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Read The Last Astronaut today, and kinda dug it. I was honestly surprised Wellington actually had an ending for his novel, because most of the ones I have read by him just full stop at the end with no sort of payoff. Just, boom. Was pretty good, albeit kinda weird. Hell of a lot better than the other big spooky object flying through space and we're gonna check it out book I read a few weeks ago.
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Jun 22, 2020 04:39
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Ben Nevis posted:I read Otherland about 20 years ago. As I recall, the first book is the best. It's interesting, there's some cool mystery and some cliffhangers. And the next book isn't quite as good, and so on, until you finish book four confused, disappointed, and wondering where it all went wrong and what happened to the last 4000 pages of your life. It's not actively bad, but it squandered most of the promise of book 1, and it took a long time doing it. The second book is tremendous fun. Not much plot momentum but lots of solid sides adventures in interesting simulated worlds, unlike book three and 75% of book four which consist of boring side adventures in dull simulated worlds.
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Jun 22, 2020 09:35
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Umbra posted:I really enjoyed Cage of Souls. I'd say I liked it better than COT/Ruin, COS has a cool dying earth sort of world, interesting characters. (I felt Ruin was a bit of a letdown, really) I also liked Redemption's Blade by him too, gimmick being that the "big bad" is already defeated, and it's about dealing with post war events. The name of the book is regretfully super generic , I will admit. Redemption blade is a shared universe thing, I also liked the set up but found the second book really bland and uninteresting by comparison.
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Jun 22, 2020 11:37
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Read The Last Astronaut today, and kinda dug it. I was honestly surprised Wellington actually had an ending for his novel, because most of the ones I have read by him just full stop at the end with no sort of payoff. Just, boom. I read his Monster Island/Nation/Planet trilogy about zombies back in the day, bit by bit when he was serialising them online, and loved them. I tapped out about halfway on both his werewolf novel and his vampire novels, though. Not sure whether it was because of the different subject matter, or because I was growing out of that kinda thing (I would've been about 16 when the Monster trilogy wrapped). Have heard really mixed things about The Last Astronaut but it's on my TBR list and I suppose I'll check it out when global supply chains can manage to reassert themselves.
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Jun 22, 2020 14:08
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There's a sale on a fair bunch of kindle books going on until the 28th: https://www.amazon.com/s?bbn=211897...9716011_nr_n_19 I'm probably going to pick up Magic for Liars.
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Jun 22, 2020 14:31
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My SF-LOVERS Digest Vol 01 re-read is still going on, 82% finished with about 70 bookmarks and climbing. Distinct posting persona's have emerged. People from UCLA-Security mostly post about non-print scifi media, a SuperMechaGodzilla style troll has appeared along with a tech-fetisher that maps everything to it's equivalent in Larry Niven's stories (lightsabers=variable blades, superconducters, klingons=kzinti, etc). Besides Stallman, Don Woods the godfather of cRPGs + roguelike games started posting in the SF-LOVERS mailing list....am now waiting for the people responsible for creating TCP/IP, HTML, etc to appear. MZB/Darkover chat mostly died off at the 48% mark, while Zelazny's AMBER series only got mentioned majorly by the guy that triggered jng2058. My back-burnered theory that Philip Jose Farmer was the Neil Gaiman of his era keeps getting fueled up whenever PJF stories come up. The burgeoning Star Wars chat in SF-LOVERS got segregated to a special PM-only SF-LOVERS edition where Star Wars spoiler discussions were 100% ok after Empire Strike Back came out. The PM edition Star Wars chat is very skip-able for a 2020 reader, yet I swear 95.999% of the theories brought up there eventually happened in Star Wars Expanded universe fiction. SF-LOVERS Digest Vol 01 Oddball things pt 3 -The time in Action Comics where "Superman got temporarily brain-damaged by an enemy, and had a TRS-80 think for him" -not wanting to be captured by HUMAN Naturalists if you're an alien(Alien Intelligence tests) -"the giant mechanical turtles of the ice planet of Hoth" -VIA GALACTICA the musical
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Jun 22, 2020 16:11
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quantumfoam posted:SF-LOVERS Digest Vol 01 Oddball things pt 3 This, by the way, was actually an advertising promo comic produced by DC for Radio Shack.
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Jun 22, 2020 16:59
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quantumfoam posted:MZB/Darkover chat mostly died off at the 48% mark, while Zelazny's AMBER series only got mentioned majorly by the guy that triggered jng2058. My back-burnered theory that Philip Jose Farmer was the Neil Gaiman of his era keeps getting fueled up whenever PJF stories come up. It was a garbage opinion in 1980, and it's a garbage opinion now. 
