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Abercrombie’s sold his latest trilogy. Sounds interesting though it doesn’t clarify if this is modern day Europe or like the 14th century. If it’s modern day it sounds a lot like Hellsing https://www.thebookseller.com/rights/gollancz-nets-epic-new-abercrombie-fantasy-trilogy
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Apr 1, 2022 01:14
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Man, if it wasn't for it being JA I'd assume it was a comedy or at least something not completely serious. Still, sounds interesting. Hope he doesn't grimdark the gently caress out of it.
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Apr 1, 2022 05:47
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I just started reading this book from the library and it is loving awful so far https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Linguist-Mages-Scotto-Moore-ebook/dp/B0927D791J/ Wish I’d read people comparing it to Ready Player One before I bothered, because that comparison is loving apt Somehow giving Wade tits and making her a lesbian and not changing anything else about the character doesn’t make them any less insufferable, who woulda figured
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Apr 1, 2022 06:10
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Sailor Viy posted:This sounds amazing. Is it good? It's a fun smart B-movie kind of book rather than a deep philosophical literary exploration of free will vs constrained patterns of action, if that helps?
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Apr 1, 2022 09:27
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Man, if it wasn't for it being JA I'd assume it was a comedy or at least something not completely serious. "I hope Abercrombie doesn't grimdark the gently caress out of it" is like saying "I hope this Woody Allen movie isn't about his neuroses".
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Apr 1, 2022 10:08
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Only vaguely SFF adjacent, but I read a great Booker-longlisted novel years ago called The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth which is a Riddley Walker style invented-language story about a resistance fighter in England after the Norman invasion, then read the sequel Beast about some guy having a mental breakdown/revelation in a remote cabin in England which I didn't like much, but I was still planning to read the recently released third part of the trilogy called Alexandria which is apparently set 1,000 years in the future... and then I got an email from Kingsnorth's mailing list this morning directing me to his recently self-published collection of COVID conspiracy and anti-vax essays.  I still recommend The Wake because I think it's a genuinely great novel, but that's also precisely why it's so disappointing to see a writer your admire jacknife into batshit conspiracy nonsense. Googling him a bit more it seems like he became a sort of Luddite eco-fascist in recent years, but still, drat.
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Apr 1, 2022 10:23
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:Are there any scifi books (or preferably series) that start out with hard science fiction and build on it with the people inventing things that build on hard science fiction principles but get more and more far-future with everything from FTL and/or wormholes? Check out Alistair Reynolds' Pushing Ice if you haven't yet, it's got pretty much all of that
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Apr 1, 2022 15:16
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Thanks for the recommendations, everyone!
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Apr 1, 2022 16:40
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Man, if it wasn't for it being JA I'd assume it was a comedy or at least something not completely serious. I've always thought Pratchett was Abercrombie's biggest influence, so this might be his Pratchettiest book yet.
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Apr 1, 2022 17:36
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Ccs posted:I've always thought Pratchett was Abercrombie's biggest influence, so this might be his Pratchettiest book yet.
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Apr 1, 2022 17:39
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:Without being familiar with Abercrombie, though maybe I should change that, that sounds like pretty high praise. I think they're pretty similar except that Abercrombie will have bad things happen to his characters while Practhett will tend to keep them alive so he can continue to poke fun at them in the next book.
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Apr 1, 2022 17:49
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The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E4A32TC/ Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XG6MG3Y Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys #1) by Seanan McGuire - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HF2ZK75/ Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson - $2.49 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01B0NS93U/ Mockingbird by Walter Tevis - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H166YQ3/ Sunshine by Robin McKinley - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OGWASCI/ The Last Policeman (#1) by Ben H Winters - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0076Q1GW2/ World of Trouble (Last Policeman #3) by Ben H Winters - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HXYHVNU/ Anyone have opinions on Mockingbird and Sunshine? I'm not familiar with the authors.
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Apr 1, 2022 22:31
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Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B569JK1/
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Apr 2, 2022 02:11
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Runcible Cat posted:It's a fun smart B-movie kind of book rather than a deep philosophical literary exploration of free will vs constrained patterns of action, if that helps? Yeah I guess the latter is what I was hoping for, but it still sounds interesting. FPyat posted:I preferred Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany. Has Mieville's penchant for being densely packed with ideas. Babel-17 is fantastic, anyone interested in weird alien language stuff should definitely check it out. Sailor Viy fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Apr 2, 2022 |
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Apr 2, 2022 02:33
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I loved Sunshine. I read it when I needed an urban fantasy itch scratched, but didn’t want to start a series.
