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I assume it's AO3 as a project, although there's good Murderbot fic there so maybe it's that?
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Apr 2, 2019 19:18
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Space Opera is bloody great. I prefer the Rick and Morty episode, unironically. I like Valente a lot, but Space Opera has this starry-eyed cloyishness that is kind of strange coming from her. The Rick and Morty episode gets at the kind of horror and nihilism that the premise actually suggests.
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Apr 2, 2019 20:36
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Space Opera does Douglas Adams pretty hard. If that's the sort of thing you'd bounce off of, it's probably not for you.
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Apr 2, 2019 21:01
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pospysyl posted:starry-eyed cloyishness Toe to tip, that's a Eurovision.
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Apr 2, 2019 21:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:A friend from my bookchat reviewed it here and essentially convinced me to preorder it. Some Dude's Blog Review posted:Key Descriptors: horror, scifi, cave exploration, psychological, unreliable narrator, LGBTQ+ Sounds like a good time.
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Apr 2, 2019 22:14
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Ben Nevis posted:Reading Black God's Drums now and I'm excited to hear it's a good one. And I just finished this. It was a super quick read. I think I give the nod to Murderbot, but Black God's Drums is pretty great. Voodoo, sky pirates, WMDs, it has everything.
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Apr 2, 2019 22:21
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StrixNebulosa posted:Eon's... I can't even say first revelation, everything about the stone is a revelation. But the first massive revelation in the library. Christ. I don't think I've read anything that's absolutely, fully conveyed what it was like to live back then under the shadow of imminent nuclear death for everyone. I know we're living in the shadow of global warming (we have what, twelve years?) now but... that's still years compared to the sense that everyone you know and love will be/could be dead soon. Eon was my sci-fi gateway drug when I was 12 or so, along with the Ender series, and I still have a strong fondness for it. Check out the sequel Eternity for a satisfying conclusion to the characters' arcs set up in Eon, and Legacy if you like Olmy's character and creepy biology.
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Apr 2, 2019 23:36
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ToxicFrog posted:I bounced off Space Opera less than a chapter in, I just found something about it incredibly grating. It's not an issue with Cat Valente's stuff in general, I liked Deathless well enough. Yes. It's a Douglas Adams impression by someone who is very bad at doing an Adams impression. The rest of slate doesn't really impress me either. But the, uh, exciting and entirely non-controversial discussion about how the Best Novel nomination for every major genre award since the whole Puppy thing has moved from a mostly even gender split to three straight years of slates of all-or-almost-all women - and mostly the same women over and over at that - and how that's totally healthy and normal and has led to better shortlists, I think I will leave to the gentlegoons of the thread.
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Apr 3, 2019 00:17
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The Puppies were the only group of science fiction fans with worse taste than the WorldCon membership.
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Apr 3, 2019 00:27
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What would you have nominated?
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Apr 3, 2019 00:29
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The 1944 slate seems not great. I mean, maybe I'm just a filthy casual, but only two novels I've ever heard of? I guess it was midwar and I do know the authors of some of the unknowns. That said, the novella slate is great because it's really just The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath vs. The Little Prince and I really appreciate that direct comparison (the latter should win and it's not close.)
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Apr 3, 2019 02:05
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New book award season rolls around yet again, selection process of nominees stirs up questions yet again. Did Scalzi get somehow nominated again this year, and was dead editor of the Years Best Scifi anthology put up for posthumus awards (Gardner Dozois)? Cryptologs update: Letters to the newsletter can't stop mentioning previously redacted stuff, especially that totally redacted article in Cryptolog #002. 14 issues into the Cryptolog readthrough, I now have the authors full name with+without middle initial, and know that the article involved Saudi Arabia, the banking industry, the UK, and "COMINT Analysis". Given the sheer age of the original article (44+ yrs old) spoilering the terrible redacting job in declassified documents feels redundant but regardless....Amazing work NSA redactors. Guessing wire-transfers + petrodollars + money laundering remain the wheel of fortune phrases yet to be uncovered in that issue #002 article. Funnily, if you word swapped bitcoin + block chain into that #002 article it would be very a very Charles Stross-y topical short story.
