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Personally, I read Dune and then stopped and I have no regrets about this.
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Dec 19, 2018 16:54
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Khizan posted:Personally, I read Dune and then stopped and I have no regrets about this. This is an entirely valid stopping point. Dune Messiah or Children of Dune are also good stopping points, if you want a little more but are uncertain how much you want to get into a whole series of Dune books. Beyond that (and really, about halfway into Children) is where they start getting pretty strange. Dune Messiah is about the only one that I'd ever push someone to read after the first book, in part because it's fairly short, but also because I feel like it's less like a sequel than a sort of appendix or epilogue to Dune.
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Dec 19, 2018 17:14
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I think I read up to Chapter House Dune or something, and as a 12 year old I probably thought they were great although I remember thinking the concept of the gom jabbar test was dumb
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Dec 19, 2018 18:21
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MockingQuantum posted:This is an entirely valid stopping point. Dune Messiah or Children of Dune are also good stopping points, if you want a little more but are uncertain how much you want to get into a whole series of Dune books. Beyond that (and really, about halfway into Children) is where they start getting pretty strange. I know this same discussion happens every month or so here, but I will make the obligatory counter argument that getting strange is the whole point. Sure, Dune is a pretty cool universe to play around in and it's neat to see Islamic mysticism instead of medieval Europe knockoffs, but the thing you get out of reading Dune that you don't really get anywhere else is a multi-thousand year experiment in building interstellar society and what changes that makes in both the rulers and the ruled. On a parallel track, the whole free will vs prophecy aspect starts out as pretty standard stuff, but Dune is one of the few series that actually really wrestles with it and says something interesting about it. The sandworms and gom jabbar and such are just window dressing to let that discussion happen. In summary, read through God Emperor and buckle in for the ride.
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Dec 19, 2018 18:45
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I've started reading the three body problem and haven't stopped in like 6 hours. This is extremely good. I did have to start it like 3 times over the year I've had it though. I just could not get through the part about the cultural revolution
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Dec 19, 2018 19:19
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Lewd Mangabey posted:In summary, read through God Emperor and buckle in for the ride.
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Dec 19, 2018 19:51
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anilEhilated posted:Stop right afterwards, though. Oh yeah, agreed. Once Frank Herbert wrapped up the "thousands of years of guided evolution to ensure humanity will blossom as an interstellar species" arc, he turned to his second love, "sex ninjas."
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Dec 19, 2018 20:07
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mllaneza posted:I thought it was a decent novel with an ok premise. I haven't been motivated to seek out the sequel though.He's done better collaborations, *cough* Freedom and Necessity *cough* Yes, as another goon said, I think you're thinking of another book, because I was very confused by your spoiler.
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Dec 19, 2018 20:08
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The new Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade, is gonna do well I think. It has an extremely grabby Forever War/Old Man's War style premise (or maybe it's better pitched as 'a novel about the backstory of Kovacs from Altered Carbon'). Protag Dietz signs up for a corporate military unit where you get traumatically disintegrated and transported directly to the combat zone, so you can end up fighting anywhere on Earth or Mars on any given day. To make matters worse (early reveal, arguably book premise) Dietz reacts weirdly to the teleport process: every time they're teleported out, they end up on a seemingly random mission from their past or future. So they can teleport out for their first mission ever and drop into a battle 30 years later, then come home and be debriefed on a mission they haven't even experienced yet. poo poo's crazy and really compelling so far.
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Dec 19, 2018 20:29
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Yes, as another goon said, I think you're thinking of another book, because I was very confused by your spoiler. Sorry, that's a spoiler for F&N.
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Dec 19, 2018 20:54
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Lewd Mangabey posted:Oh yeah, agreed. Once Frank Herbert wrapped up the "thousands of years of guided evolution to ensure humanity will blossom as an interstellar species" arc, he turned to his second love, "sex ninjas." hannibal posted:I just finished up Seveneves a few weeks ago... keep reading. Seems like pingers were an official thing separate from the Ark but diggers are just the miners. Not sure why they needed to have the Cycs though if they also had handwritten copies, but all the other details about them were pretty interesting. No mention of Mars whatsoever, I guess they died on the way to their home planet. While reading about Seveneves elsewhere, somebody brought up Hugh Howey's Silo books for a similar "people in confined spaces" scifi. I just got an audiobook to listen to in the gym and the premise is surprisingly familiar. I remember seeing what was probably a crappy B-movie in the 90s where people also had to live in underground bunkers because the outside air was toxic. I think it ended with the hero escaping outside expecting to die but instead discovering that it was all a lie by whoever was running the place in order to maintain their power. [Anyone knows what movie this is? I've been trying to find out for years] In the book at least it seems that it is actually deadly outside, at least so far, so there's something more going on there.
