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I just learned that recent novel A Memory Called Empire contains a character named Thirty-Six All Terrain Tundra Vehicle. Sorry, I don't know anything else about the character or the book, I just thought you should know.
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Apr 4, 2019 11:12
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anilEhilated posted:The difference is that Asher doesn't use the violence to confront any actual issues. Torture porn lacks meaning. I'd be willing to trust James to sneak some in there. Not sure if you would consider it an actual issue but in Asher's Owner series body horror and such are used to illustrate the dehumanization that can come with a fully automated society and for lack of a better word the dissociation you form with your own body and humanity when body mods and cyber uplinks are thing.
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Apr 4, 2019 13:21
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I just learned that recent novel A Memory Called Empire contains a character named Thirty-Six All Terrain Tundra Vehicle. Sorry, I don't know anything else about the character or the book, I just thought you should know. I will buy the book based on this fact alone.
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Apr 4, 2019 14:59
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I just learned that recent novel A Memory Called Empire contains a character named Thirty-Six All Terrain Tundra Vehicle. Sorry, I don't know anything else about the character or the book, I just thought you should know. A descendant of Number Ten Ox born through a radical in vitro fertilization program.
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Apr 4, 2019 15:08
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I just learned that recent novel A Memory Called Empire contains a character named Thirty-Six All Terrain Tundra Vehicle. Sorry, I don't know anything else about the character or the book, I just thought you should know. The B.A. Baracus role in my secret A-Team 2.0 with robots spec script has been found. MurderBot is Hannibal of course, and Chappy is Faceman. Johnny 5 or C3PO is the useless team sidekick.
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Apr 4, 2019 15:35
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I just learned that recent novel A Memory Called Empire contains a character named Thirty-Six All Terrain Tundra Vehicle. Sorry, I don't know anything else about the character or the book, I just thought you should know. Also Six Helicopter. "Mahit wondered how and when he'd learned to say his name with that degree of self importance. And also with a straight face."
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Apr 4, 2019 16:30
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Can anyone recommend some mil-SF reminiscent of Glen Cook’s Passage at Arms or the “fleet actions” parts of Singularity Sky? Some combination of above-average prose, reasonably interesting characters, and interesting hard-ish SF warfare, where “hard” in this case means the author put some thought into the implications of their premise, and the technology has at least the feel of plausibility.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:32
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Kestral posted:Can anyone recommend some mil-SF reminiscent of Glen Cook’s Passage at Arms or the “fleet actions” parts of Singularity Sky? Some combination of above-average prose, reasonably interesting characters, and interesting hard-ish SF warfare, where “hard” in this case means the author put some thought into the implications of their premise, and the technology has at least the feel of plausibility. A very very tentative rec for the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. I enjoyed it a lot, but the writing is not up to the same par as Glen Cook or Stross.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:38
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I seem to remember some good spaceship firing torpedo action in Dread Empire's Fall, but I can't confirm that it's a major part, it was some time ago. Don't binge the Lost Fleet series unless you're having a hard time remembering what battlecruisers are and want it really hammered into your mind forever. They're OK. Better than Weber.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:40
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StrixNebulosa posted:Thanks! Because it’s a Cold War fantasy. The Americans have to be right and the sole realised Soviet character has to have a realisation that the politburo is hideous when Americans don’t have to have the realisation that capitalism is terrible. Rereading it recently has been a bit of a revelation on what was a solid favourite. It’s got that big ol’ “gotta do this hard sci-fi the way papa Clarke would have wanted” stank all over it. Jem does the same kind of idea better. More fantastical because it’s oil bloc vs people bloc vs food bloc, but more realistic because everyone is a poo poo in their own special way.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:44
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Or, drat this book is good at shoving you back in time and making you feel it.
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Kestral posted:Can anyone recommend some mil-SF reminiscent of Glen Cook’s Passage at Arms or the “fleet actions” parts of Singularity Sky? Some combination of above-average prose, reasonably interesting characters, and interesting hard-ish SF warfare, where “hard” in this case means the author put some thought into the implications of their premise, and the technology has at least the feel of plausibility. Go directly to the Risen Empire duology by Scott Westerfeld. Exactly what you want.
