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PupsOfWar posted:w...was it a dolphin Indeed. occamsnailfile posted:Yeah that plotline was just Based on how I remember the sequel trilogy, maybe the mystery should have stayed a mystery. Finished the book, don't think I'll ever read it again. This feels a little weird considering how important it (plus Uplift War) was to young me (I've still got my original mmpb of UW i bought new and has come with me through at least a dozen moves), but I'm not the same reader I used to be.
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Jul 15, 2019 01:16
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all the way. Especially when the victim eventually concluded that the aggressor was just acting in harmless fun, really! I enjoyed the book on the whole but man there are some definite 'old man' ideas in there. Also the fact that Uplift War just completely abandoned the cool mystery plot was annoying, even if it was a pretty good novel.
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This is why I made that initial "David Brin.....ehhhh" reaction after the barely 2 month old public relevations about Brin's personal conduct/behavior came out. It explains and makes so much worse all the questionable/skeevy plots that Brin crammed into his Uplift Universe books. Startide Rising has the harassment dolphin, Uplift War has an entire skew of skeevy chimp eugenics stuff + trinary birdAlien rulers BDSM, for example. All that stuff is Brin's kink being written out ala Heinlein.
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Jul 15, 2019 02:00
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:This is why I made that initial "David Brin.....ehhhh" reaction after the barely 2 month old public relevations about Brin's personal conduct/behavior came out. I will give some fairness to Brin, the chimp eugenics is presented as flawed and onerous to the chimps, though the overall attitude is “well that’s just galactic culture lol.” The bird aliens didn’t really come off as a kink thing to me, more a very rigidly hierarchical society meeting impossible challenges to its orthodoxy. There’s still creepy/dumb/middle-aged white guy stuff all over it and Brin himself being all those things IRL does make them stand out.
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Jul 15, 2019 02:14
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StrixNebulosa posted:Has anyone in here ever read the Seer by Sonia Orin Leyris? I'm about halfway through it and cannot put it down. It's about a young woman on the run, a man who is potentially consort to the princess (and the king is very old), an assassin, and a mage. It's about domestic politics in a complicated Kingdom (a counterfeit coin conspiracy is my current favorite subplot), what it's like to live on the run constantly, and growing up. Baen does occasionally publish good stuff, just...not often. And it feels like it's less often now than it was 10-15 years ago, although possibly it's my tastes that have changed. I remember Seer coming up favourably recently, but I forget if it was here or in another TBB thread. It's on my backlog, now.
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Jul 15, 2019 02:29
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adary posted:The way he tells little stories in a huge universe I guess. I loved his culture novels
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Jul 15, 2019 02:52
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ToxicFrog posted:Baen does occasionally publish good stuff, just...not often. And it feels like it's less often now than it was 10-15 years ago, although possibly it's my tastes that have changed. Every time my backlog runs dry I read this thread. Then I have to stop reading it until I make some progress and the thread moves 400 pages.
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Jul 15, 2019 02:55
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occamsnailfile posted:I will give some fairness to Brin, the chimp eugenics is presented as flawed and onerous to the chimps, though the overall attitude is “well that’s just galactic culture lol.” The bird aliens didn’t really come off as a kink thing to me, more a very rigidly hierarchical society meeting impossible challenges to its orthodoxy. There’s still creepy/dumb/middle-aged white guy stuff all over it and Brin himself being all those things IRL does make them stand out. There is many layers to the chimp weirdness stuff in Uplift War, galactic culture lol was one thing, Brin hypothesising out chimp sex clubs and chimp sexual mores was where the skeeviness levels became overtly noticable on a re-read. Bird alien trinary ruling stuff...the ritualized domination subservience game each of the 3 individual bird alien rulers was trying to win to become queen ruler of the other 2 bird alien rulers, welp the quickest way to describe that in an already run-on sentence was 'BDSM' or possibly 'quasi-BDSM'. Been slowly doing an ebook version (for personal usage only) of M John Harrison's 1975 short story collection (for personal usage only). The differences between the 2000 version of Lamia + Lord Cromis story and the original 1975 version of the story are striking....original version of the story is definitely stronger, with the ending making 200% more sense than the 2000 version Lamia + Lord Cromis. 1975 version has Cromis hooking up with a mysterious purple cloaked woman over a period of a few weeks and doing lots of cocaine in his free time with more world details(Cobaltmere!). 2000 version has Cromis reading poetry and becoming fascinated with a other-worldly boy with lots and lots of tie-ins to other MJH Viriconium series stories. Both versions of the story end similarly with Cromis's kill getting ganked by Dissolution Kahn and the Sixth Beast turning out to be the purple cloaked woman/otherworldly boy.
