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Grey Area posted:There's are billions of people on each planet, to be fair. That means that Manticore has lost maybe 1% of its population, and gained far more by annexing neigbouring star systems. Really? I had a population of something like 0,5 billion for Manticore, a couple hundred million for that second planet and a bit less for that third one in my head. I think Weber wrote about that earlier in the series. The annexed star systems barely double that. Now, Haven itself has something like 2-3 billion people living on it and of course all those other star systems still under their control. Of course I could be totally wrong, it has been years since I last read a Honor Harrington book. I'm going entirely on memory here.  Also, I think you'll notice if you confront a bunch of people in the streets who have lost their loved ones in a grueling war and tell them they should chill out since only 1% of the population died, you will learn to your nasty surprise that's not how it works.
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Feb 14, 2016 17:31
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Yeah, imagine a war in which barely four million Americans died. Trivial.
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Feb 14, 2016 17:37
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Libluini posted:I swear, if it weren't for the real life example of that one weird South American country fighting until most of their male population was dead, this would be really hard to swallow. You mean Paraguay and the Triple Alliance war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War The paraguayan leader was so sick that got Argentinians, Brazilians and Uruguayans to put aside their differences and fight together to oust that guy. They got it, and 400.000 corpses also. Paraguay lost 70% of its male population. Aproximately 50 years after that, Paraguay was ready for another all-out war. This time against Bolivia. Paraguay won that one. And now, back to rocketeerism.
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Feb 14, 2016 20:52
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Libluini posted:Really? I had a population of something like 0,5 billion for Manticore, a couple hundred million for that second planet and a bit less for that third one in my head. I think Weber wrote about that earlier in the series. The annexed star systems barely double that. Manticore's population is given in the novels as 1.5 billion, with 1.2 billion for Sphinx and 600 million on Gryphon. Plus 300 million in orbital habitats for a system population of 3.6b total. Haven itself is "several billion" but they've got a lot of other planets, too. But yes, it's stupid and someone probably would have capped the Queen by now.
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Feb 14, 2016 20:58
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How old are these nations anyways? It's hard to believe that a multi planet stellar empire would have a smaller population than modern day Earth.
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Feb 14, 2016 21:52
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Mars4523 posted:How old are these nations anyways? It's hard to believe that a multi planet stellar empire would have a smaller population than modern day Earth. I'm kind of on the opposite of the matter. I look at all these SF-nations, some only a couple of centuries old, and I'm always asking myself: "Where are all those people coming from?" In case of Manticore, it's something like 3-4 centuries old and had kind of a rough start with a plague killing off a lot of the first wave colonists. It's why the modern-day Manticore is so racially mixed: They had to make a call for new colonists after the first wave nearly bought it. This brought in immigrants from all over the League. It's also why Manticore became a monarchy: The survivors of the first wave basically gave themselves the ownership of the land and declared themselves nobility. The newcomers got jack and poo poo. Anyway, even buffed with waves and waves of new colonists and nature taking its course, Manticore barely makes it in terms of population believability. If I had wrote this, I'd cut population levels everywhere in half. Essentially I think, the Star Kingdom only has the population it has because otherwise they would have had no chance in hell in fighting the Republic of Haven, considering Haven itself has almost the same population as the entire Star Kingdom. Autor fiat, basically.