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Apr 4, 2019 21:07
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General Battuta posted:Go directly to the Risen Empire duology by Scott Westerfeld. Exactly what you want. Hey, I just want to let you know that I love those books and I am picking up the Baru Cormorant series specifically because I've seen you praise them before.
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Apr 4, 2019 21:19
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General Battuta posted:Go directly to the Risen Empire duology by Scott Westerfeld. Exactly what you want. This guy ain't wrong, those books are great.
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Apr 4, 2019 21:27
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Welp. The Worst of All Possible Worlds is out, so I finally got around to reading A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe and A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy, only to discover that it's not out in Canada. For gently caress's sake.
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Apr 5, 2019 01:59
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ToxicFrog posted:Welp. The Worst of All Possible Worlds is out, so I finally got around to reading A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe and A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy, only to discover that it's not out in Canada. Far as I can tell it isn’t released yet anywhere and is scheduled for a summer release - where are you seeing it actually available?
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Apr 5, 2019 02:29
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Kalman posted:Far as I can tell it isn’t released yet anywhere and is scheduled for a summer release - where are you seeing it actually available? I misread the "release: March 30th 2020" as March 30th 2019. It doesn't come out until next year, apparently. 
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Apr 5, 2019 04:00
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General Battuta posted:Go directly to the Risen Empire duology by Scott Westerfeld. Exactly what you want. From the writer of Blue Planet that recommendation means everything, I'll grab them immediately. Honestly, if you have any other recommendations in the vein of your work on BP, I'm in for those too! Someone convince Peter Watts to write milSF, tia.
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Apr 5, 2019 05:14
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Kestral posted:Can anyone recommend some mil-SF reminiscent of Glen Cook’s Passage at Arms or the “fleet actions” parts of Singularity Sky? Some combination of above-average prose, reasonably interesting characters, and interesting hard-ish SF warfare, where “hard” in this case means the author put some thought into the implications of their premise, and the technology has at least the feel of plausibility. Glen Cook's The Dragon Never Sleeps has some badass space combat as well. And for a series loaded with trigger warnings both in its own right and for the author (and one in this post, beware), Stephen R Donaldson of all people put some great space combat into his Gap Cycle. The last two hundred pages of book four are a chase through an asteroid belt involving the protagonists and multiple pirate ships, while a navy cruiser and an alien battlewagon duke it out out in clear space. The human beings in the series do some really vile poo poo to each other; mind control and serial serial rape being just the low end of the scale. Really good, really hard to read.
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Apr 5, 2019 05:20
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ToxicFrog posted:Welp. The Worst of All Possible Worlds is out, so I finally got around to reading A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe and A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy, only to discover that it's not out in Canada. the real worst of all possible worlds is the one where i have to read books with these corny rear end titles! got em!!
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Apr 5, 2019 05:31
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https://twitter.com/itsokg/status/1112473455650172929
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Apr 5, 2019 07:10
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I seem to remember some good spaceship firing torpedo action in Dread Empire's Fall, but I can't confirm that it's a major part, it was some time ago. There's a number of major space battles, yes. It's also interesting to see people developing strategies after being part of a navy serving an alien race that quashes all independent thought, has fought no genuine wars in centuries and whose sole tactic is planetary bombardment with neutron bombs. (More accurately, it's interesting to see what happens when you take the US armed forces and cube them.)
