|
Serephina posted:Why? genuinely I don't know, I read it like people read trash airport thrillers. it's been ages since I picked it up, it's genuinely pretty bad even for Eddings e: what a terrible snipe, have a good book. My best friend just got locked up and the book he was reading and wanted me to send him once he got settled was William Gibson's The Difference Engine, which I can't argue with TheKennedys has a new favorite as of 13:59 on May 28, 2023 |
#
?
May 28, 2023 13:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 17:24 |
|
|
Serephina posted:Why? Asimov was an infamous groper at conventions. I feel a lot makes sense considering a lot of people got married and had kids because that was the thing you were expected to do, and not necessarily for any other reasons.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2023 13:59
|
|
|
Yeah 'Asimov had a weird and horrible attitude to women' was borne out in all aspects of his life.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2023 16:30
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2023 16:44
|
|
|
"They're Androids, not Gynoids !!" 
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2023 16:48
|
|
|
Mandroids
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2023 16:50
|
|
|
RoA is kinda weird in a way cause it sort of collapses the entire Eddings pastiche into one book. It's like an entire trilogy in one. It's kinda hard to hate his works because they are like boilerplate basic fantasy. You can hate the author easily enough, but the books are just pretty much inoffensive. Not that they don't have some weird poo poo that makes you go  once it kinda clicks. Sometimes you just gotta separate the art from the artist. I love cosmic horror but I'm pretty sure I'd have avoided Lovecraft before he started getting his poo poo together. Dude had subscriptions.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2023 02:16
|
|
|
Lovecraft in his personal life was way more blatantly in need of mental health help than anything.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2023 08:21
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:Lovecraft in his personal life was way more blatantly in need of mental health help than anything. Boy, that's an avatar/post combo.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2023 12:08
|
|
|
Powerful Two-Hander posted:There's a terrible Jack Reacher book (which one you may ask???) written once he ran out of ideas and just started churning out whatever where Reacher goes to England and it has this whole section of terrible stereotypes and weird attempts at writing accents from ye olde times and it's just terrible but Lee Child is actually British so all I can assume is that he deliberately wrote it as if he was an American trying to guess at it. He probably didn't write it, all those dadthriller guys use ghostwriters eventually
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2023 12:30
|
|
|
The Wicked ZOGA posted:He probably didn't write it, all those dadthriller guys use ghostwriters eventually He pretty openly switched to having his brother write the books just recently, so it doesn't seem like he had a ghostwriter before. I think he is just not the most skilled writer. I still regularly think back to the book where Reacher (50-something years old) spends a summer in Key West digging swimming pools by hand, and ends up so tanned and muscular that his arms look like "pantyhose stuffed with walnuts."
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2023 12:50
|
|
|
wheatpuppy posted:I still regularly think back to the book where Reacher (50-something years old) spends a summer in Key West digging swimming pools by hand, and ends up so tanned and muscular that his arms look like "pantyhose stuffed with walnuts." Sounds familiar. Does he also wear a lot of pouches, but leaves the feet out because he cant write feet? ?
