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Megazver posted: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. He also turns up as a character in one of Diane Duane's Cat Wizards books and is pretty cool with the cats.
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Oct 6, 2018 04:24
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Do you think one of the extraneous characters they'll jettison will be Perrin?
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Oct 6, 2018 04:58
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pseudorandom name posted:Do you think one of the extraneous characters they'll jettison will be Perrin? Why would they throw out the hot sexy werewolf?
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Oct 6, 2018 06:30
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pseudorandom name posted:Do you think one of the extraneous characters they'll jettison will be Perrin? i can see them doing a ton of like...mergings and consolidations of main characters, rather than cutting outright could go "gently caress it, Rand only needs one childhood buddy and we don't have time to implement that whole narrative where most of the main characters turn out to be Chosen Ones of various kinds", then making a weird amalgam of mat and perrin similarly I could see nynaeve and egwene being consolidated if they want to spend less time on the minutae of the magic system (since those characters' normal job is to be a window into this) probably trim rand's proto harem-anime assemblage of love interests down to just two, likely elayne and the aiel whose name I can't remember how to spell even though I can remember how to spell nynaeve PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Oct 6, 2018 |
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Oct 6, 2018 07:42
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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. The Stainless Steel Rat books are definitely products of their time. Example: The first book in the series was written when transistors were replacing vacuum tubes. I will be the first person to admit that Harry Harrison recycled story-lines in them but the Stainless Steel Rat books still manage to hold up as light anti-authoritarian heist/escapist fiction. The first Stainless Steel Rat book has looting/fencing stolen goods, why thermite is your friend, long term planning 101, suborning an entire planetary bureaucracy into building a huge space freighter slash secret imperial star destroyer by onsite construction blueprints changes + modifying purchasing orders at the suborned planet's spacedock, stealing the secret imperial star destroyer just before the galactic police arrive, going on a months long Captain Harlock style space pirate rampage.....and that's just first half of the book.
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Oct 6, 2018 08:08
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ToxicFrog posted:If you haven't read Murderbot yet, what the hell is wrong with you? I read the first one when it was free, it was pretty fun but nothing mindblowing. Definitely not willing to pay the asking price .
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Oct 6, 2018 10:08
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This won't be news to anyone in here presumably but dang City of Brass is real good, I'm breezing through it. Love the worldbuilding.
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Oct 6, 2018 11:07
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ToxicFrog posted:If you haven't read Murderbot yet, what the hell is wrong with you? Waiting for it to become an affordable omnibus! All the money I could've spent on Murderbot has instead been channeled into weird old books from the 70s! Don't worry, though - I have a friend who's been buying every single Murderbot as it releases and she's been excited at me about the series a lot, so I'm eager to read it, just not in this "let's sell novellas at novel prices" format. NoNostalgia4Grover posted:The Stainless Steel Rat books are definitely products of their time. Hot dang, that sounds cool. I like old sci-fi - it's only when it gets sexist/racist/etc that I want to avoid it, and nope, that sounds like a fun romp instead. Thanks! Jedit posted: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. I have the original in an omnibus - "Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat" along with assorted sequels. A younger, teenage me was at ground zero for my local library getting several dozen boxes of books, and then getting first pick on almost anything I wanted out of there. There was a lot of sci-fi, and unfortunately a lot of bad baen books as well. I mean, bless baen for printing a lot of lost/old sci-fi - I've got a great omnibus of Cordwainer Smith thanks to them - but also, je-sus why do your editors have no taste, did they really need to publish x, y, and z....
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Oct 6, 2018 11:09
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The real problem with the Murderbot omnibus is all the people who bought the novellas will be forced to buy it in hardcopy. Thanks Murderbot.
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Oct 6, 2018 11:57
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anilEhilated posted:Refusing to buy into the book pricing extortion scheme. Ok, that's fair.
