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NmareBfly posted:Halting state. Never read the sequel. Has stross been up to much besides the laundry books of late? I fell off those at some point. I like Stross but he mostly has good ideas that don't quite pan out or he gets lost in details I don't care about much. He's got a space opera book in progress that I thought was coming out this summer but is apparently delayed until at least next year.
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Jun 16, 2023 00:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The Dune series gets progressively more and more itself ...the Golden Path...
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Jun 16, 2023 00:25
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Chiming in that Dune Messiah wraps up the Paul Atreides arc in what felt very rushed and hinted at for the ending of Dune. It's almost a coda for making explicit Paul's dread for the future. I also actually prefer it for the more involved political intrigue and a conspiracy that includes a man who lives in a fish bowl.
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Jun 16, 2023 03:54
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pradmer posted:Paradise-1 by David Wellington - $2.99 Pretty weird, lots of body horror. Basically right on the edge of what I'm able to handle. Pretty engaging, though. Moderate spoiler if you want some over arching plot details that doesn't ruin too much of the specifics: The characters are sent to investigate a space colony and run into the manifestation of something that is some sort of semi-aware being that operates like a memetic virus. It also turns out that they are far from the first group to be sent. The ultimate cause of the events of the book are not really explained but it ends in a cliffhanger so I assume we might learn more later. It could honestly be any of aliens, demons, some sort of extradimensional being, or just like straight up hell is leaking.
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Jun 16, 2023 04:41
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Ccs posted:*Gets to chapter 2 of Acts of Caine* You are in for a ride. We need more books that just mash insane concepts together plus 80s Van Damme action movies. I've tried pitching this book to people...Avatar meets Running Man meet D&D meets Conan?
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Jun 16, 2023 06:15
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Sailor Viy posted:Any recommendations of Cthulhu Mythos* stories or novels that are set in, or deal with, the distant future? I'm specifically interested in stuff that's linked to the themes of "The Shadow Out of Time"--the vastness of the future, extinction of humanity, that sort of thing--rather than just a story that has spaceships and also Cthulhu. I don't know why I just thought of this. Eclipse Phase is a roleplaying game, not a novel, but it is exactly what you are asking for. If you don't want to even deal with that, their fiction and non-fiction inspiration reference list has plenty of books for you to look up. Reference PDF
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Jun 16, 2023 07:53
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MartingaleJack posted:You are in for a ride. We need more books that just mash insane concepts together plus 80s Van Damme action movies. I've tried pitching this book to people...Avatar meets Running Man meet D&D meets Conan? I just loaded this series onto my Kindle for a re-read and I'M SO HYPE.
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Jun 16, 2023 11:37
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Danhenge posted:Pretty weird, lots of body horror. Basically right on the edge of what I'm able to handle. Pretty engaging, though. Moderate spoiler if you want some over arching plot details that doesn't ruin too much of the specifics: Instantly purchased, thank you for the pitch. I am compelled by space horror
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Jun 16, 2023 12:59
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Ray Bradbury was at his very best writing short stories, at least for me. Funny thing is that he really wasn't liked by contemporary diehard scifi fandom, because a) despite coming from early scifi fandom Bradbury refused to insert fan service into his stories like other authors (strike 1), b) Bradbury didn't really consider himself a scifi author (strike 2), and finally c) Bradbury's widestream writing success across movies, radio and tv along with public fame really utterly pissed off the Ray Bradbury anti-fan club (strike 3). Frank Herbert's Dune series is really enhanced by the now disavowed Dune Encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dune_Encyclopedia , especially God Emperor. Lots of weird details and expansions of the Dune universe setting in the Dune Encyclopedia that Frank Herbert 100% was ok with. Even without the Dune Encyclopedia, I'm pretty ok with all of the Frank Herbert written Dune books and Dune short stories. Dune Messiah goes weird places with the genetically engineered characters (Scytale's name was extremely on point though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scytale ). Yeah, Frank Herbert got explicitly horny while writing Heretics (the sex ninjas) after his wife died in real life but the setting changes/story scope outside of Dune-Rakis in Heretics was interesting, while Chapterhouse was even more Frank Herbert sex creepiness, and the outcome of 8000+ years of nepotism across all factions. I've been reading lots of stuff the past few months. Mickey 7 (not bad but has really shoehorned abrasive dickhead conflict), the Terraformers (Planet Terraforming across thousands of years on a for-profit basis vs giving sophont-hond to just about every lifeform on the terraformed planet and the thousand plus year fight for equal-to-human rights for every sophont species that ensues), arsene lupin vs herlock sholmes (Lupin constantly fucks with Herlock/Sherlock Holmes, but Herlock gets in some solid counterblows, while Watson uh WILSON gets constantly maimed after dogmatically defending Sholmes), Drunk on all Your Strange New Worlds (a decent scifi themed murder mystery, would like to see sequels to that setting), and a massive amount of non-fiction covering stuff like climate change, the history of air/what have people thought air /was/, how beavers transform and maintain land, history of disinformation, mushroom farming, people in 1889 trying to beat Jules Verne 80 days around the world travel time, semiconductor chip wars, humblebragging art forger autobiographies, the declassification engine (highly recommend people read this book, just ignore the pitch for using the authors bespoke document metadata search engine), a history of movie stunt people, and the extremely memory-holed time that a terrorism event happened in Washington DC (American Caliph, if you want to know more). quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Jun 16, 2023 |
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Jun 16, 2023 14:45
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General Battuta posted:Instantly purchased, thank you for the pitch. I am compelled by space horror It's not precisely "space" horror (most of it takes place on Earth though it starts on the ISS) but there's also the Obelisks series by Ari Marmell.