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Jul 15, 2019 03:11
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PupsOfWar posted:my usual recc of this type is the vorkosigan saga, which can be very cozy depending on the book Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you don't mind fantasy, Ithnalin's Restoration by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Thanks for the recommendations. I'm adding them to my list. I have not read Vorkosian Saga yet, nor do I mind fantasy.
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Jul 15, 2019 03:39
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gvibes posted:House of Suns by alistair reynolds? It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I recall it being big in terms of time and apace, but still personal (and also really really good) Was going to recommend this as well before I saw this post. Reynolds' Chasm City and The Prefect are both fairly tightly focused as well, although Reynolds' characters are kind of bland which does detract. The first two thirds of House of Suns is beautiful Gothic space opera and manages to take a modernist hard science view of the universe and make it awe inspiring and intimidating.
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Jul 15, 2019 05:52
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For Revelation Space and Ice Shields, I figure the other reason they kind of just got dropped being mentioned is Reynolds feels like the author who would at a certain point just assume that now that we established this I don't need to mention it again and can talk about other stuff. The Revelation Space setting is interesting enough that I always wondered if opening it up to other authors to do their own stories might be an interesting development.
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Jul 15, 2019 07:06
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Richard Kadrey's latest book, "The Grand Dark" is pretty good. It's sort-of/not set in a roaring 20s Europe after the Great War. Only this war was a lot worse than our own and ended up nuking (plaguing) High Proszawa, while the refugees and everyone else live in Low Proszawa. It's Steam-punkish with Automatons, limb replacement and, of course, genetically engineered creatures. The book follows a bike courier who skipped the war and has to live in the Bohemian aftermath. The city is not-quite 1920's Europe, with a kaleidoscope of ethnic names from Peterson to Branca, Vohrer, Konig and others. It's like fantasy Prague, but not. It's a quick read and a one-off. If you a get a chance I would recommend it, it's a nice change of pace from his Sandman Slim books. But there's still a lot of drug use.
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Jul 15, 2019 07:14
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PupsOfWar posted:Also, historical fiction is chill a lot of the time, so you could try rustling up some Edith Pargeter or something If you're going to recommend Edith Pargeter, you should start with the Brother Cadfael Mysteries that she wrote as Ellis Peters. They're a series of stories set during the Anarchy about a former Crusader who became a monk and finds a talent for solving crimes.
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Jul 15, 2019 12:58
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Xtanstic posted:Thanks for the recommendations. I'm adding them to my list. I have not read Vorkosian Saga yet, nor do I mind fantasy. Ithanalin's Restoration is part of a loosely-knit series but it stands alone just fine (the series follows the setting, not individual characters). If you like it, read the rest of them starting with The Misenchanted Sword. They vary a bit in quality but out of the fourteen or so books only one or two of them are bad and people tend to disagree on which two those are.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:05
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How are the expanse books regarded? I haven't watched the show, I'm about 90% done the first book and it seems pretty good. Is that similar to saying Rothfuss is "pretty good"? 
