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Apr 1, 2018 01:31
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Selachian posted:At least the Hugo nominees seem remarkably free of Puppyshit this year -- not a single entry from Castalia House. yeah but we've missed out on finding a new chuck tingle i don't view a hugo award as meaning anything more as to a book's quality than 'a competent book with one or two serious ideas' anymore.
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Apr 1, 2018 01:32
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:The Hugo awards haven't made sense for a while, because in the age of Twitter, ebook marketplaces and cheap self-publishing options; This is certainly a take, how confident are you that it's supported by the evidence?
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Apr 1, 2018 01:45
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I've started Consider Phlebas and I'm liking it. Are there Culture books I should skip or prioritize?
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Apr 1, 2018 02:51
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Raere posted:I've started Consider Phlebas and I'm liking it. Are there Culture books I should skip or prioritize? Consider Phlebas is kind of the black sheep of the series so... Not really. I've seen it recommended that you should read Hydrogen Sonata last but otherwise order doesn't matter too much.
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Apr 1, 2018 03:04
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Ben Nevis posted:It's not actually 800 pages, but still, the whole book is basically set up wherein the central conflict only becomes evident towards the end. And then it ends. I enjoyed it reading it, but sitting with for awhile, it's sort of soured for me, realizing that basically it's 400+ pages of world building and some backstory. This post sold me on the novel, because that sounds incredible. When I finish the Jani Killian series (started Endgame today!) I'm gonna hunt it down.
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Apr 1, 2018 03:04
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I just read Excession and it's definitely my favorite so far. Does he keep the excessively gruesome bullshit down in the rest of the later books like he did in this one, because that's my main complaint about the first three. Though the Affont are hilarious, as horrible as they are. I guess I like my pitch black taken with a dollop of humor, rather than taking it straight.
Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Apr 1, 2018 |
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Apr 1, 2018 03:27
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Has an author ever won best novel 3 years in a row? I think Stone Sky was better than Obelisk Gate.
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Apr 1, 2018 03:37
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Stuporstar posted:I just read Excession and it's definitely my favorite so far. Does he keep the excessively gruesome bullshit down in the rest of the later books like he did in this one, because that's my main complaint about the first three. Though the Affont are hilarious, as horrible as they are. I guess I like my pitch black taken with a dollop of humor, rather than taking it straight. From the ones I've read: Player of Games: Has some excessively gruesome poo poo kind of referenced off-hand. It's not a big part of the book at all Use of Weapons: Fairly high amount of gruesome poo poo Matter: Relatively low. I think there was some rape that got stopped by a protagonist and some kind of over-the-top scenes of violence but overall tame. Surface Detail: There is a whole character arc that takes place in a virtual hell, which is nothing but insanely gruesome poo poo
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Apr 1, 2018 03:42
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Has an author ever won best novel 3 years in a row? I think Stone Sky was better than Obelisk Gate. No. Besides Jemisin, only two writers have won it twice in a row -- Orson Scott Card for Ender's Game/Speaker for the Dead and Lois McMaster Bujold for The Vor Game/Barrayar.
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Apr 1, 2018 03:54
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angel opportunity posted:From the ones I've read: Yeah, I didn't find it totally off-putting in Player of Games, and even in Use of Weapons what put me off was just how ridiculously OTP the you-know-what was. Look to Windward is next on my list. I might skip Surface Detail though, because that sounds a bit too much like the virtual torture scene in Altered Carbon, and what I hate most about that poo poo is just how boring it all ends up being. I think a friend of mine put it best when he said these authors trying to come up with the worst tortures ever end up sounding like a bunch of "14 year old bangers in basement trying to out-gross each other." Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Apr 1, 2018 |
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Apr 1, 2018 03:59
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Stuporstar posted:I think a friend of mine put it best when he said these authors trying to come up with the worst tortures ever end up sounding like a bunch of "14 year old bangers in basement trying to out-gross each other." I didn't feel like Banks was trying to come up with the worst torture possible, but it was descriptive and drawn out. Basically a hell created by the type of people that would be mean and stupid enough to want one. It wasn't my favorite Culture book, but it probably had the most impact on me because of the inevitability of virtual torture and the lack of limits on it if someone figures out a way to digitize people. It is a real slap in the face to the fantasy a lot of people have of living long enough to have their brain digitized.
