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A human heart posted:It's hard to believe that a person who reads science fiction would look at a book solely in terms of tropes Oh no, the purpose of the website the review comes from is to see if young people (teens-university students?) will react positively to reading old science fiction, they're barely regular readers of Science Fiction. They're barely readers at all, given the high school book report format of their responses. It's "This has a good beat and I can dance to it" for literature except one of the kids says, "Dancing to express sexual attraction is a trope that can die in a fire".
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Jan 12, 2018 13:27
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A human heart posted:It's hard to believe that a person who reads science fiction would look at a book solely in terms of tropes I wonder what that particular reviewer's three Tumblr accounts are about.
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Jan 12, 2018 13:48
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I thought aeromantics wanted to gently caress zeppelins?
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Jan 12, 2018 14:06
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Megazver posted:I wonder what that particular reviewer's three Tumblr accounts are about. The main blog will be a multifandom blog, filled with gifsets, fanart, links to fic on ao3, and occasionally meta or jokes. It might or might not be tagged, the layout might or might not be terrible, and that's where they'll follow other fans and chat with them and generally engage with fandom. My first guess as to which fandom would be Steven Universe, followed by Marvel or something else - and I guarantee theywill fangirl a specific pairing with happy screaming. The second blog will, depending on the person, be either a nsfw only blog, a personal blog where they just post text-posts and photosets of their life, or an art only blog where they post their art. The third blog is the roleplay blog. It's... well, it's both more and less organized than livejournal was, back in the day.
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Jan 12, 2018 14:08
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Kids these days *shakes fist at internet*
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Jan 12, 2018 14:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Kids these days *shakes fist at internet* Haha - I think the coolest thing about fandom is that it encourages kids to write. It might be terrible fanfiction, but migod, they're writing. Engaging in the creative process is so important and worthwhile and I'm thrilled that so many teenagers are trying it. And! This is where I can point to something like the Temeraire series and say that we might not have had it if their author hadn't written fanfic.
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Jan 12, 2018 14:17
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StrixNebulosa posted:
In the abstract I can respect the point you are making and even on some level agree with it In the concrete particular wouldn't the world be better off without the Temeraire series specifically The concept had so much potential in the first book and then it's just .. .squandered . . .
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Jan 12, 2018 14:19
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:In the abstract I can respect the point you are making and even on some level agree with it Hahah, you are right, after the first book it nosedives in quality. Still! I'm mostly using Naomi Novik as she's the first one to come to mind. Hmm. How about Diane Duane?
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Jan 12, 2018 14:20
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The word fandom has never been a part of a worthwhile sentence.
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Jan 12, 2018 14:24
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uberkeyzer posted:The word fandom has never been a part of a worthwhile sentence. You are Epimenides and I claim my five pounds.
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Jan 12, 2018 14:53
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StrixNebulosa posted:Haha - I think the coolest thing about fandom is that it encourages kids to write. It might be terrible fanfiction, but migod, they're writing. Engaging in the creative process is so important and worthwhile and I'm thrilled that so many teenagers are trying it. I'll back you up on this. I mean the vast majority of ADULTS I know haven't even read a book in years.
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Jan 12, 2018 15:44
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fez_machine posted:Oh no, the purpose of the website the review comes from is to see if young people (teens-university students?) will react positively to reading old science fiction, they're barely regular readers of Science Fiction. That's a pretty cool concept. I remember cringing a bit while reading Triffids and Theodore Sturgeon, especially the one about the women and their hair salon machines. I picked up a newer Simak book, time and again, and it's pretty lame. It's old timey in a bad way and throws too many sci fi concepts into a blender while not really exploring any of them in a particularly interesting way. Why did I have an impression that this guy was good?
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Jan 12, 2018 16:30
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:In the abstract I can respect the point you are making and even on some level agree with it To be fair, almost every series takes a nosedive after the book. And still every fantasy/scifi book has to be at least a 3 book series with a total of 1500-3000 pages. Looks at 1200 pages of LotR. Speaking of series, how is Stross new series? A continuation of Merchant princes or something new? I got to book 3 in merchant princes and lost interest in it. But then it was rewritten?
