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How dare you say this is not high literature.
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Mar 27, 2019 05:44
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Ok, that makes sense because the name Goodkind scans as being extemely made-up to me. The KSR clarification: thanks, scientist-leader hard scifi devolves into preachiness or utter boredom fast This is a bit like how traditional soap operas are the longest running TV series. Once you eliminate those it’s The Simpsons. At this point in life I’m wary of book series longer than a trilogy. Even trilogies often struggle with second act pacing, and series are rarely planned that far in advance and so flail sround for a while and waste the reader’s time.
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Mar 27, 2019 05:50
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Ornamented Death posted:It may have been optioned previously and Stross just couldn't say anything. On his blog he says it was optioned by an American company between 2006 and 2008, but nothing came of it. 90s Cringe Rock posted:And it's also a series where he realised he'd accidentally broken it too much to continue. It's been a while since I read those books, but was it obvious to the reader that the universe was broken? Or did Stross just get to the point where he couldn't believe in the books any more so couldn't carry on? Basically I liked that series and wanted more of it and don't remember it being any more ridiculous than much other sci-fi out there.
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Mar 27, 2019 09:24
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Another science fiction trope has come true https://twitter.com/RollingStone/status/1110573403772239872
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Mar 27, 2019 09:25
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Major Ryan posted:It's been a while since I read those books, but was it obvious to the reader that the universe was broken? Or did Stross just get to the point where he couldn't believe in the books any more so couldn't carry on? Basically I liked that series and wanted more of it and don't remember it being any more ridiculous than much other sci-fi out there. He wrote a blog post about it; IIRC his problem was that he was telling the story of the war between two time-travel based AIs from the subjective perspective of people within their influence, and he believes that he irrecoverably screwed up their view of events.
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Mar 27, 2019 09:44
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Storybundle has a space scifi/space opera bundle sale going on at the moment. Might be worth taking a peek at.
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Mar 27, 2019 09:47
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:David Gemell. If you want to read about a dude who solves his problems with an axe, Druss the legend is there for you. Seconding Gemmell, and you should start with Legend. Be sure to donate your Abercrombie books to charity first, though, as otherwise you'll be burning them.
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Mar 27, 2019 10:27
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Storybundle has a space scifi/space opera bundle sale going on at the moment. Might be worth taking a peek at. Seems pretty bottom-tier, tbh.
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Mar 27, 2019 10:40
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I have no idea whatsoever. Only space style stuff I read is the Space Team stuff by Barry Hutchison. More humor than opera.
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Mar 27, 2019 11:12
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Megazver posted:Seems pretty bottom-tier, tbh. The only thing in that bundle I recognize is the Jani Killian books, which I thought were alright, although they're more political thriller than space opera. However, the bundle includes only the first three books of the five-book series.
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Mar 27, 2019 13:18
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Major Ryan posted:It's been a while since I read those books, but was it obvious to the reader that the universe was broken? Or did Stross just get to the point where he couldn't believe in the books any more so couldn't carry on? Basically I liked that series and wanted more of it and don't remember it being any more ridiculous than much other sci-fi out there. Stross imported the two leads + the ominous "secret operatives/save the present + future" from his 2 Eschaton books wholesale into his Laundry Files series. The geeky techdude became Bob, the amazing badass operative lady became Mo(nique). It was hard staying clever writing a futuristic competing AI singularity event shadow war + the BillnTed time-looperies needed to make everything work internally. Instead, why not ape Kim Newman's "pop-culture works are real" entirely, while re-using your 2 established main characters? This is in NO way a slam against Stross or Newman, both are good to very good. Just that his Eschaton books were hard to write/come up with new stories for, and kinda suspect a Scalzi style "x amount of books in x years" book contract made the switch to 0% Eschaton/100% Laundry setting much easier for Stross. e: corrected because I left out the NO in the"This is in <NO> way a slam" sentence/ quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Mar 27, 2019 |
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Mar 27, 2019 13:33
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ToxicFrog posted:The only thing in that bundle I recognize is the Jani Killian books, which I thought were alright, although they're more political thriller than space opera. However, the bundle includes only the first three books of the five-book series. I thought the Jani Killian books were amazing and all five are some of my favorite sci-fi ever. Which probably means I need to read more political thrillers because drat if I don't love how Jani Killian handled them. I don't recognize anything else in that bundle either.
