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Kesper North posted:That was a great loving book. I wish it had been more successful, IIRC it didn't sell well enough for the writer to do any more books. Are you kidding me? That's pretty lovely. drat. 
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Jun 11, 2015 03:41
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coyo7e posted:Battle Royale is as much sci Fi as hunger games, which is to say not at all. The technology in HG doesn't really matter to anything. Where is the tom swift style stuff? Adventures with laser guns and robot dogs and spaceships? Hunger games isn't sci fi? They have a massive stadium with dynamic weather and significant amounts of genetic mutation; to the point where the bad guy sends mutated animals custom designed with Katniss's friends' faces on them to psych her out. The arenas are surrounded by force fields. I don't get it.
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Jun 11, 2015 05:11
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Kesper North posted:Oh my god, this might be amazing. edit: Not to open a can worms here, but there's more to sci-fi than future technology, it's more about the way you write about it. I wouldn't call say Bradbury science fiction just because he writes about space, for example.
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Jun 11, 2015 09:41
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I have finally completed the whole Polity books from neal Asher. I think there is just a short story book remaining, but I think I'll move to another universe for a while. The last book I've devoured is "Orbus", the third and final chapter of his Spatterjay series (although the action does not happen in Spatterjay but in that border-esque zone called "The Graveyard"). In my opinion Asher's skill as writer has gone from "quite good" to "really good". The character developing has improved a lot since his first works. Even though the main character (Orbus, a Spatterjay "Old Captain") is quite flat (not so flat as the early Cormack), the real stars of this book are the different Prador characters. Specially Vrell, who also appears in the other two Spatterjay books and ends in a very unexpected position. The Prador, who are depicted as the ultimate Bug Eyed Monsters in the other novels, receive a lot of writer's love in this novel. They are still (literally) BEMs, but at least their badassness has a (somehow) logical and evolutionary explanation. At the end the Prador are just being what they are, not the bunch of uber-evil monsters we saw before; actually, what they do to their human prisoners is not worse that what they do to their own kind, including their own children. Of course, Asher has to "fix" some loose knots introducing another kind of Prador, filthier than the usual one, just to explain how an uber-agressive and murderous species has been able to build an interstellar empire. And of course, everyone favourites aliens are back and I'm afraid this won't be the last time we know about the Jain. Oh, and the book is narrated in present tense, which makes it kind of different. And, of course, it uses that GRRM multiple-POV, one character per chapter approach. My final word: I've liked it. As well as the whole series. I started reading it as a matter of curiosity, since someone in this thread mentioned it like "what the Culture in a primitive stage would look like". I've got that, and awesome monsters (hooders, anyone?). And a mix of old-school Space Opera with ships as big as moons loving around, and a detectivesque plot, and some really bad, bad guys, and some cyberpunk added as spice. Good reads, thanks to whoever mentioned it here!
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Jun 11, 2015 11:29
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I read the novel Shambling Toward Hiroshima the other day and I have mixed feelings on it. It had an interesting premise but I can't help but feel that making the giant monsters real kind of undercut everything. Especially as they had absolutely no impact on the plot at all. The whole thing could have just been all faked and it would have worked just the same.
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Jun 11, 2015 12:13
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coyo7e posted:Kids. In. Space. Enders Game 
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Jun 11, 2015 18:12
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coyo7e posted:Alright let me clarify for everyone. I want YA sci Fi with space ships and poo poo. If the technology is not necessary to the world then it's not really fantas-I mean sci Fi, right? If it is older than 20 I am well aware of it and probably have a copy. John Barnes - Orbital Resonance
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Jun 11, 2015 20:14
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Adam Savage of Mythbusters has a Youtube thing where he infrequently does long interviews with people he finds interesting. He interviewed The Martian's author.