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Apr 3, 2019 02:25
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StrixNebulosa posted:What would you have nominated? Like, yeah, what would you have nominated? It was always treated as "well that's just what the fans want" when the awards were nearly all (white) men and it was Jeffrey Ford and Mike Resnick over and over, and not to pick on those guys too hard but these things go in waves and this one too shall crash. Something else will replace those authors. As long as nobody is being a skunk at the picnic and deliberately trying to gum up the works. Though the nominations coming out has finally motivated me to read Trail of Lightning, I traded for it on strength of recommendations but everything about how it is presented makes it very hard to tell it apart from other urban fantasy/paranormal romance stories, including the blurb about the dark mysterious man on the back.
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Apr 3, 2019 02:49
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DACK FAYDEN posted:The 1944 slate seems not great. I mean, maybe I'm just a filthy casual, but only two novels I've ever heard of? I guess it was midwar and I do know the authors of some of the unknowns. I'd say Perelandra is an easy win for novels. Kudos to Leiber for two nominations though.
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Apr 3, 2019 03:16
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occamsnailfile posted:Though the nominations coming out has finally motivated me to read Trail of Lightning, I traded for it on strength of recommendations but everything about how it is presented makes it very hard to tell it apart from other urban fantasy/paranormal romance stories, including the blurb about the dark mysterious man on the back. In a lot of ways it is pretty boilerplate UF, but in some ways the standard format makes the unique twists on the formula stand out that much more, and for me those little unique additions made the book worthwhile. I still don't think it's Hugo or Nebula worthy, necessarily, but I'm not smashing furniture over its inclusion or anything. Honestly one of the most interesting things about the book (the setting) doesn't get that heavily explored, so I'm hoping it comes into play more in sequels.
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Apr 3, 2019 03:26
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I am so curious if Black Leopard Red Wolf gets nominated for a Hugo next year, because it landed with a wet thud.
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Apr 3, 2019 03:26
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StrixNebulosa posted:I am so curious if Black Leopard Red Wolf gets nominated for a Hugo next year, because it landed with a wet thud. Yeah it's kind of surprising that it hasn't gotten some sort of fanfare. I think James is at a disadvantage, in that he's best known for a book that is too non-genre for a lot of the genre blogs/reviewers to have covered it, but the fact that this one was billed as "African Game of Thrones" probably turned off a lot of more literature-focused reviewers. I'm reading it now, and I'm not very far, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is a bit of a sleeper hit.
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Apr 3, 2019 03:30
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MockingQuantum posted:Yeah it's kind of surprising that it hasn't gotten some sort of fanfare. I think James is at a disadvantage, in that he's best known for a book that is too non-genre for a lot of the genre blogs/reviewers to have covered it, but the fact that this one was billed as "African Game of Thrones" probably turned off a lot of more literature-focused reviewers. I'm reading it now, and I'm not very far, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is a bit of a sleeper hit. I've found - at least in my bookchat, which is admittedly not a large sample size of people - that the book has landed poorly not because of the marketing but because of the content. It's so grimdark and horrific - like, you can't get through almost any handful of pages without reading about some new awful thing like rape, pedophilia, incest, slavery, violence, gang rape, cannibalism, etc - that of the handful of people who tried the book, they fled from it, upset. They wanted African Fantasy - they loved Binti, for example - but absolutely not this horror show. And I mean, it's frustrating because the book is so drat good. The writing is amazing, the first half of it at least was great (I had to put it down, will finish it later) and I want to rec it to everyone I know, except... it's dark as hell. In what feels like a really gratuitous way, too.
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Apr 3, 2019 03:37
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Honestly it sounds a lot like African game of thrones
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Apr 3, 2019 03:40
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StrixNebulosa posted:I've found - at least in my bookchat, which is admittedly not a large sample size of people - that the book has landed poorly not because of the marketing but because of the content. It's so grimdark and horrific - like, you can't get through almost any handful of pages without reading about some new awful thing like rape, pedophilia, incest, slavery, violence, gang rape, cannibalism, etc - that of the handful of people who tried the book, they fled from it, upset. They wanted African Fantasy - they loved Binti, for example - but absolutely not this horror show. Tade Thompson and Tomi Adeyemi might be people for them to check out for some African fantasy. Also the general “sword and soul” movement. I’m sympathetic with bouncing off the grimdark. I found GoT simply exhausting to watch.
