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WarLocke posted:I liked those books too. Why can't Weber finish what he starts? I've looked this up on Wikipedia, apparently the third book in the series comes out 2016 and a fourth one is planned. I guess Weber would like to abandon the series, but his co-author Linda Evans forces him to go through with this to the bitter end. 
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Jul 23, 2015 13:35
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Libluini posted:I've looked this up on Wikipedia, apparently the third book in the series comes out 2016 and a fourth one is planned. I guess Weber would like to abandon the series, but his co-author Linda Evans forces him to go through with this to the bitter end. I expect contracts are involved.
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Jul 23, 2015 22:37
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Actually I remember Weber being very interested in continuing it but Linda Evans, for whatever reason, couldn't? Maybe health? The third book is with a different coauthor.quote:At the same time, this is definitely a series I intend to get back to as soon as humanly possible. I love the storyline, Linda and I have put a lot of thought into where the series needs to go, I like working with her, and this is a story I've wanted to tell for the next best thing to 20 years. The problem, of course, is when "as soon as humanly possible" is going to come, and all I can say in this case is that I hope it's sooner, rather than later. so he's been building interdimensional trainsets in his basement for decades. Someone send out the intervention team.
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Jul 23, 2015 23:57
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I poked around. Yep Linda Evans is unfortunately suffering from unspecified but apparently serious health issues. So he's currently got Honorverse ( with five sub series), Safehold, and the War God series on the go. Seems like a perfect time to start a new multi-volume series.  Fortunately I've bailed on pretty much everything now. I think the last book of his I read was half of book 3/4? of the Safehold series. When I had exactly the same reaction as reading book 6 of the Wheel of Time. I don't remember who half these people are, or what half these plot threads reference, and I no longer care about either. If/when he ever get's around to writing a new mainline Honor Harrington book I might actually read it out of Morbid Curiosity/Nostalgia. Shame, I used to love Weber. He was never the greatest writer but he used to write fun 350 page (more or less) self-contained stories that I'd really enjoy.
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Jul 24, 2015 15:18
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God, I actually enjoyed the Safehold series for a few books but the "y in every name" gimmick is annoying as gently caress and I have no idea what's going on right now. Also I'm really tired of the really loving stupid enemy generals who keep on marching their troops into meat grinders or allowing their armies to ignore their supply lines and die on the vine. I realize that it's somewhat realistic (history is full of insanely stupid general staff ordering their men to do incredibly stupid things in the name of glory) but this is fiction, and fiction needs to have stakes/be entertaining. A better writer would have the good guy forces outrun their supply lines or something, leaving the army to be forced to take shelter in the face of a bad winter as the main characters scramble to resupply their forces.
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Jul 24, 2015 15:31
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Mars4523 posted:God, I actually enjoyed the Safehold series for a few books but the "y in every name" gimmick is annoying as gently caress and I have no idea what's going on right now. Also I'm really tired of the really loving stupid enemy generals who keep on marching their troops into meat grinders or allowing their armies to ignore their supply lines and die on the vine. I realize that it's somewhat realistic (history is full of insanely stupid general staff ordering their men to do incredibly stupid things in the name of glory) but this is fiction, and fiction needs to have stakes/be entertaining. A better writer would have the good guy forces outrun their supply lines or something, leaving the army to be forced to take shelter in the face of a bad winter as the main characters scramble to resupply their forces. Yeah, David Weber is obnoxiously bad with only the bad guys being dumb. If you read through the Honorverse books, you'll notice how the bad Havenites are always losing as long as their commanders are bad guys and as soon as they get some good guys, suddenly Manticore gets a bad guy government and starts losing. Then new bad guys enter the scene and the Manticore-government switches back to good so both Haven and Manticore can team up. It's like David Weber is flipping a giant switch with sirens going off whenever it happens. It's immersion breaking like a nuclear bomb going off right next to you while you're reading.
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Jul 24, 2015 17:26
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Oh god i've just remembered. It wasn't a Safehold book. The last one I read was 'Out of the Dark'. Which was just  when I finished reading it.
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Jul 24, 2015 17:36
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Deptfordx posted:Oh god i've just remembered. It wasn't a Safehold book. The last one I read was 'Out of the Dark'. Which was just Haha, isn't that the one where 90% of the book is aliens roflstomping Earth and then the last 10% is vampires literally coming out of nowhere, never mentioned before in the book to save the day? 
