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less laughter posted:You forgot Good Omens. Co-authored. Impossible to know how much of the credit for that one should go to Pratchett.
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Jan 3, 2015 00:18
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Every time Gaiman is discussed here I feel like the polar opposite of everyone in this forum. American Gods was extremely my poo poo, but neither Neverwhere nor Good Omens did it for me.
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Jan 3, 2015 03:48
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Co-authored. Impossible to know how much of the credit for that one should go to Pratchett. Plus it was a parody so chunks of it wrote itself.
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Jan 3, 2015 06:35
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Nevvy Z posted:Plus it was a parody so chunks of it wrote itself. Oh yes, parodies don't require any talent at all on the part of their authors, which is why Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, The Starving Games and their ilk are such masterpieces of cinema.
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Jan 3, 2015 07:04
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Chairchucker posted:I really liked the movie, how similar to it is the book? My wife and I watch stardust every Christmas eve for some reason, except for 2 years ago when she was in hospital, I gave her the novel as an early present. She didn't read it.
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Jan 3, 2015 10:37
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Co-authored. Impossible to know how much of the credit for that one should go to Pratchett. So just not count it at all then? Seems pretty weird and arbitrary.
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Jan 3, 2015 11:39
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Annoying third option Gaiman opinion: American Gods is neat, but a bit up itself; Neverwhere is just a series of bad puns; Anansi Boys hit the sweet spot.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Co-authored. Impossible to know how much of the credit for that one should go to Pratchett. Fifty percent. There's a few scenes that can be attributed - Newt going to bed with Anathema is obviously Pratchett if you've read Men At Arms, for example - but mostly you can't tell who wrote what, and that's the best credit you can get on a co-authored book.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:30
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Annoying fourth option Gaiman opinion: screw his novels, he's at his best doing short stories. Smoke and Mirrors is the one book of his I keep coming back to.
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Jan 3, 2015 23:07
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Gaiman should stick to comic books.
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Jan 3, 2015 23:27
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Non-Gaiman opinion, just to break up the monotony: I really enjoyed Three Parts Dead (after a recommendation from someone here), are the rest of the books in the same universe as good?
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Jan 5, 2015 05:25
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Just finished American Gods. Didn't quite play out as I'd expected, which I guess is a thing, as I've become pretty familiar with the usual fantasy tropes and don't often get surprised any more. Got a bit more interesting near the end as well although never really grabbed me in the way my favourite stories have. I still don't really get why the Buffalo man, whiskey Jack and the goddess turned away from him in what seemed like disappointment when he solved the disappearances from the town. Can anyone perhaps expand on what I might have missed there? I also would be interested to hear others' interpretations of Shadow's meeting with Odin in Iceland. I think I get it but want to see what others think without prejudicing comments based on my own thoughts. Separately, I liked Anansi / Mr. Nancy (the character) enough that I might read Anansi Boys, so there's that.
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Jan 5, 2015 08:38
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Non-Gaiman opinion, just to break up the monotony: I really enjoyed Three Parts Dead (after a recommendation from someone here), are the rest of the books in the same universe as good? Yes. I like them a lot. The protagonists change (although the old ones do come up as side characters). Personally I found the second book even better than Three Parts Dead. Even more interesting setting and really great protagonist. Also more Red King, who is just the best as far as megalomaniac skeleton sorcerer-gods go.
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Jan 5, 2015 09:12
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Non-Gaiman opinion, just to break up the monotony: I really enjoyed Three Parts Dead (after a recommendation from someone here), are the rest of the books in the same universe as good? Yes. I found the third one slightly hard to get into, but I think that was me, not the book. The text adventure is good enough to be another entry in the series, btw.
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Jan 5, 2015 11:02
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Jedit posted:Anyone who says Ready Player One is a terrible book should be required to sign the post with their name and year of birth. Then if it's after 1978 we know why. Ready Player One is the worst book I've ever read, and swapping out the 80s references for a different decade or subject wouldn't improve it one bit. The main character is a shut-in goon who doesn't go outside for months and has anime gently caress-pillow, and the book is a power fantasy celebration of how this goon saves the world, gets the girl and becomes infinitely rich and respected via a mental disorder where he knows every possible fact about 80s nerd culture. There is one piece of character development in the entire novel, where the goon decides to stop living on the internet and go outside. Ordinarily that'd be good, but living on the internet and avoiding the lovely world is precisely the strictly better (and only) option for his character for 90% of the novel, and it's how he saves the world. It's not genuine character development, just a change in circumstances. The plotting is non-existent and a carbon copy of a basic DnD adventure (power-up, kill defeat the bad-guy) and the characterisation is downright embarrassing. The Japanese characters, for example, have honour, like robots and literally no other traits, defining or otherwise. Add in that the prose is diabolically poor and it's about as bad as a novel can get. The references that everyone seems to love are equally awful: a handful are shoveled in to every page with no context, meaning or even understanding other than Scary Movie style "look! It's a thing! Recognise the thing!" antics. It's utterly irredeemable and I'm at a total loss why anyone could fathom even mild dislike as a reaction. The Supreme Court fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Jan 5, 2015 |
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Jan 5, 2015 11:21
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Decius posted:Yes. I like them a lot. The protagonists change (although the old ones do come up as side characters). Personally I found the second book even better than Three Parts Dead. Even more interesting setting and really great protagonist. Also more Red King, who is just the best as far as megalomaniac skeleton sorcerer-gods go. I agree. I thought the protagonist in the first book was kind of by the numbers and bland but the second book's had a bit more going on. I haven't read the third but the quality of the second is the same as the first or slightly better.