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Apr 3, 2019 03:54
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occamsnailfile posted:Tade Thompson and Tomi Adeyemi might be people for them to check out for some African fantasy. Also the general “sword and soul” movement. I’m sympathetic with bouncing off the grimdark. I found GoT simply exhausting to watch. Thanks! Eon chat because I'm yelling at this book: Why can't the US just tell the Russians about their discoveries? You'd think that they'd WANT to tell them about the imminent nuclear war coming up so they could help defuse it! Instead everyone's hiding things and no wonder the Russians are getting twitchy. And if you know nuclear war is coming up, stop doing that! Twitchy people are more likely to push that nuclear button! Why are you acting so suspicious! ....I ask, as a child of the modern era who wasn't raised to fear and hate Russians. I have faith in human decency, even from godless hedonist communist scum.  Or, drat this book is good at shoving you back in time and making you feel it.
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Apr 3, 2019 04:07
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MockingQuantum posted:Yeah it's kind of surprising that it hasn't gotten some sort of fanfare. I think James is at a disadvantage, in that he's best known for a book that is too non-genre for a lot of the genre blogs/reviewers to have covered it, but the fact that this one was billed as "African Game of Thrones" probably turned off a lot of more literature-focused reviewers. I'm reading it now, and I'm not very far, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is a bit of a sleeper hit. this book frankly sounds cool, if these incredibly stupid goodreads reviews are anything to go by quote:honestly, this is the most pretentious book i have ever read. its so far beyond high-brow, its in an obnoxious league all on its own. james employs every literary device possible to transform his words into riddles, half-truths, and vague mysteries. as a reader, i dont mind having to sometimes work for a story. some of the best stories take patience to dissect deeper meanings. but what is really happening here is marlon james hiding behind his fancy words and complicated sentences to distract the reader from the lack of substance and development. the rhetoric in this story is dense, convoluted, and bogged down with false promises of something worth reading. the prose is evasive and meandering, dragging the reader around and around in circles without an end in sight. its honestly a disorganised and conceited mess.
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Apr 3, 2019 06:32
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I sort of think it's a fool's errand to ask for 'African fantasy' given how tied fantasy as a tradition is to western european stuff, however if you are working with a broader definition of fantasy as in fantastical then Amos Tutuola and Kojo Laing(also the author of the first african sci fi novel afaik) might be worth checking out.
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Apr 3, 2019 06:35
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I'm surprised to see I haven't read any of the 1944 short stories, other than "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," which is one of Bloch's classics.
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Apr 3, 2019 06:38
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StrixNebulosa posted:
Yeah, for those of us who are old enough to have first-hand memories of the early/mid 1980s, this sort of poo poo is definitely in character for the western powers that be. I'm still somewhat amazed that we did not in fact nuke ourselves to hell back then.
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Apr 3, 2019 11:13
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A human heart posted:I sort of think it's a fool's errand to ask for 'African fantasy' given how tied fantasy as a tradition is to western european stuff, however if you are working with a broader definition of fantasy as in fantastical then Amos Tutuola and Kojo Laing(also the author of the first african sci fi novel afaik) might be worth checking out. These are cool recs, thank you.
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Apr 3, 2019 15:25
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I was wondering why Kadath was on the 1944 slate, but then I remembered it was published posthumously. Didn't think it was 1944 though. General B - serious suggestion for once, but would The Devil work for book 3?
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Apr 3, 2019 15:47
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A human heart posted:I sort of think it's a fool's errand to ask for 'African fantasy' given how tied fantasy as a tradition is to western european stuff, however if you are working with a broader definition of fantasy as in fantastical then Amos Tutuola and Kojo Laing(also the author of the first african sci fi novel afaik) might be worth checking out. Looking these up and woah, yeah I wanna read this. I also find it hilarious that something that sounds as badass as Major Gentl and the Achimota Wars has 8 ratings and 0 reviews on goodreads. quote:The rebirth of Africa in the year 2020 AD is the starting point of this surrealistic novel, which pits Major Gentl against the mercenary Torro the Terrible for control of Achimoto City. The two warriors prepare for a final battle which will decide the fate of Africa's future. Back to ebay/abebooks/amazon I go, looking for --- quote:Kojo Laing is my homeboy. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this book of his to anyone. It's a confusing tale of humans, animals and plants living together in a futuristic world whilst a series of 'friendly' wars are raging on. If you are taken aback by the cover of the book, you should be because once you start reading you are surely going to get confused. I still love reading reviews more than I love reading books sometimes  ...and frick, this book is expensive. Okay, I take it back, goodreads can ignore it. I'm going to have to save for this thing.
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Apr 3, 2019 15:58
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Laing's Women of the Aeroplanes seems pretty readily available, though possibly less badass sounding.