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Oct 6, 2018 12:03
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PupsOfWar posted:i can see them doing a ton of like...mergings and consolidations of main characters, rather than cutting outright The best-friends-forever ritual which involves them punching each other senseless made all 3.2 million words of that book worthwhile. "And remember, now you have struck your sister, and for no better reason than because someone told you to" 
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Oct 6, 2018 12:27
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Man, exit strategy was NOT worth that cost. It's more like a coda to the last novella than a even a standalone episode. Like, actually super disappointing? I expected better than this moneygrubbing. However, I did kind of borrow a bunch of her older books and binge them so I'm going to view this as paying for all 5 of the Raksura ones.
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Oct 6, 2018 16:43
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The Raksura books were fun. Pricey, though- the cost of the Murderbot novellas make a lot more sense when you see what they’re asking for Wells’ full-length works. They kinda made me want to reread the Pern books, even though I know that would be a mistake. And I’d have to rebuy them all, which would cost a loving fortune even at ebook rates. Think I’ll reread Pat Hodgell’s stuff instead. WoT: I’ve a soft spot for it since it was one of the pillars growing up, and I think you could carve a decent tv show out of it, but I have exactly zero faith in any of the forces behind this adaptation producing that.
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Oct 7, 2018 23:04
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Autonomous Monster posted:The Raksura books were fun. Pricey, though- the cost of the Murderbot novellas make a lot more sense when you see what they’re asking for Wells’ full-length works. Grab the Ile Rien books. They’re much cheaper right now. The first two are only $2.99, I believe (The Element of Fire and Death of the Necromancer) I’m doing a re-read of The Element of Fire and I’d forgotten how good it is. While she did re-work part of it so it fit in with her later books in that world (she had originally only planned it as a stand-alone), it’s pretty drat impressive for a 1st novel.
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Oct 8, 2018 05:25
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Autonomous Monster posted:The Raksura books were fun. Pricey, though- the cost of the Murderbot novellas make a lot more sense when you see what they’re asking for Wells’ full-length works. Just get them from the library. Pern was popular enough back in the day they've probably got all the books.
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Oct 8, 2018 06:45
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C.M. Kruger posted:Just get them from the library. Pern was popular enough back in the day they've probably got all the books. Or buy used. Abebooks shows that you can get the main trilogy for less than four bucks each.
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Oct 8, 2018 13:20
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General Battuta posted:If you like gothic SF and Halloween you gotta watch Event Horizon I read this over the last couple of days and it was pretty cool and creepy.
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Oct 8, 2018 16:43
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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 never pass up an opportunity to recommend my pal Jenna's books, so I'm going to plug An Unclean Legacy, about a deathless sorcerer preparing for his upcoming death, and his children's reactions to their presumed inheritance. I always wonder how long it will take people with no prior experience to spot what's going on here before the book makes it obvious, now that the really blatant references have been scrubbed.
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Oct 8, 2018 17:52
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Rand Brittain posted:I never pass up an opportunity to recommend my pal Jenna's books, so I'm going to plug An Unclean Legacy, about a deathless sorcerer preparing for his upcoming death, and his children's reactions to their presumed inheritance. Eh, this from the summary feels fairly blatant: "Montechristien Groeneveldt" Still, colour me intrigued.
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Oct 8, 2018 18:01
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Finished Ken Macleod's Corporation Wars: Dissidence, and the first 2 books in Peter McLean's Burned Man series over the weekend. Curating Iain Banks literary estate and the various insane events that have been going down in the UK since Scottish Referendum 2.0 restored Ken MacLeod's sanity enough that the Corporation Wars series is pretty much MacLeod's Star Fractions series 2.0 only with more robots + more nanomachines +more human minds uploaded into VR + everything that happens is based around a remote star system 20 light years from earth. The burned man books are pretty much inverse harry dresden or fetal alcohol syndrome john constantine. Chia ets have more of a clue of whats going in magicland than the main character, and every action the main character takes seems to make things worse. Calling it inverse harry dresden because it shares similar elements to the harry dresden books, but takes things in a more bleak british Get Carter aka Jack�s Return Home way.
