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General Battuta posted:Man, I wish I had a magic bullet. I guess my two pieces of advice would be to focus on your prose style - read literary writers, pay attention to details of scansion, imagery and word choice - and to make sure your stories are focused. Yoon Ha Lee had a really decent quote on that Not a writer, but the highlighted part is something I hear a lot from writers so I really wanna emphasize that point. It's fine to write genre fiction but you bet your rear end that all the best writers in sci-fi/fantasy read more than just sci-fi/fantasy so you should do that too.
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Nov 6, 2013 23:26
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Srice posted:Not a writer, but the highlighted part is something I hear a lot from writers so I really wanna emphasize that point. Case in point: Robert Silverberg was a shlocky pulp writer until he discovered high-lit in the mid-60s. From there his quality shot up like you wouldn't believe. His late 60s/early 70s work is some of the best sci-fi I've read.
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Nov 6, 2013 23:38
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ace_beef posted:I was trying to work out which fantasy series I wanted to read next. In my never-ending search for more Abercrombie and Lynch, I found this trilogy and I've read the first 2 and I'm very pleased with them. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CCWWTYY/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title The Heresy Within (Book 1 of The Ties that Bind) [Kindle Edition] Rob J. Hayes (Author) 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
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Nov 7, 2013 00:33
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specklebang posted:In my never-ending search for more Abercrombie and Lynch, I found this trilogy and I've read the first 2 and I'm very pleased with them. I really wasn't that impressed with this book. It's fine as a quick read, but nothing in it -from the world, plotting, dialogue- stood out as on the same level as Scott Lynch or Joe Abercrombie's stuff for me, or even above self-published kindle level. Where it really lost me was with the characters, who fell pretty flat and had no development: * The Black Thorn and his crew were a reasonably well written cliche, but no development whatsoever, either in past the cliche or during the book's plot * Jezzet in particular was boring and fairly objectionable (fight or gently caress. Fight or gently caress?) * Thanquil's only note of personality beyond "normal guy in too deep" was his stealing compulsion. That could well have been interesting, but instead it was the same consequence-less one or two liner repeated every time Thanquil met someone, and it really felt jammed in to give Thanquil a bit of depth. Actually, all the characters repeated their inner monologue pretty much every chapter. That said, I picked it up at the same time as two other books in the same vein and they both left a sour taste; I might well have been harsh on this novel by association.
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Nov 7, 2013 00:46
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V for Vegas posted:Trying to remember the name of a science fiction short story where the scene is a long bitter feud between two arch rivals on some colonised planet. That sounds like one of the middle books in Asimov's Foundation series, but it's not a short story.
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Nov 7, 2013 00:46
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V for Vegas posted:Trying to remember the name of a science fiction short story where the scene is a long bitter feud between two arch rivals on some colonised planet. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream? I dunno.
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Nov 7, 2013 04:11
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TOOT BOOT posted:I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream? I dunno. No, but thanks for reminding me to read that again!
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Nov 7, 2013 04:46
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ed balls balls man posted:Has anyone tried Tom Lloyd's Stormcaller books? It was billed as a finished series along the lines of Malazan but it just seems really generic, and the pacing is god awful. I checked out some reviews and it was all just "waa too many POVs" and I don't really care about that after Malazan. I'm about halfway through the first and really can't see myself going on. I read the first one some time ago but cannot actually recall anything about it. To be fair, this might have something to do with my attention span being hosed up at the time due to having a newborn in the house.
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Nov 7, 2013 07:03
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Tony Montana posted:Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein. One book. $15 bucks. gently caress YEAH. It also has Stanley G Weinbaum and Cordwainer Smith. Both of those authors are vastly underappreciated and should be read by many more people. Weinbaum was one of the very best of the "planetary fiction" pulp writers, he did great things with classic pulp versions of Mars, Venus, Ganymede and other places. Unscientific but fantastic in both senses. Smith built a far future and wrote about the Rediscovery of Man and what it really meant to be human. He's a gourmet prose writer in a largely fast food field.
