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A Pinball Wizard posted:Gurgeh stared at the space chess. He considered moving the space king over to the space rook, but then he didn't. Instead, he moved it to the right. He nodded. The robot flew over, and said something bitchy. Gurgeh chuckled, then sighed. "Robot," he said, "please fly away." The robot made a light from his head and then he flew away. 
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Oct 8, 2017 03:22
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Wheat Loaf posted:Haven't all the movies he's done since Kingdom of the Crystal Skull been reasonably good anyway? Maybe there's nothing groundbreaking about, say, Lincoln or Bridge of Spies or even that Tintin movie he did but I thought they were fine. The BFG is pretty bad. Definitely his worst movie in a long time. But then again, Wes Anderson kind of set a new bar for Roald Dahl adaptations with Fantastic Mister Fox.
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Oct 8, 2017 03:24
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That's a C+P that's been floating around for years.
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Oct 8, 2017 04:06
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Arcsquad12 posted:The BFG is pretty bad. Definitely his worst movie in a long time. But then again, Wes Anderson kind of set a new bar for Roald Dahl adaptations with Fantastic Mister Fox. That seems surprisingly disappointing, The BFG seems like something perfectly in Spielberg's wheelhouse. How'd that go wrong?
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Oct 8, 2017 04:50
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there wolf posted:Honestly a gorilla fanfic campaign where a bunch of people write stories to improve, flesh out, or deconstruct the world of a specific novel that then all get packaged into an anthlogy, could be kind of interesting. Late reply and it’s not really guerilla but there is David Malki’s “Machine of Death” duology which I really like a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_of_Death
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Oct 8, 2017 07:24
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Laserjet 4P posted:Late reply and it’s not really guerilla but there is David Malki’s “Machine of Death” duology which I really like a lot. Those "write about this specific topic" anthologies have been around for a while; I used to have one that was stories about Zombies against stories about Unicorns. But that one looks interesting regardless. I'll keep an eye out for it.
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Oct 8, 2017 07:53
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Arcsquad12 posted:The BFG is pretty bad. Definitely his worst movie in a long time. But then again, Wes Anderson kind of set a new bar for Roald Dahl adaptations with Fantastic Mister Fox. I haven't seen it but I can't imagine it would've lived up to the Cosgrove Hall one with David Jason as the BFG. The book has a better ending though. In the animated movie, the BFG goes back to giant country to live on snozzcumbers; in the book, he is knighted, given a castle to live in and receives gifts from all the leaders of the world in thanks for defeating the evil giants, including a pet elephant that he rides on, then he writes his best-selling autobiography.
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Oct 8, 2017 10:42
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That definitely sounds like something that works better in words than it does on the screen.
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Oct 8, 2017 12:06
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The biggest issue with the Spielberg BFG is that the kid playing Sophie is bad. Surprise, a child actress is terrible. Mark Rylance is a fantastic BFG but he can't save the movie. It doesn't help that the book it us based on is super short, so they expanded several scenes and added new ones. Unlike Fantastic Mister Fox however, these new scenes are only drawn out slapstick moments
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Oct 8, 2017 15:02
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Zore posted:Its a goofy cash-in sequel that goes for a very different aesthetic and feel than the earlier movies deliberately (50s pulp vs 30s pulp). It doesn't pull it off as well as it could, but its mostly just a mediocre blockbuster. Steve will gild a turd, make some money, and walk away.
