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Chairchucker posted:Late reply but my usual recommendation for 'fantasyish with funniness' is for Robert Rankin, who writes what he describes as 'far fetched fiction.' It is usually set on earth but with fantastical elements like aliens or vampires or whatever. It is very silly, and contains lots of recurring gags and injokes. It is something of an acquired taste and probably not for everyone but I like it and maybe you will also. I will suggest A. Lee Martinez or Christopher Moore then. Both do funny alien/vampire stuff.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:02
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XBenedict posted:I will suggest A. Lee Martinez or Christopher Moore then. Both do funny alien/vampire stuff. Christopher Moore is fantastic. I’ve actually thought about doing a Moore thread. My top picks: Coyote Blue: Sam, a insurance salesman, woos a hippie ex-biker mama with the help of a Native American Chaos deity. Bloodsucking Fiends: Young office drone turned vampire must defeat her creepy vampire dad with the help of a crew of idiot night-shift Safeway workers. Practical Demonkeeping: A WW2 soldier is kept eternally young by a captive demon that he wants desperately to be rid of Fool Lear’s Fool is Pocket of Dog Snogging, a lusty pervert, with an ever-wanking assistant and real trouble staying out of the beds of Regan and Goneril. And my very favorite: Lamb Which is the last gospel of Jesus Christ (Joshua) told by his best pal, Levi-who-is-called-Biff. It recounts the time in Jesus’ life where he leaves Israel to learn yoga, Kung-Fu, and alchemy, before returning to preach. Lamb posted:
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Dec 5, 2017 21:38
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I'm on my third LeGuin book now (planet of exile) and I'm starting to pick up a nasty hint of gender essentialism to her work. Like, every character's internal monologue includes a lot of ruminating on the place of males and females in each situation and female characters seem to be written without much agency over and over. In Left Hand of Darkness I was okay with this because it tied into the overall theme of the book, but now it's starting to feel like just problematic writing since even her "advanced" characters seem to have contempt for women and view them as emotional and subservient. Is this something that gets better in her later writing?
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Dec 5, 2017 21:40
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cis autodrag posted:I'm on my third LeGuin book now (planet of exile) and I'm starting to pick up a nasty hint of gender essentialism to her work. Like, every character's internal monologue includes a lot of ruminating on the place of males and females in each situation and female characters seem to be written without much agency over and over. In Left Hand of Darkness I was okay with this because it tied into the overall theme of the book, but now it's starting to feel like just problematic writing since even her "advanced" characters seem to have contempt for women and view them as emotional and subservient. Is this something that gets better in her later writing? edit: ok my "have you read left hand of darkness yet" question was stupid, whurps yeah you have, you said that Still it seems like an odd criticism given that she's known as an author who broke new ground by writing the first sci-fi novel explicitly about unfixed, non-essential gender. She does have many "strong female characters" in her later work. Are you reading her books in publication order or ? What was the third title you read besides Left Hand and Planet of Exile? Given her daoist beliefs there may be some elements of dualist thinking in her work yeah. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Dec 5, 2017 |
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Dec 5, 2017 21:46
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I would give Le Guin the benefit of thinking that her character's are supposed to show how they've internalized attitudes concerning gender roles, and value. Or that it's to some point other than casual misogyny.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:58
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papa horny michael posted:I would give Le Guin the benefit of thinking that her character's are supposed to show how they've internalized attitudes concerning gender roles, and value. Or that it's to some point other than casual misogyny. That's how I've been trying to read it, but it's a bit hard at points. I'm reading in pub order so I read rokannons world and now this (after reading lhod first). Maybe it's just her ideas struggling to come through in weaker writing since they're her first works, but in planet of exile it's really grating because you have these primitives where you expect those attitudes, but then the advanced exiles also have basically the same attitudes (only the men go out to fight, they hole up most of the women with the children and infirm during the siege, etc). It feels like she just naturally worked from the presumption that women can't or don't fight and are best left to menial and petty political tasks. Maybe this book is just a clunker though. I really liked left hand of darkness.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:17
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One of my favorite overlooked writers is Rhys Hughes, a strange Welsh man who is working on a cycle of 1,000 connected stories. But you can read any of them without knowing a thing about any of the others. He's got a bunch of books out on Amazon but you can get a taste of his writing online: http://platinumass.blogspot.ca/ Certain books, like "The Smell of Telescopes", collect stories with reoccurring characters. Others are just smatterings of brilliant nonsense.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:27
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cis autodrag posted:That's how I've been trying to read it, but it's a bit hard at points. I'm reading in pub order so I read rokannons world and now this (after reading lhod first). Ok, you're going back through in publication order? Yeah you're basically reading her juvenilia. Skip a few books ahead. There's no strict chronology with LeGuin. Maybe try The Dispossessed next. It isn't Left Hand but there are definitely passages that attack & break down gender essentialism. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Dec 5, 2017 |