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Dec 19, 2018 21:11
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Lewd Mangabey posted:Oh yeah, agreed. Once Frank Herbert wrapped up the "thousands of years of guided evolution to ensure humanity will blossom as an interstellar species" arc, he turned to his second love, "sex ninjas." Heretics owns though
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Dec 19, 2018 21:23
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:I've started reading the three body problem and haven't stopped in like 6 hours. This is extremely good. Gotta get the party to approve the book somehow..
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Dec 19, 2018 21:23
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General Battuta posted:The new Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade, is gonna do well I think. It has an extremely grabby Forever War/Old Man's War style premise (or maybe it's better pitched as 'a novel about the backstory of Kovacs from Altered Carbon'). Goddamn, that sounds fantastic.
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Dec 19, 2018 23:11
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General Battuta posted:The new Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade, is gonna do well I think. It has an extremely grabby Forever War/Old Man's War style premise (or maybe it's better pitched as 'a novel about the backstory of Kovacs from Altered Carbon'). Pre-ordered, sucks I gotta wait till march tho.
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Dec 20, 2018 00:36
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Here is what I am enjoying most about Queen of Angels by Greg Bear: - The concept of a culture that is divided into therapied vs non-therapied. While I haven't gotten far enough in to really explore the mechanics of how the therapy works, on the surface I love it: it produces well-adjusted people, the same as my regular ol' therapist does: I go in, we talk, I come out ready to survive another day. Therapy doesn't radically rewrite me, it gives me tools and insight into myself so I can better manage my stress and anxieties. The idea of that pervading the culture so it becomes almost mandatory doesn't frighten me - it delights me, because good! Therapy is genuinely useful even if you're the most well-adjusted person on earth. So of course there's the laughable untherapied "art" group that's full of posturing and bad behavior and of course bad poetry and the look we get at it from one of the pov characters is just, mwah. These people have taken the idea that they need to suffer for their art to a gloriously rebellious extreme and it makes me laugh so much. Also, note: it seems so far that even therapied people can commit crimes. On top of the murder driving the plot ("why did this famous poet kill a bunch of people and vanish") there are terrorists known as Selectors... - I love the Selectors. They're crazy terrorist vigilantes who decide that criminals aren't going to be properly punished by the justice system, so they capture them and plug them into what are called "hellcrowns". Yes. People in these experience total hell - and it's measured in minutes. Three minutes is way too much. Five is a good way to destroy someone's psyche. One of the scenes in the book is protagonist badass cop Mary Choy assisting with a raid of a Selector suite and she busts some robots and helps bring down a Selector armed with a flechette gun and - the victims. One was a businessman responsible for several plane crashes, because he knowingly had the planes made with faulty materials. There are comments from the therapists saying that he didn't deserve five minutes in the hellcrown. The other two are a pedophile and a petty embezzler who threatened his wife - and she called Selectors instead of cops. The whole concept of a group of crazy terrorist vigilantes armed with the world torture devices is delightfully plausible sci-fi. - And finally the whole idea that people have nine lives. A human body can be rebuilt nine times before it just can't be brought back, so the cops were discussing their "nine lives" going into the raid. And Mary Choy is a Transform - as in, whole body changed - so she's got eight lives instead of nine. It's cool!
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Dec 20, 2018 00:39
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Lewd Mangabey posted:Oh yeah, agreed. Once Frank Herbert wrapped up the "thousands of years of guided evolution to ensure humanity will blossom as an interstellar species" arc, he turned to his second love, "sex ninjas." Part of the sex-ninja stuff in the last two Frank Herbert Dune novels came from his wife dying from cancer, and Frank Herbert writing his thirstyness into the remaining 2 Dune books. Frank and @DuneAuthor collaborated on a novel (Man of Two Worlds), was mostly ok but very very wish fullfillment scifi. Lem's Fiasco: everytime I read it, the story within a story about the termite mounds gets better and better.
