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teamcharlie posted:In the interest of honesty about books: I read Ready Player One and enjoyed it. Thought it was real fun. Didn't think it was God's gift to literature, but it was sufficiently enjoyable sci-fi trash aimed at like tweens/teens who like lovely movies and video games that I have never regretted reading it (Heinlein Juniors are better, of course, but there's only so many of those). i'm sorry but there's actually very little difference between RP2 and RP1. RP2 is just a bit more brazen and, somehow, more poorly-written. like, the stuff you're citing as proof that RP2 is a garbage fire is all there in RP1 - cline just wasn't convinced he was god's gift to the world just yet. like, you can't honestly, earnestly say that you expected cline of all people to get trans/gay/nb stuff right, can you? RP1 was filled with red flags on that front.
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Dec 3, 2020 05:15
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StrixNebulosa posted:Yeah uh, as I've started the Oathbreaker/blood/honor/etc series there's rape in both backstories of the main women, and I can definitely think of some older male SF authors whose work also seems to make sexual assault into a sort of recurring motif (Jack Vance, for instance). But it’s probably true that a writer like Asimov wouldn’t go there. Maybe it’s not so much a female thing as a New Wave thing.
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Dec 3, 2020 05:27
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StrixNebulosa posted:Yeah uh, as I've started the Oathbreaker/blood/honor/etc series there's rape in both backstories of the main women, and I'd argue that rape as a trope in sci-fi and fantasy is sadly pretty common, no matter what the sex of the author or what era it was written. Besides Vance, just off the top there's also Donaldson and Thomas Covenant, or Goodkind and every book in the Sword of Truth, or Martin in every book of ASoIaF. Or David Gemmell and the Rigante saga. In contemporary woman-written fantasy, there's Diana Gabaldon. I don't think it's wrong to broaden the question from 'why older women writers?' to 'why is it a trope in these genres at all?' and from there I can only imagine it's a mix of: A perpetuation of older mythologies and religions (every major religion or myth has rape in it, and fantasy/sci-fi pulls heavily from those stories) A poor response to another text ('Mercedes Lackey had a rape scene, I need one too') The author trying to demonstrate the horrors of the world (Martin and Westeros) The author just has a thing for rape and bondage (Norman and Gor; Goodkind and the Mord-Sith) A lazy shortcut to backstory and Finding Inner Strength (Meyer writing Rosalie Hale in Twilight) Basic titillation (every Amazon self-published fantasy) Mostly, though, I think rape scenes are just a side effect of the melodrama that's inherent in the genres. There isn't a lot of room for subtlety in world-saving fantasy or space-bending sci-fi, and rape/murder/other vicious acts are a quick and easy way to get the plot moving and give the characters (unnuanced) motivations in the service of the bigger story. Which I suppose is probably pretty true for most genre fiction. But with fantasy and sci-fi, you can be weird about it. edit for clarity Eason the Fifth fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Dec 3, 2020 |
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Dec 3, 2020 06:02
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Horizon Burning posted:i'm sorry but there's actually very little difference between RP2 and RP1. RP2 is just a bit more brazen and, somehow, more poorly-written. like, the stuff you're citing as proof that RP2 is a garbage fire is all there in RP1 - cline just wasn't convinced he was god's gift to the world just yet. like, you can't honestly, earnestly say that you expected cline of all people to get trans/gay/nb stuff right, can you? RP1 was filled with red flags on that front. I get that people are obsessed with identity politics, but it's simply not the biggest problem with Ready Player Two, not because Cline now 'gets it,' but because the book is so, so very bad in pretty much every other way. Even compared to Ready Player One. Like, it's cool if you didn't like RPO. That's fine. Totally acceptable position as far as I'm concerned. RP2 is still a MUCH worse book. If anything, I'd say that identity politics is something that he has very very slightly improved on, which is to say that he still sucks at it and I fault nobody for still having a problem with him about it. It's just...gently caress. I've never seen a book this badly written that wasn't on Kindle Unlimited and shat out by a nobody hoping to make a quick $5 writing about ladies loving dinosaurs. My guess is that most of those are still better constructed than RP2. It's a masterclass of making GBS threads the bed. I think the real problem people are having is that they actually don't see (or more likely hated/disapproved of RP1 and didn't read its sequel anyway and just write performatively that they can't imagine a book being worse) just how lovely this book really is. I have no explanation as to how somebody could read both books and think that they are of roughly equal quality as far as trashy sci-fi adventure novels for young adults go, but maybe that's what's happening. Still, no, it's not just a matter of taste. Side note: Craig Anderson. Absolutely no idea if people have talked about his books in this thread because I can't search, but if you actually did like Ready Player One, for the love of God don't buy Ready Player Two and instead maybe try Anderson's One Up novels (https://www.amazon.com/Craig-Anderson/e/B00D9FXE7O?ref=dbs_m_mng_rwt_byln). No promises, but I liked them. Free on Kindle Unlimited, or at least they were when I picked them up. It's not (exactly) so much a virtual world as a 'what if video games mixed with real life,' but they're fun, occasionally funny, and well-written for a YA-oriented gamelit (ugh that stupid genre name) novel. teamcharlie fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Dec 3, 2020 |