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Nov 7, 2013 08:27
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V for Vegas posted:Trying to remember the name of a science fiction short story where the scene is a long bitter feud between two arch rivals on some colonised planet. This sounds a lot like Robert Silverberg's Neighbor, which you can find in his collection To The Dark Star. A bit of a summary is available at http://www.majipoor.com/work.php?id=784
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Nov 7, 2013 08:29
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Megazver posted:If you want to try Sanderson, Way of Kings is probably his most, uh, okay book. I do not have the strength of will to suffer through the first two Malazan books to get to the promised land of "oh it gets good!" so I can't help you there. I don't know if I call reading 2 great books suffering, but to each one his own. What people misunderstand about the Malazan books, and WoT for that matter, is that they see a fantasy series of 10-13 books and think that it takes a couple of books for the series to get really good. When in fact, the books have to be great from the start in order to lure people in. As much as I might complain about Garden of the Moon, it does a fair job of being a good stand-alone book, and same thing with Deadhouse Gates, where the latter is probably a better starting point of the series. The Malazan series consists of many interconnected storylines, however most of those story lines are good on their own terms. ed balls balls man posted:Has anyone tried Tom Lloyd's Stormcaller books? It was billed as a finished series along the lines of Malazan but it just seems really generic, and the pacing is god awful. I checked out some reviews and it was all just "waa too many POVs" and I don't really care about that after Malazan. I'm about halfway through the first and really can't see myself going on. I've read the entire series and it is enjoyable in a way with a relatively fast-paced story and some interesting magics. Characters are however quite shallow, and also rather stereotypic. The whole story line just felt bland and the main villain was just a shadow of what a real evil god should be. See what I did there  There are some apocalyptic magical outbursts which are quite decent. I would probably recommend it to someone who wants a fantasy series with not so much depth, fast-paced and with more magic than Abercrombie/GRRM.
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Nov 7, 2013 08:30
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mllaneza posted:It also has Stanley G Weinbaum and Cordwainer Smith. Both of those authors are vastly underappreciated and should be read by many more people. Weinbaum was one of the very best of the "planetary fiction" pulp writers, he did great things with classic pulp versions of Mars, Venus, Ganymede and other places. Unscientific but fantastic in both senses. Smith built a far future and wrote about the Rediscovery of Man and what it really meant to be human. He's a gourmet prose writer in a largely fast food field. 15 bucks Spent nearly that to read these drat forums! 
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Nov 7, 2013 09:16
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Tony Montana posted:Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein. One book. $15 bucks. gently caress YEAH. Jesus, I hope you aren't this insufferable in person.
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Nov 7, 2013 16:52
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Cordwainer Smith is a really fascinating writer.
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Nov 7, 2013 16:57
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CowboyKid posted:Jesus, I hope you aren't this insufferable in person. Sorry if my zest for life makes you uneasy. You can go back to your own existence now.
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Nov 7, 2013 17:01
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General Battuta posted:Cordwainer Smith is a really fascinating writer. I have a hard time reading Cordwainer Smith without thinking "Ok, so this guy is into furries" the whole time. Among the many sins furries have to answer for, one of them is ruining The Ballad of Lost C'Mell.
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Nov 7, 2013 17:13
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Bremen posted:I'm not sure if this is the best thread for this, but it was the closest I could find. Crimson and Valley of the Scarecrow by Gord Rollo are also both really good scary books. Crimson is what IT would be if IT didn't go full retard on the ending, and Scarecrow is just loving spooky. It reads like an 80s horror movie. It's pretty awesome.
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Nov 7, 2013 20:38
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Crimson and Valley of the Scarecrow by Gord Rollo are also both really good scary books. Crimson is what IT would be if IT didn't go full retard on the ending, and Scarecrow is just loving spooky. It reads like an 80s horror movie. It's pretty awesome. Quick read. http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Harvest-Norman-Partridge-ebook/dp/B002MT2EQA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383855931&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+harvest
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Nov 7, 2013 21:26
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I bought that one from some online book outlet retailer for 2$ or so. Worth every penny. Got it for the cover art, but the story was pretty great as well.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:27
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The Supreme Court posted:I really wasn't that impressed with this book. It's fine as a quick read, but nothing in it -from the world, plotting, dialogue- stood out as on the same level as Scott Lynch or Joe Abercrombie's stuff for me, or even above self-published kindle level. Where it really lost me was with the characters, who fell pretty flat and had no development: No, it's not Abercrombie or Lynch but there are not enough Abercrombies, Lynch, Morgan (some), Asher etc. to fill my reading consumption. This sufficed for me. Now I'm reading Lynch's latest but in another 300 pages I'll need to do the best I can. This was adequate.