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Oct 10, 2018 03:55
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How are the metro 2033 books?
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Oct 10, 2018 13:35
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Mr Hootington posted:How are the metro 2033 books?
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Oct 10, 2018 14:23
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anilEhilated posted:The first one is pretty decent. I'd skip the rest. All two thousand and thirty two!?
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Oct 10, 2018 15:05
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All of them. No mercy. 1 AD is the only year worth reading about. For what it's worth, 2033 is the first one and it's pretty good; 2034 is poo poo and 2035 is middling-quality if you really need to have more Metro in your life.
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Oct 10, 2018 15:29
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Man, I remembered Pern being misogynistic but I seriously was not prepared for just how bad it is. And if you get through that the classism is grotesque. If you’re not high-born, dragon-chosen or at least a journeyman crafter you’re barely human here. There’s probably a thesis or two out there on the politics of Pern. The Menolly books are still good, though 
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Oct 10, 2018 16:21
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Never got into Pern, Pern always seemed creepy as hell similar to the vibes Wild Cards books gave off. On the other hand, I enjoyed the Thieves World series growing up, and in retrospect, Thieves World had so many competing mary sue characters in it. Finished the Ken MacLeod Corporation War series. If you did not enjoy Ken MacLeod's Star Fraction series, you probably won't enjoy his Corporation Wars series. MacLeod's fetish for sloganizing 17th - 19th century philosophers who take 300 pages to get to the point into 1 sentence memes cropped up again, so did his fetish for Reaction vs Action class warfare for the uh 9th time(?), but the Iain Banks inspired machine intelligences in Corporation Wars were decent/amusing enough.
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Oct 11, 2018 03:02
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Never got into Pern, Pern always seemed creepy as hell similar to the vibes Wild Cards books gave off. On the other hand, I enjoyed the Thieves World series growing up, and in retrospect, Thieves World had so many competing mary sue characters in it. I mean, that’s mostly an artifact of how it was created - everyone involved tossed in a character or three and there were rules about what you could do to someone else’s character without running it by them. Between the “my character” aspect and the need to make other people’s characters invincible to some extent in your own stories, it kind of promoted that treatment of characters.
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Oct 11, 2018 04:04
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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? this is something I forgot to mention several pages back when someone was asking about "cozy" sci-fi, but how about jack mcdevitt's Alex Benedict novels? They're not really aspirational or exploratory in the sense that we usually mean by "escapist", but, since they are literally detective novels in space, they achieve the sort of comfy domesticity that most long-running detective series these days aim for, merged with occasionally-good high concepts.
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Oct 11, 2018 05:07
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Kalman posted:I mean, that’s mostly an artifact of how it was created - everyone involved tossed in a character or three and there were rules about what you could do to someone else’s character without running it by them. Between the “my character” aspect and the need to make other people’s characters invincible to some extent in your own stories, it kind of promoted that treatment of characters. I think the rules were "the character can't die without author ok" + "gently caress you write yourself out of this" in the setting of fantasyland notCasablanca. There was the expected immortal warrior, and thief characters. Plus there was a slavemaster/gladiator school guy, a exceptionally thirsty alchemist, a lesbian archmage in drag, a idiot ruling prince and his chancellor, a gypsy fortune teller, forgotten gods, whores, etc....and a invasion from a Aztec/Roman empire with a snake fetish happened around book 5?. By book 3 someone's mary sue character got drugged, hamstrung, castrated, tongue ripped out then tossed into the house of a vivisectionist to rot forever(he got better). Another mary sue was obsessed with banging the wife of a side character, almost the entire group of another writers characters got slaughtered minus their dog( who got posessed by their souls), another mary sue character had a failed spinoff book series attempt, etc. Thieves World series ended with the premise of importing one to four existing characters as ambassadors + staff into the capital city of the empire that had conquered the shithole notCasablanca desert city everything happened in.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:05
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:I think the rules were "the character can't die without author ok" + "gently caress you write yourself out of this" in the setting of fantasyland notCasablanca. The only thing I really remember from those is some thief/assassin called Shadowcat(?) or some such bullshit. At least 4 times per story, it was called out how he always walked on the balls of his feet.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:17
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Proteus Jones posted:The only thing I really remember from those is some thief/assassin called Shadowcat(?) or some such bullshit. At least 4 times per story, it was called out how he always walked on the balls of his feet. That was the mary sue character with the failed spinoff book series. Absolutely no one except the author + the publisher angling for a tax writeoff gave a gently caress about that character. Best thing about Thieves World is how the authors would meet up at a California Denny's every 9 or so months to argue about events in the previous books/vaguely plan out events for future books. Every recollection of Thieves World series has the authors involved in it lol'ing about how freaked out the other people in those Denny's restaurants would get eating their Grand Slams while murder/castrations/theft got loudly debated out a few tables away. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 15:29
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But that's part of the Denny's experience!
