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RBA Starblade posted:I liked them but really could have done without the incest and justification for why its totally ok at the end of the last one. Also the one character at the very end died because no one knew to just drop the pda. It's an upload, you don't need to do anything else with it!
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Sep 6, 2013 22:31
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General Battuta posted:A lot of SF/F writers can write sex really well! Catherynne Valente's Palimpsest is a book entirely about sex and it's neither pornographic nor cringe-inducing. Sex in that book isn't even particularly erotic. I seem to recall that a chunk of why it's an old shame was less because of the storm of misogyny and more because she looked back on it and decided 'actually, yeah, the sexual politics of this book are a bit on the weird side, and not in a way I adequately addressed'. Not to say that there wasn't a lot of misogyny (because female author writing speculative fiction), just that that wasn't why she's so reluctant to talk about it these days.
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Sep 6, 2013 22:54
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RBA Starblade posted:I liked them but really could have done without the incest and justification for why its totally ok at the end of the last one. Also the one character at the very end died because no one knew to just drop the pda. It's an upload, you don't need to do anything else with it! She put the batteries in upside-down. Those craaazy complicated logitech keyboards!  Real people are plenty dumb enough to spend time carrying a piece of equipment after it's no longer necessary. Especially in a stressful situation.
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Sep 6, 2013 23:39
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Darth Walrus posted:Not to say that there wasn't a lot of misogyny (because female author writing speculative fiction) This suggests, incidentally, that what is happening is that the left side of the female author bell curve is getting suppressed...great authors will get published and win awards no matter who they are; that's been true since Le Guin became the first woman to win a best novel Hugo in 1970. But an author who is merely "okay" has a better chance of being published if they are male. This in turn suggests that the easiest, most comforting explanation for the novels published disparity, namely that women are less interested in genre fiction than men and so less try to write it and less submit to publishers, isn't true, and that either there's bias at the publisher level (I've always doubted this since many if not most editors now are women) or else male readers are less willing to take a chance on an unknown female author, depressing sales and meaning female authors are more often dropped after their first contract.
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Sep 6, 2013 23:50
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Darth Walrus posted:I seem to recall that a chunk of why it's an old shame was less because of the storm of misogyny and more because she looked back on it and decided 'actually, yeah, the sexual politics of this book are a bit on the weird side, and not in a way I adequately addressed'. Not to say that there wasn't a lot of misogyny (because female author writing speculative fiction), just that that wasn't why she's so reluctant to talk about it these days. I didn't know this, thank you!
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Sep 7, 2013 01:24
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Phummus posted:I guess what I'm looking for is a lot of pages, good world building, and ideally little/no creepy sex and rape. I'm going to be surrounded by people and wouldn't, for instance want to be reading GRR Martin. Try Carol Berg. Her Lighthouse Duet and Collegia Magicka series both have interesting settings, good characters and very little sex to speak of. Or perhaps Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts if you prefer more epic fantasy, which I summarized here. fritz posted:Who wants to see more terrible opinions from a white dude about the state of science fiction today? Everybody does? Cool. Tell me more about how women don't write real sci-fi because their protagonists have relationships. 
Echo Cian fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Sep 7, 2013 |
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Sep 7, 2013 21:07
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Phummus posted:So back to the recommendations for me I guess, since Dust doesn't sound worth reading.
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Sep 7, 2013 23:04
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Scott Lynch? His worldbuilding is less heavy than the other stuff you've mentioned, but it's very well done and interesting. The Lies of Locke Lamora is better than the followup, but they're both worth a look. I've read both Lies and Red Seas. I definitely enjoy those.
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Sep 9, 2013 13:10
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I've recently got into sci-fi/fantasy books and have read the following Mistborn series (loved it) The Quantum Thief (interesting and fun but not amazing) Use of Weapons (brilliant) Neuromancer (found it very boring) Perdido Street Station (extremely inconsistent quality but had some great moments) Based on that has anyone got a recommendation for me to start reading today? Ideally I'd like to read something not from one of the above series as I'm exploring the genre at the moment.
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Sep 9, 2013 14:57
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Flayer posted:I've recently got into sci-fi/fantasy books and have read the following Lies of Locke Lamora, which was suggested a few posts above is an excellent read.
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Sep 9, 2013 15:00
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Flayer posted:I've recently got into sci-fi/fantasy books and have read the following Also if you were digging the Culture stuff by Banks, you may enjoy Vernor Vinge.