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Apr 5, 2019 10:04
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I'm ~80 pages from finishing The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin and hooooooooooooooly poo poo at the reveal that the probe/'the droplet' was just an incredibly advanced motherfucking BATTERING RAM. This trilogy continues to amaze me; I am not as fond as this translator as the first, definitely, but his style grew on me. It really does amaze me that humanity is so righteously convinced of their victory of the Trisolarans.. but it's like hello, they literally created subatomic supercomputers to gently caress with our sciences. Goddamn cocky humanity 
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Apr 5, 2019 14:51
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Johnny Truant posted:I'm ~80 pages from finishing The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin and hooooooooooooooly poo poo at the reveal that the probe/'the droplet' was just an incredibly advanced motherfucking BATTERING RAM. This trilogy continues to amaze me; I am not as fond as this translator as the first, definitely, but his style grew on me. It really does amaze me that humanity is so righteously convinced of their victory of the Trisolarans.. but it's like hello, they literally created subatomic supercomputers to gently caress with our sciences. Goddamn cocky humanity The chinese culture parts of those books were really interesting to me. How politics are viewed, how Luo Ji is portrayed as the hero of the whole thing (and how the American wallfacer fucks up tremendously) mewse fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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Apr 5, 2019 15:12
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my bony fealty posted:Started The Mask of the Sorcerer by Darrell Schweitzer. Not sure about it so far. A lot of crazy poo poo is constantly happening but the language is really straightforward and plain so it doesn't feel right. Sekenre has like no personality. I'm still pretty early and the central hook is interesting so I will keep going but I hope it gets more...unique? Better written? ok I finished this book and it did get a lot better. If I reread it I would probably like the opening chapters more. The last few chapters with the thorn child stuff was weird and felt kinda tacked on but overall a cool book with a great take on magic and sorcery. very Book of the New Sun influenced so if you like that check it out. anyone read this or anything else by Darrell Schweitzer? are his other books worth reading?
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Apr 5, 2019 15:47
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mewse posted:The chinese culture parts of those books were really interesting to me. How politics are viewed, how Luo Ji is portrayed as the hero of the whole thing (and how the American wallfacer fucks up tremendously)  It took me a minute to get into The Three Body Problem because the first like, 50? pages are all about the Chinese cultural revolution. Which, I know now, is incredibly fascinating and equally horrible, but when I was starting the book I was just thinking "what the gently caress I don't want a history lesson!" With that being said I'm having a hard time really describing how this is different from the Western sci-fi I've read up until now, how would y'all describe it? I do think, at least in The Dark Forest, that some of it is lost in translation, as there have been a few instances where what was going on didn't make a lot of sense. For example, when Zhang Beihai first meets Dangfang Yanxu in theNatural Selection, I think the end of their interaction had me seriously  I'm excited to get back to Ken Liu's translation, and also to check out his short stories.
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Apr 5, 2019 15:53
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Johnny Truant posted:I'm excited to get back to Ken Liu's translation, and also to check out his short stories. Liu's short stories are great, most of them are collected in Paper Menagerie. The best one IMO is All the Flavours which is a story about Guan Yu in America. His longer books are less great IMO. I read The Grace of Kings and found it tiresome. It also pissed me off a bit how much he took major character background details directly from Chinese history -- one general is straight up just a gender-swapped Han Xin.
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Apr 5, 2019 16:08
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Just finished The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P Djeli Clark (apologies for the dropped diacritics). In an alt-history Cairo where djinn have made it a major world metropolis, partners from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantment, and Supernatural Entities try to exorcise a haunted tram car. Their efforts take them through a city that's becoming ever more cosmopolitan, with multiple religions, immigrants, and even suffragettes. This was short, but exciting, comedic, and really enjoyable. Set in the same world as a previous novella, but not really a series. I kind of hope it becomes one, I'd happily read more about government ghostbusters in this world. After 2 by Clark this week, I'm super excited to read more by him. These two have had Pricy Novella Syndrome, but are really good, so check out your libraries y'all.
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Apr 5, 2019 16:42
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Eon spoilers: There was a part of me that genuinely believed they wouldn't go back to war. 
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Apr 5, 2019 16:55
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Just to add to Ken Liu chat, two of his short stories, The Paper Menagerie and Mono No Aware, were read by LeVar Burton on his podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/levar-burton-reads/e/51277610 https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/levar-burton-reads/e/58729561
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Apr 5, 2019 17:04
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Some of you guys might remember The Third Martian Dick Temple, which appeared in Daily Science Fiction last year. Well, I got a new one out today. No dicks this time, but it's got something called a Murder Dyson, so you know you gotta read it. (Also this is my other writerly name, not Sheila Borideux.) The story is called "Arkushanangarushashutu" and it's free to read at Little Blue Marble
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Apr 5, 2019 20:10
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I just finished The Broken Earth trilogy and dang is it good.