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Jul 24, 2015 17:50
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WarLocke posted:Haha, isn't that the one where 90% of the book is aliens roflstomping Earth and then the last 10% is vampires literally coming out of nowhere, never mentioned before in the book to save the day? That's the one and it's not just They're Vampires. They're basically Superheroes they're so powerful. They literally board the Alien motherships by clinging on to the sides of the Alien shuttles as they return to the ships in orbit. Basically the Aliens curbstomp the humans until the Vampires appear, then the Vampires curbstomp the Aliens, the end. Apparently it was originally a short story which might have been a amusing read but Weber thought. 'Say what if I rewrote this story, only 10 times longer and half as interesting. See also 'Heirs of empire' and Safehold.
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Jul 24, 2015 18:17
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I think I may well be the biggest Weber fan in the thread, but even I have absolutely no desire for more Hell’s Gate books. Those were awful.
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Jul 27, 2015 13:21
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Darkrenown posted:I think I may well be the biggest Weber fan in the thread, but even I have absolutely no desire for more Hell’s Gate books. Those were awful. I made it less than halfway through the first. Life's too short.
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Jul 28, 2015 23:24
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So I started in on Evan Currie's other scifi series, Odyssey. First, a warning: the first book in the series was apparently the first book the guy ever wrote, and god drat does it show. The grammar is strange as hell, people don't talk naturally, and there are way too many run-on sentences that should have been caught in editing. Also, the book seems to average 2 to 3 commas per sentence. It was honestly a slog to get through. But we all know I love terrible books, and there was enough good old grand space opera stuff to keep me engaged. The second book is a huge jump in quality and the scope of the plot/conflict gets even crazier. If you enjoyed his other series, Warrior's Wings, this one is pretty similar stuff, just focusing more on space battleships and fighter craft. There's an odd mixture of cliches (at least one group of the 'aliens' are actually human... somehow, and the bad guys are your typical giant bug race only silicon-based with lava for blood and procreate geometrically by eating dirt) with more interesting ideas (One of the... characters is either a planetary gestalt mind or possibly a telepathic star-based lifeform, jury's still out. And a Dyson Swarm features prominently in the second book, cosmic megastructures are always cool). They're definitely not "good" books, but if you need/want some sci-fi chaff to chew through they're not terrible.
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Jul 28, 2015 23:46
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Yeah, I'm reading the 2nd book now. I came very close to quitting during the first one, I think if I hadn't enjoyed Warrior's wings so much I would have. It picks up later on, I thought, the last third or so of the book was enough to make me want to read the next one. I wish people would smirk a bit less in his books though. Also, I'm incredibly annoyed no one is making a greater effort to ask the Colonials about Galactic history, who created the bugs, how there is a whole space empire of humans and apparently several other planets of non-spacefaring humans, or what this Oath they keep hinting at is about. At one point the Colonial Admiral tells the Odyssey captain they have been active in space for 8000 years and the captain basically just thinks that's kinda interesting and talks about something else. ASK about these things, damnit!
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Jul 30, 2015 12:19
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After seeing the discussion of the Safehold series, I decided to do an experiment. Surely my enjoying the Harrington series was merely a fluke, and my taste isn't this abysmal, right? Nope, I'm hopeless.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:38
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kznlol posted:After seeing the discussion of the Safehold series, I decided to do an experiment. Surely my enjoying the Harrington series was merely a fluke, and my taste isn't this abysmal, right? Ah, but how many books have you read, even I made it to book 4 before I gave up.
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Aug 1, 2015 12:13
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Deptfordx posted:Ah, but how many books have you read, even I made it to book 4 before I gave up. That's interesting, I just counted the Safehold-books on my shelf. I also only made it to book 4. 
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Aug 1, 2015 13:01
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Darkrenown posted:I think I may well be the biggest Weber fan in the thread, but even I have absolutely no desire for more Hell’s Gate books. Those were awful. They feel like Weber.txt to me: interesting ideas drowned in tedium and unlikable, uninteresting characters. I love the idea of a purely tech-based civilization running into a magic-based civilization and the weirdness that results, like the mages being utterly bewildered by the concept of indirect fire, but... Weber. At least the Safehold series manages to be enjoyable tedium for me, with occasional genuinely neat moments like the arrival of steam-powered ironclads freaking people the gently caress out because holy God boats aren't supposed to move BACKWARDS!