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Dec 5, 2017 22:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok, you're going back through in publication order? Yeah you're basically reading her juvenilia. Skip a few books ahead. There's no strict chronology with LeGuin. I'm one of those idiots that likes to read everything when I read an author so I generally go in pub order to get the weakest out of the way first. I started with lhod because I happened across it in a book shop.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:33
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cis autodrag posted:That's how I've been trying to read it, but it's a bit hard at points. I'm reading in pub order so I read rokannons world and now this (after reading lhod first). There is a lot of internalised gender essentialism in her early books, I think - it's particularly noticeable in the Earthsea series, where she starts out with wizards this women eeuuwy hardcoded in, and goes back to it for books 4-6 with the benefit of 2 decades more feminism under her belt. Even The Left Hand of Darkness - if you've ever read her intro to the Karhide-set short story in The Wind's Twelve Quarters she mentions that she's annoyed with herself for not showing Winter's people doing more stereotypically feminine things - they're still very masculine-coded, right down to the pronouns, so she refers to them all as "she" in the short story as a step towards counterbalancing it.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:39
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I remember reading somewhere that Le Guin was proud for making the character who initially taught Ged magic in Earthsea a woman, but realised much later that she didn't even give her a name. She acknowledges that she slips up in places, particularly earlier in her career.
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Dec 5, 2017 23:38
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Runcible Cat posted:There is a lot of internalised gender essentialism in her early books, I think - it's particularly noticeable in the Earthsea series, where she starts out with wizards this women eeuuwy hardcoded in, and goes back to it for books 4-6 with the benefit of 2 decades more feminism under her belt. It's this. In the editions I read, LeGuin acknowledges as much in the afterwords.
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Dec 5, 2017 23:58
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Silver2195 posted:It's this. In the editions I read, LeGuin acknowledges as much in the afterwords. With Earthsea I think the subversive point was that all of the characters are some kind of non-white, a point which attempts to film the book have deliberately ignored. Also that controlling how something is named controls much of how it can act in the world.
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Dec 6, 2017 00:08
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occamsnailfile posted:With Earthsea I think the subversive point was that all of the characters are some kind of non-white, a point which attempts to film the book have deliberately ignored. Also that controlling how something is named controls much of how it can act in the world. It's also a reaction to Conan-style fantasy where the bildungsroman protagonist is always a young warrior and the villains are always evil sorcerors. And, hey, Tombs of Atuan may be gender essentialist but it's got a female protagonist and that by itself was pretty drat radical for a fantasy novel in 1969.
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Dec 6, 2017 00:20
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Thanks for the input y'all. I'll soldier on through her work. I was just starting to worry I was falling down a 2nd wave pitfall in which case, as a trans woman, I wanted to climb out real fast.
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Dec 6, 2017 00:34
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cis autodrag posted:I'm one of those idiots that likes to read everything when I read an author so I generally go in pub order to get the weakest out of the way first. What in the. Please don't read books this way.
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Dec 6, 2017 01:14
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Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: any good? I read Nine Princes in Amber. The ending is the best part and I’m not saying that in a mean way, it’s really good ending. Heady stuff, just screams “go out and buy the next book already”. I like the world(s) of the story, it kind of reminds me of Michael Chabon’s “Summerland”. I like the writing style to a certain extent; if you are talking about nearly invincible magical demigod types you need to do it either very seriously or not seriously at all. This is the second one, super breezy and whimsical. It mostly works, it’s a bit glib but not cripplingly so. There’s a couple of laugh out loud moments (how DO you eat underwater?) and a lot of low level background snark. More serious passages are mostly quite good, I love how Random and Corwin’s slow approach to Amber is portrayed. I don’t really like most of the characters to be honest. They remind me of E.R. Eddison’s heroes, or even more so of his villains: aristos to the core, absolute bastards to everyone who crosses them, and very proud of it. But where in Eddison there’s love and companionship between peers as a constant transfiguring force and saving grace, the siblings don’t even seem to like one another much when they’re in alliance. Everyone of them is so selfish about everything that it’s hard to even imagine they could. They also smoke like a whole block of chimneys. I’m going to hazard a guess Zelazny’s home life sucked. I’ll definitely continue but I’m not exactly rooting for Our Hero here.
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Dec 6, 2017 02:32
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The thing to remember about Amber is that Zelazny is literally cranking it out for the cash. It's the creative equivalent of when Mr. Burns hires all the professional ringers for the Springfield baseball game. It's not his best work by a loooooooong shot.
