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coyo7e posted:I think Gemmell's Ghost King is my favorite Arthurian rewrite. The Once And Future King, T.H. White. Gemmell was a master of the plot muscular, though; Joe Abercrombie wishes he was as good.
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Mar 18, 2014 00:54
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Abercrombie tries too hard to make a detailed plot and believable characters. 
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Mar 18, 2014 01:55
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I finished A Deepness in the Sky. I thought the ending was a little too pat, glib, I"m not sure I know the words to describe how the ending felt just slightly too on the nose. I don't know, but it was enjoyable. I went looking for sequels and found a prequel in fire upon the deep, I think that was its title at least. It's not making an impression yet, but Deepness took a while to cohere into a plot I could grasp. I heard he wrote a third zones of thought thing, recently, 2011 or something. If this book turns out to be not my thing, would that third book be more like deepness or this one?
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Mar 18, 2014 03:00
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Krinkle posted:I finished A Deepness in the Sky. I thought the ending was a little too pat, glib, I"m not sure I know the words to describe how the ending felt just slightly too on the nose. I don't know, but it was enjoyable. A Fire Upon the Deep takes place far, far in the future from A Deepness in the Sky.
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Mar 18, 2014 03:03
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Krinkle posted:I finished A Deepness in the Sky. I thought the ending was a little too pat, glib, I"m not sure I know the words to describe how the ending felt just slightly too on the nose. I don't know, but it was enjoyable. There's a reason for this that is actually pretty subtle and easy to miss.
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Mar 18, 2014 03:50
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specklebang posted:I've been reading this series: It's a hard series to read sometimes, but it's very good. The main character is a reluctant torturer who enjoys his work too much. The society it's set in is a failed multistellar state, the judiciary and the fleet are the only elements still functioning. The senior judges run everything. Oh, and torture has been codified as legal and formalized. It's a fantastic way to play with ethical issues. It's not for everyone though. Baen just re-issued the series as ebooks http://www.baenebooks.com/s-358-susan-r-matthews.aspx.
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Mar 18, 2014 03:57
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andrew smash posted:There's a reason for this that is actually pretty subtle and easy to miss. Spell it out for me then please
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Mar 18, 2014 04:09
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Hedrigall posted:A Fire Upon the Deep takes place far, far in the future from A Deepness in the Sky. Yeah I gleaned that much from the wikipedia description. Pham is going to show up and probably in the prequel of deepness was much more fleshed out but that's the only link that exists between the two books. And also there are metahumans now apparently, so when I read about the primitives watching the life boat from the intro touching down and torching a few rainforests I'm looking for clues if they're bird people or not.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:16
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Fried Chicken posted:Spell it out for me then please In short all the segments about the spider things were from the viewpoints of the ziphead scientists and created for emergent consumption. It's why the spiders seem so weirdly human. That's explicit. The subtle part is that there are some hints that the same zipheads were intentionally editing their reports to be misleading to their bosses to manipulate the emergents' behavior, presumably because they identify more closely with the spiders than with other humans by that point. They were colluding directly with the spiders after having quietly made first contact way before they were supposed to. andrew smash fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Mar 18, 2014 |
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Mar 18, 2014 04:22
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Slo-Tek posted:David Brin's Existence also deals with a near-future hyper-connected panopticon, but it isn't a very good book. I've read Brin's Uplift books and nobody can do that without developing a seething hatred for the man.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:27
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corn in the bible posted:I've read Brin's Uplift books and nobody can do that without developing a seething hatred for the man. I think like the first three were pretty good and then he decided to detach the rest of the novels and start them off with alien kids rolling around on bio wheels so I gave up and looked up the series ending and it turns out the big mystery was something that was obvious from the first novel.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:31
