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MockingQuantum posted:I've been reading a lot of upbeat, optimistic sci-fi lately, but I'd like a change of pace. What are the best books that involve first contact with an alien species that maybe doesn't really go as planned? I'm sure there's tons, but the only one I've read in recent memory is Blindsight. Lem’s Fiasco is brilliant. Deeply pessimistic but also funny and has some of the best descriptions of alien landscapes I’ve ever encountered. Greg Bear’s Forge of God is pretty decent.
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Dec 12, 2018 23:21
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Anyone remember the title of a book that came out this year, or maybe to be released early next year, about a bioship crewed exclusively by women? I don't remember enough about it to find the title again. I remember it sounding a little on the weird side.
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Dec 13, 2018 00:34
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So do the Puppeters in Nivens works ever get whats coming to them or do they continue being conniving, genocidal utter bastards with everyone else basically shrugging their shoulders.
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Dec 13, 2018 00:41
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TOOT BOOT posted:Anyone remember the title of a book that came out this year, or maybe to be released early next year, about a bioship crewed exclusively by women? I don't remember enough about it to find the title again. I remember it sounding a little on the weird side. The Stars Are Legion. It's quite good and extremely full of fluids. Kameron Hurley has a real gift for viscera and body...not horror, but presence? Making you pay attention to yourself as a sack of sacs.
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Dec 13, 2018 00:42
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occamsnailfile posted:This is true, I mean she was kind of children's-lit focused. The reason for it was that her parents ran a small private school for boys, and basically just ignored their three daughters and left them in an upstairs housing area with very few toys or books. So Diana learned to tell stories to amuse herself and the other two. She branched out in her writing to more adult works later on, and she was certainly never afraid of writing complex and engaging stories for children that can be enjoyed by adults. Reading her account in Reflections of her childhood is honestly kind of horrifying.
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Dec 13, 2018 01:01
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General Battuta posted:The Stars Are Legion. It's quite good and extremely full of fluids. Kameron Hurley has a real gift for viscera and body...not horror, but presence? Making you pay attention to yourself as a sack of sacs. That was one of the books I came across when I was looking but the Amazon description threw me off because it doesn't say anything about the ships being biological or the female cast.
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Dec 13, 2018 01:28
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TOOT BOOT posted:That was one of the books I came across when I was looking but the Amazon description threw me off because it doesn't say anything about the ships being biological or the female cast. She probably wanted to sell more books by luring in those who just wanted some good ol Hard Science Fiction
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Dec 13, 2018 01:32
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General Battuta posted:She probably wanted to sell more books by luring in those who just wanted some good ol Hard Science Fiction Which gets frustrating for those of us who are looking for more weird sci-fi than hard sci-fi. And feminist sci-fi is always a plus!
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Dec 13, 2018 01:44
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:reamde was the Neal Stephenson book with the ultra-smug protagonists responsible for 90% of the deaths in the book and a literal deus-ex cougar. The cougar was Stephenson's own boredom made manifest.
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Dec 13, 2018 02:17
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Telsa Cola posted:So do the Puppeters in Nivens works ever get whats coming to them or do they continue being conniving, genocidal utter bastards with everyone else basically shrugging their shoulders. The last Known Space series I read had Niven and Edward Lerner as co-authors (so I assume completely written by Lerner), in which every other Known Space short and novel is re-told from a Puppeteer perspective. I think I remember it ending with a change in Puppeteer government so they will eventually become less lovely, maybe, but no real consequences or reparations for all the galactic manipulating they've done. I could be wrong, it was a while ago and I wasn't a huge fan of it. I'd say give it a miss unless you're a Niven or KS completionist.
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Dec 13, 2018 03:55
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Lem’s Fiasco is brilliant. Deeply pessimistic but also funny and has some of the best descriptions of alien landscapes I’ve ever encountered. Cool, I got Fiasco the last time it was on sale purely on name recognition, I'll read it soon. I read Forge of God a couple of years back and remember moderately enjoying it, though I couldn't tell you anything about it. I also remember starting Anvil of the Stars and being a little underwhelmed and not finishing it.
