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blackmongoose posted:The Traitor Baru Cormorant uses it all the time so it is now a thread-approved word (because TTBC is awesome) I am dumb.
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Jul 27, 2016 17:39
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ToxicFrog posted:Only if you're french. The word hasn't really migrated into english. ...trap sprung? (ask me about "procyote" and "joclyote" I dare you)
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Jul 27, 2016 17:53
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ulmont posted:Following up on this because Swann finally responded (email went into spam filter). In other Swann news apparently he got contracted to write a choose your own adventure book in the moreau universe so that's a thing that's happening. Including being able to choose a genetically modified capybara.
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Jul 27, 2016 18:06
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Final Fantasy VI random encounter on the Lete river, "Exocite", is how I ended up learning that one. hosed up video game English for prokaryote and eukaryote?
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Jul 27, 2016 20:09
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andrew smash posted:hosed up video game English for prokaryote and eukaryote? 
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Jul 27, 2016 20:23
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Strategic Tea posted:IIRC the main UK english meaning for exocet is, ironically, a make of missile. I think it's even a naval one? It's a French-built anti-ship missile family named after the fish. So pretty much pisces all the way down. House Louse posted:Gene Wolfe is a pretty good writer, you know.* These posts where I'm saying yes, the novel does do this stuff you're saying it should do, are in fact praising it. Ok!
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Jul 27, 2016 20:24
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Yes, actually. FF4, on the moon. And they looked like a single blobby cell with tentacles. Of course, they were palette swaps of each other, so it didn't actually teach me about microbiology Did the prokaryote have membrane bound organelles because if so I'll be cross
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Jul 27, 2016 22:52
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Koesj posted:It's a French-built anti-ship missile family named after the fish. So pretty much pisces all the way down. I've learned what an exocet missile was from the Falklands and Top Gun.
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Jul 27, 2016 23:00
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holocaust bloopers posted:I've learned what an exocet missile was from the Falklands and Top Gun. All these Exocets and Phalanxes, it's like I'm playing Harpoon again!
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Jul 28, 2016 03:02
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Just finished Perdido Street Station. I'm glad I toughed it out, it was a worthwhile read, but it definitely would have stood on its own better if I had read it before The Scar. I felt like Mieville spends too much time giving you minor details about New Crobuzon and its inhabitants, in particular late in the book when I really just wanted the plot to clip along. I also felt like the characters, while fundamentally very good, didn't really have particularly robust arcs. In particular Derkhan kind of felt pretty flat.
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Jul 28, 2016 03:05
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General Battuta posted:All these Exocets and Phalanxes, it's like I'm playing Harpoon again! I see you poking into the Airpower thread. If Baru ever needs to expand on command and control AWACS sorties, hit me up. I'll ghost write the passage.
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Jul 28, 2016 03:58
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holocaust bloopers posted:I see you poking into the Airpower thread. Hahahaha I actually have a manuscript I want to bounce off you! You can find my email on my website, if you're up for it.
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Jul 28, 2016 04:12
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There may be other military aviation experts that might want to help as well...ahem.
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Jul 28, 2016 06:36
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So I just smashed through the first 3 of Charles Stross Laundry Files novels in this space of a week while I'm working away from home. I've never picked one up before mostly because the whole Lovecraft/Cosmic Horror genre never really interested me (plus his horrible wiki pic). His writing style is great if you can live with the first three being semi-pastiches to espionage authors, and tech wankery but his world building and plot is pretty decent. Would certainly recommend.
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Jul 28, 2016 10:02
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I've been reading some short story collections lately (would like suggestions for more) and recently finished Ken Liu's Paper Menagerie. It was pretty good and I think he's a better science fiction writer than he is a fantasy one. That said some of the stories felt pretty heavy handed for their premises and the premises kinda got lost in the scuffle. Especially the last one...
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Jul 28, 2016 10:27
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ed balls balls man posted:So I just smashed through the first 3 of Charles Stross Laundry Files novels in this space of a week while I'm working away from home. I've never picked one up before mostly because the whole Lovecraft/Cosmic Horror genre never really interested me (plus his horrible wiki pic). His writing style is great if you can live with the first three being semi-pastiches to espionage authors, and tech wankery but his world building and plot is pretty decent. Would certainly recommend. If you are enjoying them get the Laundry short stories. Also grab "A Colder War".
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Jul 28, 2016 14:24
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General Battuta posted:Hahahaha I actually have a manuscript I want to bounce off you! You can find my email on my website, if you're up for it. Yea would be happy too. I'll shoot you an email here today.
