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Ravenfood posted:Yes, it's very Star Trek in "everyone is generally a good person trying to their best in a big universe" way. Star Trek is cozy as hell so I get it.
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Mar 8, 2024 22:04
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I still don't know what cozy means, can I request another 100 posts debating it?
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Mar 8, 2024 22:10
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It's a descriptor used to forewarn me that I'll dislike a work.
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Mar 8, 2024 22:21
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Finished rereading Pride of Chanur  It's so weirdly satisfying to reread books by Cherryh because the frenzied, action-packed finales are no longer frantic (as I know what happens) and I can slow down and dissect what happens.
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Mar 8, 2024 22:28
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mewse posted:I still don't know what cozy means, can I request another 100 posts debating it? It's the 2020s version of what in the 2010s would be described as being made for Tumblr.
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Mar 8, 2024 23:07
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mewse posted:I still don't know what cozy means, can I request another 100 posts debating it?  
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Mar 8, 2024 23:37
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Yeah
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Mar 8, 2024 23:40
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Some additional Lem. More Tales of Pirx the Pilot - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008EEZ7K2/ The Chain of Chance - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008F0ON4G/ Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy #2) - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008R2JK1S/ Peace on Earth (From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy #4) - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008533DBW/
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Mar 8, 2024 23:48
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zoux posted:I've never read anything she wrote but I looked at the wiki synopsis of her first novel I think more than the coziness, there’s something about it (having only read the first book) that feels very neat and compact. Nice simple message, minor friction, all tidily wrapped up. Like a middling Farscape episode. Nina Allan hit on the same features of the second one in her review as part of the Clarke award’s shadow jury a few years back: http://csff-anglia.co.uk/clarke-shadow-jury/to-boldly-go-a-closed-and-common-orbit-by-becky-chambers-a-review-by-nina-allan/ "Nina Allan” posted:For all its gesturing towards diversity and progressiveness, this novel could be put forward as a prime exemplar of the literature of reassurance. The set-up is familiar, the conflict is minimal, the resolutions are swift and painless. The dialogue reads like the script from a TV series that was a huge hit in an alternate universe and is probably set to become one in ours – about the only nod to futurology that this book contains. The whole review’s worth a read. It ends on this pretty dismissive note but she does accept it on its own terms as light tropes entertainment which can nevertheless grab you in the moment. I’ve heard better things about Chambers’s A Psalm for the Wild Built, that it’s got a bit more depth and thoughtfulness about environmental matters in particular, but tbh the main character being a monk who goes around solving people’s personal problems with custom blends of tea is an immediate turn-off due to tweeness.
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Mar 9, 2024 00:29
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Tet Jr is super into The Wind in the Willows right now. My wife bought him a Yoto card with the audiobook and then I found an unabridged version that he absolutely loves. I had never read it, and I spent more than forty years of life thinking that Mr Toad was the same character as Toad from the Frog and Toad stories. It really is a great story, which is good because he's listened to it roughly six hundred times over the last month.
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Mar 9, 2024 01:11
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tetrapyloctomy posted:Tet Jr is super into The Wind in the Willows right now. My wife bought him a Yoto card with the audiobook and then I found an unabridged version that he absolutely loves. I had never read it, and I spent more than forty years of life thinking that Mr Toad was the same character as Toad from the Frog and Toad stories. It really is a great story, which is good because he's listened to it roughly six hundred times over the last month. I love how the chapters alternate between the driving Toad action narrative and the more contemplative chapters. The second illustration there is from the edition I had as a child, illustrated by Tasha Tudor. I kept that specific "Shan't" illustration on my office wall as a public defender.
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Mar 9, 2024 01:18
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tetrapyloctomy posted:I had never read it, and I spent more than forty years of life thinking that Mr Toad was the same character as Toad from the Frog and Toad stories. w-wait, it's not?! (i'm turning 45 soon)
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Mar 9, 2024 02:05
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Kesper North posted:w-wait, it's not?! (i'm turning 45 soon) Mr Toad is a goddamn point source of manic chaos, he is amazing and terrible. I legit recommend the audiobook we've been listening to.
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Mar 9, 2024 02:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:She actively doesn't want to, I think. Deliberate choice to reject the "hard sf" style. She puts that stuff in to chase away the people who want it, like a soft fluffy pastel version of Eco's monastery door. Wait what's up with eco's monastery door? A deliberately ahistorical thing in name of the rose? Loved that book but also well aware a bunch went over my head.
