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Lprsti99 posted: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. Well you've already got Hamilton's Commonwealth books. Those are by far my favourite of his. Beyond that maybe The Forge of God by Greg Bear, it's been a while but I seem to remember enjoying it at the time.
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Jul 6, 2012 13:55
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While I'm here.... I'm in the mood for some epic action orientated science fiction that's fun to read with some big ridiculous set pieces, I want some "Holy poo poo! I can't believe that just happened moments." As mentioned I really liked the Commonwealth Saga, I enjoy the Iain M Banks (and he's kind of what I'm thinking of with regards to the big ridiculous set pieces). Am not a big fan of Alistair Reynolds but did enjoy Cham City. I haven't read any Vernor Vinge or Neal Asher, would either of those be a good fit?
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Jul 6, 2012 15:23
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Gravy Jones posted:While I'm here.... I'm in the mood for some epic action orientated science fiction that's fun to read with some big ridiculous set pieces, I want some "Holy poo poo! I can't believe that just happened moments." Neal Asher for sure. Read the Agent Cormac books in order, huge scale, super-violent, big set pieces.
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Jul 6, 2012 16:50
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Beastie 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..... I saw Caliban's War in the bookstore the other day and was genuinely surprised at how long it was, that thing is an almost Stephen King-like tome, (although technically speaking it's not actually that much longer than the last book). Can't wait to read it though, Leviathan Wakes was one of the most entertaining books I've read in a long time.
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Jul 6, 2012 21:11
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Gravy Jones posted:I haven't read any Vernor Vinge or Neal Asher, would either of those be a good fit? Asher pretty much writes a dumbed-down, more action-y Culture series, so yeah, check him out for sure. Possibly my favorite moment from one of his stories is actually from the short story "The Engineer" that you can easily pick up as part of a collection called "The Engineer Reconditioned."
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Jul 8, 2012 02:55
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I'm about half way through Caliban's War right now. It's pretty fun beach reading, and overall I think it's a worthy sequel to Leviathan Wakes, though it starts off kinda awkwardly and even for summer reading, some of the plot points are telegraphed miles away (oh by the way we have a hull breach; I sure hope it isn't the protomolecule or anything). While I overall like the new character's POV chapters, Holden without MIller is super grating; Fred ripping into him and firing him from the OPA was almost worth it.. But still, it's superfun.
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Jul 9, 2012 03:44
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Gravy Jones posted:While I'm here.... I'm in the mood for some epic action orientated science fiction that's fun to read with some big ridiculous set pieces, I want some "Holy poo poo! I can't believe that just happened moments." David J Williams' trilogy starting with The Burning Skies is absolutely worth a read. They're nonstop action, and each book has multiple mind meltingly awesome setpieces. The second book in particular just refuses to let up, and every time you think it's about to wind down things just get kicked up another notch.
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Jul 9, 2012 04:21
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Sorry if this has been asked before, but I just finished reading all the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold. Can't remember chewing through a series faster before, so needless to say I really, really enjoyed them. Sci-fi/Space opera is pretty new to me, so can anyone recommend any books or series/authors that can match Bujold? It's hard to say what specifically got me so hooked on the Vorkosigan Saga, but probably a mix of interesting and excellent worldbuilding, realistic and likable characters, good dialogue and great storytelling.
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Jul 9, 2012 12:46
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Sjonkel posted:Sci-fi/Space opera is pretty new to me, so can anyone recommend any books or series/authors that can match Bujold? Unfortunately I cannot think of anyone who does exactly what Bujold does as well as she does it. If anyone else has any tips I'd be all ears, too.
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Jul 9, 2012 12:50
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Bloom by Wil McCarthy is pretty good (Grey Goo at the solar system scale).
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Jul 9, 2012 12:50
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Thanks for the tips. I've added Asher to my "to read" pile and grabbed the first Williams book.
