|
McCoy Pauley posted:Dragon's Path didn't blow me away when I read it, but the series gets pretty interesting as it goes on, particularly when it starts to become in large part about founding banks and monetary policy, and the good guys fighting the bad guys in ways very unlike the typical fantasy series it seemed to start out as. Well, poo poo, I think I might end up checking out the second book then...
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 05:34
|
|
RIP ZEEZ 
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 10:05 |
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:Garrett PI by Glen Cook, Chronicles of Elantra by Michelle Sagara, and I haven't read it yet but I think Dragons of the Cuyahoga by S Andrew Swann fit the bill. I can't speak to Chronicles of Elantra but I've seen it rec'd enough that it's on my list. The first 2 books are free with amazon prime in the US as well.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 19:11
|
|
|
Blood of Elves (Witcher #1) by Andrzej Sapkowski - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00276HAEY/ Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GVCXWR5/
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 22:47
|
|
|
Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I dunno why, but mundane poo poo in a fantasy world is like my literary crack. Bloke with a mysterious past joins the police in a huge fantasy city and get a grumpy dwarf as a partner. It's like a straight guards guards. https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B0778NDDJM/ref=dp_st_0316469076 And seconding Glen Cook's Barrett PI
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 22:52
|
|
|
Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Kings is a pretty good book. The sequel is pretty good as well. Well worth the 2.99 price. I saw what was before the mod edit. Please don't be like that, Stupid_Sexy_Flander.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 22:55
|
|
|
Yup, got all 3 of the 5th ward series. Pretty good books! Have all the Garretts as well. They carry in quality but are all at least readable. Kinda hoping Lawrence watt-evans continues his series as well. Only 1 or 2 kinda poo poo ones in the series. Edit- didn't know I got mod edited, actually. My bad. I'll try to do better in the future guys.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 22:56
|
|
|
Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Yup, got all 3 of the 5th ward series. Pretty good books! Have all the Garretts as well. It happened just now, probably in response to me reporting it. Thank you. This is better than you being probated.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 23:16
|
|
|
branedotorg posted:And seconding Glen Cook's Barrett PI Disagree, Cook's Barrett PI series goes heavily up it's own rear end by the 3rd/4th book. Read the original Rex Stout Nero Wolfe stories instead. SFL Vol 05 continues to amuse and horrify. -Robert Heinlein's FRIDAY came out, and gets very mixed SFL reviews, even from the Heinlein Defense squad. One particularly virulent Heinlein Squad poster drops the mask completely and blames "incorrect usages of grammar" inside FRIDAY as the *WINK* real reason *WINK* why they hate Heinlein's FRIDAY.....as in "how dare this female main character dare to use feminine pronouns when describing things in book." -more Star Trek 2 movie chat, with press tours about Spock dying yes/no driving talk about still a pipe-dream Star Trek 3. -someone complains about getting sent 12 duplicate issues of the latest SFL digest, and the impact of having to store 12 copies of the SFL Digest email on their system, even for one day. Remember, the overall computer resources and network bandwidth of 1982 were a rounding error of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the computing power and bandwidth available to the year 2020. -Empire Strikes Back gets scheduled for a 1982 wintertime re-release in theaters, while A New Hope gets teased as being re-released to the theaters for the 3rd or 4th time since it originally came out in 1977 -I originally thought Foonley computer system chat was some kind of delayed April 1st 1982 SFL joke, but no. Judging from the series of not-Mad rebuttal comments, I theorized that the Foonley computer architecture was the precursor of what became the RISC/SPARC computer architecture.....however I was doubly wrong. Foonley architecture evolved into MIPS, an also-ran competitor project to RISC. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Jul 14, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 23:51
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:Disagree, Cook's Barrett PI series goes heavily up it's own rear end by the 3rd/4th book. Read the original Rex Stout Nero Wolfe stories instead. To address this kind of rec in a more general way - I'm not a fan of people dissuading people from series because of later books not being good. You've essentially tossed out two good books because the third one is bad. I see this over in the urban fantasy thread too where Anita Blake books 1-5 have no sex and are fantastic horror/noir outings but because orgies happen in later books they're all bad. It bugs me.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 00:39
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:To address this kind of rec in a more general way - I'm not a fan of people dissuading people from series because of later books not being good. You've essentially tossed out two good books because the third one is bad. I see this over in the urban fantasy thread too where Anita Blake books 1-5 have no sex and are fantastic horror/noir outings but because orgies happen in later books they're all bad. It bugs me. We even have a perfect example of the right advice to give: “Read Dune, then stop reading the series when you stop enjoying it.”
