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quantumfoam posted:Sanity break was spent reading Daniel Keys Moran's CONTINUING TIME stories SFLer's have been raving about for 3-ish years now. I'll do a bit of an effort post on this series to signal boost the Continuing Time as I think it's a little sad how little known it is. 95% of the setting is a near-future were the Europeans and various third worlders (then including a relatively poor China) in response to environmental degradation and overpopulation teamed up on the rest of the world to set up a one world government through the UN. The US, Russia, and Japan all fought and lost, and it's implied they all got nuked to varying degrees in the process, especially Japan. The UN world HQ is still in Manhattan, where they have lots of employees and "peacekeepers" (jackbooted thugs or heroes of humanity, depending) who occasionally get blown up by the active but not really a serious threat American revolutionaries. The Europeans, especially the French, mostly run things. The internet isn't called that but exists, and is a free for all of hackers and rogue AIs vs UN datapolice, with the hackers and most of the rogue AIs getting regularly bushwacked, with the prominent exception of Ring, the first AI, who escaped the US DoD control during the Unification War as part of his dual mandates of "protect America" (the programmers forgot to define "America") and "survive." He runs message boards for revolutionaries, gives abtruse support to various anti-UN or pro-American forces, and, it so happens, has a decades long plan running to bring down the UN. (Which would probably be dealt with in book 5 if we ever get it.) He shows up to varying degrees in every book. There are colonies on the moon (about 2/3 UN controlled, about 1/3 independent), Mars, and outer moons/asteroids. The outer/independent colonies trade with the UN and try to maintain space power parity to avoid getting brought under the boot but kind of expect the UN to take over the rest of the moon some day, at least. The UN Space Force and Peacekeeping Forces maintain their own L4/L5 bases in orbit. We get to visit one! 5% of the setting is some garbage time travel stuff (the actual "Continuing Time") that is the brain fever of our author when he was young and planned 50(!) books stretching over thousands of years. Basically a couple of rival time travelers from the future pop in to observe events a couple of times per book. Except for book 3, it's pretty easy to ignore. Book 1: Emerald Eyes. About a generation after the Unification War, the UN funds a genetic engineering program to develop superhumans with telepathic powers, intending to incorporate them into the Peacekeeping Force to hunt down insurgents. They succeed, and dozens of genetically similar kids with bright green eyes, beyond genius intellects, super-olympian physiques, and telepathic powers are created. (One, a boy with blue eyes, has a transcription error and no telepathic powers. He'll be, uh, important later.) A couple of administrators with sympathies for the American republic (one of whom is a former secret service agent with interesting memories of orbital laser platforms picking off his detail in a field right before, or perhaps after, the final surrender) have other ideas about how this project might be applied, and kids growing up in Manhattan with freaky mind reading powers develop yet their own ideas about what they want to do with their lives. A plucky young UN Peacekeeping Force cyborg named Sergeant Mohammad Vance (one of my top ten SF "bad" guys) doesn't let a little thing like a mind gestalt of telepaths shredding the sanity of tens of thousands of people in the heart of the global capital stop him from reasserting order. Many of the downsides of orbital tactical nukes can be overcome with property development, after all. Gentrification can take many forms. Book 2: The Long Run. Trent, the blue eyed boy without telepathic powers, was one of three escapees from that project. Outlawed, he's been in hiding and applying his talents as a 10-18 year old world-class hacker to high end theft until he bumps into one of the other escapees and comes to the wrong sort of attention. Pursued by a dedicated, experienced cyborg named Commissioner Mohammad Vance, he escapes Manhattan, escapes the L5 base, escapes several things on the moon, steals something that SERIOUSLY pisses off the UN, and ultimately escapes from the inner system. He also possibly performs a miracle, which we can guess from the 5% plot is one of the reasons he's the basis for one of the three most popular galactic religions in the far future. (Various citations from "The Exodus Bible" show up in this book with quotes from people who knew Trent when he was alive.) Book 3: The Last Dancer. This is about the two escaped telepaths, the 2076 tricentennial uprisings against the UN (nukes, special cyborg killing guns, and hijacked laser platforms shooting up Paris all feature), and Trent making a minor reappearance to temporarily help the UN keep control of some orbital assets and try to keep the body count from going too high into seven figures. If this was all it was about I'd like this 500% more, but there's a very annoying and very large plot about a survivor from some prehistoric and technologically advanced form of humanity who escapes out of a statis field and hijacks the American revolutionary effort. A well seasoned cyborg named Mohammad Vance tries to stop him. Book 4: The AI War Book 1: The Big Boost. About the time Trent went on The Long Run the UN started building the Unity, a huge fuckoff ship designed to bring all of humanity under the UN's control and crush the starship of the outer colonies. Trent, the pacifist thief, finally returns to Earth after a decade away to try to stop it, as well as interfere with Ring's anti-UN efforts that he's afraid are going to cause too many casualties. Shenanigans ensue, while a very tired of this poo poo Commander of all UN Peacekeeping Forces Mohammad Vance tries to stop him. If we ever got book 5 it would presumably resolve the Trent vs. Ring aspect of this, probably in a way I expect due to some Continuing Time short stories set a few thousand years in the future I've read. We also know that Trent is almost certainly going to get get shot by a firing squad (and presumably killed/vanished), which would probably happen at the end of this one. But the author is in his late 50s now, I think, and it was a miracle he pushed out book 4, I don't think he's coming back after ten more years away. Drone Jett fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Dec 23, 2020 |