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Jun 11, 2015 21:35
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Read Swordspoint and The Privilege of the Sword today. They were good. Few random niggles: Both books felt rather... sparse? For lack of a better word. I like that in writing, but not so much in plotting; in both books events seem to progress directly from introduction to conclusion without any sort of intervening twists or complications, which made them feel like they were missing an act somewhere. Rather like the narrative equivalent of a boulder falling off a cliff. Where does it go? Straight to the bottom. I suppose the emotional arcs were supposed to be the real meat of both books, but, well, hmm. With a few exceptions, I never felt particularly invested in any of the characters. Richard hasn't got much in the way of passions or interests beyond swordfighting and Alec, which makes him a little flat, and he doesn't get enough interiority to stop him being overshadowed by more flamboyant characters. Alec I just didn't like that much. I think if I had a friend that determined to get himself killed I'd have thrown up my hands and wished him the best of luck with it inside a month. Or at least tried not to enable him. Possibly the moral of this story is that I am not a very good friend. Both of them felt better in Privilege, which is interesting, given how much more peripheral they were. Or, actually, I think the Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death short did more to endear Alec to me than both novels combined. As for the rest of the Swordspoint characters, Michael looked like he might be going somewhere interesting before he was abruptly bundled off to not!Araby, Ferris is more of a character sketch than a character and I don't think the Duchess gets any interiority at all, so who knows? Katherine was much more interesting, but her arc is still fairly direct. Not so much an arc as a straight line, in fact. Which reminds me. During the scene in the theatre where Kat goes backstage to meet the actress, I was struck by the fact that, for all the male homosexuality in the books, that was the first time anyone had even breathed the possibility of female homosexuality. I don't really know what to make of that; obviously the books are heavily dominated by male viewpoints in a society where female sexuality is much more tightly controlled than the male, but between all the gossip and the affairs and the libertines and the Riversiders you'd think it would have come up at least once.  I guess I have to track down the other books in the series, now, which might be tricky (I had to look at two websites to find these two, and settle for hard copies besides, the very thought); it doesn't look like The Fall of the Kings is even in print.
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Jun 11, 2015 23:08
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Autonomous Monster posted:I guess I have to track down the other books in the series, now, which might be tricky (I had to look at two websites to find these two, and settle for hard copies besides, the very thought); it doesn't look like The Fall of the Kings is even in print. It is, but it's...not good. Does weird things with some of the characters, has more explicit sex scenes with less emotional connection that are weird and (probably intentionally but no less disconcertingly) creepy, and twists from the light-fantasy no-magic setting into...whatever the hell it is. I wouldn't recommend bothering, which is a shame. I really liked the first two books (even if the thing with Michael was bizarre).
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Jun 12, 2015 01:01
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Accidental month of Kindle Unlimited trip report: I like Octavia Butler more than I thought - the Lilith's Brood trilogy was pretty darn good. PKD and Vonnegut are obviously still insane.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:56
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What would be some good series to check out now that I'm done with a few authors like Hobbs and Sanderson (excluding WoT which I couldn't get in to when I tried the first book)? Something like those or Fiest's Riftwar stuff would be good.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:08
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The Chathrand Voyage
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Jun 12, 2015 04:54
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HAPPY DANCE!!! Just got my kickstarter early copy of Distopia! Yall non backer peeps can buy it in 2 weeks 
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Jun 12, 2015 05:48
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savinhill posted:The Chathrand Voyage Seconding this. Amberskin posted:I have finally completed the whole Polity books from neal Asher. I think there is just a short story book remaining, but I think I'll move to another universe for a while. I don't know if I would call Ashers character descriptions good, although he has markedly improved from Gridlocked. There are some other Ashers books not from the Polity series which are pretty good. Cowl deals with time travels and transdimensional monsters, while the Owner series is located to our Solar system. Last one is pretty grim in many ways, but has the typical fast-paced Asher action.
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Jun 12, 2015 06:44
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Hedrigall posted:With regards to Stephen Baxter's Xeelee series, remind me... can I start with Vacuum Diagrams? Is it even advisable to do so? Yes. I very much enjoyed Vacuum Diagrams. I have tried to get into Baxter's other stuff but the furthest I could read of any of his books was about 40% of the way through Transcendent, at which point I said "I really don't care" and gave up.