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Mar 27, 2019 13:44
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:This is in NO way a slam against Stross or Newman, both are good to very good. Just that his Eschaton books were hard to write/come up with new stories for, and kinda suspect a Scalzi style "x amount of books in x years" book contract made the switch to 0% Eschaton/100% Laundry setting much easier for Stross. Which is a shame for me because I only sort of liked the Laundry Files and gave up after a couple of books, whereas I really enjoyed Accelerando/Glasshouse/Halting State and would probably have preferred individual books/short series over the sprawling series he has going on right now. Then again, Stross has been very open about the need to do things like make money to afford things to eat, and I've no malice towards a writing setup that allows him to make a living. It's not like the books aren't acclaimed or anything. Just not for me I guess.
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Mar 27, 2019 15:31
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Had to exclude the mens adventure genre, because there is multiple mens adventure series with 50+ -100+ "books" published(the Destroyer, the Executioner, etc). Used the word "books" in quotation marks because they are usually thin-as-hell (think shorter stories than Martha Wells's standalone murderbot books), 60-70% of every story is blow-by-blow action-scenes/main character sex-god scenes, and everything is written at a 5th grade reading level. I have a soft spot for the Deathlands/Outlands series because they were the edgiest thing 14 year old Poldarn could find at the public library. I'm scared to find some as a 32 year old because I know in my heart of hearts that they don't hold up.
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Mar 27, 2019 17:35
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:How dare you say this is not high literature. I loved these when I was a kid. LOVED em!
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Mar 27, 2019 17:52
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Ok, that makes sense because the name Goodkind scans as being extemely made-up to me. The KSR clarification: thanks, scientist-leader hard scifi devolves into preachiness or utter boredom fast for me. Perry Rhodan laughs at this -- something on the order of 4,000 novellas published in German, of which over 100 were translated into English in the 1970s. I've never read a single one, but there used to be stacks of them in every used bookstore around.
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Mar 27, 2019 18:43
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Selachian posted:Perry Rhodan laughs at this -- something on the order of 4,000 novellas published in German, of which over 100 were translated into English in the 1970s. I've never read a single one, but there used to be stacks of them in every used bookstore around. e: As someone who actually read a couple due to the Great Eastern European SF Drought in the nineties - don't. They're boring at best and offensive at worst. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Mar 27, 2019 |
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Mar 27, 2019 19:14
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Selachian posted:Perry Rhodan laughs at this -- something on the order of 4,000 novellas published in German, of which over 100 were translated into English in the 1970s. I've never read a single one, but there used to be stacks of them in every used bookstore around. So pretty much a weekly publish similar to 2000 AD + the Judge Dredd series. Cool.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:25
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Just finished Engine Summer by John Crowley, really liked it. First Crowley book I've read, will not be the last. Nails the "1000+ years future but with tenuous connections to the present" setting; the narrative framing, and how it ties into the plot, was really cool. A bit unevenly paced and some of the characters were a bit thin but overall a gem of a novel.
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Mar 27, 2019 21:21
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Does Gibson's Spook Country get interesting at some point? I liked Pattern Recognition a lot, but I'm 25% through and I don't care about anyone or anything that's happening in this book.
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Mar 27, 2019 23:25
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Just finished Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay based on a recommend in this thread and really enjoyed it. Loved the mix of fairly basic historical fiction with straight up no holds barred fantasy elements. Kay is a great writer and I'm definitely going to read a few more of his. Anyone know of any other good settings that mix low fantasy elements with a dab of the supernatural, preferably pre-Industrial? Doesn't have to be historical per se, but I love me my low magic settings.