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Aug 1, 2015 13:21
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Deptfordx posted:Ah, but how many books have you read, even I made it to book 4 before I gave up. I finished 7 and got annoyed there weren't more.
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Aug 1, 2015 21:09
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Libluini posted:That's interesting, I just counted the Safehold-books on my shelf. I also only made it to book 4. If I remember correctly doesn't it start off with a
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Aug 1, 2015 22:37
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Deptfordx posted:If I remember correctly doesn't it start off with a That sounds like a description of any random 50 pages in the first 4 books.
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Aug 2, 2015 01:56
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As someone who's life was measurably changed by the first Terran Trade Authority book, Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD, it gladdens my heart to see this little video. (Which is apparently three years old) https://vimeo.com/29549708
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Aug 7, 2015 00:50
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Madurai posted:As someone who's life was measurably changed by the first Terran Trade Authority book, Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD, it gladdens my heart to see this little video. (Which is apparently three years old) Oh man, I loved that and Great Space Battles. I honestly think that they and Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials both had a huge influence on shaping my interest in space opera. Have you read any of the TTA roleplaying game adaptations that came out about a decade ago? They change the setting to 2100-2200 AD, but other than that hew very close to the feel and info of the original TTA books, and do a good job actually going into the societies and biology of the Alphans and Proximans.
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Aug 7, 2015 01:20
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Chairman Capone posted:Oh man, I loved that and Great Space Battles. I honestly think that they and Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials both had a huge influence on shaping my interest in space opera. I saw that they existed, but never got around to getting hold of them.
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Aug 7, 2015 01:32
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I asked in the recommendations thread, but I guess I might have more luck here. I just finished the most recent book of The Expanse series and I'm itching for more zerglike aliens and deep space explorationy stuff. Not sure I want some huge long epic million book series, but anything would be nice as I'm not sure what to read next. Thanks in advance!
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Aug 7, 2015 02:57
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Reason posted:I asked in the recommendations thread, but I guess I might have more luck here. I just finished the most recent book of The Expanse series and I'm itching for more zerglike aliens and deep space explorationy stuff. Not sure I want some huge long epic million book series, but anything would be nice as I'm not sure what to read next. Thanks in advance! Not sure about "explorationary" stuff, but some good bug/crab aliens are from Neal Asher's Polity series. Very actiony. A.A Attanasio had a pretty god damned great book in the 4th of the Radix Tetrad, The Last Legends of the Earth. Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought duology is one serious fuckin'  Great great books.ihaven't read it, but I like the author, what about something like Julie Czerneda's Species Imperative series? Drifter fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 05:30
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I'm working my way through the latest Expanse book too. While I really like the series overall, its driving me nuts how the governments in the series never actually do anything, to the point where its seriously breaking my immersion.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:01
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:I'm working my way through the latest Expanse book too. While I really like the series overall, its driving me nuts how the governments in the series never actually do anything, to the point where its seriously breaking my immersion. I'm going to start Leviathan Wakes soon and hearing that kind of bums me out. It's one of my pet peeves in SF and fantasy honestly, governments are either big and bad or non-entities at best. This was in part why I quite liked The Prefect which seems to have started as a thought experiment on what a space-faring central government, which is by its very nature going to have to be very hands-off, might look like.
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Aug 7, 2015 09:58
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I'm not sure I agree with the criticism entirely but I can see why OtherworldlyInvader might feel that way. The government stuff tends to happen slowly (often between books) and on a whole different scale. After the events at the beginning of Leviathan Wakes, the Earth and Mars governments do a whole lot of stuff, but none of it helps out the crew of Rocinante, and because the governments don't have the information the main characters have, it's mostly counter-productive.
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Aug 7, 2015 15:01
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Reason posted:I asked in the recommendations thread, but I guess I might have more luck here. I just finished the most recent book of The Expanse series and I'm itching for more zerglike aliens and deep space explorationy stuff. Not sure I want some huge long epic million book series, but anything would be nice as I'm not sure what to read next. Thanks in advance! A. E. van Vogt's The Voyage of the Space Beagle is an early classic in this genre. Even though it was written in the 1940s it still has some pretty out-there stuff by today's standards, also the author claimed that the movie Alien ripped off one of the book's storylines. Antti posted:This was in part why I quite liked The Prefect which seems to have started as a thought experiment on what a space-faring central government, which is by its very nature going to have to be very hands-off, might look like. Actually using this as a jumping-off point, are there any books that go into any sort of detail about how an interstellar government functions? This was a minor aspect of Lockstep, and I kind of remember it being also smaller parts of The Risen Empire and Ben Bova's To Save the Sun/To Fear the Light duology, but something which actually focuses on the difficulties of running such a government (other than Weber-like space UK vs. space Jacobin pap). Chairman Capone fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 16:57
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:I'm working my way through the latest Expanse book too. While I really like the series overall, its driving me nuts how the governments in the series never actually do anything, to the point where its seriously breaking my immersion. Hmm, I'm just starting Leviathan Wakes myself too. Good to know going in. Honestly I don't actually know much about the Expanse series, somewhat intentionally, so I don't have any expectations for the books to live up to.
