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I honestly love those books as well as Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga and Timoty Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. I'll take all the cheesy space-navy fiction you've got. If I was concerned with quality I would not be reading Space Opera to begin with. 
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Dec 17, 2014 09:14
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Hedrigall posted:Yeah but he's probably one of the truly happy ones Idiots and children. I rushed through John Scalzis latest during the weekend. The isolated chapter gimmick left me with a feeling that the final product was really half finished. Maybe the book works better as a bridge between larger works? Anyways, if I was to read it again I would want a follow up book.
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Dec 17, 2014 11:52
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jng2058 posted:Also the main Lost Fleet books have one of the worst, though admittedly not Honor Harrington bad, Marty Stus out there. The secondary series about the breakaway Midway system, on the other hand, have less perfect and therefore much more interesting protagonists and are better reads for it. After working my way through them i agree with you 100% that the Midway series is much better, Mary Sue/Marty Stu has a hell of a lot to answer for. 
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Dec 17, 2014 15:20
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Daktari posted:Idiots and children. What's Scalzi's latest novel?
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Dec 17, 2014 18:08
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Just Another Lurker posted:After working my way through them i agree with you 100% that the Midway series is much better, Mary Sue/Marty Stu has a hell of a lot to answer for. The only parts about the Midway books that doesn't work is all the reflected Black Jack love. "Gee, what would Black Jack do?" "If only Black Jack were here to save us!" and so on and so forth.  Fortunately, they don't dwell on it that much, and such passages are easily ignored.
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Dec 17, 2014 18:17
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Chairman Capone posted:What's Scalzi's latest novel? Lock-In. It's a book about a world where a disease makes a decent percentage of the world population suffer 'lock-in', a neurological issue that leaves them unable to move or speak. As the result of a crash program instituted when the American First Lady caught the disease, sufferers are able to control equipment and access the Internet, including full-sensory VR simulations, through a neural interface. Edit: I have a feeling Daktari was referring to Scalzi's *previous* novel, however, which is set in the Old Man's War universe and suffers badly from having been told as a serialized story. Also, it has no ending. It just stops.
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Dec 17, 2014 18:47
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Kesper North posted:Lock-In. It's a book about a world where a disease makes a decent percentage of the world population suffer 'lock-in', a neurological issue that leaves them unable to move or speak. As the result of a crash program instituted when the American First Lady caught the disease, sufferers are able to control equipment and access the Internet, including full-sensory VR simulations, through a neural interface. I don't know, The Human Division seems to have stopped in a good place to me. "Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today" was a pretty good exposition dump ending that tells the reader how everything is ending up. Full disclosure: I waited for the entire thing to be released in a single volume before reading it. We are going to get The End of All Things some time in 2015, though.
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Dec 17, 2014 20:30
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rafikki posted:I liked Spoor's stuff Spoor's stuff is great space opera fun and I want many more Grand Central Arena books. I have no interest in most of the stuff Spoor likes/annotates with, but that stuff isn't actually intrusive or even particularly noticeable in the work itself. I had *no idea* he was into anime until reading that part of his website. So yeah, nobody should let that kill their interest if they're looking for some all-out large-scale space ridiculousness. onefish fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 23:18
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onefish posted:Spoor's stuff is great space opera fun and I want many more Grand Central Arena books. I have no interest in most of the stuff Spoor likes/annotates with, but that stuff isn't actually intrusive or even particularly noticeable in the work itself. I had *no idea* he was into anime until reading that part of his website. So yeah, nobody should let that kill their interest if they're looking for some all-out large-scale space ridiculousness. He literally has Marc DuQuesne, Kim Possible, and Sun Wukong team up against Ensign Mary Sue. It's pretty intrusive. And yeah, it's anime as gently caress. The heroine literally has blue hair, for a start, and her love interest is a white-haired pretty-boy who keeps inserting Japanese words and phrases into his dialogue. Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Dec 18, 2014 01:15
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Darth Walrus posted:He literally has Marc DuQuesne, Kim Possible, and Sun Wukong team up against Ensign Mary Sue. It's pretty intrusive. And yeah, it's anime as gently caress. The heroine literally has blue hair, for a start, and her love interest is a white-haired pretty-boy who keeps inserting Japanese words and phrases into his dialogue. Hmm. Blind spot for me, I had no idea who Marc DuQuesne was, though the Hyperion Project stuff implied he was our-Earth fictional. Sun Wukong is nearly mythological -- and again, Hyperion Project. Which I guess is an excuse, but -- it made sense within the world and he actually did something reasonably interesting with it. I've forgotten anything about Kim Possible. I'll acknowledge the Mary Sue ensign bit as being a bit off the mark, though. I'm not a tremendously visual reader, I guess -- I just skipped over the fact that Sandrisson is anime-esque until it was pointed out. (Lots of people have blue hair, so I didn't make that leap initially in Ariane's case.) But sure, you make valid points, if that's all stuff you'll notice that will bug you.
