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Inescapable Duck posted:All this is making me picture Dark Souls set in Maine. That's basically what most Silent Hill games are.
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Oct 18, 2017 13:13
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DigitalRaven posted:Orson Scott Card didn't get suckered by the brain-eater, he was already a frothing fuckhead on account of being a raging homophobe who is clearly so far in the closet he's being buggered by Aslan. Don’t forget he also thinks Hitler did nothing wrong!
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Oct 18, 2017 13:38
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Mr. Sunshine posted:I read Lamps' takedown of Ian Banks and I largely agree - especially the part about the Culture's eccentricity vs everyone else's barbaric perversity. Like, everyone in the universe is hosed up but somehow the Culture gets a pass because they're hosed up in the right ways. I don't agree, however, that the settings' binary choice between regressive assholes and all-permissive ultra-liberalism is somehow a philosophical or ideological failing of the book or author. Banks doesn't strike me as trying to write some kind of liberal "Atlas Shrugged" - the Culture is just this quirky place he gets to use as a backdrop for his spaceship books. That's an accurate criticism, I never really liked Consider Phlebas. Bounced off it twice before finally reading it after I'd read the 3-4 next Culture books. Also I don't think it's very representative. Player of Games is alright but too on the nose. Use of Weapons / Excession / Look to Windward are probably the best imo. I guess you can give another book a shot if you feel like it, or don't. They're only loosely connected so it's not strictly necessary to read in order, though Look to Windward takes place after Consider Phlebas; Surface Detail goes after Use of Weapons; and Hydrogen Sonata is last.
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Oct 18, 2017 14:13
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Inescapable Duck posted:All this is making me picture Dark Souls set in Maine. Like that one horror game that everyone was talking about then forgot about some years ago, but with even more death.
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Oct 18, 2017 14:24
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Alan Wake? Game ruled. If not, I too have forgotten about it. Thassa one. Though Silent Hill would also be pretty much correct.
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Oct 18, 2017 15:03
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Consider Phlebas is bad. It feels like a series of short story ideas that he tried to cobble into a novel. The part where they actually land on the planet was completely different in tone from the rest of the book. He does this thing where his description of the action is heavily dependent on having sort of a mental map of how the place they're in is laid out, but I was never able to map it out and I just got confused by who was shooting who around what. As others have said, the rest of the culture novels get better as they go on. But my main criticism of Banks would be how he works his torture fetish into every book. As mentioned, the first scene in Phlebas is a man being drowned in poo poo, but The Algebraist, Use of Weapons and Matter all have decapitated heads being kept alive for torment purposes, and Surface Detail has a ship using a human body as an avatar and loving up the body on purpose, just off the top of my head. Wasp Factory was probably the worst for this because the whole point was the protagonist was a psychopath, but Wasp Factory was bad in a lot of ways.
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Oct 18, 2017 15:26
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Mr. Sunshine posted:the entire setting is actually in the past and the Culture are actually not humans? Or something?
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Oct 18, 2017 15:57
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A Pinball Wizard posted:Consider Phlebas is bad. It feels like a series of short story ideas that he tried to cobble into a novel. The part where they actually land on the planet was completely different in tone from the rest of the book. He does this thing where his description of the action is heavily dependent on having sort of a mental map of how the place they're in is laid out, but I was never able to map it out and I just got confused by who was shooting who around what. As others have said, the rest of the culture novels get better as they go on. Card has a book called Wyrms that does that head thing. Great leaders have their head's taken when they die, and some nanobot thing are applied that keep the head alive and torture it by sending false signals of hunger, pain, and stuff to the brain until the person breaks. Couldn't help but think of Futurama every time it came up.