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:01
|
|
|
Kalman posted:We even have a perfect example of the right advice to give: “Read Dune, then stop reading the series when you stop enjoying it.” Agreed. I should have posted "Read addtional SFL Vol 05 stuff I forgot to include earlier -Star Trek 2 came, E.T. came out, and Poltergeist came out. Many reviews of Star Trek 2 & E.T. have been posted, Star Trek 2 questions, etc. -A few U.S. based people complain about commercials suddenly being shown in theaters before the actual movie They-Paid-2-see starts. One or two people from Europe reply saying that has been common practice for a while in Europe. -One of the very earliest posters in the SFL mailing list discussion group started up a regional to the San Francisco Bay area precursor to Nick at Nite.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:40
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:To address this kind of rec in a more general way - I'm not a fan of people dissuading people from series because of later books not being good. You've essentially tossed out two good books because the third one is bad. I see this over in the urban fantasy thread too where Anita Blake books 1-5 have no sex and are fantastic horror/noir outings but because orgies happen in later books they're all bad. It bugs me. This is a fair point, but reading Nero Wolfe is almost always good advice.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:52
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:To address this kind of rec in a more general way - I'm not a fan of people dissuading people from series because of later books not being good. You've essentially tossed out two good books because the third one is bad. I see this over in the urban fantasy thread too where Anita Blake books 1-5 have no sex and are fantastic horror/noir outings but because orgies happen in later books they're all bad. It bugs me. Garret P.I. is good up until the sexy UFOs show up in Angry Lead Skies. And it gets good again afterwards and ends strongly in Wicked Bronze Ambition. It's arguably all downhill after the fourth book, but that just because Old Tin Sorrows is a really damned good noir detective novel. Cook uses the fantasy trappings of the setting to full effect to make this one more noir than noir. To StrixNebulosa's point, there's a dozen solid mysteries out of the 14 books, don't throw them all away because the author got horny for a book or two. The advice for this series is, if you find one you don't like, skip to the next, they get better.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:56
|
|
|
Ben Nevis posted:This is a fair point, but reading Nero Wolfe is almost always good advice. Nero Wolfe and his crew were Timelords before it was cool. Plus the original Nero Wolfe stories have low-key literature (Nero's reading list) and food gourmand factors (Fritz the cook) that rarely gets mentioned much. Seriously though, the first few Garrett PI books heavily borrow from the Nero Wolfe series before Glen Cook got Garrett more actively involved with various factions of the fantasy NYC setting, while Nero Wolfe + Archie Goodwin always stayed detached when dealing with the police/clients/murderers/govt officials. Pretty much the only authors or books I would recommend nobody read are mainstays of the mil-fiction/mil-scifi genres, most of post 9/11 Ken MacLeod's work, and Alfred Bester's the Deceivers. Bester's the Deceivers is so terrible and mega-racist and stupid a KKK Grand Wizard would be "uh, this is too much for me, turn down the racism dial". And speaking of Ken MacLeod, the Iain Banks project he's been "working on" for at least the past 6 years, The Culture: Notes and Drawings has been pushed back again to 25 February 2021, for the 5th? 7th? time now. e: added Alfred Bester's the Deceivers to this post. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Jul 15, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 04:53
|
|
|
Kalman posted:We even have a perfect example of the right advice to give: “Read Dune, then stop reading the series when you stop enjoying it.” That goes for any series and particularly those series where each book is a self contained story. On something else, I read The great god Pan on my kindle and it contained a massive amount of mistranslations/modern day versions (the phase e book or data streams as example ) that can’t have been part of the original text. Is this some effect of machine reading given that Machen died in the fifties? I have no issues reading archaic English and things like this makes hesitant about buying older books on kindle.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 05:37
|
|
|
SFL Vol 05 was a extremely quick read in comparison to the first 4 volumes, almost every third SFL Digest update started with apologies to the SFL Digest subscribers for extended downtime/missed SFL Digest updates caused by hardware failure. -positive feedback on Spielberg's E.T. came in hard as SFL Vol 05 came to an end. Vol 06 was started and immediately reminded me that I mind-wiped away the existence of a terrible scifi book no-one should EVER read, even for ironic purposes. Alfred Bester's the Deceivers is being added to my earlier posts list of do-not read ever books/authors. Bester's the Deceivers is so terrible and mega-racist and stupid a KKK Grand Wizard would be "uh, this is too much for me, turn down the racism dial". -one thing I failed to mention in the SFL archives was that ever since the movie adaption of Philip K Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" aka "Bladerunner 1982" got announced, there has been massive confusion because the title "Bladerunner" comes from a completely different story/author, aka The Bladerunner, a 1974 novel by Alan Nourse. So half the people discussing Bladerunner have been talking about Alan Nourse's story and getting confused when PKD's Electric Sheep gets discussed and vice versa with PKD's Electric Sheep discussion and Alan Nourse. Alan Nourse was a actual medical doctor slash scifi writer whose stories tended to involve medical themes. No lies, the plot and storyline of The Bladerunner seems eerily prescient of what is going on in 2020 right now/what seems to be the future of health care, and I am going to track down a copy of it asap. quote:The Bladerunner @1974 by Alan Nourse. Looking forward to reading reactions to The Thing 1982 & Bladerunner 1982 as I get deeper into SFL Vol 06. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Jul 15, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 06:49