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Aug 9, 2015 20:36
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Zorak of Michigan posted:I'm not sure I agree with the criticism entirely but I can see why OtherworldlyInvader might feel that way. The government stuff tends to happen slowly (often between books) and on a whole different scale. After the events at the beginning of Leviathan Wakes, the Earth and Mars governments do a whole lot of stuff, but none of it helps out the crew of Rocinante, and because the governments don't have the information the main characters have, it's mostly counter-productive. Well my main issue is that the Governments rarely seem to take action in situations where common sense would demand some sort of action. I mean, I'd be fine with foolish or counter-productive responses to problems, that happens all the time in real life, but the complete lack of them starts to break suspension of disbelief. Its been a while since I read this one, but In Leviathan Wakes: A major space station is taken over by alien zerg goop, killing a million and a half people on live TV. Earth apparently owns this station, yet appears to take no serious actions toward dealing with the situation until the entire thing starts moving weeks later. In Caliban's War: The decision of whether or not Earth and Mars go to war rests entirely in the hands of trigger happy field commanders and not the actual governments. I'm still working my way through this one, but in Nemesis Games: Both the Earth and Mars governments seem content to allow unrestricted civilian traffic through the alien gate into thousands of unexplored alien star systems. There are so many things wrong with that I don't even know where to start, I mean we're only a couple years out from the aliens who built this thing wiping out a major metropolitan area.  Mars somehow misplaced dozens of fully armed warships, and their top secret encryption codes to genocidal terrorists.  At this point I'd prefer actively malevolent governments over suicidally lackadaisical ones. I'm being pretty harsh on this, on the whole I really enjoy the series, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for some modern space opera. In most other things the Author has done a great job building a convincing universe, he just never seemed to put anyone in control of what are supposed to be the 2 major governments. OtherworldlyInvader fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 23:52
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I did not like Aurora. What I did not like was the narrative style in general was something I didn't like. It was very sciency all sorts of numbers and other stuff that were interesting, but in the end felt really boring. It seemed like a ton of stuff was glossed over, you don't find out what happens to Iris until some long amount of time after they've stopped sending communications. A bunch of other stuff felt just thrown together. Overall it also was just not a fun book. It was very bleak.
Doorknob Slobber fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 00:14
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Reason posted:I did not like Aurora. I'm like 75% through it and it seems like kind of a mess of a book that can't decide what it wants to be about. I also feel like Robinson kind of glossed over the first planetfall part, so it comes across as if the colonists didn't even try to solve their problem before running away. They just spent 170 years flying to this planet, and they give up on it within what feels like 5 pages of text..