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Sep 9, 2013 15:04
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Flayer posted:I've recently got into sci-fi/fantasy books and have read the following Read a book by a woman. You've got pretty good range on display here, from Mistborn's pulpy fantasy schlock through Banks' best work, so why not try some LeGuin? The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed are both pillars of the SF genre. You're exploring the genre, so you'll get to hit up one of the most important authors working in it and help break the tendency of SF critics and readers to ignore even the most important women.
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Sep 9, 2013 16:07
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General Battuta posted:Read a book by a woman. You've got pretty good range on display here, from Mistborn's pulpy fantasy schlock through Banks' best work, so why not try some LeGuin? The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed are both pillars of the SF genre. Edit: you know what whatever, read a sci-fi book woo Carrier fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Sep 9, 2013 |
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Sep 9, 2013 17:04
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Carrier posted:Or, alternatively, read a book because its what you want to read rather than as some dumb attempt to stick it to the patriarchy. Can you give me a more extensive list of male authors? I hate reading stuff by feminazi writers, it really emasculates me to read that poo poo. Also do you know if any "male" authors are actually women using a male pen name in order to avoid "discrimination"? I'd like to steer clear of those as well.
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Sep 9, 2013 17:19
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Carrier posted:Or, alternatively, read a book because its what you want to read rather than as some dumb attempt to stick it to the patriarchy. This would be a great idea, and the one I'd prefer, if SF/F didn't still have huge problems with women at every level, and if the recommendations and 'what I've read' posts in this thread weren't so consistently skewed male. It's not anyone's fault, it's not done out of malice, it's just a product of subtle psychological heuristics that can be counteracted pretty easily. As a male SF/F author I'm convinced by now that we actually do need to make active attempts to stick it to the patriarchy, even in Our Forum Posts. You're right to have a massive hard-on for everything Banks has written, he's great.
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Sep 9, 2013 17:41
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Carrier posted:Or, alternatively, read a book because its what you want to read rather than as some dumb attempt to stick it to the patriarchy. Or, alternatively, read books written by both genders because you might find more of what you want to read rather than sticking with only what's the most popular (which is mostly male authors, for the reason General Battuta already mentioned). As for recommendations: See my last post a little further up on this page. Or any of my previous posts.
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Sep 9, 2013 17:42
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Thank you kindly for your suggestions, and I apologize for inadvertently causing a ruckus in the thread. In the course of investigating all the suggested authors and titles I stumbled on a book called The Quiet War by Paul McAuley and have started reading that. So thank you too for your, also inadvertent, help in getting me a new book to read. I'm sure I'll be back to see what other books pop up in the thread when I'm done.
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Sep 9, 2013 21:57
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I only read books by neutrois writers 
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Sep 10, 2013 02:29
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Dave Freer, Baen author and sometime Ringo collaborator, appears to have gone crazy: http://madgeniusclub.com/2013/09/09/defeating-the-anak/ (his wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Freer)
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Sep 10, 2013 02:42
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Lol that "read what you wanna read good books only" is followed by a rec for Brandon fuckin sanderson
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Sep 10, 2013 04:42
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andrew smash posted:Lol that "read what you wanna read good books only" is followed by a rec for Brandon fuckin sanderson Please go on.
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Sep 10, 2013 04:58
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Wangsbig posted:Please go on. Save yourself some time and read the fluff text from a d&d manual
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Sep 10, 2013 05:03
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Flayer posted:I've recently got into sci-fi/fantasy books and have read the following I would say The Scar by Mieville. It's set in the same world as Perdido Street Station, but completely stand-alone. Speaking of The Scar, it really is an amazing book in so many different ways. Reread it for the 3d time last week, purely based on this thread. First of all, the Bas-Lag world is totally different from basically all other fantasy worlds. The races are imaginative and not another versions of typical elves, orcs and dwarfs. Races are not explained in detail, which just brings flavour to it. I like the fact that everything in Bas-Lag doesn't have to be explained (looking at you Sanderson). The moral ambiguity of all characters is another great thing of Mieville. And finally the plot in The Scar is so good, layers upon layers of intrigue that works together quite seamlessly. Rereading it a third time really made appreciate the whole story.