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Apr 1, 2018 04:20
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skasion posted:Terra Ignota was recommended to me as “cyberprep” Yes, it's not cyberpunk but that's cearly the subgenre it draws most from. NoNostalgia4Grover posted:The Hugo awards haven't made sense for a while, because in the age of Twitter, ebook marketplaces and cheap self-publishing options; I'm not wild about recent Hugos either, but there's still a load of reviewers out there, both pro and high-profile amateur.
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Apr 1, 2018 06:57
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muscles like this! posted:The first two books should really be viewed as just one super long novel because the first is all set up and the second is all payoff. Pretty sure they explain this in the first book and if not certainly the second - they use sex as a weapon in the world where sex has otherwise been neutered. The leaders can't resist and become enamoured either with her directly or with the lifestyle she provides.
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Apr 1, 2018 08:30
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It’s explained but not convincingly IMO. Madame’s enlightenment cosplay whorehouse being the secret hub of the illuminati world government was one of the dumber plot points I’ve seen in a long while. The rest of the book was good enough to keep going but still, that was pretty bad.
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Apr 1, 2018 08:33
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Anyone else a MWS fan and keep rereading Heroes die and the other books? I can't get enough of that poo poo.
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Apr 1, 2018 09:25
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I've read through it only once but I liked it alright. I will definitely want to reread it at some point to see if the last book will make any more sense.
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Apr 1, 2018 09:37
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Raere posted:I've started Consider Phlebas and I'm liking it. Are there Culture books I should skip or prioritize? I recently went on a Culture binge as well, after starting years earlier with the other recommended intro point to the series, Player of Games, and so far I've encountered nothing else like Consider Phlebas. Arcsech is right, it's the black sheep of the series. The Culture novels seem to follow a pattern of "well written travelogues of the people being hauled around by Special Circumstances / a Mind, while the Minds solve everything trivially at the last minute without any meaningful interaction by the ostensible protagonists." Look to Windward, the follow-up to Phlebas, is especially guilty of this. I vaguely recall Player of Games and Excession being different from when I read them years ago, but I can't say for certain. All of which is to say, if you liked Consider Phlebas, it's entirely possible that you won't find anything else in the series you enjoy in the same way. Personally I'd say check out Player of Games, because its protagonist also has a fair degree of agency, and go from there.
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Apr 1, 2018 18:25
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I like binge-reading the Hugo nominees in time to vote for them, regardless of their actual quality.