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Feb 14, 2016 22:06
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sci-fi authors are bad at math, you just sorta gotta go with it. Like I can't even really take Weber to task on this one because almost the entire field screws it up when they try. It's really better to go the route of "the planet's population? Just enough people," much like when someone asks how your hyperdrive works, you say "Very well, thank you." There was also the part where the original tonnage values for the capital ships were wildly implausible - like the original size and mass numbers computed to a ship made of air. Also, today I learned there's an HH wiki because of course there is. http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Resizing e: This came to me later, but a fair criticism I think is totally legitimate to level at Weber is his mindset seems to be problem occurs -> heroes solve problem -> problem is resolved forever. Like, he does this in Safehold and he did it with HH. The citizens of Manticore/Charis decide "you know what, it's war time, our war is justified" and that's it - the war is now justified and supported 10000% from now until the end of time. The problem is just solved forever. "Oh we conquered Corisande, and there's resistance, but now [protagonist] will roll in and solve that problem and now resistance is over, Corisande is now part of our empire 100% and devoted to our war 20000% and that's it." Further events do not typically go back and influence past decisions or "solved" problems. Everything is ... too simple. It's not treating humans like humans - you know, irrational and contradictory, ugly bags of mostly water. Maybe that's the only option for him to take if he wants to write Ye Grande Story at the scope he likes to write. But if that's the case you think he'd quit having 40 page conversations between two people recapping the prior 200 pages of nothing happening. Psion fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Feb 16, 2016 19:05
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Libluini posted:Essentially I think, the Star Kingdom only has the population it has because otherwise they would have had no chance in hell in fighting the Republic of Haven, considering Haven itself has almost the same population as the entire Star Kingdom. Autor fiat, basically. Remember, having a social security system has turned the majority of Haven's population functionally useless. You gotta get into the Weber-think, man. There is no reason to think a person who has ever lived on welfare would ever rouse themselves and take up arms for their nation. Of course the go-getters of the Starkingdom can stand up to what fighting force Haven can raise  I guess I found Drake's Alliance of Free Stars' autocratic dictatorship a more compelling, if somewhat generic, opposing force. Until the Mesan connection was revealed, Haven was like, literally a slave to what a terrible hash they had made of their economy by introducing universal welfare, which was always a bit hard to swallow as a reason to just keep on conquering new systems to prop up the economy, as if interstellar war wasn't loving expensive too. "Oh no! Introducing universal welfare is overtaxing our economy. But as the political elite, we cannot afford to roll back those policies or people might actually go vote. Hm...if people won't accept cuts in welfare, what will they accept? We know! A series of aggressive wars of conquest! They'll accept that for sure." And then of course the revolution happens. Like, I appreciate the attempt to offer a less generic narrative reason for why the enemy nation is bad, but maybe being located in central Europe made Haven's backstory a bit of an eye-roller to me personally. I suppose in Weber's world, Japan's outlandish national debt should have led to them conquering various minor pacific island nations by now I get it. Space opera is inherently ridiculous. Drake's RCN faster than light tech involves SAILS for fucks sake. The politics of the Republic of Cinnabar are often reprehensible and tons of people are jingoistic as gently caress (everyone not from Cinnabar is a wog with no honor and no rights), and yet I guess it's Weber's ridiculousness that sometimes seems a little too overtly political to me. Psykmoe fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Feb 16, 2016 19:41
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Psykmoe posted:Remember, having a social security system A fair criticism I think is totally legitimate to level at Weber is his mindset seems to be problem occurs -> heroes solve problem -> problem is resolved perfectly and forever. In HH, I feel like he also wanted to cleave too closely to the idea of decadent French royalty lording it over French peasantry, just by prefixing "space" in front of everything. Space France, Space Proletariat, Space CPS headed by Space Robspierre. That didn't help, but the trend is extant in most of his work: he does this in Safehold and he did it with HH, arguably he did this with Dahak, anything long-form. For example, the citizens of Manticore/Charis decide "you know what, it's war time, our war is justified" and that's it - the war is now justified and supported 10000% from now until the end of time. The problem is just solved forever. "Oh we conquered Corisande, and there's resistance, but now [protagonist] will roll in and solve that problem and now resistance is over, Corisande is now part of our empire 100% and devoted to our war 20000% and that's it." Further events do not typically go back and influence past decisions or "solved" problems. I think it's inevitable the Chisholm rebellion that's Going To Happen in the next, oh, ten books or so of Safehold will be the same way - it'll happen, it'll be a big deal, it'll be a real problem that will of course be resolved by our heroes, at which point it's solved perfectly and forever. Everything is ... too simple. It's not treating humans like humans - you know, irrational and contradictory, ugly bags of mostly water. It's treating them like tabletop pieces, if you ask me. Oh, the 403rd Space Legion has resolved their crisis and is now a 6/4/6 attack unit on the board that can be treated as such, as opposed to a collection of individuals. Psion fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Feb 16, 2016 21:34
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Psion posted:A fair criticism I think is totally legitimate to level at Weber is his mindset seems to be problem occurs -> heroes solve problem -> problem is resolved perfectly and forever. In HH, I feel like he also wanted to cleave too closely to the idea of decadent French royalty lording it over French peasantry, just by prefixing "space" in front of everything. Space France, Space Proletariat, Space CPS headed by Space Robspierre. That didn't help, but the trend is extant in most of his work: he does this in Safehold and he did it with HH, arguably he did this with Dahak, anything long-form. A Good Post. This sort of simplistic view of the world has been widespread throughout the science fiction genre ever since the pulps. I think most of the new generation of SF writers understand this, and have worked pretty hard to expand that worldview - and there were always exceptions to the rule. Pretty much the entire New Wave and cyberpunk movements, for a start. But space opera has perversely always been a bastion of conservatism in both artistic technique and politics for some reason, and Weber is like one of the oldest of the Old Guard still standing.
