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That was a really weird relationship. I hope it wasn't typical of the era. 
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Oct 8, 2015 04:32
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I remember getting Star Surgeon because one of the aliens from it was in Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials and looked and sounded really interesting, but just couldn't get into the book. There are actually a number of space opera books I read mainly because an alien from them was illustrated in Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. Great gateway scifi book.
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Oct 8, 2015 04:36
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Does anyone else remember the story about the space dentist that saves the universe? I can't remember for sure but I think Piers Anthony wrote it in his pre-pedo days.
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Oct 8, 2015 07:09
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Washout posted:Piers Anthony Washout posted:pre-pedo days I think you have him confused with somebody else.
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Oct 8, 2015 07:12
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Khizan posted:I think you have him confused with somebody else. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0688097057/qid=1128391115/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-3733786-4844738?v=glance&s=books Reviews.
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Oct 8, 2015 07:19
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No, I mean that Piers Anthony didn't have any pre-pedo days; all of his days are pedo days. Edit: Also Jesus loving Christ that loving book has 35% five star reviews. quote:By Amazon Customer on June 6, 2002 quote:By Kimberly Bessent on June 14, 2009 quote:By A customer on February 9, 1999 quote:Anthony's most Erotic book! Good reading with the wife! Khizan fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Oct 8, 2015 |
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Oct 8, 2015 07:21
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Baloogan posted:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0688097057/qid=1128391115/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-3733786-4844738?v=glance&s=books So the impression I'm getting from this thread is that Sector General is unironic Garth Marenghi's Doctor Rick Dagless MD In Space?
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Oct 8, 2015 07:22
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Mustang posted:I just started the Culture series with Player of Games last week and finished Use of Weapons today. God drat. For some reason before I ever read any of the Culture series I never imagined it to be as dark as it is, and I love it. Should I go ahead and start Consider Phlebas or go read some other Culture novel next? Totally up to you, it's all good. Consider Phlebas is overall probably the weakest Culture novel, but the Idiran war is a pretty major part of the setting. Also, if you like dark and nasty, then it's got some real treats for you.
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Oct 8, 2015 07:25
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Cythereal posted:Anyone familiar with Roger MacBride Allen's books? I picked up The Depths of Time from a bargain bin and enjoyed it well enough. Not great but fine for $5 and Amazon says there are two more in the series. Anyone know if they're worth ordering if I liked the first one? He has a couple of space opera books that I loved a lot. The Torch of Honor and Rogue Powers, later collected into an omnibus collection with the exceedingly-generic title Allies and Aliens. He also did a book called The Modular Man about loading brains into computers that's pretty great. He also did a series called The Hunted Earth about a wormhole network buried inside planets. Was thinking about that a lot with the Pluto pictures, since the first book is called The Ring of Charon.
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Oct 8, 2015 08:20
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oTHi posted:I like Sector General, apart from the 50s misogyny. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that when Spinrad wrote The Iron Dream, E. E. Smith was one of the authors he had in mind.
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Oct 8, 2015 10:08
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Baloogan posted:I'm glad that between Expanse and OMW we are spoilt for space opera. The only bad thing about Expanse is now we have to wait for the next book. (I hate it when books end on giant cliffhangers.  )
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Oct 8, 2015 11:06
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Yeah wtf was that honestly. Expanse Nemesis Games Spoilers I was so down with the conceit introduced at the beginning of the novel: don't go looking for spooky alien poo poo to explain space ships disappearing, humans by themselves are enough to have crazy space drama with. Then: boom, space aliens responsible for crazy space poo poo. Still a great book, but I really liked the idea that just humans being humans was enough of an explanation.
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Oct 8, 2015 11:10
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Baloogan posted:Yeah wtf was that honestly. Expanse Nemesis Games Spoilers I was so down with the conceit introduced at the beginning of the novel: don't go looking for spooky alien poo poo to explain space ships disappearing, humans by themselves are enough to have crazy space drama with. Then: boom, space aliens responsible for crazy space poo poo. Still a great book, but I really liked the idea that just humans being humans was enough of an explanation. Come on, the aliens attacking was telegraphed practically from the beginning of the book. I just didn't expect the book to end right when they start eating battleships. Books stopping at the best part are the worst. 