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Apr 5, 2019 20:15
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Man I wished you guys would have warned me that Murderbot will not return until 2020, because now I've read all the novellas and the short story and I just want more Murderbot.
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Apr 5, 2019 20:30
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my bony fealty posted:ok I finished this book and it did get a lot better. If I reread it I would probably like the opening chapters more. The last few chapters with the thorn child stuff was weird and felt kinda tacked on but overall a cool book with a great take on magic and sorcery. very Book of the New Sun influenced so if you like that check it out. This is one book I've been meaning to get to at some point (for the past twenty years that is). Finnish scifi and fantasy zine I used to read in high school (well, I still do!) had a top 10 fantasy list of one of the writers I've partially gone through but been planning to check properly. Mask of the Sorcerer, Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, R.A. Lafferty's Past Master, Cook's Black Company, James Blaylock's Elfin Ship at least were listed. Cook and Wolfe I've read and some on there I just don't recall what they were (should check my shelf for that old issue).
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Apr 5, 2019 20:40
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I'm 1/4 through Eon and it's awesome. I normally avoid old sci-fi predicting our present but this book is honestly pure sci-fi, with a mix of alternate history. Super good.
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Apr 6, 2019 19:57
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Lunsku posted:This is one book I've been meaning to get to at some point (for the past twenty years that is). Finnish scifi and fantasy zine I used to read in high school (well, I still do!) had a top 10 fantasy list of one of the writers I've partially gone through but been planning to check properly. Mask of the Sorcerer, Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, R.A. Lafferty's Past Master, Cook's Black Company, James Blaylock's Elfin Ship at least were listed. Cook and Wolfe I've read and some on there I just don't recall what they were (should check my shelf for that old issue). Its good, i got a hardback copy for $5 from thriftbooks. well worth it. I'm gonna get the sequel short story collection sometime. saw Black Leopard Red Wolf in the new books section at the library so gonna delve into that after this Octavia Butler collection I'm currently reading. Bloodchild was a good story, I liked it.
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Apr 6, 2019 20:18
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TheAardvark posted:I'm 1/4 through Eon and it's awesome. I normally avoid old sci-fi predicting our present but this book is honestly pure sci-fi, with a mix of alternate history. Super good. Ey, awesome! Eon is really, really good so far. Out of curiosity, why do you avoid old sci-fi predicting our present? I find that stuff to be interesting, because it's not that they it wrong (boy do they get stuff wrong) but how they go wrong, and where and why. The fact that Eon has - initially - an international collaboration working on the Stone is surprisingly prescient before the Cold War rears its ugly head again.
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Apr 6, 2019 20:22
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StrixNebulosa posted:Ey, awesome! Eon is really, really good so far. Somehow it's harder for me to get excited about fiction that... disproves itself. That's so stupid to say, considering we're talking about pure make believe, but it's true. I guess having to look at something through two different glasses of possibility is too much for my suspension of disbelief. But I am really enjoying those aspects of Eon right now. Definitely not any really defensible justification behind it. Edited for clarity AARD VARKMAN fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Apr 6, 2019 |
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Apr 6, 2019 21:38
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I got to meet Peter Watts at a neat conference today. In case anyone's interested, here's a video link. https://www.facebook.com/iask.hungary/videos/405082220313549/
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Apr 6, 2019 22:11
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StrixNebulosa posted:it's not that they it wrong (boy do they get stuff wrong) but how they go wrong, and where and why. Foundation's punch card-driven space battleships own 
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Apr 7, 2019 03:07
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General Battuta posted:Go directly to the Risen Empire duology by Scott Westerfeld. Exactly what you want. Fwiw the Amazon copy of the first one i bought a few years ago had the duology as an (unannounced) omnibus. Free book! Sadly I had bought both and Amazon wouldn't refund the second one. Didn't like leviathan, has anyone read and enjoyed his YA books?
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Apr 7, 2019 06:39
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