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Jul 9, 2012 14:16
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Sjonkel posted:Sorry if this has been asked before, but I just finished reading all the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold. Can't remember chewing through a series faster before, so needless to say I really, really enjoyed them. Sci-fi/Space opera is pretty new to me, so can anyone recommend any books or series/authors that can match Bujold? Hard call, Bujold's a bit of an odd one -- not many female authors write space opera, so her books have a really interesting mix of features. The standard recommendations for "space opera" with relatively interesting worldbuilding and likeable characters are going to be Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep and Deepness in the Sky, and [Singularity Sky] and Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross. Also probably John Scalzi's Old Man's War series. After that might want to try the Uplift series by David Brin. Those are relatively modern, so they won't be as pulpy as earlier space opera like the Edgar Rice Burroughs / John Carter or the old Lensman series stuff, but they have a good mix of interesting worldbuilding and relatively complex characters. If you like Stross, read everything else he wrote, then maybe William Gibson. If you like Scalzi, read Heinlein, esp. Citizen of the Galaxy, Starship Troopers, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but beware of libertarian ranting. If you love libertarian ranting, read John C. Wright's The Golden Age. If you don't mind straying into fantasy, I'd recommend looking at Ursula K. Leguin's stuff.
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Jul 9, 2012 14:30
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The libertarian lecturing is tolerable in The Golden Age. It's the Everness books you want to avoid like the plague if you are left wing or if you are a right wing person who finds proselytising odious. Which is a pity because the pure adventure and fantasy parts were great fun.
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Jul 9, 2012 16:31
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Sjonkel posted:Sorry if this has been asked before, but I just finished reading all the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold. Can't remember chewing through a series faster before, so needless to say I really, really enjoyed them. Sci-fi/Space opera is pretty new to me, so can anyone recommend any books or series/authors that can match Bujold? I don't think there's anyone else whose writing really matches Bujold's atmosphere or tone; the Vorkosigan Saga has an infectiously adventurous quality to it, but generally with a romantic air and a heavy reliance on character relationships to drive the plot. I really don't think Vinge or Brin write much like Bujold, awesome though they are. Iain M. Banks writes things that are occasionally similar in tone (Player of Games, maaaaaaybe Consider Phlebas), and so does CJ Cherryh (Merchanter's Luck, Finity's End, The Chanur Saga). Jack McDevitt (The Engines of God) maybe, though he's less similar and a lot drier. Maybe Elizabeth Moon (Trading in Danger), though don't much care for her writing style myself.
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Jul 10, 2012 01:31
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Dijkstracula posted:I'm about half way through Caliban's War right now. It's pretty fun beach reading, and overall I think it's a worthy sequel to Leviathan Wakes, though it starts off kinda awkwardly and even for summer reading, some of the plot points are telegraphed miles away (oh by the way we have a hull breach; I sure hope it isn't the protomolecule or anything). While I overall like the new character's POV chapters, Holden without MIller is super grating; Fred ripping into him and firing him from the OPA was almost worth it.. But still, it's superfun. Yeah not a bad sequel, definitely setting up things to be finished in the 3rd book. Avasarala was great. Holden was lovely and annoying 99% of the book.
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Jul 10, 2012 06:16
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Thanks for all the tips on stuff similar to Bujold. Just to be clear, it doesn't have to be exactly like it, it's more that the genre is pretty unknown to me. I really do appreciate all the tips though, will check everything out once I'm done with my current list. Summer time usually means a lot of reading time for me, so it's nice to add more books to the list.
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Jul 10, 2012 09:18
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ShutteredIn posted:Yeah not a bad sequel, definitely setting up things to be finished in the 3rd book. Avasarala was great. Holden was lovely and annoying 99% of the book. I don't know why but I always assumed The Expanse was going to be a trilogy, even though I never had any information to support this idea. Because of this notion I thought Caliban's War was a bit underwhelming. But hey if it's going to be more than a trilogy then it's actually a lot better than I first thought.
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Jul 10, 2012 13:38
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ShutteredIn posted:Yeah not a bad sequel, definitely setting up things to be finished in the 3rd book. Avasarala was great. Holden was lovely and annoying 99% of the book. Also, yeah, I thought it was meant to be more than just a trilogy, but I don't remember reading that anywhere so it might have just been an unfounded assumption on my part.
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Jul 10, 2012 17:55
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http://www.danielabraham.com/2012/03/29/some-big-news-about-the-expanse/ It was definitely billed as a trilogy, but that blog post confuses me. 3 more novels in addition to that... I guess?
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Jul 10, 2012 19:00
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ShutteredIn posted:http://www.danielabraham.com/2012/03/29/some-big-news-about-the-expanse/ That's cool. I mean, it was basically the guy's first outing and he figured out he really liked writing these books after originally saying he just wanted to do a trilogy, so if he wants to keep going then great.