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Dec 13, 2018 04:47
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Robot Wendigo posted:The cougar was Stephenson's own boredom made manifest. That makes the sequel to reamde doubly ominous. For people who haven't touched reamde good call avoid reamde there was a deus ex Finished the two other books in Martha Well's Fall of Ile-Rien series. Not bad, but unless you read Martha Wells DotN first, one of the side characters introduced in the 2nd fall of Ile-Rien book will come off as a mary sue that makes Honor Harrington almost seem reasonable. After finishing the Ile-Rien books, two of the Murderbot short stories, and 3 of the Raksura books.....Socially awkward main characters longing to belong while being combat badasses is Martha Well's scifi/fantasy genre niche. Murderbot, Tremaine, Ilias, and Moon all fit that main character description. Finally, Stanislaw Lem's FIASCO would be a 5+ book series with any other author, and also contains a crazy amount throwaway concepts that Lem only used for FIASCO, which by themselves could power entire spinoff series. Anyone who hasn't read FIASCO needs to read it.
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Dec 13, 2018 06:33
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Poldarn posted:The last Known Space series I read had Niven and Edward Lerner as co-authors (so I assume completely written by Lerner), in which every other Known Space short and novel is re-told from a Puppeteer perspective. I think I remember it ending with a change in Puppeteer government so they will eventually become less lovely, maybe, but no real consequences or reparations for all the galactic manipulating they've done. I could be wrong, it was a while ago and I wasn't a huge fan of it. I'd say give it a miss unless you're a Niven or KS completionist. Fleet of World ends with the government change happening/begining and the abducted slave race of humans getting full control of their ship planet and loving off but also realizing the Puppeteers basically ran a rape camp where they mind wiped human woman and basically had them give birth constantly to give them genetically damaged human individuals to play around with. The humans raid the camp before they leave but literally just take everyone there and the gene banks or whatever. No Puppeteers get any consquences besides the humans loving off. This is after the colonists learn that their ancestors ship was attacked for the sole purpose of giving the Puppeteers breeding stock to mess around with, with the same mindwiping happening, which we learn about because they take the wife of rhe guy who is making a record of it all. Its pretty bad because its basically outlined that they are the reason for most of the horrible things which happen in the series and a bunch of people know but everybody seems to just shrug it off. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 07:43
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MockingQuantum posted:I've been reading a lot of upbeat, optimistic sci-fi lately, but I'd like a change of pace. What are the best books that involve first contact with an alien species that maybe doesn't really go as planned? I'm sure there's tons, but the only one I've read in recent memory is Blindsight.
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Dec 13, 2018 09:48
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MockingQuantum posted:I've been reading a lot of upbeat, optimistic sci-fi lately, but I'd like a change of pace. What are the best books that involve first contact with an alien species that maybe doesn't really go as planned? I'm sure there's tons, but the only one I've read in recent memory is Blindsight. The Three Body Problem.
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Dec 13, 2018 11:32
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MockingQuantum posted:I've been reading a lot of upbeat, optimistic sci-fi lately, but I'd like a change of pace. What are the best books that involve first contact with an alien species that maybe doesn't really go as planned? I'm sure there's tons, but the only one I've read in recent memory is Blindsight. I think Rejoice! A Knife to the Heart is kind of that, but I've not got round to it yet. The title alone is enough to make me smile.
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Dec 13, 2018 13:58
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I think Rejoice! A Knife to the Heart is kind of that, but I've not got round to it yet. The title alone is enough to make me smile. It’s not good. Erikson is sad that human extinction is imminent and inevitable and wrote some fan fiction to cope.
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Dec 13, 2018 16:06
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Jedit posted:The Three Body Problem. 2nded. Great sci fi by chinese author Cixin Liu
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Dec 13, 2018 16:17
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mewse posted:2nded. Great sci fi by chinese author Cixin Liu I didn't like it at the time, but as I said in either this thread or the recommendation thread, I did the audiobook and I think that may have been a bad choice. I think it's a book you need to be able to approach at your own pace, or you lose a lot of detail in the "game" section. I think I might have to do a re-read now that it's been a minute since my first time through.