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Dec 18, 2014 05:25
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Heinlein did the "all myths are reality somewhere" thing and it was lame when he did it too.Chairman Capone posted:In the line at the post office today, there was a guy in front of me who looked to be late 40s/early 50s, very overweight, with some kind of Royal Manticore Navy captain's hat on and a Honor Harrington fan club society badge around his neck, playing some space shooter on his Android. I felt kind of bad for him.
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Dec 18, 2014 07:26
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Chairman Capone posted:What's Scalzi's latest novel? Late to the reply party, but yeah, The Human Division.
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Dec 18, 2014 10:08
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Wade Wilson posted:I don't know, The Human Division seems to have stopped in a good place to me. "Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today" was a pretty good exposition dump ending that tells the reader how everything is ending up. The Human Division really pissed me off. I bought it a chapter at a time expecting a complete story and I got, at best, half of one.
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Dec 18, 2014 13:53
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The Human Division really pissed me off. I bought it a chapter at a time expecting a complete story and I got, at best, half of one. To be fair, it was a serialized story that was intended to be open-ended depending on whether people wanted more of the same or not (and everyone was told this ahead of time in every press release about it). It just seems weird to complain about getting exactly what was advertised.
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Dec 18, 2014 15:29
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Oh, I don't mind open-ended serialization, but I . . well, here's how it was billed:quote:What does “not strictly a novel” mean here? Well, The Human Division is probably best described as an “episodic narrative” — it’s a collection of individual episodes that each tell a complete story, arranged chronologically, so that if you read them all in sequence you get a larger narrative arc. The closest analogy would be a season of a television show, and indeed The Human Division is arranged into thirteen “episodes,” including a double-length “pilot episode,” entitled “The ‘B’ Team.” I'm normally fine with that kind of thing. The problem I had with Human Division (and I admit I'm working from memory here, I haven't read it since the serialization) is that I felt like he never wrapped up any of the major plot threads he set up. If I'm watching a season of a TV show, I expect some degree of resolution in the finale; maybe a cliffhanger, sure, but I expect the major arcs to conclude. That didn't happen, and that's why I got annoyed. When I hear "open ended serial" I think something like John Carter of Mars or Tarzan, where each book has a unified plot (but there's probably a giant cliffhanger at the end). Instead of plot-with-cliffhanger I got "buy the remaining half of the story in a few years." When I'd already paid a premium to buy the book chapter by chapter that wasn't a pleasant surprise. That said we're all kinda off on the wrong foot anyway. Scalzi's latest isn't Human Division, it's Locked In, which is a decent book if not particularly original.. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Dec 18, 2014 16:25
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh, I don't mind open-ended serialization, but I . . well, here's how it was billed: What wasn't resolved that wasn't also something leftover from the main Old Man's War novel set? The individual stories wrapped up their mini-conflicts just fine (humanity is getting it's rear end kicked and the protagonists are barely surviving while getting some good licks of their own in on whoever the conspiracy enemy is) and the over-arching conflict will likely be dealt with in The End of All Things next year. EDIT: I actually like Scalzi's takes on unoriginal stories. Fuzzy Nation was a pretty good book (though that one was an outright tribute). The God Engines was a little weird, but I think 40k fans would love it. Some Pinko Commie fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Dec 18, 2014 20:06
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So I'm reading those Star Trader novels (Quarter Share, Half Share, so on) and it occurs to me that this is what anime people call "Slice Of Life". Like, in the first book the most exciting thing that happens is that the main character realizes that the belts he bought really cheap on one planet can be sold for a lot of money on the next one...but that if he buys belt buckles to go with them he can make even more money! I'm recognizing that "but you gotta finish! but you gotta finish!" impulse in myself, which is how I know that it's time to forcefully stop reading the series. (Same thing happened with Vatta's War, by the way, and I'm sorry if that was your favorite series ever but god drat it was dry. Like eating sliced white sandwich bread right from the bag.)
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Dec 19, 2014 08:17
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Miss-Bomarc posted:So I'm reading those Star Trader novels (Quarter Share, Half Share, so on) and it occurs to me that this is what anime people call "Slice Of Life". Like, in the first book the most exciting thing that happens is that the main character realizes that the belts he bought really cheap on one planet can be sold for a lot of money on the next one...but that if he buys belt buckles to go with them he can make even more money! Yeah, seriously. I read...actually, I think I had the audiobook for that one, which was worse because I read faster than they talk...and I was astounded when I got to the end and realized that literally nothing had happened. I was astounded, but not so much that I bothered getting the next one.
