|
Depends on how excited you are for an old man merging together all of his unrelated series.
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 15:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 12, 2024 22:08 |
|
|
Opopanax posted:So it's not worth reading the side stuff, then? No
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 15:17
|
|
|
Opopanax posted:I’m interested in reading Foundation but there seem to be a lot of books in the series then a bunch of stuff that’s loosely tied in, and several different reading orders. What’s the recommended order for this stuff? Watch out for the Issac Asimov Literary Doomsday Device! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDCN5oF4624&t=4374s
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 15:23
|
|
|
Opopanax posted:So it's not worth reading the side stuff, then? it’s incredible because if you want to read the absolute trashiest crap in the world and are just looking for someone to say “go ahead” usually you can find someone in this thread to give you that validation but we draw the line at the foundation side stuff
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 16:16
|
|
|
Foundation is incredibly dry and the premise is completely ludicrous. I guess in the ray gun 1950s psychohistory might seem intriguing but now it's absurd.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 16:25
|
|
|
buffalo all day posted:it’s incredible because if you want to read the absolute trashiest crap in the world and are just looking for someone to say “go ahead” usually you can find someone in this thread to give you that validation but we draw the line at the foundation side stuff I think we should draw the line at reading Foundation at all, personally. I get enough of old white guys jerking themselves off about how smart and important they are in the most dry and boring manner possible just by existing on the internet these days
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 16:51
|
|
|
I have a lot of mostly negative opinions about Isaac Asimov these days and boy I didn't like Foundations, but I'll always have a soft spot for his I, Robot collection. Just fun little tales.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 16:57
|
|
|
Opopanax posted:So it's not worth reading the side stuff, then? Nor the decades-later sequels by Asimov himself, really. In his later years he succumbed to a need to tie all of his earlier novels together. Should not have done that.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 17:06
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:I have a lot of mostly negative opinions about Isaac Asimov these days and boy I didn't like Foundations, but I'll always have a soft spot for his I, Robot collection. Just fun little tales. Also I remember the robot-detective novels fondly. Got ridiculous aspects like future super-urbanized Earth having essentially no social change since 1950s New York, but still.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 17:08
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:I have a lot of mostly negative opinions about Isaac Asimov these days and boy I didn't like Foundations, but I'll always have a soft spot for his I, Robot collection. Just fun little tales.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 17:09
|
|
|
buffalo all day posted:it’s incredible because if you want to read the absolute trashiest crap in the world and are just looking for someone to say “go ahead” usually you can find someone in this thread to give you that validation but we draw the line at the foundation side stuff cough cough Dune cough cough
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 17:17
|
|
|
Foundation is neat if you're willing to read stuff that might (I genuinely don't know if it was) have seemed original in the 50s and is now outdated, quaint, simple, and overtly misogynistic. On the other hand, I do like reading some of those old sci-fi books because it's fun to see some of the ideas that just becomes foundational for other works. Trantor is a neat place. It's also not like Foundation is a long book.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 17:37
|
|
|
Groke posted:Also I remember the robot-detective novels fondly. I’d say the super-urbanization itself involves some fairly extreme social change. Not an especially realistic one, though, IMO (Asimov had an exaggerated sense of the effects of population growth and the willingness of people to live in cramped environments).
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 17:51
|
|
|
Also IMS the population of Asimov's horribly overcrowded super-urbanized future Earth was... 8 billion.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 18:01
|
|
|
you should read Foundation so that you can marvel at how the recent TV series somehow managed to make it even more boring than Asimov did. you should read Foundation and Empire so that you can marvel at how the entire narrative of the book ends with a "big dick" joke. you should read Second Foundation so that you can marvel at how the most compelling character, who is also the villain responsible for driving the overarching plot of the previous book (such that it seemed like this book was going to primarily be about resolving said plot), gets tidily removed from the story like 10 pages in, all the dramatic tension and investment evaporates, and then the rest of the book is just contextless short stories about other people dealing with unrelated problems.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 18:02
