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Full disclosure--I've not read a single thing Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire has written.Apparatchik Magnet posted:Uh...even those who look like her? I mean I've seen the pictures of your average convention goer and bumped into more marginal specimens in the SF aisle at bookstores, but I still find this hard to imagine. Unless they're just creepy to every living thing, which I suppose is possible. The subset of convention-goers that are creepy-approaching-rapey to woman authors (or women in general) do not discriminate based on appearance. It's literally: "Is this a woman? 'Flirt' with her and try to gently caress her."
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Feb 12, 2020 21:10
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Please don't engage with the trolls.
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Feb 12, 2020 21:13
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FuturePastNow posted:Has there ever been a sex scene in sci fi that wasn't awkward and superfluous? Asking for a friend. Well, there's straight-up "erotica" aka porn, where the sex scenes are the point and hence cannot be superfluous, and certainly some of that (like Chuck Tingle's stuff) must count as SF. No longer being a hormonal teenager, I don't particularly feel the need to read detailed descriptions of people loving, I already know what that looks like. I'm fine with amusing innuendo and romance plots but as far as I'm concerned the actual sex scenes might as well be replaced by "and then they hosed and it was awesome" or "and then they hosed and it was kind of disappointing" or whatever.
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Feb 12, 2020 23:05
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i liked those Kresnov ones although i prefer his spiral wars books. Her gimmick and limitations do become a little like WoT's braid tugging after awhile although YMMV I think you'll have fun
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Feb 12, 2020 23:15
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branedotorg posted:i liked those Kresnov ones although i prefer his spiral wars books. I can handle robot braid tugging. I'm hoping that when I finish 'em I enjoy 'em enough to go pick up his spiral war series.
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Feb 12, 2020 23:17
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While I'm monopolizing the thread here's some cool news: https://twitter.com/ShepJoel/status/1222335909867089921
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Feb 12, 2020 23:33
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I've lost some respect for McGuire after the whole Jonathan Ross brouhaha. Since that also involved her being weird in the context of cons, I'm willing to believe that guy's friend as well.
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Feb 13, 2020 00:21
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FuturePastNow posted:Has there ever been a sex scene in sci fi that wasn't awkward and superfluous? Asking for a friend. There's Jean Auel's. Oh. Wait. You were going for not awkward...
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Feb 13, 2020 01:15
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Liquid Communism posted:There's Jean Auel's. Since when are (monolithless) cavemen sci-fi anyway?
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Feb 13, 2020 01:29
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branedotorg posted:i liked those Kresnov ones although i prefer his spiral wars books. Fair warning for the Kresnov series - I found the lavish descriptions of torture and injury uncomfortably offputting, though it's toned down substantially after the first book.
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Feb 13, 2020 01:38
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Liquid Communism posted:There's Jean Auel's. Wait, did those books end up being about Morlocks and Eloi or something?
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Feb 13, 2020 04:15
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pseudorandom name posted:Mary Robinette Kowal has written a few. Where? The space pun sex scenes in the Lady Astronaut books are very bad. There's a lot of good, weird, challenging sex writing in short spec-fic, in collections like Her Body and Other Parties. Also, Spar.
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Feb 13, 2020 05:47
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Gnoman posted:Since when are (monolithless) cavemen sci-fi anyway? 2001?
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Feb 13, 2020 05:55
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Cardiac posted:2001? Those were not monolithless.
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Feb 13, 2020 06:12
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Reading Grass by Sherri S. Tepper and I was tempted to actually abandon it, which I rarely do, because drat it is sloooooow. But 100 pages in it's picked up really nicely and is shaping up into an interesting sci-fi mystery, so I'm glad I stuck with it.
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Feb 13, 2020 08:42
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Megazver posted:I've lost some respect for McGuire after the whole Jonathan Ross brouhaha. Since that also involved her being weird in the context of cons, I'm willing to believe that guy's friend as well. She was right about Ross tho.
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Feb 13, 2020 16:18
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been burning through elliot kay's poor man books. i love em for space pirate stuff. i wish we got more with the alien races but im only in book 3 now
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Feb 13, 2020 16:35
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Gnoman posted:Those were not monolithless. My bad, I thought it referred to Jondalars penis.
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Feb 13, 2020 18:47
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freebooter posted:Reading Grass by Sherri S. Tepper and I was tempted to actually abandon it, which I rarely do, because drat it is sloooooow. But 100 pages in it's picked up really nicely and is shaping up into an interesting sci-fi mystery, so I'm glad I stuck with it. Coincidentally Sheri Tepper just came up on an IRC network I'm on, and I've never heard of her but her stuff sounds like something I'd enjoy. Grass was one of the specific recommendations.
