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If you're looking for military space stuff that isn't burdened by Honor Harrington Mary Sue-ing all over the place, I always like to recommend In Death Ground and The Shiva Option co-written by David Weber and Steve White. White mitigates some of Weber's long windedness, the space battles are solid, the situation dire. Just be careful with the rest of the books of the series. Weber leaves the series after four books and the series takesa nose dive.
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May 16, 2016 00:00
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I just finished a reread of Bridge of Birds and The Story of the Stone back to back and I have to say that the latter isn't as far inferior as I remembered. It definitely suffers from not having the ur-structure and motivation of BoB provided by the overt and hidden plots, and I miss the episodic named chapters and deliberate use of a certain (alliteration heavy) writing style, but The Story of the Stone still has quite a lot of charming set pieces and quotable paragraphs. Next up Eight Skilled Gentlemen. In some alternate universe Barry Hughart wrote and published all seven planned Master Li novels and GRRM choked to death on a chicken wing while doing final edits on the first Wild Cards. The people in that reality have no idea how lucky they are.
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May 16, 2016 00:35
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pseudorandom name posted:A safe rule of thumb is that if the book is published by Baen and it isn't by Lois McMaster Bujold, it is trash. Ehhhhh, maybe? I just got finished reading through a bunch of Baen books, and the ones that weren't written by Larry Correia had some things I liked about them. But they also had some rough patches and things that I had to suffer through to get to the good stuff.
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May 16, 2016 00:36
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pseudorandom name posted:A safe rule of thumb is that if the book is published by Baen and it isn't by Lois McMaster Bujold, it is trash. Keith Laumer and James Schmitz are loving great though.
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May 16, 2016 01:24
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You know what? If you want big-concept, mindblowing sci-fi space opera action, you should read Iain M. Banks's Culture novels. There's a ton of action, humor, wit and drama, but they're also really thought-provoking. And there's just a ton of mindblowingly cool stuff. It's not a standard guns'n'starships recommendation, but if you're new to scifi and open to looking at some of the best the genre has to offer, check out Banks. He'll blow your mind. Based on your preferences, I recommend starting with "The Player of Games". (But I don't mean to start yet another detail on which Culture novel to read first...) If you enjoy Banks, come back, there's more. (More from Scotland, even. Lots more.) edit to add: There are lots of guns and lots of starships. And starships with guns, and starships that are guns...
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May 16, 2016 04:17
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Also guns that are people and people that are guns.
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May 16, 2016 04:34
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Edit: Never mind.
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May 16, 2016 05:00
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Nippashish posted:I enjoyed the first Honor Harrington book in spite of it being not terribly well written, because I really like the space-britian in the age of space-sail thing. But the second book focused way too much on gender and rape in a way that I just could not stand. The Lieutenant Leary books are Patrick O' Brien's Aubrey-Maturin Series in space. Spacers literally go out on the hull to set FTL space sails by hand. (Also read the Aubrey-Maturin series)
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May 16, 2016 05:18
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Polikarpov posted:
This should be posted in every TBB thread.
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May 16, 2016 05:22
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Trier posted:I've read very little sci fi in my time. What would you recommend if I tell you I like space video games? You should give Scott Westerfeld's Risen Empire and Killing of Worlds duology a look. It has the military and politics stuff down pat, some conquest too, big space ships not as much.
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May 16, 2016 06:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Where do you fall on the "quality writing" spectrum Honour Harrington was good for a while, it just got overdone / overused. I really like the combat ideas in terms of being a somewhat decent take on relativistic warfare, which makes some of the other poo poo far less hard to choke down. Trier posted:oh is the honor harrington series not good? That's disappointing, I liked the sound of "modeled on Hornblower". It's fine, he's a snob  You probably won't get burned out on them as much as him if you don't power read them either I also dont get as wound up by Mary Sue characters generally. The point of the books is basically that the intrepid captain captains intrepidly out of trouble. That said, she fucks up pretty badly, gets captured and tortured for like a year so it's not all sunshine either. On the combat, I don't read it just as who has the better missiles. It's about tactics and positioning etc. In the later books he gets away from the ship to ship combat somewhat which is my quite as exciting 
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May 16, 2016 07:11
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My weird recommendation to the thread (not a space fantasy sim thing, just a generic "I found this and gently caress it was better than I thought!") was a surprise to me. It's a superhero novel, meaning there are heroes and villains and whatnot, but it's also a pretty noir level detective story. Dane Curse by Matt Abraham. The main character is a retired villain (black cape) who takes on cases dealing with dead villains and other black cape issues, while trying to avoid tangling with the heroes (white capes). It's on kindle unlimited, so it's a free read. It's... I dunno, good superhero books are kinda hard to come by, and good noir fiction is also hard to come by, and this kinda meshes em both in a pretty good way. Worth a peek if you have KU.
