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It's a drat shame that battlecruisers suck so much. "Battlecruiser" just sounds so badass.
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Mar 27, 2015 01:34
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They don't suck at everything, they're just incredibly specialized. Battlecruisers are really good for commerce raiding and not at all good at anything else (the British used them at Jutland because Beatty was an incredible egotist, rather than because it was a good tactical idea.)
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Mar 27, 2015 03:55
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I'd be interested in reading it.
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Mar 27, 2015 04:29
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Miss-Bomarc posted:They don't suck at everything, they're just incredibly specialized. Battlecruisers are really good for commerce raiding and not at all good at anything else (the British used them at Jutland because Beatty was an incredible egotist, rather than because it was a good tactical idea.) And in the commerce raiding role they were largely supplanted by submarines, which were much less vulnerable to attack. The niche for them was there, but it wasn't a very widespread or useful one.
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Mar 27, 2015 04:40
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Darth Walrus posted:I enjoyed Germline. Here's my post on it: I really liked Germline. About the same time I read the Union series by Phillip Richards. Very gritty future infantry warfare written by a serving UK soldier.
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Mar 27, 2015 12:59
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Daktari posted:So am I the only one who's struggling a bit with The Dragon Never Sleeps? I read The Dragon Never Sleeps recently since it was recommended here, but I thought it was awful. For the first ~20% I had no idea what was going on and didn't care about any of the characters, for the last 80% I had no idea what was going on and didn't care about any of the characters but I was interested in hearing more about some of the concepts and how the Guardships worked so I kept reading. Nothing more was really revealed though and I don't feel like the plot went anywhere  Arglebargle III posted:I'm reading The Forever War after a long break from reading scifi for fun, and I'm surprised at how jarring the idea of a software-less future is. I have read a lot of classic scifi but not for a long time. The idea of humans interacting with technology through mechanical controls seems absurd to me. The most shocking thing was the idea of the powered suits with dumb mechanical waldos that allow control inputs that will kill the driver, but almost all of the technology strikes me as bizarre. Weapons that have to be aimed by hand, no drone weapons, dumb optics that allow retina-burning settings... it's very weird, and it surprises me how weird it is to me. I tried re-reading the Foundation series recently, and the section where Sneldon gets locked out on the surface of Trantor struck me as bizarre this time around now that I am accustomed to mobile phones. The idea that someone just doesn't normally carry a mobile, if not some kind of jazzy scifi implant thing, was very strange. Reading old scifi really shows you how the world has changed since it was written.
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Mar 27, 2015 16:35
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Mars4523 posted:It's a drat shame that battlecruisers suck so much. "Battlecruiser" just sounds so badass. Ultimately, the problem with Battlecruisers was that technology passed them by before they ever had a chance to shine. The basic premise of a battlecruiser was that "speed will be her armor" but by the time they actually got to fight anyone, in World War I, advances in gunnery meant that speed wasn't an effective defense after all. And then submarines had supplanted them as the better and cheaper commerce raiders. Then World War II came around, and by then there was nothing that a battlecruiser could do that a carrier couldn't do better. But hey, we're in the Space Opera forum! So if you the space opera author want to have a ship class called "battlecruiser" that doesn't suck rear end? You can! Weber and White do it in some of the Starfire books, and Weber likes battlecruisers in the Honor books as well. ArchangeI posted:Well, Truman once said the USMC had a propaganda apparatus that put the Soviet Union to shame. I can totally see Congress forcing the Air Force (or whoever ends up running the US space fleet) to take Marines on board for "self-protection" because the Marines whined to Congress about it. We are talking about a service who wanted a supersonic stealth fighter that can take off and land vertically so they can operate it from hastily-secured beachheads (in tyool 2015) and got it. Hey, sure, I'll have a look. I don't guarantee I'll have time to finish it, but if it's a compelling read I probably will regardless of whether I really have time to do so or not, that's just how I'm wired. We can have an in thread book club! 
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Mar 27, 2015 17:37
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Piell posted:I'd be interested in reading it. ed balls balls man posted:I'd give it a read as well. Ayn Marx posted:I also want to read that Captain Monkey posted:Link it or distribute this, I want to read it. If you guys could drop me a message at robertdreyerhro@gmail.com I can get it to you. Many thanks to those who have already contacted me, I hope you'll enjoy it.
