrible space opera series, because it's not all that hard to frame them in a satirical light. Eventually the ridiculous jingoism and increasingly tenuous justification needed to justify six or seven books worth of space warfare folds in on itself entirely and it becomes impossible to take a single word seriously anymore. Series like that are really immense fun to read, so long as they keep up the pace on the warfare. Weber's an especially good example, not just because of how good he is at writing the battle scenes, but also for the talent he had at scaling up the climactic battles as the Honor series went on. Book one ends with a space dinghy and a repurposed freighter throwing rocks at each other, and by book ten it's gigantic Super Dreadnought Armadas firing everything they've got. The wider scope just made the mandatory "moment of regret" in each book funnier and funnier. Honor Harrington sheds a single tear for all the senseless murder around her, and then says "fire" and destroys an entire fleet and kills six million people in ten minutes. chalk another one up for the star kingdom of manticore Venuz Patrol fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jun 7, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2012 21:00
|
|
|
ed balls balls man posted:Unsure if this is the correct thread for it, but I just finished the Takeshi Kovacs tirology by Richard Morgan after starting off with his fantasy stuff, and it was a pretty loving good read. Also quite enjoyed one of his stand alone novels, Market Forces. Do I have to read the Takeshi Kovacs stuff in order, or do they work as stand alone novels?
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2012 21:25
|
|
|
John Ringo's Troy Rising series is fun. Maple Syrup War is all I have to say for how I enjoyed it. It unlike the Ghost series is enjoyable without being enjoyable like a train wreck you just can't stop watching.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2012 04:53
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:DO NOT read the Honor Harrington series if you're bothered by transparent right-wing propaganda, painfully blatant Mary Sue protagonists, or horrible cliches. The primary villain is literally named "Rob S. Pierre,", because he's a Space Communist leader of the Space French. To me it always sounded if David Weber was secretly a (constitutional) monarchist. But I don't think you can name Rob S. Pierre a "villain", he was an antagonist, sure, but he also honestly wanted his nation to change back to the better away from the horrible mangled wreck it had been before his coup. And I remember not many sword duels. There was just one, I think. DolphinCop posted:Is that book ten? boy was that a book Well, there are people who like reading about space politics (in space), so Weber got my taste covered, at least -I have re-read every single one of his books at least twice by now. Except Out of the Dark. Because that bit with the vampires was a bit much, even for me.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2012 14:16
|
|
|
David Weber John Ringo The Empire of man series is fun to read because it is so over to top with Four armed aliens that quad wield pistols. It is awesome bad.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2012 20:49
|
|
|
mcustic posted:Do I have to read the Takeshi Kovacs stuff in order, or do they work as stand alone novels? Sequentially read is not necessary.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2012 07:21
|
|
|
Currently halfway through The Reality Dysfunction (Just finished part one) and holy poo poo this is long. I'm used to tearing through books in no time flat (Finished the fourth Harry Potter in two days back when it came out), but it took me about a week or a week and a half to get through the first half of this one. Really enjoying it, though. I've also got Commonwealth/Void, The Culture, and Revelation Space on my to-read list. Good thing I'm not doing much this summer  . Because I don't know when to stop collecting books to read, any recommendations for books which involve either Hordes of Alien Locusts or Grey Goo? I love those kinds of plots.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2012 01:06
|
|
|
Lprsti99 posted:
There is a Niven short story that entertainingly/horrifyingly inverts this trope. Think it is called "The Locusts". Looks like it is in seveal of his compilations.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2012 01:47
|
|
|
Lprsti99 posted:Grey Goo
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2012 02:55
|
|
|
Von Neumans War by John Ringo and some other schlub. Machines instead of locusts but... And yes it's Ringo, but it is entertaining.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2012 05:07
|
|
|
I'm not a huge fan of Alastair Reynolds(excepting his short stuff, which I love), but House of Suns is excellent. The pacing is kind of all over the place, but somehow it works for me. Might have already been mentioned, but The New Space Opera 1 and 2 edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan are great. I bought the first one right after it came out, and read through it in about two days while on an antelope hunting trip in the high desert. I've read a lot of Dozois and Strahans stuff, and I've not once been disappointed. I always look forward to the new edition of The Years Best Science Fiction.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2012 06:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 13:43 |
|
|
Bass Concert Hall posted:
Same here, I started Caliban's War last night and put 100 pages into it. I really like the setting of these books. Humanity has space travel but the stars elude us, unless..... The noir detective parts in the first book got a bit too cheesy at some points but on the whole these books rule. Some of the comedy had we laughing out loud too.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2012 15:42
|
|