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Nov 8, 2013 07:32
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I've heard good things about KJ Parker. Where should I start? Are the trilogies set in the same universe? Are they self contained or are they connected like the Joe Abercrombie stand alone books that end up having a lot of returning characters and are not as enjoyable if you have not read them in order?
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Nov 8, 2013 21:31
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KJ Parker's fine, but to be honest, a little repetetive, a little gorny, and a little too into his own research, in my experience. I started with the Fencer trilogy, and recently read the first in the Engineer trilogy, and didn't really think much of either. I don't think that all the series are set in the same 'verse, but I could be wrong.
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Nov 8, 2013 22:40
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This is a Bookslut blog post with some pro links on race in sf/f. It seemed rude to quote the whole thing, and I couldn't pick just one, but look at them anyway.
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Nov 8, 2013 23:54
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I missed the discussion on Bakker, but that was the only series I have quit halfway through a book. The first one was interesting, but halfway through the second I cut my losses and moved on. I don't think I got to the parts that everyone rags on, beside the Black Cum Demon. My issue was that it was one of the most aggressively unenjoyable things I have read. That might be the point, but I could see where it was heading and wanted no part of it. Just picked up The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms on a Daily Deal, how is that?
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Nov 9, 2013 08:29
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Just finished up Fortune's Pawn by Rachel Surprisingly good. Nice to see an actual kick rear end female protagonist that isn't all weepy and retarded and girly at the drop of a hat because of plot handwaving. The Eli Monpress series was pretty good, and except for the horrible covers of the first 3, I didn't really have any complaints. All the female characters were multi dimensional, not really a single cardboard cutout mouthpiece kinda character. Extra special bonus points for having female characters in a fantasy novel and have them NOT only exist to be rape bait. Fortune's Pawn is a sci fi book that is kinda half star wars, half Warhammer 40k. There's battle scenes where people in giant armor are loving up other aliens or people in battle armor, and there's scenes were people are talking about the universe and how it's all one big mystery. I really liked it though. It had me laughing a few times in the beginning, and the story kept it's pace up pretty well. Gonna grab the sequel when it comes out.
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Nov 9, 2013 11:16
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Is it less, uh, light-weight than the Eli Monpress books? I've read half of the first one and while there was nothing bad to say about it, it was kinda... fluff. Reading so light it floated.
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Nov 9, 2013 12:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I have a hard time reading Cordwainer Smith without thinking "Ok, so this guy is into furries" the whole time. Among the many sins furries have to answer for, one of them is ruining The Ballad of Lost C'Mell. Worse, The Dead Lady of Clown Town. I love the titles Campbell came up with for his stories. The Lady Who Sailed the Soul Think Blue Count Two Scanners Live in Vain Alpha Ralpha Boulevard The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal Golden the Ship Was-Oh! Oh! Oh! The Queen of the Afternoon When the People Fell
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Nov 9, 2013 15:30
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Megazver posted:Is it less, uh, light-weight than the Eli Monpress books? I've read half of the first one and while there was nothing bad to say about it, it was kinda... fluff. Reading so light it floated. Eh, it's about the same. It's not gonna change your world view or anything, but it's a decent enough book. I just dig novels with actual kick rear end female protags. It's like finding a unicorn. Gotta treasure em when you find em.