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Oct 8, 2015 11:33
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In sector general's universe the way the heros become supreme ET doctors is via taking recorded tapes of the brains of great alien doctors. Its really how a huge multi-species hospital can operate (heh). Sector General Series posted:"As for the girls," he went on, a sardonic edge in his voice, "you have noticed by this time that the female Earth-human DBDG has a rather peculiar mind. One of its peculiarities is a depp, sex-based mental fastidiousness. No matter what they say they will not, repeat not, allow alien beings to apparently take over their pretty little brains. If such should happen, severe mental damage would result. No again. Off."
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Oct 10, 2015 07:48
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Washout posted:Does anyone else remember the story about the space dentist that saves the universe? I can't remember for sure but I think Piers Anthony wrote it in his pre-pedo days. I don't recall them saving the universe, although I do recall that the plot twist at the end was the guy realizing that he was actually a slave laborer who would spend the rest of his life being traded from one weird alien race to another.
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Oct 11, 2015 05:22
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I'm still enjoying the Sector General books, one book involved surgery on a patient the size of a continent using warships. Was cool. The continent sized creature had serious cancer due to some rear end in a top hat (but comic) water aliens who were very pleased with the lovely nuclear weapons they built. The water aliens have to keep moving to stay alive, so procreation involves two of them rolling past each other shouting reasons to copulate at each other right before they collide. This makes the water aliens really loud and boastful as a species. Around book 3 the author stops hating women as much. I can't say I miss the paragraph-and-a-half describing how women really suck at their jobs every book. The author at one point even talked about how its not universal that women suck, but specifically human women who suck the most in the universe..... O'Mara is a hilarious proto-Dr.House and the closest the series gets to an antagonist. One of my favorite little bits from the books is that every species describes themselves as 'human' and this can get really confusing so they have this elaborate alien species categorization system. It's so star trek it hurts. Loose "Federation" of planets, loads of aliens, a 'star fleet' as a science/medical/police force, telepathic aliens. The only irksome thing is that the main character (Conway) gets his achievements reset at the beginning of each book. No one seems to remember that he saved billions of lives and ended a spacewar... The main character is a galactic hero but still everyone treats him like poo poo. Though he can summon spacefleets and fleet commanders to do his bidding on a moment's notice... There are some really neat pacifist sci fi ideas, like little intelligent aliens taking huge bird creatures and turning them into organic space colony ships which is slowly discovered via surgery on one of the huge bird creatures. pre:Sector General 1—Hospital Station Sector General 2—Star Surgeon Sector General 3—Major Operation Sector General 4—Ambulance Ship <!-- I'm just starting this one --> Sector General 5—Sector General Sector General 6—Star Healer Sector General 7—Code Blue Emergency Sector General 8—The Genocidal Healer Sector General 9—The Galactic Gourmet quote:“Why are doctors always hungry?” asked the CC officer.
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Oct 14, 2015 11:24
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Miss-Bomarc posted:Hey, I think I remember that story! I didn't know that was him; I was in maybe middle school when I read that, and I didn't even care who wrote what because I just needed words to put in front of my eyes. No saving the Universe, just himself from a robot djinn ("None but I shall do thee die!") and then saving his dental tech from a horrible, prolonged laser death (Death of a thousand flashes) when the butterfly alien leader she was administrating healthy tooth practices to died from exertion; he time-travelled far too backwards so he could have perfect teeth. It was a weird book.
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Oct 14, 2015 19:59
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Heads up. The Expanse VR app added Tyco Station.
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Oct 16, 2015 07:53
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If you like the Sector General books (and I think everyone should at least try them - they are so very 50s in some ways, like the misogyny, but quite unusual in their pacifism) - then try finding a copy of The Complete Venus Equilateral by George O. Smith. It's really, really 40s-50s SF at beginning (the titular space station is an interplanetary relay station between Earth and Venus) but goes in some surprising directions with technology in the later stories, ending up with a kind of post-scarcity semi-utopia that seems way ahead of its time. Well worth pushing through to the end.Washout posted:Does anyone else remember the story about the space dentist that saves the universe? I can't remember for sure but I think Piers Anthony wrote it in his pre-pedo days. Prostho Plus I believe. I've never read it, but it's by Anthony and about the only SF-dentistry story I've ever heard of. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 04:03
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Hobnob posted:Prostho Plus I believe. I've never read it, but it's by Anthony and about the only SF-dentistry story I've ever heard of. Hey that's the one! I'll be damned.
