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Moist von Lipwig posted:If you don't like Revelation Space I'm not quite sure what to say, it's one of the best in the genre. I guess it's kind of a slow burn in the first half though so I can see getting bored if you don't dig the technobabble. If you're willing to give Reynolds another shot then House of Suns is amazing and his style had matured a little more, I'd actually say it's the better novel because it's self-contained. Reynolds is always very cold and remote in his handling of the characters and narrative. I like it a lot in the right context but I can definitely see being turned off by it. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Dec 31, 2012 |
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Dec 31, 2012 04:57
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Please, don't let it put you off House of Suns. It is one of the best space opera novels out there. The sheer scale of the first half really impressed me.
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Dec 31, 2012 05:15
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Neurosis posted:Please, don't let it put you off House of Suns. It is one of the best space opera novels out there. The sheer scale of the first half really impressed me. House of Suns is easily one of my favorite sci fi books. Just fantastic.
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Dec 31, 2012 05:28
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regularizer posted:Is there anything else I should try if I like the contact with alien species, extinct or otherwise? I also really liked the Commonwealth saga by Hamilton, particularly the bits about the High Angel. For reasonably unique takes on it: A Deepness in the Sky treats first contact from the other side. Embassytown deals with communication in much greater depth than most any other novel. And Blindsight is, well, Blindsight. You don't get more alien than Rorschach. coffeetable fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Dec 31, 2012 |
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Dec 31, 2012 05:50
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regularizer posted:I started reading Revelation Space, but could only get about halfway through before the terrible in-depth descriptions of the technology/weapons and the conversations between characters and computuers started to get in the way. Honestly parts of it felt like I was reading something from a NaNoWriMo forum. It's a shame because I really liked the whole mystery surrounding the Amarantins. Is there anything else I should try if I like the contact with alien species, extinct or otherwise? I also really liked the Commonwealth saga by Hamilton, particularly the bits about the High Angel. See, the thing about Reynolds is that he is a very cold, distant author. His attention is for his worlds, and while he has some really cool mysteries and ideas to fill his worlds with, he does not do a great job of filling his worlds with loveable people. He is like Peter Watts (who also did a solid alien first contact novel in Blindsight, which most people love and I thought was OK) in that regard; they are great idea men but you don't sign up to read one of their books for the personable characters and compelling psychodrama. If you didn't like Revelation Space, I'm not sure I would recommend another Reynolds book. If you like the idea of space archeologists exploring the mystery behind a species' extinction, try Jack McDevitt's The Engines of God. Alternately, if it's first contact with alien aliens you want, go for Cherryh's The Pride of Chanur, Serpent's Reach, or even Voyager in Night. e: oh poo poo yeah, or Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, how could I forget about that. Bass Concert Hall fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Dec 31, 2012 |
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Dec 31, 2012 05:53
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Anyone here read the Star of the Guardians trilogy by Margaret Weiss? Probably the first Space Opera I read, and never realized it at the time but I enjoyed the hell out of them in my teens. Haven't read them in a decade, at least, but they popped in my head for some reason today.
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Feb 1, 2013 02:21
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rafikki posted:Anyone here read the Star of the Guardians trilogy by Margaret Weiss? Probably the first Space Opera I read, and never realized it at the time but I enjoyed the hell out of them in my teens. Haven't read them in a decade, at least, but they popped in my head for some reason today.
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Feb 1, 2013 02:27
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Hedrigall posted:This is real nerdy, too nerdy for the music subforum, but does anyone know of some awesome music to listen to while reading futuristic sci-fi books and/or thinking up stuff for things I may want to write myself? I want music that sounds like I am in the future :B
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Feb 4, 2013 19:27
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Thanks for this thread. I had no idea that I was missing scifi / space opera from my life, but now I've gone through all of Reynolds' books and am now working on the Culture series. Both are awesome and well worth it.
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Feb 9, 2013 04:19
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Speaking of Reynolds, apparently he's writing a Third Doctor novel, and Stephen Baxter just came out with a Second Doctor novel. I've only ever read one Doctor Who novel before and it left me with no desire to read another, but if the BBC keeps getting awesome authors like these to write them then I'm definitely in.
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Feb 9, 2013 06:54
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Alastair Reynolds could write a loving Thomas The Tank Engine novel and I'd buy it on release day to read it  China Miéville once got asked if he'd consider writing an episode of Doctor Who and he didn't give a committal answer, but went on to enthuse over getting literary writers to do tie-in fiction.