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Dec 13, 2018 16:42
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MockingQuantum posted:I didn't like it at the time, but as I said in either this thread or the recommendation thread, I did the audiobook and I think that may have been a bad choice. I think it's a book you need to be able to approach at your own pace, or you lose a lot of detail in the "game" section. I think I might have to do a re-read now that it's been a minute since my first time through. There is a lot of nuance that I think you might have to read rather than listen to audio. It was really interesting to me because some of the nuts and bolts about how he talks about politics, intent, the nature of deception seemed very Chinese or Confucian(?), not how I'm used to thinking about them in western writing
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Dec 13, 2018 16:58
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Yeah I listened to the audiobook and haven't read the actual and it reeeeeally did not translate well to audio. The long technical sections were a huge drag, and had I been reading, they would have been easy to skim over.
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Dec 13, 2018 17:59
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pseudorandom name posted:It’s not good. Erikson is sad that human extinction is imminent and inevitable and wrote some fan fiction to cope. Rejoice is seriously one of the worst books I've read in years. Every scene is either 1) His self-insert protagonists pontificate about how evil capitalism and global consumerism are and how great it is that The Aliens are putting a stop to all that. 2) His incredibly obvious Trump/Putin/Murdoch analogues twirl their moustaches and cackle about how they're totally going to use this to grind everyone under their boots and make a profit.
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Dec 13, 2018 18:37
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The_White_Crane posted:Rejoice is seriously one of the worst books I've read in years. It's actually incredibly good and correct.
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Dec 13, 2018 19:05
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I dunno I always feel pretty gross when I read other peoples' political strawman anti-fantasies, even if I enjoy the book. Blackfish City was another one like this (pointless housing crisis on a floating city) turns out you just have to reach the heavily guarded 'give poor people houses' button. E: It's like when you say something you have been brooding on for a while. You thought it was pretty good, but out loud it's just really lame. Political end of the world fantasies are similarly personal IMO. Strategic Tea fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 19:10
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I was looking for a book to read on vacation and picked up Seveneves. Turns our the Stephenson thread is long dead, but he's got a new book coming out soon so maybe somebody would do the needful. Anyway, this is definitely way easier to get into than the Baroque Cycle. I've been starting that like five times in printed word and audiobook form but despite the fascinating for me topic, I just kept getting bogged down in extremely detailed descriptions of everything without ever getting the feel for what the hell the plot is. Seveneves is way easier on that front and things keep moving at breakneck pace (by Stephenson standard at least) even if the characters suffer somewhat. I'm still at around a third into "Ymir" so perhaps he'd get to it, but it's interesting that there's no real discussion of any alternatives to the Space Ark. Clearly that's the space story he wanted to tell and that's fine, but it's weird there's no mention of e.g. underground shelters at all other than by some redneck miners. Maybe it's a dumb idea but at least on the surface (hehehe) it does seem way more feasible to to just pack the 53k of the Gotthard tunnel full of vitamins, people and equipment, than to blast it all into space where it'll encounter all of the same hazards.
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Dec 13, 2018 20:21
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To be fair I don’t think Stephenson knew what the plot of the baroque cycle was at points
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Dec 13, 2018 20:24
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Grimson posted:It's actually incredibly good and correct. It also didn’t help that every character had the same loving voice. If you cut a section of the Canadian doctor’s POV and the African child soldier-turned-warlord and scoured them of plot details, you’d be unable to tell which was which.
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Dec 13, 2018 20:31
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mobby_6kl posted:I was looking for a book to read on vacation and picked up Seveneves. Turns our the Stephenson thread is long dead, but he's got a new book coming out soon so maybe somebody would do the needful. Anyway, this is definitely way easier to get into than the Baroque Cycle. I've been starting that like five times in printed word and audiobook form but despite the fascinating for me topic, I just kept getting bogged down in extremely detailed descriptions of everything without ever getting the feel for what the hell the plot is. Seveneves is way easier on that front and things keep moving at breakneck pace (by Stephenson standard at least) even if the characters suffer somewhat. In case you didn't know this, Stephenson began working on the novel after trying to come up with a simple premise that would result, millennia later, in the sort of multiple green-skinned "alien" spacefaring species that had actually all descended from humanity in the Star Trek universe.
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Dec 13, 2018 20:45
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I know I'm late to the party but I had several friends independently suggest it to me, so just finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant and really enjoyed it, even if it crushed my sad gay heart - it's been a long time since I actually literally lost sleep laying awake in bed over a book I'd finished reading. Ordered the second book, trying to balance discussing the first book with trying not to discuss it too much with people who've already read the second one. e: I have a lot of stuff I kinda want to chew over but will go back and read what other people have posted. Jedit posted:The Three Body Problem. Have this sitting in wait too, so I'm glad to see some favorable mentions of it here! Ambivalent fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Dec 14, 2018 |
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Dec 14, 2018 01:42
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Deptfordx posted:Why is it cringey? Not disputing that it is, just haven't read it in 20+ years and a lot of stuff sailed over teenage me's head.