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Mar 28, 2019 05:44
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Solitair posted:Goodking is worse than those other authors by an order of magnitude. Goodkind is what would have happened if Ayn Rand wrote a fantasy series and decided not to be subtle with her symbolism. And also of she had a huge s&m fetish.
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Mar 28, 2019 09:02
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my bony fealty posted:Just finished Engine Summer by John Crowley, really liked it. First Crowley book I've read, will not be the last.
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Mar 28, 2019 10:32
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Midgetskydiver posted:Just finished Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay based on a recommend in this thread and really enjoyed it. Loved the mix of fairly basic historical fiction with straight up no holds barred fantasy elements. Kay is a great writer and I'm definitely going to read a few more of his. Ash, by Mary Gentle is pretty good. It's about a mercenary commander in medieval Europe, only things are a bit off. They worship "the Green Christ", who's some kind of weird pagan syncretism of Jesus, and their priests can occasionally do legit miracles. Meanwhile, in the east, half a continent is wrapped in perpetual twilight known as the Doom of Carthage... It is, however, extremely long (possibly too long) and very "gritty", where gritty means quite a lot of often sexualised violence.
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Mar 28, 2019 11:57
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The_White_Crane posted:Ash, by Mary Gentle is pretty good. It's about a mercenary commander in medieval Europe, only things are a bit off. They worship "the Green Christ", who's some kind of weird pagan syncretism of Jesus, and their priests can occasionally do legit miracles. Meanwhile, in the east, half a continent is wrapped in perpetual twilight known as the Doom of Carthage... Sold me on it! Just grabbed it on Kindle, thanks.
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Mar 28, 2019 12:01
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Midgetskydiver posted:Anyone know of any other good settings that mix low fantasy elements with a dab of the supernatural, preferably pre-Industrial? Doesn't have to be historical per se, but I love me my low magic settings. This pretty well describes most of KJ Parker's (actually Tom Holt) stuff. Most of the novels have little or no actual supernatural elements although most of them do seem to be set in the same world, where low-key magic does exist as seen in a number of related short stories. When I say most of the novels seem to be set in the same world, they're not a unified series as such, they just share enough references to geographical or cultural names to show they're somewhat related. It's sort of like if an author of historical novels writes one book set in late republican Rome, another book in medieval Germany where the Holy Roman empire is namedropped a few times, and a third book on some island in the Pacific in the 18th century where one of the supporting characters is a Roman Catholic priest. That sort of spread in space and time.
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Mar 28, 2019 12:12
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Major Ryan posted:Which is a shame for me because I only sort of liked the Laundry Files and gave up after a couple of books, whereas I really enjoyed Accelerando/Glasshouse/Halting State and would probably have preferred individual books/short series over the sprawling series he has going on right now. If it helps, Stross wrote a short story that sort of bridges the gap between his Eschaton & Laundry Files series. Stross's The Laundry + various other foreign govt services that deal with the same threats are super duper top secret in-universe, right? Well in that Stross short story, there is a super duper DOUBLE covert top secret organization that runs around mindwiping agents of all those agencies into believing what they encountered were supernatural threats + definitely not a time-looped AI singularity wiping out competing AI singularities before they can get a foothold on "this" reality.So in theory, these two kinda-similar Charles Stross series are really ONE series and he's gonna reveal it again at the very end to mindfuck everyone who missed that short story. Can't quite recall the name of that short story, but I definitely mentioned + named it in one of my earlier posts in this thread.
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Mar 28, 2019 13:24
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I'm reading Sundiver! It's oscillating between being boring garbage and actually interesting. None of the characters are compelling except for the broccoli alien, the science lectures on the sun are too technical for me and Brin can't write a woman to save his life. It is, in short, the most quintessential sci-fi I have ever read. It nails every bad stereotype about old dude-written sci-fi - while being interesting enough to justify my continuing to read it. PS creating a border zone between America and Mexico and literally making the aliens live there is way too prescient
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Mar 28, 2019 14:41
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Midgetskydiver posted:Just finished Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay based on a recommend in this thread and really enjoyed it. Loved the mix of fairly basic historical fiction with straight up no holds barred fantasy elements. Kay is a great writer and I'm definitely going to read a few more of his. Maybe Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy? I think it will fit the space you're looking to fill.