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Jun 12, 2015 08:57
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Neurosis posted:Yes. I very much enjoyed Vacuum Diagrams. I have tried to get into Baxter's other stuff but the furthest I could read of any of his books was about 40% of the way through Transcendent, at which point I said "I really don't care" and gave up. Did you ever try Voyage? Outside of some Phase Space shorts it's my favorite Baxter by far.
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Jun 12, 2015 11:32
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Cardiac posted:Seconding this. Well, I didn't say "good", just "improved" As for further readings, I'm taking a break from Asher and I'll go for the Revelation Space series. I just purchased the full pack from Amazon and I have just begun to read the first book. Different tone and different pace, but the scenery descriptions are good so far. Chasm City seems to have a hughe potential to develop good stories. And the haunted ship ambientation looks good and eery.
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Jun 12, 2015 13:00
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Evil Fluffy posted:What would be some good series to check out now that I'm done with a few authors like Hobbs and Sanderson (excluding WoT which I couldn't get in to when I tried the first book)? Something like those or Fiest's Riftwar stuff would be good. P. C. Hodgell's Kencyrath series, which does not get nearly as much love as it deserves.
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Jun 12, 2015 14:00
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Kalenn Istarion posted:Hunger games isn't sci fi? They have a massive stadium with dynamic weather and significant amounts of genetic mutation; to the point where the bad guy sends mutated animals custom designed with Katniss's friends' faces on them to psych her out. The arenas are surrounded by force fields. I don't get it. Yah sci-fi is a broad umbrella, so much that any argument about a thing not being sci-fi is a bad conversation, imo.
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Jun 12, 2015 14:15
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This conversation reminds me, everyone should read this fantastic interview between Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro. A lot of talk about SF and genre, and a lot of other interesting discussion about fiction writing.
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Jun 12, 2015 14:52
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Speaking of sci-fi, or not sci-fi, I just read Memory of Water and really enjoyed it. It felt like a cross between Paolo Baccigalupi and A Handmaid's Tale with lots of tea thrown in.
bonds0097 fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Jun 12, 2015 |
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Jun 12, 2015 19:30
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Oh hey, people talking about John Barnes - do any of you know where one can find ebook versions of the GIraut/Thousand Cultures books? I have the first and the last in print, but can't find the others.
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Jun 12, 2015 21:52
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nvm Edit: Actually mind- The third one is on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Merchants-Souls-John-Barnes/dp/0812589696/ref=bseries_primary_1_0812589696 but no sign of the second one or the first one. I smell some bullshit publishing kerfuffle. General Emergency fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jun 12, 2015 |
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Jun 12, 2015 22:02
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So I just read The State of the Art by Iain Banks. I found most of the shorter stories in the collection more interesting than the titular story, although it wasn't bad per say, just not as good as other Culture books I've read. Probably the most amusing bit was a short section buried in an otherwise mostly incomprehensible story (to me at least, maybe I'm just missing something) at the tail end of the book: The History Of The Universe In Three Words (sic) THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE CHAPTER ONE Bang! CHAPTER TWO sssss . . . CHAPTER THREE crunch. THE END
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Jun 13, 2015 06:31
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I recently started to listen to the audiobook of The Red Knight, book 1 of the Traitor Son Cycle, by Christian Cameron (styled as Miles Cameron for some reason). I am really enjoying it. It's about heroic knights battling "the wild", which is anything from giant bears to demons to wyverns. What's interesting is that because a lot of the conflict is knights interacting, they go by the laws of the chivalry of the world, so there's a lot of assholes bowing and offering phony apologies and posturing over each other with words that seem benign but are to actually get ahead. There's also what I can only describe as "anime catholic" religion, which is very much about revering saints, the cross, the Jesus analogue (I think they call him Jesu), and that sort of thing but in a metal paladin way where soldiers are carried to their caskets on spears, and holy magic burns away evil and provides protection against it. It's pretty great. Also, the author is a turbonerd re-enactor and former Navy officer, and knows his arms, armor, and tactics. When he writes his gore and battle, he knows the difference between a fauld and a pauldron and describes fighting stances and stuff. It's almost like Warhammer fantasy with the serial filed off, but in a good way.