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(deepness in the sky ending)andrew smash posted:In short all the segments about the spider things were from the viewpoints of the ziphead scientists and created for emergent consumption. It's why the spiders seem so weirdly human. That's explicit. The subtle part is that there are some hints that the same zipheads were intentionally editing their reports to be misleading to their bosses to manipulate the emergents' behavior, presumably because they identify more closely with the spiders than with other humans by that point. They were colluding directly with the spiders after having quietly made first contact way before they were supposed to. I got that, I didn't go back and reevaluate those parts with that knowledge though. I'm not sure it would be useful to imagine what those sports cars were actually in reality when imagining them driving sports cars was fine. I meant the climactic showdown where Quib or Quim or goddamn it I am miserable with names, the lady, walks in nose bleeding "wow you kicked me out an airlock didn't you hear me banging?" and ezr says the magic words and a memory cascade happens and she shoots the bad man in his balls until he dies from it. (I'm imagining a wiregun as just shooting out a continuous string of wire and cutting people up, is that about right?) The rest, they said "hey I think someone is loving around with our systems" often enough that the clues were successfully brought up and hidden. I don't have any problems with videomancy almost being real and saving the day. When the ziphead looks right into Pham's eyes and starts talking with Shrenk's voice it was pretty neat. Just the "don't you remember? the thing you can't remember?"/balls shooting part felt off to me. I even like how they left it open whether underhill or general smith survived or not. e: Actually maybe I didn't. I'm not sure what things were withheld from the emergents through loose translations, I thought all the manipulation was at the end when they shot their own nukes out of the sky with the targeting data they linked up from the mothership. Krinkle fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Mar 18, 2014 |
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Mar 18, 2014 04:32
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Quim, the lady.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:33
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I'll accept that I could be wrong on some of the details, I think I read it in 2007.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:36
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What do people think of Brin's book "Kiln People"? I've heard good things about it, but the Brin talk doesn't sound good.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:39
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gatz posted:What do people think of Brin's book "Kiln People"? I've heard good things about it, but the Brin talk doesn't sound good. I've read it, like most of brin's books it's got a really interesting central idea but the book falls apart when he fails to do anything coherent with it.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:45
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Fallom posted:I think like the first three were pretty good and then he decided to detach the rest of the novels and start them off with alien kids rolling around on bio wheels so I gave up and looked up the series ending and it turns out the big mystery was something that was obvious from the first novel. I was more talking about the endless descriptions of dolphin masturbation
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Mar 18, 2014 04:50
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I must have forgotten about that one
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Mar 18, 2014 04:51
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gatz posted:What do people think of Brin's book "Kiln People"? I've heard good things about it, but the Brin talk doesn't sound good. He seems to take the ideas from his non-fiction book The Transparent Society and write a fiction book around it. The ideas stemming from that are fun and interesting (big data, transparency, uploading/downloading memories, intellectual property rights), but in the end the plot involves a literal mad scientist cackling away, and it sort of flies off the deep end as you read the end of the book 
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Mar 18, 2014 07:36
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Xenix posted:He seems to take the ideas from his non-fiction book The Transparent Society and write a fiction book around it. The ideas stemming from that are fun and interesting (big data, transparency, uploading/downloading memories, intellectual property rights), but in the end the plot involves a literal mad scientist cackling away, and it sort of flies off the deep end as you read the end of the book
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Mar 18, 2014 10:33
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corn in the bible posted:I was more talking about the endless descriptions of dolphin masturbation You didn't like the dolphin who wanted to rape the human woman as a comic relief character?
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Mar 18, 2014 11:57
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Paul McAuley tweeted yesterday that his "alien invasion novel" Something Comes Through was sent to his publishers. It sounds intriguing, but won't be published until February 2015 in the UK and god knows when States-side. quote:The aliens are here. And they want to help. The extraordinary new project from one of the country's most acclaimed and consistently brilliantly SF novelists of the last 30 years.
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Mar 18, 2014 18:30
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Fire upon the deep just took a weird turn. It's now no longer about a super computer in space, it's about various packs of dogs/wolves who psychically bond, form a sentient overmind to be a coherant personality that happens to be made of dogs, and are in some kind of feudal knights and castles war (but with dogs so like two dogs hold the bow and one dog notches the arrows). All the people I was struggling to remember their names are now dead, they don't matter anymore. It's about dogs now. That it was written from that alien point of view and that I puzzled this all out is a testament to the writing.
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Mar 19, 2014 03:29
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Zola posted:I did a big paper on the Holy Grail aspect of it, I will have to see if I can find it. That would actually be a big help! I started writing this yesterday and it's turning into an absolutely massive document, and I'm just hitting the highlights of the main legend. On the plus side I'm finding out a lot of things I didn't know before as I research to fill in various gaps. With luck I'll have it finished in a few more days and then get the thread up.
