|
I just discovered the story "Scales" by Alastair Reynolds. It's a super short (less than 2000 words) and succinct "gently caress you" to the entire Military SF genre, and it's got a great ending.
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 03:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 22:05 |
|
|
Best quote I've read about Scalzi's award thus farquote:So apparently Redshirts is considered to be in such immortal company as Ender's Game, Neuromancer, Dune, Starship Troopers, and a Canticle for Leibowitz?
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 03:57
|
|
|
Some years are weak years... To be more specific, Forever Peace, American Gods, and The Diamond Age all are winners and have been panned by various people a few pages back. Come on, people. The diamond age. It's the book without an ending, for all it's neat techno-gadgetry. Looking at that list, wow - imagine how Mira Grant feels! All 3 of her books in the trilogy, once a year, as finalists. No winners. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Sep 4, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 04:11
|
|
|
Anyone that gets upset over who did or did not win a Hugo is dumb because the award (as it exists today) has less to do with the quality of a book than it does with how well the author can market him- or herself. It's a popularity contest, and that's why someone like Scalzi, with tens of thousands of Twitter followers, wins with a weak book.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 04:32
|
|
|
Hedrigall posted:I just discovered the story "Scales" by Alastair Reynolds. It's a super short (less than 2000 words) and succinct "gently caress you" to the entire Military SF genre, and it's got a great ending. Excellent story! Thanks for the link.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 05:28
|
|
|
sky shark posted:Best quote I've read about Scalzi's award thus far It surely isn't as bad as Ender's Game. And tons better than Speaker for the Dead. There's a fight to pick: Why did such a bad book get a Hugo? Because the name Scott Orson Card wasn't toxic back then? I don't think its worse than Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire or American Gods (two books I quite liked) either. Re: John Ringo. Criticism coming from a writer who won't even be nominated in thousand years reeks a lot like sour grapes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 06:39
|
|
|
Fried Chicken posted:On my phone so no link but John "I like nazis and rape" ringo has decided to pick a fight with John scalzi over winning the Hugo. Yea, but none of the people said he only won because of LIBERALS!!!! 
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 08:21
|
|
|
Khizan posted:I feel that I can sum that up as "Even a broken clock is right twice a day", frankly. A clock that stands still is right twice a day... but one that is instead broken so that it races ahead arbitrarily fast can be right arbitrarily often!
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 09:36
|
|
|
Bhodi posted:Some years are weak years... It's true, none of the books this year are going against Ender's Game or Dune or Canticle for Liebowitz.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 12:24
|
|
|
I'm in the middle of reading Redshirts right now: I picked it up when I heard. It's moderately funny, I guess, but Hugo material it ain't. What I'm more irritated with is the (lack of) criteria the Hugo people use for their nominations. Seriously, this has been a banner year for sci-fi and fantasy, and to not see Alif the Unseen, The Age of Miracles, The Dog Stars, Angelmaker, or even a loving token nomination for recently-departed Iain Banks for The Hydrogen Sonata on the list while middle-of-the-road poo poo by nerd darlings like Stross, Scalzi and Doctorow gets nominated every year isn't just disappointing: it's INSANE. Popular Human fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Sep 4, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 15:26
|
|
|
Popular Human posted:What I'm more irritated with is the (lack of) criteria the Hugo people use for their nominations. Seriously, this has been a banner year for sci-fi and fantasy, and to not see Alif the Unseen, The Age of Miracles, The Dog Stars, Angelmaker, or even a loving token nomination for recently-departed Iain Banks for The Hydrogen Sonata on the list while middle-of-the-road poo poo by nerd darlings like Stross, Scalzi and Doctorow gets nominated every year isn't just disappointing: it's INSANE. quote:So apparently Redshirts is considered to be in such immortal company as Ender's Game, Neuromancer, Dune, Starship Troopers, and a Canticle for Leibowitz? Bodhin posted:Looking at that list, wow - imagine how Mira Grant feels! All 3 of her books in the trilogy, once a year, as finalists. No winners.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 17:49
|
|
|
I read a lot of fantasy but I mostly find new authors through this thread, I rarely browse in bookstores and never check out awards lists. I have never heard of Mira Grant until this page of the thread. She's not even recommended in the OP. That probably has something to do with why she lost a popularity contest. Now that I'm aware of her, those Newsflesh books sound really interesting and I will look to check them out, but she's definitely not well marketed.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 17:54
|
|
|