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Sep 10, 2013 09:54
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Cardiac posted:I would say The Scar by Mieville. It's set in the same world as Perdido Street Station, but completely stand-alone. It's a loving fantastic book. I was doing a chapter-by-chapter analysis blogging thing but kinda gave up around chapter 30 because  You should totally come post in the Miéville thread. It's dying because there's been no book news since Railsea came out 
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Sep 10, 2013 10:00
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fritz posted:Dave Freer, Baen author and sometime Ringo collaborator, appears to have gone crazy: http://madgeniusclub.com/2013/09/09/defeating-the-anak/ (his wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Freer) I really enjoy the sour grapes by all those manly-man authors. Especially if they never ever would even get a whiff of a Nebula or Hugo. Too bad there wasn't a Twitter or Blogs when Le Guin got her Hugo back in the Seventies.
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Sep 10, 2013 10:37
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andrew smash posted:Save yourself some time and read the fluff text from a d&d manual While he does go into some pretty serious mechanics with his magic systems, his books, especially the later ones like Way of Kings are quite good. He's excellent at characterization and world building if a bit "Magic the Gathering" about his magic. Read past the prologue of Way of Kings and you may well change your tune.
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Sep 10, 2013 13:19
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Hedrigall posted:You should totally come post in the Miéville thread. It's dying because there's been no book news since Railsea came out You could've discussed Dial H, but you didn't and now it's cancelled AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. Sorry, I am lashing out.
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Sep 10, 2013 13:22
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Seldom Posts posted:You could've discussed Dial H, but you didn't and now it's cancelled AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. Dial H was awesome, and the team in the last few issues (Open Window Man et al) were really cool! There's a coda issue coming out this month, a last hurrah for Miéville and Dial H: http://www.dccomics.com/comics/justice-league-2011/justice-league-233-dial-e
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Sep 10, 2013 13:24
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Phummus posted:While he does go into some pretty serious mechanics with his magic systems, his books, especially the later ones like Way of Kings are quite good. He's excellent at characterization and world building if a bit "Magic the Gathering" about his magic. Read past the prologue of Way of Kings and you may well change your tune. Yeah, I have no idea what that dude you quoted is thinking. If you want the true Sanderson experience you need to read the spell list text from a D&D manual.
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Sep 10, 2013 13:27
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I don't know, I find Sanderson's characterization fairly thin and his writing mechanical. I remember someone explaining his books to me as though the magic systems were the high point but after reading a few I find that pretty ridiculous. They are easily the weakest points in the books and require no imagination from the reader. Similarly when he writes conflict it tends to be overly descriptive and full of repetition. I decided awhile ago his stuff is just not my cup of tea. Moving on to Mark Lawrence from a few pages ago, I felt really conflicted about The Broken Empire trilogy. He's essentially writing one lovely character the entire time, the books are full of ridiculous grimdark shock content and he meanders all over the place before finally deciding on an arch for the character and story. On the other hand his world building is stellar and feels wasted on the characters and story.
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Sep 10, 2013 18:15
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In what I've read of Sanderson's stuff he came across as a very workmanlike writer -- everything's professional, but there didn't seem to be much originality to it. Not bad at all, far from it, but no amazing flashes either, just solid genre fantasy.
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Sep 10, 2013 18:22
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The Gunslinger posted:I don't know, I find Sanderson's characterization fairly thin and his writing mechanical. I remember someone explaining his books to me as though the magic systems were the high point but after reading a few I find that pretty ridiculous. They are easily the weakest points in the books and require no imagination from the reader. Similarly when he writes conflict it tends to be overly descriptive and full of repetition. I decided awhile ago his stuff is just not my cup of tea. I feel like that about most of his books except Way of Kings. I think he, like, really wanted his ten volume fatasy* to succeed so he put in way more effort than he usually does. Characterization and dialogue there went from Sandersonian to "okay, I guess" and that was enough for me to enjoy the bits that he actually does well without cringing at the rest of it. *not a typo
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Sep 10, 2013 18:46
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The Gunslinger posted:I don't know, I find Sanderson's characterization fairly thin and his writing mechanical. I remember someone explaining his books to me as though the magic systems were the high point but after reading a few I find that pretty ridiculous. They are easily the weakest points in the books and require no imagination from the reader. Similarly when he writes conflict it tends to be overly descriptive and full of repetition. I decided awhile ago his stuff is just not my cup of tea. I can't remember a single well-written antagonist from any of Sanderson's books and I've read WoK, Warbreaker and the entire Mistborn trilogy. The closest he comes to a villain with presence is the Lord Ruler who appears briefly and then gets ganked iirc. Badguys are almost always my favorite part of fantasy books and Sanderson just doesn't seem capable of writing a good one, at least not that I've seen. I like his books well enough but his characters are easily the weakest part of his stories.