|
|
|
Caves of Steel was pretty good
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 18:10
|
|
|
Groke posted:Nor the decades-later sequels by Asimov himself, really. whoa whoa whoa you're telling me that the final ending of Foundation where the actual, literal I, Robot robots decided humanity was in too much danger in their original universe, so they invented parallel universe travel and moved every human into a parallel, empty-of-other-sentients universe, to keep them safe was dumb??? I may be misremembering this slightly. edit; Oh and also that the 0th law of robotics meant that the psychic robot from other earlier stories is guiding humanity toward a collective mind species was kind of stupid too? Yngwie Mangosteen fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Aug 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 18:22
|
|
|
zoux posted:Foundation is incredibly dry and the premise is completely ludicrous. I guess in the ray gun 1950s psychohistory might seem intriguing but now it's absurd. I found it extremely fitting that a movie/TV adaptation went nowhere for decades until Apple finally threw a bunch of money at it, because of course it would be Silicon Valley technocrat types that are still in love with the idea of a magical algorithm with which to predict/influence the future agree with the sentiment that Foundation hasn't aged that well, and everything other than the original three books really hasn't aged well. been a while since I've read any Asimov but I expect that the robot stuff like I, Robot and Caves of Steel holds up better e: Runcible Cat posted:cough cough Dune cough cough look, at least the trash that Frank was turning out in his dotage still gave the people what they wanted: Duncan Idaho and sex Blotto_Otter fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Aug 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 18:27
|
|
|
Second Foundation felt kind of pointless to me because it was basically "what if the big idea in the Foundation books wasn't actually workable?" and I was like "I knew that already but I was politely suspending my disbelief"
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 18:29
|
|
|
Qwertycoatl posted:Second Foundation felt kind of pointless to me because it was basically "what if the big idea in the Foundation books wasn't actually workable?" and I was like "I knew that already but I was politely suspending my disbelief" On the other hand it was my first exposure to, essentially, the idea that Great Man Theory was wrong and that societal forces actually are forces. That isn't exactly a new thought, but for an elementary schooler being taught history through exactly the lens of "and then this guy did a thing" it was pretty neat. The fact that the narrative relies on a great man to do the things societal forces created was...well, I politely ignored that for the sake of a narrative.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 18:34
|
|
|
I'm the first being to exist with total telepathic powers, I can control entire worlds - empires! - with my mind, and thus shall name myself after my most salient feature: I'm Mr. Can't Have Kids Guy.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 18:43
|
|
|
zoux posted:Foundation is incredibly dry and the premise is completely ludicrous. I guess in the ray gun 1950s psychohistory might seem intriguing but now it's absurd. "What if all human hopes and fears were a sub discipline of engineering?"
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 19:15
|
|
|
zoux posted:I'm the first being to exist with total telepathic powers, I can control entire worlds - empires! - with my mind, and thus shall name myself after my most salient feature: I'm Mr. Can't Have Kids Guy. Settle down, Kojima san
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 19:16
|
|
|
Strategic Tea posted:Settle down, Kojima san "no, it's because he's bisexual" the mule was not actually bisexual but gently caress it I can never not quote that Vamp quote
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 19:29
|
|
|
Strategic Tea posted:"What if all human hopes and fears were a sub discipline of engineering?" That's one reason I kind of like the Mule stuff. The previous book was just stories about how Seldenonomics was perfectly planning the Foundation's rise. And then the universe goes "Whoopsie, curveball" that throws all that poo poo out the window.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 19:32
|
|
|
Yeah, I always enjoyed the part where the Seldon Chamber opened while the Mule was taking over and everyone was like "Oh, ok, we've got this, Seldon forsaw it" and instead NOPE, it's time to panic!
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 19:38
|
|
|
Blotto_Otter posted:look, at least the trash that Frank was turning out in his dotage still gave the people what they wanted: Duncan Idaho and sex Pretty accurate summary of the last two (three?) Dune books TBH.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 19:42
|
|
|
Came across this on a folk music podcast, Tolkien singing a rendition of Sam's troll poem from LotR, and drat but he wasn't a bad singer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68GDPaywiS4 But Troll don't care, and he's still there With the bone he boned from its owner. Donor! Boner! Troll's old seat is still the same, And the bone he boned from its owner! 
