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thotsky posted:Is there any good SF about black holes? I am fascinated by them as pure expressions of power. Like, they don't have to be portals or unlock time travel or whatever, they're plenty menacing and mysterious on their own. Not a black hole but if you haven’t read it, The Dragon’s Egg is about a neutron star.
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Mar 28, 2021 05:31
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StrixNebulosa posted:Today I learned that if you're a fan of Jane Lindskold's Wolf fantasy series, she wrote two more and self-published them practically a decade after the series ended: Wolf’s Search and Wolf’s Soul Thanks for this, we had 4-5 of the series and I'd forgotten all about them.
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Mar 28, 2021 06:22
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Artifact by Gregory Benford is a good one to read. I spoilered the title because it's sort of a "oh poo poo!" sorta twist in the book. Deep Storm by Lincoln Childs is a pretty good one too. Weird poo poo happening underwater. Again, bit of a weird ending so I spoiled the title. Can't honestly think of a way to recommend these based on requests without inadvertently spoiling part of the novel, so I figured just blocking the title out should work. Last one I can think of, I can't recall the name of but it involves mysteries underwater while a big roving sea base thing wanders through the ocean. All I can recall offhand is one of the characters had eaten a radioactive donut in the previous book. I'll dig and see what I can find.
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Mar 28, 2021 06:52
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Well gently caress I'm sold on Queen of Ieflaria.
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Mar 28, 2021 08:56
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It's a bit more horror than sci fi but I just finished Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway. This book has no right to feel as fresh and innovative as it does. It also has plenty of genuinely scary / delightful moments and excellent 'monsters'. Highly recommend.
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Mar 28, 2021 12:15
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Jedit posted:How many do you want? Ash, Fevre Dream, The Prestige and The Shrinking Man are no-brainers. Anything else in the SF or Fantasy Masterworks collection is probably worth a punt. Louise Carey is Mike Carey's daughter and has co-authored two novels with him, so 99p is a good trial price for her stuff. Of the rest, I've heard good things about Gallow Glass, Planetfall and Revenger, and while I haven't read Fools Pat Cadigan is a known quantity. I'm in the US - is there a way to actually buy UK amazon deals? do I just change my address and back or do they yell at me for that or what?
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Mar 28, 2021 12:51
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You just have to change your address then change it back. I use 10 Downing Street.
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Mar 28, 2021 13:07
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withak posted:You just have to change your address then change it back. I use 10 Downing Street.
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Mar 28, 2021 13:21
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packetmantis posted:Well gently caress I'm sold on Queen of Ieflaria.  It's the comfort fantasy I've been needingAlso I just remembered, you can buy the ebooks straight from the publisher in this case: https://ninestarpress.com/product/the-queen-of-ieflaria/, they come in epub and mobi
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Mar 28, 2021 13:23
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Haha, I didn't even notice. Well then! I was looking at it thinking, "I've seen that name somewhere else recently, now where..."! Back to the huge-weird-structures theme, Catherine Fisher's YA Incarceron is another one; an apparently-infinite Piranesian prison with added CCTV and mad AI. I quite liked it, but the sequel had such a stupid name I've never quite brought myself to find out how it ends. (It's called Sapphique. I just can't read that title as anything other than something about faaabulous decadent lesbian nightlife, written by Angela Carter or Tanith Lee or suchlike.) Runcible Cat fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Mar 28, 2021 14:56
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Sheriff Falc posted:It's a bit more horror than sci fi but I just finished Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway. I liked it a lot as well. For those unaware it's a collection of semi related apocalyptic short stories ala World War Z. I'm a big fan of the "related short stories" sub genre, wish there were more of them.
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Mar 28, 2021 18:12
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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers #1) by Becky Chambers - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZP64F28/ Side Jobs (Dresden) by Jim Butcher - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0043RSIV4/
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Mar 28, 2021 18:19
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Sheriff Falc posted:It's a bit more horror than sci fi but I just finished Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway. Thirding this, I have no idea how it got to Kindle Unlimited. High quality stuff.