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Jul 15, 2019 19:13
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mewse posted:How are the expanse books regarded? I haven't watched the show, I'm about 90% done the first book and it seems pretty good. Is that similar to saying Rothfuss is "pretty good"? I personally couldn't stomach them three separate times. I'd hit the horny space captain main character and stop reading.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:19
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mewse posted:How are the expanse books regarded? I haven't watched the show, I'm about 90% done the first book and it seems pretty good. Is that similar to saying Rothfuss is "pretty good"? I liked the early hints of Dead Space poo poo, but it didn't pay off. I've read worse, far worse, but I just couldn't be bothered after the fourth book.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:21
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They're a consistent product, exactly as procedural as you'd expect from eight books written at a pace of one book a year. Book 5 is the closest they come to genuinely great. They feel exactly the same, tonally, whether they're dealing with ancient alien artifacts or asteroid belt terrorist poliltics. Capital-F Fine. e: like 90s Cringe Rock said it's remarkable how fast they drop the idea of the protomolecule as a body-horror contagion threat. And how long it takes to give the central cast any characterization.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:23
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Reading Wikipedia, apparently I read one book further than I remember, and apparently the protomolecule starts being a bigger thing at some point, but ehhhh. Despite a lot of people including me thinking they went downhill, I can definitely see why you'd call them consistent. They are. You know what you're getting, a few hundred pages of science fiction product. Edit: I just want a whole bunch of books that are basically dead space, maybe some system shock, a dash of prey, a whole bunch of alien but not so much the actual alien, some event horizon, but just scared people on a spooky horror ship full of weird meat or cyborg meat on the walls and ideally some kind of sinister ai. it doesn't even have to be a space ship. E2: yes I've read Voyager in Night. 90s Cringe Rock fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jul 15, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 19:28
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I stopped reading the Expanse around book 4 or 5. It wasn't bad as such I just lost interest. Not awful or objectionably horrible, just predictable.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:37
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I stopped reading the Expanse around book 4 or 5. It wasn't bad as such I just lost interest. Not awful or objectionably horrible, just predictable.
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Jul 15, 2019 20:21
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90s Cringe Rock posted:
I can't speak to it yet, as it's on my 'to-read' list and I haven't actually read any of it yet. But this might be what you're looking for. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/602187/salvation-day-by-kali-wallace/9781984803696/ Just came out
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Jul 15, 2019 20:32
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Edit: I just want a whole bunch of books that are basically dead space, maybe some system shock, a dash of prey, a whole bunch of alien but not so much the actual alien, some event horizon, but just scared people on a spooky horror ship full of weird meat or cyborg meat on the walls and ideally some kind of sinister ai. it doesn't even have to be a space ship.
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Jul 15, 2019 20:37
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anilEhilated posted:Have you read Unto Leviathan/Ship of Fools?
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Jul 15, 2019 20:46
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I have kind of a weird request, is there any good Norse Mythology influenced sci-fi out there? I don't know if anyone remembers the game Too Human, but basically what that game was trying to be (instead of the terrible mess it ended up being) would be amazing. Basically Epic Space Asgard.
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Jul 15, 2019 21:40
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Substitute Indian Myth, and Lord of Light is really good.
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Jul 15, 2019 22:24
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Deptfordx posted:Substitute Indian Myth, and Lord of Light is really good. Amusingly I was going to say "I basically want Lord of Light, but Norse mythology" in my original point. Agreed, though, it's excellent and definitely what I'm hoping for.
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Jul 15, 2019 22:26
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MockingQuantum posted:I have kind of a weird request, is there any good Norse Mythology influenced sci-fi out there? I don't know if anyone remembers the game Too Human, but basically what that game was trying to be (instead of the terrible mess it ended up being) would be amazing. Basically Epic Space Asgard. Isn't this what Stargate SG:1 is? There have to be books.
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Jul 15, 2019 22:41
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How clued up on Hindu/Buddhist mythology do you have to be to appreciate Lord of Light?
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Jul 15, 2019 22:54
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pseudanonymous posted:Isn't this what Stargate SG:1 is? There have to be books. SG-1 has Epic Space Asgard, but they're not the main focus and don't really do many Asgardian things. Sg-1 has more of an Egyptian thing going on.