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Feb 16, 2016 21:46
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Yeah, I shouldn't let this get to me. I try to do better when writing, but I'm sure if I ever show my ideas of how a matter desintegrator and FTL could work to a scientist, they would probably scream like the damned and rip their own eyes out. Considering the ideas propping up my own SF-writing are all completely absurd the more I try to make them "scientifically correct", demanding other, far more successful writers to do better is maybe a bit much. Of course that said, I make this extra-painful for myself by writing about a species with lower population growth and density than Humans, so I have all this extra work and the first comment if I ever finish up and publish will probably be "Why is the population on all those planets so low?" Weber's method of letting the plot regulate population would have made writing a lot easier. Kesper North posted:A Good Post. This sort of simplistic view of the world has been widespread throughout the science fiction genre ever since the pulps. I think most of the new generation of SF writers understand this, and have worked pretty hard to expand that worldview - and there were always exceptions to the rule. Pretty much the entire New Wave and cyberpunk movements, for a start. But space opera has perversely always been a bastion of conservatism in both artistic technique and politics for some reason, and Weber is like one of the oldest of the Old Guard still standing. Not so in German space opera, but for some reason not in the English speaking world. Russian, Japanese, even French? That's available, gently caress it you can read the most famous German space opera in whatever moon language Brazil uses (Portuguese, I think?). English however? gently caress you and learn German! (Or German space opera is too leftist for the kind of people who eat up "normal" space opera over there, I don't know. )
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Feb 16, 2016 21:51
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Libluini posted:Not so in German space opera, but for some reason not in the English speaking world. Russian, Japanese, even French? That's available, gently caress it you can read the most famous German space opera in whatever moon language Brazil uses (Portuguese, I think?). English however? gently caress you and learn German! Americans read a decent amount of leftist British SF (Banks, Stross, McLeod, Mieville come to mind - the latter two are card-carrying Commies whose political views heavily influence their work, and Mieville is a major commercial and critical success in the US). No, IMO the real issue is that the American market has, until the last couple of years, been highly resistant to translated works. That's started to change, particularly with the success of The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. But you just don't get translations here for some reason. I'm really curious to hear about German space opera, now. Can you give us some examples? Are there, perhaps, any British translations we could track down?
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Feb 16, 2016 21:57
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Kesper North posted:Americans read a decent amount of leftist British SF (Banks, Stross, McLeod, Mieville come to mind - the latter two are card-carrying Commies whose political views heavily influence their work, and Mieville is a major commercial and critical success in the US). I could joke about Perry Rhodan being the only SF-opera Germany has, but there are actually some other things, most of them similar in structure to PR. (Small 70-page novellas, weekly release and sometime re-release in bookform.) Atlan Atlan is a weird spin-off from Perry Rhodan with his buddy having dumb adventures all over space and time. It's not my taste because I don't like that guy, but it's an even better fit for classical space opera than Perry Rhodan. Also, theoretically you could read all of his adventures without needing to be an immortal yourself. Translations: None, as far as I know. There's a French wikipedia-page, but I can't read French so I have no idea if it's just some German-speaking fans of Atlan or if there is a French version somewhere. Menschen wie Götter (Humans as Gods) This isn't actually German SF, it's written by Sergej Snegow, a Soviet author. It's nice, short and exotic for us capitalists. But there is no English translation, only an English-language wikipedia-article. The German translation is readable, though. I included this because this is basically a repeating pattern for us: Instead of writing SF ourselves, we just translate a crapload of foreign authors. Which is why there is so much Russian stuff you can read in German, but not in English, for example. Mark Powers It's the crappy knock-off version of Perry Rhodan and died an early and deserved death. Translations: None and be happy for that. Perry Rhodan Basically what Germans think of if they hear "Space Opera". Most of the modern (and earlier) authors of this series went on and published their own works, but most of it is SF, not SF-opera. There's some nice stuff you've probably never heard about among their works, but as soon as they write something not-Perry related, the space opera part basically breaks away. It's probably because they write Space Opera so much they don't want to write about it even more. Translations: It's complicated. Before you use Google to track down all the failed English translation