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Oct 8, 2017 21:42
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I'm sure everyone knows how Ghost by John Ringo is hilariously terrible, but here's how I discovered it. At the time it came out I was dating a girl that worked at the city library, and they get piles of promotional copies of books. They don't put them on the shelves, I suppose it's just to drum up interest from the librarians and folks to buy copies to rent. So a lot of the promo copies just get taken home. Well, my girlfriend would grab interesting-looking ones from time to time to read or give to me, and lo and behold one day she grabs a promo copy of Ghost, doesn't read it, and gives it to me. I'm a relative lefty, and she was super left, so the conversation a couple days after I read the thing was pretty amusing. "No, seriously, it's this insane right-wing power fantasy where the dude kills Bin Laden, then there's like a hundred pages of BDSM porn in the middle!" She absolutely refused to believe me, thinking I was putting her on. So naturally I gave the book back and she read it. I can still remember how fast I went from "Oh this is pretty bad" to "What the gently caress." to "WHAT THE gently caress"
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Oct 8, 2017 22:41
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There is/was a Let's Read of the series going on in TFR and it gets even crazier from there. In the second book he ends up in this tiny Eastern European valley where he buys a castle that makes him into a local lord and he turns the valley into his own personal fiefdom. He stops some white slavers moving girls through the area and instead of freeing any of them he takes them to his castle and turns it into his own personal harem. Also since he bought the castle the people of the valley basically let him do whatever he wants so he runs roughshod over all of their property and traditions. Turning the men of the valley into his own personal PMC using his old army buddies to train them. This guy is supposed to be the HERO of the series.
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Oct 9, 2017 00:17
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Laserjet 4P posted:Late reply and it’s not really guerilla but there is David Malki’s “Machine of Death” duology which I really like a lot. That's a series riffing entirely on a dinosaur comic right?
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Oct 9, 2017 00:44
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I thought John Ringo admitted that Ghost was basically him letting his id run free? Or was that just a lame attempt to make himself look better? I'm not excusing the quality of the book or the writer, mind you, just wondering.
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Oct 9, 2017 02:53
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Ringo's the guy that put a webcomic character in one of his books, right?
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Oct 9, 2017 03:07
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CommissarMega posted:I thought John Ringo admitted that Ghost was basically him letting his id run free? Or was that just a lame attempt to make himself look better? I'm not excusing the quality of the book or the writer, mind you, just wondering. He did do that, but everything he's done since indicates that his id isn't that repressed overall. The best assumption you could make is that he'll write anything for a buck, no matter how lurid and tasteless.
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Oct 9, 2017 03:29
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Kay Kessler posted:Ringo's the guy that put a webcomic character in one of his books, right? I do recall the Troy Rising series was apparently originally a prequel to the webcomic Schlock Mercenary.
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Oct 9, 2017 08:09
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Laserjet 4P posted:Late reply and it’s not really guerilla but there is David Malki’s “Machine of Death” duology which I really like a lot. there wolf posted:Those "write about this specific topic" anthologies have been around for a while; I used to have one that was stories about Zombies against stories about Unicorns. But that one looks interesting regardless. I'll keep an eye out for it. Good news, the first book is available entirely for free on the internet, and it's quite good. http://machineofdeath.net/ebook
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Oct 9, 2017 10:02
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Kay Kessler posted:Ringo's the guy that put a webcomic character in one of his books, right? Like when Ray bought that Ukranian BMP that was always raining inside.
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Oct 9, 2017 10:35
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Wheat Loaf posted:I haven't seen it but I can't imagine it would've lived up to the Cosgrove Hall one with David Jason as the BFG. Slight tangent, but what were the giants like in the books? Because I never read it as a kid, but that animated version was GREAT! The evil giants were horrifying and visually distinct and posed a genuine threat, something the new film appeared to lack. The evil giants, from what I saw, just looked like a bunch of drunk dads staggering home from a pub. Feels like a lot of kids films these days lack a certain "bite". It's a point that's been brought up by people with better analytical skills than I have, but to bring it back to literature, I'm wondering if that extends to books as well.
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Oct 9, 2017 11:52
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Drunken Baker posted:Slight tangent, but what were the giants like in the books? Because I never read it as a kid, but that animated version was GREAT! The evil giants were horrifying and visually distinct and posed a genuine threat, something the new film appeared to lack. The evil giants, from what I saw, just looked like a bunch of drunk dads staggering home from a pub. Visually they're generally not very distinct from one another in the book (I've only read it with Quentin Blake illustrations) where I suppose they all look like oversized cavemen. The only ones who have any sort of unique role are the Fleshlumpeater and the Bloodbottler, as is the case in the animated movie. You're definitely right that they're more visually distinct in that: here they are all in one scene.
