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Hedrigall posted:House of Suns is excellent, a fully-contained, epic space-opera that beautifully demonstrates everything good about Reynolds. Personally I like the Rev Space books even better, so you could then move onto them. Reynolds has said he wants to do a sequel to House of Suns at some point so it won't always be self-contained, probably. Looking forward to that. Book owned so much. I especially liked the part at the Vigilance, the biomodification to the members of the Vigilance was loving cool.
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Apr 9, 2014 16:07
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Neurosis posted:Reynolds has said he wants to do a sequel to House of Suns at some point so it won't always be self-contained, probably. Looking forward to that. Book owned so much. I especially liked the part at the Vigilance, the biomodification to the members of the Vigilance was loving cool. It'll still be perfectly recommendable as a standalone even if it gets a sequel, though.
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Apr 9, 2014 16:27
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 Just a heads up for everyone with a KindleSolaris is on sale for 99 cents on Amazon (at least for today 04/09/2014)
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Apr 9, 2014 17:32
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Zola posted:
Or an ipad, or a computer who doesn't mind reading on screen. Looks like this is the new translation, which isn't a double translation like the 1970 one, which I hope makes for a better translation, but I love everything I've read by Lem, so thanks for pointing it out!
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Apr 9, 2014 18:52
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I thought The Goblin Emperor was pretty OK but ultimately had no real tension. I was hoping for something more like Arcanum (by Simon Morden) but from the child/unprepared ruler's POV and maybe more upbeat. Instead it was a nice story, refreshing in contrast to all the grimdark stuff out there, but kind of unexciting. Edit: After thinking about it a little more, maybe my issue is that I didn't get a sense of real character development. He does gain some more confidence over the course of the book, but I feel like at no point after the very beginning does the character really change the way he thinks about or approaches the world. Instead he just has a series of challenges that he overcomes with the help of his companions. He refines his approach, but I didn't feel like there was a major evolution. Instead, everything is just another obstacle that he gets past by figuring out who he can trust to help him with it. ZerodotJander fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 18:59
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Kalman posted:Or an ipad, or a computer who doesn't mind reading on screen.
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Apr 9, 2014 19:04
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Damo posted:Can someone recommend a good first Alastair Reynolds novel? Chasm City is pretty standalone even though its in the RS series. I actually recommend you start there instead of Revelation Space.
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Apr 9, 2014 19:53
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Cardiac posted:Lynch/Gentlemen Bastards seems to have psychic problems Yes, sometimes he accidentally starts levitating
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Apr 9, 2014 22:13
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Hedrigall posted:They extended the contract after book 1, so my theory is that book 2 was the filler book (because it doesn't deal directly with the protomolecule that crashed onto Venus, just human experiments using the protomolecule IIRC; still the best of the lot so far though!) and book 3 is what book 2 was going to be. Yeah, but given the short gap between the books, I would guess that they were a good chunk through 2 when they got the news. The story for 2 did a really good job of tying the two seperate plots of the first book together (it's the rare case where I felt the sequel made the original better in retrospect). It had a great sense of momentum. 3 just felt like trying to buy time while they expanded the plot, and it ended on a "oh, hey, look, anything could happen from here." cliffhanger, unlike 2's  of a climax.
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Apr 9, 2014 23:50
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Joramun posted:Yes, sometimes he accidentally starts levitating What actually happened there anyway? I had heard that he had gone on a bender or something, but not much else.
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Apr 10, 2014 00:35
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He has anxiety/depression issues. He was in bad shape for a couple of years '10-12, seems to be fine now.
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Apr 10, 2014 04:19
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gohmak posted:Chasm City is pretty standalone even though its in the RS series. I actually recommend you start there instead of Revelation Space. Seconding this. I read Century Rain first and thought it was okay, but I was underwhelmed enough that I didn't feel like reading anything else by Reynolds. Then, recently I picked up Chasm City on a whim and loved it. I had a hard time doing anything else until I finished it. Really enjoyable book.