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 20:00
|
|
|
Leng posted:Okay so I was chatting to an own voices reader about Tasha Suri (RAVE) and Kaikeyi (eh for me; they REALLY disliked it, they were like it makes no sense) and they told me that if I wanted more South Asian fantasy I should read R.R. Virdi and got me to finally start The First Binding. (Sons of Darkness by Gourav Mohanty which is Mahabharata inspired was the other rec.) branedotorg posted:If you aren't vibing it I wouldn't have thought you'll enjoy it, it does get out of the fantasy middle eastern city but at no point does it stop being 'heavily inspired' by notw. Danhenge posted:I read like a quarter of it and I would recommend putting it down. buffalo all day posted:reading fantasy works inspired by name of the wind (itself insanely derivative) is like having dinner with the dopey copies of Michael Keaton in multiplicity I have now finished The First Binding and I have regrets. It was an incredibly meh read for me. I mostly skimmed through it. Even not having read NotW, just knowing the broad strokes of NotW makes the parallels obvious. It's not just the narrative structure or the character archetypes or the beat-for-beat parallels, it's also in the prose style (less purple and full of itself compared to Rothfuss, but still clearly of the same ilk) and the way the story is set and told. I found the "romance" in The First Binding's frame story cringe enough even though Eloine is not Denna; based on excerpts, I do not have any desire to find out how much more cringe the Denna thing in Kingkiller actually is. To Virdi's credit: the frame narrative actually advances the plot of looking for the Ashura and trying to kill them (I hear Kvothe never gets around to the Chandrian). And the way the South Asian mythology was integrated was nice. (That said, I don't know much about South Asian mythology, so I'm going off what the own voices reader said.) Imo it's pretty fair to call this an alt-universe fix fic of NotW. Virdi, in interviews, has talked about how very much he loves NotW and how it's a love letter to it and there's a level of uncanny parallel between the two books at so many levels that goes beyond coincidental. Somewhere around the 70% mark there's a specific in-text reference to Kvothe and the themes deliberately point you towards the conclusion of "hey, maybe Ari and Kvothe are really the SAME PERSON, it's just the details of the stories are different because STORIES." Also as a musician, every time Radi used his mandolin to have a dialogue with Ari and the note/s that were plucked/strummed got translated in the prose as doubtful, stupid, foolish or whatever single word sentiment, I cringed. It's worse than the Kvothe narration about his lute playing that ends on  withak posted:Reminder that the number of pages you have to read before you are allowed up give up on a book is 100 minus your age in years. Hahaha, that's somewhere still in the setup of the framing narrative. The first 6 or 7 chapters were very hard to read. I just could not take any of the dialogue or narration seriously. Annnnnnd I probably should've done just that. Up next: Sienna Frost's Obsidian: Awakening which I have heard lots of good things about. It's in the Self-Publishing Fantasy Blog-off this year and unfortunately just got cut due to reviewer preferences. By all accounts this should be a book that I should enjoy and I'm hoping that I will.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2023 22:09
|
|
|
Leng posted:I have now finished The First Binding and I have regrets. I heard this guy on a podcast and I had to turn it off because he was so annoying. eta something more than just being an rear end in a top hat: if you want to read a much better book that's also by a South Asian writer, you should check out The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. tiniestacorn fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Aug 11, 2023 |
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 05:06
|
|
|
Captain Monkey posted:whoa whoa whoa you're telling me that the final ending of Foundation where the actual, literal I, Robot robots decided humanity was in too much danger in their original universe, so they invented parallel universe travel and moved every human into a parallel, empty-of-other-sentients universe, to keep them safe was dumb??? I may be misremembering this slightly. never have I been gladder to click on a spoiler
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 05:43
|
|
|
GhastlyBizness posted:Came across this on a folk music podcast, Tolkien singing a rendition of Sam's troll poem from LotR, and drat but he wasn't a bad singer Then you'll be glad to hear that there's an entire album of Tolkien reciting and singing his own work. I probably still have it somewhere.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 11:23
|
|
|
Years after I'd given up on recommending her books, my mother expressed interest in reading Greg Egan's short stories after seeing the recent translation of his work praised on Korean BookTube. Hope she likes it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 12:03
|
|
|
Very excited about this. I was going to wait but then remembered the talk about how important pre-orders can be.  I've already bought All In because I really enjoyed the pre-publication PDF I got on preview. Would other goon authors please mind posting if they have something coming out I can do the same for? I read a lot (I mean we aren't talking StrixNebulosa levels who I imagine as a human library  but it is a few books a week) and would like to send money to some fellow forum posters. Would it be possible to add Goon Author Books to the OP at all as they come up?
ClydeFrog fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Aug 11, 2023 |
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 13:09
|
|
|
sick, GB’s books are auto-buy on day 1 in this house
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 13:11
|
|
|
This is only 99p at the moment in the UK - maybe the same elsewhere? M.R. Carey - The Infinity Gate
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 13:22
|
|
|
ClydeFrog posted:This is only 99p at the moment in the UK - maybe the same elsewhere? That's a steal, but it is the first book in a duology and the second one isn't out until next year and it ends on a cliffhanger.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 13:36
|
|
|
Because the topic just came up, I created a goon authors thread, message me or post in it to add more https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4039078
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 14:01
|
|
|
Jedit posted:That's a steal, but it is the first book in a duology and the second one isn't out until next year and it ends on a cliffhanger. Yeah, though it's a very fun book. Carey is good.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 15:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 12, 2024 22:08 |
|
|
Ravenfood posted:On the other hand it was my first exposure to, essentially, the idea that Great Man Theory was wrong and that societal forces actually are forces. That isn't exactly a new thought, but for an elementary schooler being taught history through exactly the lens of "and then this guy did a thing" it was pretty neat. Tolstoy wrote about this with war and peace - glad Asimov was breaking new ground
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2023 15:25
|
|