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May 16, 2016 07:47
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Number Ten Cocks posted:I just finished a reread of Bridge of Birds and The Story of the Stone back to back and I have to say that the latter isn't as far inferior as I remembered. It definitely suffers from not having the ur-structure and motivation of BoB provided by the overt and hidden plots, and I miss the episodic named chapters and deliberate use of a certain (alliteration heavy) writing style, but The Story of the Stone still has quite a lot of charming set pieces and quotable paragraphs. Next up Eight Skilled Gentlemen. I've said it before and I'll say it again, being introduced to Barry Hughart is the single best thing the Internet has ever done for me.
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May 16, 2016 09:03
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you like Hornblower then you owe it to yourself to read the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. They're actually pretty demanding, sophisticated reading -- the polar opposite of all the space fluff we've been talking about -- but they're amazing in every way and everyone should read them. I can't find the quote now but I think it was Jo Walton, when she was doing a re-reading of the series at Tor, who compared it to speculative fiction in a way: it plonks you down in our own historical world, but gives you minimal exposition as to how that world works, and in many ways (debt laws, for example) it's very alien and bizarre. And of course it has that wonderful sense of exploration, adventure and travelling beyond the horizon.
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May 16, 2016 09:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Vorkosigan Saga. This one sounds good, but  there are a lot of books in that series. Where do I start?
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May 16, 2016 10:34
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Trier posted:This one sounds good, but There's two schools: internal chronological and the order in which they were published. Here's the author's own recommendation (it's internal chronology). I personally read the two Cordelia novels first (Shards of Honor and Barrayar), and then shifted to the main Miles series: I've only read The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game so far. It's arguable that reading Shards and Barrayar first take away from a few of the twists in Apprentice, so another way might be to read Apprentice and Vor Game first, then double back to the two Cordelia novels, and then continue in the main Miles series. The only "DON'T DO THIS" I've heard is that Memory shouldn't be read until you've read all the books before it in internal chronology. Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 11:06 on May 16, 2016 |
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May 16, 2016 11:03
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Antti posted:There's two schools: internal chronological and the order in which they were published. Here's the author's own recommendation (it's internal chronology). Thanks man, I think I'll start with the warrior's apprentice. Miles sounds like a cool guy and I'd like to get straight to reading about him.
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May 16, 2016 11:24
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Trier posted:Thanks man, I think I'll start with the warrior's apprentice. Miles sounds like a cool guy and I'd like to get straight to reading about him. That series is fun as hell, but be advised there is a lot of planetary action and, as far as I can remember, not so much ship-to-ship combat. If your level of tolerance to bad literature is high (bad as in cartoonish, nonsensical and full of stereotypes), perhaps you could take a look into the Starforce Series (https://www.goodreads.com/series/69279-star-force). It is about a next door guy turned into Star Admiral by an alien race which enlists the humanity in a war against someone else. Be ready to read about the main character loving a girl just a few hours after loosing his son. You have been warned  E: I almost forgot about Neal Ahser. His Agent Cormac series (https://www.goodreads.com/series/49124-agent-cormac) contain some big space battles, with big ships with big, big weapons. Also, some of the best monsters you can find in Science Fiction (creatures that make Alien's xenomorphos look like helpless kittens). There is also a lot of politics and ground action, so it is not exactly what you are asking for. Amberskin fucked around with this message at 11:45 on May 16, 2016 |
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May 16, 2016 11:42
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Donaldson's Gap series has lots of ship to ship combat...
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May 16, 2016 13:17
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anilEhilated posted:I actually like SotS a lot. It has some of the most memorable bits from the series (I rather suspect the treatise on the shape of the world will remain with me until I die) and a final confrontation that's almost on par with BoB as far as catharsis goes. The real drop in quality is between Story and Gentlemen and even that has amazing stuff like the corpse disposal scene. The Wen-Wu lute soliloquy in Story is definitely at least as funny as the porcupine recipe in Birds. I never remember it for some reason.
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May 16, 2016 13:21
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How's the new Tim Powers?
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May 16, 2016 17:26
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Medusa's Web? Basically Three Days To Never done right. Well, right-er. Nothing amazing like Declare but pretty solid.
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May 16, 2016 17:41
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:My weird recommendation to the thread (not a space fantasy sim thing, just a generic "I found this and gently caress it was better than I thought!") was a surprise to me. It's a superhero novel, meaning there are heroes and villains and whatnot, but it's also a pretty noir level detective story. That sounds like a lot of fun! Thanks for the rec, I'll check it out and report back.
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May 16, 2016 18:14
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Just finished Revelation Space over the weekend. gently caress, what a good book. But, I think I'm going to just go ahead and finished The Expanse series before getting into Redemption Ark. Reynolds is just so long winded it was a struggle to finish the book, even if it was completely amazing. He's like the Robert Jordan of Sci Fi (in that he can write 3 pages describing a coffee table). Edit: With the Babylon's Ashes coming out in November, would anybody be up for an Expanse thread with a plan to read the series before the release, kind of like the Wheel of Time thread that happened a while back? Looks like Reddit's doing one, thought it'd be cool to do one here where I like people. Fiendish Dr. Wu fucked around with this message at 21:34 on May 16, 2016 |
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May 16, 2016 21:21
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Is there ever going to be another Trent the Uncatchable novel? I recall DKM finally squeezed out a partial effort a few years ago that gave me hope, but nothing since.
