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my bony fealty posted:Read some Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser in the "Swords and Deviltry" collection. First story took a while to get into but I quite liked it once it got going. James Enge's Morlock the Maker books (Blood of Ambrose, This Crooked Way, and The Wolf Age).
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Oct 26, 2018 03:03
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FuzzySlippers posted:I stumbled into Rejoice, A Knife to the Heart by Steven Erikson. I've barely read his fantasy stuff but this is a weird sorta cathartic read. If you've been reading the Trump thread too much might be worth a read. He was at Forbidden Planet London, signing that yesterday evening
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Oct 26, 2018 11:06
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Khizan posted:I'm in the middle of it and I like it so far. As far as it goes, it's a standard Richard K Morgan book. Over the top alpha-male protagonist, dystopian setting, needlessly graphic sex scenes, well done action scenes. It's on Mars in the same setting as Thirteen, with COLIN and the lottery for passage back to Earth and such, but it's not actually related to Thirteen storywise and doesn't seem to share any characters. Aren't Morgan's books all set in pretty much the same universe? Market Forces saw economic collapse, UN struggled to enforce anything and the US fell apart (and first mention of Mars) --> rise of genexperementation and thus Jacobson, COLIN established and Mars with its tech seen in Thirteen --> Marstech leads to stacks and needlecast tech, humanity seeds the stars with its colony ships and so Altered Carbon. Nevermind all the Land Fit For Heroes Dakovash/Kovacs and computer stuff. P.S i'm only 11% into Thin Air so might be completely wrong!
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Oct 26, 2018 12:43
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Just finished "Neuromancer" and loved it. I really liked the Molly character for some reason; I kept wondering if the "Ghost in the Shell" creator took inspiration from her when making the "Major" character for Ghost in the Shell. I also feel like I can see influences of "Neuromancer," or concepts from it, in all sorts of Sci-Fi I've seen. It's amazing the world that Gibson imagined back in the mid-1980s, before any of the kind of tech described in the book existed. I really liked Maelcum as well and the way he decided to integrate this whole Rasta scene into the book lol. One question I have though is why did Neuromancer try to trap Case in the construct? Was it part of his programming to try to prevent anyone who would want to merge the Rio/Neuromancer and Berne/Wintermute AI's together? I'm also not too sure how this book hasn't been made into a movie yet, but I would love to see this in movie form with the right directors. I had started reading the book about 15+ years ago, but only got roughly 1/3rd of the way through. I'm glad I decided to start from the beginning and read it all the way
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Oct 26, 2018 21:35
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Neuromancer is very influential. So much so it's not that unusual to see people read it for the first time and declare it utterly derivative. If you've developed an 80s cyberpunk kink I'd recommend giving Burning Chrome (the anthology, not just the story) and Schismatrix a shot too.
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Oct 26, 2018 22:06
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Molly is also in Mona Lisa Overdrive and in the Johnny Mnemonic short story.
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Oct 26, 2018 22:27
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Sally Shears  Neuromancer movies have been announced like 5 times and never seem to go anywhere. As it should be. Count Zero is dope, read that too.
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Oct 26, 2018 22:36
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I name my computers after Neuromancer characters. Just yesterday, I set up a service called pi-hole on my home network that spoofs known advertising web servers to block ads at the network level. Called it Riviera of course.
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Oct 26, 2018 23:25
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my bony fealty posted:Neuromancer movies have been announced like 5 times and never seem to go anywhere. As it should be. The Neuromancer computer game on the Commodore 64 (  ) was surprisingly excellent though.
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Oct 26, 2018 23:28
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tooterfish posted:Neuromancer is very influential. So much so it's not that unusual to see people read it for the first time and declare it utterly derivative. This happened to me when I was watching Aliens for the first time. Practically every storybeat in that movie has been done to death in videogames elsewhere, and I kept feeling like I'd seen it before. Still a good movie, just strange to see it after seeing its influence everywhere. Which reminds me, I need to reread Lord of the Rings someday now that I'm not a teenager - it'll probably have a similar effect, given what it did to the genre.