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Feb 9, 2013 07:17
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Like has always happened ever? Half of the original set of Star Trek novels were at least plotted by Diane Duane, if not written outright.
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Feb 9, 2013 08:25
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Hedrigall posted:Alastair Reynolds could write a loving Thomas The Tank Engine novel and I'd buy it on release day to read it Don't think Mieville could write a Dr. Who episode. The Doctor isn't explicitly socialist. Don't get me wrong, Mieville's great, but i've never seen him write anything that wasn't explicitly Marxist in the same sense that Narnia is explicitly Christian.
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Feb 9, 2013 20:08
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Don't think Mieville could write a Dr. Who episode. The Doctor isn't explicitly socialist. Only when compared to the usual background noise of science fiction which is full of reactionary dudes like Jerry Pournelle and Tom Kratman and David Weber and basically the entire Baen fleet of non-Bujold authors.
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Feb 10, 2013 01:28
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fritz posted:Only when compared to the usual background noise of science fiction which is full of reactionary dudes like Jerry Pournelle and Tom Kratman and David Weber and basically the entire Baen fleet of non-Bujold authors. Eric Flint too, who's also an explicit socialist. Which always makes me really surprised that he publishes with Baen.
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Feb 10, 2013 02:04
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Chairman Capone posted:Eric Flint too, who's also an explicit socialist. Which always makes me really surprised that he publishes with Baen. Oops, my browser ate a longer relply. In sort, Flnt showed Jim Baen how to make more money by giving away free books. The participating authors make more money too. That's a pretty smart socialist. Speaking of Baen, almost none of you have even heard of one of the best authors in their catalog, Cordwainer Smith. There are two longer stories here: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1416520953/1416520953_toc.htm The Dead Lady of Clown Town is an excellent reselling of the Joan of Arc legend. And bunch of short ones here http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1416521461/1416521461_toc.htm Scanners Live In Vain and The Lady Wo Sailed The Soul are the gems here.
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Feb 10, 2013 04:15
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I really love Reynolds (except for how often he flubs endings), and I've read just about everything except some of his short stories/novellas and Blue Remembered Earth. Any recommendations for where I could go from him? My favorites of his are Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, and Terminal World.
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Feb 10, 2013 05:21
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Hyperion has a fairly similar tone to the RS series.
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Feb 10, 2013 06:07
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I've read and enjoyed Hyperion, but on Adam Roberts's blog's warning I haven't followed up with any of the sequels. It definitely had some of the grimness and body horror of RS.
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Feb 10, 2013 06:10
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Reynolds is one of my favorite sci-fi authors but he definitely has some stinkers and at times his flat characters can ruin novels. I think his worst novel was Century Rain, followed closely by Terminal World. In Century Rain he basically had to "world build" two different settings and both felt half-assed. He then added in the flat characters and it was exceptionally boring to read. I don't know yet know how I feel about Blue Remembered Earth. I enjoyed it while I was reading it but I want to see how it will fit in context of the next books in the series. Comparing Miéville to Reynolds, Miéville seems to cohesively create a world where the realism and tone is consistent throughout. For instance in both 'The City and the City' and 'Embassytown' you have very unlikely situations that feel realistic. Miéville adds in a lot of implausible concepts, but each element has enough realism mixed in with it that the setting and story feel like a real thing happening. In 'The City and the City' the one Reynolds like stupid element that broke the consistency was the random alien weapons and artifacts that added nothing to the plot. Reynolds has too many things like this in many of his books; I think 'House of Suns' is so highly regarded mostly because Reynolds managed to create a cohesive setting where everything was more consistent than usual. He had Giant guys who eat you and give you answers while you are inside them, but it somehow had the same ratio of plausibility and absurdity as the rest of the elements in the story. As far as Blue Remembered Earth goes, Reynolds is really on the edge of adding in too many ridiculously stupid things into what feels like a fairly realistic near-future setting. He has his prediction of Africa being the "super-power" of the near future, the concept of 'the aug', a relatively tame concept of a colonized moon and mars, and a fairly modest idea of a propulsion system for spacecraft. Overall you want to feel that he is aiming for trying to create a near future scenario that feels realistic. Is he trying to create this feeling so that he can add in People living in the ocean and turning into giant whales? and hope it still feels grounded in reality or does he really think something like that would happen? I think part of the problem that Reynolds has is that he is trying to do "hard sci-fi" and