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FuzzySlippers posted:So what's the contrast supposed to be here? We have 2 men (Wade and the old wallfacer) who make the 'hard decisions' which all turn out to be correct. Then you have her (the first significant female character since the one who betrayed Earth in book 1) who makes seeming very sensible compassionate decisions that all turn out to be horrifically wrong. No place for compassion in politics? That's something that is said of women in politics (too soft for politics except when they are HRC assassin extraordinaire I guess) but maybe that's just a Western thing. Her early kinda harsh decision to send her old creepy college friend dead into space turns out to be correct I guess. Also, I don't think that Luo Ji is supposed to be the same comparison but I'm not sure. I might be overweighting his final decision to go down with the Solar System rather than going on board the lightspeed ship.
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Oct 4, 2018 01:59
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Scifi + fantasy thread: thank you for the Lies of Locke Lamore book advice, will take it into consideration if I ever read the sequel. So no-one has any thoughts or advice about Jodi Taylor's St Mary's historian fantasy scifi series? As I said before, I got heavy Kage Baker ultra-incestous feedback vibes from the book I did stumble across. On a quasi scifi/fantasy note, Medusa's gaze and vampire's bite: the science of monsters by Matt Kaplan is definitely worth checking out.
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Oct 4, 2018 02:05
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shirunei posted:I know this was awhile back but from my reading everything the man wrote this would be my Heinlein rankings This was the first Heinlein I read and the misogyny and dehumanisation of women was enough to make me reevaluate reading his other books. If they took out any mentions of women, it would have been a three star book (some interesting ideas, but nothing really stand out). I think this book is a good test of a person's character. If you read this book, rated it more than three stars on goodreads, and don't bring it up (or mention it in passing), you are a bad person.
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Oct 4, 2018 02:33
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Tokamak posted:This was the first Heinlein I read and the misogyny and dehumanisation of women was enough to make me reevaluate reading his other books. If they took out any mentions of women, it would have been a three star book (some interesting ideas, but nothing really stand out). I think this book is a good test of a person's character. If you read this book, rated it more than three stars on goodreads, and don't bring it up (or mention it in passing), you are a bad person. I might suggest giving Friday a try. Orphans was published in 1941 a different day and man from 1982. His early stuff is such a quick read I usually glaze over that stuff and chalk it up to different times. Still a decent romp if it isn't for you 
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Oct 4, 2018 02:46
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DACK FAYDEN posted:That's what I think it is - her harsh decision to send him out there is another of the decisions that go really well for humanity (for basically entirely-anticipated reasons), so I think it's a weird paean to strongmen, just... also they made her a woman so it looks like a horrible gender thing rather than a commentary on compassion and "hardness". I guess it could also be empathy specifically towards the Trisolarans, since that's at the root of most of what doesn't work out well, and you've got her friendship with Sophon to kind of spectate to that? I guess the whole trilogy kinda has that vibe. The dark forest as a concept suggests we'll never get to some Star Trek / Culture cooperation and everything is inevitably zero sum struggle. Harsh measures will always be forgiven in that sort of world view so hurrah for strong men. I'd be curious what a native speaker took from the trilogy. Beyond the language, I'm guessing the start in the cultural revolution would have greater resonance. We repeat that sort of 'people are terrible' chaos many times in the trilogy but maybe it's more than that. I'd guess Century of Humiliation ideas tie into the Dark Forest concept as well. I do really dig the books and so I'm excited about the adaptation.
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Oct 4, 2018 03:14
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I am in dire need of upbeat escapist fiction at the moment. I read The Goblin Emperor (which was good) and have The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet but a friend is reading it at the moment. Any other suggestions? Fake edit: oh and recently read Howl's Moving Castle
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Oct 4, 2018 03:42
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shirunei posted:I know this was awhile back but from my reading everything the man wrote this would be my Heinlein rankings
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Oct 4, 2018 03:59
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shirunei posted:I might suggest giving Friday a try. Orphans was published in 1941 a different day and man from 1982. His early stuff is such a quick read I usually glaze over that stuff and chalk it up to different times. Still a decent romp if it isn't for you I bought a few of his other books for cheap before I got around to reading them. Like a lot of old sci-fi authors, he may have been influential in his time, but his work hasn't aged well and there's plenty of newer novels that I could be reading instead.