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Oct 18, 2017 16:43
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Mr. Sunshine posted:And the entire book is filled with these grotesque details. Like, the story opens with the protagonist locked in a dungeon with sewage pipes connected straight to toilets installed in the chairs at a banquet of the ruling class, so he'll eventually drown in sewage. The rich and powerful are literally going to poo poo him to death while they eat and drink. And the cult he gets caught by later has these hosed up tenets where only the leader is allowed to eat meat - everyone else is forced to live off garbage and excrement. The cult leader is grotesquely fat, eats the meat off of people's bones while they're still alive and eventually suffocates a prisoner with his gigantic rear end. see, I came to Consider Phlebas from The Wasp Factory, where Banks being as gross as he could was basically the point. So I thought it started right but I was disappointed when it didn't continue in this vein. anyway, this is why Culture fans routinely suggest starting with Player of Games or Use of Weapons.
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Oct 18, 2017 21:37
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Tiggum posted:IIRC, The Culture isn't a species, it's made up of basically whoever wants to join, and none of them are humans. The setting is totally disconnected from Earth so questions like "how far in the future is this?" or "what modern-day society eventually evolved into The Culture?" don't arise. There's actually a short story where the Culture finds Earth, but in like the 1960's. The Culture's a lot like Star Trek's Federation; it's comprised of a bunch of races and most of them are humanoid. It's also like the Federation in that it's generally, even excessively benevolent (although most of the books don't show that, for drama's sake. Usually the books involve Special Circumstances agents, the government workers who work in areas that would involve a lot of ideological or ethical arguments). And I'll echo that one shouldn't read Consider Phlebas first, or maybe even at all.
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Oct 19, 2017 00:34
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The Culture considers itself benevolent but they're interventionist as hell & always up in everybody's poo poo. Which is okay when it works out but then sometimes they gently caress up badly and cause gigadeaths. Whoops.
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Oct 19, 2017 07:22
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Powaqoatse posted:The Culture considers itself benevolent but they're interventionist as hell & always up in everybody's poo poo. Which is okay when it works out but then sometimes they gently caress up badly and cause gigadeaths. Whoops. And sometimes they just shrug off the brutal deaths as acceptable losses. Banks tends to make antagonists of the Culture clearly seem like they deserve an rear end-kicking... until it actually happens, and it’s just awful and needlessly sadistic and reveals that the Culture is, in many ways, no better, because bored, entitled little shits who throw lethal tantrums when you aren’t their sort of person are really awful neighbours. Darth Walrus has a new favorite as of 10:54 on Oct 19, 2017 |
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Oct 19, 2017 10:51
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John Lee posted:There's actually a short story where the Culture finds Earth, but in like the 1960's. 1970s. State of the Art: the crew of a Culture are highly amused by Star Wars and make replica light sabers to have fights with. Aside: I had the impression that the Culture was largely humanoid but I don't know if that's ever explicitly said. Certainly almost all the narrators are humanoids or Minds.
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Oct 19, 2017 12:01
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Mr. Sunshine posted:I read Lamps' takedown of Ian Banks and I largely agree - especially the part about the Culture's eccentricity vs everyone else's barbaric perversity. Like, everyone in the universe is hosed up but somehow the Culture gets a pass because they're hosed up in the right ways. I don't agree, however, that the settings' binary choice between regressive assholes and all-permissive ultra-liberalism is somehow a philosophical or ideological failing of the book or author. Banks doesn't strike me as trying to write some kind of liberal "Atlas Shrugged" - the Culture is just this quirky place he gets to use as a backdrop for his spaceship books. There are a few things going on here, I think: * Consider Phlebas was the first Culture novel and so is not indicative of the rest of the series (series? what would we call it?) * CP is also a travelogue novel, a "let's come up with an excuse to tour this world I've built". Which can be a lazy genre. * Banks' ideas on the Culture evolved. I once saw him talk and (from memory) The Culture started out as a utopia (due to the superfluity of dystopias in SF), whiplashed back to a dystopia and ended up shifting between the two depending on his mood and thinking. * Late in the series, there is an idea that the Culture is something special. Civilizations are supposed to "transcend" or fall into chaos and the Culture is supposed to somehow have avoided either fate, perhaps due to being able to adapt.
