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Finished Ventus by Karl Schroeder, his first novel that he put up for free. Pretty good. About a world terraformed by a nanite swarm that develop their own type of intelligence. On that planet is a guy who is a fragment of a malevolent god like ai who was defeated by the main human/ai civilisation. Solid prose and characters, a couple of interesting ideas, maybe minorly pretentious here and there but overall a good 7.5/10.
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Jun 29, 2016 03:38
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Neurosis posted:Finished Ventus by Karl Schroeder, his first novel that he put up for free. Pretty good. About a world terraformed by a nanite swarm that develop their own type of intelligence. On that planet is a guy who is a fragment of a malevolent god like ai who was defeated by the main human/ai civilisation. Solid prose and characters, a couple of interesting ideas, maybe minorly pretentious here and there but overall a good 7.5/10. I heartily endorse Karl Schroeder and so does Peter Watts, and if that isn't enough for this thread...  Turdis McWordis posted:1/3 through the Nightmare Stacks I kind of love it. Me too. The happy "ding" of the notification email turned a really crappy day into a good evening.
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Jun 29, 2016 06:35
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Kesper North posted:I heartily endorse Karl Schroeder and so does Peter Watts, and if that isn't enough for this thread Sold.
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Jun 29, 2016 08:02
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Just finished "A talent for war", by Jack McDevitt After reading the Academy series (recommended, except Starhawk, which is awfully bad) I wanted to take a look at other works from this guy. I remember reading The Hercules Text a lot of years ago and liking it, so I went for the Alex Benedict series. I'm not disapointed. The main character is a relic/archeology stuff trader living in a future universe where mankind have established a flourishing confederation of worlds. Some centuries before the facts in the book, there was a war against an alien race, which was won by mankind thanks to the actions of a war hero, who died in action but made posible the human response to the alien threat. In current days (as for the book), the uncle of Alex Benedict disappears in a starliner accident, and as his heir Alex get a hint about what his uncle (an archeologist himself) was pursuing. What seems to be a purely academic thing gets complicated when unkown agents intervene to disrupt Alex research, so he decides to solve the puzzle himself, aided by a pretty space pilot and using the whole mountain of money he inherited from his uncle. The book is brilliant. It mixes some action stuff with academic research (you know, the boring one based on digging on old books and documents), some space combat scenes (short enough to be "just fine" and not converting the book into another mil-sci pastiche) and, over all, the pursuit of a mistery. The ending is good, the story gets nicely wrapped and the universe set for more stories. I'm going to follow with the second one, and after that I'll probably check the new Asher book.
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Jun 29, 2016 10:02
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Turdis McWordis posted:1/3 through the Nightmare Stacks I kind of love it. Let me know how it turns out. The endings are usually what disappoint me about Stross books. Is the new protagonist good? I really didn't get a great feel for him on the last couple of books.
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Jun 29, 2016 10:57
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Rough Lobster posted:Let me know how it turns out. The endings are usually what disappoint me about Stross books. Is the new protagonist good? I really didn't get a great feel for him on the last couple of books. He is bob Howard version 2.
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Jun 29, 2016 11:36
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Also, saddest nerd issue ever with what was a cool book: The gas path components of the EJ200 engine used by the Eurofighter Typhoon are platinum and ceramic coated as an anti corrosion measure, whilst platinum does in fact react with flourine at the temperatures inside a jet engine, it does not do so quickly. I am fairly sure that the engines would suffer degradation and need a complete overhaul but they would probably last long enough to allow the plane to land especially given how damage resistant military gas turbine engines are. Source: I work for the company who makes the things.