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Feb 13, 2020 18:50
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Cardiac posted:My bad, I thought it referred to Jondalars penis. 
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Feb 13, 2020 20:17
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Gnoman posted:Since when are (monolithless) cavemen sci-fi anyway? Planet of the Apes
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Feb 13, 2020 23:35
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Nimisha's Ship by Anne McAffery was a very pleasant surprise from my local library. I've never read a book by her before, so I gave this one a shot. What I got was a pretty standard YA sci-fi adventure coming-of-age story, but with the unusual twist that the protagonist is a woman and the book is unapologetically written by a woman for a female audience. Sure, the story is pure stock and Nimisha is a wish fulfillment character without shame, but it's still pretty neat to happen across a sci-fi book where the protagonist is a woman who dreams of becoming a master engineer and starship designer, and throughout the book it's her intelligence and skill as an engineer that are consistently relevant to the plot, rather than her beauty and wealth (she's gorgeous and ridiculously wealthy, natch). There's even a lesbian couple late in the book that no one comments on as being weird except that it's those two particular personalities pairing up. Teenage me would have gone gaga over this book, and it was still a quick, enjoyable read now.
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Feb 14, 2020 00:14
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Cythereal posted:Nimisha's Ship by Anne McAffery was a very pleasant surprise from my local library. I've never read a book by her before, so I gave this one a shot. What I got was a pretty standard YA sci-fi adventure coming-of-age story, but with the unusual twist that the protagonist is a woman and the book is unapologetically written by a woman for a female audience. Sure, the story is pure stock and Nimisha is a wish fulfillment character without shame, but it's still pretty neat to happen across a sci-fi book where the protagonist is a woman who dreams of becoming a master engineer and starship designer, and throughout the book it's her intelligence and skill as an engineer that are consistently relevant to the plot, rather than her beauty and wealth (she's gorgeous and ridiculously wealthy, natch). There's even a lesbian couple late in the book that no one comments on as being weird except that it's those two particular personalities pairing up. Teenage me would have gone gaga over this book, and it was still a quick, enjoyable read now. The Ship Who Sang by her is a whole book of stories about a brain in a jar lady piloting a ship around, it's extremely 70s tho
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Feb 14, 2020 00:19
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There's a whole series of those, with various co-authors including Mercedes Lackey, S.M. Stirling, Jody Lynn Nye, and Margaret Ball. The City Who Fought is the one I remember liking best, because the main character (the Brain running a space station) is goony as hell.
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Feb 14, 2020 00:24
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It's freezing out, I'm bored, and I'm gonna do something hopefully fun for this thread: Author Patreon Highlight Zone Patreon: give someone [x] money per month, they give you content and it often unlocks all of their previous content. Lilith Saintcrow's patreon gets you a chapter of her ongoing serial fiction (currently Hood, which is sci-fi robin hood), and her previous serial Roadtrip Z (zombies + romance + roadtrip), as well as sneak peeks of her current stuff. There is a Gumroad alternative but I'm not sure if you get the backlog of old posts. Kameron Hurley gets you a bunch of short stories, draft chapters and deleted scenes, videos, audiobook versions of the short stories, and gads more if you're willing to throw a lot of money at her. Lots of bang for your buck here if you like her! Martha Wells is an odd duck in that her patreon is currently dormant and kind of functions as an infrequent newsfeed for her stuff. I wouldn't post it, except: there's a ton of 500-800 word stories set in her Raksura universe. Sadly, no Murderbot shorts. Sonia Lyris has been posting a chapter a month of the sequel to her novel the Seer, which I really enjoyed. When it's all up on patreon she's going to try to figure out how to publish it, or at least sell it in paperback form. And finally, not a patreon but same idea: Caitlin R Kiernan has a setup where you send her 10$ per month via paypal and she emails you a pdf of a short story. Sometimes there are publishing announcements at the end as well. This is the most expensive of these operations, as having a membership doesn't get you past volumes - you have to separately order them each for ten bucks. Sometimes they're repackaged as short story collections and published, it varies. That's all I've got for now - patreon is becoming a bigger and bigger presence for authors given how much the pay sucks. Kameon Hurley's been upfront about how her patreon was her primary income while she was between jobs - it kept her in medicine and pet food. I guarantee there are more authors out there on patreon, but I'm afraid to look because my money is a finite resource. Still: I'd like to hear about other patreons or similar. StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Feb 14, 2020 |
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Feb 14, 2020 18:21
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J V Jones, who's currently working on the last book in the Sword of Shadows series after being on hiatus for a long time, has a Patreon https://www.patreon.com/jvjones/posts where she posts snippets of her work in progress and bits and pieces about her life.