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Oct 19, 2017 12:12
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outlier posted:Aside: I had the impression that the Culture was largely humanoid but I don't know if that's ever explicitly said. Certainly almost all the narrators are humanoids or Minds. I mean, it's noticeable enough to comment on when a character has a really long neck, or like a hundred dicks all over their body, so I was just assuming that Spiderians or blobs of sentient gaseous matter would also be commented upon, and they rarely are. outlier posted:* Late in the series, there is an idea that the Culture is something special. Civilizations are supposed to "transcend" or fall into chaos and the Culture is supposed to somehow have avoided either fate, perhaps due to being able to adapt. The deal here is that it's not fully explainable by/to non-ascended beings, but it's kind of a collective-will-of-the-group thing, and the Culture has collectively decided not to ascend to the status of Full Gods just yet, because matter and the current universe are fun. John Lee has a new favorite as of 22:25 on Oct 19, 2017 |
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Oct 19, 2017 21:45
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John Lee posted:The deal here is that it's not fully explainable by/to non-ascended beings, but it's kind of a collective-will-of-the-group thing, and the Culture has collectively decided not to ascend to the status of Full Gods just yet, because matter and the current universe are fun. Trapped in a state of adolescent neotony is a good descriptor of the Culture in general.
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Oct 19, 2017 23:07
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Sounds like he eventually figured out it's more fun when you're not trying to portray sides as The Good Guys and The Bad Guys but explore the ramifications of societies and ideologies colliding in space. Especially since that description sounds best comparable to Q, but from the other end; they could be doing god stuff, but loving around in the material world and trying to help people in a dickish way is more fun.
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Oct 20, 2017 07:41
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divabot posted:see, I came to Consider Phlebas from The Wasp Factory, where Banks being as gross as he could was basically the point. So I thought it started right but I was disappointed when it didn't continue in this vein. Yeah, I haven't read The Wasp Factory, but from what I can gather from summaries it is very much not my thing. That kind of body horror/torture porn just grosses me right out, and whenever it showed up in Consider Phlebas it was really jarring.
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Oct 20, 2017 07:42
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outlier posted:* CP is also a travelogue novel, a "let's come up with an excuse to tour this world I've built". Which can be a lazy genre. Are there any books like this which are good? It does sound like a hoot if done right.
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Oct 20, 2017 13:10
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CommissarMega posted:Are there any books like this which are good? It does sound like a hoot if done right. There was one really popular one a few years back, about some dude with a goofy name. Gilligan? Goliver? Something like that.
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Oct 20, 2017 13:20
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outlier posted:* Late in the series, there is an idea that the Culture is something special. Civilizations are supposed to "transcend" or fall into chaos and the Culture is supposed to somehow have avoided either fate, perhaps due to being able to adapt. Pretty sure it's implied or stated outright that there have been multiple offshoots of the Culture and that some of those have transcended/sublimated/whatever.
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Oct 20, 2017 15:05
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CommissarMega posted:Are there any books like this which are good? It does sound like a hoot if done right. Ringworld's not too bad, depending on your tolerance for the amount of words spend describing physics and massive physical dimensions. Of course, the best travelogue is Xavier de Maistre's "Voyage Around My Room"
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Oct 20, 2017 15:37
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Strom Cuzewon posted:There was one really popular one a few years back, about some dude with a goofy name. Gilligan? Goliver? Something like that. 
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Oct 20, 2017 15:44
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outlier posted:1970s. State of the Art: the crew of a Culture are highly amused by Star Wars and make replica light sabers to have fights with. There's a few mentions throughout the books that by and large the Culture is "panhuman". Basically, because of a variety of factors like tool use, a lot of the species that developed space travel are more-or-less human looking. Stuff like the Idirans and the weird elephant people from surface detail are usually commented on.
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Oct 20, 2017 15:51
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CommissarMega posted:Are there any books like this which are good? It does sound like a hoot if done right. Eat, Pray, Love  Watching that movie and reading extracts of the book with an Hindu philosophy phd was loving hilarious though.