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Mar 29, 2021 01:21
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Man how do I even find good scifi/fantasy to read anymore? I feel like the last two books I've actually enjoyed was years ago and everything else I picked up since hasn't impressed. People say check out awards but then I see they recommend garbage like ready player one and I lose all trust in them immediately
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Mar 29, 2021 09:41
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You could try asking here by describing what kinds of books you're looking for, there's usually at least one person with overlapping taste
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Mar 29, 2021 10:01
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Xun posted:People say check out awards but then I see they recommend garbage like ready player one and I lose all trust in them immediately Afaik the only SFF award Ready Player One won was the Prometheus Award, which is the libertarian one and definitely not the place to look for recommendations; Hugo, Nebula and Locus are the big three to look at instead. But yeah, as per above give an idea of what you like to get suggestions here! I.e., what were the two books you liked?
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Mar 29, 2021 10:16
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The Nebula Awards have been reliably good for essentially forever. The Hugos have been mostly good for the same length of time, although there’s been a few years recently when the neofascists have rigged the vote enough to skew the results. Gardner Dozois’s Years Best Science Fiction was the most reliable source of excellence for a few decades straight, but he’s died and Jonathan Strahan has tried to step into the gap. Strahan’s collections have been pretty good, so I think he may be a worthy successor, but only time will tell. I did like his first attempt. Amazon’s ML recommendation algorithm has been outstanding for 20 years, but they’ve gone out of their way to make it more or less impossible to use unless you’re only buying from them. And their toxic closed ecosystem makes it difficult to escape and find great new things. Goodreads has an entirely different recommendation algorithm which is mostly terrible. It is very frustrating. Ultimately you have to pay attention to weird recommendations in Internet forums like this one, unfortunately. Good luck.
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Mar 29, 2021 10:37
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pseudorandom name posted:Gardner Dozois’s Years Best Science Fiction was the most reliable source of excellence for a few decades straight, but he’s died and Jonathan Strahan has tried to step into the gap. hope the rest of the thread appreciates that mental image as much as I did
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Mar 29, 2021 12:22
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pseudorandom name posted:The Hugos have been mostly good for the same length of time, although there’s been a few years recently when the neofascists have rigged the vote enough to skew the results. The sad puppies campaigns have at best managed to impact the nominations, with most of those "victories" then getting voted into oblivion. The only award winners to have appeared on their lists seem pretty unconnected to their agenda or outright in conflict with their stated goals, being Guardians of the Galaxy and, you know, works by women of color.
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Mar 29, 2021 13:11
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Xun posted:Man how do I even find good scifi/fantasy to read anymore? I feel like the last two books I've actually enjoyed was years ago and everything else I picked up since hasn't impressed. People say check out awards but then I see they recommend garbage like ready player one and I lose all trust in them immediately Go read Between Two Fires.
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Mar 29, 2021 13:30
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Go read Between Two Fires. I picked this up on the strength of the thread recommendations, and it's 100% not the kind of thing I would ever have checked out on my own and also really good.
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Mar 29, 2021 13:40
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[" post="513479324"] Book of the New Sun, the Quantum Thief trilogy, Between two Fires, Ninefox Gambit, Lord of Light, the first two Baru books, and I'm about to start Aurora. [/quote] Here's a good place to start for books that are good. I have read enough of them that I added the rest to my list. What have you liked?
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Mar 29, 2021 14:42
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Recent books I've liked include all the Christopher Buehlman books (Between Two Fires, etc.), 16 Ways to Defend a Walled City, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It, The Curse of Chalion, Gideon the Ninth, The Trouble With Peace, and The Unspoken Name.
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Mar 29, 2021 15:08
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Ccs posted:Recent books I've liked include all the Christopher Buehlman books (Between Two Fires, etc.), 16 Ways to Defend a Walled City, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It, The Curse of Chalion, Gideon the Ninth, The Trouble With Peace, and The Unspoken Name. Did you try Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to Gideon the Ninth, yet?