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Jun 22, 2020 18:24
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Alright folks, I have now played 3 whole matches of Magic the Gathering with my brother and enjoyed them. Which means it's time to look at the book barn and wonder: are there any actually good tie-in novels? It's been around for so long, there must be at least one. Anyone in here got any recs?
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Jun 22, 2020 20:06
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jng2058 posted:It was a garbage opinion in 1980, and it's a garbage opinion now. Any post that triggers that much indignation 40 yrs later deserves to be quoted in full. Trigger warning: it's not just a shitpost ------------------------------ AQE@MIT-MC 03/19/80 15:12:49 Re: Similarities between "World of Tiers" and "Amber". I just finished reading P. J. Farmer's "World of Tiers" series, and it reinforces my opinion that Farmer should be prevented from writing anything longer than a short novel. His short stuff is good, but his novel series just get totally out of hand. Maybe he needs a good editor. However, when I was only partway through the series, I started getting VERY UPSET because of similarities between it and Zelazny's "Amber" series, which I consider to be an All Time Classic. I figured that "Tiers" was just a low-grade re-working of "Amber". Then I thought of checking the copyright dates, and lo and behold, it is the other way around. "Amber" looks like a high-grade re-working of "Tiers". Here is a summary: The "World of Tiers" series by Philip Jose' Farmer: The Maker of Universes (1965) The Gates of Creation (1966) A Private Cosmos (1968) (my edition has an intro by Zelazny) Behind the Walls of Terra (1970) The Lavalite World (1977) (dedication: "For Roger Zelazny, The Golden Spinner") The "Amber" series by Roger Zelazny: Nine Princes in Amber (1970) The Guns of Avalon (1972) Sign of the Unicorn (1975) (dedication: "For Jadawin and his Demiurge, not to forget Kickaha." Jadiwin and Kickaha are characters from "World of Tiers", and a Demiurge is the Creator of the material world, and probably a pun, too.) The Hand of Oberon (1976) The Courts of Chaos (1978) The similarities: (WARNING: THESE PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN SPOILERS!)l World of Tiers Amber The series concerns the exploits \ The series concerns the exploits of an immortal race called "Lords", \ of an immortal royal family, human-looking but of superhuman \ human-looking but of superhuman speed and strength. They possess \ speed and strength. They possess the technology to travel between \ an inborn ability to travel between universes. They almost never trust \ universes. They almost never trust each other, and often try to kill \ each other, and often try to kill each other. They are all descended \ each other. They are all descended from a great artisan named \ from a great artisan named Dworkin Shambarimen. The series begins with \ Barimen. The series begins with a a major character (Wolff) living on \ major character (Corwin) living on Earth and suffering from amnesia. \ Earth and suffering from amnesia. The character is swept up into an \ The character is swept up into an odyssey through the universes, and \ odyssey through the universes, and eventually finds himself to be one \ eventually finds himself to be one of the supermen. \ of the supermen. I'm sure there are more that I've missed. The tone of the dedications and Zelazny's intro seems to indicate that Zelazny plagiarized Farmer with Farmer's permission. Also, Farmer has used many characters created by others, so maybe he doesn't mind sharing his plots. Does anyone out there know anything else about the relation of these series to each other, or other "sharing" by Zelazny? Jef ------------------------------ quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Jun 22, 2020 |
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Jun 22, 2020 20:51
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quantumfoam posted:tech-fetisher that maps everything to it's equivalent in Larry Niven's stories (lightsabers=variable blades, superconducters, klingons=kzinti, etc). Nonsense. The kzinti in Star Trek are the Kzinti. Zelazny wrote a lot of pastiche stuff ( M ight in the Lonesome October) and yeah Farmer was known for that kind of thing too. Farmer wrote a whole thing based on the Doc Savage character, etc.