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Mar 19, 2014 03:50
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Krinkle posted:Fire upon the deep just took a weird turn. It's now no longer about a super computer in space, it's about various packs of dogs/wolves who psychically bond, form a sentient overmind to be a coherant personality that happens to be made of dogs, and are in some kind of feudal knights and castles war (but with dogs so like two dogs hold the bow and one dog notches the arrows). All the people I was struggling to remember their names are now dead, they don't matter anymore. It's about dogs now. I think it goes back around to the super computers in space after a bit but I always thought of the Tines as penguins. A hive mind made of dogs notching and firing arrows is some seriously  stuff though I haven't read the latest book, though from what people say I think I might be better served waiting for the next book in the series.
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Mar 19, 2014 04:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That would actually be a big help! I started writing this yesterday and it's turning into an absolutely massive document, and I'm just hitting the highlights of the main legend. On the plus side I'm finding out a lot of things I didn't know before as I research to fill in various gaps. With luck I'll have it finished in a few more days and then get the thread up. Please put this in a Google doc or something so I can read it when your done because I have zero life. Same for the dude with the holy grail aspect paper.
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Mar 19, 2014 04:28
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Stravinsky posted:Please put this in a Google doc or something so I can read it when your done because I have zero life. Same for the dude with the holy grail aspect paper. Thread is up! I'll be posting section by section as I get it written, but I figured I'd go ahead and post the first part now to get things started.
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Mar 19, 2014 05:21
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Krinkle posted:Fire upon the deep just took a weird turn. It's now no longer about a super computer in space, it's about various packs of dogs/wolves who psychically bond, form a sentient overmind to be a coherant personality that happens to be made of dogs, and are in some kind of feudal knights and castles war (but with dogs so like two dogs hold the bow and one dog notches the arrows). All the people I was struggling to remember their names are now dead, they don't matter anymore. It's about dogs now. Vinge's best thing is always the alien races he writes about, like the Tines or the Spiders in A Deepness in the Sky The worst part is everything else. The main plot of Fire Upon the Deep was a huge slog for me to get through, but I did it because I liked learning about what was going on with the Tines.
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Mar 19, 2014 05:51
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Chances are there are a bunch in here that don't follow the Humble Bundle because it's usually for video games, but it's doing an ebook bundle which includes books relevant to this thread. Anyone have anything to say about any of the titles in it?
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Mar 19, 2014 06:06
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corn in the bible posted:Vinge's best thing is always the alien races he writes about, like the Tines or the Spiders in A Deepness in the Sky The worst part is everything else. The main plot of Fire Upon the Deep was a huge slog for me to get through, but I did it because I liked learning about what was going on with the Tines. Exact opposite experience for me. I loved finding out about the broader space opera stuff and the tines were boring as hell. The spiders were a step up but I still preferred finding out what was going on with the Emergency and Qeng Ho.
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Mar 19, 2014 08:34
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Xik posted:Chances are there are a bunch in here that don't follow the Humble Bundle because it's usually for video games, but it's doing an ebook bundle which includes books relevant to this thread. Anyone have anything to say about any of the titles in it? Jumper is good, although the core conceit (kid has superpowers, hunted by government and conspiracies while growing up) has been done once or twice before. Mogworld is also good, but completely and unashamedly a parody of World of Warcraft from the viewpoint of PCs. ...haven't read the others.
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Mar 19, 2014 20:16
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I finished Beyond the Blue Event Horizon today. It was pretty good, but not as good as Gateway. Robinette's character became very predictable and shallow when compared to Gateway. You could almost replace any generic rich investor with Robinette, if not for the occasional reference to Klara. I wish they did, and revisited Robinette at a later date. Janine's character development was great, even if it occurred pretty suddenly in a later chapter. It was foreshadowed pretty well. Paul and the Lurvey were completely forgettable. Wan was an interesting character in the beginning, though he didn't progress much from where he started. Peter was... well, his death was interesting, but other than Pohl writing about how, "wow it sucks to be old and unaccomplished", he didn't really matter Albert was just Pohl's way of dumping loads of hard sci-fi into the novel. Essie was only defined through her car crash, living in the shadow of Robinette, only existing to try to give Robinette depth. It didn't work, and she was forgettable. The plot was interesting enough to keep me engaged the entire time, though again it felt like it was shorter than a 300 page novel. Apparently, the game, Gateway II: Homeworld, shares the same premise at BTBEH, visiting an old abandoned Heechee artifact, also including the dead men (and possibly the old ones?). Anyway, it was a pretty good book, so I'll start the third in the series soon.