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Jul 15, 2019 22:56
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pseudanonymous posted:Isn't this what Stargate SG:1 is? There have to be books. I thought Stargate was Egyptian mythology but I'm not all that familiar with the franchise. And I'm not big on TV show novelizations as a rule, though I've been surprised before.
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Jul 15, 2019 22:57
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Darth Walrus posted:How clued up on Hindu/Buddhist mythology do you have to be to appreciate Lord of Light? not at all, I don't know anything about it and think it's a great book can anyone who does have some knowledge of Hindusim comment on whether it makes you appreciate the book more? or perhaps less?
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Jul 15, 2019 23:04
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MockingQuantum posted:I have kind of a weird request, is there any good Norse Mythology influenced sci-fi out there? I don't know if anyone remembers the game Too Human, but basically what that game was trying to be (instead of the terrible mess it ended up being) would be amazing. Basically Epic Space Asgard. I'm hesitant to call it good, but Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap series is a SF-ized version of the Ring Cycle.
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Jul 15, 2019 23:15
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MockingQuantum posted:I have kind of a weird request, is there any good Norse Mythology influenced sci-fi out there? I don't know if anyone remembers the game Too Human, but basically what that game was trying to be (instead of the terrible mess it ended up being) would be amazing. Basically Epic Space Asgard. Northworld by David Drake
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Jul 15, 2019 23:18
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Just finished The Seer by Sonia Orin Lyris and holy moly Credit to the Seer: A+ ending (with enough dangling bits that I do want a sequel but I'm not starving for one. An ending in the style of "the adventure continues"), great character writing, badass ladies everywhere, and it made me turn pages so fast that I devoured 910 pages in less than a week. That doesn't happen to me! There's a sequel apparently coming this year and I neeeeeed it
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Jul 15, 2019 23:22
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I just want a whole bunch of books that are basically dead space, maybe some system shock, a dash of prey, a whole bunch of alien but not so much the actual alien, some event horizon, but just scared people on a spooky horror ship full of weird meat or cyborg meat on the walls and ideally some kind of sinister ai. it doesn't even have to be a space ship. You're making me think of Blindsight some, but only some.
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Jul 15, 2019 23:42
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my bony fealty posted:can anyone who does have some knowledge of Hindusim comment on whether it makes you appreciate the book more? or perhaps less? Creatures of Light and Darkness is a lot weirder than Lord of Light but is very (very) roughly a similar idea but with Egypt.
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Jul 15, 2019 23:53
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Nevvy Z posted:You're making me think of Blindsight some, but only some. There's definitely elements of this in Blindsight (which is free https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm ) and Echopraxia in some ways is even more creepy.
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Jul 16, 2019 00:07
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Xtanstic posted:I just finished reading Record of a Spaceborn Few and was unfortunately disappointed by it. I preferred the first two books in the series. Is there anything else in the "chill/fun slice of life" niche that those books are in? I need something fun and relatively low-stakes to scratch the itch. I've read The Goblin Emperor already, which is usually suggested in this thread in the same breath. If you're okay with manga I'd suggest Hakumei to Mikochi. It's only about a couple tiny people living in the woods and their friends.     
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Jul 16, 2019 00:20
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MockingQuantum posted:I have kind of a weird request, is there any good Norse Mythology influenced sci-fi out there? I don't know if anyone remembers the game Too Human, but basically what that game was trying to be (instead of the terrible mess it ended up being) would be amazing. Basically Epic Space Asgard. Elizabeth Bear has a series called The Edda of Burdens beginning with All the Windwracked Stars. Iirc it's a weird post-ragnarok sci fi about a valkyrie who survived.
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Jul 16, 2019 01:05
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my bony fealty posted:not at all, I don't know anything about it and think it's a great book I have some knowledge but have no way of knowing if that increased my appreciation or not. Maybe read it once through, learn some basics, and read again?
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Jul 16, 2019 03:35
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