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Jan 12, 2018 16:45
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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm mostly using Naomi Novik as she's the first one to come to mind. Hmm. How about Diane Duane? Yoon Ha Lee writes fanfic regularly even now, and Ninefox Gambit and Raven Strategem are really very good.
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Jan 12, 2018 16:59
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Neurosis posted:If she normally wears makeup she would look different to people who knew her and probably more tired than normal. It's not like guys won't get told they look tired. Lol, the point is way over there behind you now
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Jan 12, 2018 18:21
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Nevvy Z posted:That's a pretty cool concept. I remember cringing a bit while reading Triffids and Theodore Sturgeon, especially the one about the women and their hair salon machines. Simak has a lot of respect for being one of the more science-y of the old SF writers but...yeah. For his audience, he was cool for being a writer who wrote fiction with something like actual science in it. This was in a time period when Neutron Star could win a Hugo for writing about then-cutting-edge scientific knowledge. Also, Amazon has a deal for three Michael Swanwick novels for 1.99: Bones of the Earth, In the Drift, and Vacuum Flowers. occamsnailfile fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Jan 12, 2018 |
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Jan 12, 2018 18:58
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Hard scifi back in the 1940s - 1970s was "the effects of gravity exist and are mentioned in the story" with some "not all alien planets are super-Edens/not every main character is Heinlein skilled". Hal Clement was hard-hard scifi in his era, and Mission of Gravity & it's sequel are still readable. e: I have a massive soft spot for James E. Gunn. Granted his latest scifi stuff isn't great, but the dude is 93+ years old and still writing. More people need to experience KAMPUS. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jan 12, 2018 |
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Jan 12, 2018 19:57
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So I just finished up Count to Infinity and it's left me with a lasting sense of having my mind blown out the back of my head. Wars with galaxies and poo poo over countless hundreds of millions of years of sailing through space and igniting an entire galaxy's worth of stars and lasing the supernovae to burn out the other dude's star-birthing nebulae and poo poo. Engineering untold generations of interstellar civilizations to cultivate Dyson swarms and fuckin, like, I really liked Count to the Eschaton, these books own
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Jan 12, 2018 21:47
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Bujold ‘s Vorkosigan Saga started off as modified Star Trek fanfic, and... well, if you read Shards of Honor, it kind of shows. It’s a very good series, though.
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Jan 12, 2018 21:52
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Simak's Way Station is really cool. I mostly can only ever remember this work from him though.
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Jan 12, 2018 21:56
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I did not expect Severian to rescue her that way. 
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Jan 12, 2018 22:00
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I finished Times Square Red Times Square Blue pretty recently and loved it and I'm interested in reading some of Samuel R Delany's fiction. What's a good place to start? Someone I know mentioned they'd read Dhalgren which sounded very up my alley.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:52
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DisDisDis posted:I finished Times Square Red Times Square Blue pretty recently and loved it and I'm interested in reading some of Samuel R Delany's fiction. What's a good place to start? Someone I know mentioned they'd read Dhalgren which sounded very up my alley. Babel-17 is really, really good. I haven't read anything else by him yet, but I can 100% recommend Babel-17 as a fun and thought-provoking sci-fi adventure.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:54
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Darth Walrus posted:Bujold ‘s Vorkosigan Saga started off as modified Star Trek fanfic, and... well, if you read Shards of Honor, it kind of shows. It’s a very good series, though. Allegedly. That is, it allegedly started out that way, in a very early first draft kind of way. Shards of Honor is maybe not the best entry in the series but it does lead directly to Barrayar and stuff like the "shopping" scene.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:48
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StrixNebulosa posted:The main blog will be a multifandom blog, filled with gifsets, fanart, links to fic on ao3, and occasionally meta or jokes. It might or might not be tagged, the layout might or might not be terrible, and that's where they'll follow other fans and chat with them and generally engage with fandom. My first guess as to which fandom would be Steven Universe, followed by Marvel or something else - and I guarantee theywill fangirl a specific pairing with happy screaming. No they're aromantic remember, so pairings are a dirty trope that can die in a fire.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:58
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Ccs posted:No they're aromantic remember, so pairings are a dirty trope that can die in a fire. No part of this post made sense to me. Is it translated from the original gaelic into english?