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Dec 19, 2014 15:54
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Miss-Bomarc posted:Same thing happened with Vatta's War, by the way, and I'm sorry if that was your favorite series ever but god drat it was dry. Like eating sliced white sandwich bread right from the bag. Hmm, I wonder if our definition of "dry" differs. I really liked Vatta's War and sped through all the books in a couple of days, but found Revelation Space to be painfully dry and boring.
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Dec 19, 2014 22:10
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This last page has convinced me that I should just start reading whatever is on the receiving end of the most vitriol in this thread. I have the taste of a child.
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Dec 20, 2014 06:54
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I just finished The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds. I really liked it. It stands alone as far as Revelation Space goes, and is about the golden age of mankind, when the Glitter Band is in its Demarchist full glory. Going back to look at the RS timeline again, since I've only read Galactic North and Revelation Space so far, it was kind of depressing afterwards to realize this was as good as it gets for mankind. I was expecting the novel to look deeper into the political apparatus set up with the Panoply, where all the habitats are self-governing to a high degree with a central authority just ensuring basic liberties and principles are followed, but it turned out to be more of a thriller, but it still worked. And they did touch on the political stuff briefly with things like Hell-Five, a habitat where the citizens have voluntarily surrendered themselves to brutal totalitarianism. It also had characters I cared about - or really loathed, in a good way - which has been a bit of a problem with Reynolds in the past. The Jane Aumonier sideplot felt like a short story that he'd incorporated into the main story but that didn't matter because it was very Reynoldsian  .kznlol posted:This last page has convinced me that I should just start reading whatever is on the receiving end of the most vitriol in this thread. I have the taste of a child. Don't worry, we're all children here, reading our ridiculous spaceship novels.
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Dec 20, 2014 14:01
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Wade Wilson posted:EDIT: I actually like Scalzi's takes on unoriginal stories. Fuzzy Nation was a pretty good book (though that one was an outright tribute). The God Engines was a little weird, but I think 40k fans would love it. I wish he had made The God Engines a full-length book, since it is among his best ideas. Old mans war and Ghost Division were good, and then it went sharply downhill from that.
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Dec 20, 2014 21:42
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Miss-Bomarc posted:So I'm reading those Star Trader novels (Quarter Share, Half Share, so on) and it occurs to me that this is what anime people call "Slice Of Life". Like, in the first book the most exciting thing that happens is that the main character realizes that the belts he bought really cheap on one planet can be sold for a lot of money on the next one...but that if he buys belt buckles to go with them he can make even more money!
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Dec 20, 2014 22:37
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Antti posted:The Jane Aumonier sideplot felt like a short story that he'd incorporated into the main story but that didn't matter because it was very Reynoldsian Every one of his books has that moment or idea that makes me really look forward to each new book I read by him... just waiting for it to appear, and being horrifically and queasily surprised each time.Like the "sectioning" in House of Suns.
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Dec 21, 2014 04:33
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It's not really space opera, but I started reading The Martian. I'm about a quarter through and I'm really hooked. Though I have no idea how it's going to work as a movie.
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Dec 21, 2014 21:54
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Chairman Capone posted:It's not really space opera, but I started reading The Martian. I'm about a quarter through and I'm really hooked. Though I have no idea how it's going to work as a movie. If 127 Hours worked as a movie why wouldn't The Martian?
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Dec 21, 2014 22:00
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Hedrigall posted:Every one of his books has that Oh yeah. It also made for a superb closing line: "Beautiful, human dreams." I think I rank The Prefect right behind House of Suns. Gonna read Chasm City next.
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Dec 21, 2014 23:01
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What would you guys recommend for someone who's finished reading Reynold's work? And yeah, loving sectioning. Especially the description of its end result.
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Dec 22, 2014 01:28
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If you like the cold dark vastness of the cosmos and the insignificance of humanity in the face of unknowable horrors, try Blindsight.
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Dec 22, 2014 02:29
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:If 127 Hours worked as a movie why wouldn't The Martian? As long as they don't try to throw in actual Martians or evidence of same.
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Dec 22, 2014 04:35
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:127 Hours worked as a movie 
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Dec 22, 2014 08:19
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General Battuta posted:If you like the cold dark vastness of the cosmos and the insignificance of humanity in the face of unknowable horrors, try Blindsight. Pretty neat stuff. I finished reading this one today, and while I found the repeated use of the word topology kind of annoying, it came together pretty well in the end. I also read Sundiver on the advice of the OP. I forgot how much I missed fantastic technology with everything still being recorded on magnetic tape, and it was a fun read overall. Any further recommendations?
