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The first book in the Milkweed Tryptic trilogy is probably the most depressing novel I have ever read. I'm sure if I'd continued to read the series the good guys would win eventually, but I can't put myself though any more of that utter bleakness.
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Apr 2, 2018 09:25
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Milkweed is good, but my personal favorite of his is Something More Than Night, UF about a gumshoe angel. Also (slightly) less stupid than it sounds.
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Apr 2, 2018 09:27
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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm cracking up at the sale blurb for this book: I'd be most impressed if they had put #1 BEST SELLER in both high and low fantasy.
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Apr 2, 2018 12:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm cracking up at the sale blurb for this book: It has an Amazon tag for #1 in African Literature.
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Apr 2, 2018 12:46
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Just want to thank everyone for their suggestions. I got: The Difference Engine Burton & Swinburne series Alchemy Wars They all sound interesting and they are all on Audible which made me very happy because my eyesight is awful.
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Apr 2, 2018 13:07
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Syzygy Stardust posted:It has an Amazon tag for #1 in African Literature. quote:Born in England to South American parents, Evan Winter was raised in Africa near the historical territory of his Xhosa ancestors.
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Apr 2, 2018 14:23
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Syzygy Stardust posted:It has an Amazon tag for #1 in African Literature. Do these tags mean it actually was at some point that high in sales ranking or is it completely arbitrary
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Apr 2, 2018 15:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Do these tags mean it actually was at some point that high in sales ranking or is it completely arbitrary It's easy to be #1 for a moment when it's a niche category. It's a common sales tactic, put your book in a super niche category, rack up a few sales, and bam, you're #1 for a day.
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Apr 2, 2018 15:12
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NikkolasKing posted:Just want to thank everyone for their suggestions. I got: On Burton and Swinburne, I found the series decreased in quality until I stopped reading after the 3rd. The first is nicely steampunk but for reasons the whole world goes off kilter and crazy, becoming less steampunk and also less enjoyable. I should add that I do not necessarily consider steampunk and enjoyment to be correlated.
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Apr 2, 2018 15:23
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I publish books on Amazon and you can put yourself into a ton of categories. Having a book get that #1 Bestseller tag is going to boost your sales because most people won't even notice it's in a super-niche and obscure category. You can see how obscure the subcategory is by looking at the overall rank. For this book, it's rank 2,500 on the store, which is good enough to be #1 in African Literature. Being #1 on African Literature probably draws in almost no sales via people browsing that category, but if you are browsing some other category the book is in, and you see it's something like 25th on this category, it will still have that orange bestseller tag which will make people browsing around much more likely to look at the book. You used to be able to see all the categories an author/publisher put themselves into at the very bottom, but you no longer can. Now you just see: #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > African #11 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Military #21 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Dragons & Mythical Creatures This is giving you just the 3 subcategories that display the highest rank for the given overall rank. Basically this is going to be "Most obscure to third-least obscure". Those last two look pretty solid, but considering that "Fantasy --> Military" and "Fantasy "Dragons and Mythical Creatures" are also pretty obscure, it seems less impressive. For him to get himself into those specific categories can be really tricky. You are given two hard choices for category. This defines the greater subcategories you can be in. This author probably did "World Literature" and "Fantasy." So he chose from a list those two categories as probably "World Literature - African" or "World Literature - General" For Fantasy he might have chosen something specific, or chosen "General." You then get 7 "Keywords" where you can type in anything you want. Depending on what you type in, you put yourself into additional categories. THe system is very stupid because you are not limited to a single word, you can use the full text field to "stuff" categories e.g. "Dragons Military Africa Swords Elves Magic." You generally want to view subcategories to target for this to stuff into as many as possible. If you already manually chose a category, you don't need to keyword into it, so if he chose Africa specifically he doesn't need to waste a keyword on it. If a category name has two words, you have to use an entire text field for it. So for "Mythical Creatures" you couldn't stuff that with a bunch of other words, you have to use up an entire text field. I could go into more detail, but it's basically a stupid system where you want to stuff into as many things as possible simply because everyone else is doing that, and you want to get as much free visibility as possible. If you don't do this you are losing visibility and hurting sales on your book. When Amazon recommends a book to you, it might be because you've bought books in certain subcategories, so Amazon knows you like that kind of book. Since this book had/has an overall strong rank that has held for a long time, and because it's in a ton of subcategories, it's more likely for the algorithms to recommend the book to you.
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Apr 2, 2018 16:46
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occamsnailfile posted: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. Simple numbers. Resnick's written a shitload of things. Look at the short story category.
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Apr 2, 2018 17:03
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The Iain M. Banks thread was archived so I guess I'll post here that I finished my first read-through of Use of Weapons. ...well then. 