Really? I see those books everywhere. They don't look particularly good either - the promotional poo poo for the first one made it sound like Stephen King's Cell, which was such a terrible novel it tarnishes Grant's by association. edit: kudos for reccing the Arthur C. Clarke award - the list of nominations/winners for that looks leagues better. I've never heard of the book that won this year (Dark Eden) but it looks really good. Thanks! (double edit - I've never heard of it b/c it hasn't come out in the US! Awesome). Popular Human fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Sep 4, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 20:06
|
|
|
Dammit. A.C. Crispin is dying of cancer as well. This has been a horrible year for authors.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 22:48
|
|
|
Dark Eden is phenomenal and everyone should read it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 23:20
|
|
|
Hugochat has reminded me of a pretty sweet set of articles, Revisiting the Hugos. Written by (Hugo winning) author Jo Walton, it's a look at all the Hugo winners year by year, from its creation to the year 2000. It's worth checking out if you haven't already. Each year she looks at what won, what was nominated, and which ones should have been nominated but weren't. Also includes the Nebula after that starts up. Her opinions can obviously be pretty subjective (like when she writes of a book 'haven't read it, w/e') but it's a great resource if you're looking for new books to try. It's also pretty entertaining.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 23:32
|
|
|
Lex Talionis posted:Of course, right now the Hugo is the highest profile award, but I suspect that may decline over time (like the Nebula already has) as people continue to disagree with the winners.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2013 23:46
|
|
|
Both awards (both the winners and the finalists) are best seen as popular recommended reading lists - that's pretty much as much as you can and should expect from any award. That article is really interesting though - especially this bit: quote:Julian May’s The Many Coloured Land is what I’d have voted for in 1982, and now I think it’s the weakest book on the list. It was so exactly to my taste then and so little to my taste now that you could use it to graph precisely how my tastes have changed. It’s about people in a multi-planet future with psi powers who have a one-way gate to the Pliocene of Earth, through which people can go into Exile, and when they get there they discover to their astonishment a society of Celtic aliens. There are sequels, which I kept reading for far longer than I should have. It’s not in print and it’s not in the library, but if anybody’s interested I remember exactly how all the magic-enhancing torcs worked and the names of the different kinds of psi.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 01:20
|
|
|
Azathoth posted:I haven't paid attention to the Nebula for quite a while, but could you talk a little more about this? In my mind, the Hugo and the Nebula are both equally prestigious and the highest awards possible, with all other awards ending up somewhere a bit lower. However, that opinion was mostly formed pre-2000, so it's quite out of date I'm sure. I actually think the Nebula, absent other issues, ought to be by far the most prestigious SF award. Unlike the Hugo, its voter pool is restricted to what we might call experts. Unlike the Clarke, it's not limited by the UK market requirement or the irritating tendency for publishers not to submit worthy novels for consideration. There are hundreds of film awards, but the Oscars are by far the most prestigious for basically these reasons (to extend the analogy for you film geeks, the Clarke is a more open version of the Palme D'Or and the Hugo is, hmm, maybe the MTV Movie awards?). Yet I don't care all that much about it, and the most anyone could argue is that the Nebula is about even with the Hugo in prestige. Why? To start with, there's the dirty secret that although the average SFWA member might theoretically have more expertise than the average Hugo voter (and even that is debatable), it's almost certainly the case that they read less. The average SFWA member has a day job just like the average Hugo voter, but instead of only reading in their spare time they are using most of it to write their own fiction. Then there's the fact that the voting pool is small and made even smaller by the fact that most SFWA members don't nominate or vote. Unlike the Hugo Awards, SFWA doesn't release the statistics, and it's almost certainly because the number of votes involved is embarrassingly low. Which, if they are lower than the Hugos...well, it must be incredibly low. A small voting pool means weird outliers show up in the short lists and sometimes even win (most famously in 2010 with "The Leviathan, Whom Thou Has Made"), most voters know most nominees so they are tempted to vote for friends (and against enemies) instead of for quality, and with so few voters they are easier for publishers or self-promoting authors to influence via campaign. Some evidence for this can be seen in Robert Sawyer's self-contratulatory post about winning in 1996:
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 01:40
|
|
|
ZerodotJander posted:I read a lot of fantasy but I mostly find new authors through this thread, I rarely browse in bookstores and never check out awards lists. I have never heard of Mira Grant until this page of the thread. She's not even recommended in the OP. That probably has something to do with why she lost a popularity contest. Now that I'm aware of her, those Newsflesh books sound really interesting and I will look to check them out, but she's definitely not well marketed. I read them recently. Good, solid workmanship, even when zombies aren't particularly my thing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 02:37
|
|
|