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Apr 2, 2022 04:34
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My best friend adores Sunshine so much that she ordered a hard copy and sent it to me when I couldn't get it on the UK Amazon store, and her taste is very reliable.
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Apr 2, 2022 12:01
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The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018SIYVAU/ Empire in Black and Gold (Shadows of the Apt #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GK21XK/ Cold Iron (Masters and Mages #1) by Miles Cameron - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079L5669Y/ Sins of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder) by Brian McClellan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KT7YTV4/
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Apr 2, 2022 18:10
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Foxfire_ posted:If you're not enjoying the bulk of (1Q84), I don't think there's anything in the last quarter that's going to change your mind Yeah you were right, I ended up skimming the last few chapters and the amount of actual plot that happened could have fit in a tweet. Since I’m a sucker for punishment, I started reading The Kaiju Preservation Society by Scalzi, doing his best Andy Weir impression. The gist is that there is an alternate Earth we can access that’s populated by Kaiju (e.g., giant monsters, like Godzilla and the Pacific Rim creatures), and there are a bunch of scientists studying them. Unfortunately, it’s very self aware - everybody’s a nerd, the main character gets fired from a delivery app company and has to start delivering food during the pandemic, the Trump kids wanted to come over and hunt the Kaiju, etc. On the other hand, it’s easy to read and the chapters are short, so it might be a suitable gift for a nephew you don’t really like.
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Apr 2, 2022 18:22
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i can't tell if the older scalzi books are like that and I just don't get the references or if he's simply getting worse with age
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Apr 2, 2022 19:28
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I like the Old Man's War series, and perhaps even more than that I like the Interdependency series - but even though I absolute am a nerd, The Kaiju Preservation Society doesn't sound the least bit interesting.
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Apr 2, 2022 19:38
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Red Shirts was really bad for that but I don't remember it with Old Man's War, Lock-In or Android's Dream. Red Shirts at least was obviously going to be wanky going in and actually was decent at parts despite that
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Apr 2, 2022 19:38
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:Are there any scifi books (or preferably series) that start out with hard science fiction and build on it with the people inventing things that build on hard science fiction principles but get more and more far-future with everything from FTL and/or wormholes? Marina J. Lostetter's Noumenon trilogy fits what you're looking for, I think. Starts with a generation ship setting out to investigate a star that might have an alien artifact attached to it and goes to some wild places. I also think Nancy Kress' Yesterday's Kin trilogy fits, too. I wasn't super into it by the end but I'm also very picky. Second question, I would say to check out Nnedi Okorafor's Binti series, just chock full of aliens and them interfering with Earth politics among other things. Sue Burke's Semiosis duology involves a small colony of humans settling a planet that contains highly-evolved intelligent plants and how they form a new society there. Also Chana Porter's The Seep, for a really interesting take on alien invasions.
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Apr 2, 2022 20:10
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big dyke energy posted:Marina J. Lostetter's Noumenon trilogy fits what you're looking for, I think. Starts with a generation ship setting out to investigate a star that might have an alien artifact attached to it and goes to some wild places. I also think Nancy Kress' Yesterday's Kin trilogy fits, too. I wasn't super into it by the end but I'm also very picky.  Universe at war-sort of stories aren't quite what I'm looking for - more along the lines of mostly-co-existence and slice-of-life within that universe. It's sort of hard to define, except to point at Becky Chambers' series, especially the 4th entry that's called The Galaxy And The Ground Within. Still, I've added the first of all of them to my list - if they grab me, they grab me regardless of almost anything, and I see no reason not to give it a chance. BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Apr 2, 2022 |
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Apr 2, 2022 20:44
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:I like the Old Man's War series, and perhaps even more than that I like the Interdependency series - but even though I absolute am a nerd, The Kaiju Preservation Society doesn't sound the least bit interesting. I think Scalzi can still write a good book sometimes when he wants to but much like Gaiman he seems to be taking the quantity over quality approach most of the time.
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Apr 2, 2022 21:05
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think Scalzi can still write a good book sometimes when he wants to but much like Gaiman he seems to be taking the quantity over quality approach most of the time.
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Apr 2, 2022 21:10
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Another Dirty Dish posted:Since I’m a sucker for punishment, *Plot making sense outside of dream logic not guaranteed
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Apr 2, 2022 21:20
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:Are there any scifi books (or preferably series) that start out with hard science fiction and build on it with the people inventing things that build on hard science fiction principles but get more and more far-future with everything from FTL and/or wormholes?