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Dec 20, 2018 00:52
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Identify a book for me which I read in high school: it begins with a sentient alien robot probe entering the solar system and humanity exchanging messages with it, it seems friendly, it happily provides them with information before swinging around the sun and departing. At one point they're asking it about religion and it confirms that most alien religious societies started out as livestock herders, I think? I'm pretty sure it's written so you only see the probe's side of the exchange and have to infer what Earth is asking it. I remember literally nothing about the rest of the book and vaguely feel like it might have been a Clarke novel, but none of his Wikipedia synopses match. (I think it's entirely possible I only read the first chapter of the book). edit - also I'd be really happy to hear any other first contact recommendations. Really enjoyed Pushing Ice earlier this year.
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Dec 20, 2018 05:26
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Bhodi posted:Neuromancer is part of a trilogy and the second book is the strongest / just as strong as neromancer, IMO. oh man thanks for this rec. neuromancer was okay, liked it overall, still on a cyberpunk kick so i checked this out and count zero loving rocks. really great thriller and it goes into the eldritch horror aspects of cyberpunk internet. is mona lisa overdrive also good? (also i couldn't help laughing a little whenever i heard anyone mention a fax or cassette tape)
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Dec 20, 2018 07:13
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I always thought Neuromancer stood head and shoulders above its sequels (or anything else Gibson ever wrote). Like, the sequels are fine, but from memory they were always told from like three different perspectives and never seemed to have any strong plot thread? The only thing I really remember from them is the mercenary who has to extract somebody from a biome lab on top of a mesa in Arizona, which was cool. But part of the reason I love Neuromancer is that aside from all the really great cyberpunk idea stuff, it's just a loving classic heist story.
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Dec 20, 2018 07:23
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Yeah I can see the multiple perspectives getting weird but I didnt mind it too much and you can start to see the pieces falling into place.
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Dec 20, 2018 07:29
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I loved neuromancer but I disagree that Gibson peaked there. If you haven't you should really read the Peripheral.
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Dec 20, 2018 08:16
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New NPCs novel is out, if anyone is following that series.
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Dec 20, 2018 08:19
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General Battuta posted:The new Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade, is gonna do well I think. It has an extremely grabby Forever War/Old Man's War style premise (or maybe it's better pitched as 'a novel about the backstory of Kovacs from Altered Carbon'). You're using "they" for Dietz, but Publisher's Weekly uses "she". NB protagonist or no?
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Dec 20, 2018 09:38
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General Battuta posted:The new Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade, is gonna do well I think. It has an extremely grabby Forever War/Old Man's War style premise (or maybe it's better pitched as 'a novel about the backstory of Kovacs from Altered Carbon'). I'm excited for this but people who don't get advanced reader copies have to wait until March!!!
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Dec 20, 2018 16:30
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andrew smash posted:I loved neuromancer but I disagree that Gibson peaked there. If you haven't you should really read the Peripheral. Absolutely agree. Gibson’s later work is really good. The_White_Crane posted:You're using "they" for Dietz, but Publisher's Weekly uses "she". I can’t tell yet, it seems to be left ambiguous.
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Dec 20, 2018 17:10
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I read Kim Stanley Robinson's latest book, Red Moon. It's not bad. Not as good as the Mars Trilogy, but way less boring than Antarctica. On issue though is the references to cryptocurrenices and blockchain. It's not a major part of the story, and it's somewhat forgivable considering the time the book was written. But it seemed like it was being set up to be more important in the sequels, and that would be bad. Hopefully he still has time to write that stuff out of Green Moon If Green Moon comes out in like 2020 and he's still talking about how "Blockchain Governance" is gonna be the next big thing, that's just going to be embarrassing.
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Dec 20, 2018 22:35
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Red Moon? Green and Blue Mars? Starting to think this guy is just mesmerised by celestial bodies of different colours
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Dec 20, 2018 23:24
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He also wrote Aurora, which is a multicolored celestial phenomenon, hth
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Dec 21, 2018 00:18
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Can anyone think of a book / series that has the people Discovering magic for the first time? i dont mean re-discovering magic that was lost, or ancient magic. but someone actually discovering magic for the first time?