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Dec 6, 2017 02:51
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navyjack posted:Stuff about Christopher Moore Holy crap all of these sound silly, stupid, and totally entertaining. I've never heard of this guy and it looks like he's got a relatively large body of work out there, I'll definitely stick him on my to-read list. I'll start with Lamb. Thanks!
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Dec 6, 2017 03:33
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USMC_Karl posted:Holy crap all of these sound silly, stupid, and totally entertaining. I've never heard of this guy and it looks like he's got a relatively large body of work out there, I'll definitely stick him on my to-read list. I'll start with Lamb. Thanks! no no no Start with The Stupidest Angel it's wildly out of order but it's also christmas we did it as a BOTM a few years back because my wife reads it religiously every year at christmas
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Dec 6, 2017 03:46
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The thing to remember about Amber is that Zelazny is literally cranking it out for the cash. It's the creative equivalent of when Mr. Burns hires all the professional ringers for the Springfield baseball game. It's not his best work by a loooooooong shot. Yeeeepp. Zelazny was a goddamned master. On an unrelated note I am trying to get through the Laundry Files because I love Lovecraft and know Stross can do it well but Jesus Christ the way he lays the attempts at droll humour on is obnoxious. He calls an iPhone a JesusPhone. I thought he had put a lamely named knockoff into the book since that was the only thing it was called for the first hundred pages but nope it's an iPhone. And he calls his iPod with magic programmes on it the Necronomipod. It's embarrassing to read. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Dec 6, 2017 |
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Dec 6, 2017 04:06
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Neurosis posted:Yeeeepp. Zelazny was a goddamned master. You have to remember Bob is a nerd. Stross has a background as a nerd. And naming an iPod the Necronomipod is a very, very nerd thing to do.
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Dec 6, 2017 04:22
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:no no no Well then , The Stupidest Angel it is. I'll start it once I finish The Underground Railroad, which is a pretty good book.
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Dec 6, 2017 04:33
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USMC_Karl posted:Well then , The Stupidest Angel it is. I'll start it once I finish The Underground Railroad, which is a pretty good book. If that takes you till after Christmas then start with an earlier book -- Moore has a rough internal chronology -- but if you're starting at Christmas, Stupidest Angel it is.
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Dec 6, 2017 04:39
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USMC_Karl posted:Well then , The Stupidest Angel it is. I'll start it once I finish The Underground Railroad, which is a pretty good book. Lol the titular Stupidest Angel shows up in Lamb first, FYI.
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Dec 6, 2017 08:33
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So lately I've been hankering to read some good adventure fantasy. After a quick google I've come up blank. Seems like there's lots of sci-fi out there that covers the ground pretty well but not much fantasy (that I can find anyway). Mostly I'm just hoping to read about people exploring an unknown world/discovering cool stuff, so I could probably best describe what I'm looking for as the opposite of epic fantasy. Armies and wars and stuff optional. Not fussed if its dark/lighthearted.
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Dec 6, 2017 08:37
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Thanks for all the recommendations, I actually have The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet on my shelf so I'll get to that as soon as I finish City of Stairs. While I'm here, I grew up on fantasy but I haven't read a lot of sci-fi, what's a good standard adventure-y space opera series? I've heard The Expanse and Old Man's War are both good but I don't really know much about either of them.
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Dec 6, 2017 08:43
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Sheriff Falc posted:So lately I've been hankering to read some good adventure fantasy. After a quick google I've come up blank. Seems like there's lots of sci-fi out there that covers the ground pretty well but not much fantasy (that I can find anyway). The Brian Daley Han Solo novels should set you right up for adventure-y SF.
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Dec 6, 2017 08:43
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skasion posted:Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: any good? If you like having main protagonists suffer in the wilderness through 3 novels, yes? It is Tad Williams after all. He is an ok author with a bunch of fairly enjoyable books. I probably enjoyed his Shadows series the most, and Otherland is pretty good until the end. Neurosis posted:On an unrelated note I am trying to get through the Laundry Files because I love Lovecraft and know Stross can do it well but Jesus Christ the way he lays the attempts at droll humour on is obnoxious. He calls an iPhone a JesusPhone. I thought he had put a lamely named knockoff into the book since that was the only thing it was called for the first hundred pages but nope it's an iPhone. And he calls his iPod with magic programmes on it the Necronomipod. It's embarrassing to read. You have obviously never encountered scientific abbreviations? Where naming stuff like SUMO, RING, INEPT, MrBUMP, WATERGATE, CHAINSAW, AIMLESS, POINTLESS is rather the norm.