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Mar 9, 2024 02:20
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DACK FAYDEN posted:As long as we're stepping on Pradmer's toes, a bunch of stuff that never goes on Kindle sale is on sale: i like ted chiang but his stories often feel like a very elegant extended presentation of a straightforward flash fiction level idea. if i'd come to him without knowing he was omg best sci fi short writer of his generation I'd probably be more impressed, which is a little unfair on him i guess
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Mar 9, 2024 02:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I love how the chapters alternate between the driving Toad action narrative and the more contemplative chapters. The second illustration there is from the edition I had as a child, illustrated by Tasha Tudor. I kept that specific "Shan't" illustration on my office wall as a public defender. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/420373 Wild Wood is basically CSPAM wind in the willows and it's great - a retelling of the stories from the perspective of the weasels, in which frog rat and toad are exposed as the mildly repulsive bourgeois caricatures they are
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Mar 9, 2024 02:31
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I love how the chapters alternate between the driving Toad action narrative and the more contemplative chapters. The second illustration there is from the edition I had as a child, illustrated by Tasha Tudor. I kept that specific "Shan't" illustration on my office wall as a public defender. It really does feel like very modern storytelling. "Dad, I'm tired of these Mr Toad.mytharc chapters, let's get back to the badger of the week ones."
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Mar 9, 2024 02:32
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Benagain posted:Wait what's up with eco's monastery door? A deliberately ahistorical thing in name of the rose? Loved that book but also well aware a bunch went over my head. He wrote elsewhere that he wrote the monastery door deliberately to be an immensely, absurdly over the top tour de force of medieval history and theology aimed at the nerdiest of medieval nerds, essentially. If that sort of thing pissed you off? The rest of the book was full of it, so you might as well leave now. If you were into it OR willing to skip it, you'd cross the threshold and enjoy the rest of the book. It's a test for the reader. You can pass or turn back, your choice.
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Mar 9, 2024 02:32
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:He wrote elsewhere that he wrote the monastery door deliberately to be an immensely, absurdly over the top tour de force of medieval history and theology aimed at the nerdiest of medieval nerds, essentially. If that sort of thing pissed you off? The rest of the book was full of it, so you might as well leave now. If you were into it OR willing to skip it, you'd cross the threshold and enjoy the rest of the book. It's a test for the reader. You can pass or turn back, your choice. And it still ended up being an international bestseller. The moral of the story is always go hard, whether it’s Medieval monastic minutia or whale facts or whatever. People love that poo poo
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Mar 9, 2024 02:51
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sebmojo posted:https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/420373 Wild Wood is basically CSPAM wind in the willows and it's great - a retelling of the stories from the perspective of the weasels, in which frog rat and toad are exposed as the mildly repulsive bourgeois caricatures they are
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Mar 9, 2024 03:06
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I'm real late to the party but I just read The Lathe of Heaven. I'd only ever read Schrodinger's Cat by Ursula LeGuin and it's my favorite (weird?) sci-fi story involving cats, so many double-layers to that one. I'm of course blown away. I thought the first half was better than the second, where it becomes less dream-logic and more "genie that purposely misinterprets your wishes", but where LeGuin shines is the characterization. There aren't many characters in the book, but you know exactly what they're thinking, what their motivations are, etc. even when they're trying to convince themselves they're something else. So much of the story was a good answer to "Why don't we simply do X about racism/global warming/whatever". drat. I can't believe this was written in the 70s and predicted so much. Most unrealistic part was the Israel/Egypt alliance but that only became total science fiction since last October.