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Dec 21, 2018 01:39
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CoolHandMat posted:Can anyone think of a book / series that has the people Discovering magic for the first time? i dont mean re-discovering magic that was lost, or ancient magic. but someone actually discovering magic for the first time? I could swear I've read one or two books like this, but the titles escape me. It's rare, though. Discovering new kinds of magic in a setting where magic in general is already known to exist is more common. Ditto the protagonist discovering magic for the first time in a setting where it's already known elsewhere. I don't think either of those is what you were asking for, though.
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Dec 21, 2018 03:52
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Scientist would be wizard in a story where absolutely none of the rules or boundaries of magic are known sounds fun. Someone go write it.
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Dec 21, 2018 07:14
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FuzzySlippers posted:Scientist would be wizard in a story where absolutely none of the rules or boundaries of magic are known sounds fun. Someone go write it. That's pretty much Stasheff's Wizard/Warlock series. The natives are descendants of wind-wiped hyper-SCA enthusiasts, and the main character is the wizard figuring out actual rules and boundaries of magic/psi powers.
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Dec 21, 2018 14:48
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:That's pretty much Stasheff's Wizard/Warlock series. The natives are descendants of wind-wiped hyper-SCA enthusiasts, and the main character is the wizard figuring out actual rules and boundaries of magic/psi powers. Yeah, he's a modern (sci fi modern) scientist whose spaceship crashlands on a planet settled by descendants of SCA folks who happened to all have latent genetic psi talents which flourished due to genetic founder effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect So everyone calls him a wizard because he has "magic powers" but really he's just using science in a "magic" world. They're basically B+ tier 70's/80's schlock pulp. I think at one point stasheff rewrote one of the books from scratch because he decided the initially published version was just embarrassingly bad.
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Dec 21, 2018 15:52
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, he's a modern (sci fi modern) scientist whose spaceship crashlands on a planet settled by descendants of SCA folks who happened to all have latent genetic psi talents which flourished due to genetic founder effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect Dude was a secret agent with a robot horse/AI companion, but yeah pretty close to what you described. No real argument about the books being basically B+ tier 70's/80's schlock pulp. The main things that made Stasheff's Wizard books stand out was versus the usual 70's/80's pulp fantasy Tolkien LotR ripoffs with notGandalf, notAragon, etc was that the Wizard series a) went with a shakespearan/euro folklore style setting, and b) unlike most 70's/80's fantasy pulp the main character was the least powerful member of his extended family and his wife or kids usually ended up saving the day.
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Dec 21, 2018 16:27
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:
Yeah that's why he gets the B+ -- relatively innovative concept, decent character writing, nothing in it objectively horrible (no egregious ripoffs or racist caricatures etc). Honestly I should probably re-read them. I've got a signed hardback of one of them sitting around somewhere that was a gift from a friend.
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Dec 21, 2018 16:33
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah that's why he gets the B+ -- relatively innovative concept, decent character writing, nothing in it objectively horrible (no egregious ripoffs or racist caricatures etc). God I haven't read those in so long. I seem to remember the youngest child was so powerful he terrified the poo poo out of everyone which led to him living like a hermit for a while.
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Dec 21, 2018 18:07
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CoolHandMat posted:Can anyone think of a book / series that has the people Discovering magic for the first time? i dont mean re-discovering magic that was lost, or ancient magic. but someone actually discovering magic for the first time? Belgarath the Sorcerer by David Eddings, if you don't count god powers.
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Dec 21, 2018 19:40
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Proteus Jones posted:God I haven't read those in so long. Yeah I'm not sure I read the last book(s) in that series because the kids seemed a bit mary sue-ish. Genetics doesn't work like that! That said the robot horse was a good character I wonder which came first, Zelazny's dilvish the damned with the demon iron horse, or the robot AI horse in Stasheff fake edit: heh, checking, Stasheff was ahead of Zelazny there, not what I expected
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Dec 21, 2018 20:10
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andrew smash posted:I loved neuromancer but I disagree that Gibson peaked there. If you haven't you should really read the Peripheral. I liked it and I think it was best book he's done in years, but it's still no Neuromancer. "Peaked" is a bit of a backhanded compliment; his other stuff is still great, it's just that Neuromancer is, like, in the top 100 flat-out best novels of the 20th century, in any genre.
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Dec 21, 2018 23:32
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