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Jun 22, 2020 20:59
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StrixNebulosa posted:Alright folks, I have now played 3 whole matches of Magic the Gathering with my brother and enjoyed them. Which means it's time to look at the book barn and wonder: are there any actually good tie-in novels? It's been around for so long, there must be at least one. Anyone in here got any recs? Magic has a long and patchy history with tie-in fiction. Here are my recommendations based on my history of playing the game off and on since childhood. If you ask around you'll find some general consensus that these are the most broadly enjoyed books: The Artifacts Cycle: The Brothers' War by Jeff Grubb Planeswalker by Lynn Abbey Time Streams by J Robert King Bloodlines by Loren Coleman Actually usually only the first, and maybe the second or third, book is cited as broadly enjoyed, but that's the whole cycle. These were all published in the late 90s and tell Magic's earliest major plotline which was assembled out of random fragments and proper nouns that were printed in flavor text on the first set of cards. There's also The Thran by J Robert King which is a prequel to that story and highly regarded. The Gathering Dark and sequels (all by Jeff Grubb) are also cited as some of the better stuff, but I have not read them. In the 2000s, most Magic fiction was in the form of tie-in novels that came with every set. I barely read any of them. One of Magic's biggest plotlines (the Weatherlight and Invasion storylines) falls within this period, and it was popular but kind of despite itself. After that, the stories became more self-contained based on individual sets. I think they are mostly regarded as not great. They did try to launch some character-specific stories like The Purifying Fire by Laura Resnick but that line got canceled. In the mid-2010s, Magic started doing web fiction. You can find a lot of it at https://magic.wizards.com/en/story. It is also of variable quality. Generally I think people like the stories under the Innistrad and Ixalan headers the most. However, just about everything on this page is part of their Gatewatch storyline, which was a sort of soft reboot that followed a focus-grouped alliance of attractive young worldhoppers as they try to stop the plans of The Multiverse's Greatest Villain. This storyline recently ended with a spectacular crash and burn, where at the very climax of the action they switched from distributing the stories for free on the web back to a traditional novel format, namely War of the Spark by Greg Weisman. This book was extremely poorly received, not just because it had the hallmarks of rushed tie-in fiction where an unfamiliar author was forced to become too proficient with a franchise too quickly, but also because it walked back a popular bisexual relationship as "just a fling". The backlash was so strong that the company actually canceled the next planned novel and released a set entirely without story. Of particular note, you might like the web stories under the Dominaria header by some nobody named Martha Wells who writes books about sad robots. These stories have kind of a weird pacing to them though--I am pretty sure that they were originally planned to be published as a full novel and got chopped up into novellas. Since the end of the Gatewatch cycle there have been two stories published as standalone ebooks only: The Wildered Quest by Kate Elliot and Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths by Django Wexler. I've read both of them. They're not great. If you want a full bibliography of stories that is maybe a little less subjective than my personal retelling, look here: https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Magic_Story
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Jun 22, 2020 21:28
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StrixNebulosa posted:Alright folks, I have now played 3 whole matches of Magic the Gathering with my brother and enjoyed them. Which means it's time to look at the book barn and wonder: are there any actually good tie-in novels? It's been around for so long, there must be at least one. Anyone in here got any recs? You'll find fans of most of them in the mtg threads that talk about them. Brother's War and the Thran are decent older reads and interesting in that its almost sci fi if I remember right, I had a trade paperback reprint of them. Brother's War was written by Jeff Grubb who has made the rounds of licensed fiction (books for Forgotten Realms, WoW, Starcraft, Guild Wars 2). They feature the OGs Urza, Mishra and Yawgmoth. More recently I liked the Ravnica trilogy (Ravnica, Dissension, Guildpact). Police procedural of sorts in a city where 10 guilds based on 2 color mana combinations run the place. It keeps popping back up as a setting over and over so may be worth checking out. I freaking love the Shadowmoor and Eventide sets and art. It came out before I played but I made a point of collecting a bunch of foils for it, some of my favorites in my collection. That said, the four novels set in that block and Lorwyn were kinda bad and two of those were just short story collections. You should know that there's 2 eras for the game, the old one where the planeswalkers were almost godlike in power, and the current ones where they are just powerful mortals who can pop around the multiverse and get their own cards. That's when the Gatewatch came front and center as WOTC tried to emulate the Avengers and had members of the superteam show up in every new set to meddle in the plot with Nicol Bolas as the big baddy. They went from novels to ebooks you had to pay for (including one by Brandon Sanderson) to free fiction on their website, much of it featuring posterboy Jace Beleren and the rest of the Gatewatch. Then they got yelled at on twitter for queer erasure for friend zoning a fan favorite implied lesbian relationship last year when they did put out another novel, War of the Spark, to wrap up the Bolas story. The author's response. Now I think there's no more fiction and they just tell the story in the cards. I'd start with the free online stories then see which characters and art you like then go from there. I had to get a few of the older books on ebay then gave up after a while. There are hints Phyrexia might be coming back so the Mirrodin trilogy might be important. People seem to love the swashbuckling crew of The Weatherlight when they pop up again but I haven't read those and I'm not sure where to start. bagrada fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jun 22, 2020 |
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Jun 22, 2020 21:31
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I clearly asked the right thread, thank you so much for all of this info.