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Dec 23, 2020 21:44
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Drone Jett posted:I like this more than you (especially The Long Run), but I'll just note a fourth book came out about 10 years ago. The Long Run had a paragraph or two mentioning various world historical events that occurred during a summer early in that book, one of which was laying the keel of the Unity, a huge starship intended to help the UN conquer the outer planets/colonies. The plot of this one deals with that as it nears completion. Gotten burned too many times buying books solely on the recommendations from here and the internet. To show the level of hesitance, SFLers of 1987-1991 who can't stop raving about the CONTINUING TIME series also can't stop raving about David Eddings and Spider Robinson and Stephen R Donaldson's Thomas Covenant and Guy Gavriel Kay and the extremely terrible Jerry Pournelle, etc. I've only read the publicly available CONTINUING TIME books Daniel Keys Moran released copyleft-free to the Internet about a decade ago. Might read book 4 if I come across it in a used bookstore/local library, otherwise I am good. Your synopsis's of CONTINUING TIME Book 1 - 3 were pretty good, although you kind of combined things and overstated how much of a main character Vance was in book 1. Vance only became a main character in the back half of book 2 in his role as Tom the eternally frustrated in his attempts to capture/kill
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Dec 23, 2020 23:30
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quantumfoam posted:Also: It was a hologram made by Ralf, Trent's 1st lost AI Internet Avatar that "walked through" a wall. Probably!
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Dec 23, 2020 23:50
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space marine todd posted:I had an absolute blast with The Ministry For The Future (along with Gibson's The Peripheral and Agency) and I'd love more recommendations of...near-future speculative fiction? I liked Pattern Recognition, but couldn't get into Spook Country. I have to respect KSR for not just writing about unilateral geoengineering but actual eco terrorist cells killing individuals most responsible for climate change
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Dec 24, 2020 08:57
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Finished up The Hole by William meikle, and while I dig his writing, he tends to not go into detail for some of the poo poo I'm wondering about in the story. Interesting horror book but it leaves you with a lot of questions.
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Dec 24, 2020 10:39
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shrike82 posted:I have to respect KSR for not just writing about unilateral geoengineering but actual eco terrorist cells killing individuals most responsible for climate change Yeah, it was beautiful and I want more of it haha.
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Dec 24, 2020 13:08
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A Man of His Word: Complete Series by Dave Duncan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0732J6PN5/ Recent thread discussion series with an interesting premise. The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files #8) by Charles Stross $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LM09RDM/ The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6HYNGE/
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Dec 24, 2020 19:12
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quantumfoam posted:. Stuck in a small town on a rained out beach holiday I bought the first four Chung Kuo novels at a second hand store. All I remember now, 25 years later, is a mild disdain.
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Dec 25, 2020 01:45
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branedotorg posted:Stuck in a small town on a rained out beach holiday I bought the first four Chung Kuo novels at a second hand store. All I remember now, 25 years later, is a mild disdain. They got really loving weird as they went on.
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Dec 25, 2020 07:48
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That series definitely got weird. The main antagonist turns himself into a genetically altered superman and there's an implication of something mystical between him and a minor recurring character. I read most of it but stopped when the remaining cast fled the Earth. Like ten or so years ago the author ended up putting out a couple of prequel novels to explain how the world came to be.
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Dec 25, 2020 13:09
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The Empire of Gold (Daevabad #3) by SA Chakraborty - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YG44LJD/ I Am Legend by Richard Matheson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XB49BG4/
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Dec 25, 2020 18:57
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space marine todd posted:I had an absolute blast with The Ministry For The Future (along with Gibson's The Peripheral and Agency) and I'd love more recommendations of...near-future speculative fiction? I liked Pattern Recognition, but couldn't get into Spook Country. I quite enjoyed James Bradley's novel Clade, which covers a couple of generations in a near-future Australia in a world wracked with climate change and socio-economic collapse.