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Apr 10, 2014 05:11
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UK goons, you need to read Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell. Holy poo poo it's good.
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Apr 10, 2014 05:20
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Where do you guys go for podcasts on fantasy/horror lit?
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Apr 10, 2014 08:21
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Haerc posted:What actually happened there anyway? I had heard that he had gone on a bender or something, but not much else. Nah it wasn't anything like that--pretty sure it was clinical depression. Not to mention he also got all the way through writing the 3rd book before he realized he'd left a huge plot hole open and basically had to rewrite the whole thing to fix it. Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 12:43
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Hedrigall posted:All those drat psychics hounding him day and night He's that dude at the beginning of Ghostbusters that kept getting zapped by Bill Murray.
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Apr 10, 2014 17:07
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ravenkult posted:Where do you guys go for podcasts on fantasy/horror lit? PodCastle, Drabblecast, Escape Pod.
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Apr 10, 2014 17:12
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Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:Nah it wasn't anything like that--pretty sure it was clinical depression. Not to mention he also got all the way through writing the 3rd book before he realized he'd left a huge plot hole open and basically had to rewrite the whole thing to fix it. Ah, that sucks, glad the dude is doing better.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:42
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Joramun posted:PodCastle, Drabblecast, Escape Pod. Sorry, I meant about fantasy and horror lit.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:22
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The Coode Street Podcast hosted by Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe is a good podcast focused on SF, fantasy, and sometimes horror. It's usually a discussion between the two hosts about novels and short stories, current state of the field, history of SFF, as well as discussions/interviews with authors and people involved with SFF. These guys have been involved in the field for a long time and know many folks, so they get some great guests. Jonathan Strahan does a lot of work on anthologies, and Gary K. Wolfe is involved with the academic side of SF, and they both write for Locus magazine. http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/the-coode-street-podcast/ http://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com
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Apr 11, 2014 06:07
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http://io9.com/syfy-is-turning-james-s-a-coreys-books-into-game-of-t-1562411885io9 posted:Syfy has given a direct-to-series order to The Expanse, a new show based on James S.A. Corey's acclaimed space-opera novels, with the first season comprising 10 episodes. And they're describing it as "Game of Thrones in space." Wow, not even a pilot, they've ordered a whole 10 episodes. This could be good. They're also doing a loving 12 Monkeys tv show????
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Apr 12, 2014 05:02
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I hope they blow up the main cast in a shocking twist and segue into the Avasarala and Bobby Show.
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Apr 12, 2014 05:17
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I hope SyFy rewrites parts of The Expanse to be less terrible. Rarely see a series nose-dive so quickly after a promising first novel.
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Apr 12, 2014 05:20
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Fallom posted:I hope SyFy rewrites parts of The Expanse to be less terrible. Rarely see a series nose-dive so quickly after a promising first novel. I really enjoyed the second novel. The third on the other hand was a steaming pile. There is no way SyFy gets the hard scifi aspects right and that is the main appeal of the series because the plot and characters are pretty much cliches. gohmak fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Apr 12, 2014 |
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Apr 12, 2014 06:23
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gohmak posted:I really enjoyed the second novel. The third on the other hand was a steaming pile. There is no way SyFy gets the hard scifi aspects right and that is the main appeal of the series because the plot and characters are pretty much cliches. Yeah, the second had some really great new characters, even if it did spin its wheels a bit. Shame about them using those great new characters in the third book. Still, I seem to like the series quite a bit more than most here do.
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Apr 12, 2014 06:39
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My dream TV series would be KSR Mars Trilogy on a premium channel with Black Sails level of sex. Just cut the old age crap out of the third book and it would be Game of Thrones epic. Hell the first season has it's very own Ned Starks with Boone.