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Jun 22, 2020 21:50
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Bunch o' sales to cover today. Gideon the Ninth (Locked Tomb #1) by Tamsyn Muir - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J6HWLPR/ The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth's Past #1) by Cixin Liu - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IQO403K/ The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive #1) by Brandon Sanderson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003P2WO5E/ Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GV95CWZ/ A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ME0TBFE/ The Great Hunt (Wheel of Time #2) by Robert Jordan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002VBV1R2/ Old Man's War by John Scalzi - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SEIK2S/ The Black Cauldron (Chronicles of Prydain #2) by Lloyd Alexander - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005EYXACW/ Ender's Shadow (Shadow Saga #1) by Orson Scott Card - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GWX8SK/ The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K Le Guin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003U2TR6I/ Foundation by Isaac Asimov - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1PWA/
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Jun 22, 2020 22:32
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bagrada posted:People seem to love the swashbuckling crew of The Weatherlight when they pop up again but I haven't read those and I'm not sure where to start. The books aren't very good, to be honest; I guess they're passable for tie-in fiction but they're also very much a product of their time. MtG players mostly like it because it's all connected to old and powerful cards and is a big part of the game's history. Well, they did in the past, my info is about thirteen years out of date. e: For something different, this pradmer posted:The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K Le Guin - $2.99 anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jun 22, 2020 |
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Jun 22, 2020 22:37
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I checked and the book I had was Artifacts Cycle I which had The Thran and Brother's War book 1. Amazon has almost everything at $4.99 ebook pricing but the paper books are long out of print. It's the kind of thing where if you want a specific physical book you are screwed but you could probably get a bundle of random ones on ebay or a garage sale for cheap from someone cleaning off their shelves. Thanks for the Weatherlight info. I didn't realize that was Martha Wells writing some of the web fiction. Her Dominaria stories are from when MTG returned to its original setting and mixed in some old characters with the new. Current poster boy Teferi came from Mirage, another of the early sets but I think they stopped the fiction before he turned up again. I haven't played or read any of them for years but Arena being good way to play has me keeping an eye on everything again.
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Jun 22, 2020 22:56
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Finished reading SF-LOVERS Digest Volume 01. Volume 01 started on September 9 1979 and lasted until June 30 1980, with 175 total issues. Next up on my reading list is SF-LOVERS Digest Volume 02, which literally pickups the next day on July 1 1980 and ends on December 31 1980. Overall, reading the SF-LOVERS mailing archive has been a good idea. Lots of interesting discussion, with only a few things that aged super badly. The mailing list maintainers (Brodie@PARC-MAXC & DUFFY@MIT-AI) deserved raises or demotions/pay cuts for all the work they put in on it (since the SF-LOVERS mailing ran ontop of 100% taxpayer funded Offical ARPANET networks/servers). Harry Harrison's Bill the Galactic Hero is my favorite novel of all time, so the funniest thing in the final 18% of SF-LOVERS Digest Vol 01 for me was Harry Harrison's BLOATER drive getting mentioned as a FTL travel device. Then, People who outright said that they'd never read the book it came from (Bill the Galactic Hero) and therefore never realized the BLOATER drive was a joke FTL concept in a very funny yet true satirical mil-scifi novel that tore apart mil-scifi worship took Harry Harrison's BLOATER drive concept seriously for 3 very detailed de-bunking posts. Going to consolidate my various posts from this past week about SF-LOVERS Digest Vol 01 into one-megapost for the "What Did you just finish?" Book barn thread quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Jun 23, 2020 |
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Jun 22, 2020 23:43
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bagrada posted:I didn't realize that was Martha Wells writing some of the web fiction. Her Dominaria stories are from when MTG returned to its original setting and mixed in some old characters with the new. Current poster boy Teferi came from Mirage, another of the early sets but I think they stopped the fiction before he turned up again. The Martha Wells parts really suffer from something beyond her control, which is the fact that they are a "getting the crew together" story about a crew that doesn't have anywhere to go. They exist to be a lovable, diverse gang of misfits who learn to work together as a team....just in time to assist the real main characters of the metaplot who travel onward to their next adventure. It feels very much like a backdoor pilot for a series that never made it off the ground. (And given what we know about the overall plotting for this storyline, it was a series that was intended never to take off, or maybe only get revisited briefly in another five years.)
