The Science Fiction and Fantasy Thread: Read the OP, Bridge of Birds, and Murderbot

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Science Fiction and Fantasy Thread: Read the OP, Bridge of Birds, and Murderbot

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Clark Nova: Jul 18, 2004

StashAugustine posted:

Do I need the first culture book to read player of games?

Emphatically no. Consider Phlebas was written a good decade before the other Culture novels and the tone is a bit different. Player of Games is the most frequently recommended starting point

# ? Mar 21, 2019 18:51

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# ? May 23, 2024 18:36

Lord Bob: Jun 1, 2000

Clark Nova posted:

Emphatically no. Consider Phlebas was written a good decade before the other Culture novels and the tone is a bit different. Player of Games is the most frequently recommended starting point

I didn't believe everyone when they said to skip the first book. OCD dictated I read them in release order starting with the first, but I should have believed them. I didn't really enjoy the first book much - player of games is so much tighter and far more interesting, and there is very little that crosses over between the two (i think they're set like a thousand years apart?).

Consider Phlebas is definitely not bad, but it is not great and real easy to skip. It feels slightly aimless, like one of those books that is "here's all the cool scifi scenes I can think of, how do I glue these together into a narrative". Where player of games is a tight story with cool scifi scenes as a bonus

# ? Mar 21, 2019 19:05

my bony fealty: Oct 1, 2008

I finished Excession yesterday. 4th Culture book I've read, in some ways it is my favorite (Minds!), in some it was a bit of a letdown.

For all the "holy poo poo" of the Excession itself, it didn't really go anywhere interesting...more like the thing was a prop to build a story about the Culture around. Which is ok since it's a Culture book, but I do wish it took the universe-traversing-beings concept and did something with it. Annoyed me at the end how one of the ships was like "it could be a scout judging us and we were found wanting" and then the epilogue confirms that yes, that is exactly what it was.

I appreciated how the entire Genar-Hofoen plot was a red herring that had nothing to do with the Excession, just one of the ships being weirdly fixated on a single human relationship. Pretty great way to characterize a godlike entity that secretly carried a galaxy-dominating war fleet.

# ? Mar 21, 2019 19:18

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

Ornamented Death posted:

https://twitter.com/jeffvandermeer/status/1108716824689078272

Cool. About time someone put out a new + expanded version of Science Fiction by Gaslight.
Electricity was the FTL/nano-machines in science fiction stories of the 1880s -1910s

# ? Mar 21, 2019 20:28

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

StashAugustine posted:

Do I need the first culture book to read player of games?

Definitely not.

# ? Mar 21, 2019 21:10

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Not sure if this goes in here or in LitRPG, but:

I have a good friend who gifted this to me (as I refuse to read ebooks) and I'm fifty pages in and severely charmed. It's cliched, reads like the opening to an anime, but with clear fun prose and it's fun to root for our poor underdog hero. He gets his arm broken tricking an angry ghost, he gets challenged to a duel by a ten year old, an ancient magical fox tells him that he might have a chance at not being a screwup for his entire life. Good stuff!

# ? Mar 21, 2019 21:12

Proteus Jones: Feb 28, 2013

StrixNebulosa posted:

Not sure if this goes in here or in LitRPG, but:

I have a good friend who gifted this to me (as I refuse to read ebooks) and I'm fifty pages in and severely charmed. It's cliched, reads like the opening to an anime, but with clear fun prose and it's fun to root for our poor underdog hero. He gets his arm broken tricking an angry ghost, he gets challenged to a duel by a ten year old, an ancient magical fox tells him that he might have a chance at not being a screwup for his entire life. Good stuff!

I uninronicaly love these books. It�s like a power-creep-Shaw-Brothers-martial-arts-on-crack extravaganza. It�s pure popcorn and fun as hell. The later books are absolutely bug-gently caress insane and I can�t wait fo the the next one.

His Wielders of Comically Large Swords series is pretty entertaining as well.

# ? Mar 21, 2019 21:19

Gravy Jones: Sep 13, 2003; I am not on your side

my bony fealty posted:

I finished Excession yesterday. 4th Culture book I've read, in some ways it is my favorite (Minds!), in some it was a bit of a letdown.

For all the "holy poo poo" of the Excession itself, it didn't really go anywhere interesting...more like the thing was a prop to build a story about the Culture around. Which is ok since it's a Culture book, but I do wish it took the universe-traversing-beings concept and did something with it. Annoyed me at the end how one of the ships was like "it could be a scout judging us and we were found wanting" and then the epilogue confirms that yes, that is exactly what it was.

I appreciated how the entire Genar-Hofoen plot was a red herring that had nothing to do with the Excession, just one of the ships being weirdly fixated on a single human relationship. Pretty great way to characterize a godlike entity that secretly carried a galaxy-dominating war fleet.