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2023 13:14
|
|
|
Way too many authors are just like that setting stories in unfamiliar locales, they go by stereotypes because that's pretty much all they have to go on.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2023 13:28
|
|
|
Sobatchja Morda posted:Sounds familiar. Does he also wear a lot of pouches, but leaves the feet out because he cant write feet? ? No, but let me tell you about the sex scene with the woman with severe facial injuries that continually ooze pus.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2023 13:28
|
|
|
nonathlon posted:William Gibson's Zero History is set in London and has a series of slightly strange descriptions like "then we came to LANDMARK" which don't quite feel like their real-world counterparts. For example, there's a long section of a character being driven through the Hangar Lane Gyratory and being in awe of it and ... it's just an intersection. my gold standard for "guy writing weird rear end fiction/nonfiction about a place he KNOWS" is always Iain Sinclair's writing about london.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2023 13:36
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:Lovecraft in his personal life was way more blatantly in need of mental health help than anything. I honestly think if you went back in time and offered Lovecraft some sort of magic cure for his racism, he'd take it. The man didn't so much have deep, nasty prejudices as he was freaking terrified of THE OTHER and seeing it EVERYWHERE. There's being a bigot, there's being a severe bigot, and then there's being in pain just walking around New York because THE OTHER IS EVERYWHERE.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2023 07:16
|
|
|
I was thinking about book recommendations today and got to wondering, are there particular things you see before starting a book and just instantly feel like you're heading for some terrible writing? I was browsing horror novels and saw one publisher summary that started with "Based on the Reddit sensation". I think that's it for me, I did the in-app equivalent of  and got outta there. I know it's not a sure thing, but I've read so many short horror stories that are spawned from r/nosleep and such, and 95% of them fall into the same lazy, illogical nonsense around a half-baked premise, and are mostly entertaining because of their badness. I don't think I have the heart to give it a try when it's a full-length novel.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 21:41
|
|
|
"Volume 1 of a new epic fantasy series" used to be a massive tell. Then there's all those generic crime or thriller novels where the cover is a silhouette running away from the viewer, and the subtitle will be "number 21 in the DI Wargkebaum series"
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 00:03
|
|
|
Any time a book starts with "Let me introduce myself: my name is [blank] and I am a [premise of the series]." Unsurprisingly, a lot of KindleUnlimited urban fantasy series start this way.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 02:01
|
|
|
Lumbermouth posted:Any time a book starts with "Let me introduce myself: my name is [blank] and I am a [premise of the series]." Animorphs is good as hell, though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 02:07
|
|
|
nonathlon posted:
Oh yeah, numbers are a thing too. There's a lot of times where I'll see one that looks potentially interesting, then it'll be 12th in a series by an author I've never heard of, and I'll just go eh. Especially for crime novels. Maybe not so much an indicator of being terrible, it just makes them feel like they're never gonna give me anything impactful enough to put in the effort to read.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 02:25
|
|
|
I was reading a historical fiction book set in ancient Egypt and the first chapter was a eunuch ogling a nubile nobleman's daughter. There was also a series I started reading and put up with the author's poorly-disguised fetishes (women turning into livestock, hypnosis/mind control, weight gain, intelligence loss) for the duration of one entire book, but then the next book in the series started off with a character who'd been a cool space assassin deciding that her mission in life was to have children with a donkeyman to spite being half turned into a donkey at the end of the first book, and I decided I'd had given the series enough chances.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 04:18
|
|
|
Djeser posted:I was reading a historical fiction book set in ancient Egypt and the first chapter was a eunuch ogling a nubile nobleman's daughter. I guess you could say he was an rear end man 
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 04:34
|
|
|
Captain Hygiene posted:I was thinking about book recommendations today and got to wondering, are there particular things you see before starting a book and just instantly feel like you're heading for some terrible writing?