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Apr 12, 2014 07:31
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Decius posted:Yeah, the second had some really great new characters, even if it did spin its wheels a bit. Shame about them using those great new characters in the third book. Still, I seem to like the series quite a bit more than most here do. The second didn't really feel like wheel-spinning to me when I first read it, but after reading the third, yeah, the plot ended up not going anywhere. It felt like it was leading somewhere pretty awesome with the super vomit-zombies and tensions between Earth and Mars, but then, oh, hey, none of that plot matters because we need to delay poo poo to write three more books.
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Apr 12, 2014 23:05
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Apr 13, 2014 07:29
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I just finished The Judge of Ages by John C Wright. I've posted my thoughts on this particular series above so I don't need to repeat it but I'll give a summary anyway: highly imaginative, very cool look at the future of humanity as controlled by posthuman geniuses opposed to each other, but with a bit of Wright craziness thrown in here and there which is offputting and jarring. Despite the flaws I am now going on to read the Chaos series he put out.  I realise he is a pretty reprehensible human being but he's just so imaginative, his prose is decent (if heavily stylised), and he is actually pretty funny here and there. This series is narrated by a girl, though, so if anything finally makes me swear off him it's going to be this series.
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Apr 13, 2014 09:37
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to wound the empty post?
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Apr 13, 2014 18:19
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Neurosis posted:I just finished The Judge of Ages by John C Wright. I've posted my thoughts on this particular series above so I don't need to repeat it but I'll give a summary anyway: highly imaginative, very cool look at the future of humanity as controlled by posthuman geniuses opposed to each other, but with a bit of Wright craziness thrown in here and there which is offputting and jarring. Despite the flaws I am now going on to read the Chaos series he put out.
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Apr 13, 2014 20:50
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Hedrigall posted:Anyone else read The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher yet? I'm about 40% in and it's really compelling. Lots of spookiness and mystery aboard a space station. A cover quote calls it The Haunting of Hill House in space, and that's a pretty apt comparison so far. Other reviews are invoking Event Horizon, which is like my favourite horror movie. Read this and The Goblin Emperor (which was very agreeable, and which I would recommend to anyone who wants more politicking in their fantasy, even though the terminology can be quite hard to digest). The short version is that I thought it an imperfect but fun read that marks a positive addition to the woefully small pool of space horror stories, and the long version... well, I'll warn you right now, it's going to contain giant loving spoilers if you haven't finished the book. You could maybe say that the book explains too much, but I think that's just a consequence of not deviating much from the source material - 90% of the plot is explained if you read the prologue and then either have a basic understanding of Japanese mythology or decide to Google that psychiatrist's unusual name. In that sense, the mystery is really more on the characters' end - they're spending the book catching up with what the reader already knows, and the big infodump near the end was a courtesy for the mythology-illiterate. There's a few things that make this work better than it might. First, the myth the author picked is a great little horror story in its own right, and since sci-fi horror is nerd catnip, fusing them works really well. Second, the myth is treated with respect. There's a technobabbly explanation at the end, but it feels less like 'ohoho those silly naive peasants were mistaken and their gods were just weird aliens', which would have lessened the impact and diminished the villain's menace, and more like the characters are trying to filter something completely insane and terrifying (that their government once tunnelled into Japanese Hell, and are now so desperate to win a losing war against an existential threat that they have bargained away thousands of their best and brightest to a homicidal goddess) through a rational, scientific lens, and aren't entirely succeeding. Third, this is a far-future setting where most present-day traditions are dead and gone, which explains a good chunk of the characters' ignorance about stuff like a spacesuit with CCCP on the helmet. I guess the lack of Space Wikipedia is a bit odd, but you can probably chalk much of their difficulty in looking stuff up to a consequence of Shadow's interference with their electronics and Izanami's mindfuckery. Like I said, the book isn't perfect. The usual haunted-house idiocies are present and correct (seriously, guys, never split the party), and the characters are slow to learn from their mistakes. The cast's at about genre-standard level, though, rather than being unusually dim, and the author gives himself an out in the form of a mind-affecting villain. I did wish he'd explained more of what was up with Ludmilla, though - why was she, of all the souls Izanami claimed, able to stand up to her? It just felt a bit arbitrary. Still, it's space horror that makes solid use of cool and unusual source material. That gets it a thumbs-up from me.