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Apr 3, 2018 00:43
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Use of Weapons heavily reminded me of Pham Nguyen's intro from Deepness in the Sky when I first read UoW. Deepness also had mega-uncomfortable stuff with the mind-wipe douchebags. Thought about the ending in Iain Bank's Excession after re-reading Surface Detail because people kept bringing up the VRsim worlds in this thread. You know what, the Sleeper Service probably lied, and kept that super-annoying 40 yr pregnancy lady in a full immersion VRsim.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:51
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Use of Weapons heavily reminded me of Pham Nguyen's intro from Deepness in the Sky when I first read UoW. Deepness is so good I don't think sleep service would pull a dick move like that. He just wants to chill with his meat dioramas.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:57
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Sleepy service was cool dealing with the GCU Grey Area aka the MeatFucker unlike 99.9999999999% of the other Culture Minds, almost like Sleepy was the Grey Area's home-GSV. Going from that connection, hell yes I believe the humanoids were kept in full VRsim(for safety WINK) while the Sleepy Service hosed off at maximum ++++ engine speeds towards another galactic cluster. Sleepy's shipwide Meat diorama's were the inspiration for that other branch of Contact mentioned in Surface Detail, the Quietus service or something.
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Apr 3, 2018 02:21
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Sleepy service was cool dealing with the GCU Grey Area aka the MeatFucker unlike 99.9999999999% of the other Culture Minds, almost like Sleepy was the Grey Area's home-GSV. One day I will understand what this post was about. One day...
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Apr 3, 2018 02:44
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Sleepy service was cool dealing with the GCU Grey Area aka the MeatFucker unlike 99.9999999999% of the other Culture Minds, almost like Sleepy was the Grey Area's home-GSV. I think you're reading too much into eccentric solidarity.
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Apr 3, 2018 02:47
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^^^ Probably so. The Quietus service first mentioned in Iain Bank's Surface Detail was definitely expanded out from what Iain Bank's described as the Sleeper Service's eccentric habits cover story in Excession. Really looking forward to Iain Bank's papers on the Culture getting published, to see what other ideas got fleshed out or dropped in the Culture series.
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Apr 3, 2018 03:57
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:^^^ So since I made the mistake of reading Surface Detail before Use of Weapons (it's just what the library had available), was the character revealed at the end of Surface Detail the real Zakalwe, not Elethiomel? Or was it still Elethiomel, since he already had a penchant for using names derived from Livueta? Or is it just ambiguous? E. Never mind, thinking about the way he works and how Culture characters speak about him, Vatueil is definitely Elethiomel. He's still fighting, trying to do good, hundreds of years later, and still not knowing which side of his proxy wars is right. I think one of the minds refers to him as a "ramshackle ghost" or something like that. shirts and skins fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 11:53
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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm cracking up at the sale blurb for this book: I got this for 99p through a Reddit thread about 5 months ago and was very impressed with it. His marketing is... Unsubtle, but the novel is written by someone who has an interesting perspective on the world, and isn't to shabby in terms of prose etc. Fail to see how it is low fantasy, it has dragons and extremely prominent magic etc. Think there are magically infused soldiers hulking out in the first 10 pages IIRC.
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Apr 3, 2018 12:51
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Yeah uh, the original cheradenine zakalwe is unambiguously dead
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Apr 3, 2018 14:21
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I've been trying to get through the Cyphernomicon again, and it's a tiring mind-warping read. About 25% in, which is the farthest I've ever gotten in it. The Cyphernomicon is a distillation FAQ of the 1990s era online activist cryptography & privacy rights goup called Cypherpunks that Neal Stephenson heavily borrowed from/was immersed in/was inspired by when he was writing his 1999 novel Cryptonomicon. The Cyphernomicon can technically be described as science-fiction & fantasy. It can also technically be called a proto sovreign citizens manifesto, a proto bitccoin slash ecurrency fan letter, and so many many other things. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 14:57
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andrew smash posted:Yeah uh, the original cheradenine zakalwe is unambiguously dead Yeah, but in a certain sense so were many of the characters in Surface Detail, which set me to wondering. But on further review that doesn't make sense. shirts and skins fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 15:07
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Alfred Bester's short stories are really good. I had read "Fondly Fahrenheit" (which I never can remember the author of) but not his other stuff, picked up the collection on Amazon for three bucks, and they're all pretty good. Clearly old, with a bunch of manly men and all that, but not offensive or dated-feeling.
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Apr 3, 2018 19:26
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shirts and skins posted:Yeah, but in a certain sense so were many of the characters in Surface Detail, which set me to wondering. But on further review that doesn't make sense. Yeah he died on a pre-contact 20th-century-equivalent tech level planet. No backups.
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Apr 3, 2018 19:42
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Wait, I thought vatueil was the guy from look to Windward. Guess I read too fast.