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Apr 1, 2018 19:21
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I'm cracking up at the sale blurb for this book: #1 BEST SELLER in Epic Fantasy #1 BEST SELLER in Low Fantasy #1 BEST SELLER in Dark Fantasy #1 BEST SELLER in Sword and Sorcery GAME OF THRONES MEETS GLADIATOR... OVER 10,000,000 PAGES READ by Amazon Fantasy readers BEST NOVEL 2017 (Reddit r/Fantasy nominee) BEST DEBUT 2017 (Reddit r/Fantasy nominee) 98% LIKED IT (Goodreads) Ease up there on the 10/10 GOTY reviews, eesh
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Apr 1, 2018 19:40
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^^^ ETA: Amazon keeps trying to recommend that one to me and I am honestly baffled why it would think that--I don't read much epic fantasy at all. For at least a decade prior to...I want to say 2010 or so, the Hugos were very much dominated by older, well-established authors who tended to be white dudes. They had a long established social circle in SF fandom. Things that won were often "nostalgia" SF--stuff about hard-bitten Mars colonists or old people retraining themselves for a digital future or whatever. A lot of it wasn't bad, but plenty of it was not real...inspired say. Like, I'm picking on Mike Resnick here, but really, how is he the record holder for most Hugo nominations and awards? He's not bad but he's never knocked my socks off the way someone like Michael Swanwick has. Enter the internet--disparate folks from outside that white-guy center who made up a fairly substantial reader- and writership were able to organize themselves more easily and formed their own social network. There was never any conspiracy, just a lot of people finding what they liked in genre fiction. And using the social network, they were able to "get out the vote" and explained to a lot of people how one goes about nominating and voting for the Hugos (among many other organizing things they did) and being much more accustomed to this new kind of social networking than the old established authors, they started getting more award-popular. Also, a lot of old Hugo favorites died or retired and that left some space for the new kids. Were there some better novels published this year? Define "better," and show your work, but yes, undoubtedly. There always have been better novels published that didn't make it. Jo Walton's columns about the Hugos illustrated that this has always happened, and the award is a better measure of what the SF community is digging in a given year, with an eye towards the upper ten percent of content. Like, this year is kind of a weak ballot but there's nothing on it I would say is bad. Even Scalzi, whom I enjoy reading but will not pretend is something I would have nominated. The ones I have read from this year are Provenance, Six Wakes and Stone Sky. Stone Sky is better than Obelisk Gate but I'd personally probably vote for Six Wakes--I really enjoyed the book and while a part of me wants to know how the crew's story continues, it really is self-contained and doesn't demand a sequel. All the others are things I want to read eventually but keeping current with all the new good stuff out there is hard.
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Apr 1, 2018 19:52
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Excession is interesting because it’s one of the most overt articulations of an idea that the Culture series entertains throughout its run - that even if a society is monstrous, rolling in with guns blazing to ‘fix’ them through righteous brutality can be even more monstrous. It’s why I kind of side-eye people talking about the Culture as perfect good guys - the existence of Special Circumstances, a playground for hyperprivileged little shits to relieve their boredom by dicking around with ‘lesser’ civilisations in gruesome but at-least-theoretically morally-excusable ways, is a huge and obvious flaw.
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Apr 1, 2018 19:56
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I don’t disagree but not having Special Circumstances would probably be worse. The crimes and atrocities that occur in the Culture universe go far into “worse than death” territory, and when you’re stuck in virtual hell, or your entire sex has been engineered to be subsentient and experience all sex as rape, or you’re about to be genocide in a millennia-old grudge between two supercivilizations, your literal only hope is outside intervention. Without SC there would be hopeless and eternal torment in the setting and I think that, in a very real sense, justifies their existence.
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Apr 1, 2018 20:27
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Also given the trauma Excession’s protagonist experienced I think there’s some unspoken and deeply loathsome undertones to his decision st the end of the book. He sure got as far as he could from the thing that hurt him.
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Apr 1, 2018 20:33
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Kestral posted:All of which is to say, if you liked Consider Phlebas, it's entirely possible that you won't find anything else in the series you enjoy in the same way. Personally I'd say check out Player of Games, because its protagonist also has a fair degree of agency, and go from there. And Against A Dark Background, which is like CP, only more so. No Minds though, but maybe an AI participating in the mortal-scale fuckery.
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Apr 1, 2018 21:31
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Excession, while good, started the trend of "clueless idiot gets hauled around the cosmos by Culture super-spaceship" in the Culture series. Not talking about the dude who loves hanging with the alienFratBros, talking about the lady who knifed him/killed her own unborn child, and then spent 40 straight years sulking. Player of Games "clueless idiot getting hauled around" doesn't count because he was semi-clued in and only went to one place & came back.
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Apr 1, 2018 21:52
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People who talk about the Culture as perfect good guys are weird. At least the people who complain about Tolkien elves being perfect good guys have the excuse that they didn't read the Silmarillion, which features many terrible elven decisions. I just assume they heard about the Culture from some third party, probably in the context of a Star Wars vs Star Trek argument, and never actually read Banks.
