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Heh, it sounds like it is worth picking up if only to assess if they (mis)handled it.
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Jan 29, 2018 23:58
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Is Who Fears Death worth finishing? I'm about 50% through, and I don't hate it, but it feels really aimless and repetitive. Does the latter half pick up the pace, or is it a slog?
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Jan 30, 2018 05:41
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Neurosis posted:well, that was the story they told in the first half of Too Like the Lightning. It sounded extremely improbable from a top-down and bottom-up perspective, regardless The popular recounting of history never goes easy on the behavior of the victors
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Jan 30, 2018 07:07
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Just found out that Pat Cadigan is fighting terminal cancer. Major bummer.
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Jan 30, 2018 09:29
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branedotorg posted:read everything but market forces Market forces is not bad, it just shows a world where capitalism is taken to absurd levels.
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Jan 30, 2018 14:32
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Black Man is kind of an unpleasant read too. It ups the Kovacs sociopath feeling without a lot to redeem it. Morgan freaked out at some reviewer who didn't like it and sent the reviewer an email saying 'you just can't handle or understand the strong masculine black protagonist who doesn't apologise for his blackness that I've masterfully crafted'. The review said nothing about race nor even hinted at it beyond stating the protagonist was black I should add I really liked the first two books of Land Fit for Heroes but the last was a disappointing wheeze in which it was clear Morgan hadn't thought out much of the grander plot Neurosis fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jan 31, 2018 |
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Jan 30, 2018 23:57
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Wow, I didn’t know about the meltdown, it makes Black Man look even worse because the titular character is a hyper masculine, genetically engineered violence machine. If that is the essence of blackness for Morgan, whelp.
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Jan 31, 2018 00:09
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Grimwall posted:Market forces is not bad, it just shows a world where capitalism is taken to absurd levels. Reality already does that.
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Jan 31, 2018 00:26
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Neurosis posted:well, that was the story they told in the first half of Too Like the Lightning. It sounded extremely improbable from a top-down and bottom-up perspective, regardless Grimson posted:The popular recounting of history never goes easy on the behavior of the victors The catastrophic seminal event for the foundation of the Hives was literally World War 3: Now With (More) Nukes. While I don't think the actual foundation has been covered in detail yet, between WW3 and the What If Flying Cars that I still suspect is a central part of the basic premise, there's space for it to be sensical. Actually, there's some discussion of the whole bash' thing that suggests that might have been a contributing social factor. I don't remember any tidbits we've been tossed about the actual timeline. if you really want, just consider "and then magically Hive government" part of the scifi assumptions
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Jan 31, 2018 00:27
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Yeah there's a line in Seven Surrenders about-- just backstory/setting stuff-- people bombing NY after it was evacuated, "just to watch the skyline burn". DC is mentioned as having been nuked, and large swathes of the Middle East are unpopulated.
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Jan 31, 2018 01:40
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Krazyface posted:Yeah there's a line in Seven Surrenders about-- just backstory/setting stuff-- people bombing NY after it was evacuated, "just to watch the skyline burn". DC is mentioned as having been nuked, and large swathes of the Middle East are unpopulated. A utopia indeed.
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Jan 31, 2018 02:22
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Krazyface posted:Yeah there's a line in Seven Surrenders about-- just backstory/setting stuff-- people bombing NY after it was evacuated, "just to watch the skyline burn". DC is mentioned as having been nuked, and large swathes of the Middle East are unpopulated. Also Africa and what's left of the ME got turned into literal tribal reservations as I recall from the first book.
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Jan 31, 2018 03:09
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Neurosis posted:well, that was the story they told in the first half of Too Like the Lightning. It sounded extremely improbable from a top-down and bottom-up perspective, regardless I admit I haven't got round to reading it yet, I just couldn't resist the chance to tease the random goon who thinks he knows more about history than a history professor.
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Jan 31, 2018 03:47
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Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky was a good read that I think was recommended from here, here's a blurb:quote:The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. The novel grabbed me and I could not put it down. I noticed the ebook verison is going for a STEAL at $0.99 on Amazon, great deal https://www.amazon.com/Children-Time-Winner-Arthur-Clarke-ebook/dp/B00SN93AHU The sample gives a good preview, the novel switches between the human POV and the "alien" POV chapter by chapter, and paced so well there was never any "ugh want to read the other viewpoint," it was always compelling.