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Nov 9, 2013 15:35
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Max Awfuls posted:I've heard good things about KJ Parker. Where should I start? Are the trilogies set in the same universe? Are they self contained or are they connected like the Joe Abercrombie stand alone books that end up having a lot of returning characters and are not as enjoyable if you have not read them in order? The books are pretty great, albeit also a bit depressing/downers as his/her main characters tend to be rather unlikeable people or at least people who do bad things for often dubious reasons. Which is also true for Abercrombie, but Parker doesn't have the reliever of comic/funny parts/quips that Abercrombie has. Still, well paced, tightly plotted and interesting characters. Not many flashy scenes though. They are all - as far as I know - set in the same universe, but at different times and only very loosely (far looser than Abercrombie) connected. Decius fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 15:59
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Decius posted:They are all - as far as I know - set in the same universe, but at different times and only very loosely (far looser than Abercrombie) connected. I'm pretty sure that's only some of them that are set in the same world(s). For example I recall no indication of any connection between either of the first two trilogies and any of the other books, and the author has got at least three different not-Rome or not-Byzantium city-states that probably couldn't exist alongside each other. But some of the later standalone novels do have callbacks to earlier books, in the form of mentioning some of the same geographical or cultural names. They are, as you say, only loosely connected and set at widely distant points in time and geography so one really cannot consider them to be part of a series or anything. Kind of like a historical novelist choosing to write one book set in Rome during the last days of the Republic, and then writing another book set in Germany during the 30 years' war which has a couple of characters discussing something going in in the Vatican, or whatever.
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Nov 9, 2013 22:07
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bigmcgaffney posted:
Good first person voice, relatively interesting plot. Unique in a lot of ways. Good stuff, imo.
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Nov 10, 2013 00:06
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Max Awfuls posted:I've heard good things about KJ Parker. Where should I start? Are the trilogies set in the same universe? Are they self contained or are they connected like the Joe Abercrombie stand alone books that end up having a lot of returning characters and are not as enjoyable if you have not read them in order? The trilogies seemed slow to me, but I *loved* The Company and The Folding Knife. Clean prose, sharp characters, beautiful clockwork plots.
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Nov 10, 2013 03:06
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Can anyone recall any stories that use the premise "man turns out to be a spaceship" or vise versa?
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Nov 10, 2013 05:38
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Stuporstar posted:Can anyone recall any stories that use the premise "man turns out to be a spaceship" or vise versa? Plenty of brain-in-a-jar spaceships, it was A Thing in the 70's. I can't think of all that many that were big reveals. There is a Larry Niven story I liked where he was writing in Fred Saberhagen's Berzerker universe. A formerly-human now-computer-inhabiting AI has beef with a Berzerker. called "A Teardrop Falls" McCaffree's "The Ship Who Sang" is probably the biggest, though unlikely the best. One of the annoyingly formatted and sold John Scalzi shorts also has brain in a jar ships. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Nov 10, 2013 |
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Nov 10, 2013 06:05
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Stuporstar posted:Can anyone recall any stories that use the premise "man turns out to be a spaceship" or vise versa? One of the focal characters in M John Harrison's Light is horrifically vivisected in order to become the implanted controller of a gently caress-off planet-scorching spaceship, but there's quite a bit more to the book than just following her around. I've only skimmed Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, but I think the protagonist is a spaceship's AI who was confined to a human body if that's close enough for you.
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Nov 10, 2013 06:21
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Stuporstar posted:Can anyone recall any stories that use the premise "man turns out to be a spaceship" or vise versa? It's not "turns out" because its clear the whole time by Gordon Dickson's 'The Forever Man,' has people as ships.
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Nov 10, 2013 12:22
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Stuporstar posted:Can anyone recall any stories that use the premise "man turns out to be a spaceship" or vise versa? I'm not quite sure what you mean - you make it sound like a twist ending - but going by other people's suggestions, "The Lady who Sailed the Soul" by Cordwainer Smith?
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Nov 10, 2013 12:37
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In Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn series there are living ships, some of which get possessed by the souls of the dead, who find they rather like being spaceships.
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Nov 10, 2013 12:42
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In Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space series there is a subplot about a man being a spaceship. There is also a disembodied brain running a spaceship in one of his short stories set in the Rev. Space universe.
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Nov 10, 2013 15:14
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systran posted:In Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space series there is a subplot about a man being a spaceship. There is also a disembodied brain running a spaceship in one of his short stories set in the Rev. Space universe. There's a 3-(4?)-generations-removed human consciousness that controls a ship in house of Suns as well.
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