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Oct 26, 2018 23:56
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It's been just about 5 months since Peter Watts Freeze Frame Revolution came out. Now that you've had time to let the book sink in and read other stuff, what's the current view on Freeze Frame Revolution? Haven't read it yet, still have the impression it's Watts short story "The Island" expanded into a novellette.
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Oct 27, 2018 00:25
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StrixNebulosa posted:This happened to me when I was watching Aliens for the first time. Practically every storybeat in that movie has been done to death in videogames elsewhere, and I kept feeling like I'd seen it before. Still a good movie, just strange to see it after seeing its influence everywhere. Who was it who said re: Shakespeare that all he did was stitch together well known sayings.
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Oct 27, 2018 00:32
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:It's been just about 5 months since Peter Watts Freeze Frame Revolution came out. It covers a lot that the short stories don’t, and I wish those stories had been bundled with the novella. I’m looking forward to more stories in that universe, especially now that I’m wrapping up Remembrance of Earth’s Past.
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Oct 27, 2018 01:03
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Just saw this on Twitter: https://twitter.com/serialboxpub/status/1055909787974725633 That’s Yoon Ha Lee (Ninefox Gambit), Becky Chambers (Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet), Rivers Solomon (An Unkindness of Ghosts), and one other author who I don’t recognize. I think they got me on this one, I guess I’m trying out this serialized fiction app.
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Oct 27, 2018 01:09
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StrixNebulosa posted:Which reminds me, I need to reread Lord of the Rings someday now that I'm not a teenager - it'll probably have a similar effect, given what it did to the genre. LotR has the unique quality in fantasy where its aesthetics and worldbuilding and general character and story beats have been copied to hell and back, but that its thematic and literary and narrative merits and "feeling" still remain more or less uncopied and unmatched. At least that's what I felt while rereading earlier this year. Still ain't anything quite like it.
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Oct 27, 2018 01:11
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Arcsech posted:Just saw this on Twitter: I hate serialized fiction but that's a day-one purchase when the omnibus comes out.
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Oct 27, 2018 03:44
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my bony fealty posted:Read some Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser in the "Swords and Deviltry" collection. First story took a while to get into but I quite liked it once it got going. Leiber was a big influence on Glen Cook, and I'm a fan of both, so I'll recommend Cook. The influence shows up most in the Dread Empire series, so let's go with An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat as an anthology. It's a collection of terrific stories, including one written for Leiber as a birthday present, and another written in Leiber's living room. Good stuff, check it out. Arcsech posted:That’s Yoon Ha Lee (Ninefox Gambit), Becky Chambers (Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet), Rivers Solomon (An Unkindness of Ghosts), and one other author who I don’t recognize. I think they got me on this one, I guess I’m trying out this serialized fiction app. Lee and Chambers are new favorites of mine, so I'll try this thing out.
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Oct 27, 2018 04:17
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Selachian posted:The Neuromancer computer game on the Commodore 64 ( Truth. Still preferred Loderunner
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Oct 27, 2018 05:22
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meinstein posted:I name my computers after Neuromancer characters. Just yesterday, I set up a service called pi-hole on my home network that spoofs known advertising web servers to block ads at the network level. Called it Riviera of course. That and Blade Runner names have been a common factor in the networks I have used. I blame scientists.
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Oct 27, 2018 06:47
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Arcsech posted:Just saw this on Twitter: S.L. Huang is pretty good. The Russel’s Attic series are good
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Oct 27, 2018 08:15
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BananaNutkins posted:Everyone and their brother wanted to be the SF version of Game of Thrones, and claimed to be it's succesor on their front covers. Any read Luna: New Moon by Ian Mcdonald? The closest thing I've seen to Game of Thrones in Space is Dread Empire's Fall by long time GRRM collaborator Walter Jon Williams. Ironically it's about the only attempt on the task that doesn't bill itself using GoT.