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Oct 20, 2017 21:01
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FrozenVent posted:Eat, Pray, Love Please share so your sacrifice was not in vain.
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Oct 21, 2017 18:07
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Groke posted:Pretty sure it's implied or stated outright that there have been multiple offshoots of the Culture and that some of those have transcended/sublimated/whatever. Also theres the Zetetic Elench. Theyre an offshoot of the Culture & iirc they don't like the Cultural intervensionism.
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Oct 21, 2017 18:25
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ryonguy posted:Please share so your sacrifice was not in vain. Just imagine the nicest, calmest woman you've ever met turning onto a frothing ball of rage who ran out of languages to swear in. poo poo was epic. The ashram with nary a south Asian person in it was pretty impressive, I have to say.
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Oct 21, 2017 19:31
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FrozenVent posted:Just imagine the nicest, calmest woman you've ever met turning onto a frothing ball of rage who ran out of languages to swear in. poo poo was epic. I hope she meets Ms. Gilbert in person someday. Gilbert radiates smug self-satisfaction. It's like a superpower. Her  rays are nearly visible to the naked eye.Whatever, nobody ever went broke telling the bourgeoisie what they want to hear. 
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Oct 22, 2017 00:02
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This thread has been entertaining me for weeks now. I feel like I should contribute. I went through a phase where I just loaded a shitload of random books onto my Kindle (not the kindle self-publish stuff—actual books) and then got to them months after loading them, completely oblivious to what it was I had loaded. Some of the results were ... interesting. I submit: Stealing Light by Gary Gibson. A book that was almost good, but then was remarkably bad. I loaded this book because it's sci-fi, and has a female protagonist who is also a military space pilot. It was intriguing and looked like it would be right up my alley. The basic plot is even somewhat interesting: Aliens have arrived toting FTL travel technology, among other things, and have heavily influenced mankind with tech trade (if not quite enslaved them...). The main antagonist of the book is an alien fish who is floating around in a bubble of water. The protagonist has illegal implants in her head that allow her to interface with the ships and give her an exceptional level of piloting skill, but also might malfunction and make her insane and murderous (thus the 'illegal' part). The aliens discover an FTL drive that is NOT their technology, and they hire the protagonist to fly a ship over there to figure out wtf. Some of the things that are revealed are even interesting! gently caress yeah. But then you actually read the book, and it spends, like, 75% of its time describing the protagonist naked. Because she is a girl, you see, and we need detailed descriptions of her body. She has a space suit which is essentially a liquid film that emerges and covers her body to protect her from space. The book feels it necessary to describe, in detail, how it seals her anus. And she has sex with every male she happens across. I'm pretty sure it's established within the first couple paragraphs of incredibly boring and painful exposition about people I don't give a single poo poo about yet but the book manages to throw in a line that explains how she's had sex with this person and that person and is considering the merits of having sex with the males that are present which she has not yet banged. At one point I wrote a note in my kindle saying "Wait. Is she loving her ship right now?" Yes. She was loving her ship. It took human form and hosed her. But she also made plenty of time to gently caress the main male protagonist, of course. That was a major plot point. I struggled through the first one and felt there was just enough potential that I would see if the second book managed to get on with the plot instead of describing her naked and loving everyone. The second book starts with her in jail (naked). Then male-protagonist is thrown into the same cell with her. The book spends many paragraphs describing female-protagonist's naked body. Male-protagonist is hardly described at all (despite also being naked). Female-protagonist is described as so starved and weak in this cell that she is barely coherent, but she still manages to revive enough to gently caress him when he arrives. I quit. I did note in my personal review that if a ruthless editor got hold of this and cut all the self-indulgent bullshit out of it that it would probably make a pretty decent movie, though. Tagra has a new favorite as of 04:30 on Oct 22, 2017 |
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Oct 22, 2017 04:27
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Seveneves by Stephenson is not good. It’s barely even a book, it’s a series of technological solutions to problems, surrounded by a thin plot and thinner characters. This book might be fine if you read it expecting “The Martian 2.0.” But if you’re like me, and have heard nothing but superlatives about what Stephenson is doing to sci-fi, about his heavy tomes pushing the genre forward, then this book is a heavy let down.