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Dec 3, 2020 06:47
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Laura Hudson has posted her review of RP2; her hatchet job on Armada is one of my favourite pieces of commentary about geek nostalgia culture. "Nothing about what Ready Player Two serves up is satisfying, in the same way that reading a shopping list isn’t as satisfying as eating a meal. You will never eat the meal. There is no meal. As with its predecessor, Ready Player Two will simply come to your table, tell you the names of delicious dishes cooked by other chefs, recite the ingredients they used, and then shake your hand and thank you for coming. This time, you will leave even hungrier, emptier, and poorer for the experience." https://slate.com/culture/2020/12/ready-player-two-review-ernest-cline-sequel.html
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Dec 3, 2020 09:13
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Not to be a downer but it's not like rape isn't present in the actual lives of a lot of women, you know? Not that I love it just showing up all the time but it's something a lot of authors probably have experience of.
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Dec 3, 2020 12:19
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teamcharlie posted:I was referring to the failed attempt to be trans-/gay-/nonbinary-friendly in RP2, not in RPO. There's a different scene in RP2 where apparently he's watched a lot of gay porn and is now kinda into it if the person he thinks is sexy is packing, but not enough for that to go anywhere. Maybe read the rest of what I quoted. You claimed that the accusations were overblown in RPO, and it was only RP2 that was that bad. But RPO was actually worse is what I was getting at! RP2 was cringy as hell and dumb, but it did briefly try. RPO was just plain awful without even bothering. Make no mistake, RP2 really bad, but RPO is just as bad if not worse. freebooter posted:Laura Hudson has posted her review of RP2; her hatchet job on Armada is one of my favourite pieces of commentary about geek nostalgia culture. Not wrong, and yet, also way too kind about RPO.
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Dec 3, 2020 12:46
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HopperUK posted:Not to be a downer but it's not like rape isn't present in the actual lives of a lot of women, you know? Not that I love it just showing up all the time but it's something a lot of authors probably have experience of. You know what's even more common is UTIs and yet I can only think of one book in which they appear.
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Dec 3, 2020 13:47
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StrixNebulosa posted:Yeah uh, as I've started the Oathbreaker/blood/honor/etc series there's rape in both backstories of the main women, and In the case of female-written rape scenes in older SF/fantasy, I think it's helpful to look at contemporary romance novels. They got called "bodice-rippers" for a reason -- they're full of brutal, dangerous, "masterful" heroes who, at the climactic moment, grab the heroine and kiss and grapple her into a swoon until she Surrenders to Her Passion. And she doesn't have to explicitly consent at any point, so the writer can get the heroine laid without having her actually *ask* for sex, because God forbid we admit women might be able to go get sex for themselves. I see it as an outgrowth of romance's fondness for brooding, uncommunicative rear end in a top hat heroes who are just waiting for The Right Woman (meaning YOU, the special, wonderful reader/protagonist). See Heathcliff, Edward Cullen, Maxim de Winter, etc. I'm not as familiar with the other writers you name, but McCaffrey and Gaskell were definitely drawing from the same well. Selachian fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Dec 3, 2020 |
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Dec 3, 2020 16:08
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These are thoughtful and informative posts, thank you Silver2195, Eason the Fifth, HopperUK and Selachian. It's... I think it stands out more to me when I read the older fantasy/sci-fi because the women authors tend to spend more time on the emotional landscape of their characters (to generalize) as well as writing the women's pov, so it's more... it stands out more. Which is frustrating and disturbing - I've seen at least one friend from discord claim they no longer read older sci-fi/fantasy as it's either sexist or full of sexual violence and they're not entirely wrong. On my end - I'm still reading, and I've started Oathbound by Lackey and I'm enjoying that it's framed as "this awful thing happened, and now REVENGE" and maybe that's a cliche but it's gratifying to see. gently caress 'em up!