I seem to remember Excession not being particularly well received, mostly for the reasons you state here, on release, but growing in popularity over time. I think the fact that it (the Excession itself) is essentially one big shaggy dog story, rubs a lot of people the wrong way. That said, because you know that going in, it really shined on a second reading for me and now it's one of my favourites.

Also in terms of big dumb science fiction excess (something Banks always has a lot of fun with, when Sleeper Service "wakes up" is definitely right up there as a pretty enjoyable "holy poo poo" moment.

Gravy Jones fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Mar 21, 2019

# ? Mar 21, 2019 21:35

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Proteus Jones posted:

I uninronicaly love these books. It�s like a power-creep-Shaw-Brothers-martial-arts-on-crack extravaganza. It�s pure popcorn and fun as hell. The later books are absolutely bug-gently caress insane and I can�t wait fo the the next one.

His Wielders of Comically Large Swords series is pretty entertaining as well.

Yeah I'm beginning to realize book 1 wasn't a gift, but rather a "the first one's free, heh heh" kind of trap.

# ? Mar 21, 2019 21:45

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

The Cradle series is on Kindle Unlimited, so if you already have that the books are sort of free.

Weird to see this thread liking it, though.

# ? Mar 22, 2019 10:03

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

This thread has depths of taste you've barely dreamed of.

Speaking of which, can one of the litrpg posters post about the current goings-on in the genre? Not this weak xianxia and progression stuff, I mean the poo poo with tables and grinding and hell, dungeon cores.

# ? Mar 22, 2019 11:12

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Well, the LitRPG subreddit really hates Aleron Kong, author of "The Land", one of the major and best-known LitRPG series: https://www.reddit.com/r/litrpg/comments/b2vwde/this_is_so_scummy_how_can_anyone_defend_kong/

# ? Mar 22, 2019 11:20

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

quote:

It's not that I want to throw shade at you for liking what you like, but what exactly do you find about the land that's " drat good"?
* the jokes are lame.
* pop culture references are cringe.
* the mc is a Chad and not even a good one.

thank you

# ? Mar 22, 2019 11:22

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Cicero posted:

The Cradle series is on Kindle Unlimited, so if you already have that the books are sort of free.

Weird to see this thread liking it, though.

I don't do ebooks, sadly. :C I'm gonna have to shill out for the entire series now.

Also I try not to be a snob about genres. There's trash everywhere, and diamonds everywhere, and you just gotta look for them and keep an open mind.

# ? Mar 22, 2019 12:43

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Clark Nova posted:

Emphatically no. Consider Phlebas was written a good decade before the other Culture novels and the tone is a bit different. Player of Games is the most frequently recommended starting point

It's also a frequently recommended stopping point. The Culture novels suffer badly from the presence of the Minds; they're too much of a restriction on the agency of the characters, and have all the problems encountered when a writer tries to create a character more intelligent than they are.

# ? Mar 22, 2019 13:21

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

Ebooks definitely rule.
Physical copies of books are fantastic, ebooks + physical copies of books are amazing.

Only caveat with ebooks is that ebook library management is recommended once you get past a certain amount of ebooks.
Calibre lets you convert ebooks to different formats, do backups of your metafiles if you're OCD about ebook organization (raises hand), and ebook drm/anti-drm stuff exists, but eh.

# ? Mar 22, 2019 14:31

The_White_Crane: May 10, 2008

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Only caveat with ebooks is that ebook library management is recommended once you get past a certain amount of ebooks.

Library management?
That's a folder full of 500+ DRM free epubs with the file names "Firstname Lastname [Series/No.] - Title.epub" right?

# ? Mar 22, 2019 14:57

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

The_White_Crane posted:

Library management?
That's a folder full of 500+ DRM free epubs with the file names "Firstname Lastname [Series/No.] - Title.epub" right?

Nah you put ` at the front of the filename if they're something you want to look at, so they appear first in the list. `` if they're really important, and so on. So something you downloaded and want to remember to transfer when you get home might be "`````first name misspelled last name - series number title - series name.epup"

# ? Mar 22, 2019 15:02

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

The_White_Crane posted:

Library management?
That's a folder full of 500+ DRM free epubs with the file names "Firstname Lastname [Series/No.] - Title.epub" right?

Used to have stuff setup like that until I got seduced by the tagging/search in calibre's ebook software.
For example, have Peter Watts's novel Blindsight tagged with "#scifi, body-horror, footnotes, space travel, space travel STL, vampires, first contact, 1st contact, aliens, modes of thought,...etc" in my calibre ebook library.
Other bonuses: Way easier to find stuff, easier to manage/weed out duplicates than sorting everything manually.