versions, I suggest starting with what I've linked here. The Lemuria-cycle is short, only six books and is getting an English publication since 2015. Only as e-books, though. This short PR-related series was originally published in 2003-2004 and written by Hubert Hänsel, one of the better PR-authors. Some guy I've never heard off called Dwight R. Decker is translating Lemuria into English. If you want to find out if you can stand reading billions of books about Perry Rhodan's universe, here's your chance to try it out in a smaller scale. Ren Dhark, Adventures of the Space Nazi Another go at copying Perry Rhodan, this time by Kurt Brand and some co-authors. The series wasn't bad, but died an early death in 1969. Only during the 90s was Ren Dhark revived, this time in bookform and the author-team is now lead by Hajo F. Breuer. Ren Dhark is old-fashioned and due to not having regular re-releases, its early series is filled with errors. Like PR, it tries to walk the dangerous border of trying to be friends with as many aliens as possible, while shooting as many non-friendly aliens as possible. The publisher today is a small-scale Nazi publisher, so I guess they weren't successful in this. Translations: You really expect German Neo-Nazis to translate a German series into Non-German? You don't know much about Nazis, do you? And that's it, mostly. If I've forgotten something, it's most likely to be even more obscure then some of those entries. German SF on the other hand is alive and well, but if you want space opera, it's 99,99% Perry Rhodan. The rest is Perry Rhodan spin-offs. On the other hand, many of our SF-authors (most of them also PR-authors), spend their time either writing interesting normal SF, or translating foreign SF, including foreign Space Opera. We have all works of David Weber in German, for example!  If you want pure German space opera, it's Perry Rhodan. And also Perry Rhodan. Now go read Lemuria, it's great! Libluini fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Feb 16, 2016 22:26
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Oops! Looks like I made a grave error. When I said Lemuria is written by Hubert Hänsel, I wasn't entirely correct. He had the idea and wrote the last book, but the other five are written by other very important and good German authors. Let's try this again. Lemuria posted:#1 Ark of the Stars by Frank Borsch
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Feb 16, 2016 22:49
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Whoever recommended the Spiral Wars series by Joel Shepard, it's a fun read. Definitely suffers a bit from editorial quality, but definitely a good read so far.
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Feb 17, 2016 00:38
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Psion posted:A fair criticism I think is totally legitimate to level at Weber is his mindset seems to be problem occurs -> heroes solve problem -> problem is resolved perfectly and forever. In HH, I feel like he also wanted to cleave too closely to the idea of decadent French royalty lording it over French peasantry, just by prefixing "space" in front of everything. Space France, Space Proletariat, Space CPS headed by Space Robspierre. That didn't help, but the trend is extant in most of his work: he does this in Safehold and he did it with HH, arguably he did this with Dahak, anything long-form. It may be simple, but on the other hand, we are talking about fiction and storytelling, here. I'm always very wary when people demand realism in their fiction, and I say that as someone who deliberately set out to write hard-ish space opera/mil-sf. At the end of the day, a fictional story is a fictional story, it is subject to the laws of the medium, not of nature. And one of those laws - at least in the genre of space opera - is that there should be development and progress throughout the story. Part of that is not going back to fix a problem the hero has already fixed. Once the hero has forged the Sword of Destiny, it makes little sense for the sword to break before confronting the Villain near the end of the book (or at all, really). All that would lead to would be another ten chapters about re-forging the Sword of Destiny. The sword shattering might be more realistic, but would it make for a better story when you have to go back and do the whole thing over again in the next book? Wouldn't that read more like padding? Wouldn't it be better to show new problems to be solved, which by necessity requires old problems to remain solved? I for one find it difficult to blame someone who wants to show of every part of the universe they created rather than writing yet another book dealing with the Sixth Corisande Insurgency War.
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Feb 17, 2016 07:17
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Psykmoe posted:I get it. Space opera is inherently ridiculous. Drake's RCN faster than light tech involves SAILS for fucks sake. The politics of the Republic of Cinnabar are often reprehensible and tons of people are jingoistic as gently caress (everyone not from Cinnabar is a wog with no honor and no rights), and yet I guess it's Weber's ridiculousness that sometimes seems a little too overtly political to me.
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Feb 17, 2016 07:47
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Does the new Safehold book actually do anything with the whole Merlin and Nimue being weird twin things... thing? That was what I was most looking forward to getting into after the last book. 