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Jun 13, 2015 16:16
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Firstborn posted:Christian Cameron (styled as Miles Cameron for some reason) Authors frequently use pen names when writing in different genres.
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Jun 13, 2015 16:37
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Yeah, I like Red Knight a lot, for most of the same reasons as you too. The author just nails that whole heroic medieval epic feel that I love in fantasy lit when its done well.
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Jun 13, 2015 17:53
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Anyone else reading nemesis games yet? I think this series has hit the point where I can't ignore the author's habits any longer and I'm starting to skim chapters that are overly predictable (too many).
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Jun 13, 2015 18:09
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Sextro posted:Anyone else reading nemesis games yet? I think this series has hit the point where I can't ignore the author's habits any longer and I'm starting to skim chapters that are overly predictable (too many). I just finished it last night actually. I'd kind of agree with you. There was a lot of predictable plot lines that the author's foreshadow rather clumsily early on. Naomi "We need more crew members Holden! Next chapter Alex meets Bobbie on Mars. Next chapter Amos meets Clarissa Mao. Also, how much they focus on that new engineer Sajaki or whatever his name was on Tycho station made it pretty obvious he was going to be the saboteur. I still enjoyed it though and thought it was a little better than the last one. It seemed like a set up novel for the rest of the series. For some reason I really enjoy sci fi that's pretty much confined to our solar system so I've really liked this series. It's definitely not great and like you said is fairly predictable but the books are generally fun and easy to read. I also finished the new Alastair Reynolds book Poseidon's Wake before I started Nemesis Games. Since I'm posting from my phone I'm going to leave it at, it was good, for now. I'm starting his novella Slow Bullets next today too and I've heard it's a return to his Revelation Space darker style sci fi compared to his last trilogy. johnsonrod fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Jun 13, 2015 |
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Jun 13, 2015 21:24
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Should I read Neverness before A Requiem for Homo Sapiens? I can't believe I hadn't heard of these books earlier, the concepts sound so loving cool.
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Jun 14, 2015 12:00
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Neurosis posted:Should I read Neverness before A Requiem for Homo Sapiens? I can't believe I hadn't heard of these books earlier, the concepts sound so loving cool. Tell me more!
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Jun 14, 2015 16:12
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Yes. If anything read Neverness instead of Requiem. These are soft sf novels by David Zindell, who also wrote an epic fantasy series I haven't read. They're set a long way in the future, in an elaborate and decadent world rendered in sometimes-confusing archaisms, neologisms, and everyday words with new meanings. Quick, what do cark, tlot, space, membrum, and hibakusha mean? I think only one of those is actually made up - a lot of the time he's doing the Gene Wolfe thing. He also pinches liberally from history and literature, especially The Glass Bead Game. The most important worldbuilding points are that interstellar travel is done by jumping into another kind of dimension, or something, called the manifold, and you must travel through it via solving equations. All space travellers are mathematicans. The other point is that some beings in the universe are so powerful they are called gods - not supernatural, some are posthuman or AI, others are worshipped by huge cults. Although one of the laws kind of holding this civilisation together forbids genetic engineering, there's a lot of sorta-posthuman stuff, including people who chose to regress to being Neanderthals. The aliens are weird but not generally dwelt on. The most actually important points are that they are deeply romantic and mystical, ornate epics about humanity and transcendence and good and evil, struggling to find the Truth as manifested inside our DNA by ancient aliens who were almost God. The descriptions of travelling through the manifold by solving equations, and mystical experiences, are a particular highlight. It's no coincidence the main organisation in the series is called the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame - but don't worry, it's a lot earthier and more humane than that makes it seem. (Part of the climax of the trilogy hinges on one guy pissing in another's beer.) There's lots of sex, mostly well-done.