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Mar 27, 2015 18:26
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Darkrenown posted:I read The Dragon Never Sleeps recently since it was recommended here, but I thought it was awful. For the first ~20% I had no idea what was going on and didn't care about any of the characters, for the last 80% I had no idea what was going on and didn't care about any of the characters but I was interested in hearing more about some of the concepts and how the Guardships worked so I kept reading. Nothing more was really revealed though and I don't feel like the plot went anywhere I'm not getting down on you or anything - you're free to like whatever books you want to like -, but these explanations are just the weirdest thing to me. There's lots of stuff going on, but it was all pretty clear. It's certainly not as easy a read as Harry Potter or anything. I feel like Malazan had a similar 'put you in the world and ask that you learn about it' process. Drifter fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Mar 28, 2015 |
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Mar 28, 2015 01:07
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Drifter posted:Wow. Way to sound like a grade-A dick, man. Yeah that read worse than was intended. I loved Armor. I have real doubts about any sequel written twenty years later, so I'm not sure if it was better to get a sequel or not.
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Mar 28, 2015 01:25
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Drifter posted:I'm not getting down on you or anything - you're free to like whatever books you want to like -, but these explanations are just the weirdest thing to me. There's lots of stuff going on, but it was all pretty clear. Yeah. It throws you in the deep end, but it's not exactly Finnegans Wake. There are lots of books where you just sort of have to go with it, and trust that the context will become clear. I thought that worked well in The Dragon Never Sleeps. Very simply, it's about an interstellar war and the people who cause/fight/try to profit by it. The meta plot is pretty simple. One thing that threw me off in addition to the minimal exposition was there's really no good or bad characters. A lot of traditional story structure is based on knowing who you're rooting for, and against. In this novel the characters realign several times, and people I assumed were supposed to be villains became protagonists in their own right. That was cool, but confusing at first, when you're also trying to get a handle on the setting.
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Mar 28, 2015 04:12
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If you want Mil SF that focuses more on ground-level combat than the usual space opera stuff, Ian Douglas's stuff has a bunch of that. He's got clear conservative leanings when it comes to politicians and their interactions with the military, and the whole ancient aliens thing isn't exactly unique, but it's fun reading. Also if you've got a hate on for the USMC you'd be best served elsewhere. Douglas was a Navy Corpsman, and loves his Marines. He has the Navy transition to being the service mostly responsible for spacecraft, which makes sense because there's a lot more institutional knowledge applicable to space travel/combat in the service used to confined spaces and crew-manned craft than in the Air Force. Using the Marines as the primary invasion force follows the same logic, they're a part of the Navy, and orbital insertions are basically the next generation of amphibious landings. The Corps is also a lot more specialized than the Army is, both in the actual world right now and in the books.
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Mar 29, 2015 02:32
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I thought of The Dragon Never Sleeps as a novelized EVE drama and it made more sense.
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Mar 29, 2015 06:24
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Tanith posted:I thought of The Dragon Never Sleeps as a novelized EVE drama and it made more sense. What's EVE?
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Mar 29, 2015 07:28
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https://www.eveonline.com/quote:EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online game set 23,000 years in the future. As an elite spaceship pilot, you will explore, build, and dominate across a universe of over 7,000 star systems. Sandbox gameplay and advanced skill-based progression provide you with a truly unique experience as you rise to power among the stars. aka spreadsheet simulator
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Mar 29, 2015 08:08
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thehomemaster posted:https://www.eveonline.com/ For some of us, it's Jabber Online.
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Mar 29, 2015 08:49
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Hmmm. That doesn't sound similar at all except for taking place in or around Space.Oh well.
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Mar 29, 2015 16:16
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Drifter posted:Hmmm. That doesn't sound similar at all except for taking place in or around Space.Oh well. https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/CONCORD_%28Mechanics%29 Space Police NPCs who keep the peace in their neck of the galaxy. The rest of it is just drama and backstabbing and crazy people trying to get a competitive edge and screw everyone else over.
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Mar 29, 2015 17:08
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Also, remember that The Dragon Never Sleeps is supposed to be a reinterpretation of the Norse Eddas in a sci-fi context.
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Mar 31, 2015 04:57
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ArchangeI posted:If you guys could drop me a message at robertdreyerhro@gmail.com I can get it to you. Would love to read this. I will email you shortly.