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Mar 9, 2024 04:44
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Some American editions of TWITW leave out the chapter "Piper at the gates of dawn" because paganism.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:31
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Drakyn posted:Did you leave out badger here just by chance or because he's something way, way worse than the other guys? I mean, even in the original I recall him as the very eager captain of the good ship gently caress Them Woods Critters. Oh he's in there too, but it's really about the weasels.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:56
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pseudorandom name posted:Becky Chambers absolutely does not understand thermodynamics. See also: the ships that grow algae to produce fuel to power the engines that power the lights that grows the algae and the ships powered by their occupants stepping on the pressure plates that line the corridors. Who gives a gently caress, it is scifi. All authors ignore thermodynamics in any case cause it makes a whole lot of their “science” untenable. Favourite example are zombies which are impossible from a thermodynamics perspective. It is a hard subject even for professionals. Becky chambers writes cozy, feelgood scifi with a nice flow in the writing. IMO a nice change of pace from the general “in the dark future there is only misery” that permeates the field. Edit: oddly relevant  Cardiac fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 06:26
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tetrapyloctomy posted:I spent more than forty years of life thinking that Mr Toad was the same character as Toad from the Frog and Toad stories. my new headcanon
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Mar 9, 2024 06:58
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sebmojo posted:Oh he's in there too, but it's really about the weasels. Badgers are weasels 
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Mar 9, 2024 08:00
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Cardiac posted:Who gives a gently caress, it is scifi. Suspension of disbelief is a fragile thing and once it breaks then people will start to notice the problems and the writing no longer has a nice flow. That breaking point is going to be different for individual readers and we even have sub genres acknowledging those preferences. So I suppose the answer to "who gives a gently caress" is people with different aesthetic preferences to you. Zombies aren't a good catch-all counter example because zombie fiction is extremely broad and a large proportion of it uses explicitly supernatural origins for zombies or just says that no one can explain why it's happening. For some readers, a handwave is better than an obviously wrong explanation
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Mar 9, 2024 09:41
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Mr. Toad is an English character written by an English author, and that he is a wealthy landowner who lacks a peerage is meant to make him a figure of derision and comedy. Toad is an American character written by an American author, which means that he is bad at expressing his feelings but he is gruffly supportive of his husband. When in doubt, remember that Toad would have utterly no time for Mr. Toad's bullshit. I hope this has clarified things. Please join me next time for a discussion on how to differentiate your common and crested Lebowskis.
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Mar 9, 2024 10:20
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GhastlyBizness posted:I think more than the coziness, there’s something about it (having only read the first book) that feels very neat and compact. Nice simple message, minor friction, all tidily wrapped up. Like a middling Farscape episode. I don't have an issue with a coziness or a lack of edge, I'm writing something along those lines now, or at least it's discovered as the story goes along that people are generally quite well-meaning. I do have an issue with not getting into the problems people would face despite a well meaning setting. I have an issue with the characters not being allowed to be characters but being forced into archetypes. And on top of that the writing is far from good. I understand this started out as self-published, somewhere I'd let the writing pass, especially for €2.99 or €3.99 on Kindle. These are, I've found, quick and easy books that scratch the 'quick-read' itch. I paid €13 in Waterstones, though. If you're going to write "character-driven" fiction then when I encounter the characters it'd be nice if they weren't entirely generic demo models pulled from a shelf. It's something I've found in a lot of fiction (bad fiction) where authors try to make each character unique, especially in friend groups, or work groups. And they make the difference obvious at every point, and from the start (which Chambers did) when I've especially found difference typically gets highlighted over time. I've found it's more believable for most characters to be mostly similar, to talk the same way, except in certain circumstances. It might not be a crisis where they react differently, it could be some minor struggle, or some amazing success, and "the group" while still having the same outlook, and an agreement overall on what the correct response is, all have slightly different reactions, or different understandings, or motivations despite the same broad agreement on what inspiring events correct response should be. Chambers immediately set out making every character super obviously different in every way. And in doing so they were generic "grumpy reaction" and generic "unsure reaction." I have no issue with cozy anything. It's just a clunky book. And it seems people's reactions based on that that, from the likes of the wikipedia and commentary, were for her supporters to say, "They just want edgy stuff!" which isn't fair.
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Mar 9, 2024 14:06
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Some American editions of TWITW leave out the chapter "Piper at the gates of dawn" because paganism. Wtf thats my favourite bit
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Mar 9, 2024 14:58
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Help me, thread! I woke up with a weird and very specific desire: starship fights. Where can I go to read the good ones? Cherryh of course, SN Lewitt too, and the RTS-esque joy of the Lost Fleet series, but... where else? Where can I get ship to ship combat? I don't care if it's dogfighting or carrier battles or whatever, I want to read about starships fighting! (I suspect a part of this desire is being driven by how so far First Man in Rome is fantastic but lacks action, and I want explosions this morning!)