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Jun 29, 2016 14:23
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Rough Lobster posted:Let me know how it turns out. The endings are usually what disappoint me about Stross books. Is the new protagonist good? I really didn't get a great feel for him on the last couple of books. Cardiac posted:He is bob Howard version 2. Sort of. I mean he has the geeky tech guy thing, but Bob was a practical IT guy by profession by the time we met him, Alex is a high level theoretical mathematician. He's also an almost 25 year old virgin, which both makes him very different from the Bob/Mhari early dynamic and matters for this plotline. To the extent they're similar I think it's good, Stross knows how to write this kind of character, and I never want to read Mo's POV again. I liked the ending quite a bit. One of the things I hated about Annihilation Score was that the super powers were kind of ignored, not really explored in any kind of detail and they never really mattered much to the actual set piece fights or actual plot (rather than metaplot) development. The Nightmare Stacks turns into a fantasy elves version of Tom Clancy (particularly Red Storm Rising) that actually shows and discusses what a military based on thousands of years of magical "technology" could look like. I liked that you could see how the conflict was going to be resolved (after massive civilian casualties and various military/Laundry show downs with the bad guys) from the mid book plot developments and the title of the last chapter, but he still surprised me with the scale of it and I LOL'd at the particular way they ended things on the last couple of pages. You think the Laundry would be relieved that the conflict is over, but ever single member has to be making GBS threads their pants at the way Alex and Cassie choose to do it. My biggest complaint is that the name of the book makes zero sense. There is a Nightmare Stacks, which is a weapons cache but it has very little to do with the action or plot. Unless it's a metaphor for this being (in addition to a romantic comedy) a Clancy-esque shoot-em-up. My minor complaint is that I'm still not sure what he was trying to pull off with the Scorpion Stare deployment and whether it suceeded. Was it to set up even more extreme consequences for the Laundry management in the next book, possibly including government orders to shut down their defenses? To make us think that the Laundry hasn't fully thought through the implications and capabilities of their weapons so we and they should be even more scared of Case Nightmare Green? To make you think the conflict is going to be resolved one way, then yank the rug out from under you? (This sort of worked, in that I expected this to be effective, but I also thought it was obvious that the ultimate resolution would come the way it did, if not specifically via invocation of both the Dead Gods and the UN Convention on Refugees in the same plea. As far as romantic comedies angle goes, the meet the parents dinner scene reminded me quite a bit of the dinner party in A Civil Campaign. I'll be rereading this one again soon with a more critical eye, but this is probably my favorite Laundry book ever, albeit because I don't know/care much about the IT angle of the predecessors, and do know/care quite a bit about the military stuff and awkward dating in this one. Turdis McWordis fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Jun 29, 2016 |
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Jun 29, 2016 14:47
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What's with the super lovely reviews of Annihilation Score on Amazon? I didn't find it that much different from the rest of the series.
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Jun 29, 2016 15:24
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Mo is super boring/bitchy, there are hardly any superheroes in this superhero book, it's all bureaucracy, PowerPoint, midlife crisis, and gobbledygook.
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Jun 29, 2016 15:52
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People apparently prefer reading about twentysomething male geeks than middle aged female civil servants. Also dogwhistle dogwhistle dogwhistle. Actually speaking of "bitchy" female characters I would've loved for the vampire-POV Laundry Files book to be from the perspective of Mhari the resident HBIC. Using the perspective change to follow what seems to be a baby-Bob was not a particularly inspired choice. Anyways, I blew through Hope and Red by Jon Skovron pretty quickly. It's one of those books that starts out pretty poorly (Skovron makes the mistake of trying and failing to write child characters) and there are some pacing issues but now I really want to read the next book. The premise is pretty crazy though. Think ninjas meet pirates meet street urchin thieves with a dash of body horror from the resident magicians.
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Jun 29, 2016 18:35
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Turdis McWordis posted:Mo is super boring/bitchy, there are hardly any superheroes in this superhero book, it's all bureaucracy, PowerPoint, midlife crisis, and gobbledygook. This is literally every previous Laundry book. The biggest problem with it is that Mo isn't a distinct enough character from Bob.
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Jun 29, 2016 18:42
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I think Annihilation Score is somehow worse than the rest of the series. I was actually stoked for a book with Mo as the main character, but the utter dumbness of the superhero idea and the dull bureaucratic plot with an actual bureaucracy instead of an arcane one just made me feel like a Daily Mail reader seething with rage at the EU trying to straighten our cucumbers. So gently caress that book.
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Jun 29, 2016 19:38
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Is the rest of the series worth picking up, despite this outlier?
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Jun 29, 2016 20:16
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pseudorandom name posted:This is literally every previous Laundry book. The biggest problem with it is that Mo isn't a distinct enough character from Bob. No. The others used faked magic bureaucracy for humor and flavor. Annihilation Score has several chapters on business plan development. The others had actual magic and conflicts solved by the magic system that are described. AH has superheroes who don't do anything on screen and Mo playing a violin that auto wins.
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Jun 29, 2016 20:20
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Klungar posted:Is the rest of the series worth picking up, despite this outlier? I'd say yes. The first couple at least are pretty clever spoofs of Cold War-era fiction and even when it shifts into becoming its own thing it's pretty good. I find the first four books very enjoyable, then it's a bumpy ride. Also don't skip the side stories, Equoid in particular is great.