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Sep 10, 2013 18:53
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I thought the Way of Kings was way better than Sanderson's other books, but that's because the other books were about a C-minus and Way of Kings was about a B. Sanderson's mechanical and formulaic with poor characterization and magic systems that reduce the wonder/interest of the world while reading like a D&D sourcebook.
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Sep 10, 2013 19:52
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The Gunslinger posted:I remember someone explaining his books to me as though the magic systems were the high point but after reading a few I find that pretty ridiculous. They are easily the weakest points in the books and require no imagination from the reader. I agree with this despite generally enjoying his books. To me, it looks like Sanderson goes to painstaking lengths to insure that there is 0 sense of wonder about the magic in his works. Absolutely everything is put out there for the reader to know, with the only "surprises" coming from how he chooses to play with the established rules. But those "surprises" are just that, and my response is typically a "huh, well that's neat" instead of "hooooooly poo poo". Really, Sanderson is just the best of pulpy fantasy to me. I'll always take another author when it comes to characters and worldbuilding.
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Sep 10, 2013 20:30
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I think a problem of Sanderson's isn't just that the reader knows how things work but that the characters have such a good handle on the magic too. Usually it's viewed with minimal superstition or fear, and the society it's set in usually understands 90% of how it works. And the remaining 10% is revealed in plot twists by the end. It makes sense for the author to know themselves how things work, so they aren't just making stuff up because plot. But a lot of magic's wonder and gravitas is lost when it's so well understood by almost all the major characters in a book, or in almost every novel by the same author.
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Sep 10, 2013 20:54
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Decius posted:I really enjoy the sour grapes by all those manly-man authors. Especially if they never ever would even get a whiff of a Nebula or Hugo. Too bad there wasn't a Twitter or Blogs when Le Guin got her Hugo back in the Seventies. Friendly reminder to all concerned that Robert Silverberg wrote an introduction to a James Tiptree Jr collection in which he said quote:It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing. I don’t think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe the author of the James Tiptree stories is male.
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Sep 10, 2013 21:13
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I mostly wonder why y'all keep talking about Sanderson's magic systems when none of his novels contains one. There are fantastic natural systems that work in ways our universe doesn't, and they're treated by people the same way people treat natural systems in our world. By doing their absolute best to find out the rules that drive it and exploiting them mercilessly for whatever benefit they can get. If you want traditional "nobody knows how the gently caress anything really works", you should be looking exclusively at Stormlight, because it appears a hell of a lot of knowledge actually HAS been lost there, and people are going to have to figure it out through experimentation. I'm not trying to be pedandic here, this is just a fundamental difference in how most people think about magic and how Sanderson thinks about and works with magic in his books. If it's the way the universe works, then it can be studied, and people will discover the laws behind it and use them. He isn't saying "It's magic, lol.", he's saying "Here's how this universe works, what can/will people do with that?" NinjaDebugger fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 22:07
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NinjaDebugger posted:I mostly wonder why y'all keep talking about Sanderson's magic systems when none of his novels contains one. There are fantastic natural systems that work in ways our universe doesn't, and they're treated by people the same way people treat natural systems in our world. By doing their absolute best to find out the rules that drive it and exploiting them mercilessly for whatever benefit they can get. I think this is a good point. A good amount of the criticisms against Sanderson seems to be that the magic isn't handwavy Abra-Kadabra mysticism and that he spends too much time explaining the laws in detail, which is fair enough, but viewing it as just another form of science is a much better fit and makes it closer in concept to explaining, say, the details of a warp drive in an SF novel and have that be a major plot driver.
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Sep 10, 2013 22:34
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Vinterstum posted:I think this is a good point. A good amount of the criticisms against Sanderson seems to be that the magic isn't handwavy Abra-Kadabra mysticism and that he spends too much time explaining the laws in detail, which is fair enough, but viewing it as just another form of science is a much better fit and makes it closer in concept to explaining, say, the details of a warp drive in an SF novel and have that be a major plot driver. And this is why I particularly enjoy Alloy of Law, because it's set in a sort of industrial revolution era where people are really starting to get deep into how allomancy works and have discovered some new metals as well. The role of metal is so ingrained into their culture that it's everywhere and has influenced everything from technology to the kind of clothing people wear. (Admittedly it's almost hokey sometimes.) Also why I'm looking forward to the novel where people are able to turn allomancy into FTL travel.
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