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Dec 3, 2020 16:20
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fritz posted:You know what's even more common is UTIs and yet I can only think of one book in which they appear. I mean, yeah. I can only think of the one in The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley. I thought there was one in the Hyperion saga but it was just kidney stones.
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Dec 3, 2020 17:27
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Sharp Ends: Stories from the World of the First Law by Joe Abercrombie - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013HA6W92/ Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) by Brian McClellan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0092XHPIG/ To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L2Z4DBK/
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Dec 3, 2020 23:20
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pradmer posted:To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers - $1.99 That's a really beautiful novella, very hopefully about our destiny in the stars. As highly recommended as the rest of her stuff.
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Dec 4, 2020 00:14
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Kchama posted:Maybe read the rest of what I quoted. You claimed that the accusations were overblown in RPO, and it was only RP2 that was that bad. But RPO was actually worse is what I was getting at! RP2 was cringy as hell and dumb, but it did briefly try. RPO was just plain awful without even bothering. Make no mistake, RP2 really bad, but RPO is just as bad if not worse. We're not disagreeing. The scene in RPO was indeed worse, and that was my point. See the following as well: teamcharlie posted:RP2 is still a MUCH worse book. If anything, I'd say that identity politics is something that he has very very slightly improved on, which is to say that he still sucks at it and I fault nobody for still having a problem with him about it. Cline doing slightly better in RP2 than RPO doesn't mean he's now good at it, just less bad. Which I still consider an improvement, possibly the only improvement, from RPO. teamcharlie fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Dec 4, 2020 |
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Dec 4, 2020 01:42
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I'm really not sold on the idea that "I found out she was trans because I'm massively violating her privacy, but I'm OK with this because I've experienced fully immersive porn as all possible variations of gender and sex with all members of gender and sex" is an improvement.
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Dec 4, 2020 05:25
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StrixNebulosa posted:whoof that awkward feeling of popping open the first Vows and Honor short story and it's about Mercedes Lackey excitedly showing off her short stories to Marion Zimmer Bradley....god, gently caress you MZB, gently caress you so hard. I meant to respond to this. MZB used to edit a Swords and Sorceress short story anthology series for a while and basically every installment had a Vows and Honor short story in it; I’m pretty sure that’s where the stories got their start.
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Dec 4, 2020 05:44
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I liked Blindsight, liked Echopraxis somewhat less but still, thought the Rifters trilogy started off uneven but still holding interest, and what the gently caress at the end of book 3 it very quickly dissolves into rape torture porn. Explicit, horrifying passages, Never went cold on an author so quickly. Didn't even bother finishing the loving books, and I don't know about you but quitting a trilogy 60% of the way into book 3 is something that just does not loving happen.
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Dec 4, 2020 06:42
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Blindsight is one of those books I liked a lot while I read it a few years ago but barely remember now - couldn't tell you the name of a single character or the story beyond "investigating a BDO at the edge of the solar system and there are also, unrelatedly, vampires or something?" Although "enjoying it while I'm reading it but don't remember it at all" is still better than half the sci-fi I read.
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Dec 4, 2020 10:47
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GD_American posted:I liked Blindsight, liked Echopraxis somewhat less but still, thought the Rifters trilogy started off uneven but still holding interest, and what the gently caress at the end of book 3 it very quickly dissolves into rape torture porn. Explicit, horrifying passages, Never went cold on an author so quickly. Didn't even bother finishing the loving books, and I don't know about you but quitting a trilogy 60% of the way into book 3 is something that just does not loving happen. Yeah Behemoth was a huge mistake. Really pissed me off.
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Dec 4, 2020 14:52
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I read the first two Rifters books like a decade ago and every discussion about it I've read since has made me pretty glad I didn't try too hard to track down the third.