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Dec 26, 2014 05:14
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Anticheese posted:Pretty neat stuff. I finished reading this one today, and while I found the repeated use of the word topology kind of annoying, it came together pretty well in the end. I also read Sundiver on the advice of the OP. I forgot how much I missed fantastic technology with everything still being recorded on magnetic tape, and it was a fun read overall. Well, there is Echopraxia, the side-quel to Blindsight. While blindsight is one more or less United team against the alien, Echopraxia is 5 competing agendas by transhuman intelligences competing against each other and against the alien. Oh, and a baseline human that all of them are using as a game piece against each other. It is less straight forward than blindsight because it has a bunch of ideas he is examining rather than one central idea the book is looking at, and because you are trying to figure out the motivations and plans of intelligences far beyond human reasoning with most of the information coming from an unreliable narrator who is a bit of a narcissistic idiot. Also, 3 separate editors doing skim passes didn't help it much.
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Dec 29, 2014 17:00
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Do you think Hamilton is super popular with those crazy incels, like that GovernmentGetsGirlfriends guy? In Fallen Dragon the rich dad has secretly hired a prostitute to be his sons girlfriend, a plot point that i think Hamilton has used at least twice more in other novels or a short story. The GGG guy blames all his life's failures on the fact that his parents did not do this for him. It just seems weird that Hamilton comes back to this.
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Dec 30, 2014 18:47
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ianmacdo posted:Do you think Hamilton is super popular with those crazy incels, like that GovernmentGetsGirlfriends guy? This is just one of these ideas Hamilton has to cram more sex into his books, I believe. Really, as goods as his books are, it's sometimes aggravating how much time his characters waste loving, often described in great detail by Hamilton. Seriously, I could take some choice parts, show it to some guy who doesn't know Hamilton, and he would conclude Hamilton writes porn, not science fiction.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:14
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I just finished his newest book about the void (They Abyss Beyond Dreams) and I don't recall any "on stage" sex in it. Maybe he's heard some of this feedback?
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Dec 30, 2014 19:46
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I just finished The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook. The short of it: this is a really good and dense space opera and you should give it a try. The long of it: This book is just full of stuff. A lot of stuff happens within 400 pages; you could probably spin the contents and the universe into three or ten books and no one would blink an eye. I haven't read any of the Black Company novels by Cook, but I've heard the common complaint of them throwing you in the deep end and being hard to keep up with the plot. Dragon definitely has that same style, and it took me about 50 pages to really have a handle on the setting and the story, but once I did, I couldn't put it down for the next 380. A great deal of worldbuilding happens within a few sentences; e.g. no one takes the time to explain to you that the intelligence core of a starship is biological in nature, there's just an off the cuff mention of a starship that went batty because its core got a physiological disease. No one spells out what a Hellspinner is, but they are a very, very bad time if you are on the receiving end of one. Cook just doesn't waste time. It really reads like a 700 page manuscript that got mercilessly cut down for size. The story reminded me of Dune, and looking around I'm not the only one feeling that way. There are essentially two angles here: there's the massive galactic empire, the Canon, whose law is enforced by invincible Guardships (the titular Dragons), who have an on-ship martial society loosely molded in the Roman Republican tradition (e.g. the Guardships are named after Roman legions, such as XII Fulminata); and then you have the Houses, aristocratic dynasties slash interstellar businesses that chafe under Canon rule, making a living and keeping the wheels of society turning. The former is lots of ship politics, station invasions and pew-pew battles, the latter is loads of backstabbings and clones (gholas!) and enough double and triple bluffs to make your head spin. There's a sprawl of characters, and because of the density of the plot and the sheer number of people, only three of them have any depth to them, but then if Dragon somehow had not only the brisk-paced narrative and the expansive world-building but also an emotionally engaging cast of characters with arc and depth, the novel probably wouldn't be obscure but a timeless classic! Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 16:36
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Yeah, I almost wish "Dragon Never Sleeps" had been written today, when publishers (and audiences) are on board with a story being told in six or eight doorstop-size volumes. As you say, practically every chapter of DNS could have been a whole story by itself--which, sometimes is neat, but is also quite frustrating.
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Jan 4, 2015 18:54
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Libluini posted:This is just one of these ideas Hamilton has to cram more sex into his books, I believe. Really, as goods as his books are, it's sometimes aggravating how much time his characters waste loving, often described in great detail by Hamilton. And it goes from aggravating to creepy when you notice how fond he is of having huge age-gaps between his couples, with some of the younger parties being way the gently caress underage.
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Jan 5, 2015 00:30
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Miss-Bomarc posted:Yeah, I almost wish "Dragon Never Sleeps" had been written today, when publishers (and audiences) are on board with a story being told in six or eight doorstop-size volumes. As you say, practically every chapter of DNS could have been a whole story by itself--which, sometimes is neat, but is also quite frustrating. I think I first encountered this book through either this thread of the Iain Banks one--such a great read. I've not read Cook's other SF work, Passage at Arms looks really interesting as well but I haven't read it.
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Jan 5, 2015 04:29
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