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Jan 5, 2015 12:47
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The Supreme Court posted:Ready Player One is the worst book I've ever read, and swapping out the 80s references for a different decade or subject wouldn't improve it one bit. Reminds me of that other videogame book, the one about some guy who worked at a game design studio.
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Jan 5, 2015 20:59
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ravenkult posted:Reminds me of that other videogame book, the one about some guy who worked at a game design studio. JPod?
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Jan 5, 2015 21:26
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ravenkult posted:Reminds me of that other videogame book, the one about some guy who worked at a game design studio. Reamde?
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Jan 5, 2015 21:27
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Bizob posted:Reamde? Legit. Classic Stephenson.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:28
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I'm going to say something that is probably going to get me made fun of: I read The Wizard of Earthsea and didn't really love it. It was OK.
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Jan 5, 2015 23:27
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ravenkult posted:Reminds me of that other videogame book, the one about some guy who worked at a game design studio. Lucky Wander Boy? Because that book was awesome.
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Jan 5, 2015 23:30
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Anyone read The Book of Strange New Things? It's pretty fantastic. Just getting to the end now and there are some major, ahem, reveleations, so to speak. Great example of lit/SF cross-over IMO.
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Jan 5, 2015 23:38
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ravenkult posted:Reminds me of that other videogame book, the one about some guy who worked at a game design studio.
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Jan 6, 2015 00:01
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Zeitgueist posted:I'm going to say something that is probably going to get me made fun of:
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Jan 6, 2015 01:46
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DACK FAYDEN posted:In the dark, I'm guessing You, by the brother of the dude who wrote The Magicians? The one about the magic sword that jumped between video game universes and the merchant AI engine that secretly made the stock market crash? I should check that out. Premise sounds weird but I liked Soon I Will Be Invincible by him.
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Jan 6, 2015 01:46
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bonds0097 posted:I should check that out. Premise sounds weird but I liked Soon I Will Be Invincible by him.
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Jan 6, 2015 05:25
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Azathoth posted:Did you accidentally lose your sense of joy and wonder to a trickster god or something? There's surprisingly little joy or wonder in A Wizard of Earthsea. It's a great horror novel, though.
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Jan 6, 2015 12:21
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Apparently I get a free copy of some book called The End is Nigh as a reward for backing Wasteland 2. It's some kind of sci-fi short story anthology. Anyone read it? Does it suck? Is it good?
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Jan 6, 2015 17:28
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Chairchucker posted:Apparently I get a free copy of some book called The End is Nigh as a reward for backing Wasteland 2. It's some kind of sci-fi short story anthology. Anyone read it? Does it suck? Is it good? From amazon- “The Balm and the Wound” by Robin Wasserman | “Heaven is a Place on Planet X” by Desirina Boskovich | “Break! Break! Break!” by Charlie Jane Anders | “The Gods Will Not Be Chained” by Ken Liu | “Wedding Day” by Jake Kerr | “Removal Order” by Tananarive Due | “System Reset” by Tobias S. Buckell | “This Unkempt World is Falling to Pieces” by Jamie Ford | “BRING HER TO ME” by Ben H. Winters | “In the Air” by Hugh Howey | “Goodnight Moon” by Annie Bellet | “Dancing with Death in the Land of Nod” by Will McIntosh | “Houses Without Air” by Megan Arkenberg | “The Fifth Day of Deer Camp” by Scott Sigler | “Enjoy the Moment” by Jack McDevitt | “Pretty Soon the Four Horsemen are Going to Come Riding Through” by Nancy Kress | “Spores” by Seanan McGuire | “She’s Got a Ticket to Ride” by Jonathan Maberry | “Agent Unknown” by David Wellington | “Enlightenment” by Matthew Mather | “Shooting the Apocalypse” by Paolo Bacigalupi | “Love Perverts” by Sarah Langan. I know for a fact these two are great short fiction authors. Dunno the rest.
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Jan 6, 2015 20:35
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Don't know about the qualities of the stories in question, but I recognize most of these authors. They're legit published authors.
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Jan 6, 2015 20:37
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Speaking of Paolo Bacigalupi, has there been any word of him writing something that isn't a tween book? I loved The Windup Girl and Pump Six and I'm super bummed that all he's done lately are tween books. 