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Apr 14, 2014 12:12
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Darth Walrus posted:I'll warn you right now, it's going to contain giant loving spoilers if you haven't finished the book. Really, because here's my thoughts as I headed towards the ending: quote:Hmm, this is creepy. Whoa, it's kinda scary in places! The tension and the dread is really amping up. This is cool! The backstory's really interesting too. Oh my god this is amazing! Somebody finally did space horror right! This book is gr— FFFFFFAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRT
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Apr 14, 2014 13:32
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I kinda felt that way about Hull Zero Three. Sorta like Pandorum meets a worse plot idea.
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Apr 14, 2014 14:01
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Hedrigall posted:Really, because here's my thoughts as I headed towards the ending: How close in to the ending? Because yeah, I think that, like, the last few pages were weak, with some tension being lost to the aforementioned catchup for people who still didn't have a clue, and a bit too much of the climax being offscreen and/or open-ended/underexplained (What was the deal with the full transcript of Ludmilla's death? What purpose did it serve? Wasn't all of it information we already had?). However, it seemed like it did enough, without retroactively ruining the rest of the story. It's not like the ending, to, say, the Deepgate Codex, which was a complete loving disaster and felt like the author had just run out of pages. Actually, I'd place it above Hull Zero Three as well in terms of how much tension it manages to retain, because Zero Three really deflated hard quite a bit earlier (though that wasn't my only complaint with that book - the first part went past 'intentionally confusing' straight into the realm of 'unpleasantly difficult to parse').
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Apr 14, 2014 15:10
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I read through Sheri Tepper's Grass again recently. I think she is, maybe, worthy of a thread all to herself.
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Apr 15, 2014 03:39
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Darth Walrus posted:How close in to the ending? Because yeah, I think that, like, the last few pages were weak, with some tension being lost to the aforementioned catchup for people who still didn't have a clue, and a bit too much of the climax being offscreen and/or open-ended/underexplained (What was the deal with the full transcript of Ludmilla's death? What purpose did it serve? Wasn't all of it information we already had?). However, it seemed like it did enough, without retroactively ruining the rest of the story. It's not like the ending, to, say, the Deepgate Codex, which was a complete loving disaster and felt like the author had just run out of pages. Actually, I'd place it above Hull Zero Three as well in terms of how much tension it manages to retain, because Zero Three really deflated hard quite a bit earlier (though that wasn't my only complaint with that book - the first part went past 'intentionally confusing' straight into the realm of 'unpleasantly difficult to parse'). After a slow and terrifying build up of horrific visions and people disappearing, the main threat turns out to be a Japanese spirit thing who literally stands on a pile of corpses wielding her katana, uguu~. The book turned into anime. It became anime, in my hands. loving Adam Christopher weeaboo piece of poo poo.
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Apr 15, 2014 04:15
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Welp, that's going off my to read list I guess... One day someone will do space horror right.
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Apr 15, 2014 05:15
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Haerc posted:Welp, that's going off my to read list I guess... One day someone will do space horror right. Ship of Fools / Unto Leviathan gets off to a good start but ends a little abruptly, still probably the best space horror aside from blindsight which given that you are posting here i will assume you have already read.
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Apr 15, 2014 05:52
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I actually just wrote a blog post about the space horror subgenre, and I mini-review 5 works (Unto Leviathan, Blindsight, Hull Zero Three, The Burning Dark, and the Revelation Space series) while giving comments on the horror elements, SF elements, and mystery/resolution elements of each work. http://outtherebooks.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/space-horror-five-recent-works/ I also spent some time doing cool graphics for the ratings in Photoshop, like so:  Pretty proud of that glowy control panel look 
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Apr 15, 2014 06:30
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