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Oct 4, 2018 04:31
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MockingQuantum posted:I am in dire need of upbeat escapist fiction at the moment. I read The Goblin Emperor (which was good) and have The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet but a friend is reading it at the moment. Any other suggestions? Well, if you liked Howl's, why not try more Diana Wynne Jones? I recommend Archer's Goon.
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Oct 4, 2018 05:22
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I'm actually looking for similar recommendations, I've just finished reading the Record of a Spaceborn Few and the rest of the series, and I've also recently read Howl's Moving Castle and really liked it. I really, really want to read more stuff like the Wayfarers books, because I'm in love with the series. Howl's I just thought was really fun, and I'm going to be getting some more of her other stuff.
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Oct 4, 2018 07:18
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uberkeyzer posted:Puppet Masters belongs in the first group. And I don’t think the politics in TMIAHM are effectively pushing anything given how it ends and how Prof’s idealism ends up getting put into practice. Or rather, I think the good characters outweigh the politics pushing. I agree on Stranger though. Puppet Masters is a legitimately good horror/thriller novel.
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Oct 4, 2018 07:34
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Selachian posted:Well, if you liked Howl's, why not try more Diana Wynne Jones? I recommend Archer's Goon. DWJ is generally pretty good, and fairly upbeat. Also Becky Chambers has two more novels our past Long Way and the library can probably get them if you don’t want to risk more money. Also, have you met our friend Murderbot?
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Oct 4, 2018 08:48
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So I think this sums up Murderbot, and I couldn’t stop giggling at it.“Murderbot” posted:I’d been pretending to be human off and on since I left Dr. Mensah, but this was the first time I’d had anything on me that officially labeled me as human. It was weird.
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Oct 4, 2018 11:41
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MockingQuantum posted:I am in dire need of upbeat escapist fiction at the moment. I read The Goblin Emperor (which was good) and have The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet but a friend is reading it at the moment. Any other suggestions? I personally enjoy really low-tension power fantasies when I'm stressed out. Mother of Learning is more or less "Groundhog Day in Hogwarts" so read until he starts looping and experimenting with it and see if you enjoy it. Also, in the last few years translation of Chinese web novels have been gaining a lot of popularity in the West and those are usually incredibly escapist and are basically the literary equivalent of cotton candy. Try Library of Heaven's Path. As in case of most of these novels, the translation is somewhat stiff at the beginning and the story is mostly the same beats over and over again executed in new ways, but it's rather fun. It's a bit like the Bridge of Birds, if you squint. Give it like twenty chapters and see if you enjoy it. Finally, give Damon Runyon a try. He was a guy who basically hung out in New York's speakeasies and rubbed elbows with all the types who'd hang out in such places, including being friends with some actual big-time gangsters, and wrote hilarious and, for the most part, oddly uplifting short stories about it. He was huge during his life and not so much these days, but he's amazing and deserves way more spotlight than he currently has. These are all things you can read for free, btw. Megazver fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 14:21
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MockingQuantum posted:I am in dire need of upbeat escapist fiction at the moment. I read The Goblin Emperor (which was good) and have The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet but a friend is reading it at the moment. Any other suggestions? Murderbot, The Misenchanted Sword (80's character driven fantasy that's better than it has any right to be), Bridge of Birds (world fantasy award winner; chinese-mythology-inspired), Dark Lord of Derkholm (my personal favorite Diana Wynne Jones book)
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Oct 4, 2018 14:27
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Velius posted:That was a lot of internal monologue. Some of it seems quite similar to your personal webpage discussion about the ending of Traitor, and maybe a little too explicit about the meaning and motivation of it. Or maybe I feel that way because I read your webpage? I’m kind of curious as to whether that sort of thing might have been suggested so the reader who misses the subtext doesn’t get too lost. Reading what's happening at the beginning, I suspect we need some insight into what's happening in Baru's interior to feel the full degree of whiplash when things don't go as expected.