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 04:44
|
|
|
Djeser posted:I was reading a historical fiction book set in ancient Egypt and the first chapter was a eunuch ogling a nubile nobleman's daughter.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 06:49
|
|
|
You can just... write porn these days. Gay werewolf porn is apparently a huge seller.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 07:05
|
|
|
Tiggum posted:Made-up fantasy/sci-fi names for real things. Or things that are functionally identical to real things but have lasers or magic added for no reason. Difficult to google for, but there's a joke in SF fandom about books describing in detail an alien creature called an "ooblok", which is clearly a rabbit. Others tells of a bad book: * When the cover screams in big bold letters that it's by BIG NAME AUTHOR (and SmallName WriterForHire, who clearly did all the work) * Prominent and effusive endorsement on cover by Big Name Author (Stephen King etc.) * SF novels set in the far future, featuring Space Russia at war with Space America, characters in same novel being obsessed with very specific period in history, i.e. modern day USA, talking about the music or namedropping politicians and celebrities. Because I'm always thinking about the Dark Ages and Aethelraed The Unready. Bonus points if Space Japan shows up and their space samurai talk about honour
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 07:19
|
|
|
Tiggum posted:Made-up fantasy/sci-fi names for real things. Or things that are functionally identical to real things but have lasers or magic added for no reason. Aw man, I adore Watership Down, but coming back to it years after I first read it, gently caress does that poo poo take me out of the story. We're already presumably translating the rabbit language into human speech. Why the hell do they say "silflay" instead of "grazing" ? Humans have perfectly fine words for time of day, you don't have to write "ni Frith" when we have "sundown" gently caress goddammit
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 09:00
|
|
|
nonathlon posted:* SF novels set in the far future, featuring Space Russia at war with Space America, characters in same novel being obsessed with very specific period in history, i.e. modern day USA, talking about the music or namedropping politicians and celebrities. Because I'm always thinking about the Dark Ages and Aethelraed The Unready. The Honor Harrington series was terrible with this, especially because it mixes those metaphors. It wants to be Space Napoleonic France vs Space 1800s Britain, while also trying to do Space Soviet Union vs Space Modern Britain at the same time with the same factions. So you get weird things like the command structure of the supposedly egalitarian Bad Faction being filled with incompetents who gained their rank only through party connections, whereas the Good Faction always has the cream rising to the top even though it's a literal aristocracy where command is generally reserved to those of rank. Also, in one of the later books the Bad Faction is lead by a guy called Robert Stanton Pierre. Rob S. Pierre. Yes, David Weber, I get it. gently caress you.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 10:04
|
|
|
Perestroika posted:The Honor Harrington series was terrible with this, especially because it mixes those metaphors. It wants to be Space Napoleonic France vs Space 1800s Britain, while also trying to do Space Soviet Union vs Space Modern Britain at the same time with the same factions. So you get weird things like the command structure of the supposedly egalitarian Bad Faction being filled with incompetents who gained their rank only through party connections, whereas the Good Faction always has the cream rising to the top even though it's a literal aristocracy where command is generally reserved to those of rank. but also despite all the Republic of Haven = Revolutionary France But Also Soviet stuff, Haven is supposed to be "the US after centuries of the welfare state" or something to that effect.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 10:10
|
|
|
I always thought that the political structures of the Harrington books felt like they were written as he was browsing through some kind of historical trivia book. "Oh, I recognized that bit, it's going in a book along with this other bit that sounds cool. They don't really make sense together but nobody is gonna notice." Contrasted to, say, David Drake who will have a foreword explaining exactly which specific pre-classical civilization inspired the minor kingdom featured in chapter 32, and citing the classical sources. Which he read in Latin, of course. (I really like Drake, to be clear,)
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 11:04
|
|
|
It's that combined with uncritical love of Cold War propaganda views where the patriotic protagonist fucks with the economy of her home country to get rich and is seen as heroic for it even while a war is on, while their opposition went broke by giving everyone welfare.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 11:46
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:It's that combined with uncritical love of Cold War propaganda views where the patriotic protagonist fucks with the economy of her home country to get rich and is seen as heroic for it even while a war is on, while their opposition went broke by giving everyone welfare. It's seen as real proof that Manticore is really desperate to win and the Leftists have hosed Everything Up that they actually have to raise taxes at all, instead of having infinite Free Market cash with the wormhole junction. Also to tie into the OTHER bad things, there's also planets like New Montana, where everything is named after places in Montana, and somehow was rich purely off of cattle ranching, because apparently one planet can supply the beef and leather needs of other planets enough that it didn't need to do anything else. It also had animals like Neo Rabbits, which were.. rabbits, but not. Like how the Solarian League calls other people 'Neo-Barbarians' despite just meaning... barbarians. Also there's Graysons, who use the power of Mormonism to become pretty much the greatest scientists and engineers in the universe in less than a decade despite having been roughly 500 years behind everyone else when the story begins.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 12:04
