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Cardiac posted:Tried Asher? Thanks for the tip, I never actually read Neal Asher. Time to try!
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Aug 14, 2014 17:24
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Glen Cook's The Dragon Never Sleeps also has ancient largely autonomous spaceships, some of which are completely AI-run, and might be a bit crazy.
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Aug 16, 2014 08:02
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Kellanved posted:Just had a brainfart on how the Honor books could get interesting again. Kill off her entire family or something so she goes completely bonkers and flies away with her fleet after bombing manticore/sol/some planet. And then switch pov and deal with the fallout, hunting down and fighting against the unstoppable Honor Harrington and the fleet she stole. Brandon Sanderson already did something similar and probably better than Weber in Firstborn
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Aug 16, 2014 15:44
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Tanith posted:Glen Cook's The Dragon Never Sleeps also has ancient largely autonomous spaceships, some of which are completely AI-run, and might be a bit crazy. Wait, poo poo, there's Glen Cook that I haven't read? I need to fix this.
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Aug 17, 2014 01:03
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So I was a dumb nerd and read Wright's The Golden Age, and I was foolish enough to think the Libertarian BS in that was just some sort of unreliable narrator type device to show the privilege and naiveté of the protagonist. I'm now in the second book, and I'm at the stage where the protagonist is being set up as a benevolent Jobs Creator, while taking a moment every three pages to poo poo on poor people, who are portrayed as lazy and drug-addled. Does Phoenix Exultant eventually get back to the inter-faction intrigue or is it doomed to 200 pages of Going Galt?
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Aug 19, 2014 01:39
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The second book is the most Randian of the trilogy, but it's not like the third one is a lot better than the first.
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Aug 19, 2014 09:58
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Welsper posted:So I was a dumb nerd and read Wright's The Golden Age, and I was foolish enough to think the Libertarian BS in that was just some sort of unreliable narrator type device to show the privilege and naiveté of the protagonist. I'm now in the second book, and I'm at the stage where the protagonist is being set up as a benevolent Jobs Creator, while taking a moment every three pages to poo poo on poor people, who are portrayed as lazy and drug-addled. Does Phoenix Exultant eventually get back to the inter-faction intrigue or is it doomed to 200 pages of Going Galt? It gets worse, if that's possible. I actually like that trilogy despite that just because it's really imaginatively written, but it's propaganda more extreme than anything of Heinlein's. Maybe libertarians are good at imagining fantastic, unreal worlds.
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Aug 19, 2014 12:24
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Libluini posted:Personally, I fear Weber has written Henke into a corner. With the latest plot development I read, it looks he can either kill her off to show how dangerous the Mesan Alignment is, or he lets her decapitate the central enemy of this arc prematurely. At which point he can pretty much stop writing Honor Harrington books, since there is no real enemy left. I figure Talbott is Space Philippines which would make Henke Space Macarthur.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:04
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I just finished Consider Phlebas, my first Banks book. I liked a lot of parts of it but absolutely hated the ending. I should probably check out other Culture books, though. My favorite scene in it was on the Orbital where Horza murders the Culture ship's AI although the part right before that was really really bizarre.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:08
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Consider Phlebas is widely considered a poor introduction to the Culture series so yes, definitely pick up something like Player of Games next. Use of Weapons is the best but it's even better if you have some Culture under your belt so you can appreciate it. Or just read it again after reading more Culture.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:15
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Antti posted:Consider Phlebas is widely considered a poor introduction to the Culture series so yes, definitely pick up something like Player of Games next. Use of Weapons is the best but it's even better if you have some Culture under your belt so you can appreciate it. Or just read it again after reading more Culture. Use of Weapons is actually very little about The Culture. For me it is hardly the best Culture novel by Banks, instead my favorite Culture Novel is still Look to Windward. Other good culture novels are Excession, Matter and Hydrogen Sonata, since they focus more on the Culture. Also, gently caress cancer.
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Aug 19, 2014 20:25
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I read Player of Games a while back and didn't think it was all that great, but I don't remember why.