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Jan 31, 2018 04:25
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PlushCow posted:Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky was a good read that I think was recommended from here, here's a blurb: I would have been perfectly happy with just double the length of the alien viewpoint. But yeah, it's fantastic.
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Jan 31, 2018 05:19
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I'm watching the Expanse but I'm almost out and craving more. How far behind the books is it?
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Jan 31, 2018 05:23
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Children of Time is great. The alien POV chapters are incredible and the rest doesn't drag.
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Jan 31, 2018 05:23
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cis autodrag posted:I'm watching the Expanse but I'm almost out and craving more. How far behind the books is it? The show is around halfway through book 2 at the moment, and book 7 came out last month. The show will probably never catch up until after the written series is done. Also there's a major time-skip at one point, and they may just decide to end things there.
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Jan 31, 2018 05:50
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Safety Biscuits posted:I admit I haven't got round to reading it yet, I just couldn't resist the chance to tease the random goon who thinks he knows more about history than a history professor. ... the things i was talking about have no parallel in history, it's a sci fi thing she did, albeit one using some renaissance stuff as its base. the 'well, the history told was bullshit propaganda' thing is a valid response to what i was raising - it's in fact what i expected. but i got 60% through and hints the societal developments weren't perverse and artificially forced were scarce - the only one i can think of being how the criminals were treated, but there doesn't seem to be any remark from the characters about that being potentially screwed up, so i thought it was just another element that was too fantastic for something that was meant to be a relatively near-future societal extrapolation. i thought the prose was pretty good and the renaissance thinking discussion reasonably interesting, but the narrative was really dragging and taking forever to kick into gear. that there's payoff invalidating a lot of this rosey discussion of terra incognita motivates me to pick it up and finish it
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Jan 31, 2018 08:40
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I have a TVIV thread for altered carbon since it comes out in 2 days: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3847981 Feel free to post book stuff in there but keep it spoiler tagged for other peoples sake. Although the tv show looks like it is changing a few things about the characters and story, dramatically in some areas.
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Jan 31, 2018 18:45
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drunkill posted:I have a TVIV thread for altered carbon since it comes out in 2 days: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3847981 I’m...really uneasy about some of the proposed changes. I’m going to try to go into it not expecting it to be much like the books.
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Jan 31, 2018 18:54
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I just started reading Kim Stanley Robinson's non Mars trilogy books and I didn't realize that they were all so good. I've enjoyed basically everything I've read so far.
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Jan 31, 2018 18:56
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Anyone read "An Unkindness of Ghosts"? I'm a few chapters in and enjoying it; only complaint is that it feels like it's trying way too hard to reinforce "the protagonist is smart and resourceful," so much that it becomes distracting and makes the dialogue feel unrealistic. It is very nice to read about a character who can Macgyer stuff up and not be snarky about it, though.
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Jan 31, 2018 19:35
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navyjack posted:I’m...really uneasy about some of the proposed changes. I’m going to try to go into it not expecting it to be much like the books. I hope it abruptly transitions from gritty cyberpunk noir into hardcore porn - complete with sets, music and production values - and then back again like it never happened.
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Jan 31, 2018 20:09
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It turns out Murderbot Diaries is good. It's short and according to Amazon so are the sequels coming out in May and October. $9.99 for an ebook of a 160 page novel is a little on the high side. drat me if I'm not getting them anyway.
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Jan 31, 2018 20:14
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mllaneza posted:It turns out Murderbot Diaries is good. It's short and according to Amazon so are the sequels coming out in May and October. $9.99 for an ebook of a 160 page novel is a little on the high side. drat me if I'm not getting them anyway. I'm really looking forward to the next two installments. Wells has a *lot* of credit to draw on from me due to how much I loved her Ile Ren and Raksura series. City of Bones was a great stand-alone as well.
