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Taeke posted:As you should be, unless they're rare or really old or a special edition or whatever. Hell, since I started studying English I've made a habit of always having a pencil or whatever on hand when I read to mark interesting passages and stuff, even with books I read for fun. I used to sperg out over keeping my books in pristine condition until I worked in a bookstore and saw how disposable they really are. After that in stopped worrying about cracking the spine on my Dragonlance novels and became a much less insufferable human being.
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Jul 4, 2014 05:20
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A vastly overrated book, imo.
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Jul 4, 2014 09:24
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Khizan posted:The Aubrey and Maturin novels are really really good. My only problem with them is that the ebooks are ~$10 each and there's 23 or so of the loving things. I could cut that price in half by skimming through the used bookstores but then I'd have to store the loving things. Without real library access I'm just not willing to jump that far into a series that long. I bought the German hardcovers (and the softcovers once they stopped doing the hardcovers) back when I discovered the books (still have to than Donna Leon for recommending them in an article). Then I bought them in English (because why read the inferior translation?) once Amazon became a thing. Then I bought all of the ebooks again because I want to preserve my Norton hardcovers. I must have spent well over 1000 Euros on Patrick O'Brian books over the last 15 years, and it was worth every single cent. Decius fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 10:53
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So speaking of Aubrey-Maturin, is there any analog in sci-fi? I know you guys have been talking about sci-fi --> naval fiction, but I want the opposite direction. I've read a great deal of sci-fi, but mostly "hard" sci-fi, with a big emphasis on realism and believable science. I've never really dipped into military sci-fi as a sub-genre. I'm looking for believable space-battles, mostly. Is there any consensus on where to start? I'm kinda expecting it all to be terrible though, in comparison to what I normally read. Count Roland fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 15:32
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Count Roland posted:So speaking of Aubrey-Maturin, is there any analog in sci-fi? I know you guys have been talking about sci-fi --> naval fiction, but I want the opposite direction. I've read a great deal of sci-fi, but mostly "hard" sci-fi, with a big emphasis on realism and believable science. I've never really dipped into military sci-fi as a sub-genre.
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Jul 4, 2014 15:38
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tonberrytoby posted:The RCN series by David Drake is pretty much Aubrey-Maturin in space. It is one of the better " space is an ocean" kind of series in general. Neat, thanks. Wow, the first in the series is available for free? Its soon time for me to get an e-reader I guess.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:11
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Count Roland posted:Neat, thanks. Wow, the first in the series is available for free? Its soon time for me to get an e-reader I guess. And this is how Baen makes money by giving away books.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:15
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Count Roland posted:Neat, thanks. Wow, the first in the series is available for free? Its soon time for me to get an e-reader I guess. Actually, the first six are available for free if you go here and are willing to download ~450M of other books by Drake and various unassociated crap along with them. The one you're looking for there is the "When the Tide Rises CD". The CDs listed on that site are ones that Baen gave out free with the purchase of a new book, and they generally contain e-books versions of the previous books in the series and other older works by them. People are allowed to freely distribute them, but they've got to do it as the entire CD or nothing(which is why you need to download the whole thing to get at the ~6 RCN books on it). From that particular CD, I also liked Redliners, Northworld, and the Hammer's Slammers stuff.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:50
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Count Roland posted:Neat, thanks. Wow, the first in the series is available for free? Its soon time for me to get an e-reader I guess. I really like the Moon+ reader and perfect viewer for android. PV also handles graphic novels really well in that epub or whatever former its named.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:48
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Count Roland posted:Neat, thanks. Wow, the first in the series is available for free? Its soon time for me to get an e-reader I guess. Gotta say, e-readers own and are much more pleasant for reading on than any reader app on a smartphone/tablet/laptop. You can't beat the battery life, either. I keep about a thousand books on mine and it's great. These days a good one like a Sony PRS-T2 can be had for <$100, down from something like $300 when they were an early technology. Speaking of which, I think this is my cue to find my Tide Rises iso and get all the RCN books off it.