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Aug 19, 2014 20:33
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Cardiac posted:Use of Weapons is actually very little about The Culture. For me it is hardly the best Culture novel by Banks, instead my favorite Culture Novel is still Look to Windward. I don't remember much about Matter except the head-mounted nuke (that's from Matter, right?) and thought it was kind of weak. I've only read that, Consider Phlebas, and Use of Weapons, though; Use of Weapons was easily my favorite and I quite liked it.
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Aug 19, 2014 21:02
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I think the whole point of Player of Games being a good introduction to the Culture is because so much of it is about comparing it to the Azadians.
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Aug 19, 2014 23:49
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I always thought Excession would make a good intro-to-the-culture book, considering how much it deals with the Minds and the way the Culture behaves as a whole. I mean yeah it would get more confusing than Player of Games, but it should be fine for SF/F readers that are used to getting dumped into the deep end of a setting
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Aug 20, 2014 00:21
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I got lost with Excession and it was the 4th or 5th Culture novel I read.  I found it really difficult to keep track of the discussing Minds for some reason.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:04
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I had a notepad page where I wrote down which Minds were on which mailing lists... ...mebbe this is indeed not the right place to start
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Aug 20, 2014 01:25
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Excession is my favourite Culture novel and I should probably reread it this fall. Speaking of excellent SF, I just finished my Cherryh binge: Heavy Time, Hellburner, Rimrunners, Cuckoo's Egg, and the Faded Sun trilogy. This is your weekly reminder: Cherryh owns, read her books.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:55
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ToxicFrog posted:Excession is my favourite Culture novel and I should probably reread it this fall. I just started reading something by her for the first time ever, Downbelow Station, and it's just the most unbelievable slog. Wat do??
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Aug 20, 2014 02:04
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Slog through. The opening is dreadful, but once the situation starts developing I really think it's worthwhile. Long burn but a big bang.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:19
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General Battuta posted:Slog through. The opening is dreadful, but once the situation starts developing I really think it's worthwhile. Long burn but a big bang. drat, nice icon/quote.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:37
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The icon is from the Freespace 2 user-made campaign Blue Planet. It's a very good campaign, thanks in large part to the authorial prowess of the good General.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:42
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and the quote is from Blindsight
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Aug 20, 2014 02:52
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eriktown posted:I just started reading something by her for the first time ever, Downbelow Station, and it's just the most unbelievable slog. Wat do?? I would say read a bunch of her other stuff and then return to Downbelow. It's a good book, but a heavy one, and IMO it's more accessible once you have historical context to put it into. It is arguably her slowest book, and the hardest to get into. It's commonly recommended as a good book to start with, possibly because it won a whole pile of awards (and justly so), but I think it works better if you start with her lighter work and then read Downbelow when you start getting curious about what actually happened at the Treaty of Pell. I note that all of her work focuses more on personalities and politics than on laserspewpew. The Pride of Chanur is probably her most "swashbuckling" book (and was the book that hooked me on Cherryh and sci-fi in general, in fact). Recommendations from the same setting: - pre-Downbelow: Heavy Time + Hellburner (read both together) - post-Downbelow, Merchanter space: Rimrunners, Tripoint, Finity's End, Merchanter's Luck (read in any order) - post-Downbelow, Union space: Cyteen Recommendations from other settings: - the Pride of Chanur, and the Chanur's Venture/Vengeance/Homecoming trilogy (Pride stands on its own, the trilogy should be read in one go) - the Faded Sun trilogy - Serpent's Reach
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Aug 20, 2014 04:24
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Fried Chicken posted:and the quote is from Blindsight Speaking of which, I recently started reading Blindsight and I'll be damned if it isn't the most immediately gripping and interesting book I've read this year. And apparently there's a new book in the same setting coming out later this month. Pretty excited for that now, too.
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Aug 20, 2014 17:21
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apophenium posted:Speaking of which, I recently started reading Blindsight and I'll be damned if it isn't the most immediately gripping and interesting book I've read this year. And apparently there's a new book in the same setting coming out later this month. Pretty excited for that now, too. Oh poo poo, really? That's honestly the most exciting sci-fi related thing I've heard all year.