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Jan 13, 2018 01:35
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Groke posted:Allegedly. Yeah, but once you see Beta Colony as the Federation and Barrayar as the Klingon Empire in Shards, you really can’t entirely unsee it. It’s a theory that makes a lot of sense.
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Jan 13, 2018 01:39
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:No part of this post made sense to me. aromantic = "without romance", or someone who is just not into romance for themselves, at all. pairings = character A and character B should be in a romantic relationship, aka a "pair" trope = 
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Jan 13, 2018 02:07
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DisDisDis posted:I finished Times Square Red Times Square Blue pretty recently and loved it and I'm interested in reading some of Samuel R Delany's fiction. What's a good place to start? Someone I know mentioned they'd read Dhalgren which sounded very up my alley. If you're into experimental fiction, Dhalgren is probably a good place, especially if that was your reaction to Times Square. If you're more into sf, Nova or Babel-17, then read The Motion of Light in Water which mentions how he wrote his early books, or Triton. The Neveryon books are sword and sorcery and semiotics and bondage, but I haven't read the whole series, and I haven't read any of his porn either.
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Jan 13, 2018 02:14
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StrixNebulosa posted:I did not expect Severian to rescue her that way. Cryptozoology posted:So I just finished up Count to Infinity and it's left me with a lasting sense of having my mind blown out the back of my head. Wars with galaxies and poo poo over countless hundreds of millions of years of sailing through space and igniting an entire galaxy's worth of stars and lasing the supernovae to burn out the other dude's star-birthing nebulae and poo poo. Engineering untold generations of interstellar civilizations to cultivate Dyson swarms and fuckin, like, I really liked Count to the Eschaton, these books own
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Jan 13, 2018 03:19
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Alright. Found the laser attack scene from Sax Rohmer's The Golden Scorpion, published roughly 41 years before lasers were invented. quote:The telephone bell rang, and he started back in his chair as though to avoid a blow. Then many, many chapters later the proto-laser is sort of explained. quote:"And what is the weapon which the cowled man (who may be 'The Scorpion') uses to remove Dr. Stuart? It is a frightful weapon, my friends; it is a novel and deadly weapon. It is a weapon of which science knows nothing—a blue ray of the colour produced by a Mercury Vapour Lamp, according to Dr. Stuart who has seen it, and producing an odour like that of a blast furnace according to myself, who smelled it! Or this odour might have been caused by the fusing of the telephone; for the blue ray destroys such fragile things as telephones as easily as it destroys wood and paper! There is even a large round hole burned through the clay at the back of the study grate and through the brick wall behind it! Very well. 'The Scorpion' is a scientist and he is also the greatest menace to the world which the world has ever been called upon to deal with. You agree with me?" quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Jan 13, 2018 |
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Jan 13, 2018 05:29
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DisDisDis posted:I finished Times Square Red Times Square Blue pretty recently and loved it and I'm interested in reading some of Samuel R Delany's fiction. What's a good place to start? Someone I know mentioned they'd read Dhalgren which sounded very up my alley. If you want queer SF Delany in manageable chunks then Trouble on Triton and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand are in that vein. There's also Through The Valley of The Nest of Spiders which is very gay but also pushes the transgressive stuff real hard, but if you like manga that your avatar is from I'm gonna guess that's fine. The American Shore is great criticism and an intro to good gay SF author Thomas M Disch, although I think On Wings Of Song is his most out novel (most of his other main characters are sub-textual or hetro), also a great read.