ground everything in real physics while adding crazy, far-flung ideas that oftentimes clash with each other. In Revelation Space one of my biggest pet peeves is that The conjoiner drives were not invented as usual on the current timeline; they used that time travel voice device (I forget exactly how it worked) to hear how to make the drive. The drive is therefore several hundred years more advanced than would otherwise have been possible. Adding in such goofy ideas really detracts from the world to me. I think the ending of the trilogy suffered from this fault as well: Reynolds spends like 60% of the final book building up the mystery of the flickering gas giant and finally reveals that it is an alien-species that was previously unmentioned (and likely is a super far future humanity!). Would the trilogy have felt paced much better had Reynolds slowly built up the shadows and dropped clues as to what was going to happen in the ending rather than building up his pet idea of the flickering planet? He seems to feel that since the former caused the latter, it was okay to spend 60% of the book building up the latter. I'm hoping that Reynolds will not fall prey to this again in his new trilogy, but I'm not overly optimistic at this point. angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Feb 11, 2013 |
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Feb 11, 2013 15:51
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I'll try reading more Miéville. The only thing I've read is Perdido Street Station, which had a lot of interesting individual components (mood, setting, a few plot beats, a few character beats) although it did kind of go on forever. I've got Iron Council sitting around somewhere unread. --- For me, the most annoying Reynolds moment was the end of Century Rain, when it turns out the entire conflict was motivated by one side being rabidly genocidal assholes for the sake of some incomprehensible philosophical point. I'm all right with a lot of the doofier elements in Reynolds's settings. It is a bit disappointing that the Revelation Space universe was mostly characterized by slower-than-light travel and yet half the plot ends up being driven by FTL and time travel. But there's a lot of neat aspects he crams into stuff, and even the further-out things I like.
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Feb 11, 2013 16:41
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I like a lot of his further out concepts as well, but House of Suns is a good example of how he created a world where all of those crazy concepts felt at home. Also if you look at Chasm City as a self-contained book it also worked in a lot of crazy stuff in a way that felt natural. The concept in House of Suns where the wormhole makes andromeda no longer visible to agree with relativity was a nice example of Reynold's pet physics stuff working its way into the plot in a fulfilling way. He created a mystery that didn't eat up an inordinate amount of focus, then it had a cool payoff in the end of the book. Contrast this with the inertia suppressing technology which added almost nothing to the plot but he spent way too much focus on. You could tell he just had a 'cool idea' that he wanted to force into the story and it was done at the expense of the plot.
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Feb 11, 2013 17:32
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Chasm City frustrates me because the major twist that the POV character is Sky Hausmann felt so painfully telegraphed that I got annoyed waiting for him to come out and say it. On the other hand, the thrilling spaceship chase in Chasm City is quite a bit cooler than the thrilling spaceship chase in Redemption Ark. And Sky himself is generally cooler than Skade or Clavain. I think my favorite RS book is either the first one, because the central mystery and its revelation end up being so cool, or The Prefect, because it has so many interesting plot details developed so swiftly. It's also interesting to me that he doesn't end it with the Melding Plague happening then and there. It's got a pretty solid ending on its own, and we know where it goes from there.
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Feb 11, 2013 18:58
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systran posted:In 'The City and the City' the one Reynolds like stupid element that broke the consistency was the random alien weapons and artifacts that added nothing to the plot. I have read TC&TC twice and I... don't remember that.  Reynolds is fantastic, he's quickly becoming my second favourite author after Miéville. I started with Terminal World which I kinda hated (except for the hints about the Earth of that book actually being Mars thousands of years after abandonment of the original Earth and settlement by the Chinese which was pretty drat inspired), but luckily I gave him another chance with Revelation Space. I absolutely loved that. One of my favourite things about Reynolds is he does the vast scale of the universe so drat well. I'm on House of Suns now and I'm enjoying the mystery, as well as the concept of a persisting race watching countless other civilisations rise and fall, as well as cool technology like the time-slowing Synchromesh. Chasm City was good enough. I actually liked the twist even though I agree it was telegraphed. It's my least favourite book in the Revelation Space series though because I really didn't like the titular city. Reynolds is a good world builder on an interstellar scale, but the city in Chasm City just felt like a half-baked sci-fi version of New Crobuzon. The best book was Redemption Ark by far. I didn't have as many gripes about Absolution Gap as most people, I thought the new elements introduced were interesting, and the ending didn't take me by surprise because I'd already read the short story "Galactic North". Scorpio is also my favourite character in RS, and that last book gives him a ton of character development. Goddamn it's an amazing series.