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Dec 14, 2018 02:04
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gvibes posted:I too was reading it after a 20+ year hiatus. I'm no literary critic, but the writing seems really bad compared to the better-written books we get these days. I think it's a very good book but Brin is really into this gee-whiz holy-smokes style that infantilizes a lot of the dialogue. And there's at least some singing.
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Dec 14, 2018 02:46
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mobby_6kl posted:I was looking for a book to read on vacation and picked up Seveneves. Turns our the Stephenson thread is long dead, but he's got a new book coming out soon so maybe somebody would do the needful. Anyway, this is definitely way easier to get into than the Baroque Cycle. I've been starting that like five times in printed word and audiobook form but despite the fascinating for me topic, I just kept getting bogged down in extremely detailed descriptions of everything without ever getting the feel for what the hell the plot is. Seveneves is way easier on that front and things keep moving at breakneck pace (by Stephenson standard at least) even if the characters suffer somewhat. I just finished up Seveneves a few weeks ago... keep reading.
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Dec 14, 2018 03:05
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Fiasco is great high-concept SF. Thing is, nobody else would have written it as a 5 or any number volume series given the ending. At least I can't think of anyone. My first-contact recommendation is for Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population. A colony has failed, so the settlers are being pulled out and sent somewhere else (always read the fine print in your contract). One elderly woman has decided that she isn't going and stays behind, happily tending her garden and rejoicing in the isolation. Suddenly, aliens. It's well thought out and with excellent characterizations. Highly recommended, and not just for this niche.
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Dec 14, 2018 04:00
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Strategic Tea posted:I dunno I always feel pretty gross when I read other peoples' political strawman anti-fantasies, even if I enjoy the book. Blackfish City was another one like this (pointless housing crisis on a floating city) turns out you just have to reach the heavily guarded 'give poor people houses' button. A “good” right wing nut job one is Neil Asher’s Owner series. Evil socialists have taken over earth and only John Galt can kill them all, destroy their orbital laser platform, fly to mars, kill them all on mars, and save the solar system with the help of self reliance and helpless bad guys who haven’t learned how to do anything themselves without the government handing them everything!
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Dec 14, 2018 04:02
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Velius posted:A “good” right wing nut job one is Neil Asher’s Owner series. Evil socialists have taken over earth and only John Galt can kill them all, destroy their orbital laser platform, fly to mars, kill them all on mars, and save the solar system with the help of self reliance and helpless bad guys who haven’t learned how to do anything themselves without the government handing them everything! Those books were such a loving whiplash when set up agains the Polity books. I kept thinking, "there something subtle here I'm missing that will be revealed shortly", but nope. It's a blunt loving club to the head in terms of message.
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Dec 14, 2018 04:09
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I finally got around to starting season 2 of the expanse; it's good but does the plot with the annoying mars marine sergeant ever stop? Christ it's bad.
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Dec 14, 2018 05:33
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andrew smash posted:I finally got around to starting season 2 of the expanse; it's good but does the plot with the annoying mars marine sergeant ever stop? Christ it's bad. She gets waaaay better. Seriously.
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Dec 14, 2018 05:36
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That's good because her current arc of complaining about not being allowed to murder civilians to her commanding officer and beating up her subordinate for being an immigrant is getting a little stale
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Dec 14, 2018 05:56
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mewse posted:To be fair I don’t think Stephenson knew what the plot of the baroque cycle was at points mdemone posted:In case you didn't know this, Stephenson began working on the novel after trying to come up with a simple premise that would result, millennia later, in the sort of multiple green-skinned "alien" spacefaring species that had actually all descended from humanity in the Star Trek universe. hannibal posted:I just finished up Seveneves a few weeks ago... keep reading.
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Dec 14, 2018 09:06
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New Joe ledger novel's out. Turns out it's the final one. I thought he'd be pulling a Cussler or a Child and be writing them for, well, ever.
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Dec 14, 2018 10:10
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