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Oct 19, 2015 05:26
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The new Vorkosigan novel is out in eARC form from the Baen site. Being on holiday this week, I read it today. Thoughts (there's no major spoilers, really): It's about what family means, even about what the very definition of family is. Reproductive technology as a force of change. That's not unusual for Bujold, I guess, but this is done well. loving miles away from Space Opera though, heh heh. Resonated a lot with me anyway
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Oct 23, 2015 02:53
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I remember getting The Galactic Gourmet from a dollar store back in middle school. Reading about a chef trying to take on the ultimate cooking challenge (hospital food sucking) was pretty great and lead me to the more mainline Sector general books. The book does get extremely heavy handed in the second half.
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Oct 23, 2015 09:31
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TheHoodedClaw posted:The new Vorkosigan novel is out in eARC form from the Baen site. Being on holiday this week, I read it today. Thoughts (there's no major spoilers, really): Thanks for the reminder, bought it right sway. Ugh, so many free Kratman and Ringo books in my account. It makes me feel dirty (the Liaden ones I might read though).
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Oct 23, 2015 19:03
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TheHoodedClaw posted:The new Vorkosigan novel is out in eARC form from the Baen site. Being on holiday this week, I read it today. Thoughts (there's no major spoilers, really): Thanks for the reminder as well, I need something that moves more than 5 mph after slogging through the last Safehold novel. It wasn't bad, but there just wasn't a lot of movement. I keep seeing Weber's writing process as setting up a very large Domino Rally; hours of set up and maybe 45 seconds of action.
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Oct 23, 2015 19:16
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Another 15$ worth of electrons. Shouldn't have downloaded it at 11pm on a school night. I find it interesting that the scale of Vorkosigan novels keeps shrinking. No more planetary/interplanetary stakes. Which I can appreciate, and is nice that you can still write a perfectly good story where death of tens of thousands, or even fives is really on the line. I kept expecting it to ramp up much bigger than it did, maybe that was the point.
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Oct 23, 2015 21:12
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Slo-Tek posted:I kept expecting it to ramp up much bigger than it did, maybe that was the point. Yeah, the Vorkosigan family focus narrowing down to what is really important to them as a family. Having said that there's plenty of stuff left as available material for a next-generation adventure. Miles and Ekaterin's eldest pair, the general's daughter, the Cetagandan plumber boy. There's no way that the last of these isn't forward planning - he's a future drain expert!
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Oct 24, 2015 00:07
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tribbledirigible posted:Thanks for the reminder as well, I need something that moves more than 5 mph after slogging through the last Safehold novel. It wasn't bad, but there just wasn't a lot of movement. I keep seeing Weber's writing process as setting up a very large Domino Rally; hours of set up and maybe 45 seconds of action. I read it on my kindle, so I was pretty surprised that the story just ended with 15%/2 hours left to read. The rest was a list of characters. I was just thinking "And now the payoff" 
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Oct 25, 2015 13:53
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Is the story in any way visibly near concluding yet?
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Oct 25, 2015 15:35
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tribbledirigible posted:Thanks for the reminder as well, I need something that moves more than 5 mph after slogging through the last Safehold novel. It wasn't bad, but there just wasn't a lot of movement. I keep seeing Weber's writing process as setting up a very large Domino Rally; hours of set up and maybe 45 seconds of action. This is just a sign of bad editing. Every drat time some author starts to be popular the original publisher loses editorial control and usually the books get worse.
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Oct 25, 2015 18:35
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Washout posted:This is just a sign of bad editing. Every drat time some author starts to be popular the original publisher loses editorial control and usually the books get worse. I always thought the big selling point of Safehold was "We got Weber a real editor to cut out the bloat this time!"  At least for the first book.
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Oct 25, 2015 19:11
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Deptfordx posted:Is the story in any way visibly near concluding yet? It doesn't seem like he could drag it out much longer really, at least not without giving the Church side some amazing leap forward. Darkrenown posted:I read it on my kindle, so I was pretty surprised that the story just ended with 15%/2 hours left to read. The rest was a list of characters. I was just thinking "And now the payoff" I had the same reaction last night when I finished it. I thought I had at least another days worth of reading to go when.. list of characters. ugh. Did anyone else with the hardback have terrible binding issues? Mine is literally falling apart and I always use book-marks and never lay it down while open. I was going to email TOR, but they don't have anything but snail-mail contact info on their web site, so I will bitch through Amazon instead I suppose.