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Jul 28, 2016 14:29
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So I started reading Children of Time because of the recommendations earlier and I've really been enjoying it so far. The spider culture stuff is pretty interesting as well as the Peter Watts-esque ant civilization that doesn't have consciousness.
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Jul 28, 2016 14:52
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muscles like this? posted:So I started reading Children of Time because of the recommendations earlier and I've really been enjoying it so far. The spider culture stuff is pretty interesting as well as the Peter Watts-esque ant civilization that doesn't have consciousness. The ending is a little bit 'what the gently caress' (but not necessarily in a bad way). Honestly a really great book. But the idea of having my brain forcefully re-wired to see spiders as 'family' squicks me the gently caress out 
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Jul 29, 2016 00:19
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The ending was loving brilliant What do we think it's chances are of winning the Arthur C Clarke Award? It has to be either that or Arcadia, but I think politics will win out.
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Jul 29, 2016 01:22
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MockingQuantum posted:Just finished Perdido Street Station. I'm glad I toughed it out, it was a worthwhile read, but it definitely would have stood on its own better if I had read it before The Scar. I felt like Mieville spends too much time giving you minor details about New Crobuzon and its inhabitants, in particular late in the book when I really just wanted the plot to clip along. I also felt like the characters, while fundamentally very good, didn't really have particularly robust arcs. In particular Derkhan kind of felt pretty flat. This was pretty much my feeling as well. A bunch of neat ideas wrapped around flat characters and a lack of focus.
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Jul 29, 2016 02:59
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Xotl posted:This was pretty much my feeling as well. A bunch of neat ideas wrapped around flat characters and a lack of focus. FWIW if you (or anyone who has read PSS) haven't read The Scar I really feel like Mieville figures his poo poo out much better and the world of Bas-Lag takes off in that one. It's much more coherent, and he gets deeper into some of the cultures (Remade, Cacti, one other one that doesn't show up in PSS) and the central characters feel more like actual people than plot puppets. The overarching plot of The Scar is also about 1000x more compelling too, I think. PSS didn't have a bad plot per se, but it felt like a lot of threads to try and maintain through the book, and I think only one or two of them felt like they successfully led somewhere satisfying. I feel like much more interesting things could have been done with the Construct Council, the Weaver, and the Handlingers but all of them kind of felt like they appeared to fill a particular plot bucket, and after that was fulfilled they disappeared. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I feel like the ending of Perdido was a letdown, given everything that built up to it. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Jul 29, 2016 |
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Jul 29, 2016 04:50
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To be fair all of his endings are 'let downs'
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Jul 29, 2016 04:58
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I usually absolutely love books with very dense novel ideas and concepts as reflected in the worldbuilding... But PSS left me very cold. I read the Scar which I found just okay, nothing remarkable, save for the mosquito people bit which I thought was loving alien and cool. I tried to get into the City and the City but found it dreadfully boring, though the prose was technically miles above PSS. I think Mieville is not for me. Surprisingly it has nothing to do with his politics either, even though we disagree on major issues. He doesn't lecture so it's not grating. The only time it annoyed me was how the mob in the Scar was such a positive force, which I thought unlikely.
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Jul 29, 2016 05:01
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the_homemaster posted:To be fair all of his endings are 'let downs' I guess to a point, yeah. The Scar at least felt like it had a pretty concrete climax, instead of "welp we built a machine, wahoo now the moths are dead, turns out my girlfriend is alive... also the garuda's a rapist. bye!". Neurosis posted:I usually absolutely love books with very dense novel ideas and concepts as reflected in the worldbuilding... But PSS left me very cold. I read the Scar which I found just okay, nothing remarkable, save for the mosquito people bit which I thought was loving alien and cool. I tried to get into the City and the City but found it dreadfully boring, though the prose was technically miles above PSS. I think Mieville is not for me. Surprisingly it has nothing to do with his politics either, even though we disagree on major issues. He doesn't lecture so it's not grating. The only time it annoyed me was how the mob in the Scar was such a positive force, which I thought unlikely. I'm curious, since I like your recommendations (or tastes or whatever) in the horror thread: what SF/F does it for you in terms of worldbuilding? I'd agree that I love novel concepts in fantasy worlds, but that Mieville kind of only seems to deliver on about half of his ideas beyond a very surface level.
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Jul 29, 2016 05:22
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ulmont posted:Following up on this because Swann finally responded (email went into spam filter). Thanks for the update.