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Feb 11, 2013 22:33
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I love everything about the RS universe. I understand, and even agree with, the usual criticisms, but it just hit all the right notes with me. That said, I think House of Suns is is best book (when read directly after Thousandth Night).
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Feb 12, 2013 01:15
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Alastair Reynolds is one of my favorite authors, but if you read his novels in the order he published it eventually you start to realize the pattern his plots take and his stories become fairly predictable. The world building, insane detail to the technology and plot devices, and imaginative settings are all mind blowing, but he's in a bit of a thematic rut. I'm been meaning to read Blue Earth because he said he wanted to go in a new direction with his work and approach the future from a more positive perspective.
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Feb 12, 2013 03:04
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Just finished rereading Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Space. It's a bit more meandering than I remember, and the character seem even flatter than Baxter's usual fare, but it's still pretty compelling. Both it and the Revelation Space stuff have pretty satisfyingly miserable answers to the Fermi paradox. Now, Baxter's a lot more prolific than Reynolds, but he's also done a lot of stuff that's more ancient-historical than sci fi. I've read most of his Xeelee stuff (I think, I haven't found a copy of Starfall) and I read that Time Odyssey collaboration with Arthur C Clarke (also pretty awesome, although Sunstorm and Firstborn weren't as cool as Time's Eye). I haven't read the Flood series yet. Does Baxter have any other really crucial science fiction? And is there anyone else who's written stuff that's kind of in the vein of the Xeelee Sequence? I guess that's pretty vague, there's a lot of stuff that takes place over tens of thousands of years. Specific elements I like: The diversity of the species humans encounter (Squeem, Qax, Silver Ghosts, Xeelee, others), the tactical use of time travel for space combat, the multiple timescales (years, tens of thousands of years, and millions of years), the interesting possibilities for a recognizable but still pretty different humanity. I don't know if I'd need any of those specific elements in a series, but that's I think some of what stands out about Baxter's books.
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Feb 12, 2013 04:04
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If those are the reasons you like Baxter's work, I'd also highly recommend The Time Ships (which has a similarly broad scope of setting and technology, and to a degree critters) and the rest of the Manifold series. I also really enjoyed his so-called "NASA Trilogy" books (Titan, Voyage, Moonseed) and Anti-Ice, even though they're not in similar to his Xeelee works. I think Voyage is unique among Baxter sci-fi in that it doesn't end with humanity being obliterated in the most soul-crushing way possible. Anti-Ice is interesting as it's Baxter's take on Verne and Wells, and a look at steampunk before it became all gears and goggles and airships.
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Feb 12, 2013 04:20
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I have read The Time Ships, it's okay. And I'm pretty sure I've read Manifolds Time and Origin, but I don't really remember their details. I'll check out the NASA trilogy and Anti-Ice. And I would say that in Manifold: Space, while humanity IS obliterated, it's in a relatively non-soul-crushing way. The most soul-crushing obliteration of humanity I'd have to say is Evolution, followed closely by the Xeelee stuff. John Magnum fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Feb 12, 2013 |
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Feb 12, 2013 04:23
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Titan was a gruesome read. Even for Baxter, something about it just felt really bleak and cruel. Almost petty. I can deal with human extinction but the actual human beings depicted in Titan felt like they deserved it.
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Feb 12, 2013 04:28
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pentyne posted:Alastair Reynolds is one of my favorite authors, but if you read his novels in the order he published it eventually you start to realize the pattern his plots take and his stories become fairly predictable. The world building, insane detail to the technology and plot devices, and imaginative settings are all mind blowing, but he's in a bit of a thematic rut. I bogged down about 1/4 of the way through Revelation Space because he just wouldn't get on with it. I like detailed worlds, but that was a bit much. Having said that, I did enjoy House of Suns.
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Feb 12, 2013 04:29
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I really like Voyage and Moonseed (especially Voyage)
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Feb 12, 2013 04:52
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General Battuta posted:Titan was a gruesome read. Even for Baxter, something about it just felt really bleak and cruel. Almost petty. I can deal with human extinction but the actual human beings depicted in Titan felt like they deserved it. One thing I recall when it first came out was a lot of reviewers saying the president was such an unlikely caricature. And then a few years later Bush is elected president and was eerily spot-on. Also a bit eery that Baxter predicted the Columbia would be destroyed on re-entry in 2003.