* The characters are driven, cruel, irresponsible, priapic, charming, compelling, insane, and arrogant. Neverness is about a young pilot (i.e. space-travelling mathematician) called Mallory Ringess who meets a god, searches for the information in our DNA, spends time as a caveman, fucks his sister and witnesses her being torn apart by his friends, fights in a war, is imprisoned, has serious Dad issues, fights superhuman Nietzschean warrior-poets, and experiences a form of transcendence. A Requiem for Homo Sapiens is a trilogy - The Broken God, The Wild, and War in Heaven - about his son Danlo who grows up as a caveman, sees everyone else he knows die, eats his best friend, comes to civilisation, and becomes a pupil of an alien teaching a philosophical system which aims at transcendence and is I think ripped off from Samuel R. Delany, becomes a pilot, saves a stranger's life who becomes a close friend, then they get in on day one of a new and incredibly popular cult, has adventures in space with gods and forgotten civilisations, witnesses a war being fought amongst the whole human civilisation, returns to Neverness, contemplates non-violence in a starving city and experiences another form of transcendence. I left a lot out of both of these descriptions. Forgive me if I'm gushing; they're dense and full of fascinating detail and philosophical pondering. They're nowhere near perfect though. The philosophy, I suspect, is not very good at all. The trilogy changes some major stuff in Neverness that makes it less impressive. Danlo and Tamara are basically Mary Sues, although this was arguably inevitable given the story they're in. There's some bad sex writing, but only one. Some of the characters are a bit black and white. The ending of Requiem is a bit disappointing in its tight focus on Danlo. The universe is baroque and poorly explained and maybe not too convincing. I've described their romantic and mystical elements as a plus, but they might not be for anyone else. If you're after cool stuff, you'll find it in spades. If you're after more, you will probably find them very interesting books - I feel Zindell could have been a major sf writer, but he didn't seem to want that. I'm a bit surprised you've never heard of them, General - I think you'll find them interesting, ultimately not your bag, but I strongly recommend them to you *I.e. not detailed.
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Jun 14, 2015 17:38
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Just finished Leviathan Wakes, and enjoyed it quite a bit. How are the rest of the Expanse novels?
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Jun 14, 2015 23:42
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Just finished Leviathan Wakes, and enjoyed it quite a bit. How are the rest of the Expanse novels? I am currently enjoying Calibans War very much. It maintains much of the same pacing and momentum, and takes off right where LW leaves off.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:15
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Just finished Leviathan Wakes, and enjoyed it quite a bit. How are the rest of the Expanse novels? If you liked the first one you'll like the second. The third is much slower paced, it's where you can tell they suddenly realized they had another 3 still to write and start padding things out. It isn't bad, but it's not all that great either - it's an Act One that occupies a whole novel. By the time of the fourth one the contract had Expanded to 9 total books - 5 more to write, and while 4 doesn't drag as badly as 3, it still feels side-questy, although the (presumably) Overarching Plot is now somewhat revealed. But it's a change of setting and is alright. I haven't read the fifth yet one but people seem to like it more than 3 and 4, so I'm hopeful about it.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:20
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Also if you haven't heard Syfy is turning it into a series that starts in December.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:23
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Alastair Reynolds is loving good. I read Revelation Space in one tirade, and I've had to slow my reading or else I'll munch the whole RS collection in five days. Wow!
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Jun 15, 2015 09:07
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:I am currently enjoying Calibans War very much. It maintains much of the same pacing and momentum, and takes off right where LW leaves off. Also it's got at least one character who's much better than anyone in the first book. (It seems the people making the TV show have understood this and are featuring said character from the start.)
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Jun 15, 2015 11:12
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Groke posted:Also it's got at least one character who's much better than anyone in the first book. (It seems the people making the TV show have understood this and are featuring said character from the start.) Actually, Caliban's war introduces TWO new awesome characters, and I hope they are back in the new book. To be honest, Holden gets quite better in Cibola Burns, which is the only book in the series so far which DOES NOT feature cartoonish big-moustached villains. The bad guy in Cibola is kinda believable and even has his points some times. E: I have not read the new one yet.
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Jun 15, 2015 11:28
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