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General Battuta posted:jedao kramers into the hexarchate and just keeps kramering, sliding off fortresses, bouncing against wolf towers. you get the feeling he's trying to spike your calendar but he's kramering at such a high velocity you just can't quite make it out. as he finally nails hellspin fortress and falls into the black cradle you think you hear him exclaim "I'm not even a kel, that's what's so CRAZY about this" on the way down THE HEAT IS ON (saxaphone, threshold winnower goes off) edit: I'm about halfway through In The Name of the Rose and it's really good. C.M. Kruger fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Aug 26, 2018 |
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Aug 26, 2018 07:59
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C.M. Kruger posted:THE HEAT IS ON (saxaphone, threshold winnower goes off) While I love Foucault's Pendulum (duh) and think it might be the "better" book, The Name of the Rose is my favorite of Eco's books. I wish I knew Italian.
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Aug 26, 2018 16:00
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Started my Baru reread today, forgot how quickly it pulls you in for the ride. Can't wait for this sequel.
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Aug 26, 2018 16:22
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Thats....the point. It's a LOVE POEM. Do love poem metaphors not need to make sense? People with math knowledge have also written mathematical love poems or songs that do make sense mathematically like Finite Simple Group of Order Two
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Aug 26, 2018 22:05
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Anybody read JY Yang's Tensorate series? I just read the first book, and I thought the prose and world-building were great, but the plot was disjointed and never really grabbed me. Are the other two books worth checking out?
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Aug 27, 2018 02:39
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Ccs posted:Do love poem metaphors not need to make sense? People with math knowledge have also written mathematical love poems or songs that do make sense mathematically like Finite Simple Group of Order Two Honestly, who knows, or more accurately, who cares except for you and the cabal of mathematically sound love poem/song writers that you represent?? General Battuta, please don't ruin Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire for me. War Kites are standing by to nuke the gently caress out of Cormorants home planet, do not gently caress with the War Kites. ......................http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/lee_01_11/
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Aug 27, 2018 03:14
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C.M. Kruger posted:THE HEAT IS ON (saxaphone, threshold winnower goes off) For some reason I completely lost it at the mental image of Jedao whipping a saxophone out of nowhere and busting out some sweet improv jazz as the winnowers power up. NoNostalgia4Grover posted:General Battuta, please don't ruin Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire for me. War Kites are standing by to nuke the gently caress out of Cormorants home planet, do not gently caress with the War Kites. ......................http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/lee_01_11/ I think Baru and Jedao would get along like a house on fire with all of their enemies locked inside it in a plausibly deniable manner.
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Aug 27, 2018 03:42
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MarksMan posted:Has anyone read "Medusa Uploaded" by Emily Devenport? If so, what are you thoughts on it? I thought it was 'fine' if you could get past the 'character is extremely super into an art form from ye olde earth' thing, but that kind of wrecked the whole thing for me.
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Aug 27, 2018 14:00
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Lester Shy posted:Anybody read JY Yang's Tensorate series? I just read the first book, and I thought the prose and world-building were great, but the plot was disjointed and never really grabbed me. Are the other two books worth checking out? I thought the second was better, as it was a bit more focused. Haven't read the third. I will though.
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Aug 27, 2018 15:54
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I and most of the other people I've talked to about it agree that the third one is emotionally devastating.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:25
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Lester Shy posted:Anybody read JY Yang's Tensorate series? I just read the first book, and I thought the prose and world-building were great, but the plot was disjointed and never really grabbed me. Are the other two books worth checking out? The first book tried to cover so much ground with only a novella's worth of pages, and it was hard to get invested after the first act. Glad to know the sequels are better.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:36
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Oh poo poo there's a third Tensorate book out now? Welp I know what I'm reading next.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:50
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Hey you mother fuckers who said Gene Wolfe writes like poo poo because Severian is supposed to be pompous, bumbling fool and unaware of his own lack of importance. You are loving liars and cowards
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Aug 27, 2018 16:55
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Are the Legend of Ethshar books tied together by anything other than the setting, or are they all just standalone stories? Was looking around for a fantasy series and saw it mentioned here. The first two books seemed decent enough.
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Aug 27, 2018 17:37
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Evil Fluffy posted:Are the Legend of Ethshar books tied together by anything other than the setting, or are they all just standalone stories? Was looking around for a fantasy series and saw it mentioned here. The first two books seemed decent enough. Shared setting with occasional crossing cameos is all. I don't want to over hype them - they're B grade '80s fantasy, just done very well. Like, actual character driven stories not just Campbellian ur-quest coming of age stories, etc.