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Mar 31, 2015 08:31
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Drifter posted:I'm not getting down on you or anything - you're free to like whatever books you want to like -, but these explanations are just the weirdest thing to me. There's lots of stuff going on, but it was all pretty clear. I didn't much enjoy Malazan either, although I read the whole thing. I'm going to complain about TDNS a bit more, mostly just venting: The corporate people. They just constantly and seemingly pointlessly betray each other over and over, but I don't have any reason to care about any of them since they are all horrible, so I don't give a poo poo that X is betraying Y but really Y knows about it and is going to preemptively counter-betray X to Z who is also betraying X and Y. Uhoh, it turns out that X knew about both plots the whole time and is really meta-betraying Y and Z! Then at some point the corporate lady gets on an abandoned Guardship and it turns out that sometimes the Guardship's main computer becomes a naked retarded guy so she takes control of the ship by loving it. Now she has a Guardship! She has a plan to do...something! But then they go to a place and the ship gets destroyed, oh well. The outcast aliens - there's a psi alien involved in a pretty boring side story, and some kind of flying sex slave who don't really do much, and some kind of immortal super general who is great at space war. Super alien general has a plan to destroy the Guardships, but he doesn't really want to destroy them. Or Does he?! No, he doesn't. The Outsider empire. These guys want to take down the Guardships, but they're a bit poo poo. If they have super-general on their side and turn an entire solar system into a trap they can sometimes destroy a Guardship, but for the most part the war seems hopelessly one-side and the Guardships treat the whole thing as a bit of a chore. The Guardships do end up using all their stockpiled resources, but at the same time they are building a new even larger base to control still more of the galaxy and don't seem to bother sending any aid to the war besides the local forces. The Guardships. This was the best part of the book for me, it was pretty interesting to read about this immortal force which has been so powerful for so long they don't give a poo poo about the empire they defend and something like half the fleet is somewhere between eccentric and flat out mad. Some of them realise they're losing focus and stagnating, and that despite their power they have too large an area to defend effectively and may eventually be eclipsed if they don't change and refocus on their purpose. They seem to have plans to recruit new blood and expand the fleet, but nothing really happens before the book ends. I would have liked to hear more about the Guardships that went weird, how the Guardships became so untouchable, and the struggle to reform the fleet to be able to expand and stay motivated in their role.
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Mar 31, 2015 11:20
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I read all of falkenberg's legion over the last 4 days and it reminded me a lot of black company, are there anymore black company in space series that are good?
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Apr 5, 2015 07:37
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Washout posted:I read all of falkenberg's legion over the last 4 days and it reminded me a lot of black company, are there anymore black company in space series that are good? Maybe Tanya Huff's Confederation series? http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/772606.Valor_s_Choice I've never read Hammer's Slammers, but would that fit the bill? maybe to a lesser extent Tony Daniels' Metaplanetary series? <- This probably isn't like TBC, but I like it a lot.  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/116171.Metaplanetary Grand Central Arena by Ryk E Spoor? I enjoyed this one. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6948420-grand-central-arena Drifter fucked around with this message at 09:23 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 09:14
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ulmont posted:And A Civil Campaign before that. And Barrayar, for a lot of it. Romance mixed with other items is pretty much Bujold's stock in trade. The Sharing Knife is pretty great, the one issue I had with it was too much romance filler. Books one and two could easily have been combined if she'd edited out a bunch of unnecessary romance poo poo, mostly from the middle of book two. She did write it in such a way that I kept reading this time because she's established that exciting things could be expected to happen. Hopefully this new book will be chronologically after Cryoburn so we can finally get a glimpse of where things stand after Aral's death. Ending on something major like that, then not advancing the plot for 6 years kind of hurts. Casimir Radon fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 09:46
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Drifter posted:Maybe Tanya Huff's Confederation series? Be warned - Spoor lets his nerdboner swing free and proud. There's a decent classic space opera hidden behind all the silly references and shout-outs, but the series is only recommended if this page doesn't make you run away screaming.
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Apr 5, 2015 10:31
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Darth Walrus posted:Be warned - Spoor lets his nerdboner swing free and proud. There's a decent classic space opera hidden behind all the silly references and shout-outs, but the series is only recommended if this page doesn't make you run away screaming. Oh for gently caress's sake. None of those references anyone would get unless you're already some supernerd sperg. Nobody normal would piece that poo poo together unless they looked specifically at that page before reading the book, much less have the world be ruined because of it.
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Apr 5, 2015 10:46
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You may not get or care about the references, but when an author feels the need to explain that "Things were finally looking up." "is a fairly obvious equivalent of those devastating words "what could possibly go wrong?"" then I'm not sure I want to read any more of the guy's writing.