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Jan 6, 2015 21:01
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Snuffman posted:Speaking of Paolo Bacigalupi, has there been any word of him writing something that isn't a tween book? http://marcdgoldfinger.outlawpoetry.com/2014/12/13/the-water-knife-by-paolo-bacigalupi/
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Jan 6, 2015 21:05
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Megazver posted:Don't know about the qualities of the stories in question, but I recognize most of these authors. They're legit published authors. The names I recognize are all good. I'd definitely read that anthology.
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Jan 6, 2015 22:28
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David Brin did a Reddit AMA, in which he said he's currently writing a new Uplift novel that focuses on the crew of the Streaker, particularly Thomas and Creideiki. Exciting 
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Jan 6, 2015 23:03
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Holy poo poo! It'll probably suck but I know I would've been really excited to hear that ten years ago.
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Jan 6, 2015 23:19
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Per this thread's recommendations, I've read some of Greg Egan's novels, and now I want to talk about them. Luckily I didn't start with Permutation City, because that was the one I liked the least of the five I've read, although at least it was good enough to keep me reading until the end. I started with Diaspora. I found Diaspora, Permutation City and Schild's Ladder to be way too heavy on the imaginary physics and/or imaginary computational neurology (I made up this term but I'm sure it's clear what I'm referring to). I skimmed a lot of the details but the underlying plot was interesting enough to keep me reading even though I didn't care about "oh the possibilities" of the science. The exception was Permutation City, where I never really bought in to the idea of the eponymous city itself. Like, okay, infinite possibilities, so it could exist, fine, but it's like the monkeys and the typewriters and Hamlet. Even if they manage it, who cares? So what? It's just one possibility of infinitely many, so why does this one matter? Why does it have any significance? What's impressive about it? Maybe some people wouldn't see it that way, but I did, so the entire storyline set in the city seemed irrelevant to me. Two I didn't end up skimming 30+% of: Zendegi and Incandescence. They had enough imaginary science to be thought-provoking but not so much that it became a distraction, like it did for the others. Zendegi basically inspired me to try to teach myself how to program again, because holy poo poo I'm going to be left behind in 20 years if I can't. Incandescence left me thinking about it a lot, because I can't quite piece together the ending. Incandescence spoilers follow. So even though Rakesh presents another idea, I think the most elegant explanation is that the Aloof is not a civilisation but rather an automated program (the Wall referred to by Haf) left behind by the descendants of the Roi storyline who got the gently caress out of dodge and ended up being the ancestors of the people of the disc, who became the Amalgam. But then how do you explain Zey's people? They're clearly very closely related to Roi's people, if not identical. But if they'd decided that the bulge was terrible and dangerous, why would any people have stayed? I guess they could have been left behind as an eventual "teaching moment", but that seems pretty immoral, leaving a group of people in danger and also specifically making some people like Zey who would always feel alienated and alone. There's other possibilities involving the Aloof being a separate civilisation and Roi's people occurring after Zey's people that would seem to make some sense too, with the message being that everything is cyclical, but when I actually try to write out how that would work, I run into too many things that don't make sense. So can anyone shed some light on how they see the two storylines lining up?
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Jan 7, 2015 00:24
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I love this. Pat Rothfuss (in a horrible tumblr gif format) discussing how hard it is to write women.  http://plutheroquexos.tumblr.com/post/107214156058/patrickrothfuss-i-wish-i-could-have-been-there That's just... god drat that's hilarious to me. The dude wrote what is bar none the tropiest (is that a word?) female leads in his books, and basically just had every single female (SAVE ONE, FOR SHE IS A SHY DEER  ) sex up the main character while he powers up DBZ style with the sex ninja stuff. This is truly the man to go "Yea man writing women is hard. They have like, feelings and poo poo. We need to write them better."The only person this would have been better coming from is John Ringo.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:34
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Ok so looking for a recommendation, I just finished the 7th book of Malazan book of the fallen on audio book to find out that the 8th won't be released for a few months. After that I'll probably just read them instead of waiting. So some titles I've read liked: WoT, GoT, Gentlemen Bastards (Lynch), most Sanderson (Stormlight, Mistborn, Elantris, etc.), The First Law (Abercrombie), Prince of Nothing and Aspect Emperor (Bakker), Kingkiller (Rothfuss), Malazan (Erikson) as I said. Thread hasn't failed me yet, thanks.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:36
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toe knee hand posted:The exception was Permutation City, where I never really bought in to the idea of the eponymous city itself. Like, okay, infinite possibilities, so it could exist, fine, but it's like the monkeys and the typewriters and Hamlet. Even if they manage it, who cares? So what? It's just one possibility of infinitely many, so why does this one matter? Why does it have any significance? What's impressive about it? Maybe some people wouldn't see it that way, but I did, so the entire storyline set in the city seemed irrelevant to me. I'd say Egan is mostly about "oh the possibilities", which is what I love about his writing. But if that doesn't strike your fancy, his stuff won't appeal to you as much simply because his plotting and characters are not particularly great. That said, everything you just said about Permutation City applies to us, in the (real?) world. Which I suppose is fine if you're a nihilist.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:53
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