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Oct 27, 2018 12:14
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Jedit posted:The closest thing I've seen to Game of Thrones in Space is Dread Empire's Fall by long time GRRM collaborator Walter Jon Williams. Ironically it's about the only attempt on the task that doesn't bill itself using GoT. It’s pretty old, though. It definitely predates the show, and probably the wide popularity of the series. Edit: Yeah, original trilogy published 2002-2005. I didn’t realize there were new books. Drone Jett fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Oct 27, 2018 |
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Oct 27, 2018 13:23
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my bony fealty posted:LotR has the unique quality in fantasy where its aesthetics and worldbuilding and general character and story beats have been copied to hell and back, but that its thematic and literary and narrative merits and "feeling" still remain more or less uncopied and unmatched. At least that's what I felt while rereading earlier this year. Still ain't anything quite like it. Tolkien being a proper academic probably has some impact. When people copy his world or try to utilize mythology from a cursory reading it is different than how his work grew from his research. Genre writers that are academics from something other than creative writing departments still aren't that common. I also can't think of any other fantasy or genre lit from a WW1 veteran.
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Oct 27, 2018 22:04
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FuzzySlippers posted:I also can't think of any other fantasy or genre lit from a WW1 veteran. C.S. Lewis
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Oct 27, 2018 22:26
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Also Robert Graves.
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Oct 28, 2018 00:15
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Lord Dunsany.
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Oct 28, 2018 00:37
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William Hope Hodgson though he didn't really make it to "veteran."
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Oct 28, 2018 00:50
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Kesper North posted:LOL. Thank you for saving me money on buying the sequel. i quite liked the first interdependancy and really liked that short story about killers in a post death world so i had medium hopes going in. it's junk. everything i've disliked about scalzi over the years and the plot barely moves. it's like a more-self-satisfied-late-era-robert jordan-wot-in-space.
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Oct 28, 2018 14:23
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tooterfish posted:Neuromancer is very influential. So much so it's not that unusual to see people read it for the first time and declare it utterly derivative. Yeah, I couldn't finish Neuromancer because I felt like I was reading a parody of cyberpunk.
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Oct 28, 2018 14:33
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I am mostly a reader and don't go to many movies in general. My rate is usually 1 movie every 2 or 3 years. But this past year, I've found myself tagging along more, usually with whatever brother wants a movie buddy. Here's what I noticed. Maybe it was always this bad, maybe it has gotten worse (my view), but drat, Hollywood doesn't trust you to pay attention. It's not enough to have people running from a bad guy with a gun. There have to be random explosions and someone bleeding out, too. Because they're not sure you can focus without really high stakes all the time. All this compressed into a much smaller time frame than I remember. By contrast, I remember when I was a kid, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. A friend's dad took us to see Lawrence of Arabia. No poo poo. I think it was even the director's cut. We were 9 years old and it seemed like an eternity in the desert, but the 3 or 4 hour movie gripped us for the entire time. And we got to take the train home by ourselves, which was big. This is what I appreciate about LitRPG. The authors trust you to pay attention. The genre is set up to produce big, slow-moving books and series. I finished Divine Dungeon 1-3 and most of Book 1 was descriptions of the leveling up system with essence and mana, and getting a tiny bit more powerful. It's the anti-Hollywood. And in a lot of ways, I guess it would be 'bad writing' in fantasy since most traditional fantasy doesn't give you the real, under-the-hood details of how the worlds work, at least the stuff that I usually read.
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Oct 28, 2018 15:51
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The problem with comparing "X these days" to classics of whatever media years ago is that you're comparing the average or bottom of the barrel to the cream of the crop. There were a lot of bad movies made the same year as Lawrence of Arabia but nobody remembers or cares about them. You see it all the time with pop music, but it happens with all kinds of media.
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Oct 28, 2018 18:39
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90s Cringe Rock posted:This is what I appreciate about LitRPG. The authors trust you to pay attention. The genre is set up to produce big, slow-moving books and series. I don't... think that means what you think it means.
