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Barbe Rouge posted:Just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky's newest book and I liked it. It's SF with mainly spiders, but there are other bugs. He's a zoologist and psychologist Fyi it's called Children of Time and it's the best sci fi I read all year.
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Dec 10, 2015 23:46
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Heads up, there is a "secret" (read: well publicised by Lev Grossman) early screening of the pilot for The Magicians on SyFy, December 16th at 10pm. edit: Right after Childhood's End! 
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Dec 11, 2015 05:14
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Speaking of The Magicians, I just finished it. Not sure what to think about it, it felt pretty unfocused through much of it, but I think it picked up nicely in the end. Are the sequels worth reading?
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Dec 11, 2015 15:20
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Sjonkel posted:Speaking of The Magicians, I just finished it. Not sure what to think about it, it felt pretty unfocused through much of it, but I think it picked up nicely in the end. Are the sequels worth reading?
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Dec 11, 2015 15:31
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Sjonkel posted:Speaking of The Magicians, I just finished it. Not sure what to think about it, it felt pretty unfocused through much of it, but I think it picked up nicely in the end. Are the sequels worth reading? Yes, definitely. I think there's a good argument that they're better books, like Forgall says, but beyond that, I think the trilogy works very well as a whole, and there are things from early on where I found my enjoyment of them retroactively increased after I finished the third book. Definitely worth reading.
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Dec 11, 2015 18:22
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Sjonkel posted:Speaking of The Magicians, I just finished it. Not sure what to think about it, it felt pretty unfocused through much of it, but I think it picked up nicely in the end. Are the sequels worth reading? If you didn't hate the first one, it's probably worth going through the last two. The second one is good, but the third really does a lot to complete the character arc that Quentin goes through, and ties up some lingering loose ends.
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Dec 11, 2015 19:42
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Neurosis posted:The Book of Lost Souls was alright. Supreme Power was good then turned to poo poo as it got melded into the main Marvel stuff. There's something he did about a bunch of heroes being in stasis since WW2 then coming out in the new world and readjusting which I remember being alright. Rising Stars was okay but uneven. Particularly some of the later preaching. His understanding of politics is... Child-like. Midnight Nation was pretty good and got in just under the wire for being this century...
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Dec 12, 2015 04:16
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Has anyone read P.C. Hodgell's Kencyrath books, and are they any good? Goodreads rec'd them to me and I'm curious.
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Dec 13, 2015 03:43
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Combed Thunderclap posted:On the topic of Use of Weapons, I wanted to say that I do agree with you. That kind of act requires a level of dehumanization and hatred that's only barely achieved against anonymous strangers during genocide, or Actual Jigsaw from Saw-Level Crazy. It's much more a product of Banks' twisted tendency to create imagery of outlandishly ghoulish scenarios (The Hells in Surface Detail, the cartoonishly evil villain in The Algebraist, the scenes of literally torture porn being televised, but only to the elite in The Player of Games). It's a kind of "This is the dark in the human heart that the selfless liberals are up against" thing he likes to go back to, and obviously Use of Weapons is about how the selfless liberals use that darkness for their own supposedly selfless and liberal ends, but to say it's believable character development is absurd. I'm pretty sure Lusiferous was supposed to be a ridiculous tryhard who couldn't match up to the greater and far more destructive powers whose interplay he'd accidentally stumbled into. I mean, c'mon, one of the guy's biggest regrets was ordering absolutely hideous Brutalist interior-decoration for his ship because he'd thought the name sounded cool.
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Dec 13, 2015 03:56
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Rollofthedice posted:Has anyone read P.C. Hodgell's Kencyrath books, and are they any good? Goodreads rec'd them to me and I'm curious. The first one, God Stalk is an amazingly creative little fantasy adventure. The second one is still good, and explores some of the mysteries of the first. The third one sends the main character to a prissy girls' school and starts being about politics that I found really, really boring. There's more after that but I never picked back up in.