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Apr 3, 2019 16:04
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A human heart posted:this book frankly sounds cool, if these incredibly stupid goodreads reviews are anything to go by In my experience of reading crappy Goodreads reviews, "I'm willing to put in the work to dissect a text to find hidden meanings" usually means they like books like Da Vinci Code (or if we're being generous, something like Name of the Rose), but not that they're actually all that interested in reading books that will genuinely challenge them. That said, the book is very... James-ian so far. I think it'd be a harder book to tackle if you're going in expecting a more traditional fantasy narrative, and honestly I'm glad I read Brief History of Seven Killings first, because that was another book where you really had to just trust that it all mattered and bask in some amazing prose. Also like Strix said earlier, the book is just relentlessly, constantly dark, which is sure to turn off a whole lot of milquetoast Goodreads reviewers. also mods please change my username to "Repetitious Orgies"
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Apr 3, 2019 16:04
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Ben Nevis posted:Laing's Women of the Aeroplanes seems pretty readily available, though possibly less badass sounding. quote:what we've got here is a sort of plotless, comic kind of thing, with lots of dick jokes and puns and wordplay, and fun stuff like that. lots of funny parts like, guy who sleeps under a mercedes benz with his wife, guy with a vulture that perches on his pipe, inventing a 'stupidity machine', and others too. you can also tell that the book is cool because there's a glossary of words at the end, some of which are local ghanaian words, and some of which the author just made up.
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Apr 3, 2019 16:08
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StrixNebulosa posted:Looking these up and woah, yeah I wanna read this. I also find it hilarious that something that sounds as badass as Major Gentl and the Achimota Wars has 8 ratings and 0 reviews on goodreads. What an amazing cover though. 
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Apr 3, 2019 16:21
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Thranguy posted:The Hugo Nominations are up. Nobody talked about this much but I think The Calculating Stars might be the best of the bunch. The whole slate is decent, but not incredible. Gardner is definitely a shoo in for posthumous best editor award.
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Apr 3, 2019 18:59
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StrixNebulosa posted:Looking these up and woah, yeah I wanna read this. I also find it hilarious that something that sounds as badass as Major Gentl and the Achimota Wars has 8 ratings and 0 reviews on goodreads. It is pretty much unread because it's out of print and there was only one edition in like 1992 when the african writers series which it was published under was already on the way out.
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Apr 3, 2019 19:49
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Want to clarify my last post in this threadquote:Funnily, if you word swapped bitcoin + block chain into that #002 article it would be MockingQuantum posted:Also like Strix said earlier, the book is just relentlessly, constantly dark, which is sure to turn off a whole lot of milquetoast Goodreads reviewers. also mods please change my username to "Repetitious Orgies" Torture porn fiction genre isn't for everyone. Obviously the author gets off at least once while writing (and usually a 2nd time when the royalty checks come in) , but the readers who don't bail out 1/2 through get off reading it too.
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Apr 4, 2019 00:07
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that doesn't really sound like 'torture porn' in the sense of saw or something.. books are allowed to be violent and have rapes in them.
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Apr 4, 2019 06:44
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like, i've never read any of his books but when you have an african american dude coming from a tradition of actual literature who writes about oppression and similar topics doing an african 'fantasy' book and the book is full of rapes and violence, it seems fairly bizarre to just assume that he's doing it because it makes him horny. maybe there's something else going on there?
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Apr 4, 2019 06:53
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A human heart posted:like, i've never read any of his books but when you have an african american dude coming from a tradition of actual literature who writes about oppression and similar topics doing an african 'fantasy' book and the book is full of rapes and violence, it seems fairly bizarre to just assume that he's doing it because it makes him horny. maybe there's something else going on there? True. Like you I have never read the dudes books, was commenting on a 3rd hand re-observation quote in general terms. Unrelentingly constantly dark books tend to veer into that territory, and agreed, not all authors go that far. Neal Asher's Splatterjay series definitely circles into that Saw "torture porn" territory, unless I am remembering that series wrong. HyperDeath Waterworld, massive bodily damage, wolverine style healing, brain-shunt puppeteering, and something about true death only being possible via notKryptonite.
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Apr 4, 2019 07:47
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Neal Asher goes pretty deep into the whole body horror thing but I never felt it was torture porn.
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Apr 4, 2019 09:46
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Telsa Cola posted:Neal Asher goes pretty deep into the whole body horror thing but I never felt it was torture porn. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 11:03
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