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Jan 31, 2018 22:24
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Clark Nova posted:I hope it abruptly transitions from gritty cyberpunk noir into hardcore porn - complete with sets, music and production values - and then back again like it never happened. To be fair the books sort of do that as well. The sex scene with Mrs Bancroft is weird and unnerving, but it seemed deliberate. As a Meth she's of course been engineered for maximum sexual attraction, and it feels like author was milking the body horror of it to make a point about porn and the commodification of women's bodies. Then he does the same thing with every subsequent sex scene and you realise that oh he's just a bit creepy.
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Jan 31, 2018 23:53
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Almost every woman in the Kovacs books is there for him to gently caress despite having negative charm due to his sociopathy
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Feb 1, 2018 01:18
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UltimoDragonQuest posted:Children of Time is great. The alien POV chapters are incredible and the rest doesn't drag. Thirding(?) this,its a great read.second best spider aliens in all of scifi
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Feb 1, 2018 02:35
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Strom Cuzewon posted:To be fair the books sort of do that as well. The sex scene with Mrs Bancroft is weird and unnerving, but it seemed deliberate. As a Meth she's of course been engineered for maximum sexual attraction, and it feels like author was milking the body horror of it to make a point about porn and the commodification of women's bodies. I have trouble not laughing at any sex scene in the Kovacs books after having come across this 2010 blog post about another Morgan book, where it appears that Morgan himself pops up with a comment in order to respond to the post and, in part, to defend the sex scenes in his books with this amazing line: "Look, I'm not really sure how to frame this without it sounding like some kind of chest-beating, but the fact is that by and large (eliding the odd dose of biotech or VR, obviously), the sex I write is the sex I've had." I suppose I don't know with certainty that that's really Richard K. Morgan there, popping into a blog and bragging about how he's gotten as freaky as Kovacs, but at this point, I just have that running in the back of my mind any time I read one of his books, where I imagine that whatever the crazy sex scene is, that Morgan wrote the scene, then fired up a cigarette, and said to himself "yes, that's right, the sex I just wrote is the sex I had." Okay, Richard K. Morgan -- that's great, buddy.
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Feb 1, 2018 04:28
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McCoy Pauley posted:I have trouble not laughing at any sex scene in the Kovacs books after having come across this 2010 blog post about another Morgan book, where it appears that Morgan himself pops up with a comment in order to respond to the post and, in part, to defend the sex scenes in his books with this amazing line: See, I read that as more self-deprecating. That the sex he writes is better than the sex he has in real life.
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Feb 1, 2018 04:38
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But he literally says "the sex I write is the sex I've had.". And he concedes it will sound like bragging.
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Feb 1, 2018 04:58
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ChainsawCharlie posted:Thirding(?) this,its a great read.second best spider aliens in all of scifi What are the best spider aliens in all of scifi? I need to read more books with spider aliens. Also gonna throw some more love in the pile for All Systems Red. It's light and fun and short.
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Feb 1, 2018 04:58
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It sounds like you guys just can't deal with the fact that the epic sci fi man has cool mindblowing sex all the time.
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Feb 1, 2018 05:07
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apophenium posted:What are the best spider aliens in all of scifi? I need to read more books with spider aliens. That would be the Attercops from A Deepness in the Sky.
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Feb 1, 2018 05:10
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NoneMoreNegative posted:That would be the Attercops from A Deepness in the Sky. 
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Feb 1, 2018 05:34
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McCoy Pauley posted:I have trouble not laughing at any sex scene in the Kovacs books after having come across this 2010 blog post about another Morgan book, where it appears that Morgan himself pops up with a comment in order to respond to the post and, in part, to defend the sex scenes in his books with this amazing line: Lol The graphic description of the whiff of poo poo as a character in Land Fit for Heroes is going at it sodomising an alien prince comes to mind
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Feb 1, 2018 05:57
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NoneMoreNegative posted:That would be the Attercops from A Deepness in the Sky. It felt like someone narrating a game of Civilization at me while occasionally mentioning that everyone is a spider.
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Feb 1, 2018 06:12
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Microcline posted:It felt like someone narrating a game of Civilization at me while occasionally mentioning that everyone is a spider. You must have been reading a different book. Or you're a zip.
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Feb 1, 2018 06:15
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I see Baen is jumping on the anime bandwagon. http://www.baen.com/princess-holy-aura.html
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Feb 1, 2018 06:49
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