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Dec 26, 2020 10:25
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The Silo Saga Omnibus: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Sil0 stories by Hugh Howey - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088BBLMGS/ The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JFJHTS/ The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0079KT81G/ Beren and Lúthien by JRR Tolkien - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MG2HOWD/
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Dec 26, 2020 18:56
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anyone got any good novels about settling other planets or generation ships?
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Dec 26, 2020 19:11
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Children of Time, Seveneves (kind of), Aurora
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Dec 26, 2020 19:17
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PawParole posted:anyone got any good novels about settling other planets or generation ships? Legacy of Heorot 
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Dec 26, 2020 19:45
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withak posted:Children of Time, Seveneves (kind of), Aurora read all of those. I’ve a type that I like ( ive asked like 7 times in the last year in this thread lol) , and I probably read it unless it’s really niche and old ( in which case I’d love to hear it) General Battuta posted:Legacy of Heorot Loved it.
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Dec 26, 2020 20:15
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PawParole posted:anyone got any good novels about settling other planets or generation ships?
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Dec 26, 2020 21:01
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General Battuta posted:Legacy of Heorot Seconding this. Mount Tushmore is still the most realistic event to ever happen in a science fiction novel. EVER.
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Dec 26, 2020 21:49
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Llamadeus posted:Stephen Baxter's Mayflower II actually, spent the last week reading all of his books and short stories. They’re wonderful (proxima is my personal favorite)
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Dec 26, 2020 22:24
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General Battuta posted:Legacy of Heorot hadn't thought of that book in years, looked into it and apparently they published a third book in the series this year. huh.
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Dec 26, 2020 23:57
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freebooter posted:I quite enjoyed James Bradley's novel Clade, which covers a couple of generations in a near-future Australia in a world wracked with climate change and socio-economic collapse. Thanks! This looks great.
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Dec 27, 2020 00:21
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PawParole posted:anyone got any good novels about settling other planets or generation ships? I found Semiosis by Sue Burke interesting. It has planet settling and follows several generations through what I thought was an interesting premise.
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Dec 27, 2020 07:04
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uber_stoat posted:hadn't thought of that book in years, looked into it and apparently they published a third book in the series this year. huh. No 4th... apparently. I've only read the first two. Second one was.. not as good. The Founder is also about settling another planet. I can't remember the author name.
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Dec 27, 2020 11:51
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NinjaDebugger posted:Seconding this. Mount Tushmore is still the most realistic event to ever happen in a science fiction novel. EVER. Wait what's Mount Tushmore (do I want this answered)
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Dec 27, 2020 17:46
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General Battuta posted:Wait what's Mount Tushmore (do I want this answered) Some drunk idiots use a laser to carve an rear end into a mountain and it's named Mount tushmore.
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Dec 27, 2020 18:30
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The Martian by Andy Weir - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EMXBDMA/ Binti: Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DH9QFMY/
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Dec 27, 2020 19:07
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NinjaDebugger posted:Some drunk idiots use a laser to carve an rear end into a mountain and it's named Mount tushmore. Well, the most inprobable thing about that is that they didn't carve a penis instead. That's what we humans do: draw dicks everywhere.
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Dec 27, 2020 23:29
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Groke posted:Well, the most inprobable thing about that is that they didn't carve a penis instead. That's what we humans do: draw dicks everywhere. the guys who wrote that book most likely think that drawing a picture of a dick turns you gay.
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Dec 27, 2020 23:37
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PawParole posted:anyone got any good novels about settling other planets or generation ships? 40,000 in Gehenna is your settling a planet book set across multiple generations (not on a generation ship per se, just in the colony the gets established). It's slow and weird and not for everyone I'd imagine but I found it engrossing. It does not go how you first expect it to go.
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Dec 27, 2020 23:39
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I finished A Deadly Education, which was on some best of the year lists. I’m a sucker for stories about wizards, hoping I’ll get something like The Magicians or KJ Parker’s Studium stories or even the better parts of Kingkiller, but most end up not being able to sustain my interest. Magic for Liars and An Unkindness of Magicians are sitting unfinished on my kindle because I just didn’t find them gripping. A Deadly Education manages to sustain its pace much better, though the descriptions of areas are very light on detail and there’s not much to the prose style. Some passages had so many repeated words that the flow was incredibly clunky. I guess the ever present danger the characters are in gives the book a sense of urgency that makes it easy reading. Overall though I think the main character is very one note, and the book isn’t really exploring any big ideas other than “dying should be avoided!” The importance, endurance and beauty of language should have been a major part of the book since that’s how spells are performed and languages are the protagonists major. But the book doesn’t have much to say on the subject and none of the prose ever shows off the power of language during the spell casting. Really nice cover design though
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Dec 28, 2020 02:52
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Network Effect: A Murderbot Novel (The Murderbot Diaries Book 5) by Martha Wells - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/Network-Effect-Murderbot-Novel-Diaries-ebook/dp/B07WZ7SB5D The Last Emperox (The Interdependency Book 3) by John Scalzi - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/Last-Emperox-Interdependency-Book-ebook/dp/B07QPGW9FS For all that 2020 has brought us, this was a pleasant surprise.