gatz fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Mar 21, 2014 |
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Mar 20, 2014 02:05
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I prefer my fantasy and sci-fi to actually be fantastic and strange. I just read Lord Dunsany's The Gods of Pegana and The Sword of Welleran. They're both sets of stories about strange incidents, with an elegiac tone to them. The closest to 'modern' fantasy is 'The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth[/b], which reads like a dream somebody had fatter playing Dark Souls. I think Tolkien's ruined fantasy, and I prefer The Lord Dunsany model of unexplainable strangeness. I'm currently reading JG Ballard's New Wave classic Terminal Beach, which is a sort of horror that transposes in an outer worlds. Most of the stories are crystal clear bad trips, and I love them. I also read Flann O'Brian's The Third Policemen, which is full of fantastic incidents and logical paradoxes.
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Mar 20, 2014 02:29
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I read the Harry Connolly books in the Twenty Palaces series. What else is similar except Dresden Files?
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Mar 20, 2014 23:46
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ravenkult posted:I read the Harry Connolly books in the Twenty Palaces series. What else is similar except Dresden Files? I wrote a UF recommendation post a while back. You'll probably enjoy a lot of books there. Man, I am seriously considering rewriting the list and just putting it up as a one page site to refer people to. Maybe put some Amazon referral links on it. Call it "UF for Guys" or something like that.
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Mar 21, 2014 00:01
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Megazver posted:I wrote a UF recommendation post a while back. You'll probably enjoy a lot of books there. I'm sorry, but you have Chuck Wendig on there and that's a sin. Looks useful though!
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Mar 21, 2014 00:13
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ravenkult posted:I'm sorry, but you have Chuck Wendig on there and that's a sin. (Shameful confession: That's the only one on that list I haven't read beyond the first few pages. Frankly right now I'm not sure why it's there.)
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Mar 21, 2014 00:26
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ravenkult posted:I read the Harry Connolly books in the Twenty Palaces series. What else is similar except Dresden Files? The mentioned list is great, but if you're looking for similar tone I'd take a look at Richard Kadrey, Daniel O'Malley, or Mike Carey first. Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim has a bit more of a Supernatural (TV Show) vibe though, in case that puts you off.
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Mar 21, 2014 01:19
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I confess to having not read a lot of scifi in recent years. An author I used to really enjoy until he died was Charles Sheffield, who wrote hard scifi I suppose but could also write characters and dialogue so it never felt like a drag like Niven et al are to me. Might you all have suggestions for writers who take similar themes, from the edges of theoretical physics, say, and turn them into interesting stories which characters I can care about? Just started Atwood's Oryx trilogy for now.
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Mar 22, 2014 03:11
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Count Chocula posted:I prefer my fantasy and sci-fi to actually be fantastic and strange. I just read Lord Dunsany's The Gods of Pegana and The Sword of Welleran. They're both sets of stories about strange incidents, with an elegiac tone to them. The closest to 'modern' fantasy is 'The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth[/b], which reads like a dream somebody had fatter playing Dark Souls. I think Tolkien's ruined fantasy, and I prefer The Lord Dunsany model of unexplainable strangeness. I kind of think that Lovecraft is also to blame for the lack of Dunsanian fantasy these days. From what little I know about the history of the genre, Dunsany never really achieved too much market penetration in America. Lovecraft (who was heavily influenced by Dunsany) and his circle really pulpified the basic concepts that you'd find in Dunsany's fantasies. The end result is that Dunsanian fantasy (despite itself being literary fantasy) becomes associated with shocky pulp weird tales, while Tolkien's fantasy remains associated with its more literary roots. But then again, I could be totally wrong about this. It's just a gut feeling. (Also, not really trying to knock Lovecraft either, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is pretty rad. Haven't read it in years but some of the imagery has stuck with me.)
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Mar 22, 2014 07:26
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