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Feb 17, 2016 17:31
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ArchangeI posted:I'm always very wary when people demand realism in their fiction, Which I'm not; if I'm demanding anything it's treating humans like actual human beings. I mean if you want to call that realism, okay. I demand realism in depicting human beings. Otherwise it's kind of lovely of you to pull that card. This isn't about the sword of magic breaking and needing to be reforged, that's obviously a fictional construct that only has to adhere to whatever ruleset the author creates. That's fine. If you ask why the combat cars in Hammer's Slammers are basically hover M113s with pintle guns instead of super-futuristic AI robodrones, the answer is because that's how it works in that universe. Again, fine. This is about characters, and I think if you're writing about human beings, and a lot of Weber's work at least tries to deal with what that means - having a soul, having faith, long speeches about monarchy and freedom - then you owe it to your audience that your humans are at least believable humans. that's where the disconnect occurs. You can't sit there and discuss what it means to be human from characters who don't act particularly human and not raise eyebrows. Psion fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Feb 17, 2016 |
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Feb 17, 2016 17:54
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One of my most favorite SF books of all time is a translated book - "The Cyberiad" by Stanislaw Lem. There is so much wordplay and humor in that book that comes through that I am curious how close the text is to the original Polish. Anyway, I just finished "Stealing Light", by Gary Gibson, and I liked it a lot. Little bit of a rough start, not helped by the non-linear narrative at the start. The big mystery revealed toward the end raises more questions than it answers, which is always a good hook. Probably all-in at this point and will pick up the sequels.
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Feb 17, 2016 17:58
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Miss-Bomarc posted:I think it's because the political attitudes and situations of Drake's RCN are utterly foreign to modern readers, whereas the stuff in Weber's Honorverse is very definitely alluding to contemporary events. Drake is just as heavy-handed in his metaphors; it's harder to tell because they aren't metaphors we're used to seeing. (it's a bit clearer in things like Cross The Stars and The Voyage, which are straight-up "The Odyssey with laser guns" and "The Argonautica with laser guns"). Drake is also extremely up front about his historical influences. He's like "yeah I was reading _____ Roman author and thought hey, this is cool, I'm going to write about it" and does so. He also puts a lot of his own energy in there - he puts a lot of character in there even if the plot beats are essentially taken from Homer or Apollodius or whoever. As you can probably tell I respond well to authors putting characters in their book WarLocke posted:Does the new Safehold book actually do anything with the whole Merlin and Nimue being weird twin things... thing? That was what I was most looking forward to getting into after the last book. Well... quote:“I know it’s hard to believe,” Merlin said gently. “But it’s the truth. No, we’re not demons, but Nimue and I used to be the same person, you see. And that person died over a thousand years ago.” actual answer in the spoiler: There's a little, but no - not really. Weber is continuing to push Merlin's belief that he's now a separate person and Merlin no longer self-identifies as Nimue (even Owl addresses him as Merlin now and remember how careful he was about that in previous books - it's notable), and the two Nimues sorta-kinda have a sorta-sibling relationship. "It's weird but it's working out!" type handwave. On the other hand, Weber doesn't seem to have dropped this idea - I think he's trying to position the two Nimues as different people now so he can do different things with them in the future so credit for that. I'm not wholly enthused with how he's doing it, but that does seem to be the angle he's going for. and there's been zero bullshit about Nimue being any less badass than Merlin, for which I do give Weber credit. Psion fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Feb 17, 2016 |
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Feb 17, 2016 18:00
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WarLocke posted:Does the new Safehold book actually do anything with the whole Merlin and Nimue being weird twin things... thing? That was what I was most looking forward to getting into after the last book. As mentioned above, no. What's worse...I'd browsed the dust cover and read the bit about "someone knows Merlin's secret" and mistakenly assumed that it meant some Seijin was going to wake up and balance things for the Temple side. You know, get some real drama as opposed to more "Charisians Murder Everyone." Nope! It meant that there was another hidden conspiracy out to save the truth from the evil Inquisition who would all join up with Team Merlin!  God, Safehold is getting on my nerves.
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Feb 17, 2016 23:21
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Psion posted:and there's been zero bullshit about Nimue being any less badass than Merlin, for which I do give Weber credit. I did wince at the completely pointless GRRRRRL POWA scene in the last book, but Nimue and Merlin storming a prison galleon with Safehold's first shotguns was fun.