# ? Mar 22, 2019 16:33

Hemp Knight: Sep 26, 2004

Can anyone recommend a book or books similar to the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons? I've seen a suggestion for The Book of the New Sun, is it worth trying?

# ? Mar 22, 2019 17:12

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Hemp Knight posted:

Can anyone recommend a book or books similar to the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons? I've seen a suggestion for The Book of the New Sun, is it worth trying?

Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, especially books 2 and 3, reminded me strongly of Hyperion. (The first one gave me more of a Diamond Age vibe.)

# ? Mar 22, 2019 17:21

occamsnailfile: Nov 4, 2007; zamtrios so lonely; Grimey Drawer

I also use Calibre for library management--and to make DRM-free backup copies of my kindle library, because gently caress you Amazon, I own my poo poo.

I like my Kindle and it is at times easier to wrangle on the bus than a physical book but I also love my piles and piles of trade paperbacks (preferred format) and trading books online is a hobby I enjoy.

# ? Mar 22, 2019 17:42

pseudanonymous: Aug 30, 2008; When you make the second entry and the debits and credits balance, and you blow them to hell.

Hemp Knight posted:

Can anyone recommend a book or books similar to the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons? I've seen a suggestion for The Book of the New Sun, is it worth trying?

There's always the Canterbury Tales.

# ? Mar 22, 2019 19:56

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

Also Calibre is very useful for setting fields like date, contributing authors, publishers, language, series order, etc.

The three oldest ebooks in my Calibre collection are Livy's History of Rome in Three Volumes (@1830 english language reprint), John Polidori's The Vampyre short story(which kicked the 'modern vampire mythos' off @1819), and HD scans of the Voynich Manuscript (which I tentatively dated as 1599, the high end date estimate from Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library).

Finished the non-fiction book I briefly mentioned earlier this week about Invisible Inks/Steganography. It was pretty good, it even included mostly non-toxic invisible ink recipes. The invisible ink recipes that used cobalt + arsenic were skipped, for obvious health/lawsuit reasons, but you can make your own invisible inks in 2019 with milk, or lemon/citrus juice, or even bodily fluids if you're desperate/gross.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 02:43

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

just throw all your pdfs in a folder with no particular arrangement or even labeling format, cowards

# ? Mar 23, 2019 03:41

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Cicero posted:

The Cradle series is on Kindle Unlimited, so if you already have that the books are sort of free.

Weird to see this thread liking it, though.

This is a thread with milsf fans. Cradle is definitely ahead of Weber, Stirling, or Ringo.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 05:00

ulmont: Sep 15, 2010; IF I EVER MISS VOTING IN AN ELECTION (EVEN AMERICAN IDOL) ,OR HAVE UNPAID PARKING TICKETS, PLEASE TAKE AWAY MY FRANCHISE

Darth Walrus posted:

This is a thread with milsf fans. Cradle is definitely ahead of Weber, Stirling, or Ringo.

Probably behind Kratzman though.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 05:03

A human heart: Oct 10, 2012

PupsOfWar posted:

just throw all your pdfs in a folder with no particular arrangement or even labeling format, cowards

Thank you.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 08:30

Megazver: Jan 13, 2006

PupsOfWar posted:

just throw all your pdfs in a folder with no particular arrangement or even labeling format, cowards

I sort only by download date.

It's fine. It's cool.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 11:07

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

PupsOfWar posted:

just throw all your pdfs in a folder with no particular arrangement or even labeling format, cowards

Don't doxx me

# ? Mar 23, 2019 11:14

ZearothK: Aug 25, 2008; I've lost twice, I've failed twice and I've gotten two dishonorable mentions within 7 weeks. But I keep coming back. I am The Trooper!

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021

Anyone has opinions on Black Leopard, Red Wolf from Marlon James? I absolutely loved his A Brief History of Seven Killings so I am very much curious what he'd do in the fantasy genre, specially since he's pulling influences from African myth and history instead of the usual.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 11:42

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

ZearothK posted:

Anyone has opinions on Black Leopard, Red Wolf from Marlon James? I absolutely loved his A Brief History of Seven Killings so I am very much curious what he'd do in the fantasy genre, specially since he's pulling influences from African myth and history instead of the usual.

I read about 200~ pages of it before running out of the fortitude needed to finish it. It's rich and compelling, but it's full of the deepest, darkest stuff. Trigger warnings are everywhere: rape, torture, incest, child abuse, child rape, a gangbang rape, violence, more violence, cannibalism, and so on. You can't go more than five pages without coming across some new atrocity.

The first section of the book is about Tracker (our hero) and his childhood - his escape from his abusive father, his meeting with Leopard, his eventual journey to an orphanage for malformed children. It was a hugely compelling section and I really loved it, even though it was dark as hell. I almost wish I'd stopped there, as it was really satisfying reading.