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Dec 13, 2015 04:47
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Rollofthedice posted:Has anyone read P.C. Hodgell's Kencyrath books, and are they any good? Goodreads rec'd them to me and I'm curious. I've read all of them, they're basically a guilty pleasure that I don't make any effort to recommend to anybody but still enjoy. edit: To elaborate, they're not generic fantasy in the sense that she didn't rip off Tolkien or Dungeons & Dragons and actually came up with something original; I don't hate the prose; I enjoy the characters (the protagonist is the mortal incarnation of their god's aspect of destruction, which is amusing) and the world; and they're quick reads (which is a bonus). On the other hand, she's written a lot of books that don't really address the fundamental thrust of the story, which is disappointing. pseudorandom name fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Dec 13, 2015 |
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Dec 13, 2015 06:00
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Hedrigall posted:edit: Right after Childhood's End! I made a TVIV thread for this, although I haven't read the book. It sounds like they've changed some things already from the book to make it work for our current time. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3755690 Incase anyone wants to check it out and discuss the differences in the adaptation there (in spoiler tags for the first week or so)
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Dec 13, 2015 13:20
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Rollofthedice posted:Has anyone read P.C. Hodgell's Kencyrath books, and are they any good? Goodreads rec'd them to me and I'm curious. I've read maybe 4 or 5 of them fairly recently after I found out she had started writing more. The "girls' school" one was actually pretty interesting because the protagonist, Jaime, really, really fights against it, and in typical Jaime fashion it usually ends in disasters and fancy gowns torn apart by cat claws. She might be the best character I've ever read at simply destroying her surroundings by accident. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Dec 13, 2015 |
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Dec 13, 2015 14:33
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Just finished Ancillary Sword and it was... boring and nothing really happened? Evil plantation owners and tea. Such a shame, the first one was pretty good and interesting.
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Dec 14, 2015 18:27
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HUMAN FISH posted:Just finished Ancillary Sword and it was... boring and nothing really happened? Evil plantation owners and tea. I enjoyed the poo poo out of Sword, but it is mostly setting the stage for things to go boom in Mercy.
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Dec 14, 2015 18:44
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I've just found this thread in a search for some good hard Sci-Fi or cyberpunk reading. I've just finished the Vatta's War series by Elizabeth Moon and have a taste for the sci fi as follows: Hardwired by Walter John Williams Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds (I read his others in the Revelation Space series, but I found them to be plodding and cumbersome.) Can anyone recommend other books in this vein?
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Dec 15, 2015 04:22
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Altered Carbon, by Richard K Morgan, is an excellent cyberpunk/dystopian type book. Highly recommended.
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Dec 15, 2015 04:36
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Khizan posted:Altered Carbon, by Richard K Morgan, is an excellent cyberpunk/dystopian type book. Highly recommended. Ahah. Must be in the right place and I like the cut of your jib. I've read the Takeshi Kovacs books and found them to be awesome! Any other suggestions?
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Dec 15, 2015 04:39
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Agrikk posted:Ahah. Must be in the right place and I like the cut of your jib. Try the Budayeen books by George Alec Effinger. First one is "When Gravity Fails."
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Dec 15, 2015 05:31
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Philip Reeve seems to be a consistently underrated and unknown YA author, but I thought I'd mention I'm enjoying the hell out of Railhead. Haven't finished it yet but it's easily the best thing he's written since the Mortal Engines series.
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Dec 15, 2015 11:23
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I'm vaguely annoyed because I'm trying to read these Ethan Warner books by Dean Crawford but he's got 2 separate series that intertangle with each other and therefore gently caress me over with spoilers for a book I haven't read yet but MIGHT READ so it's all incredibly annoying.
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Dec 15, 2015 14:58
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Is Saturn's Children considered one of Charles Stross's better novels? It's coming across to me as one of his most plodding and uninteresting works, with the "I'm going to drink a nice hot cup of ACETONE and enjoy a breakfast of MIXED BOLTS AND SMALL GEARS" mad libs replacements wearing mighty thin as you go along. I guess I'm complaining because I generally enjoy his novels and totally wasn't expecting to kinda hate this one.
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Dec 15, 2015 15:03
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Saturnalia Children is p much Charlie doing a Heinlen juvenile. I enjoyed it, but I knew that going in to the book.
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Dec 15, 2015 16:43
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Agrikk posted:I've just found this thread in a search for some good hard Sci-Fi or cyberpunk reading. I found that Simon Morden's Petrovitch Trilogy scratched that itch for me...