Number Ten Cocks fucked around with this message at 22:06 on May 16, 2016 |
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May 16, 2016 21:51
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Number Ten Cocks posted:Is there ever going to be another Trent the Uncatchable novel? I recall DKM finally squeezed out a partial effort a few years ago that have me hope, but nothing sense. The latest is "The AI War: Part I", so I really hope so. But considering this one took 18 years to see the light of day after "The Last Dancer", I'm not holding my breath.
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May 16, 2016 21:58
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Nippashish posted:I thought the idea of the slow zone/beyond/transcend was really interesting, but it wasn't really explored in Fire Upon the Deep or the sequels. Speaking of which, how is the third book in this series? I really enjoyed A Fire Upon The Deep, and A Deepness in the Sky was even better. I did enjoy the Tines' chapters, but can't really imagine them adding up to a standalone book of a comparable quality.
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May 16, 2016 22:39
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I thought it was moderately dire. I finished it but can't remember anything except it seemed to set up a sequel that linked to the end of A Fire Upon the Deep.
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May 16, 2016 22:51
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I love most Vinge books but Children of the Sky is definitely his weakest. I'd put it on part with The Peace War, as in not actively bad reading but mediocre by comparison to anything else he's written. Very skippable plot wise as well, until and unless he writes another.
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May 16, 2016 22:53
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There is a chapter where the human kids and their puppy friends pretend to be a traveling circus act so that they don't get lynched by hick villager puppies.
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May 17, 2016 00:09
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Clark Nova posted:There is a chapter where the human kids and their puppy friends pretend to be a traveling circus act so that they don't get lynched by hick villager puppies. Sold.
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May 17, 2016 01:50
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I just finished Lavie Tidhar's Central Station and it is fantastic. He builds a world and throws you into it so well, I want more of the universe.
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May 17, 2016 03:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Honor is the most perfect example of a Mary Sue I'm aware of in any fiction, and I'm including Ayn Rand protagonists in that assessment. Everything Honor does is perfect, anyone who disagrees with her for any reason is weak and evil, she's instantly the best at everything. . . All of that. It's pretty good pulp reading if you really hate yourself, though.
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May 17, 2016 14:11
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Kesper North posted:You know what? There is also Neal Asher The Polity universe, which is the cynical and brutal version of Banks universe. More detailed space combat than Banks, where AIs does most of the action stuff. Also contains the best terrifying alien ecosystems out there. Latest book, War Factory, is out and is sofar pretty good.
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May 17, 2016 14:28
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I dont think "Forever War" is sci-fi mil fetishism, its one of those books that kinda transcend its genre to be a solid piece of literature. Also, future socialism wins. Another desguised-as-sci-fi-mil-book-but-actually-great is Jonh Steakley's "Armour".The first half of the book is just this brutal Battle of the Ardennes but in the future tale. The second half of the book is weaker that the first part, being a con man\who dunnit story but it as a pretty great climax , though the ending is maybe too nice.Its got a more pulpy feeling to it than "Forever war". Also nthing Vernor Vinge, "A fire upon the deep\ A Deepness in the sky" is maybe the greatest one-two punch in sci-fi.
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May 17, 2016 14:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:and after the first book the space battles are lame too and just turn into "well, our side had fancier space missiles, so we won."
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May 17, 2016 19:23
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Apraxin posted:I think that came as a side effect of Weber shoehorning his political opinions into the backstory. He had the whole 'Hornblower in space' universe set up, right down to Haven as (space) France about to undergo a revolution led by (space) Rob S. Pierre, but then for some reason he needed a cack-handed '(space) socialism is bad okay' moral and made Haven into this lumbering USSR analogue (but also still space France) without touching anything else. It hosed up the in-universe power balance so bad that he had to have Manticore pull a new superweapon that Revolutionizes Space Warfare Forever out of their rear end every second or third book. The other problem is that space Hornblower is doomed from the start because a space navy is the only way to project power, so you can't have the historical situation of Revolutionary France with an unmatched army but relatively weaker navy. Thus, you end up with either an overpowered space France that needs to be defeated through technobabble or a space France that doesn't become scary because it never beat up space Austria, space Prussia, and space Russia. Weber somehow managed to have both of those problems in the same series(space France managed to lose every major encounter and never conquers anyone of importance, yet has infinity ships and planets so can't be defeated without superweapons). That's an impressive feat I suppose, but not a sign of good planning. Edit: fixed overuse of commas blackmongoose fucked around with this message at 20:04 on May 17, 2016 |
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May 17, 2016 20:00
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Cardiac posted:There is also Neal Asher The Polity universe, which is the cynical and brutal version of Banks universe. Banks is no less cynical or brutal. He's just far more subtle.
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May 17, 2016 20:19
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What does the more cynical and brutal version of Use of Weapons look like
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May 17, 2016 20:53
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Number Ten Cocks posted:What does the more cynical and brutal version of Use of Weapons look like Elethiomel opens a furniture store.
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May 17, 2016 21:15
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