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Just finished Brian McClellan's "The Autumn Republic," which I think ended up being a great ending to The Powder Mage Trilogy. It moved at a break neck pace -- seemed like it covered enough ground that it could easily have been stretched a bit to be two books. But in this age of series being expanded out beyond their originally planned size, I appreciate that McClellan kept it to a trilogy and wrapped up pretty much every thread in a third book. Definitely worth reading if you enjoyed the prior two Powder Mage books.
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Feb 13, 2015 14:13
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McCoy Pauley posted:Just finished Brian McClellan's "The Autumn Republic," which I think ended up being a great ending to The Powder Mage Trilogy. It moved at a break neck pace -- seemed like it covered enough ground that it could easily have been stretched a bit to be two books. But in this age of series being expanded out beyond their originally planned size, I appreciate that McClellan kept it to a trilogy and wrapped up pretty much every thread in a third book. Definitely worth reading if you enjoyed the prior two Powder Mage books. He put the whole thing out pretty quickly too. I didn't even know it was released yet.
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Feb 13, 2015 14:58
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Yeah, I hadn't noticed it was due out until Monday, so it was a nice surprise to have it there on my Kindle Tuesday morning.
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Feb 13, 2015 15:19
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McCoy Pauley posted:Just finished Brian McClellan's "The Autumn Republic," which I think ended up being a great ending to The Powder Mage Trilogy. It moved at a break neck pace -- seemed like it covered enough ground that it could easily have been stretched a bit to be two books. But in this age of series being expanded out beyond their originally planned size, I appreciate that McClellan kept it to a trilogy and wrapped up pretty much every thread in a third book. Definitely worth reading if you enjoyed the prior two Powder Mage books. Thanks for the heads' up on this, that was a series I'd put in the "I'll start this when it's finished" category since I'd heard the second book was so-so.
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Feb 13, 2015 16:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Thanks for the heads' up on this, that was a series I'd put in the "I'll start this when it's finished" category since I'd heard the second book was so-so. I only got a few chapters into the first. The prose is way too mechanistic, like Sanderson at his most plodding. (And yes, I know he's a student of Sanderson's.)
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Feb 13, 2015 17:51
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SquadronROE posted:On that note I have blown through 4 novels on this vacation. Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, Handmaid's Tale, and 2 Hornblower books. Got a couple at home but... Any recommendations for Cyberpunk? Read Neuromancer, Snow Crash, a bunch more Stephenson.. Not sure what else is out there that would be considered Cyberpunk.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:44
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That and The Demolished Man which I remember being pretty noir.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:59
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Trouble And Her Friends by Melissa Scott is cyberpunk, perhaps a bit softer in tone than the Dew-slamming x-treme style of a lot of the others listed. Kathleen Ann Goonan is sort of cyberpunk, mingled with music and stuff about bees.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:32
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http://peterdickinson.com/books/the-green-gene/
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Feb 13, 2015 23:49
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General Battuta posted:That and The Demolished Man which I remember being pretty noir. A lot of that era of sci fi seems pretty quaint and isn't super well written but Bester's stuff has aged exceptionally well.
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Feb 14, 2015 14:53
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Neurosis posted:A lot of that era of sci fi seems pretty quaint and isn't super well written but Bester's stuff has aged exceptionally well. Really holds up better than a lot of much newer stuff, IMO. Dude's post-50s output, however, is... best not mentioned, really.
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Feb 14, 2015 19:44
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Brunner's The Shockwave Rider is another proto-cyberpunk well worth anyone's time. Try Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net for a later (1988) but still oddly prescient view of the internet, and his Mirrorshades is pretty much the definitive cyberpunk anthology.
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Feb 14, 2015 20:25
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I accidentally came across the books Red Rising & Golden Son and they were surprisingly entertaining. Its essentially a young adult series so its not exactly high literature and the first book is a bit hunger gamey - bland ,but it pulls together and is pretty decent, and the book isn't afraid to punish the main character for loving up (which is good, because otherwise he would be a total sue). Also it is has a decent sci-fi setting, albeit a weird dune-ish one with people fighting with swords and poo poo. For a quick popcorn read it is solid, finished each book in about 2-3 hours.
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Feb 14, 2015 23:18
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Anyone read Richard Paul Russo's Destroying Angel (Carlucci #1) ? I'm about 60 pages in and I'd just like to know if there is more to the story than Cyberpunk serial killer, because right now it seems like it is going to go to some very predictable places.
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Feb 15, 2015 13:24
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Hobnob posted:Brunner's The Shockwave Rider is another proto-cyberpunk well worth anyone's time. Try Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net for a later (1988) but still oddly prescient view of the internet, and his Mirrorshades is pretty much the definitive cyberpunk anthology. Don't forget Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar. That's a fantastic novel with some amazing world building.