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Jun 22, 2020 23:48
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pradmer posted:Bunch o' sales to cover today. The Calculating Stars is $2.99, first of the Lady Astronaut series. Kind of an oddball, but recommended. https://www.amazon.com/Calculating-Stars-Lady-Astronaut-Novel-ebook/dp/B0756JH5R1/
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Jun 23, 2020 00:15
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bagrada posted:I didn't realize that was Martha Wells writing some of the web fiction. Her Dominaria stories are from when MTG returned to its original setting and mixed in some old characters with the new. Current poster boy Teferi came from Mirage, another of the early sets but I think they stopped the fiction before he turned up again. Actually Teferi is the sole tie-in between all four phases of Magic lore. He first appears in the pre-Weatherlight era as Mirage block's mysterious master of phasing magic; gets his backstory in the Weatherlight Saga as a pupil at Urza's rebuilt academy on Tolaria who was trapped in time by an accident; returns at the start of the post-Yawgmoth era after causing the Time Spiral; and finally in the modern era he from time to time joins up with the Superfriends of Dominaria.
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Jun 23, 2020 00:23
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Short fiction superstar Kij Johnson worked on planning and executing the whole Weatherlight Saga back in the day.
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Jun 23, 2020 03:19
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lol when did they announce this? Apple just dropped a trailer for a series based on Asimov's Foundation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgbPSA94Rqg
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Jun 23, 2020 04:29
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shrike82 posted:lol when did they announce this? Why is there an alien?
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Jun 23, 2020 06:07
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"Asimov would have been  for Apple"
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Jun 23, 2020 06:29
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High Warlord Zog posted:"Asimov would have been Not likely. Absolutely none of Apple's products are nuclear powered.
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Jun 23, 2020 06:54
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mllaneza posted:Not likely. Absolutely none of Apple's products are nuclear powered. That you know of
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Jun 23, 2020 10:41
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The House in the Cerulean Sea is a charming gay fantasy story that came out a few months ago and is on sale for $3, too. It's not going to rock your world, but it's comfy. https://www.amazon.com/House-Cerulean-Sea-TJ-Klune-ebook/dp/B07QPHT8CB/
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Jun 23, 2020 10:53
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I forgot to mention this when Tadd Williams chat was on, in regards to Otherness and Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, but I think one of Williams's better books is "The War of the Flowers". In part better because it's a stand-alone fantasy novel, and if you want to get a feel for how he tells a story and how the endings go, this might be a good exposure to his writing. If you like it then you can grab The Dragonbone Chair. Also iirc Martin lists Tad Williams and specifically Memory, sorry, and Thorn as one of the inspirations for ASoIaF, but I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
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Jun 23, 2020 19:34
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Well; MST at least ended. In less than a decade.
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Jun 23, 2020 19:43
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Far Sector #1 by NK Jemisin and Jamal Campbell - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YXDF93H Green Lantern comic?
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Jun 23, 2020 23:21
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Groke posted:Well; MST at least ended. In less than a decade. It took me a subjective decade to read the lost-in-the-woods parts.
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Jun 23, 2020 23:24
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Drone Jett posted:It took me a subjective decade to read the lost-in-the-woods parts. Wasn't he lost in the tunnels under the castle? Or maybe both. Dude did spend a lot of time lost and confused.
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Jun 24, 2020 01:32
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pradmer posted:Far Sector #1 by NK Jemisin and Jamal Campbell - $0.99 Yes it is, and yes it's good.
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Jun 24, 2020 01:45
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Groke posted:Wasn't he lost in the tunnels under the castle? Or maybe both. Dude did spend a lot of time lost and confused. He gets lost a lot in those books.
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Jun 24, 2020 01:47
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Oh poo poo, new Jeff Strand book out! #5 in the Andrew Mayhem series, Cemetery Closing (Everything Must Go) out on Amazon on ku.
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Jun 24, 2020 05:04
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Ccs posted:There's a sale on a fair bunch of kindle books going on until the 28th: It’s ok from my memory of it. The main character got a bit weirdly invested in high school drama for an adult person & I wasn’t totally into the ending, but overall it was not bad. Those also might just be my personal pet peeves. It mostly left me looking forward to the author’s next book- I feel like if they work out a few kinks their follow up novel could be great.
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Jun 24, 2020 09:02
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since a lot of people only check bookmarks, you should know that our admin, lowtax, has been credibly accused of abusing his partner. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3928980 please do what you believe to be ethical.
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Jun 24, 2020 10:59
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Is there a Book Barn offsite/discord? Obviously I don't wanna support an abuser, but I also would like to keep talking to goons about dumb sci fi novels.
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Jun 24, 2020 11:15
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There is one (it's not well advertised apparently) but it's not exactly active (yet) https://discord.gg/JrGy9j
Llamadeus fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Jun 24, 2020 |
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Jun 24, 2020 11:20
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