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Dec 6, 2017 08:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If that takes you till after Christmas then start with an earlier book -- Moore has a rough internal chronology -- but if you're starting at Christmas, Stupidest Angel it is. Now that I think about it, do you need to read The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove first? For those thinking of jumping on the Chris Moore train, his books all exist in the same Universe, so the cops from Practical Demonkeeping show up in Bloodsucking Fiends, Tucker and Roberto (he no like the light) from Island of the Sequined Love Nun show up in TSA. These are generally Easter Eggs rather than critical info other than in the sequels to the various series. I would say the Pocket books, Fool and The Serpent of Venice are the most “free” from that stuff. Also, FWIW, I don’t like the “Death” books, starting with A Dirty Job, or the sequels to Bloodsucking Fiends, but pretty much everything else is great.
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Dec 6, 2017 08:56
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Stanfield posted:
I can't speak for anyone else, but I really enjoyed the first Expanse novel until maybe halfway through, didn't like it by the end, then read the prologue of the second one and never touched the series again. Old Man's War is decent, but not spectacular, though I'd say it's more Military Sci-Fi than Space Opera. For the first few books, at least.
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Dec 6, 2017 09:02
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Sheriff Falc posted:So lately I've been hankering to read some good adventure fantasy. After a quick google I've come up blank. Seems like there's lots of sci-fi out there that covers the ground pretty well but not much fantasy (that I can find anyway). Fritz Leiber, C. L. Moore, and Jack Vance are the classic examples of this. Patricia Mckilip's Riddle Master of Hed has a bit of an adventuring feel to it. Hugh Cook is excellent, all of his fantasy novels are essentially excuses for discovering cool stuff. Although literally for children, The Chronicles of the Magi series by Dave Morris is decent.
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Dec 6, 2017 09:30
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fez_machine posted:Fritz Leiber, C. L. Moore, and Jack Vance are the classic examples of this. Thanks for the recommendations - I'll be sure to add some of these to my list. This is the first I've ever heard of Hugh Cook - not surprising given he seemed intent on naming his books so that my sturgeon's law-vision wouldn't recognise them as anything more than pulp. His stuff seems really interesting though, and I'll definitely give it a try.
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Dec 6, 2017 10:00
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cis autodrag posted:Thanks for the input y'all. I'll soldier on through her work. I was just starting to worry I was falling down a 2nd wave pitfall in which case, as a trans woman, I wanted to climb out real fast. Nah, I think for once you can actually legitimately call the earlier undercurrent a product of the time. Everything I've ever heard says she's good people.
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Dec 6, 2017 10:09
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Sheriff Falc posted:This is the first I've ever heard of Hugh Cook - not surprising given he seemed intent on naming his books so that my sturgeon's law-vision wouldn't recognise them as anything more than pulp. His stuff seems really interesting though, and I'll definitely give it a try. Hugh Cook is weird and messy and humane. Recommended. His books can be hard to get hold of, look for his old website on the Wayback Machine or use eBay.co.uk. E: The Walrus and The Warwolf is in print with a bad China Miéville introduction. Best bug-eating pirate adventure ever.
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Dec 6, 2017 10:19
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Stanfield posted:While I'm here, I grew up on fantasy but I haven't read a lot of sci-fi, what's a good standard adventure-y space opera series? I've heard The Expanse and Old Man's War are both good but I don't really know much about either of them. Neither are particularly good. I’m assuming you are looking for Star Trek style stories of people exploring strange new worlds, set in space rather than the worlds themselves? Best in class is probably A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge (not a series but there are other books in the universe). Iain M Banks’s culture novels are pretty good, start with Player of Games and see what you think. Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice books are newer and got a lot of praise - the first one is the best. You could also try Ninefox Gambit although that’s more military SF. You could also read the Patrick O’Brian master and commander series and just write the word laser every couple of pages, it’s probably better than most of this other stuff.
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Dec 6, 2017 12:52
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If you're going to read kitchy space opera crap why wouldn't you just read something old like those lensman books rather than whatever rubbish is being churned out nowadays
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Dec 6, 2017 13:28
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A human heart posted:If you're going to read kitchy space opera crap why wouldn't you just read something old like those lensman books rather than whatever rubbish is being churned out nowadays for you, I recommend the book "Voices of Chaos" by A.C. Crispin & RU Emerson. If you want a gritty sci fi war book, what you'll want is to read the novel "Armor," by John Steakley
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Dec 6, 2017 14:11
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Neurosis posted:Yeeeepp. Zelazny was a goddamned master. The technology news website The Register frequently refers to iPhones as JesusPhones. I've never been able to get anyone to admit it, but I am certain that Stross writes the Bastard Operator From Hell series for the Reg. If he doesn't, he sure as hell reads it.
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Dec 6, 2017 14:27
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navyjack posted:Also, FWIW, I don’t like the “Death” books, starting with A Dirty Job, or the sequels to Bloodsucking Fiends, but pretty much everything else is great. Either way, Lamb is the poo poo, and that’s something that we can all get behind.
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Dec 6, 2017 14:33
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