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Jul 5, 2014 01:12
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coyo7e posted:I really like the Moon+ reader and perfect viewer for android. PV also handles graphic novels really well in that epub or whatever former its named. I use Cool Reader and Calibre + Calibre Companion on Android.
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Jul 5, 2014 01:39
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tonberrytoby posted:The RCN series by David Drake is pretty much Aubrey-Maturin in space. It is one of the better " space is an ocean" kind of series in general. Drake is a great author in general. His Hammers Slammers stories are some of the best military sci-fi out there. All based on his experiences in the armored cavalry in Vietnam.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:40
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nightchild12 posted:There are so, so many ways in which The Lost Fleet is bad. Psykmoe posted:The weird sail-based FTL (of the RCN series) may not be for everyone but I found it kind of charming. Also the "space sails" in the RCN series affect a lot more about the story than just "you have to shoot sideways", which helps the whole idea seem like something that might actually happen rather than an excuse to use age-of-sail battle tactics. PupsOfWar posted:Scott Westerfeld isn't known for Space Opera, but he did write one duology that features some bitchin' space battles
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Jul 6, 2014 04:36
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Miss-Bomarc posted:In a way it's nice to see the "age of sail only in space" metaphor worn so clearly on the sleeve. Rather than try to dress it up with "oh well the drive energy whatsis just sort of makes a force tachyon flux that inverts the polarity and that's why ships fight by broadsides", Drake is just "yeah I wanted sailing ships in space, therefore my spaceships use sails, if you don't like it gently caress you". Yeah, I haven't started reading RCN yet but I actually like that in concept. All FTL, at some point, involves the author waving their hands and muttering "and then a miracle occurs"; at least sails are (a) stylish and (b) offer scope for interesting failures and interactions with the plot. It's certainly a lot more interesting than, say, the Alderson Drive, which is just a black box where you put energy in and get teleportation out.
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Jul 6, 2014 13:10
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Miss-Bomarc posted:I think the guy had some kind of contract term that he had to describe the characteristics of battlecruisers in every single book. Not that this ever actually becomes relevant to any of the space battles; he just has to say it.
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Jul 6, 2014 16:09
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coyo7e posted:Have I mentioned that there is a delay in sight and communication due to distances of light years, and how it complicates a battle? Let me tell you three more times in this book Light-seconds  On reflection, I kind of feel like he tried to write each book so that someone coming into the middle of the series wouldn't be completely lost -- there's the recap at the start of each book, and then somewhere in there is going to be mention of the light-lag, the effects of high velocity on targeting systems, the difference between battleships and battlecruisers, why the FFAs are important, etc.
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Jul 6, 2014 16:19
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PupsOfWar posted:Scott Westerfeld isn't known for Space Opera, but he did write one duology that features some bitchin' space battles (well, more like one bitchin' space battle that takes up most of the second book, then some other skirmishes). Thank you very much for the recommendation. Going to give the first book a go tonight (was looking for some good void warfare)
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Jul 6, 2014 19:42
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Miss-Bomarc posted:I think the guy had some kind of contract term that he had to describe the characteristics of battlecruisers in every single book. Not that this ever actually becomes relevant to any of the space battles; he just has to say it. Despite the YA label, Uglies, Pretties and Specials is excellent, and adult enough, Sci-Fi. Also, Polymorph is adult (although out of print and very hard to find). specklebang fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 20:49
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The Leviathan series is also pretty good and flavored with Keith Thompson's awesome artwork. It ends rather abruptly and feels like a lot more could have been done with the setting though.