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Feb 12, 2013 05:31
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Just finished the John Ringo Troy Rising series. Loved the first two but the third as just meh. Didn't really seem to go anywhere and was too focused on micro issues instead of taking it wider.
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Feb 15, 2013 06:50
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Done with the Culture series now and I am kind of sad about that, since it was a hell of a fun ride. And if anyone cares, here is a list of ship names from the books. That part seriously owned. I got a kick out of all the Mind names, and I'm glad he saved Mistake Not... My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath for the end. That ship conversation was hysterical. E: also Psychopath class LOUs owned
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Mar 5, 2013 03:50
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In case anyone is interested I've found a series I hadn't seen mentioned here: The Frontiers Saga by Ryk Brown http://www.amazon.com/Ep-Aurora-CV-01-Frontiers-Saga/dp/1480121029/ref=la_B00727LG8Y_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362619757&sr=1-1 Essentially Earth becomes significantly advanced and starts a rapid expansion into the universe only to get hit by a computer virus that nearly destroys the human race and leaves it back in the dark ages and now, some time later (generally refered to as a millennium, but the idiot ball affects the author in keeping consistent about that) they've recently found a cache of human knowledge from just before the virus. Now Earth has built a new warship with FTL capability but everything goes crazy on a test run and the ship ends up at the hands of the fresh from the academy junior officers/enlisted a long ways away from home in the middle of a war of religious persecution and tyranny in an area of space colonized by humans in a mad rush to escape the virus. Don't expect anything great, but it's still a step above the bottom of the barrel. Just be warned ahead of time that the characters get more and more idiotic as you go ahead (at least to book four, which is easily the worst, haven't read the other two out). Definitely the worst case of an idiot ball being thrown around that I've seen in a long time.
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Mar 7, 2013 02:39
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nessin posted:In case anyone is interested I've found a series I hadn't seen mentioned here: The Frontiers Saga by Ryk Brown This is definitely self published. I always feel like that should be flagged.
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Mar 7, 2013 03:03
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I actually started reading this recently and I'm up to book two. A quality read it is not, but its not too bad. That said, Who the hell decided that the fastest, best ship ever should be crewed entirely with the absolute newest, quite possibly brain damaged newbies they could find, seriously?
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Mar 7, 2013 03:26
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oTHi posted:I actually started reading this recently and I'm up to book two. A quality read it is not, but its not too bad. That said, Who the hell decided that the fastest, best ship ever should be crewed entirely with the absolute newest, quite possibly brain damaged newbies they could find, seriously? Told ya, idiot ball. Edit: If you want to see how much worse it can get, in the second or third book (can't remember offhand) they get attacked by a boarding party coming in a shuttle they thought was legitimate. In the fourth book, literally just days later and after a significant battle and much turmoil on the planet they're over, they recieve a shuttle from the ground with medical personnel. Only turns out it had been infiltrated by enemies and the shuttle was just let on and meet without any real security to verify them. Just a few DAYS after the first event had happened. Edit #2: Because I knew I wouldn't be able to give it up I went ahead and bought book 5. Just 10% in (Kindle) and it's already getting worse than book 4 in sheer idiocy... nessin fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Mar 7, 2013 |
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Mar 7, 2013 05:14
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I picked up The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F Hamilton when it was on sale for 99p recently. I'd heard good things about it, and I enjoyed Manhattan in Reverse, a short story collection of his, but I'm just not feeling it with this one. I'm about 17% of the way through (reading on Kindle) but I'm pretty close to giving up. The book's something like 1200 pages long and so far I don't think there's been a character I've really liked or felt any interest in, and there doesn't really seem to be much of anything approaching a plot yet. His whole attitude to sex is pretty cringe-inducing too, like something out of a 14-year-old boy's imagination. Also, he has an obsession with describing people as 'oriental', which makes him sound like a Victorian racist. I like the whole 'bitek' technology thing, and the descriptions of the process of establishing a colony on another planet, but that's not enough to carry the weak cast of characters so far. It feels like he's put a lot of effort into thinking up a whole backdrop for the story to take place against but that doesn't come across very well so far. Is it worth sticking with? Or if I'm not enjoying it now am I unlikely to enjoy the rest of it? I went on a major Iain M. Banks binge last year, and was really feeling in the mood for some more space opera from a different author, and having enjoyed the stories in Manhattan in Reverse was quite looking forward to reading more of Hamilton's stuff. I gather this is one of his earlier books so maybe he's just improved with age.
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Mar 7, 2013 15:29
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