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:Garret P.I. is good up until the sexy UFOs show up in Angry Lead Skies. And it gets good again afterwards and ends strongly in Wicked Bronze Ambition. It's arguably all downhill after the fourth book, but that just because Old Tin Sorrows is a really damned good noir detective novel. Cook uses the fantasy trappings of the setting to full effect to make this one more noir than noir.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 12:45
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:Yeah, I never got the whole "Garrett gets bad after books 3-4" thing because I'm fairly sure Old Tin Sorrows is one of those and it's easily the best in the series and only one I'd recommend reading as standalone. The problem with the Garrett series is I always get a few books in and then go read Nero Wolfe instead.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 13:36
|
|
|
Cardiac posted:That goes for any series and particularly those series where each book is a self contained story. The Great God Pan was written in intelligible modern English. I don't know what you got - maybe some weird ereader errors or something? Where did you get your version? The Project Gutenberg plain text version (http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/389/pg389.txt) uses the word 'ebook' several times in the legal material around the book but never in the text itself. They also have a free kindle version.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 15:34
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:Yeah, I never got the whole "Garrett gets bad after books 3-4" thing because I'm fairly sure Old Tin Sorrows is one of those and it's easily the best in the series and only one I'd recommend reading as standalone. Old Tins Sorrows was indeed really good. My Garrett experience is odd though, because I read the first couple, Tin Sorrows, then a couple random ones before the last three due to hard copy unavailability. So I never experienced a downward trend, just the pretty jarring change the last few books had from the Noir trappings to an actual somewhat happy ending. And some surprisingly emotional turns along the way. I enjoyed Gilded Latten Bones and Wicked Bronze Ambition a lot.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 15:37
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:Garret P.I. is good up until the sexy UFOs show up in Angry Lead Skies. And it gets good again afterwards and ends strongly in Wicked Bronze Ambition. I agree with 'good until "Angry Lead Skies" '. "Whispering Nickel Idols" was fine and I remember pretty much nothing about "Cruel Zinc Melodies", but "Gilded Latten Bones" was a slog and I actively disliked "Wicked Bronze Ambition". Maybe this weekend tho I'll do a re-read of the series, at least the first few, it's been a bunch of years.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 17:31
|
|
|
Cardiac posted:That [read until it stops being good and then stop] goes for any series and particularly those series where each book is a self contained story. It only really works for series that exhibit a consistent downward trend, though. Sometimes you have a series that's generally good but one book in particular is a stinker -- or perhaps a good book that's dramatically tonally different from the rest of the series and thus won't necessarily appeal to the same audience. Ethshar is like this, for example -- if you stop at Taking Flight you miss out on The Spell of the Black Dagger, Night of Madness (both decent), and Ithanalin's Restoration (a perennial recommendation ITT). Or things like Discworld where each book is referencing/parodying a different genre (or specific body of work) and will land very differently depending on how familiar you are with it; I disliked Soul Music on my first read-through and I don't think there's any way you can argue it's all downhill after that. fritz posted:I agree with 'good until "Angry Lead Skies" '. "Whispering Nickel Idols" was fine and I remember pretty much nothing about "Cruel Zinc Melodies", but "Gilded Latten Bones" was a slog and I actively disliked "Wicked Bronze Ambition". Between this and The Black Company, Glen Cook's endings seem to be kind of divisive. I thought TBC had a great ending but that seems to be very much a minority opinion here.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 18:52
|
|
|
a foolish pianist posted:The Great God Pan was written in intelligible modern English. I don't know what you got - maybe some weird ereader errors or something? Where did you get your version? Yeah, given that Machen was English, this surprised me especially since the prose was not worse than Lovecraft. I bought it on Amazon using the kindle and the horrible text handling surprised me. That’s what I get for taking the easy route.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 19:25
|
|
|
Is there anything like Asimov’s Foundation, but… Good? I hate to put it that way since it’s a classic of the genre and I know a lot of people have fond memories of it, but coming to it for the first time as an adult, the only reason I’m making myself struggle through the flat prose and awful dialogue is because I want to experience this, ah, foundational piece of SF. I love generational stories though, and a sci-fi epic spanning a thousand years of history would be extremely my jam if it were well-written and had more characters than “the smug, correct person” and “the obstinate wrong person.”