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Jul 10, 2012 20:24
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Just finished Caliban's War. Corey got so close to the end without cranking up the cheese and then he literally writes the sentence "This was a new and improved vomit zombie.". Christ. On the whole it was fun, but I'm kind of left wishing that the political thriller aspects had been done a bit better. If you're going to have the various factions be more than just set pieces, you've really got to make all the moving parts more interesting: in the end, why did Mao continue research on the protomolecule? "For his legacy" is a pretty terrible explanation given it killed his daughter. Why did Nyugen go along with Mao? What was in it for him, beyond having a new weapon that he would want to use against Mars? Why did Saren betray Avasarala, and why did he disappear from the novel after he was fired? Who was Dr. Strickland, really, and couldn't he have been made different than the generic scientist villain in the first one? How does Fred Johnson fit into everything, and why was the OPA basically absent from the whole book? A third player would have made the Earth vs. Mars dynamic a lot more fluid and interesting.. Still, though, I'm really glad the thing that happened in the epilogue happened. And, that announcement about the novellas is awesome; hopefully it'll be The Continuing Adventures Of Avasarala Yelling At People. Dijkstracula fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Jul 11, 2012 |
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Jul 11, 2012 06:55
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Gravy Jones posted:Thanks for the tips. I've added Asher to my "to read" pile and grabbed the first Williams book. Just a warning: Neal Asher is a literal fascist and the flavor texts he puts at the beginning of chapters become more and more thinly veiled screeds about how stupid people who oppose the state are. He writes good action and Mr Crane is a cool rear end character though.
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Jul 11, 2012 16:22
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I really need to get around to Leviathan Wakes, I've generally only heard good things, but the fact that half of it was written by GRRM's pet monkey really puts me off.
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Jul 11, 2012 17:45
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Junkenstein posted:the fact that half of it was written by GRRM's pet monkey really puts me off. Why would that put you off? Did Ty Franck participate in some manner of heinous activity that I'm unaware of? \/ Aha, my mistake. Nuclear Tourist fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jul 11, 2012 |
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Jul 11, 2012 18:53
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Nuclear Tourist posted:Why would that put you off? Did Ty Franck participate in some manner of heinous activity that I'm unaware of? Daniel Abraham is the GRRM collab, and some people don't like GRRM I guess.
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Jul 11, 2012 19:24
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Junkenstein posted:I really need to get around to Leviathan Wakes, I've generally only heard good things, but the fact that half of it was written by GRRM's pet monkey really puts me off. I hope you like pointless descriptions of food. They cook lasagna in a spaceship at one point. The POV character keeps complaining about having to use ersatz cheese. Aside from that, and characters acting goony, the book is rather good.
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Jul 11, 2012 19:45
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You can always do the Elizabeth Moon Mary Sue in Space thing I think she has like 2 or 3 of them for series. Cathrine Asaro's Diamond Star I found entertaining because Space Prince who wants to be a pop star. Bullshit has like 6 octaves, and extra joint in hands and is a Psychic. But it was fun to read.
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Jul 11, 2012 22:33
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zoux posted:Daniel Abraham is the GRRM collab, and some people don't like GRRM I guess. Ty Franck, on the other hand, is GRRM's personal assistant and Leviathan Wakes was his first novel, so my guess is the "pet monkey" business was referring to Franck. I don't know why doing GRRM's paperwork isn't an honest way to make a buck, but as zoux said, some people don't like GRRM. Leviathan Wakes (I haven't read the sequel yet) did remind me some of Song of Ice and Fire in that it's long-form fiction that spends a lot of time setting the stage of a precarious political situation, then smashes it. With only two viewpoint characters it all stays far more under control, though at some cost...for me the war never really felt real, just a series of action scenes with cheap allusions to a much wider conflict, whereas in Ice and Fire if it does anything it shows you the scope of the civil war's violence and misery.
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Jul 12, 2012 00:48
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Dijkstracula posted:Caliban's War epilogue So I'm confused about this part. Miller is alive? Is he a new version of the Protomolecule. If he is how did he get off of Venus? Was it a hallucination?
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Jul 13, 2012 06:06
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Lex Talionis posted:Ty Franck, on the other hand, is the ubergoon. 
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Jul 13, 2012 06:40
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Beastie posted:So I'm confused about this part. Miller is alive? Is he a new version of the Protomolecule. If he is how did he get off of Venus? Was it a hallucination? Good question. I doubt if he's just a figment of Holden's imagination, as that would cheapen his entire reappearance. That "blue firefly" that showed up along with him probably means that he's a new and improved form of the Protomolecule - hell, someone above even pointed out that the author specifically used the phrase "new and improved vomit zombie." But I guess we'll find out for sure in Abaddon's Gate. Quick question of my own: What does the title Caliban's War actually refer to? The war in question is pretty obvious, but I don't remember any character named Caliban in either of the books.