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Jun 29, 2016 20:21
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I liked The Annihilation Score and even I can admit that the book made CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN come off like it was Marvel Comics instead of Lovecraft's worst, well, nightmare. Also a few chapters in to the new book and new-Bob is adorably clueless and super scared of actual-Bob but occasionally remembers how Mhari saved his rear end and I couldn't help but want to return to her viewpoint so we could get the perspective of someone competent again.
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Jun 29, 2016 21:53
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The Laundry Files series is overall pretty variable in quality book to book. New book is probably the best out of the past four or so entries, definite improvement.
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Jun 29, 2016 22:09
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Combed Thunderclap posted:I liked The Annihilation Score and even I can admit that the book made CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN come off like it was Marvel Comics instead of Lovecraft's worst, well, nightmare. Well, to be fair CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is still ramping up. What was happening in Annihilation Score was a byproduct of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN's effects on our universe.
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Jun 29, 2016 22:16
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flosofl posted:Well, to be fair CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is still ramping up. What was happening in Annihilation Score was a byproduct of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN's effects on our universe. I get the rationale, I just didn't like the effect. 
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Jun 29, 2016 22:23
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Combed Thunderclap posted:I get the rationale, I just didn't like the effect. Oh, I hear you on that. Part of it is me just reminding myself that "this is the not the CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN you're waiting for" because of how uninteresting the book was. I don't quite understand the Mo hatred, but I definitely think she's not a compelling POV character. The whole book felt like it was just spinning it's wheels until the last few chapters. From what I understand the next two books after Nightmare Stacks are dealing directly with CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. That was a year or two back I heard that, so that may have changed and I haven't read the latest one yet.
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Jun 29, 2016 22:29
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We were just talking about this in another thread, and while I'll never agree that Mo was a bad character I'll definitely agree that the plot mostly sucked and was boring and really appeared to be a way to get rid of the violin.
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Jun 29, 2016 23:09
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i'm kind of glad i never read past the atrocity archives based on the wildly variable reviews that series always gets. hotness review: Ninefox Gambit was really good, yes it's also guilty of being PART ONE but very much unlike Too Like the Lightning it represents a complete and satisfying plot arc. Basically everything i've read by Yoon Ha Lee has been excellent and this continues that trend. andrew smash fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Jun 30, 2016 |
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Jun 30, 2016 03:53
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Is there an actual genre term for the "old future" setting where mankind has been in space for hundreds/thousands of years? You know like Revelation Space or Schismatrix Plus. There's something about it that I just really like, especially when it's characters interacting with weird ancient future tech.
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Jun 30, 2016 14:48
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muscles like this? posted:Is there an actual genre term for the "old future" setting where mankind has been in space for hundreds/thousands of years? You know like Revelation Space or Schismatrix Plus. There's something about it that I just really like, especially when it's characters interacting with weird ancient future tech. huh? schismatrix plus is in the 22nd century.
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Jun 30, 2016 15:03
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Amazon just let me know that the Vandermeers' murder-weapon-disguised-as-a-short-story-anthology, The Big Book of Science Fiction, is coming out on July 12. 800,000 words: quote:Yoshio Aramaki, “Soft Clocks” 1968 (Japan) – translated by Kazuko Behrens and stylized by Lewis Shiner
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Jun 30, 2016 15:04
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flosofl posted:From what I understand the next two books after Nightmare Stacks are dealing directly with CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. That was a year or two back I heard that, so that may have changed and I haven't read the latest one yet. Early on in Nightmare Stacks Alex makes the observation that the Laundry expects to be on a wartime footing in a year or so. They're rating up for CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN in a big way. That makes CASE NIGHTMARE RED breaking out a really unwelcome surprise. Some of the other CASE NIGHTMARE RAINBOW scenarios get some talking time in the book.
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Jun 30, 2016 19:46
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Antti posted:Amazon just let me know that the Vandermeers' murder-weapon-disguised-as-a-short-story-anthology, The Big Book of Science Fiction, is coming out on July 12. That reminds me that I need to start digging into The Weird sometime soon.
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Jun 30, 2016 20:05
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muscles like this? posted:Is there an actual genre term for the "old future" setting where mankind has been in space for hundreds/thousands of years? You know like Revelation Space or Schismatrix Plus. There's something about it that I just really like, especially when it's characters interacting with weird ancient future tech. I'm now reading The Alex Benedict series by McDevitt, and in that universe mankind has been in space for some millenia. Enough time to produce archeological sites, rare ancient artifacts and semi-true legends, which is the stuff the books are about.