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Aug 20, 2014 17:30
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Less than a week! This Tuesday 
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Aug 20, 2014 17:57
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and the ARC reviews, even from people who don't like Watts, are singing its praises. So stoked. The only better news is that overseas they are releasing Blindsight and Echopraxia as a bundled book, so Blindsight can be put up for the Hugo it deserves
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Aug 20, 2014 18:32
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Fried Chicken posted:and the ARC reviews, even from people who don't like Watts, are singing its praises. It was already nominated once, iirc. Don't know if it can be nominated again.
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Aug 20, 2014 18:34
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I rarely buy brand new ebooks before there's at least a bit of a price drop, but Watts owns for putting so much of his stuff up for free. I'm happy to give him all my money.
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Aug 20, 2014 18:37
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eriktown posted:It was already nominated once, iirc. Don't know if it can be nominated again. Huh, just checked and it was. I thought it got sandbagged by the publisher. Well then
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Aug 20, 2014 18:37
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Fried Chicken posted:and the ARC reviews, even from people who don't like Watts, are singing its praises. I think expectation management is really important to avoiding disappointment. Get appropriately hyped: it's a good book full of interesting ideas. It's not as good as Blindsight.
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Aug 20, 2014 18:59
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Fried Chicken posted:Huh, just checked and it was. I thought it got sandbagged by the publisher. It did, and then got nominated anyway, because it's an amazing book and also because Watts put it on his website for free (again iirc).
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Aug 20, 2014 19:46
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Has anyone here read Lockstop by Karl Schroeder? I know his Virga series seemed to not be well-regarded here, but I liked them for the concept if nothing else, and Lockstep's concept (of a galactic society based on entire communities going into suspended-animation for decades at a time, at the same time, to make up for the lack of FTL) definitely intrigued me.
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Aug 20, 2014 23:14
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Chairman Capone posted:Has anyone here read Lockstop by Karl Schroeder? I know his Virga series seemed to not be well-regarded here, but I liked them for the concept if nothing else, and Lockstep's concept (of a galactic society based on entire communities going into suspended-animation for decades at a time, at the same time, to make up for the lack of FTL) definitely intrigued me. I have. It's not bad. A little bit YA-ish in feel for me, but that seems to be the hip thing to do these days. I'm a casual fan of Schroeder generally (and Virga is my least favorite of his work). My favorite book by him is probably Permanence. Ventus isn't bad.
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Aug 21, 2014 00:19
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General Battuta posted:I think expectation management is really important to avoiding disappointment. Get appropriately hyped: it's a good book full of interesting ideas. It's not as good as Blindsight. Even "it's not as good as Blindsight" is drat fine by me. Can't wait for Tuesday!
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Aug 21, 2014 01:56
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Welsper posted:So I was a dumb nerd and read Wright's The Golden Age
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Aug 21, 2014 04:51
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the first Wright novel I read was one of the ones with the weird Texas-fetish totem as protagonist it was also the last Wright novel I read.
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Aug 21, 2014 05:13
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Miss-Bomarc posted:I used to be thinking the same thing, that it was just "here we see the tragic flawed hero character", and then I read some of the other stuff that Wright wrote, and man, gently caress. that. guy. I'm a big one for kill-the-author in art appreciation, but seriously, Wright is king fucker chicken. quote:“In a complex speech, Notor explained something Phaethon already knew. Most deviants are deviant because they are poor. Most poor are poor because they lack the self-discipline necessary to forgo immediate gratification”  
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Aug 21, 2014 12:46
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Miss-Bomarc posted:I used to be thinking the same thing, that it was just "here we see the tragic flawed hero character", and then I read some of the other stuff that Wright wrote, and man, gently caress. that. guy. I'm a big one for kill-the-author in art appreciation, but seriously, Wright is king fucker chicken. He's literally insane. He hears voices and sees visions. http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/09/a-question-i-never-tire-of-answering/ Imagine how insufferable Richard Dawkins would be if he had a psychotic break, started seeing visions of the Virgin Mary, and converted to Catholicism.
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Aug 21, 2014 16:07
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