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Oct 22, 2017 05:03
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lifg posted:Seveneves by Stephenson is not good. It’s barely even a book, it’s a series of technological solutions to problems, surrounded by a thin plot and thinner characters. This book might be fine if you read it expecting “The Martian 2.0.” But if you’re like me, and have heard nothing but superlatives about what Stephenson is doing to sci-fi, about his heavy tomes pushing the genre forward, then this book is a heavy let down. Are people saying that Stevenson is some revolutionary writer shaking up the genre? Why? I like his stuff and all, but it's not groundbreaking.
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Oct 22, 2017 06:17
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there wolf posted:Are people saying that Stevenson is some revolutionary writer shaking up the genre? Why? I like his stuff and all, but it's not groundbreaking. Yeah, Stevenson is writing what is easily some of the most boilerplate SF out there.
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Oct 22, 2017 06:41
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there wolf posted:Are people saying that Stevenson is some revolutionary writer shaking up the genre? Why? I like his stuff and all, but it's not groundbreaking. I think that comes entirely from Snow Crash, which people still act like was something new and different, despite just being Neuromancer except dumber and with more sexualized teen girls.
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Oct 22, 2017 07:35
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lifg posted:Seveneves by Stephenson is not good. It’s barely even a book, it’s a series of technological solutions to problems, surrounded by a thin plot and thinner characters. This book might be fine if you read it expecting “The Martian 2.0.” But if you’re like me, and have heard nothing but superlatives about what Stephenson is doing to sci-fi, about his heavy tomes pushing the genre forward, then this book is a heavy let down. Let's be honest it was written title first, rest of the story later
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Oct 22, 2017 07:42
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my favourite terrible book is the new testament!!
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Oct 22, 2017 07:50
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Poor Miserable Gurgi posted:I think that comes entirely from Snow Crash, which people still act like was something new and different, despite just being Neuromancer except dumber and with more sexualized teen girls. fwiw its a decent satire of cyberpunk and an excellent parody of himself also, recipe: - random essay re "i loving love science" - a hella young girl in a rapey situation - snipes against everything
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Oct 22, 2017 08:07
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Poor Miserable Gurgi posted:I think that comes entirely from Snow Crash, which people still act like was something new and different, despite just being Neuromancer except dumber and with more sexualized teen girls. Just out of curiosity, am I the only one who is generally a fan of Stephenson that dislikes Snowcrash? Powaqoatse posted:fwiw its a decent satire of cyberpunk and an excellent parody of himself I've heard this before, but even if it's true, it's the kind of joke that still flatters the subject by playing up it's excesses in a positive way. Maybe it was different back in the early 90's, but nowadays the last thing cyberpunk needs is a semi-ironic satire that lovingly plays up all it's extremes with little to no criticism. there wolf has a new favorite as of 19:13 on Oct 22, 2017 |
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Oct 22, 2017 19:05
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there wolf posted:Are people saying that Stevenson is some revolutionary writer shaking up the genre? Why? I like his stuff and all, but it's not groundbreaking. He defied expectations by having a book where MMO politics were somehow more interesting than globetrotting adventure and foiling a terrorist plot. Reamde was so, so bad.
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Oct 22, 2017 20:01
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there wolf posted:Just out of curiosity, am I the only one who is generally a fan of Stephenson that dislikes Snowcrash? Personally I thought the beginning of Diamond Age was a better parody of the typical cyberpunk protagonist. I also thought that in general, The Diamond Age was better but I havent met anyone that agrees with me there. Also while I liked that book, that's about when I realized that he really has trouble writing endings.
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Oct 22, 2017 20:25
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