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Dec 15, 2015 17:00
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TheWhiteNightmare posted:Is Saturn's Children considered one of Charles Stross's better novels? It's coming across to me as one of his most plodding and uninteresting works, with the "I'm going to drink a nice hot cup of ACETONE and enjoy a breakfast of MIXED BOLTS AND SMALL GEARS" mad libs replacements wearing mighty thin as you go along. I'd say not at all. Neptune's brood is a bit better but all in all both are his worst.
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Dec 15, 2015 17:02
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TheWhiteNightmare posted:Is Saturn's Children considered one of Charles Stross's better novels?
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Dec 15, 2015 17:11
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DigitalRaven posted:Saturnalia Children is p much Charlie doing a Heinlen juvenile. I enjoyed it, but I knew that going in to the book. I haven't read it but I thought it was supposed to be late-period Heinlein, what with the sexbots and all.
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Dec 15, 2015 17:11
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Are the Rama sequels worth bothering with?
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Dec 15, 2015 17:45
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Junkenstein posted:Are the Rama sequels worth bothering with?
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Dec 15, 2015 17:46
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Junkenstein posted:Are the Rama sequels worth bothering with?
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Dec 15, 2015 17:46
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Junkenstein posted:Are the Rama sequels worth bothering with? No. If you're really jonesing for more Rama after you finish Rendezvous with Rama, you could dig up and play the old Sierra puzzle game Rama -- it's based on Rama II, but stops before the book gets really stupid, and is actually pretty good. But really your best bet is to ask the thread for other good Big Dumb Object stories. On that note, any recommendations?
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Dec 15, 2015 18:05
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I'd like to thank goons for mentioning Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time. It was awesome! Does anyone have any recommendations for other first contact novels, or novels from the perspective of an alien species? I didn't like Blindside, too much jargon. I loved Alan Dean Foster's Nor Crystal Tears and C. J. Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg when I read them a while ago.
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Dec 15, 2015 18:48
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ToxicFrog posted:No. If you're really jonesing for more Rama after you finish Rendezvous with Rama, you could dig up and play the old Sierra puzzle game Rama -- it's based on Rama II, but stops before the book gets really stupid, and is actually pretty good. But really your best bet is to ask the thread for other good Big Dumb Object stories. I dug Ship of Fools.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:24
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Ship of Fools/Unto Leviathan is excellent. One of the most fascinating alien cultures I've seen is present in China Miéville's Embassytown but you should be aware that while it is science fiction, the science in question isn't one you're used to seeing in this kind of stories. I heard good things about The Three-Body Problem, apparently it's a right oldschool hard SF, the exotic setting is a bonus.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:32
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Thanks guys. I suspected the Rama sequels were one of those cases where they expanded on something that was best left alone, but wanted to check. ToxicFrog posted:
The newly released Planetfall is really good. It's not really about the Big Dumb Object, but that's relatively interesting on it's own and has a few cool exploration scenes.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:47
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I don't understand 'heard good things' regarding Three Body Problem. It's the best sci fi in years, won a Hugo, etc etc
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Dec 15, 2015 19:47
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Let's be honest here, Cixin Liu's books are good at being the sorts of books they want to be, but that thing is rather specific. China's Asimov is a rather good description - not everyone likes Asimov.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:51
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Some people just really don't seem to like Three Body Problem. I really liked it, but I've noticed enough people saying they just couldn't get into.
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Dec 15, 2015 20:10
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chrisoya posted:No. The sequel is much better and has interstellar bitcoin scams. I finished Neptune's Brood a few days ago and it had the same problem Saturn's Children did of the ending not being very fulfilling. They just kind of... stop. While they weren't outright bad, I feel like there was more of a draw to them in terms of reading about a fairly interesting post-human robotic society than to the actual plots themselves. Except that one bit in Saturn's Children when Freya gets slave-chipped, that was just uncomfortable as gently caress to read. e: I don't know if there's an accepted description of this sort of stuff, but I really enjoy 'journey through time' stuff like Charles Sheffeild's Tomorrow and Tomorrow or Frederik Pohl's The World at the End of Time (and while not exactly the same thing, the framing premise of Darwinia was also really cool), any suggestions for more of that sort of stuff? WarLocke fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 20:21
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If you liked Stross Accelerando wasn't too bad and is basically 10 (?) year slices of humanity following one character through eras of exponential technological progress.
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Dec 15, 2015 20:34
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