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Jul 29, 2016 05:24
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm curious, since I like your recommendations (or tastes or whatever) in the horror thread: what SF/F does it for you in terms of worldbuilding? I'd agree that I love novel concepts in fantasy worlds, but that Mieville kind of only seems to deliver on about half of his ideas beyond a very surface level. Thanks! I think the books that do it the best that I can remember are The Quantum Thief and The Golden Age. The Quantum Thief probably has cooler 'big ideas', but The Golden Age has so many cool ideas for what could be done to human thought, identity and expression with technology. I remember one bit in the first book where the protagonist is going through things for sale where it's just this barrage of cool ideas incredibly densely packed. Of course, the flipside of the author's, John C Wright's, fevered imagination is that he sees liberals coming for his rights left and right. House of Suns had some extremely cool world (universe?) building as well. The plot itself was so-so, but the sense of scale given by the aspects of the world that Reynolds detailed was breathtaking. It also felt very Gothic.
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Jul 29, 2016 06:07
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Deepness in the Sky had massive worldbuilding hooks for me. The 'failed dreams', the way the trading families provide for civilizational backstops, the alternate history/near-future sci fi of the alien world, etc.
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Jul 29, 2016 15:23
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MockingQuantum posted:Just finished Perdido Street Station. I'm glad I toughed it out, it was a worthwhile read, but it definitely would have stood on its own better if I had read it before The Scar. I felt like Mieville spends too much time giving you minor details about New Crobuzon and its inhabitants, in particular late in the book when I really just wanted the plot to clip along. I also felt like the characters, while fundamentally very good, didn't really have particularly robust arcs. In particular Derkhan kind of felt pretty flat. I remember reading that Mieville had spent quite a bit of time poring over RPG manuals as a youth and this came through in PSS.
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Jul 30, 2016 00:59
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Robot Wendigo posted:I remember reading that Mieville had spent quite a bit of time poring over RPG manuals as a youth and this came through in PSS. I could believe that. A lot of it reads like sourcebooks-- little bite-sized chunks of info that are enough to give you a flavor of the world without really feeling like you've gone deeper than a surface level.
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Jul 30, 2016 01:08
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Thinking of starting my first foray into Gene Wolfe's stuff 
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Jul 30, 2016 01:22
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I'm going into Neal Asher's work by starting on Dark Intelligence. 
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Jul 30, 2016 03:18
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Hey fellow Craig Schaefer fanboy(s), how long does Revanche Cycle take to build up to some action? I'm reading Winter's Reach right now, and while the prose is nice and snappy, the "sort of Europe, sort of not" setting already feels really blah to me. I'm not wild on the idea of digging into a 4 book series right now but I'm willing to give this a chance since I love the Faust books, as long as I know what I'm getting into.
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Jul 30, 2016 03:25
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It's a different type of book. I haven't finished the series but it's more of a political thriller sort of fantasy, albeit depressing as gently caress, more so than a dungeons and dragons escapade.
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Jul 30, 2016 03:48
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Koesj posted:Thinking of starting my first foray into Gene Wolfe's stuff You are about to either go on a wonderful journey or hit a brick wall. May I recommend beginning with Fifth Head of Cerberus, before deciding if you want to go deeper? It's quite short and digestible,, it still has Wolfe complexity and prose, and I think his reflections on identity in a post-colonial context are interesting. The only thing maybe lacking c.f. The New Sun is the really engaging and strange world. The Wizard Knight wouldn't be a bad non-Solar Cycle starting point, either.
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Jul 30, 2016 03:58
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Here's a thread for the new Harry Potter book coming out tomorrow: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3784894
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Jul 30, 2016 04:58
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Koesj posted:Thinking of starting my first foray into Gene Wolfe's stuff A good idea. I'll second The Fifth Head of Cerberus and The Wizard Knight as good starting places, so are his short stories (watch out, though, these can get seriously confusing) and Peace if you want something more mainstream. Contrariwise, his newer books are generally less well thought of. Wolfe does ask more of the reader than most writers, but he's worth it. You might find this interesting: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2007/gwms0704.htm I'm the Book Barn IK. Feel free to PM me or email bookbarnsecretsanta@gmail.com if I can help you with anything.
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Jul 30, 2016 05:21
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House Louse posted:A good idea. I'll second The Fifth Head of Cerberus and The Wizard Knight as good starting places, so are his short stories (watch out, though, these can get seriously confusing) and Peace if you want something more mainstream. Contrariwise, his newer books are generally less well thought of. Thank you for this article. This articulates Wolfe's appeal far better than I've ever managed.
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Jul 30, 2016 06:29
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Robot Wendigo posted:I remember reading that Mieville had spent quite a bit of time poring over RPG manuals as a youth and this came through in PSS. I don't like Mieville's books, but his sadly too-brief run of Dial H is a treasure.
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Jul 30, 2016 11:19
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I was devastated by the ending of Perdido Street Station, but I ended up really appreciating it for that reason.
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Jul 30, 2016 14:15
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