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Apr 2, 2022 21:43
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Harold Fjord posted:There's some of this vibe in Stross's Accelerando, but with singularity stuff. Also making me think of The Days of Solomon Gursky. But both are pretty short.
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Apr 2, 2022 22:02
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Old Man's War was very Heinlein but probably too Heinlein, haven't read the sequels (probably will at some point), hope the humans stop just murking every alien they see and the wife thing was just creepy and I was waiting for it to happen when they revealed a different thing. Red Shirts got too cute for its own good and seemed a downgrade in writing style but maybe because he wasn't trying to immitate a style Current publishing drama https://twitter.com/RVTheBookSlayer/status/1509960934332186630 https://twitter.com/RVTheBookSlayer/status/1510347999809097730
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Apr 2, 2022 23:00
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Surprised they didn't try the april fools clause
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Apr 3, 2022 00:23
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Who the gently caress thinks there's "scorching desert outback" in Tasmania? That's, like, not even Googling levels of research. 
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Apr 3, 2022 00:51
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Behold: the scorching desert outback of Tasmania! I wonder if the end of the summary is implying that the virus mutates to be deadly to everyone, or if the worse case scenario it mentions is just "kills white people, but MORE".
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Apr 3, 2022 01:55
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...Why was that dude talking to Ken M?
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Apr 3, 2022 03:06
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:The serendipity of me reading a lot of lesfic romance lately and your username, makes me think I should take all these recommendations very seriously Of those ones, I would say only Yesterday's Kin and Semiosis feature a lot of actual fighting and war type stuff. Noumenon is very slice of life-y and also more...politics/society focused. Oh also if you haven't read Becky Chambers' other works, definitely pick them up. To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a really beautiful story. I don't think the main character in The Seep id's herself directly as a dyke but she definitely calls herself a diesel butch so there is that as well. I'm always looking for lesbian sci fi/fantasy and I will definitely post about good stuff when I come across it.
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Apr 3, 2022 05:18
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Psalm for the Wild-Built is probably my favorite Becky Chambers book but the Universal Commons books are really excellent too.
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Apr 3, 2022 05:25
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big dyke energy posted:Sue Burke's Semiosis duology involves a small colony of humans settling a planet that contains highly-evolved intelligent plants and how they form a new society there. I tried reading Semiosis last year and bounced hard off it, and now I can’t even remember why I DNFed the thing before finishing the first chapter It’s a shame, because it sounded like exactly the kind of novel I want more of big dyke energy posted:Of those ones, I would say only Yesterday's Kin and Semiosis feature a lot of actual fighting and war type stuff. Except for maybe this
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Apr 3, 2022 05:58
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I just remembered the sexual assault that happens in like, the first chapter of Semiosis. Fun! The first chapter is basically there to contrast with the society the colonists eventually end up making. I really enjoyed the series overall and I don't really see it talked about much so I am kind of trying to sell it pretty hard.
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Apr 3, 2022 06:36
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Speaking of white supremacy, I don't know how many people here are familiar with M.A.R. Barker, the creator of the classic Tékumel - Empire of the Petal Throne fantasy setting. Tékumel was the first detailed setting published for Dungeons & Dragons, as well as the focus of multiple independent RPG systems. Barker also published several novels set in the empire. While it never achieved mainstream popularity, Tékumel had a dedicated cult following for being much less eurocentric than the typical western fantasy setting. Anyway, there has recently been some new revelations about Barker's activities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._A._R._Barker#Neo-Nazi/White_Supremacist_Work posted:Barker wrote a sixth novel, Serpent's Walk, under the pseudonym Randolph D. Calverhall (likely a play on "Randolph de Caverhall", a supposed ancestor).[31][32] The novel, published by the white supremacist National Vanguard Books that also published The Turner Diaries, features a sci-fi 'what if' where SS soldiers begin an underground resistance after the end of WWII, with their descendants rising up a century later to take over the United States of America with the "tactics of their enemies", "building their economic muscle and buying into the opinion-forming media". The back cover of the book states "The good guys win sometimes. Not always, of course. They lost big in the Second World War. That was a victory for communists, democrats, and Jews, but everyone else lost." It continues, "A century after the war they are ready to challenge the democrats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Americans, who have begun to have their fill of government-enforced multi-culturalism and 'equality.'"[33]
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Apr 3, 2022 10:48
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Quite disconcerting to read that, click through to the Wikipedia article and then scroll up to read: "Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker (born Phillip Barker,[2] "
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Apr 3, 2022 12:05
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The Dreaming Tree by CJ Cherryh - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N4DE4V5/
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Apr 3, 2022 17:46
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