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Oct 4, 2018 14:50
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:So no-one has any thoughts or advice about Jodi Taylor's St Mary's historian fantasy scifi series? As I said before, I got heavy Kage Baker ultra-incestous feedback vibes from the book I did stumble across. I got the first book in the series in a bundle but haven't read it yet so MockingQuantum posted:I am in dire need of upbeat escapist fiction at the moment. I read The Goblin Emperor (which was good) and have The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet but a friend is reading it at the moment. Any other suggestions? Record of a Spaceborne Few is in the same setting as Long Way but can be read before it. I didn't find it as warm and fuzzy, though. A Closed and Common Orbit is really good, but is also a much more direct sequel and will spoil some stuff that happens at the end of Long Way. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Murderbot, The Misenchanted Sword (80's character driven fantasy that's better than it has any right to be), Bridge of Birds (world fantasy award winner; chinese-mythology-inspired), Dark Lord of Derkholm (my personal favorite Diana Wynne Jones book) Seconding the recs for Bridge of Birds and Misenchanted Sword, and if you like those both of them have sequels. I also recently read Happy Snak, which is about a woman running a space station fast food restaurant who gets roped into also tending the alien memorial shrine next door, and while it's no Long Way it somewhat scratched the same itch.
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Oct 4, 2018 18:19
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FuzzySlippers posted:I guess the whole trilogy kinda has that vibe. The dark forest as a concept suggests we'll never get to some Star Trek / Culture cooperation and everything is inevitably zero sum struggle. Harsh measures will always be forgiven in that sort of world view so hurrah for strong men. I'd be curious what a native speaker took from the trilogy. Beyond the language, I'm guessing the start in the cultural revolution would have greater resonance. We repeat that sort of 'people are terrible' chaos many times in the trilogy but maybe it's more than that. I'd guess Century of Humiliation ideas tie into the Dark Forest concept as well. Just wanted to clarify something in this post. Culture humans are not from earth and are basically aliens, they have extra joints and fingers apparently. Banks wrote a short story that had the Culture visit cold war era earth and they basically hosed off in disgust. So yes, Banks had the same idea of humanity as we know it never cooperating. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 22:26
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darthbob88 posted:I'd add Sixth Column to the "Dark Place" list. You know, the one with the Asian-killing ray used by a resistance movement claiming to be a church. 
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Oct 4, 2018 23:00
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Alfred, Lord Dunsany is top-notch escapist fiction.
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Oct 4, 2018 23:07
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Telsa Cola posted:Just wanted to clarify something in this post. Culture humans are not from earth and are basically aliens, they have extra joints and fingers apparently. Banks wrote a short story that had the Culture visit cold war era earth and they basically hosed off in disgust. Contact openly, uh, contacts earth humanity in like the mid 2300s or something per the appendix to consider phlebas I believe
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Oct 4, 2018 23:10
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andrew smash posted:Contact openly, uh, contacts earth humanity in like the mid 2300s or something per the appendix to consider phlebas I believe Oh neat. Guess we get our poo poo sorted by then.
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Oct 4, 2018 23:13
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Did anyone else listen to the misenchanted sword? The most bizarre narration style I've come across.
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Oct 5, 2018 00:46
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Telsa Cola posted:Just wanted to clarify something in this post. Culture humans are not from earth and are basically aliens, they have extra joints and fingers apparently. Banks wrote a short story that had the Culture visit cold war era earth and they basically hosed off in disgust. it wasn't that the culture was specifically disgusted with Earth humans (Earth's problems are nothing they haven't seen and codified before) but that their various models didn't call for intervention/assimilation at that particular time period the tension was never about whether Contact would move in - it seems like this was never on the table - but on whether they'd talk the local expert guy they'd sent in for observation into giving up on the Earth and coming home.
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Oct 5, 2018 01:00
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I haven’t read that story in a while but didn’t he convert to Christianity and become a jesuit?