Bhodi posted:Both awards (both the winners and the finalists) are best seen as popular recommended reading lists - that's pretty much as much as you can and should expect from any award. Heh, thirded. The Saga of Pliocene Exile was one of my favorite series for years. A long time later I read some of Julian May's latest books (The Rampart Worlds series) and was surprised to find them kind of... average. Not bad as such, just fairly standard fare SF pulp. Then I re-read my old favorite and realized that while I still enjoyed it for pretty much sentimental reasons, it was exactly the same quality as the newer series.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 02:43
|
|
|
Bhodi posted:I had my Anne McCaffrey phase I am still forever holding out for Dragonriders of Pern: The Movie. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 03:41
|
|
|
Wait, people don't like American Gods? I'm one of the most critical assholes in this thread and I can't think of anything bad to say about it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 04:16
|
|
|
SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Wait, people don't like American Gods? I'm one of the most critical assholes in this thread and I can't think of anything bad to say about it. It's meandering, Shadow is a personality-less main character, and Neil Gaiman is clearly better at writing comics than prose. Plot is still hella-fun though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 04:35
|
|
|
Hedrigall posted:It's meandering, Shadow is a personality-less main character, and Neil Gaiman is clearly better at writing comics than prose. I'd agree with all of this, except I didn't find the plot that fun. The allusions and takes on myth were the only thing that got me to finish that book.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 06:19
|
|
|
I'm a fantasy reader primarily, but I'd like to try some sci-fi. Either space opera or cyberpunk, I think. I'm aware the genres are riddled with crap so I'm wary of just picking something with a lot of stars on Amazon. On the fantasy side, I've recently really enjoyed Abercrombie, Lynch, Rothfus, and Martin. So I think I want something modern - published fairly recently by an author who is still under 60 or so (preferably younger). Any suggestions? Edit: on the sci fi side, I haven't read much recently. I loved the first 2 Dune books when I read them a few years back, and failed to penetrate god emperor. I enjoyed some Heinlen and Douglas Adams, but I don't think they're what I'm looking for now. Nor is Dune, really. DancingMachine fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Sep 5, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 07:01
|
|
|
Hedrigall posted:I just discovered the story "Scales" by Alastair Reynolds. It's a super short (less than 2000 words) and succinct "gently caress you" to the entire Military SF genre, and it's got a great ending. drat, quite good!
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 07:26
|
|
|
Hedrigall posted:It's meandering, Shadow is a personality-less main character, and Neil Gaiman is clearly better at writing comics than prose. The plot is pretty much obvious if you've read any kind of myth or The Sandman. I don't regret reading American Gods, but I have no urge to read it again.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 09:12
|
|
|
DancingMachine posted:I'm a fantasy reader primarily, but I'd like to try some sci-fi. Either space opera or cyberpunk, I think. I'm aware the genres are riddled with crap so I'm wary of just picking something with a lot of stars on Amazon. On the fantasy side, I've recently really enjoyed Abercrombie, Lynch, Rothfus, and Martin. So I think I want something modern - published fairly recently by an author who is still under 60 or so (preferably younger). Any suggestions? For fast-moving stuff, Neal Asher and Richard Morgan is probably a good bet. Morgan is cyberpunk, while Asher is space opera. Both got a similar fast paced writing as in Abercrombie with gritty characters.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 09:33
|
|
|
 4th book
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 10:38
|
|
|
Hedrigall posted:It's meandering, Shadow is a personality-less main character, and Neil Gaiman is clearly better at writing comics than prose. Gaiman writes great prose, but he is far better with his shorter work. I really like American Gods, but I agree that it could have been tighter and more focused.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 11:43
|
|
|
Jedit posted:The plot is pretty much obvious if you've read any kind of myth or The Sandman. I don't regret reading American Gods, but I have no urge to read it again. Yeah, this, I found American Gods painfully predictable. It's not horrible or anything but it's not one of Gaiman's first-rank works. Sandman, Stardust, Neverwhere are all far superior.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 12:28
|
|
|
The third chunk of the Wool books, called Dust came out last month. Has anyone read it yet? I enjoyed Wool, but not so much Shift. I'm really in need of a good, long series to read. I'm usually a fantasy guy, but I've read most of the major recommendations here. If anyone could just travel into the future and get me the rest of The Way of Kings, that would be splendid.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 13:10
|
|
|
Schneider Heim posted:I'm reading the 2013 Campbellian Pre-Reading Anthology brought up by the previous thread (it still looks up so get it if you haven't). Mur Lafferty's good, but I really liked Zen Cho's story about the aunts. Also, Southeast Asian fantasy! The links in this are dead unfortunately. Since it was a free give-away is it considered  or can someone link a copy of the anthology if they have it?