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 03:11
|
|
|
Kestral posted:jam if it were well-written and had more characters than “the smug, correct person” and “the obstinate wrong person.” I mean, look at modern American politics. That dichotomy may be a lot more realistic than we'd like to think
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 03:25
|
|
|
Read through the latest Lady Astronaut novel that came out yesterday. Spoilers for the whole book: I thought it was pretty good, the writing flowed well and the protagonists seemed fairly human and relatable. Sometimes it was difficult to tell if a married couple was actually disagreeing and fighting or if it was just how they related to each other. At times, it strained belief when the main character was involved in high level politics, a very capable pilot, a literal WWII spy, and (eventually) President of the United States, but she had a lot of empathy and events really seemed to affect her as opposed to her being in control all the time. I can't remember if her husband's death was mentioned in the previous book, it definitely hit hard in this one. Even though it was a larger base, the danger they were in felt more immediate than it did in the first duology. I liked how the bad guy was portrayed and also why he gave up so much information. Everything about the riots at the beginning of the book, to people focusing on their own issues over world problems, to a quarantine over the outbreak of a deadly disease was honestly a little surreal to read through, since it hit so close to what we are going through now. I'm not much of a mystery reader, so I can't really comment on if that portion was well done or not. It was really interesting to me how long they knew who did it but waited to actually interrogate them. Sometimes the politics feels weird? This is very much an idealized version of a U.S. space program and within the program race and gender relations feel much more modern than they do in the rest of the 1950s - '60s world as described. There are several times where Black characters talk about or are put down, but nearly all of those incidents are off screen, which feels like a deliberate choice to not show directly. I have no idea what the U.S.S.R. is doing, I think they have their own program, but as far as I can tell they just aren't mentioned. It was the strongest in the series so far. Also I think the longest. Mary Robinette Kowal said that the manuscript's word count was double that of the first book. Potential content warning: It's not glorified, but if depictions of anorexia are upsetting, then this is not a good book for you.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 04:14
|
|
|
Kestral posted:Is there anything like Asimov’s Foundation, but… Good? I hate to put it that way since it’s a classic of the genre and I know a lot of people have fond memories of it, but coming to it for the first time as an adult, the only reason I’m making myself struggle through the flat prose and awful dialogue is because I want to experience this, ah, foundational piece of SF. I love generational stories though, and a sci-fi epic spanning a thousand years of history would be extremely my jam if it were well-written and had more characters than “the smug, correct person” and “the obstinate wrong person.” This is the correct take on Foundation. It's a great book if you want to listen to pompous old farts lecture people. Heinlein had a similarly grating "everyone's an idiot but me" worldview but could at least string together an engaging story, Clarke had similarly flat writing skills but at least didn't come off as an obnoxious prick. Asimov is easily the worst of the big three of the golden age writers.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 05:31
|
|
|
Kestral posted:Is there anything like Asimov’s Foundation, but… Good? I hate to put it that way since it’s a classic of the genre and I know a lot of people have fond memories of it, but coming to it for the first time as an adult, the only reason I’m making myself struggle through the flat prose and awful dialogue is because I want to experience this, ah, foundational piece of SF. I love generational stories though, and a sci-fi epic spanning a thousand years of history would be extremely my jam if it were well-written and had more characters than “the smug, correct person” and “the obstinate wrong person.” Kalpa Imperial by Angelica Gorodischer (Translated by Ursula Le Guin) The Glory of the Empire by Jean D'Ormesson and of course the origin, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons are all extremely good. The Starbridge Chronicles by Paul Park also crosses generations but it's up to taste on how good it is as series.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 07:20