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Oct 28, 2018 18:45
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90s Cringe Rock posted:This is what I appreciate about LitRPG. The authors trust you to pay attention. The genre is set up to produce big, slow-moving books and series. Your super generic “old media was good” first two paragraphs could have preceded literally anything from a discussion of political advertising to, I dunno, West Coast style IPAs, but the left turn you took into LitRPGs was truly unexpected. Congratulations.
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Oct 28, 2018 19:03
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I agree. Modern media is practically propaganda with a side order of "appealing to a wider audience." Same with AAA game publishers. By appealing to as many people as possible instead of a specific audience, they have to dumb down material in order so that the least capable in the audience won't get discouraged and leave. So its jangling keys, bouncing tits, orchestral stings, lens flares, explosions, and drama/action every moment all smooshed together in a plot that reads like a tumblr post mated with r/politics. Tada! Weak men, cucking, 'strong independent wymyns that don't need no man,' purple haired lesbians mocking men all the time, women who solve all the mens problems because men are useless trash, 'ask me about my SJW agenda,' diversity is our strength, and so on. Its pretty much why I prefer my harem fantasy because at least the male characters aren't useless most of the time. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 28, 2018 19:43
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Oct 28, 2018 19:49
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I agree. Modern media is practically propaganda with a side order of "appealing to a wider audience." Same with AAA game publishers. By appealing to as many people as possible instead of a specific audience, they have to dumb down material in order so that the least capable in the audience won't get discouraged and leave. So its jangling keys, bouncing tits, orchestral stings, lens flares, explosions, and drama/action every moment all smooshed together in a plot that reads like a tumblr post mated with r/politics. Tada! Weak men, cucking, 'strong independent wymyns that don't need no man,' purple haired lesbians mocking men all the time, women who solve all the mens problems because men are useless trash, 'ask me about my SJW agenda,' diversity is our strength, and so on. Its pretty much why I prefer my harem fantasy because at least the male characters aren't useless most of the time. When you get back from your prob source your quote TIA
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Oct 28, 2018 19:59
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I am mostly a reader and don't go to many movies in general. My rate is usually 1 movie every 2 or 3 years. But this past year, I've found myself tagging along more, usually with whatever brother wants a movie buddy. Did BravestoftheLamps hack your account? Peter Watts's the Island is one of the rare Pete Watts stories where the protagonist of the story is actually happy-ish at the end. Just let me know if Freeze Frame Revolution craps over that ending or not. Really not down for more Watts style techno-misery porn if it does. Speaking of misery/frustration porn, Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs found in a Bathtub is $1.99 on the kindle storefront. Disclaimer: Memoirs is a bleak book. Avoid reading it if you're prone to depression or suicidal thoughts. Seriously, it is that bleak.
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Oct 28, 2018 20:04
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Nice! My Lem collection keeps growing, and I haven’t paid more then 3 bucks for any of the books
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Oct 28, 2018 20:09
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90s Cringe Rock posted:most of Book 1 was descriptions of the leveling up system with essence and mana, and getting a tiny bit more powerful. I'm fine with the "getting a tiny bit more powerful" thing, but that second sounds like Sanderson done to the nth degree. It's good if the writer knows all those rules and the readers can puzzle them out if they need to (or the rules are laid out in an appendix) but right there in the text, gumming up all the pacing? Madness.
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Oct 28, 2018 21:09
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Ccs posted:I'm fine with the "getting a tiny bit more powerful" thing, but that second sounds like Sanderson done to the nth degree. It's good if the writer knows all those rules and the readers can puzzle them out if they need to (or the rules are laid out in an appendix) but right there in the text, gumming up all the pacing? Madness. To take this seriously, I prefer it when I keep my videogames in the videogames, so to speak? If I want that kind of stuff, I'll play Baldur's Gate. Give me magic that works like Tolkein or Fortress in the Eye of Time: it works, it's magical, it's beyond our ken.
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Oct 28, 2018 21:16
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