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Feb 15, 2015 15:33
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Am I stupid or are there no (legal) Cyteen ebook versions? I've mainlined the first four Chanur books, Cuckoo's Egg, and now Downbelow Station, and I need my GODDAMN FIX.
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Feb 15, 2015 18:31
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Vorik posted:Anyone read Richard Paul Russo's Destroying Angel (Carlucci #1) ? This series is one of my all-time favorites. It quickly blows up into a big corporate dystopia-style conspiracy, and the main character changes after the first novel. The serial killer is just a tiny footnote, but I can't remember how much of the first book is focused on him. Even with some predictable story beats, though, I think his world building is amazing. He nails the sense of malaise in a broken society. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Feb 15, 2015 |
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Feb 15, 2015 19:12
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Koesj posted:Am I stupid or are there no (legal) Cyteen ebook versions? I've mainlined the first four Chanur books, Cuckoo's Egg, and now Downbelow Station, and I need my GODDAMN FIX. Her books are weirdly hard to obtain. I had this problem as well, and basically gave up. 
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Feb 15, 2015 22:38
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Hobnob posted:Mirrorshades is pretty much the definitive cyberpunk anthology. It really isn't; it has some good early cyberpunk/cyberpunkish stories, but about half of it isn't cyberpunk at all. The Houdini story by Rudy Rucker and the gargyoles one are a tall tale (slipstream, maybe) and fantasy. It's more of a snapshot of a scene. Some great stories though.
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Feb 17, 2015 05:36
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Speaking of cyberpunkish stuff, I just recently finished my yearly re-read of When Gravity Fails and the rest of the series by George Alec Effinger. Can anyone reccomend me something similar? I have read a lot of trashy scifi, pseudo cyberpunk over the years and nothing quite hits the same notes. I have read all the usual suspects on the required cyberpunk reading list and enjoyed much of it, but nothing has interested me quite a such as the Budayeen. I love scumbag, loser protagonists who end up doing the right thing in spite of themselves right alongside heavy detective noir overtones. Marid Audran was perfect in that role. Miller from Leviathan Wakes started off in the right direction, but wasn't quite what I was looking for. (Though the series was good on its own, for other reasons)
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Feb 17, 2015 08:37
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I'm looking for something similar to Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. The idea of attempting to communicate with an alien that is actually alien seems to be pretty rare in SF. The alien is alien to the point that no one can agree if it is even an alien, much less communicate with it. I love that, I love the haunted house feel of the station, and the themes of claustrophobia and insanity. The characters are very well done as well. There's a real haunting and melancholy tone throughout the book that is just beautiful. Even the exposition chapters, full of made-up words for made-up concepts, manage to pull me in. It's fantastic. If you haven't read it, or if you have read it for that matter, get the audiobook. It's narrated by Lt. Gaeta in Battlestar Galactica and he does a really wonderful job. Trouble is, I can't find any other books quite like it. I've read Lem's Fiasco but found it not nearly as satisfying as Solaris. Fiasco's characters are sort of flat and it's jam packed with technobabble. Blindsight by Peter Watts is another actual alien contact book that suffers from an over abundance of transhuman nonsense and aforementioned technobabble. Solaris did have some technobabble of its own, I'm not totally averse to that sort of thing, but I prefer it to be kept at a reasonable level. Does the book I'm looking for exist? Basically all I want is aliens that are not humanoids (preferably with whom 'contact' is impossible, but I'd settle for just very strange), well developed characters, and at most a moderate level of technobabble and minimal transhuman nonsense.
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Feb 17, 2015 15:44
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also by Lem, maybe this doesn't quite meet your criteria, but the main theme is that communication is not possible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_%28novel%29
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Feb 17, 2015 15:46
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PopetasticPerson posted:I'm looking for something similar to Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. The idea of attempting to communicate with an alien that is actually alien seems to be pretty rare in SF. The alien is alien to the point that no one can agree if it is even an alien, much less communicate with it. I love that, I love the haunted house feel of the station, and the themes of claustrophobia and insanity. The characters are very well done as well. There's a real haunting and melancholy tone throughout the book that is just beautiful. Even the exposition chapters, full of made-up words for made-up concepts, manage to pull me in. It's fantastic. If you haven't read it, or if you have read it for that matter, get the audiobook. It's narrated by Lt. Gaeta in Battlestar Galactica and he does a really wonderful job. Try Embassytown by China Mieville. The aliens and humans do have contact with one another but it's strange and awesome and how they communicate has massive implications on the plot.