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Feb 14, 2020 20:40
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cardinale posted:J V Jones, who's currently working on the last book in the Sword of Shadows series after being on hiatus for a long time, Holy crap, I'd given up all hope... it's been a goddamn decade since the previous book!
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Feb 14, 2020 21:15
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I know, right?! I was surprised too!
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Feb 14, 2020 21:18
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Thinking about converting the 2nd post in this thread into a SciFi + Fantasy Recommended Authors and Books to check out post. So PM me or directly quote this post with any author/book/book series recommendations you have, and I will add them to the 2nd post of this thread. If I compiled the recommendation list myself, it would be very half-assed, authors or book series I can't stand would be skipped, and I would inevitably miss listing one or more of the scifi-fantasy writers who post here like battula (causing hurt feelings). Also vaguely remember someone either in this thread or another thread complaining how ebooks, more specifically EPUBs really don't do anything clever with their layouts or structure. The ebook version of Rob Swigart's "Portal -A Dataspace Retrieval" actually has a pretty interactive layout(author was big into the interactive-fiction scene). The sidebar/interactive extras in "Portal -A Dataspace Retrieval" heavily reminded of the Leela and Durandal terminal messages from the Marathon video-game series.
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Feb 14, 2020 21:50
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StrixNebulosa posted:Still: I'd like to hear about other patreons or similar. Robert Jackson Bennett writes semi-frequent essays on craft, and imo they're very good. Yours for the low, low price of $1.
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Feb 15, 2020 05:44
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ptkfvk posted:been burning through elliot kay's poor man books. i love em for space pirate stuff. i wish we got more with the alien races but im only in book 3 now The fourth and fifth books have more alien stuff in them. (the fifth book felt like a Stargate SG-1 homage to some extent) Like I said in the military scifi thread they're decent, not high art and they certainly hit all the stereotypical milSF cliches but they're entertaining and readable regardless. (And better than I expected from a self-published author who's other stuff is a UF brorotica series.) The reviews mad at the author and accusing them of being a "Existentialist Pelosi aide" for writing "corporations bad" were a bit of extra added value too:     
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Feb 15, 2020 06:23
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goodreads review posted:completely lost my breakfast when the hero walks into a unisex bathroom
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Feb 15, 2020 11:05
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This whole toilet argument going on on the interwebs and which sometimes leaks in to real world sometimes is so loving stupid. I am tempted to post the image macro of "not this poo poo again."
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Feb 15, 2020 13:06
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I've read a lot of space operas, and never got around to read A Fire Upon the Deep (I know I know). I started reading it recently, just at night before bed, and it wasn't really pulling me in. But after reading the end of the first act last night.. Holy poo poo I can't put it down
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Feb 15, 2020 13:18
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orange sky posted:I've read a lot of space operas, and never got around to read A Fire Upon the Deep (I know I know). I just started reading it as well and was having a similar experience, great to hear that it picks up because I was thinking about putting it down.
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Feb 15, 2020 14:06
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i encounter unisex bathrooms often enough even in the poor and rural area where i live this is to say both that some businesses have consciously unisex bathrooms and also that "unisex bathroom" is what every terrible backroad gas station that can only afford 1 bathroom has also it is the type of bathroom that is in your house makes me wonder where these reviewers live that allows them to think unisex bathrooms are some sort of exotic left-wing fantasy
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Feb 15, 2020 17:59
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PupsOfWar posted:also it is the type of bathroom that is in your house Ooooh ! I'm gonna remember that one.
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Feb 15, 2020 18:41
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Unisex bathroom is where I go if I’m not sure whether I want to pick up a lady or a dude.
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Feb 15, 2020 20:05
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Tommu posted:Does anyone have any recommendations for zombie/post apocalyptic? I like the book Positive by David Wellington. It takes place years after a zombie virus outbreak with the main character having to make a trip across the ruins of America in order to go live in a special camp for those who are potentially infected by the virus.
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Feb 15, 2020 20:28
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It appears that The Market has spoken so I'm going to have to add several paragraphs of exposition to my upcoming mil-scifi project explaining how thanks to the advent of positronic cock cages, men in the 27th century no longer have to be afraid of spermjacking in public restrooms
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Feb 15, 2020 21:13
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