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Apr 3, 2018 21:38
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I finally started Children of Time and am enjoying it so far (150 pages in) largely for the premise. I am unfortunately uninterested in Holsten and Lain and the other characters on Gilgamesh so far. Holsten especially has mostly just been watching things happen around him while awake or having things happen around him while he's asleep. The stuff happening on Kerns' World is cool and fun, but there's not really any characters to latch on to. Does this improve much? I'm totally fine reading this on premise alone but am hoping I'll start caring about the characters/characters will be introduced who do more than Holsten.
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Apr 3, 2018 22:14
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apophenium posted:I finally started Children of Time and am enjoying it so far (150 pages in) largely for the premise. I am unfortunately uninterested in Holsten and Lain and the other characters on Gilgamesh so far. Holsten especially has mostly just been watching things happen around him while awake or having things happen around him while he's asleep. The stuff happening on Kerns' World is cool and fun, but there's not really any characters to latch on to. I did the audiobook so I don't have a good gauge for what's happening at around 150 pages, but Holsten and Lain are the main characters for most of that storyline. It... does some unexpected things, though. The book takes some time to really establish some of the story, and to be honest the book is very much driven by the premise. It does a lot with that premise, though, and it only gets more interesting, so I'd encourage you to stick with it. Kerns' World stuff will also have a few regular characters emerge, if they haven't already.
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Apr 3, 2018 22:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Do these tags mean it actually was at some point that high in sales ranking or is it completely arbitrary Well the author is African so the tag means the author is from Africa....
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Apr 4, 2018 01:07
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apophenium posted:I finally started Children of Time and am enjoying it so far (150 pages in) largely for the premise. I am unfortunately uninterested in Holsten and Lain and the other characters on Gilgamesh so far. Holsten especially has mostly just been watching things happen around him while awake or having things happen around him while he's asleep. The stuff happening on Kerns' World is cool and fun, but there's not really any characters to latch on to. Hey Children of Time buddy! I'd like to echo your thoughts on the book, I'm around the same spot somewhere. I cant help but feel the plot is disconnected so far, anything not directly related to Kern's world has felt underwhelming. Its almost as if the author couldn't disassociate his spider perspective from the rest of the characters, and wrote them all in fragments of that same thought process. I agree with the premise being interesting enough to keep with the book
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Apr 4, 2018 01:35
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Ubiquitus posted:Hey Children of Time buddy! I'd like to echo your thoughts on the book, I'm around the same spot somewhere. There's definite reasons for including the Gilgamesh plot line. They will feel disconnected for some time but it's intentional. The third act of the book ties it all together rather well.
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Apr 4, 2018 02:32
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MockingQuantum posted:There's definite reasons for including the Gilgamesh plot line. They will feel disconnected for some time but it's intentional. The third act of the book ties it all together rather well. True, but the spiders are far more interesting. And much less depressing.
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Apr 4, 2018 02:56
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mllaneza posted:True, but the spiders are far more interesting. And much less depressing. I can't dispute that, they're definitely the star of the show.
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Apr 4, 2018 03:35
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occamsnailfile posted: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. I had a look at this and the most obvious change is where Hugo-tier stuff was being published. Around 2005-10, short fiction changes from being almost all Asimov's and Analog and a bit of F&SF to a much wider variety of publishers. It's not the same for novels, although Orbit has been doing really well since 2011. It's changed the kind of book that gets nominated but not really for the better, imo. E: And then there's 2008 being the end of the Langford Era. I just finished Too Like the Lightning and don't reply to this, please, just have a laugh if I'm wrong: the big plot twist in the last chapter seems like obvious misdirection to me. They're having a set-set plan this stuff, but didn't think another set-set would notice? Seems implausible. Also letting Cato tip everyone off is, er, poor opsec from a bunch of security officers. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Apr 4, 2018 |
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Apr 4, 2018 06:29
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Syzygy Stardust posted:It has an Amazon tag for #1 in African Literature. I like how the tweaked-for-redditors/GoT fans blurb doesn’t mention Africa at all, even though that sounds much more impressive to me than #1 Fantasy Book about a half-elf rogue, levels 5-8.
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Apr 4, 2018 14:52
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I just finished Deathless by Valente, which was a better version of Gaimans work. How is the rest of her stuff? Also the parallel Koschei the Deathless and Project Koschei in A Colder War was entertaining. I should really read up on Eastern European/Russian mythology.
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Apr 4, 2018 14:53
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Has anyone here read any of the Battlecruiser Alamo books? Are they worth reading?
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Apr 4, 2018 19:27
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Has anyone here read any of the Battlecruiser Alamo books? Are they worth reading? I got friends who gave it it's an okay mil space opera book but nothing special, so unless you are really digging or a friend recommended it, I don't know why you would read it. Looks like they got better overtime reading reviews of later books, also holy moly 26 books.
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Apr 4, 2018 19:33
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What are the current best sci-fi/fantasy review blogs to read, outside of tor.com?
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Apr 4, 2018 19:59
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StrixNebulosa posted:What are the current best sci-fi/fantasy review blogs to read, outside of tor.com? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3833655
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Apr 4, 2018 20:03
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