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Aug 27, 2018 18:12
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Tor's ebook club added a bonus book for August: The Black Company by Glen Cook "Available from August 27th to August 31st. Download before 11:59 PM ET August 30th, 2018." I absolutely loved his space opera, The Dragon Never Sleeps, and seem to remember people are usually positive towards The Black Company. Also, it's free.
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Aug 27, 2018 19:26
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Anyone have any idea why Becky Chambers kindle versions are suddenly unavailable in Canada?
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Aug 27, 2018 20:14
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Evil Fluffy posted:Are the Legend of Ethshar books tied together by anything other than the setting, or are they all just standalone stories? Was looking around for a fantasy series and saw it mentioned here. The first two books seemed decent enough. They're mostly standalone, but characters from earlier books tend to cameo in later ones. There are a few books with tighter links: - The characters from With a Single Spell play a supporting role in The Spell of the Black Dagger; - The Spriggan Mirror is a sequel to With a Single Spell; - The Unwilling Warlord, The Vondish Ambassador, and The Unwelcome Warlock are direct sequels to each other; - and The Unwelcome Warlock is also a sequel to The Night of Madness. My recommendation would be to just read them in order (and possibly skip The Blood of a Dragon and Taking Flight).
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Aug 27, 2018 20:27
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ToxicFrog posted:They're mostly standalone, but characters from earlier books tend to cameo in later ones. There are a few books with tighter links: Also Ithnalin's Restoration happens at the same time as The Spell of the Black Dagger, but there's essentially zero direct overlap.
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Aug 27, 2018 20:39
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Is there any consensus on the best cyberpunk out there? Anything new and interesting in the genre?
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Aug 27, 2018 22:19
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trip9 posted:Is there any consensus on the best cyberpunk out there? Anything new and interesting in the genre? Cyberpunk is mostly dead in print SF (much less so in games/movies), but Altered Carbon was a pretty good tribute, it's basically an 80s cyberpunk novel.
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Aug 27, 2018 22:38
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trip9 posted:Is there any consensus on the best cyberpunk out there? Anything new and interesting in the genre? If you liked (or are about to like) the Cyberpunk 2077 reveal trailer you'll enjoy the new 48 min gameplay walkthrough. And yeah, it's kind of a retro genre at this point, tbh.
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Aug 27, 2018 22:45
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The Peripheral definitely counts though it’s a couple years old and has ditched the mirrorshades aesthetic.
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Aug 27, 2018 22:55
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Stuporstar posted:Anyone have any idea why Becky Chambers kindle versions are suddenly unavailable in Canada? Hey that is pretty weird 
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Aug 28, 2018 01:03
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trip9 posted:Is there any consensus on the best cyberpunk out there? Anything new and interesting in the genre? Check out a book called 'Dreams of Amputation' by Gary J Shipley, it's from 2013 and it's good.
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Aug 28, 2018 01:05
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ToxicFrog posted:They're mostly standalone, but characters from earlier books tend to cameo in later ones. There are a few books with tighter links: Iirc, the Dragon Blood books are not Esthar books, but it’s been awhile, so I’m not positive
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Aug 28, 2018 03:24
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Megazver posted:If you liked (or are about to like) the Cyberpunk 2077 reveal trailer you'll enjoy the new 48 min gameplay walkthrough. That's kind of what got me in the mood to ask haha. You'd think with how dystopian our current society is becoming it would be ripe for a new wave of modernized cyberpunk. drat. A human heart posted:Check out a book called 'Dreams of Amputation' by Gary J Shipley, it's from 2013 and it's good. Awesome, noted.
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Aug 28, 2018 03:33
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Just finished Glynn Stewart's Starship's Mage series. It's unexceptional but enjoyable space opera with a nice mix of deep space fleet actions, ground combat, and political intrigue, which I know some people earlier in the thread were looking for. It's also a setting that mixes high tech and high magic, which is pretty rare and something I'd like to see more of.navyjack posted:Iirc, the Dragon Blood books are not Esthar books, but it’s been awhile, so I’m not positive What do you mean by "the Dragon Blood books"? The Blood of a Dragon is definitely Ethshar and in fact the protagonist from it plays a minor role in The Unwelcome Warlock, it just isn't very good and doesn't have much connection to the other books. Same deal with Taking Flight. If you mean Watt-Evans's Obsdian Chronicles (Dragon Weather, Dragon Society, and Dragon Venom), yeah, those have nothing to do with Ethshar, which is why I didn't mention them. 
ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 13:37
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ToxicFrog posted:Just finished Glynn Stewart's Starship's Mage series. It's unexceptional but enjoyable space opera with a nice mix of deep space fleet actions, ground combat, and political intrigue, which I know some people earlier in the thread were looking for. It's also a setting that mixes high tech and high magic, which is pretty rare and something I'd like to see more of. I assume you've read Debra Doyle and James Macdonald's Mageworlds series?
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Aug 28, 2018 18:15
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ulmont posted:I assume you've read Debra Doyle and James Macdonald's Mageworlds series? I've never heard of them, but I'll check them out!
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Aug 28, 2018 19:36
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I will readily admit that I was halfway through Son of a Liche before I got the joke about the Head of Marketing.
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Aug 28, 2018 21:04
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ToxicFrog posted:Just finished Glynn Stewart's Starship's Mage series. It's unexceptional but enjoyable space opera with a nice mix of deep space fleet actions, ground combat, and political intrigue, which I know some people earlier in the thread were looking for. It's also a setting that mixes high tech and high magic, which is pretty rare and something I'd like to see more of. Oh yeah, those are the ones I was thinking of
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Aug 28, 2018 21:26
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ToxicFrog posted:I've never heard of them, but I'll check them out! The Mageworld series is 100% non-licensed Star Wars Expanded Universe fiction, with all the official Star Wars copyrighted names replaced. Started reading those 3 201x english translations of Arkady & Boris Strugatsky's The Doomed City, Hard to be a God, and Monday Begins on Saturday. The Doomed City matched up nicely to the advanced readers copy of it I own. Monday Begins on Saturday new translation is definitely different than the earlier english translation version. Going to have to grab my DAW paperback copies of Monday Begins on Friday and Hard to be a God, and re-read them in sequence.
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Aug 28, 2018 23:19
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:The Mageworld series is 100% non-licensed Star Wars Expanded Universe fiction, with all the official Star Wars copyrighted names replaced. Vicious slander. 99%
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Aug 29, 2018 00:05
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:The Mageworld series is 100% non-licensed Star Wars Expanded Universe fiction, with all the official Star Wars copyrighted names replaced. Ok, that makes me a lot less interested in it, because I read a lot of SWEU stuff in my misspent youth and looking back on it the only books that wouldn't have been better used as bookstands for other, better books were Zahn's trilogy, and even that wasn't Zahn's best work.
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Aug 29, 2018 00:06
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ToxicFrog posted:Ok, that makes me a lot less interested in it, because I read a lot of SWEU stuff in my misspent youth and looking back on it the only books that wouldn't have been better used as bookstands for other, better books were Zahn's trilogy, and even that wasn't Zahn's best work. This was written right around the time of Zahn's trilogy, so before the SWEU really became a thing. More to the point, though, if you're looking for "a setting that mixes high tech and high magic", it's going to look a lot like Star Wars.
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Aug 29, 2018 01:48
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I started reading The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu. I'm hooked. Has anyone read the Chinese novel he translated, The Three-Body Problem? I'm also thinking of starting his fantasy series, because the word wuxia got thrown around.
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Aug 29, 2018 02:29
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ulmont posted:This was written right around the time of Zahn's trilogy, so before the SWEU really became a thing. More to the point, though, if you're looking for "a setting that mixes high tech and high magic", it's going to look a lot like Star Wars. Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series covers high tech and high psionic magic in a non Star Wars way, and is pretty light in tone by comparison to Star Wars. The main character of the Warlock series is a galactic troubleshooter (w/high tech devices) sent to a planet (Gramarye) originally colonized by extremely rich and dedicated SCA members. Latent psionic talents in the original colonizers + a weird planetary-wide fungi + generations of time resulted in 80% of the people on Gramarye having magic abilities to varying degrees when the main character arrives.
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Aug 29, 2018 03:08
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Three-Body Problem is a favorite controversy in this thread; I think consensus is that it's really good, but kinda weird and not for everybody. Definitely check it out, it has ideas and assumptions very different from Western SF. I also like Cixin Liu's short stories, he has a hell of an imagination. As for Ken Liu, he can definitely turn out English language prose at a high level. I'm going to pick up his Star Wars book on Kindle Unlimited; it's a collection of stories people are telling about Luke Skywalker in-universe. If a writer can make up a good tall tale, then they've got the stuff. https://smile.amazon.com/Journey-Star-Wars-Last-Jedi-ebook/dp/B075TJJW5T/
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Aug 29, 2018 03:10
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I loved The Paper Menagerie. I freaked out when I saw I was going to be in the same magazine issue as Ken Liu, even though it was a reprint of Ten Suns.
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Aug 29, 2018 05:03
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