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Feb 17, 2015 15:58
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Yeah, Lem's The Invincible might also qualify. quote:A very powerful and armed interstellar space ship called Invincible lands on the planet Regis III which seems uninhabited and bleak, to investigate the loss of its sister ship, Condor. During the investigation, the crew finds evidence of a form of quasi-life, born through evolution of autonomous, self-replicating machines, apparently left behind by an alien civilization which had inhabited the planet a very long time ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible
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Feb 17, 2015 15:58
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Invincible and Embassytown were the first two I thought of as well. I don't think Blindsight is particularly rich with technobabble, but it's a definitional argument - it's certainly absolutely packed with technical jargon, even if it's mostly meaningful and related to real science instead of subspace verteron nodes.
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Feb 17, 2015 17:27
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Some of the requests in this thread are so specific I almost want to say you should just be rereading the book you liked or writing something. Embassytown is super awesome check that out. The \Word for World is Forest is kind of neat but very humanoid.
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Feb 17, 2015 18:03
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PopetasticPerson posted:I'm looking for something similar to Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. The idea of attempting to communicate with an alien that is actually alien seems to be pretty rare in SF. The alien is alien to the point that no one can agree if it is even an alien, much less communicate with it. I love that, I love the haunted house feel of the station, and the themes of claustrophobia and insanity. The characters are very well done as well. There's a real haunting and melancholy tone throughout the book that is just beautiful. Even the exposition chapters, full of made-up words for made-up concepts, manage to pull me in. It's fantastic. If you haven't read it, or if you have read it for that matter, get the audiobook. It's narrated by Lt. Gaeta in Battlestar Galactica and he does a really wonderful job.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:31
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The only thing I've read of Lem's was Memoirs Left In A Bathtub. Which was utterly fantastic, but not really sci fi.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:31
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Looking for a fantasy recommendation with some perhaps odd restrictions: something that moves at a good pace, and isn't a doorstopper. After all the SoF&I, 7 WoT, and quitting both Name of the Wind and Stormlight Archive due to a lack of forward momentum, I'm looking for something with less glacial world building and more action. Not necessarily war or combat or anything, just things actually happening. I've already read most of Moorcock's work, Glen Cook's Black Company, and Ellen Kushner's standalone novels, which got me to thinking there must be more of this type fantasy. PopetasticPerson posted:I'm looking for something similar to Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. The idea of attempting to communicate with an alien that is actually alien seems to be pretty rare in SF. The alien is alien to the point that no one can agree if it is even an alien, much less communicate with it. Iain M. Bank's Excession might be up your alley. The "Excession" of the title discovered is pretty much exactly what you're describing.
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Feb 17, 2015 20:31
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Looking for a fantasy recommendation with some perhaps odd restrictions: something that moves at a good pace, and isn't a doorstopper. After all the SoF&I, 7 WoT, and quitting both Name of the Wind and Stormlight Archive due to a lack of forward momentum, I'm looking for something with less glacial world building and more action. Not necessarily war or combat or anything, just things actually happening. Nine Princes in Amber, perhaps? People will recommend Lies of Locke Lamora, no doubt. City of Stairs was pretty good.
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Feb 17, 2015 20:40
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Rusty posted:I have been looking for the same thing. I really like the non-humanoid alien idea and all the mystery and theories surrounding it. "Speaker for the Dead" has kind of the same feel in parts, but I didn't think the book itself was quite as good, though I still liked it quite a bit. I also read Lem's "Eden" which is just full of weird aliens on a weird planet, but the story was pretty lacking and the characters were, I think purposely, not really fleshed out at all. I'm a little ways into Michael Faber's Book of Strange New Things and it has the whole coming into contact with weird, hard-to-communicate-with aliens going on so far. I went into this not knowing anything much about the plot, so I could be wrong, but it seems like that will be the focus for most of the book. I think it even had a reference to Solaris early on .
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Feb 17, 2015 20:53
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Looking for a fantasy recommendation with some perhaps odd restrictions: something that moves at a good pace, and isn't a doorstopper. After all the SoF&I, 7 WoT, and quitting both Name of the Wind and Stormlight Archive due to a lack of forward momentum, I'm looking for something with less glacial world building and more action. Not necessarily war or combat or anything, just things actually happening. Martha Wells's Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, or really any of her catalog fit that bill. A lot of interesting worldbuilding combined with pretty swashbuckly adventure. In YA, Ysabeau Wilce's Flora Fyrdraaca series is entertainingly weird and keeps things going in a society that clearly has some stuff going on. Also Stephen Hunt's Jackelian novels.
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Feb 17, 2015 21:39
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Looking for a fantasy recommendation with some perhaps odd restrictions: something that moves at a good pace, and isn't a doorstopper. After all the SoF&I, 7 WoT, and quitting both Name of the Wind and Stormlight Archive due to a lack of forward momentum, I'm looking for something with less glacial world building and more action. Not necessarily war or combat or anything, just things actually happening.