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Oct 9, 2017 12:04
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The video is back up of Iain Banks showing how to deal with bad books. Burning books is wrong. So they had it taken out and shot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-g6nkqflgU (from about 20:50)
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Oct 9, 2017 12:46
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Enos Shenk posted:
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Oct 10, 2017 02:16
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Pastry of the Year posted:Here's a famously awful passage (that was new to me). It's a photograph of a page in a book, but linked for NSFW text, just in case. http://i.imgur.com/I4ZrJ91.jpg  Drunken Baker posted:This is what delights and infuriates me about crap books/films/whatever. You get an idea like RPO and it is done so, so terribly. But it gives you a little spark of insight and inspiration because it COULD be the bedrock for some really fascinating fiction. Strom Cuzewon posted:His ship and robot action is vastly more interesting than his human stuff - the opening of Excession has a drone escaping from a hacked ship, bouncing of pressure waves, rerouting forcefields, jettisoning memory cores, all takes place over a matter of seconds. It's pretty great. Wheat Loaf posted:Is "genre" just science-fiction and fantasy or is stuff like detective novels and thrillers "genre" as well? there wolf posted:Those "write about this specific topic" anthologies have been around for a while; I used to have one that was stories about Zombies against stories about Unicorns.
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Oct 10, 2017 06:58
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Mr. Sunshine posted:Having read nothing of RPO except this thread and a few internet takedowns, I suspect that the move will be better than the book, or at least less obnoxious. 'Cause the book seems to go "This was a Firelfly class spaceship, based on the design of the Serenity from hit TV series Firefly by cult director Joss Whedon (who, did I mention, also happens to be president of the world)" at every other turn, but in the move it's just gonna be a spaceship unless you know where it's from. The movie will probably be quite different from the book, because the plot of the book is based entirely on the pop-culture it references, and I'm sure the producers aren't going out of their way to acquire the rights for each of those specific elements. In the trailer it looks like they're just cramming it full of whatever properties Warner Brothers owns instead. They are also clearly adding extra stuff to the movie make it more interesting. The second half of the trailer depicts an enormous car chase, which doesn't appear in the novel at all. The protagonist's avatar is depicted as a kind of huge ogre, when in the book he can't afford a fancy avatar, so it looks like him -- an overweight high-schooler. I wonder if it'll still have the tangent in the middle where Cline rants for several pages about how much it sucks to be a tech support worker.
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Oct 10, 2017 07:57
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Ready Player One is a mediocre book: It contains nothing to love nor hate.
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Oct 10, 2017 08:11
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Tiggum posted:Zombies vs. Unicorns. I mostly liked the unicorn stories and didn't like many of the zombie stories. I think I fell on the side of zombies, myself. Of course that could have been the 'princess fucks a unicorn then gives birth to their mutant spawn and kills herself' tilting the scales way down.
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Oct 10, 2017 10:17
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 just finished this winner last night. It's bad... so, I'm going to spoil the hell out of it. There's this kid bucky, and his two buds, one is a good kid who is bullied in to hanging out with him, and the other kid is a native kid, who has been held back a lot and is like 15 hanging out with twelve years old. He's an alcoholic who pops all the valium, and can't read so he just looks at the pictures in porn mags. Bucky starts spraypainting sheep, and kills one of them. Then he kills a sheep, and then he starts killing people. The sweedish chef stereotype. The old busy body who calls the cops on him! Then he goes to the halloween party the whole town is at. The power goes out. and... Nothing happens. Halfway through the book and halloween is over. It's basically there so he can wear his Captain Terror halloween costume. Which is glow in the dark, has lots of pockets, and is really tight and keeps showing his erection when he kills people. Captain Terror has a rule of two. What you do to me, I do back to you twofold!. And he draws some pictures of himself killing a lot of naked ladies. The teacher, understandably disturbed whne she finds it, talks to his mom about it. You find out he's a child of rape, and his father was a psycho vietnam vet that pimped out and raped his mom, and died on another tour of nam. Then a bunch of nothing happens where he plots to kill the teacher, attacks the good kids sister, and falls off a cliff and dies. I was falling asleep during the last ten pages, and might have missed why he fell off the cliff (Ithink he was being chased by the teacher's father, who was the only one who knew he was killing people) I don't really care enough to go back, it was all tripe and not even entertaining tripe.