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 13:20
|
|
|
Blog Free or Die posted:Hugochat has reminded me of a pretty sweet set of articles, Revisiting the Hugos. Written by (Hugo winning) author Jo Walton, it's a look at all the Hugo winners year by year, from its creation to the year 2000. This is a really interesting series and nearly made it into the OP. Be sure to read the comments; amongst others, Gardner Dozois weighs in quite often. Lex Talionis posted:I actually think the Nebula, absent other issues, ought to be by far the most prestigious SF award. Unlike the Hugo, its voter pool is restricted to what we might call experts. Unlike the Clarke, it's not limited by the UK market requirement or the irritating tendency for publishers not to submit worthy novels for consideration. I was going to post that I respect the Nebulas over the Hugos for these reasons. I don't totally buy the argument that the Nebulas are less reliable because I think that would imply that juried awards are worthless - they seem to be halfway between juried awards and the Hugos' "anyone with the money" model. Although maybe you feel it's a worse of both worlds situation? (And if so what about, say, the BFAs, where members select the shortlists that judges choose from?) I'm not saying it doesn't have the other problems you list, though. Perhaps SFWA could invite non-US writers to have "Nebula voting membership" or something similar? Either way it was an interesting post. Did you notice that Sawyer's figures reveal that he needed less than 5% of the votes to win a Nebula (40 of 930)...
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 14:01
|
|
|
Blog Free or Die posted:Hugochat has reminded me of a pretty sweet set of articles, Revisiting the Hugos. Written by (Hugo winning) author Jo Walton, it's a look at all the Hugo winners year by year, from its creation to the year 2000. Jo Walton is a clever and funny person and pretty much everything she writes is worth reading; I used to hang out on a few of the same Usenet groups as her back in the day and we all thought it was pretty  when she got her first book published. This reminds me she has one or two books out that I haven't read yet. Let me grab my Kindle...
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 14:05
|
|
|
Phummus posted:The third chunk of the Wool books, called Dust came out last month. Has anyone read it yet? I enjoyed Wool, but not so much Shift. I don't think Dust did a good job of resolving the story, I liked Shift more than Dust. Dust needed either 100 more pages or another sequel to fulfill the promise built up in the first two books. Instead the scope narrows considerably, the ending is rushed, and I found it very disappointing. And I'm not someone who had a problem with the ending of Lost.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 14:11
|
|
|
Groke posted:Jo Walton is a clever and funny person and pretty much everything she writes is worth reading; I used to hang out on a few of the same Usenet groups as her back in the day and we all thought it was pretty I'm really excited for her new book coming out in January: blurb posted:As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 14:47
|
|
|
Some books I haven't seen discussed: does anyone have any opinion on the Jacob's Ladder books by Elizabeth Bear? I'm about halfway through Dust. It's not too bad. A fairly interesting colony ship setup with mad AIs who are fragments of the central AI fighting over the ship.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 14:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 22:05 |
|
|
Cardiac posted:For fast-moving stuff, Neal Asher and Richard Morgan is probably a good bet. Morgan is cyberpunk, while Asher is space opera.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2013 15:04
|
|