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Oct 25, 2015 19:56
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chrisoya posted:I always thought the big selling point of Safehold was "We got Weber a real editor to cut out the bloat this time!" But when an author gets big I'm sure they must have more control over the final product, like edit approval or something, and for 90% of writers this is a bad thing. Ironically all the self published stuff I've read is the reverse and the editing gets better as time goes on.
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Oct 25, 2015 21:34
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I just wish authors would finish their damned series instead of just dropping them to work on something else. Weber never did finish the Hell's Gate books. And yeah, I actually like the Safehold books but by this point it's been established for 3-4 books now that the Church is irredeemable and imcompetent and other than maybe the treasury guy growing a spine Weber is running out of plot room.
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Oct 25, 2015 21:39
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chrisoya posted:I always thought the big selling point of Safehold was "We got Weber a real editor to cut out the bloat this time!" that was only true for book 1, unfortunately WarLocke posted:And yeah, I actually like the Safehold books but by this point it's been established for 3-4 books now that the Church is irredeemable and imcompetent and other than maybe the treasury guy growing a spine Weber is running out of plot room. I maintain he still could pull something interesting out of this if he'd be willing to drop long and tedious battle passages and do something with his characters, but it's clear he won't. From the snippets posted prior to publication, I thought he was going to tease something between Merlin and Aivah but no it just fizzled into nothingness. Or the fact that at this point half of Charis is hooked into this sweet com net, and someone should have noticed by now and there should be domestic problems they gotta sneak their way past or whatever, but no. Or that they might get it wrong and have to kill someone who hears ~the truth~ but again, no. It's taken eight books for him to finally get off the pot with Thirsk and even then it's just the teaser chapter for book nine so I don't even know what to say. basically any interesting concept you have involving interpersonal conflict or character growth, Weber didn't, and it's a drat shame. Psion fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Oct 25, 2015 |
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Oct 25, 2015 22:01
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Psion posted:basically any interesting concept you have involving interpersonal conflict or character growth, Weber didn't, and it's a drat shame. Even though it was cliche as hell I was a bit tickled at the introduction of Nimue in the last book. There's a lot of potential for inter-character drama and comparisons between her and Merlin, therefore Weber won't explore any of it. 
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Oct 25, 2015 22:13
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WarLocke posted:Even though it was cliche as hell I was a bit tickled at the introduction of Nimue in the last book. There's a lot of potential for inter-character drama and comparisons between her and Merlin, therefore Weber won't explore any of it. You'd also think that at that point someone would have sat down and asked themselves how they'd identify any other PICAs running around if they're acting more low-key than Merlin has. But that would be an interesting plot hook and an obstacle to the Empire gamely marching towards victory without defeat or setback or wrong choice or error.
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Oct 25, 2015 23:03
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WarLocke posted:Even though it was cliche as hell I was a bit tickled at the introduction of Nimue in the last book. There's a lot of potential for inter-character drama and comparisons between her and Merlin, therefore Weber won't explore any of it.  towards the enemy.Sadly, this is Weber, and so every character has roughly the same personality.
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Oct 26, 2015 04:21
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Here's a bit of an off recommendation for this thread - The House of Rumour, by Jake Arnott. Since while it's not a space opera itself, it has a number of space opera authors as characters in it, both fictional ones and real ones (Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, a few others I forget) and the plot involves (among many other things) UFO cults, alien abductions, the production of a movie that's basically a fictional version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and related stuff like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Operation Paperclip, Nazi astrology, and Ian Fleming's conceptualization of James Bond.
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Oct 26, 2015 04:25
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Deptfordx posted:Is the story in any way visibly near concluding yet? I can't really see the war vs the Church lasting more than another 2 books. Maybe 3 if there's some huge setback with an Archangel showing up or church-hitler getting control of the bombardment system. But then that still doesn't deal with the Gbaba, which could be 3-6 mores books. And I wouldn't be surprised if there was a higher tech "unification war" later on, with maybe WWI/WWII tech before that with another 3-6 books. WarLocke posted:I just wish authors would finish their damned series instead of just dropping them to work on something else. Weber never did finish the Hell's Gate books. The Hell's Gate books were really bad though. Like, really awful, and I like pretty much everything else Weber has done. I do wish he'd finish the Mutineer's Moon series (which oddly include a one book proto-Safehold), or if him and Ringo could finish Prince Rodger - although it seems like there's another book in progress there.
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Oct 26, 2015 13:56
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Wait, I thought both of those were finished? Three books for the Fifth Imperium and four for March to the Stars.
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Oct 26, 2015 14:08
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