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Mar 28, 2019 14:49
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:If it helps, Stross wrote a short story that sort of bridges the gap between his Eschaton & Laundry Files series. Stross's The Laundry + various other foreign govt services that deal with the same threats are super duper top secret in-universe, right? That story isn't related to anything else any more than the one about Ollie North failing to prevent the Soviets from feeding America to Cthulhu or the one about the insects infiltrating flatland during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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Mar 28, 2019 16:36
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Just finished reading The Rosewater Insurrection by Tade Thompson. Second book in the Wormwood trilogy, definitely bigger scale than the first book and although characters get reintroduced and you could read it standalone, it doesn't have the training wheels on and instead just keeps hitting with a lot of cool alien-invasion cyberpunk/afropunk. I think the best thing is how different it feels to 'normal' sci fi. Closest comparison might be Neuromancer because of the general vibe and I guess similarity in some of the story beats, but that's not a bad book to be compared with. Some of the characters, especially the not exactly human ones are really well written. Liked the first book but loved this one. Absolutely not a slow second book, so fingers crossed for the finale.
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Mar 28, 2019 16:43
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pseudorandom name posted:That story isn't related to anything else any more than the one about Ollie North failing to prevent the Soviets from feeding America to Cthulhu or the one about the insects infiltrating flatland during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yeah. I can hope though . Last few Laundry books bored me away, slightly curious how many literal-brainworms will be involved if Stross incorporates Brexit into that series.
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Mar 28, 2019 18:40
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Midgetskydiver posted:Just finished Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay based on a recommend in this thread and really enjoyed it. Loved the mix of fairly basic historical fiction with straight up no holds barred fantasy elements. Kay is a great writer and I'm definitely going to read a few more of his.
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Mar 28, 2019 19:04
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Yeah. I can hope though . Last few Laundry books bored me away, slightly curious how many literal-brainworms will be involved if Stross incorporates Brexit into that series. Laundry is running a decade or so behind real time at this point, but the Elder God who is PM as of the last few books left the EU quickly and efficiently in order to bring back capital punishment.
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Mar 28, 2019 19:22
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Also it is a reasonably safe guess at this point that the general public has caught on to the fact that magic is real and that government agencies exist to deal with it.
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Mar 28, 2019 19:32
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pseudorandom name posted:Also it is a reasonably safe guess at this point that the general public has caught on to the fact that magic is real and that government agencies exist to deal with it.
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Mar 28, 2019 19:41
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Also external observers have probably noticed that the United States has forgotten the President exists. And then you can connect the dots backwards to the outbreak of superheroes.
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Mar 28, 2019 19:49
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I bowed out of the Laundry series after the US megachurch/tongue n genitals symbiotes book. Tried reading the one where Stross decided vampires existed in-universe, and then the one where the senior auditors signed everyone-in-the-UK's souls over to some gimp locked in the Tower of London. Both books made me glad I dropped that series when I did. On a totally disconnected topic: Still no eta on the Iain M Banks encyclopedia that Ken MacLeod has been researching for a few years now. Kind of debating sending Jim Butcher some RIFTS sourcebooks/worldbooks for April fools day with the note "Hey. Found the Dresden Files notes you lost when moving a few years ago. Good Luck" attached. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 20:04
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darthbob88 posted:Son of the Morning, by Mark Alder, was pretty popular here when it was new. Basically, it's the 100 Years War, except France has angels on its side, and England is considering enlisting the aid of Hell, since their own angels aren't coming for some mysterious reason. One of the characters is an actual wizard IIRC, but it's still pretty low on magic apart from that.
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Mar 28, 2019 20:26
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Please don’t mail authors anything without checking in before, it’s frightening.
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Mar 28, 2019 22:25
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