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Jul 6, 2014 21:04
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PupsOfWar posted:speaking of all the David Weber chat on the previous page, I spotted this at the town library: If you got bored after the first couple, the last few would probably cause you physical pain. I wondered about this so I went over to wikipedia and got some numbers, then did some math on how many pages of text per month of time in the book. Simple division of pagecount by internal timeline duration. in the first book, it was ~30.4 pages/month. That's sort of inaccurate since there was a prologue which makes this look higher than it really is - the true number is probably like 26-28 pg/month but I can't give you exact totals. This was the high point of my expectations for this series. The one you quoted? 100.57 pages/month. That's not even the worst (121.6 pg/mo is the current "winner")  oh, those are for the hardcovers. Trade paperbacks are ... much worse. In short, Piell posted:Not really. Psion fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 22:12
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ToxicFrog posted:Light-seconds The thing is though is that he writes like its a magazine serial and people are showing up blind every three chapters so all the basic physics premises are literally repeated 3 or 5 times per book.
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Jul 8, 2014 04:35
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So I'm reading the Spinward Fringe series (https://www.goodreads.com/series/55775-spinward-fringe) at the moment, and drat if they're not as engrossing as the Lost Fleet series. Surprised I've not seen them mentioned I like them, they've got a bit more worldbuilding in them than the Lost Fleet stuff too... though they're not literary by any stretch of the imagination. Shooty space battles, pirates, clones? Yes please.
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Jul 8, 2014 18:12
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kalleth posted:So I'm reading the Spinward Fringe series (https://www.goodreads.com/series/55775-spinward-fringe) at the moment, and drat if they're not as engrossing as the Lost Fleet series. Surprised I've not seen them mentioned I thought they were pretty great back when I read them a few years ago. I keep meaning to reread them since the author's put out a lot more in the meantime.
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Jul 10, 2014 01:52
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Have other people read Ventus by Karl Schroeder? It's been a while, but I recall enjoying it quite a bit. He's written others, Permanence is the other one that I can remember distinctly, involving the clash of cultures of civilizations with different star drives get involved. Also been rereading David Gerrold's Trackers novels, which I think are based off of a failed TV pitch. The titular brothers are bounty hunters, get involved with the genetically-engineered vampires that were bred to destroy a galaxy-spanning superweapon, the dragons that are their enforcers, and end up getting way, way over their heads. Doesn't look like Roger MacBride Allen's books are available digitally--a pity, The Torch of Honor is a crazy novel about an interstellar space war with an incredible set-piece battle towards the end. Its sequel also has some of the most memorable aliens, whose biology actually works along Lamarckian principles.
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Jul 13, 2014 09:37
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Ventus has a weird scale problem where it takes place in a single star system but can't possibly fit in a space that small; otherwise it's a pretty good story. Same problem that Firefly had, now that I think of it.
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Jul 13, 2014 09:47
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I stumbled onto the first two Agent Cormac books and the entire Spatterjay trilogy in a used bookstore and grabbed the lot. Does it matter where I start digging into them?
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Jul 25, 2014 10:41
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Antti posted:I stumbled onto the first two Agent Cormac books and the entire Spatterjay trilogy in a used bookstore and grabbed the lot. Does it matter where I start digging into them? Yeah. Start with Gridlinked and go to Line of Polity or start with The Skinner and go to Voyage of the Sable Keech. Internally Gridlinked predates The Skinner but they're sufficiently distinct you can read either series independently and they'll be good! Fun books. Not the greatest sci fi ever but excellent action, quite fast moving, and decent prose. And holy poo poo the ecosystems Asher develops...
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Jul 25, 2014 10:58
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Okay so as long as I read them in publishing order within any subseries I'll be good. Thanks!
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Jul 25, 2014 11:20
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Elyv posted:Oh, there absolutely is variety among the bad guys, but I feel like the good people all have basically the same ideology and are all at least somewhat competent. It's apparently Eric Flint's fault. He introduced the totally gamebreaking tech about twenty years earlier than Weber wanted.
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Jul 25, 2014 20:27
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Tunicate posted:It's apparently Eric Flint's fault. He introduced the totally gamebreaking tech about twenty years earlier than Weber wanted. What did he introduce? It has been a while since I read the slave planet novels.