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Aug 10, 2015 00:17
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Y'all joking, right?Reason posted:I did not like Aurora. What I did not like was the narrative style in general was something I didn't like. It was very sciency all sorts of numbers and other stuff that were interesting, but in the end felt really boring. It seemed like a ton of stuff was glossed over, you don't find out what happens to Iris until some long amount of time after they've stopped sending communications. A bunch of other stuff felt just thrown together. Overall it also was just not a fun book. It was very bleak. Welcome to KSR, I guess it's personal taste. None of it was thrown together though, and I suppose it wasn't fun? But hey, again, personal I guess. I mean, if you missed the whole narrative voice of a computer being a computer, then no one can help you. And you can't really say the in-depth stuff was boring then turn around and say stuff was glossed over. Did they even say what happened to Iris, I don't think it mattered anyway. PINING 4 PORKINS posted:I'm like 75% through it and it seems like kind of a mess of a book that can't decide what it wants to be about. I also feel like Robinson kind of glossed over the first planetfall part, so it comes across as if the colonists didn't even try to solve their problem before running away. They just spent 170 years flying to this planet, and they give up on it within what feels like 5 pages of text.. It knows exactly what it wants to be about, how can you miss it? And I hardly see how he glossed over something he went into quite stringent detail about, such as the geography and how they overcame it. Also, the problem they have to overcome is, uh, pretty much unsolveable for their intended goals. How the gently caress can you say 5 pages of text when a literal revolution took place before a decision was made? What I'm saying is I just understand either of you.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:25
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thehomemaster posted:Y'all joking, right? The "revolution" was over the decision to leave or settle on the Iris, not Aurora (with a sentence mention of people researching a way to 'fix' Aurora in the future), and it seemed a foregone conclusion from the beginning that the two camps would go their separate ways. I'd say Kim glossed over the settlement of the planet in two ways: he didn't do a great job of showing how invested they were in staying on the planet, and he didn't do a great job of showing how the people tried to solve the issue of a mysterious pathogen. He decided to portray that through the research of a single character and talked about how years and years of decisionmaking were devoted to the question of leaving the system or settling on the airless planet but not to coming up with a way to live on Aurora, so to me, personally, it seemed as if nobody really cared that much. Was the problem actually unsolvable? I can see how, but the book didn't do much to convince me. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 03:40
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Dude the entire premise of, like, every book about generation ships is about how those who reach the end are not those that commenced the journey. Don't put revolution in quote marks either, it was a split down the middle with hundreds dead. They were dealing with an unknown pathogen (no even strictly bacterial/viral) so yes it's pretty clearly an almost impossible problem to solve. I mean, that's part of the genius of the book, how everyone freaks out about aliens with tentacles and consciousness, but like on earth it's the invisible things that would kill you. The entire book talked about Plan B, which was Iris. Half the ship wanted to stay, and the other half wanted to go home to the only planet they knew would support them. I still don't get how you can think anything was glossed over. For those interested in an excerpt. http://thebaffler.com/stories/aurora thehomemaster fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 04:00
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thehomemaster posted:They were dealing with an unknown pathogen (no even strictly bacterial/viral) so yes it's pretty clearly an almost impossible problem to solve. Using lasers to send spaceships to distant stars is a difficult problem, too. What about the pathogen problem was so plainly an unsolvable issue? The single person researching it couldn't figure out if it even existed - why not? Why wasn't inoculation or eradication a short or medium term possibility? Why did the passengers so quickly decide that their years were better spent deciding how to making a habitat work on Iris rather than staying in orbit around Aurora?
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Aug 10, 2015 04:11
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Problems of engineering would be far preferable to ones of biology. Did you even read the book? It's about the problems of balancing life, the tiny details that could kill us, small imbalances that require some luck to solve. The problem of biology is central to the themes. Like, they can barely keep ahead of bacteria ON the ship, how the gently caress are they meant to adapt to an alien pathogen? And as I said, it was foreshadowed that if Aurora failed they had a back up. Aurora was deemed extremely hostile, so the back up was always on the cards. The real twist was people realising their only real hope was earth. And from a plot perspective KSR made a far more exciting choice. I'd loved to have read a book where they solved the biology problem and then just happily settled Aurora!
thehomemaster fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 04:13
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thehomemaster posted:Did you even read the book? Unnecessary. I get it. I agree with everything you just wrote in your post. My posts have been about how poor of a job KSR did of convincing me that the problems on Aurora were so significant. The problems of the decaying environment aboard the ship were much more visceral and convincing, and I think he did a great job making me feel the despair the inhabitants must have felt as their numerous stop-gap methods failed one-by-one to fix an extraordinarily complex biological relationship that they plainly were under equipped to handle. The author did a far better job showing me the dire situation of the ship than the dire situation of the planet, which I felt he !!!! GLOSSED OVER !!! Given what happened on the return trip to Earth, I understand that the passengers didn't have the slightest idea of how to manage their own ecosystem, much less a brand new planet's, so I get why they had issues. I just think there was much less effort on their part to work with the planet, and on KSR's part to describe why it was such a problem.. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 04:19
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Yeah fair enough, sorry for the outburst. And yes fair enough on your point. Maybe I just can't see how he could have really brought out more in that section? Like, is it necessary? I thought the scene with Euan dying was pretty powerful tbh, really haunting and beautiful. Then again maybe KSR had his agenda and wanted to get on with it.
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Aug 10, 2015 04:24
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