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Jul 13, 2012 07:58
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Finisher1 posted:
Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest seems to suit, if you believe Prospero - a half-devil who sought to sire a race of others like him.
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Jul 13, 2012 08:38
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Hedrigall posted:[Ty Franck] is the ubergoon. No. There is...another... 
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Jul 13, 2012 13:25
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Beastie posted:So I'm confused about this part. Miller is alive? Is he a new version of the Protomolecule. If he is how did he get off of Venus? Was it a hallucination? Of course, now this raises new questions: how long has the Protomolecule been able to shape creatures indistinguishable from humans? Are there characters we've met who are actually part of the Venus consciousness? And how will Corey avoid repeating all of BSG in the third book? Regardless, it was a heck of a last paragraph. I literally said "ooooo yeaaaah  " loud enough for some heads to turn in the coffee shop.
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Jul 13, 2012 15:26
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Ceebees posted:Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest seems to suit, if you believe Prospero - a half-devil who sought to sire a race of others like him. Book three is called Abbadon's Gate. Abbadon is Hebrew for destruction, and it's also the name of an angel that commanded an army of locusts. 
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Jul 13, 2012 15:37
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Fallorn posted:You can always do the Elizabeth Moon Mary Sue in Space thing I think she has like 2 or 3 of them for series. For being military sci-fi, Moon's stuff never struck me as being filled with Mary-sues. Sure, the protagonists are always generally good people, and they always go from relatively humble origins to fame. But they're also flawed, even if the flaws are virtuous flaws, and they make mistakes. By the standards of the genre they're certainly not outlandishly perfect, unlike say Honor Harrington.
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Jul 13, 2012 16:52
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Leviathan's Wake and Caliban's War is written by James S.A Corey which is "the pen name for a collaboration between Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck." Here's a youtube video interview with terrible audio for the first novel, and they say they switch writing chapters then edit each others' chapters. I thought they were both good reads, but I did get tired of Holden's stupidity pretty early in Caliban's War but he did improve near the end. As to the Caliban's War epilogue, Miller did seem to me to be a physical manifestation (the blue fireflies!) of the protomolecule colony on Venus other than just a projection. The Venus colony has had time to grow into more than just a creature working on its instincts and genetic programming like the vomit zombies and the other protomolecule creatures we have seen. Looking forward to the next one. And with the teaser for the next book, it makes me wonder if we will get to see the progenitor race of the protomolecule.
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Jul 14, 2012 03:25
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Velius posted:For being military sci-fi, Moon's stuff never struck me as being filled with Mary-sues.
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Jul 14, 2012 05:27
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I just finished 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson and I really enjoyed it. It re-uses some settings from his Red Mars series so if you've read that you will recognize some things. I only had 1 problem with it though, I never really understood the plot at all: Who made the qubeoids and why? Why did they destroy Terminator and that asteroid? Why did they try to "attack" Io? Why did the bowling guy do what he did, if he even did it? Why did that guy help qubeoids escape? Why did the qubeoids who had infiltrated the Mars government make them leave the Mondragon Accord? All those questions makes it seem I didn't understand anything in the book and that might be so, but I still enjoyed it. I recommend it, especially if you've read the Red Mars series.
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Jul 18, 2012 07:22
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TjyvTompa posted:I just finished 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson and I really enjoyed it. It re-uses some settings from his Red Mars series so if you've read that you will recognize some things. I only had 1 problem with it though, I never really understood the plot at all: Awesome, I am 30 pages from the end and will be finishing it tonight too! I really loved it. It reminds me of Dune in that it's a relatively short book (under 600 pages) yet is so packed with world-building and SF ideas and great characters, that it feels like you've just read a whole trilogy. I dunno the answer to all the questions you posted, but I'm pretty sure the attack on Terminator was to show off the destructiveness of the pebble attack, so that whether the next attack was averted or not, Venus would still be scared enough to want to get rid of the sunshield and speed up the rotation. The lawn bowler was just a sociopathic genius who liked programming and didn't care if he killed lots of people as long as he got to try out his new qube algorithms or something. He was hired by Lakshmi's group who were presumably behind the qubans.
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Jul 18, 2012 09:08
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