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Jun 16, 2023 17:01
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I'm about halfway through The Stars are Legion and I don't know if I want to finish it. The world is interesting, but I'm not that attached to the characters and listening to the main character try to trudge up from the planet's core to the surface, where I feel it's gonna just be, "the surface? That doesn't exist, you're crazy" for like a dozen chapters while not engaging with the central mysteries doesn't sound appealing to me. If people say it's worth it, though, might keep going. I'm tempted to jump to The Broken Sword, House of Suns, or Project Hail Mary instead.
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Jun 16, 2023 17:31
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I'm about halfway through The Stars are Legion and I don't know if I want to finish it. The world is interesting, but I'm not that attached to the characters and listening to the main character try to trudge up from the planet's core to the surface, where I feel it's gonna just be, "the surface? That doesn't exist, you're crazy" for like a dozen chapters while not engaging with the central mysteries doesn't sound appealing to me. If people say it's worth it, though, might keep going. I love Stars Are Legion, but if you're not enjoying the part you're at now and didn't like the stuff before it that much either, you're probably better off jumping to a different book. It won't be that different after the section you're at now.
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Jun 16, 2023 17:48
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Yeah, it's tries very hard to be a Dying Earth style travelogue, so if you're not digging the excuse to explore bizarre landscapes and civilizations you won't be any happier by the end.
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Jun 16, 2023 18:31
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Numbers in the Dark by Italo Calvino - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E9FYU12/ Dr Futurity by Philip K Dick - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008LQ1EUK/
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Jun 16, 2023 22:36
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I'm tempted to jump to The Broken Sword, House of Suns, or Project Hail Mary instead. House of Suns is very cool.
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Jun 16, 2023 23:29
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House of Suns is one of the best books at demonstrating how time is a mundane dimension
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Jun 16, 2023 23:38
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The Broken Sword is cool af, too. Also short so should not take too long.
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Jun 17, 2023 01:08
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Thanks, I'll move to The Broken Sword then House of Suns.
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Jun 17, 2023 03:44
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King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1) by Kate Elliot - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AFXJKCG/ The Solitudes (Aegypt Cycle #1) by John Crowley - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P9H6QTD/
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Jun 17, 2023 15:44
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At some point I read a very convincing post about what Dune 7 would be about and how it would conclude the story but I don’t remember where.
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Jun 17, 2023 15:45
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pradmer posted:Paradise-1 by David Wellington - $2.99 I’m a quarter of the way through and unfortunately it sucks rear end so far. Just the bare skeleton of a thriller with a perfunctory cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, no more than a hint of the good weird poo poo. It’s probably written this way on purpose to target an audience but that audience isn’t me.
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Jun 17, 2023 16:11
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General Battuta posted:I’m a quarter of the way through and unfortunately it sucks rear end so far. Just the bare skeleton of a thriller with a perfunctory cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, no more than a hint of the good weird poo poo. It’s probably written this way on purpose to target an audience but that audience isn’t me. Piss, I bought it for full price after seeing that description too.
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Jun 17, 2023 16:14
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Ccs posted:At some point I read a very convincing post about what Dune 7 would be about and how it would conclude the story but I don’t remember where. I don't know where you heard that, as before he died Herbert said there would be ten novels.
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Jun 17, 2023 20:44
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General Battuta posted:I’m a quarter of the way through and unfortunately it sucks rear end so far. Just the bare skeleton of a thriller with a perfunctory cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, no more than a hint of the good weird poo poo. It’s probably written this way on purpose to target an audience but that audience isn’t me. Thank you for your sacrifice.
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Jun 17, 2023 22:28
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It’s a downer as I thought Last Astronaut was decent to good.
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Jun 17, 2023 22:58
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General Battuta posted:I’m a quarter of the way through and unfortunately it sucks rear end so far. Just the bare skeleton of a thriller with a perfunctory cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, no more than a hint of the good weird poo poo. It’s probably written this way on purpose to target an audience but that audience isn’t me. It worked for me but it was also so much better written than the stuff I’ve been reading recently I may have given it a pass objectively.
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Jun 18, 2023 05:26
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General Battuta posted:It’s a downer as I thought Last Astronaut was decent to good. I started reading The Last Astronaut despite my misgivings because y'all were talking about it a couple weeks ago and I found it to be incredibly derivative and bland and after I got a little ways in I checked my Goodreads and discovered that I'd read it already and hated it, so apparently it was so bad that it made almost no impression on me whatsoever.