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Jun 30, 2016 22:56
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Antti posted:Amazon just let me know that the Vandermeers' murder-weapon-disguised-as-a-short-story-anthology, The Big Book of Science Fiction, is coming out on July 12. Guess I know what I'll be reading on my summer vacation, then.
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Jul 1, 2016 08:46
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The Nightmare Stacks would be a lot less scary if people weren't actively promoting Theresa May as our next PM. Still a good book. Whoever referred to it as Stross doing Red Storm Rising had a point.
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Jul 1, 2016 14:19
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chrisoya posted:The Nightmare Stacks would be a lot less scary if people weren't actively promoting Theresa May as our next PM. The part of the book that featured an obvious May analogue cracked me up.
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Jul 1, 2016 18:32
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Was out for a walk, thinking about the Nightmare Stacks, or at least as far as I've gotten on it so far, and I had a setting idea I thought was interesting. Original concept do not steal: Humanity has finally been invited to join the Galatic Federation now that we're advanced enough to be interesting. There's just one problem: It turns out that the wise, noble and ancient races that make up the Galactic Federation are basically elder gods, and infovores, and humanity must either sign up and become complicit in mass genocide to slake the demand of the Dining Club for delicious, vivid, meat-body-experience memories, or refuse and fight for survival against many-angled femtotech tentacle monsters from beyond the stars. (Humans at this point virtually being femtotech tentacle monsters themselves. Evolution's a bitch sometimes.) In this setting, humanity has lost that fight and is looking to flee into our universe in order to use it as a staging ground for a counterattack, but first the local baselines must be made useful. A Special Operations Gestalt is dispatched to solve the problem, and it in turn buds off an interface for interacting with baselines and translating god-thoughts into thoughts and actions the locals can comprehend. The interface inherits enough of its creating gestalt's fear, grief and loneliness to be humanized as it acculturates to having an endocrine system again, and remembers what love is for while forcibly uplifting the primitive hominids of this brane.
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Jul 1, 2016 18:50
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Combed Thunderclap posted:The part of the book that featured an obvious May analogue cracked me up. Explain for those of us on the momentarily, relatively, sane side of the pond ?
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Jul 1, 2016 19:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Explain for those of us on the momentarily, relatively, sane side of the pond ? At the end of Chapter 17, there is a discussion with the Right Honorable Jeremy Michaels, which is the only real portion of the book with any obvious governmental analogues. Mind you, I can't explain the analogue to you, being on the same side of the pond.
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Jul 1, 2016 19:25
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I gather as a fellow seppo that the bitchy dragon Home Secretary who featured prominently in the Atrocity Archives, and very briefly in this one, is based on the actual Home Secretary. Since I'm not one of those poncy Brits I don't find it quite as annoying and tone deaf as the similar thing he did with US government officials in the Merchant Princes.
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Jul 1, 2016 20:12
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This is re: The Nightmare Stacks. I must be thick but what's implied at the end of the family dinner when they're about to leave and the main character sees Cassie talking to Mack furtively and his sister offers to stay behind? There's two books left in the series right? I imagine that a lot of it is going to be trying to deal with a world that is rapidly waking up to the fact that the paranormal is real, real bad, and about to tear the collective heads of humanity off.
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Jul 1, 2016 20:18
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RoboCicero posted:This is re: The Nightmare Stacks. I must be thick but what's implied at the end of the family dinner when they're about to leave and the main character sees Cassie talking to Mack furtively and his sister offers to stay behind? I thought she told them to GTFO town. But that leaves the parents stranded and uniformed by their daughter, so who knows.
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Jul 1, 2016 20:30
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I think it's reasonable (and correct) that Cassie guessed his parents were much less likely and able to take such advice seriously and so didn't bother, but figured his sister was likely to bail fast. Plus there's all sorts of implied beliefs about what's appropriate to do in terms of direct imperatives to your boyfriend's parents (elders) vs. your boyfriend's sister
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Jul 1, 2016 22:31
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Grimson posted:I think it's reasonable (and correct) that Cassie guessed his parents were much less likely and able to take such advice seriously and so didn't bother, but figured his sister was likely to bail fast. Cassie did at least mark a warding sign on their front door so the Wild Hunt would pass them by.
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Jul 1, 2016 23:00
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