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Oct 11, 2018 15:44
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Like many of others around here, I've been itching for some "cozy" reading. Over the last few years I've read a lot of scifi and dystopian stuff and I just feel the need for a good brain bleaching. I really want to sink into some quality high fantasy. I decided to pick up The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson. I'm only 30% or so in but it is really excellent so far and is scratching that itch. It feels like a mixture of Arthurian legend and Tolkien spiced up with a little weirdness. In a lot of ways is the polar opposite of modern fantasy doorstops, which is refreshing. Much of the book feels like I'm hitting fast forward. Plot is compressed into montages only for things to slow down for a scene or two, then speed right back up. Someone needs to go back and edit the Wheel of Time books in this fashion. Any suggestions on where to go with Anderson after this book? One of the reasons I went with this one is that it is standalone but now I'm probably going to be left wanting more. I may also move Vance's Lyonesse books up on my list, because I have a feeling they are somewhat similar.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:59
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:That was the mary sue character with the failed spinoff book series. Absolutely no one except the author + the publisher angling for a tax writeoff gave a gently caress about that character. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/magazine/my-dad-the-pornographer.html
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Oct 11, 2018 16:09
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Ban Folklore posted:Any suggestions on where to go with Anderson after this book? One of the reasons I went with this one is that it is standalone but now I'm probably going to be left wanting more. The High Crusade
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Oct 11, 2018 16:45
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Ban Folklore posted:I may also move Vance's Lyonesse books up on my list, because I have a feeling they are somewhat similar. That sounds pretty similar, yeah. Lyonesse gets quite dark at times but it's generally a very nice take on Arthurian/high fantasy ideas with the Jack Vance spin you want. That said it's a lot more than just 'Arthurian,' the influence is clearly there but it goes in its own directions. It's very good, probably Vance's best work.
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Oct 11, 2018 16:49
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fritz posted:Written by this dude: I actually liked the Shadowspawn stories in Thieves' World, much more than Janet Morris's Tempus, who also got his own spinoff series despite being drearily humorless. Of course, the real problem with the shared-world anthologies that were all the rage in the 80s after Thieves' World hit it big is that the first few books in the series would feature stories by big-name writers who wanted to play around with something different. (For instance, the first couple TW books included stories by John Brunner, Philip Jose Farmer, A. E. Van Vogt, Poul Anderson, and Marion Zimmer Bradley.) And then in later books, the big-name writers would go back to their own work, leaving the C-listers like Offutt and Morris to carry things on.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:02
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my bony fealty posted:That sounds pretty similar, yeah. Lyonesse gets quite dark at times but it's generally a very nice take on Arthurian/high fantasy ideas with the Jack Vance spin you want. His best novels. His best work is "The Moon Moth" novella, by far.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:03
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andrew smash posted:The High Crusade Cool, I will check that out next. Thanks.
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Oct 11, 2018 18:14
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How similar is Dodge Tank to Ready Player One? I'm trying to decide between that and The Blade Itself. Wasn't a big fan of RPO.
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Oct 12, 2018 02:31
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