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Jan 13, 2018 08:44
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Cryptozoology posted:So I just finished up Count to Infinity and it's left me with a lasting sense of having my mind blown out the back of my head. Wars with galaxies and poo poo over countless hundreds of millions of years of sailing through space and igniting an entire galaxy's worth of stars and lasing the supernovae to burn out the other dude's star-birthing nebulae and poo poo. Engineering untold generations of interstellar civilizations to cultivate Dyson swarms and fuckin, like, I really liked Count to the Eschaton, these books own i liked it too. not as much as the hermetic millennia and judge of ages; the creativity with lifeforms and social structures was great, and the characters in that were much better. but there was probably no really good way to write sapient galactic clusters, and there's a lot more jumping around here than there was in those books so we get to spend less time with the characters we do encounter. satisfying conclusion. if you haven't, read The Golden Age too. i'd say 'it's more grounded', but compared to books where fleets of galaxies go to war with entire races and civilisations rising and falling within each to fuel the activities needed for the war to continue and stars encouraged to go supernova to create beam weapons anything is going to be grounded. i can't recommend wright's fantasy with any enthusiasm; his politics and social views infect those to a far greater degree (orphans of chaos is awful). somewhither and city beyond time are alright.
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Jan 13, 2018 09:53
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Selachian posted:For 1953, I'd say you should consider The Space Merchants as well. 1955, Mission of Gravity. And 1958 could include Memoirs of a Space Traveler or The Star Diaries. Mission of Gravity is part of the 1954 retro Hugos (which don't pick from the previous year like normal Hugos do). I'll look into the others. The problem with using ISFDB as a metric for this is that, while this list of their highest-rated novels looks helpful at first, a lot of stuff on the website has low to no ratings, plus there's no way to look up everything from one year ordered by rating, or anything beyond that one list (which isn't linked on the front page anymore). StrixNebulosa posted:I did not expect Severian to rescue her that way. I'm glad that you're keeping us up to date with your reading of Severian's Fun Time Adventures, and that you're taking your time with them.
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Jan 13, 2018 13:12
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fez_machine posted:If you want queer SF Delany in manageable chunks then Trouble on Triton and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand are in that vein. never liked delany much and actually never gave though to disch being gay himself but looking back on On Wings Of Song it makes sense, i really liked that book. my favourite of his though was The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of, a history cum conversational rant about the significance of science fiction in america.
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Jan 13, 2018 15:44
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Right? Enjoying the ride so far, I take it. drat good books. Solitair posted:I'm glad that you're keeping us up to date with your reading of Severian's Fun Time Adventures, and that you're taking your time with them. I am indeed enjoying these books! ...Even if Gene Wolfe explicitly called out my expectation that Severian would make a daring rescue and they'd both escape into the night. Instead I'm now getting a Tolkien-esque boating song and things are... not as horrible as I expected after that 'rescue'? "Here, even though you dun hosed up, have a sword! Have advice! Have fun traveling! Have a good life, kiddo!" - I'm simultaneously impressed at how it fits with the setting and characterizations so far and all "are you serious" In conclusion: between Amber's prison sequence and Shadow & Claw's 'rescue', these books are far more hardcore than I expected. And well written to boot, which isn't always the case with famous award-winning books. On a side note I picked up David Weber's Hell's Gate on a whim as it's been floating around in my book collection for years and I figured it'd be a funny contrast to the gold I'm reading and it was like diving into a swimming pool and finding out that the water was overly verbose vanilla pudding. It...might find its way to a library at some point.
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Jan 13, 2018 16:14
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After spending 10+ years on my bookshelf, I'm finally getting around to finishing Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, and I'm already trying to decide which of his books to pick up next. Is The Martians collection worth reading? I've heard differing opinions. Any particular KSR recommendations? Aside from The Martians, I think I'd prefer a stand-alone novel over a series for the time being.
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Jan 13, 2018 23:05
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Aurora.
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Jan 14, 2018 00:28
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Aurora.
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Jan 14, 2018 00:45
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Probably Aurora. I'll also mention The Years of Rice and Salt for a recommendation that's a little different. It's an alt-history novel where the black plague wiped out Europe and recounts the history of the world through reincarnations of the protagonists.
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Jan 14, 2018 01:30
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