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Feb 18, 2016 01:23
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jng2058 posted:As mentioned above, no. Make the legendary hero Seijin Kohdy not only real, but still loyal to the Church of God and newly reactivated from stasis to fight for the Church
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Feb 18, 2016 17:22
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Cythereal posted:I did wince at the completely pointless GRRRRRL POWA scene in the last book, but Nimue and Merlin storming a prison galleon with Safehold's first shotguns was fun. it would also be nice if Weber ever used another adjective to describe Nimue other than "exotically attractive" but yes, team shotgun was a good piece.
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Feb 18, 2016 19:24
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Cythereal posted:I did wince at the completely pointless GRRRRRL POWA scene in the last book, but Nimue and Merlin storming a prison galleon with Safehold's first shotguns was fun. Edit: Christ, I thought it was up to 5, maybe 6 books. I'll just google "Merlin Nimue shotguns fanfiction" and read that. 90s Cringe Rock fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 19:28
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If you're going to read any Weber at all, Safehold is his strongest multi-volume work. That may be damning with faint praise, but it is. There's a lot of garbage fluff to skip, but that's true of everything else he does that's multi-book. And in this case there is the counterbalance that there are some interesting concepts and ideas going on in there as well. I'd suggest you read the first book or better, first two, because a lot of traditional Weberisms were subdued in OAR and not so much in the second->eighth. If it hooks you, understand that the pacing gets worse and the books get longer from there. If it doesn't hook you, no big deal. e: if you're not going to read any multi-volume work pick up an old copy of Path of the Fury - not the "updated" version In Fury Born (insert warlocke disagreeing with me here) because that's my vote for his best self-contained, one book and it's done work. Psion fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 19:44
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Psion posted:If you're going to read any Weber at all, Safehold is his strongest multi-volume work. That may be damning with faint praise, but it is. There's a lot of garbage fluff to skip, but that's true of everything else he does that's multi-book. And in this case there is the counterbalance that there are some interesting concepts and ideas going on in there as well. I don't know, I really enjoyed the Honor Harrington series until the Solarian League poo poo went off the deep end. Still, if more books come out to advance the plot, I'll go back to reading them. I've been struggling hard with Safehold, but after four books I finally admitted to myself I can't enjoy it and stopped. Maybe they're still good in the technical sense (minus the typical Weber-flaws, of course), but sitting on the same planet for book after book is just not my thing.
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Feb 19, 2016 00:25
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Psion posted:e: if you're not going to read any multi-volume work pick up an old copy of Path of the Fury - not the "updated" version In Fury Born (insert warlocke disagreeing with me here) because that's my vote for his best self-contained, one book and it's done work. The Armageddon Troll is decent too, if memory serves. I think In Fury Born's extra stuff works as a fleshing out of Path of the Fury (ie, it's not blatant padding like Out of the Black, the extra words actually supplement the original) but PotF on its own is definitely a nice, tight, streamlined work.
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Feb 19, 2016 00:34
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Kesper North posted:No, IMO the real issue is that the American market has, until the last couple of years, been highly resistant to translated works. That's started to change, particularly with the success of The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. But you just don't get translations here for some reason. I actually found Three-Body difficult to read and have shelved it for now. Characters with weird made up space names? Not normally a problem. Lots of people with actual real-world Chinese names? Found it really difficult to follow. I'm intending to give it another shot in a month or so.
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Feb 19, 2016 11:39
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all these chinese names look alike
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Feb 19, 2016 11:51
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The Dark Forest was actually much, much harder for me to get into, actually. They throw you back into the middle of the story with all these weird chinese names, and it's not easy. It has a list of names at the beginning but there's so many... I'd finished The Three Body Problem like a year before and I read a whole of 10 pages before I quit. I gotta read both of them one right after the other.
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Feb 19, 2016 12:15
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orange sky posted:The Dark Forest was actually much, much harder for me to get into, actually. There's no not that much continuity really. As long you know that the Trisolarian invasion fleet is on its way and that they've infiltrated Earth with their sophons, putting a stop to proper technological advancement, that's pretty much it. I think there's only one character in both and he's such a cliché you understand him straight away.
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Feb 19, 2016 14:28
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Cythereal posted:I did wince at the completely pointless GRRRRRL POWA scene in the last book, but Nimue and Merlin storming a prison galleon with Safehold's first shotguns was fun.