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Oct 5, 2018 01:05
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Ada Palmer kind of broke me earlier this year and I decided to stop reading genre fiction, but the incessant praise Lem gets in this thread plus a timely Kindle Book of the Day OfferTM or whatever it's called made me pick up Fiasco. I must say I am more than satisfied with the novel. The general feeling I get from the book is one of Lem constantly and mercilessly mocking everything. He does his utmost to crush the idea that technology can in any way improve the human race or make the human condition more bearable. His specialty seems to be coming up with one fascinating future technology after the other at a pace no other author can match, only to utterly demolish each one of them in the very next passage as something useless or fraught with unintended consequences worse than the initial problem that was meant to be solved. I really appreciated the whimsical nihilism. He also writes beautifully, occasionally. The mech walk on Titan is probably one of the most evocative passages I've seen in genre fiction, the beauty and cruelty of the truly alien landscape unmatched by more pedestrian writers that aim at "worldbuilding". And the bleak ending is very appropriate considering the main theme of the novel, which seems to be failure of communication. I would definitely recommend everyone to read the book. There are also lasers.
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Oct 5, 2018 11:33
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Wait, what did Ada Palmer do?
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Oct 5, 2018 11:36
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I almost finished the second book in the Terra Ignota trilogy when it suddenly occurred to me I’d be better off reading actual Voltaire and Diderot stuff rather than a series of novels that are inspired by their writings, or emulate them or however you want to describe it. After that, I realized that the last few books I’ve really enjoyed were “serious literature”, and the last several books I really hated were genre stuff, and highly praised sci-if, to make matters worse. The conclusion seemed kind of obvious.
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Oct 5, 2018 13:08
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:I almost finished the second book in the Terra Ignota trilogy when it suddenly occurred to me I’d be better off reading actual Voltaire and Diderot stuff rather than a series of novels that are inspired by their writings, or emulate them or however you want to describe it. After that, I realized that the last few books I’ve really enjoyed were “serious literature”, and the last several books I really hated were genre stuff, and highly praised sci-if, to make matters worse. The conclusion seemed kind of obvious. Ah, fair enough.
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Oct 5, 2018 13:20
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:I almost finished the second book in the Terra Ignota trilogy when it suddenly occurred to me I’d be better off reading actual Voltaire and Diderot stuff rather than a series of novels that are inspired by their writings, or emulate them or however you want to describe it. After that, I realized that the last few books I’ve really enjoyed were “serious literature”, and the last several books I really hated were genre stuff, and highly praised sci-if, to make matters worse. The conclusion seemed kind of obvious. Welcome to the Real Literature crew brother
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Oct 5, 2018 13:22
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ninguno posted:Did anyone else listen to the misenchanted sword? The most bizarre narration style I've come across. I read it, what was weird about the narration?
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Oct 5, 2018 14:15
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FuzzySlippers posted:I guess the whole trilogy kinda has that vibe. The dark forest as a concept suggests we'll never get to some Star Trek / Culture cooperation and everything is inevitably zero sum struggle. Harsh measures will always be forgiven in that sort of world view so hurrah for strong men. I'd be curious what a native speaker took from the trilogy. Beyond the language, I'm guessing the start in the cultural revolution would have greater resonance. We repeat that sort of 'people are terrible' chaos many times in the trilogy but maybe it's more than that. I'd guess Century of Humiliation ideas tie into the Dark Forest concept as well. Hmmmmmm I actually take the opposite point of view on the point of the Dark Forest series: the overall point is that in this sort of zero-sum game everything is hosed. Ruthless choices might work out in the short term, especially if you take the narrow perspective that the survival of humanity is the important thing etc. But extend it out to the long term and this is irrelevant. A more ruthless Cheng Xin might have saved the solar system from being destroyed when it was, but by the end of the series the *entire* universe is getting destroyed. Hiding your location is meaningless. The only way that *anyone* gets saved at the end of the day is that you need enough people who are compassionate enough to sacrifice themselves and get off the lifeboat. You need to both observe the dark forest scenario existing but also work beyond it. In the end Cheng Xin can't save humanity but she helps save all of existence. Like for me and I suspect for other Chinese, the obvious metaphor of the Dark Forest is capitalism and the entire system of international relations. The idea is that the system discourages altruism and naive cooperation, that it's obvious that if you just blithely ignore how things work you will invite disaster. But in the long term the system itself is self-destructive, so you can't just give up on its excesses. Fangz fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 14:33
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Fallom posted:I think The Explorer and The Echo (and anything else) by James Smythe are extremely creepy despite the relatively rough writing. I bounced hard off The Echo about a third of the way through. The writing seemed really... amateurish, I suppose, it really didn't draw me in and the central mystery didn't grip me at all.