After that first section, the second takes place years later - Tracker as an adult, performing various tracking jobs and making a name for himself before he's drawn into the main plot and meets Leopard again. They travel from city to city looking for this child and untangling the plot and I realized I couldn't stomach it. (Middle of February, I'm depressed and struggling with schoolwork, and it was just plain work to pick up the book)

The writing was extremely good and I want to see how it ends, but also not while I'm in a bad way myself. I'd say you should try reading it, but BE CAREFUL.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 11:50

Solitair: Feb 18, 2014; TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Used to have stuff setup like that until I got seduced by the tagging/search in calibre's ebook software.
For example, have Peter Watts's novel Blindsight tagged with "#scifi, body-horror, footnotes, space travel, space travel STL, vampires, first contact, 1st contact, aliens, modes of thought,...etc" in my calibre ebook library.
Other bonuses: Way easier to find stuff, easier to manage/weed out duplicates than sorting everything manually.

I'm gonna have to teach myself to use Calibre. In addition for every other reason Amazon can go gently caress itself, my Kindle app on PC keeps forgetting my collections.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 14:25

buffalo all day: Mar 13, 2019

ZearothK posted:

Anyone has opinions on Black Leopard, Red Wolf from Marlon James? I absolutely loved his A Brief History of Seven Killings so I am very much curious what he'd do in the fantasy genre, specially since he's pulling influences from African myth and history instead of the usual.

I�m in the middle of it and the prose is gorgeous. It�s dark as hell but beautifully written.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 18:01

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

I need to complain. I have been enjoying Jean Johnson's military sci-fi mary sue series Theirs Not to Reason Why, but lord if book 2 didn't set out to destroy all of my goodwill towards it. The first book was half space marine boot camp, then half goofy space marine adventures which were fun....but book two so far has followed that exact same formula. The first hundred pages were Ia taking leave to see her homeplanet - and that's interesting but slow as it's still mostly setup for future books, and then the next hundred and a half were Ia in officer training. And this author sucks when it comes to training, as it initially it's fun, but then it's infodump city.

And I mean she tried to lighten it up by tossing in a romance subplot, but since that entire aspect sucked, it just made the entire sequence worse. (protip: it's not cute if a priestess/officer abuses her privileges to force two adults to tell each other they have feelings for them! It's horrific and I hate that Ia basically forgave her!)

:rant:

huff. so. I soldiered on, because multiple friends in my book discord have been all "that was a good read / that was the BEST read" at me, and 260~ pages into this book the plot actually finally starts. ... Which is to say Ia is now in a warzone on a starship doing fun soldier-y things. And I'm having fun again, thank god.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 18:09

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

Solitair posted:

I'm gonna have to teach myself to use Calibre. In addition for every other reason Amazon can go gently caress itself, my Kindle app on PC keeps forgetting my collections.

Calibre is quite good for this, works great with multiple kindle device + other ebook readers attached without problems.
Calibre's built-in ebook converter is pretty good too, only issue I've had with it is with documents that use multiple columns per page, conversion results on those multi-column per page documents are 100% williams burroughs cut-up.

Cryptolog #003. Heavily redacted, and pretty much was china china china on the non-redacted stuff. Cryptolog #003 also included a puzzle that is 300% impossible for a modern reader to solve without cheating, given that it references twice dead landline phone technology + five times dead phone number calling lingo.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 19:00

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

Darth Walrus posted:

This is a thread with milsf fans. Cradle is definitely ahead of Weber, Stirling, or Ringo.

thru inertia and sunk cost i must find out whether captain Lance Hardcock will defeat the space united nations

surely book 27 of the series will finally resolve this tale

# ? Mar 23, 2019 19:03

Stupid_Sexy_Flander: Mar 14, 2007; Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?; Grimey Drawer

https://twitter.com/BrianTMcClellan/status/1109629695576793088

He's got his new urban fantasy book out early on his website, if you are interested in it.

# ? Mar 24, 2019 03:03

mewse: May 2, 2006

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

https://twitter.com/BrianTMcClellan/status/1109629695576793088

He's got his new urban fantasy book out early on his website, if you are interested in it.

Thanks, enjoyed the powder mage books. Affordable ebook with more money going to the author seems like best of all worlds

# ? Mar 24, 2019 04:44

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# ? May 23, 2024 18:36

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Isn't he basically Sanderson-lite? Pages and pages on the mechanics of magic?
Not sure if transitioning to UF is going to help.

# ? Mar 24, 2019 14:26

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Science Fiction and Fantasy Thread: Read the OP, Bridge of Birds, and Murderbot

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