|
|
|
Oh great, another Mormon sci-fi author.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 12:09
|
|
|
The latest books have all been "Weber's Steely-Eyed Paladins forge ahead for what's right after the New Worst Thing That Has Ever Happened Happens, with a side order of Eric Flint's Quippy Action Movie Heroes having their excellent adventures in the background." At least, that's where things were up into "Uncompromising Honor." I don't even remember if I've read "To End in Fire." It's also kind of weird how often a character "raised a hand, palm-uppermost, and made a throwing-away gesture." in the series. I think it slows down later, but every time it showed up when I was listening the audiobooks in the early 2000's it always jumped out at me.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 12:24
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:Oh great, another Mormon sci-fi author. He's a United Methodist actually, but he seems to have some weird love of Mormons. The Graysons actually had a civil war not too long before and the bad ones were exiled and became the Masadans (named after a fortress where a bunch of Jewish zealots were sieged by Romans and committed mass suicide) and indeed are basically fundamentalists who somehow picked up a ton of negative traits associated with fundamentalist Islamists instead of being Evil Mormons. There's a lot of how actually polygamy where the women serve the men rules... but only because Graysons are just so cool that they do it right. When MASADANS do it, it's done bad and evil. maltesh posted:The latest books have all been "Weber's Steely-Eyed Paladins forge ahead for what's right after the New Worst Thing That Has Ever Happened Happens, with a side order of Eric Flint's Quippy Action Movie Heroes having their excellent adventures in the background." Uncompromising Honor's plot is "The Solarian League, the greatest force in the universe, is casually trounced by the Grand Alliance because the Solarian League has been a paper tiger for millenium and nobody noticed" and To End In Fire is "Weber And Flint's Self-Inserts cleanup". Speaking of, I can't believe that Flint's books were actually the worst in the series despite being nominally about much cooler stuff like slaves overthrowing slavers. Perestroika posted:The Honor Harrington series was terrible with this, especially because it mixes those metaphors. It wants to be Space Napoleonic France vs Space 1800s Britain, while also trying to do Space Soviet Union vs Space Modern Britain at the same time with the same factions. So you get weird things like the command structure of the supposedly egalitarian Bad Faction being filled with incompetents who gained their rank only through party connections, whereas the Good Faction always has the cream rising to the top even though it's a literal aristocracy where command is generally reserved to those of rank. Don't forget the Planet Of Chinese who all converted to being Prussians because their first ruler was a literally delusional maniac, which of course made him the best person for the job. Kchama has a new favorite as of 12:31 on Jun 21, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 12:26
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:Oh great, another Mormon sci-fi author. Hey, the ancient mormons built a wooden submarine, there's clearly genius in there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 14:03
|
|
|
Terrible Opinions posted:Are you talking about the Well World books? 
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 17:07
|
|
|
Captain Hygiene posted:I was thinking about book recommendations today and got to wondering, are there particular things you see before starting a book and just instantly feel like you're heading for some terrible writing? anything with a cover that's just a person and animal duo covers (sometimes even subtitles) that include the hyper-specific subgenre, like Such-and-Such: A Cozy Hopepunk Mystery first person narrative the first few pages are used to set their internal voice as snarky and quippy
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 17:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 17:24 |
|
|
Djeser posted:I was reading a historical fiction book set in ancient Egypt and the first chapter was a eunuch ogling a nubile nobleman's daughter. Is this the lady turned into a monster by weird cultists, who then gets technologically brainwashed by a dude who decides it's the only way she won't go crazy, or the type A soldier guy who gets turned into a minotaur woman of a race where the women are categorically less intelligent? In any case: lol. The author has some neat ideas, and clearly tries to play with how people come to terms with how they're made (only God is an alien squid with a computer instead of a metaphor for random chance). But holy poo poo are there some patterns to who gets turned into what. Serephina posted:Why? He started the series when he was in high school. Also he had serious issues with women even by the standards of his day. IMO if you're gonna read one Asimov book "I, Robot" is way better, but even that's not good enough to be worth powering through if you hate it. Asimov's interesting ideas got adopted widely enough you mostly aren't missing out if you skip actually reading his work. Blue Footed Booby has a new favorite as of 17:50 on Jun 21, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 17:31
|
|