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Feb 19, 2016 17:33
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chrisoya posted:Edit: Christ, I thought it was up to 5, maybe 6 books. I'll just google "Merlin Nimue shotguns fanfiction" and read that. lmao, no. And they're all getting longer I could give you a chapter number if you want to swing by a local library and just read Boatmurder Adventures and then put it back on the shelf, though?
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Feb 19, 2016 17:40
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Mars4523 posted:Yeah, it doesn't work so well when the "girl" is a futuretech killer robot and the rear end in a top hat is just a normal flesh and blood human. And more to the point, we don't need to establish the girl's rear end-kicking credentials because we already goddamn know her and how lethal she is.
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Feb 19, 2016 17:46
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Psion posted:Drake is also extremely up front about his historical influences. He's like "yeah I was reading _____ Roman author and thought hey, this is cool, I'm going to write about it" and does so. He also puts a lot of his own energy in there - he puts a lot of character in there even if the plot beats are essentially taken from Homer or Apollodius or whoever. I think it's usually right in the foreword, or at least on his webpage which historical event inspired which of his books. I think we like his writing for similar reasons. Edit: Looking at my posts in this thread, it seems there was an extremely similar conversation back in December 2013 Libluini posted:If you want pure German space opera, it's Perry Rhodan. And also Perry Rhodan. Now go read Lemuria, it's great! Have you read anything by Andreas Eschbach? According to wikipedia he wrote a bit of Perry Rhodan as well, but I mean, other stuff by him. I guess at least one of his earlier works, The Carpet Makers, got a translation into English too. I read a novel called Quest which is set in the same universe and I really ended up hating the entire experience. Like I was actively mad about having wasted my time reading it, and I was laid up in the hospital after surgery so it's not like I had much of anything better to do. Psykmoe fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 23:11
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Psykmoe posted:Have you read anything by Andreas Eschbach? According to wikipedia he wrote a bit of Perry Rhodan as well, but I mean, other stuff by him. I guess at least one of his earlier works, The Carpet Makers, got a translation into English too. I've only read his Perry Rhodan stuff and found it not actively offensive. His other works never really gripped me. The Carpet Makers looks like it could be worth a laugh, at least. On the other hand, I suggest going for Lord of All Things instead, it's one of his newer and better written works. Since it involves nanomachines and love (two of my favourite things), I'm planning on reading it myself. Andreas Brandhorst is ten times better, though. His Graken-books are some of the best SF I've ever read.  In typical fashion, None of his works have been translated into English yet, apparently. But some lovely Eschbach-books are, of course. Typical.  In case this never gets translated, the Diamond-trilogy deals heavily with time travel and how bad things can get if it were possible to weaponize time travel, while the following Graken-trilogy deals with creepy things eating your dreams and how the civilizations of the galaxy try to fight this menace. (And because the Graken are dream-eaters, the fight goes very, very badly.) Libluini fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 23:32
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The Expanse, Abbadon's Gate: toward the middle Martian marines in power armor fire upon Holden inside Ring Station causing the Slow Zone to buffer down below the speed of bullets, then shortly afterward down the the speed of a grenade launcher, causing severe casualties aboard external vessels. This effect is supposed to be permanent until conditions are met n I'm not there yet. Then closer to the climax theres a bunch of firefights within the Behemoth which I guess make sense cuz they're inside but then Holden and company are outside the drum along an elevator scaffold shooting sniper rifles at Ashford's thugs in power armor. Shouldn't the bullets all be slowed down to non-lethal Slow Zone speeds?
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Feb 20, 2016 05:03
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Odoyle posted:The Expanse, Abbadon's Gate: toward the middle Martian marines in power armor fire upon Holden inside Ring Station causing the Slow Zone to buffer down below the speed of bullets, then shortly afterward down the the speed of a grenade launcher, causing severe casualties aboard external vessels. This effect is supposed to be permanent until conditions are met n I'm not there yet. Then closer to the climax theres a bunch of firefights within the Behemoth which I guess make sense cuz they're inside but then Holden and company are outside the drum along an elevator scaffold shooting sniper rifles at Ashford's thugs in power armor. Shouldn't the bullets all be slowed down to non-lethal Slow Zone speeds? IIRC the slow zone magic does affect just the ship hulls. The self propelled grenade is, well, self-propelled, so it can be seen by the magic field like a small ship, but the bullets are just slugs, so they are free to go Anyway, Abbadon's Gate sucks for a multitude of reasons, beyond the inconsistent
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Feb 20, 2016 12:06
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