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Apr 1, 2018 22:59
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90s Cringe Rock posted:People who talk about the Culture as perfect good guys are weird. At least the people who complain about Tolkien elves being perfect good guys have the excuse that they didn't read the Silmarillion, which features many terrible elven decisions. Meatfucker
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Apr 1, 2018 23:02
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So I think this is a good place to ask about good steampunk books or fiction? I've played a few video games which maybe qualify as "steampunk" but they were things like Final Fantasy VI and IX which, if you have played them, don't really go into the details of it all very much. In fact, it's more like magic when you get right down to it. However I'm playing a visual novel right now that is very lore/worldbuilding heavy and talks a lot about its AU 19th Century UK where steampunk has started to reign supreme. It made me curious to find books that really explore the whole idea. I tried just googling Steampunk novels but, very weirdly to me, it looks like the steampunk stuff is usually almost a backdrop or afterthought and the core stories are things as simple as detective novels or whatever. I'm not interested in that. What I'd like is a steampunk story that goes over how the world is revolutionized and the implications of the technology. Big, kinda "epic" stuff I guess you might say? One book I found sounded kinda interesting - Perdido Street Station. What do you all think of it? Also other suggestions are very welcome.
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Apr 1, 2018 23:33
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Pretty much the only serious one that you're going to find is The Difference Engine.
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Apr 1, 2018 23:37
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PSS is very good, the sequels, The Scar and Iron Council are even better. I wouldn’t actually call them steampunk, they’re more often described as weird fiction. Iron Council is rad if you’re into communism and the history of the workers’ movement. Deals with colonialism too, all in the weird fantasy setting. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote a neat novel called The Difference Engine, imagining a world in which computing came a century earlier. That’s all I’ve got. I read that steam pirate novel Sterling wrote about d’Annunzio’s takeover of Fiume, wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. e: drat
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Apr 1, 2018 23:43
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Mark Hodder's The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack and its sequels have a strong steampunk component.
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Apr 1, 2018 23:53
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The City & The City has been made into a TV series.
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Apr 2, 2018 00:10
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As mentioned, the first stop for good steampunk is Perdido Street Station. After Mieville, try Michael Swanwycks' _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_ and perhaps Colin Greenland's _Harm's Way_.
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Apr 2, 2018 00:12
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Errant Gin Monks posted:Anyone else a MWS fan and keep rereading Heroes die and the other books? I can't get enough of that poo poo. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I keep meaning to read the next one because I wanted more Pallas Ril, who I found more interesting than the lead.
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Apr 2, 2018 00:18
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NikkolasKing posted:So I think this is a good place to ask about good steampunk books or fiction? If you're looking for good steampunk, I'd also recommend K. W. Jeter's Infernal Devices.
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Apr 2, 2018 00:51
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Jedit posted:The City & The City has been made into a TV series.
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Apr 2, 2018 07:21
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Based on the trailer, they made it blurry.
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Apr 2, 2018 07:27
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NikkolasKing posted:So I think this is a good place to ask about good steampunk books or fiction? I would recommend Ian Tregillis' Alchemy Wars trilogy. I am currently finishing off the second book and it has been an enjoyable read. It roughly covers the era you are looking for, however instead of steam power the Dutch invented alchemy infused giant robot servitors/soldiers to go hog wild. You can read the first chapter on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-Alchemy-Wars-Book-ebook/dp/B00IRIR85M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522650940&sr=8-2&keywords=ian+tregillis The moral of the story, Clockmakers Lie Note, I am a bit of a Tregillis fanboy, I really enjoyed his Milkweed Tryptych. Ninurta fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Apr 2, 2018 |
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Apr 2, 2018 07:38
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Seconded on the Milkweed Triptych. It is far better and more serious than its goofy premise would suggest.
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Apr 2, 2018 08:52
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