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Oct 5, 2018 14:42
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Telsa Cola posted:Just wanted to clarify something in this post. Culture humans are not from earth and are basically aliens, they have extra joints and fingers apparently. Banks wrote a short story that had the Culture visit cold war era earth and they basically hosed off in disgust. It isn't about humans specifically. In the 3BP books I don't think any of that sort of grand galactic cooperation is possible. So no Federation / Culture kinda stuff regardless of how lovely or not lovely any races are. Near the end of the third book I think there's a little bit of neutral territory and trading between races but I think its still heavily shrouded in paranoia. I think the rogue humans have some allies but very tenuous ones. A much less optimistic view than many scifi where peaceful grand democracies seem the inevitable future aside from some space orcs or whatever.
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Oct 5, 2018 18:08
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https://www.tor.com/2018/10/04/patrick-rothfuss-nycc-dungeon-master-advice-book-3-update/quote:“I have no idea who you are,” an audience member said during one of the Q&A portions of NYCC’s Patrick Rothfuss spotlight—prompting uproarious laughter from the attendees and the epic fantasy author himself. “My friend has been talking about you for a year,” the person went on, “drags me here—you’re hysterically funny—I still don’t know what you write.”  The Science Fiction And Fantasy Thread: epic fantasy, big thick fantasy
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Oct 5, 2018 22:01
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Finished Locke Lamore book 1. It was...ok i guess.. Characters actually being affected by wounds throughout the story was refreshing in a fantasy series, inversely the amount of times blood loss was mentioned then immediately resolved by the next chapter was very Stainless Steel Rat-esque. No desire to seek out any possible sequel books, on the other hand won't be actively avoiding the author like i do for neal stephenson, kage baker, and greg egan.
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Oct 6, 2018 00:57
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Finished Locke Lamore book 1. It was...ok i guess.. Characters actually being affected by wounds throughout the story was refreshing in a fantasy series, inversely the amount of times blood loss was mentioned then immediately resolved by the next chapter was very Stainless Steel Rat-esque. No desire to seek out any possible sequel books, on the other hand won't be actively avoiding the author like i do for neal stephenson, kage baker, and greg egan. Characters being actually bothered and hampered by wounds has been happening in Janny Wurts' novels - it's actually neat, because she's accurately depicting what'll happen if you get sliced open by a sword, without being gruesome. Characters mention infection, and puffy skin, and so on. Also someday I'm gonna actually read a Stainless Steel Rat book. I have like six of them, and they've been lying around for years, but whenever I pick 'em up something just spooks me off so I read other things.
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Oct 6, 2018 01:07
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StrixNebulosa posted:Also someday I'm gonna actually read a Stainless Steel Rat book. I have like six of them, and they've been lying around for years, but whenever I pick 'em up something just spooks me off so I read other things. Don't read anything published after 1990. Any of the others would be fine. Rat For President is my favourite, but needs a bit of backstory. Rat is Born is OK if you want to do everything chronologically. But start with the original if you have it.
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Oct 6, 2018 01:31
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Just finished Exit Strategy and now I'm sad because there's no more Murderbot for a while. If you haven't read Murderbot yet, what the hell is wrong with you?
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Oct 6, 2018 02:53
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While it's obvious that a Wheel of Time adaptation would jettison most of the extraneous plot and characters, what are they going to do about the magic system? There's hundreds of pages devoted to characters' internal monologues as they wrestle with weaving spells -- we're in for some extremely cheesy dramatic CGI sewing scenes
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Oct 6, 2018 03:47
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