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Mar 9, 2024 15:08
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StrixNebulosa posted:Help me, thread! I woke up with a weird and very specific desire: starship fights. Where can I go to read the good ones? Cherryh of course, SN Lewitt too, and the RTS-esque joy of the Lost Fleet series, but... where else? Where can I get ship to ship combat? I don't care if it's dogfighting or carrier battles or whatever, I want to read about starships fighting! I mean, I assume you've read Allston's x-wing books, but if not, Wraith Squadron, the two books following, and Starfighters of Adumar are all real good stuff. There's also, if you're okay with webcomics-but-it's-a-full-story-and-complete, Schlock Mercenary has some really interesting battles with point defenses and rings of planned traps and such. silvergoose fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 15:14
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StrixNebulosa posted:(I suspect a part of this desire is being driven by how so far First Man in Rome is fantastic but lacks action, and I want explosions this morning!) Such a goddamn solid book, how did you even find it? To keep it thread appropriate, this is a 900 page doorstop book by an Australian author that hits a lot of the same notes as The Empire Trilogy by Raymond Faust (Daughter of the Empire etc). Isolationist fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 15:33
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Isolationist posted:Such a goddamn solid book, how did you even find it? It came up in the Historical Fiction thread! Then I wandered over to ebay and bought a used copy and wow this thing is a brick! Posting the reviews that sold me: zoux posted:It's slow and dense but it's probably the gold standard as far as Roman historical fiction goes. First Man covers the era in which Marius and Sulla were ascendant, which is woefully underrecognized in history because it happened right before the whole Julius Caesar thing. But McCullough also wants you to get a picture of how Romans of all classes lived, so you'll be following these patrician families in compelling political intrigue and then it switches to like 200 pages on what it's like to live in an insula. It's a bit drier than I like. silvergoose posted:I mean, I assume you've read Allston's x-wing books, but if not, Wraith Squadron, the two books following, and Starfighters of Adumar are all real good stuff. I actually haven't! I'll look those up! ... also holy cannoli I feel old, I remember seeing Schlock Mercenary a billion years ago while I was in my big webcomics reading phase.
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Mar 9, 2024 15:39
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I also confess that if you describe a book as "slow and dense" to me I am going to ZOOM over to look at it, that kind of description usually means it's the kind of book I can soak in, and lo! I can soak in First Man in Rome all day, it's got details galore.
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Mar 9, 2024 15:42
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I can second the Wraith Squadron stuff if you want space explosions. I like the Expanse spaceship fights.  They're a pretty small part of the books overall but they are less "WW2 aircraft in space" compared to a lot of SF that I remember reading and someone seemingly thought for at least two seconds about constant acceleration in space fights.
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Mar 9, 2024 16:02
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StrixNebulosa posted:
Shocking! Yeah, absolutely go for them, then. You can also, I guess, read the first four x-wing books by Stackpole, but you really don't need to, and the "super cool protagonist" is way less interesting than literally everyone in Allston's books. I too, am, old. I'm buying the books in print as he releases them though, I love Howard Taylor's humor and the space battles as I said, are really neat.
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Mar 9, 2024 16:05
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StrixNebulosa posted:Help me, thread! I woke up with a weird and very specific desire: starship fights. Where can I go to read the good ones? Cherryh of course, SN Lewitt too, and the RTS-esque joy of the Lost Fleet series, but... where else? Where can I get ship to ship combat? I don't care if it's dogfighting or carrier battles or whatever, I want to read about starships fighting!
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Mar 9, 2024 16:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:Help me, thread! I woke up with a weird and very specific desire: starship fights. Where can I go to read the good ones? Cherryh of course, SN Lewitt too, and the RTS-esque joy of the Lost Fleet series, but... where else? Where can I get ship to ship combat? I don't care if it's dogfighting or carrier battles or whatever, I want to read about starships fighting! If you don't mind your space battles rushing the tech climb from the age of sail to carrier aviation, the Honor Harrington books are full of space battles and exposition about the weapons of space battles.
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Mar 9, 2024 16:34
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Ravenfood posted:I can second the Wraith Squadron stuff if you want space explosions. I really enjoyed the Expanse TV show, when they did space fights they were neat - much like how Babylon 5's space fights were INCREDIBLE when they showed up. RDM posted:If you can get over the fact that it badly needed an editor, The Dragon Never Sleeps is good. If you can get over the fact that it's Master and Commander in space (and the series won't ever get an ending because the author died of chud COVID), To Honor You Call Us is quite good. Glen Cook hasn't gone wrong for me yet! To Honor You Call Us... how chuddy are the books? I can hold my nose for military sci-fi, but anything blatant I should be braced for? (Man I miss David Drake, he was good at not doing that... and Eric Flint...) Zorak of Michigan posted:If you don't mind your space battles rushing the tech climb from the age of sail to carrier aviation, the Honor Harrington books are full of space battles and exposition about the weapons of space battles. Honor Harrington should be everything I like in a book: heroine, space cat, starship battles, long-running series... but David Weber has a talent for making really frustrating choices, from politics (stop worshipping the monarchy aaa) to characters (Weber isn't allowed to write romance), to the writing style itself. ... I wonder if his stuff is better on audiobook, to match how it was written?
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Mar 9, 2024 16:43
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