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Dec 4, 2020 15:25
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freebooter posted:Blindsight is one of those books I liked a lot while I read it a few years ago but barely remember now - couldn't tell you the name of a single character or the story beyond "investigating a BDO at the edge of the solar system and there are also, unrelatedly, vampires or something?" There's a lot going on in Blindsight, virtually every character is transhuman or post-human in some way and the narrator is unreliable and the sequel questions whether the narrator is actually the narrator or some kind of alien mimicking the narrator and the narrator (who is false) explains through the book that he himself doesn't really have an inherent construction of himself so he has to model how to be himself by watching other people around him, but his job is to not really exist and to serve as an interface between post-human entities and humans, so the more he models himself the worse he is at his job. Anyway, I think it's pretty loving good, but you have to read it pretty carefully.
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Dec 4, 2020 18:24
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Is it weird that I never read Blindsight because as soon as I read that it involved space vampires it immediately ruined it for me?
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Dec 4, 2020 18:36
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Riot Carol Danvers posted:Is it weird that I never read Blindsight because as soon as I read that it involved space vampires it immediately ruined it for me? It's not really space vampires, there's one vampire, who happens to be in space. And it's almost the opposite of the things that for me "vampires in space" would be a red flag for. Also though it's a free book you can just read it, so you could always read the first chapter and see if the vampires bother you. The vampire character just mostly lurks off-screen. https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#Prologue
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Dec 4, 2020 19:02
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I went into Blindsight thinking that space vampires would be a lot more prominent in the plot. They were not at all. It's more like a thought experiment that the author decided to work into the worldbuilding to supplement the book's theme.
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Dec 4, 2020 19:19
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If we're talking about this again, I was never a fan of the vampires in Blindsight because nothing about them made sense, I didn't appreciate their 'hey autistic people are a broken expression of dormant predatory traits!' origin, and seriously literally nothing about them made a gram of sense biologically or ecologically. They were the nessie-is-a-plesiosaur of hard science fiction concepts: making a myth 'realistic' in a way that's even less plausible than its original form*. Then I read the first Rifters book and the guy from the surface who comes downstairs to monitor the underwater workers privately nicknames them 'vampires' in his head and is constantly experiencing ~primal spooks~ from how pale and silent and menacingly otherworldy they are to his frail human sensibilities and I liked Blindsight's vampires even less in hindsight because now they felt like the author jerking off. And this is probably why people end up talking about them so much relative to the rest of the book or its sequel: they're such an outlandish concept - even in a book full of them - that you end up either feeling they're really neat or really stupid. *I would unironically find 'evil magic made this corpse (or melon, or gourd) animate and thirst for human blood' more believable than 'there was once a pathologically solitary Homo species that was dietarily compelled to kill and eat other (hypersocial, probably armed) humans or die and it was very successful and good at doing this until humans invented distinct right angles, something that definitely never ever previously existed.' I've said this before, but it's like making a lovely tiger and giving it a koala's picky eating habits. You don't need to invent a secret brain glitch to explain why that wasn't a viable ecological niche. Drakyn fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Dec 4, 2020 |
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Dec 4, 2020 19:54
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the only thing about the space vampires i liked was just the concept of a race that can't visually process right angles, which would be a cool idea for a story about aliens encountering humans
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Dec 4, 2020 19:58
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I feel like the earth-vampires (in space) are kind of a distraction in Blindsight - there's too much cultural and mythical baggage around vampires that I feel distract from the neuro-fuckery. And yeah, the "created from austic genes" thing is really gross. Keaton is a pretty sensitive portrayal of a neuro-atypical character imo, so I don't think Watts is intentionally associating austism with blood-sucking predators. But the implication is still there. The visual-processing/crucifix glitch feels fairly realistic to me though - there's all sorts of dumb uselss poo poo in real biology (pandas, avocados, the recurrent laryngeal nerve, pop-sci is full of em) and weird-epilepsy is pretty normal by comparison.
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Dec 4, 2020 20:07
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I thought the vampire part was kinda neat, although the "we were already 50% of the way there with autistics" could have been left out and nothing would be lost. The core concept of humanity not just creating its own predator, but re-creating an extinct one just for efficiency's sake was the best part of the book. The fact that it wasn't the primary (or, despite being the ending, really even a secondary) theme of the book was disappointing. I slogged through Watts' look-how-smart-I-am unending string of unexplained technical references, both because that's just something all hard sci-fi authors will do to a point and it is kind of neat to learn these concepts through genre fiction, BUT he never knew when to take a break. He's writing a story for an audience of PhD carrying biologists. The idea that in your cyberpunk-lite dystopia people will refer to others as r-selectors or k-selectors is unrelentingly dumb. I literally will put this guy in the Lovecraft box. Neat ideas, lovely writing, seems to be kind of a lovely person too.