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Dec 28, 2020 12:47
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Hot drat, I never expected to get the Murderbot novel for 3 bucks this year.
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Dec 28, 2020 16:15
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Major Ryan posted:40,000 in Gehenna is your settling a planet book set across multiple generations (not on a generation ship per se, just in the colony the gets established). A bunch of Slaaneshi daemonettes/Eldar/Tau turn up? 
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Dec 28, 2020 17:58
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feedmegin posted:A bunch of Slaaneshi daemonettes/Eldar/Tau turn up? You joke, but some weird poo poo goes down on this colony, there’s spaceports falling into the earth and huge spiraling mounds controlling behavior and chthonic orgies.
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Dec 28, 2020 18:06
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General Battuta posted:You joke, but some weird poo poo goes down on this colony, there’s spaceports falling into the earth and huge spiraling mounds controlling behavior and chthonic orgies. Well now I'm interested but it doesn't look like it's on kindle. Amazon is selling a 30 dollar paperback version.
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Dec 28, 2020 18:27
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Sibling of TB posted:Well now I'm interested but it doesn't look like it's on kindle. Amazon is selling a 30 dollar paperback version. It's included in this: https://www.amazon.com/Alliance-Space-Alliance-Union-Universe-Cherryh-ebook/dp/B01N5NU2AQ
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Dec 28, 2020 18:28
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Over the holiday weekend someone mentioned to me that the X-Files tv-series originally premiered in 1993. Ugh, yet another item added to 1993's upcoming wheel-of-pain SFL Archives readthrough. Although that is semi-balanced out by one other thing that happened in 1993: the specifications for HTML were released to the public in 1993, and that public release of HTML literally changed everything for the Internet. SFL Archives 1991 has seen lots of one-note longtime SFL posters harden into toxicity. The husband-wife duo who only talk about conventions, the SFWA white knight, the various author Defense Squads, etc. Current best meta-moments in SFL Archives 1991 are the TEKUMEL super-fan acting like a reincarnated Joseph McCarthy in their hate-boner campaign against Raymond Feist's Riftwar series, and the details finally leaking out of how Jerry Pournelle lost his ARPANET access forever.
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Dec 28, 2020 22:14
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quantumfoam posted:SFL Archives 1991 Asking for more detail on this : quote:-SFLer Gregory R Weiss sees extreme similarities in certain aspects of ULTIMA 5 and Stephen Donaldson's CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT. It's been a while since I read Covenant but aside from the isekai aspects I'm drawing a blank.
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Dec 29, 2020 00:49
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fritz posted:Asking for more detail on this : I have no idea what "isekai" is. However here's the full post from SFL Archives 1991 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 May 91 13:11:37 GMT From: grweiss@lit.princeton.edu (Gregory R Weiss) Subject: Ultima V and Donaldson Has anyone else noticed the extreme similarity between ceratin aspects of Ultima V and certain aspects of both of Stephen R. Donaldson's _Chronicles_of_ _Thomas_Covenant_ series ? I'm tempted to think Richard Garriot (author of the Ultima series) had at least read Donaldson's novels before working on Ultima V. In both, the virtuous law of the land is corrupted by an evil being who takes over the kingdom by insinuating himself in the king's council (Foul:Kevin Landwaster::Blackthorn:Lord British) The features of the Ravers and the Shadowlords are remarkably similar; both possess their victims, are practically invulnerable, and are loyal to their evil master (Foul/Blackthorn) Doesn't the green "Gem of Mondain"(?) that is split into three shards scattered throughout the land remind you of the green "Illearth stone" that is split into many shards throughout the land? several smaller similarities which I can't remember. Does anyone else see any other similarities? I'm not saying that Blackthorn is exactly the same as Foul, but while playing Ultima V, I was especially struck by similarities #2 and #3. Did anyone else notice this, or does anyone notice it now that I mention it? Greg grweiss@phoenix.Princeton.EDU ------------------------------
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Dec 29, 2020 01:16
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