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Jul 25, 2014 21:13
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(x-post) Good news everyone! Alastair Reynolds' new Revelation Space short story, "The Last Log of the Lachrimosa", is free to read online here! Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 23:05
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Libluini posted:What did he introduce? It has been a while since I read the slave planet novels. If I remember right, it wasn't so much introducing gamebreaking tech as much as advancing the plot a generation ahead. The original plan was for Honor to die in the Battle of Manticore, and to have her children be the ones dealing with the Mesan Alignment . The problem was that Eric needed someone that could be an enemy of both Manticore and Haven, for his whole Cachat/Zilwicki storylines, so the intended villains of the future became the villains of now, and that's where we're working from currently.
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Aug 4, 2014 06:34
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Cachat, Zilwicki and co. are more fun than Honor at this point, so I don't mind things getting twisted around for them in principle. Doesn't excuse the other deficiencies (terrible pacing, etc) of the most recent books, though. I have been disappointed in the recent Henke-centric material. From the way their personalities were differentiated earlier in the series from Honor's PoV, I might've expected Weber to take this opportunity to write some goofy interludes where Henke goes around being an outrageous super-glam socialite in between Admiraling, but what we get is essentially Honor Harrington: Backup Edition. Weber is just really bad at writing different voices or getting involved in a character's interests/perspectives if they deviate from the comfortable norms he's been writing for 20 years.
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Aug 4, 2014 07:35
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So I've now read the first five RCN books, and they're pretty fun, although some things are a bit jarring and betray its origins in Aubrey-Maturin, like every involved nation being pretty much horrible. That said, I can't shake the feeling that Adele Mundy is both grossly overpowered and badly underused. Two incidents in particular come to mind -- - In the second book, when she hacks the minefield so that it won't regard their ship as a valid target, why didn't she just also tell the minefield that the base they were attacking was a valid target? They could have just sat back and sipped wine while the base's own defences turned on it. - In the fifth book, she hacks an enemy ship's sensors to lie to the crew about the identification of their ship, and explains that this is possible only because the ship in question doesn't isolate the communications, sensors, and fire-control nets from each other. But if that's possible, why not just lie about the ship's vector, making them impossible to hit, or use fire-control to light off the missiles while still in the interior magazine? There are other, less dramatic occurrences, but it seems like there's a lot of Mundy basically having an I Win button at her fingertips and then no-one thinking to use it.
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Aug 4, 2014 17:58
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ToxicFrog posted:
Yeah, she basically has a magic hacker wand that's powered by plot magic. It's still nowhere near as bad as Honor Harrington. I just burned through most of C.J. Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe novels and they're dramatically under-recommended in this thread, possibly because most of the action is political and takes place on space stations, and there's relatively little space pew-pew battling. Still great stuff all around though.
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Aug 4, 2014 18:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I just burned through most of C.J. Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe novels and they're dramatically under-recommended in this thread, possibly because most of the action is political and takes place on space stations, and there's relatively little space pew-pew battling. Still great stuff all around though.
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Aug 4, 2014 18:33
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I think the action scenes in Downbelow Station are absolutely fantastic. She doesn't spend much time bogged down in the specifics of how the weapons and systems work, but the battle of momentum and positioning really gets me.
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Aug 4, 2014 21:06
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Fried Chicken posted:Shame they aren't on kindle At least some of them are? Downbelow Station is. http://www.amazon.com/Downbelow-Station-20th-Anniversary-Collectors/dp/0756400597
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Aug 4, 2014 23:25
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:At least some of them are? Downbelow Station is. http://www.amazon.com/Downbelow-Station-20th-Anniversary-Collectors/dp/0756400597 Well gently caress me that's changed since march, thanks!
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Aug 5, 2014 03:04
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Fried Chicken posted:Well gently caress me that's changed since march, thanks! The Devil to the Belt novels are on Closed Circle as well, Heavy Time and Hellburner.
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Aug 5, 2014 14:28
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