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean, look at modern American politics. That dichotomy may be a lot more realistic than we'd like to think Hah, too real. But in Foundation it's like Asimov has only two character archetypes he can work with, and they're just writing style templates that he applies to whoever happens to be objectively right or wrong in that section of the story. Captain Pritcher's portrayal between Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation, for example. Edit: fez_machine posted:Kalpa Imperial by Angelica Gorodischer (Translated by Ursula Le Guin)  I am intrigued by this one. Thanks! Would love recommendations for more generational stories in SF or fantasy. I saw Centennial early in life and for all its faults, I have never stopped being fascinated by that sort of story. Kestral fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Jul 16, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 07:35
|
|
|
Kestral posted:Would love recommendations for more generational stories in SF or fantasy. I saw Centennial early in life and for all its faults, I have never stopped being fascinated by that sort of story. Here's a few more generation spanning stories of varying quality: The Man Who Awoke by Laurence Manning The Last and First Man by Olaf Stapeldon Realtime/Bobble by Vernor Vinge The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury Little Big by John Crowley (also maybe Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr but I haven't read it) The Beggars in Spain series by Nancy Kress The Emortality series by Brian Stableford A Canticle for Lebowitz by Walter M Miller The Red Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson Accelerando by Charles Stross
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 08:56
|
|
|
Legend of Galactic Heroes. Though I've heard the novel translations range from fine to barely acceptable because the publisher kept changing the translator, but there's always the 110 episodes of the original OVA series!
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 09:29
|
|
|
The Three Body Problem series by Lui Cixin Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky if generations of spiders count
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 09:40
|
|
|
C.M. Kruger posted:Legend of Galactic Heroes. Though I've heard the novel translations range from fine to barely acceptable because the publisher kept changing the translator, but there's always the 110 episodes of the original OVA series! This is a big commitment, but it's really goddamn good. Has very few of the normal anime pitfalls, and is absolutely worth your time.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 11:09
|
|
|
Cardiac posted:Yeah, given that Machen was English, this surprised me especially since the prose was not worse than Lovecraft. There's a surprising amount of public domain stuff on Amazon that's just "we took the ebook from gutenberg and converted it to kindle format and somehow hosed it up badly in the process". There's also a surprising amount of "we took a pirate copy of this in copyright but out of print book and uploaded to Amazon for $10 and hope no-one notices".
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 12:11
|
|
|
freebooter posted:This is the correct take on Foundation. It's a great book if you want to listen to pompous old farts lecture people. Nah. You're forgetting that Asimov's best works are his short stories. He was really good at taking one idea, spinning it around, and coming up with a neat angle on it. The short story was the perfect length for that kind of examination, and that's where Asimov excelled. Nothing of Heinlein's or Clark's that I read ever affected me the way "The Last Question" did, or made me think the way "The Dead Past" did. There's a reason that Asimov's Science Fiction is a magazine dedicated to science fiction short fiction and not, say, a novel publishing house.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 16:50
|
|
|
The Days of Solomon Gursky by Ian McDonald - short story spanning near future to the end of time. Semiosis by Sue Burke- duology regarding colonization of a new planet with sentient but slow plant life
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 17:56
|
|
|
freebooter posted:This is the correct take on Foundation. It's a great book if you want to listen to pompous old farts lecture people. Counterpoint: Asimov didn't write books about how fascism and incest are good, actually.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 18:05
|
|
|
Silver2195 posted:Counterpoint: Asimov didn't write books about how fascism and incest are good, actually. Probably, but I don't think Heinlein was an actual sex pest like Asimov.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 18:34
|
|
|
Kchama posted:Probably, but I don't think Heinlein was an actual sex pest like Asimov. He never had daughters so I suspect it was just lack of opportunity.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 19:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 10:05 |
|
|
Kestral posted:Would love recommendations for more generational stories in SF or fantasy. I saw Centennial early in life and for all its faults, I have never stopped being fascinated by that sort of story. On the off chance you haven't read them, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt and Alastair Reynolds' House of Suns. They're both not exactly generational, which is the point of both books, but they deal with groups of people changing over time.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 21:13
|
|