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Jun 18, 2023 05:52
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General Battuta posted:I’m a quarter of the way through and unfortunately it sucks rear end so far. Just the bare skeleton of a thriller with a perfunctory cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, no more than a hint of the good weird poo poo. It’s probably written this way on purpose to target an audience but that audience isn’t me. Have you gotten to the first other ship? I think that's where things start to get gnarly. The grossest part was probably when they get to the ship where the crew believes there's something infectious hiding on the ship. The ship's doctor has used the ship's robot surgeon to auto-vivisect himself down to the bare minimum of a functioning human body because the humans are convinced it's hiding inside one of them. I'm probably easily manipulated by the cliffhanger structure though, it's pretty much always worked in me.
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Jun 18, 2023 05:57
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Danhenge posted:Have you gotten to the first other ship? I think that's where things start to get gnarly. The grossest part was probably when they get to the ship where the crew believes there's something infectious hiding on the ship. The ship's doctor has used the ship's robot surgeon to auto-vivisect himself down to the bare minimum of a functioning human body because the humans are convinced it's hiding inside one of them. lmao Man is the warmest place t- is it just me or is it getting cold in here?
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Jun 18, 2023 06:09
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Ccs posted:At some point I read a very convincing post about what Dune 7 would be about and how it would conclude the story but I don’t remember where. Yeah I'm pretty sure those books (as Jedit said, books plural) got written by Brian Herbert. The writing is atrocious, and I literally gave up after 2.5 books, but it does go into the broad plot strokes Frank Herbert was planning. It also unravels the mysteries from book six. Axolotl tasks are actually lobotomized women. Honored Matres are descendants of Tleilaxu women who escaped, which is part of why they're so furious. The old man and woman in the garden who visit Duncan Idaho are actually the super-AIs defeated in the Butlerian Jihad, reaching out via a "tachyon web" that allows them to instantly affect anywhere in the universe. Basically every major character gets brought back as a ghola. Duncan Idaho is the penultimate Kwizats Haderach and demonstrates this by loving up the robots in personal melee combat. The end.
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Jun 18, 2023 07:33
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Also someone mentioned The Book of the Long Sun in response to someone else looking for a scheming super-AI story, which reminded me that I hadn't read it. It's really good! Definitely on the more comfortable end of reading for Wolfe, in terms of use of unreliable narrator / deep mysteries left as an exercise for the reader.
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Jun 18, 2023 07:37
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I've obviously not seen Frank's notes but personally I'm sceptical that they say the main villain is Brian+Kevin's OC, defeated by Brian+Kevin's other OC
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Jun 18, 2023 11:28
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No it’s all in there. Along with the Butlerian Juhad starting because of an extremely late term abortion
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Jun 18, 2023 15:07
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I just finished the 2nd in Becky Chamber's "Wayfarers" series, "A Closed and Common Orbit". It was...fine? I liked it less than book 1, and less than "A Psalm for the Wild Built" and "A Prayer for the Crown Shy". I was much more interested in Jane 23's story than Sidra's. Sidra's just felt a little...whiney? She just kind of mopes around for a while. Also kind of hard to square the "AI aren't people in this universe" thing with "constantly mopey robot". I also felt that there was some big stuff that was either unexplained, or hand wavey. Jane turned into Pepper? How? When? Why? What was that like? Jane breaks into that tower for the fuel and meets Blue and then suddenly he's giving her fuel and it's just...fine? I just came off reading most of the Murderbot series (up till Network Effect), and this Becky Chambers book felt a bit soft at the edges in comparison.
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Jun 18, 2023 15:38
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This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MNG496J/ Perennial thread favorite, recommended. Dandelion Dynasty series by Ken Liu - $2.99 each The Grace of Kings (#1) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KU4O1CY/ The Wall of Storms (#2) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BKR14LK/ The Veiled Threat (#3) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075RND5N7/
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Jun 18, 2023 16:12
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The Galaxy and the Ground Within is the one that felt like a proper story. I'm not too fond of book 3.
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Jun 18, 2023 16:15
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Qwertycoatl posted:I've obviously not seen Frank's notes but personally I'm sceptical that they say the main villain is Brian+Kevin's OC, defeated by Brian+Kevin's other OC Oh yeah I'd honestly be curious about how much was just Frank Herbert getting weirder in his old age and how much was Brian and Kevin's bad fanfiction. Either seem plausible to me. Regardless, those books are bad, and I regret putting the time into reading them.
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Jun 18, 2023 16:49
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zoux posted:No it’s all in there. Along with the Butlerian Juhad starting because of an extremely late term abortion Come on, I don't like Brian Herbert either but that's no way to describe him.
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Jun 18, 2023 17:08
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Oh yeah I'd honestly be curious about how much was just Frank Herbert getting weirder in his old age and how much was Brian and Kevin's bad fanfiction. Either seem plausible Also Frank Herbert wasn't exactly not weird to begin with.
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Jun 18, 2023 18:29
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Groke posted:Also Frank Herbert wasn't exactly not weird to begin with. Yeah, anyone ever read The Santaroga Barrier? what the hell was with all the loving jaspers, man.
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Jun 18, 2023 18:59
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