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Apr 5, 2015 11:07
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Casimir Radon posted:Hopefully this new book will be chronologically after Cryoburn so we can finally get a glimpse of where things stand after Aral's death. Ending on something major like that, then not advancing the plot for 6 years kind of hurts. I mentioned this before, but I was kinda afraid that Bujold would use that as a sort of natural ending point for Miles' story, and instead start focusing on either earlier adventures or more on other cast members. I hope that isn't the case 
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Apr 5, 2015 14:46
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rafikki posted:I mentioned this before, but I was kinda afraid that Bujold would use that as a sort of natural ending point for Miles' story, and instead start focusing on either earlier adventures or more on other cast members. I hope that isn't the case I think it is. The Ivan book was funny though.
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Apr 5, 2015 18:59
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Darth Walrus posted:Be warned - Spoor lets his nerdboner swing free and proud. There's a decent classic space opera hidden behind all the silly references and shout-outs, but the series is only recommended if this page doesn't make you run away screaming. Drifter posted:I've never read Hammer's Slammers, but would that fit the bill? (as Black Company In Space)
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Apr 5, 2015 20:06
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Washout posted:I read all of falkenberg's legion over the last 4 days and it reminded me a lot of black company, are there anymore black company in space series that are good? Did you read the other three novels? Falkenberg's Legion is just the first one.
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Apr 6, 2015 04:29
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Reading Hyperion now. It's very good.
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Apr 6, 2015 05:21
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Kesper North posted:I think it is. The Ivan book was funny though.
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Apr 6, 2015 09:39
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I just finished Hyperion and I am mad about the ending. Did anyone else finish Hyperion? I think the author just didn't know how to end it, couldn't get the 5th story to work, wrote them both out of the frame story and came up with the most ridiculous ending he could think of beyond ROCKS FALL EVERYONE DIES. FURIOUS SPOILERS The characters are about to reach the big reveal to the mult-part mystery all the stories have been building towards, then walk off towards their destination singing "we're off to see the wizard" and the book ends. That is not hyperbole, that is literally what happens in the end. I mean the first 500 pages were really good. Was Dan Simmons poor at the time or something? The ending reminds me very strongly of Farenheit 451's bizarre WELP I LITERALLY CAN'T AFFORD FOOD FOR MY FAMILY AND I ALREADY WROTE THE INTERESTING AND GOOD PART SO TIME TO PUBLISH THIS. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 10:02
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hannibal posted:Did you read the other three novels? Falkenberg's Legion is just the first one. Yeah I read a book a day when I actually have something to read, problem is finding stuff now that I haven't read before, I actually reread it because I had forgotten about it.
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Apr 6, 2015 11:17
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Arglebargle III posted:I just finished Hyperion and I am mad about the ending. Did anyone else finish Hyperion? I think the author just didn't know how to end it, couldn't get the 5th story to work, wrote them both out of the frame story and came up with the most ridiculous ending he could think of beyond ROCKS FALL EVERYONE DIES. OK, now read the next book.
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Apr 6, 2015 12:59
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RVProfootballer posted:OK, now read the next book. Yeah but stop after that one. Three and four are a hundred pages of plot scattered over 1100 pages of text, with an ending that completely fails to justify the time investment.
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Apr 6, 2015 13:51
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Arglebargle III posted:I just finished Hyperion and I am mad about the ending. Did anyone else finish Hyperion? I think the author just didn't know how to end it, couldn't get the 5th story to work, wrote them both out of the frame story and came up with the most ridiculous ending he could think of beyond ROCKS FALL EVERYONE DIES. I had the same experience. Everyone says to read the next book, but the opening was so tremendously dull that I could not bring myself to do so. I sort of chalked the ending up to "lol Canterbury Tales, lol actual literature" and moved on.
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Apr 6, 2015 17:01
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hannibal posted:Did you read the other three novels? Falkenberg's Legion is just the first one. Since the Falkenberg novels are set in the same continuity as the Mote in God's Eye books, I thought I'd take the opportunity to ask if anyone's read the third Mote book written by Jerry Pournelle's daughter, and if so, is it at least tolerable to read? Mote in God's Eye is one of my favorite books ever, and I even enjoyed The Gripping Hand for the most part, so I probably have higher tolerance for a lovely sequel to it than most, but "written by the daughter of the less-talented half of the original author pair" is a hard sell even so.
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Apr 6, 2015 17:30
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The Space Catholicism is the only good bit of Endymion and Rise of Endymion. The rest of it is more like the Ozzie parts of PFH's Commonwealth Saga, complete with annoying child. The series was worth reading once because I wanted to see how some of the more interesting plot lines got tied up, but I wouldn't do it again.
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Apr 6, 2015 17:45
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