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Dec 4, 2020 20:20
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Riot Carol Danvers posted:Is it weird that I never read Blindsight because as soon as I read that it involved space vampires it immediately ruined it for me? The vampires are an allegory for sociopaths and people who thrive in corporate structures imo. People who walk around and seem superficially normal but just don't have anything going on inside (and succeed because of it). Watts is proposing that some of the most successful humans are the ones who are the least human. They're basically Jake Gyllenhaal from Nightcrawler except less frightening.
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Dec 4, 2020 21:12
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Riot Carol Danvers posted:Is it weird that I never read Blindsight because as soon as I read that it involved space vampires it immediately ruined it for me? There's a bunch of reasons why I've never and won't read Blindsight but that's not one of them, as I liked Friedman's "The Madness Season".
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Dec 4, 2020 21:55
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GD_American posted:I literally will put this guy in the Lovecraft box. Neat ideas, lovely writing, seems to be kind of a lovely person too. Fair. His blog posts about the time he got necrotizing fasciitis are dope though.
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Dec 4, 2020 21:57
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The implausibility of the vampires kinda spoiled the book for me too. I mean, in the real world just making potatoes more resistant to disease is super controversial, but you're telling me someone decided to create a race of creepy super-smart monsters that feed on humans and terrify everyone? No-one would think that's a good idea. It's not like there's even any twists, it ends exactly the way you'd think.
Crashbee fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Dec 4, 2020 |
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Dec 4, 2020 22:24
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They had already existed in the setting, so it was more like jurassic park style research. But I'm sure Jurassic Park exists as fiction in the setting and they should have known better. I am gonna have to reread both books
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Dec 4, 2020 22:28
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Crashbee posted:The implausibility of the vampires kinda spoiled the book for me too. I mean, in the real world just making potatoes more resistant to disease is super controversial, but you're telling me someone thought it would be a good idea to create a race of creepy super-smart monsters that feed on humans and terrify everyone? No-one would think that's a good idea. It's not like there's even any twists, it ends exactly the way you'd think. I mean the controversy barely slows the adaption of the potatoes and several major countries had a bioweapon research program that was rather unadvised.
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Dec 4, 2020 22:36
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Crashbee posted:The implausibility of the vampires kinda spoiled the book for me too. I mean, in the real world just making potatoes more resistant to disease is super controversial, but you're telling me someone decided to create a race of creepy super-smart monsters that feed on humans and terrify everyone? No-one would think that's a good idea. It's not like there's even any twists, it ends exactly the way you'd think. I know, right? resurrecting the vampires would be like ignoring a pandemic in order to maximize the value of your stock portfolio. Nobody would ever do that, not even if you deliberately left in the crucifix glitch or even amplified it's effect. Bringing back the apex predator that hunted humans would be as morally and ethically dubious as turning people into p-zombies for the slave labor.
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Dec 4, 2020 22:49
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fritz posted:There's a bunch of reasons why I've never and won't read Blindsight but that's not one of them, as I liked Friedman's "The Madness Season". I think it's more A) I just generally don't care for vampires (or werewolves) etc unless it's What We Do in the Shadows B) That the story has been marketed to me as pretty hard scifi but also vampires exist for :reasons: None of this is to say that anyone who enjoyed it is wrong, however!
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Dec 4, 2020 22:53
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Even however many years on, Twilight has left horrible psychic wounds on sci-fi nerds
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Dec 5, 2020 01:13
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fritz posted:There's a bunch of reasons why I've never and won't read Blindsight but that's not one of them, as I liked Friedman's "The Madness Season". Well go on! Crashbee posted:The implausibility of the vampires kinda spoiled the book for me too. I mean, in the real world just making potatoes more resistant to disease is super controversial, but you're telling me someone decided to create a race of creepy super-smart monsters that feed on humans and terrify everyone? No-one would think that's a good idea. It's not like there's even any twists, it ends exactly the way you'd think. It was done to maximize corporate revenue, and is therefore highly plausible.
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Dec 5, 2020 01:49
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He even made a powerpoint about why it was a great idea.
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Dec 5, 2020 01:49
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General Battuta posted:He even made a powerpoint about why it was a great idea. the vampires were made by "FizerPharm." why does that sound so familiar hmm. 
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