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Oct 10, 2017 11:09
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It took me a loong time to decipher that book's title as "Pranks". The R is actually a P with the little bit sticking to the A, and it all gets kinda blurry around the supposed K.
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Oct 10, 2017 12:08
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 Ambitious Spider posted:Nothing happens. Halfway through the book and halloween is over. It's basically there so he can wear his Captain Terror halloween costume. Which is glow in the dark, has lots of pockets, and is really tight and keeps showing his erection when he kills people. Captain Terror has a rule of two. What you do to me, I do back to you twofold!  ???
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Oct 10, 2017 12:40
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Tiggum posted:"Genre fiction" is just a term that exists to smugly dismiss other people's taste as inferior. (Serious response: You're putting the cart before the horse. "Genre fiction" is a perfectly valid descriptor of a distinct type of writing. The spurious term is "literary fiction", as if literature could be anything but literary. Only when contrasted with this false category can "genre" be a pejorative.)
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Oct 10, 2017 13:02
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I've read most of the Cormac McCarthy novels and they're mostly just westerns to me. There must be something more to it than the particular category you sort them into. It's the same with Joseph Conrad. I read Lord Jim and I read Heart of Darkness and those are adventure novels. Or The Secret Agent - I feel like that's just an Edwardian spy novel.
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Oct 10, 2017 13:14
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Anything that's old, critically acclaimed and doesn't have too many spaceships in it becomes literary fiction eventually.
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Oct 10, 2017 13:24
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Wheat Loaf posted:I've read most of the Cormac McCarthy novels and they're mostly just westerns to me. There must be something more to it than the particular category you sort them into. The best and most useful definition I've found for 'literary fiction' is experimental fiction, work that tries to create new genres, to use language in new ways, et cetera. So literary sci-fi, for instance, is experimental sci-fi that makes innovative use of the medium.
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Oct 10, 2017 13:28
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Sounds like somebody reads a lot of genre fiction. You drove me to look up how genre fiction was defined, which ended up being the logical (if circular) idea of fiction that is written to fit within a genre, using genre tropes. Related anecdote: some years ago, I asked a knowledgeable bookseller friend to recommend me some modern crime genre novels, that were acclaimed but not the Big Name, mass-market stuff. Without exception, every book was cliche-ridden bollocks: angsty cops that never slept and lived off coffee and cigarettes (literally not figuratively), genius serial killers with absurdly ornate MOs (e.g. this one poses their victims in the style of Italian paintings of the 14th century), sudden romances with inexplicably beautiful expert lawyer / art professor / DJ who is drawn into the case and who will later get kidnapped by the serial killer. And let's not get started on the garbage that wins major SF awards.
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Oct 10, 2017 13:50
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outlier posted:Related anecdote: some years ago, I asked a knowledgeable bookseller friend to recommend me some modern crime genre novels, that were acclaimed but not the Big Name, mass-market stuff. Without exception, every book was cliche-ridden bollocks: angsty cops that never slept and lived off coffee and cigarettes (literally not figuratively), genius serial killers with absurdly ornate MOs (e.g. this one poses their victims in the style of Italian paintings of the 14th century), sudden romances with inexplicably beautiful expert lawyer / art professor / DJ who is drawn into the case and who will later get kidnapped by the serial killer. 
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Oct 10, 2017 14:15
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I'm not sure what the worst detective/mystery/crime novel I've read is. Hannibal and Hannibal Rising are up there, though, the latter particularly.
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Oct 10, 2017 14:17
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Hannibal is more like a globe trotting adventure novel, where the protagonist is an ultra-intelligent cannibal.
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Oct 10, 2017 14:22
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Serephina posted:It took me a loong time to decipher that book's title as "Pranks". The R is actually a P with the little bit sticking to the A, and it all gets kinda blurry around the supposed K. I initially read it as "Prawns." And it took me a while to figure out what it actually said. But it did make me imagine a horror story about shellfish, which sounds far more entertaining.
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Oct 10, 2017 17:12
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RoboRodent posted:a horror story about shellfish That's just Lovecraft minus a bunch of archaic adverbs and adjectives.
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Oct 10, 2017 17:14
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