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Feb 17, 2015 23:22
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The Lies of Locke Lamora is about fantasy mafiosos in fantasy Venice and it's ridiculously good and works as a stand-alone just fine. The sequels fail to live up to it, but I don't think they're bad. They're just disappointing next to Lies, which is understandable; most fantasy books disappoint when compared to it.
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Feb 17, 2015 23:32
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Nevvy Z posted:Some of the requests in this thread are so specific I almost want to say you should just be rereading the book you liked or writing something. For what its worth, the reason I ask is because I'm a few chapters into Solaris again and already don't want it to end. I suppose I'm also looking for some inspiration, there has been a story knocking around in my head since the first time I read it. Essentially, a group of scientists wake up from hibernation on an alien world with instructions to assess potential colonization with the understanding that Earth is pretty well hosed. Specific mission details were to be worked out once the crew sent back preliminary data, but alas, the communication satellites seem to have failed. They landed in a lander and have no way to leave the planet or communicate with anyone. Orders for just this situation exist, however. Assume Earth is lost. Assume any other similar missions on different planets have failed. Determine compatibility between humans and native life forms. If there is any doubt whatsoever, exterminate all native life with extreme prejudice. Native life in this case is a continent spanning mycelium with the ability to subtly influence the thoughts of man and (potentially) his AIs. The story is, these people have to attempt to communicate with this thing, with failure meaning the extinction of the thing, the human race, or both. Not to mention their own souls, which are (in)conveniently teetering on the brink already. It interests me because usually in Man vs Alien books, humanity fights aliens to avoid extinction because the aliens attack them. They fight aliens to avoid extinction here, but the aliens aren't doing anything to them, it's just a matter of they need a new place to live and can't risk this thing being there. Furthermore, it's implicit that the method of destruction will kill the crew as well, so they have survival of the species on the one hand with both morality and self preservation on the other. They have to ask themselves if the human race is even worth saving. This is compounded by the fact that for all they know everything back on Earth is just fine and their comms satellite just malfunctioned. I don't know poo poo about writing, though. If this book has already been written I'd be super pleased to not have to write it myself. ALSO, how necessary is it to have read other Ian Banks books before The Excession? The idea sounds pretty cool but I've shied away from the Culture series so far because I have a hard time suspending disbelief in universes in which there is fairness and justice and whatnot...too much ASoIaF I suppose. I'm checking out Embassytown, The Invincible, and Book of Strange New Things as of now...I haven't read His Master's Voice yet because I was under the impression it was mostly satire and I'm looking for something more serious. Am I totally wrong about that?
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Feb 18, 2015 02:22
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Looking for a fantasy recommendation with some perhaps odd restrictions: something that moves at a good pace, and isn't a doorstopper. After all the SoF&I, 7 WoT, and quitting both Name of the Wind and Stormlight Archive due to a lack of forward momentum, I'm looking for something with less glacial world building and more action. Not necessarily war or combat or anything, just things actually happening. Doesn't fit your doorstopper restriction, but Malazan fits with someone who's managed to do WoT already and liked Black Company as Cook is a stated influence of the author. Lies is quite good but pretend it's a standalone IMO
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Feb 18, 2015 02:23
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Looking for a fantasy recommendation with some perhaps odd restrictions: something that moves at a good pace, and isn't a doorstopper. After all the SoF&I, 7 WoT, and quitting both Name of the Wind and Stormlight Archive due to a lack of forward momentum, I'm looking for something with less glacial world building and more action. Not necessarily war or combat or anything, just things actually happening. The Iron Elves trilogy by Chris Evans. It fits all of your criteria and is quite good.
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Feb 18, 2015 02:39
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For action and swaToph Bei Fong posted:Looking for a fantasy recommendation with some perhaps odd restrictions: something that moves at a good pace, and isn't a doorstopper. After all the SoF&I, 7 WoT, and quitting both Name of the Wind and Stormlight Archive due to a lack of forward momentum, I'm looking for something with less glacial world building and more action. Not necessarily war or combat or anything, just things actually happening. try "the Queens Necklace" by Teresa Edgerton. also for the poster wanting aliens, it's flawed but maybe try Gardinkle's "Waylands Principia".
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Feb 18, 2015 03:14
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PopetasticPerson posted:Book of Strange New Things No one responded to me itt, but this is a really excellent book. Communication between the species is a big part of it. thehomemaster fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 03:49
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PopetasticPerson posted:The idea sounds pretty cool but I've shied away from the Culture series so far because I have a hard time suspending disbelief in universes in which there is fairness and justice and whatnot You should read Use of Weapons, imo.
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Feb 18, 2015 04:44
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