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Mar 29, 2021 15:21
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Artifact by Gregory Benford is a good one to read. I spoilered the title because it's sort of a "oh poo poo!" sorta twist in the book. Dude! Recommending a book without the name, meaning you have to click on it to perhaps take the recommendation AND THEN telling people the name is a spoiler is way more spoilery than just er, recommending the book. Let alone stating the second title relates to the ending. Oh my poor brain.
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Mar 29, 2021 15:38
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jng2058 posted:Did you try Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to Gideon the Ninth, yet? Yeah I liked it, it was actually easier to keep track of the cast. First books really lays on a ton of characters in too quick succession. Second book also has a bit more variety in setting.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:11
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The SFL Archives readthrough has clued me into lots of forgotten 1970s-1990s Hugo & Nebula Award behind-the-scenes drama/repeated instances of vote counting fraud/proto sad puppies voter collusion/award committees pressuring nominated SF&F authors to drop themselves from the nominee lists, etc. The first 20 years of the Hugo Award is pretty dire. Many of the nominated stories/novels from that period aged badly at best and are outright terrible. The Nebula Award is more open and has a better set of yearly nominees. However, the absolute worst poster in the SFL Archives has been a die-hard nutjob trying to speedrun themselves into S.M.O.F. -hood ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMOF ) via a lovely SFF fanzine and rabid Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America White-Knighting. Every single post they made for 5 years in the SFL Archives revolved around the SFWA: defending the honor of the SFWA, them narc-ing complaints to SFWA committees/SFF authors or trying to character assassinate people & authors that maligned the SFWA, etc.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:21
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Kinda. It's a weird situation when someone wants a book based on a certain thing, but that thing, in itself, is a spoiler for the book you wanna toss up as a recommendation. Sorta like The Translators by Gord Rollo. loving love that book but damned if I can ever summarize what happens because literally every plot point is a major spoiler for the rest of the book. It's amazing he was able to write a synopsis that doesn't spoil anything. So, I opted for keeping the title covered so it's a mystery, but lobbing the author up in case they recognize them and like their books. No way to avoid spoiling something about it, but at least this keeps it something of an unknown for the innocent people reading the thread. At least that way you gotta go out of your way to actually see what the book is. Best I got at the moment. 
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Mar 29, 2021 17:16
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Thanks everyone! The two books (well...series I guess but I demolished them  ) were the Quantum thief and Ancillary Justice, I also really loved the Culture novels. I'm also pretty open to fantasy, but they've never really made as much of an impression for whatever reason
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Mar 29, 2021 17:18
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I don’t understand how a title as generic as “The Artifact” can be a spoiler. It’s the title, the author wanted it to be the first thing you know about the book.
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Mar 29, 2021 17:19
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General Battuta posted:I don’t understand how a title as generic as “The Artifact” can be a spoiler. It’s the title, the author wanted it to be the first thing you know about the book. wait the name of the book is "Dune"? well thanks for the spoiler, no need to bother reading it, I can already imagine that wonderful dune
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Mar 29, 2021 17:42
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Does Chalion keep being good? I liked curseClydeFrog posted:Dude! Recommending a book without the name, meaning you have to click on it to perhaps take the recommendation AND THEN telling people the name is a spoiler is way more spoilery than just er, recommending the book. Let alone stating the second title relates to the ending. The real spoiler is the question being responded to. It's a (title spoiler for common saying) catch 22 Xun posted:Thanks everyone! The two books (well...series I guess but I demolished them TQT trilogy is one of my favorite recent scifi works and a common thread favorite. I'd recommend checking out other thread faves Ninefox Gambit, Children of Time, and The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Are there any books we talk about that you strongly disliked? Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 17:43
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Xun posted:Thanks everyone! The two books (well...series I guess but I demolished them If you liked the Ancillary books, obvious recommendations there are Leckie's other work: Provenance (same setting, otherwise unconnected) and The Raven Tower (fantasy). You might also enjoy A Memory Called Empire (and just-released sequel A Desolation Called Peace) by Arkady Martine; at least, I enjoyed it in much the same way. Aliette de Bodard's Xuya stories also come to mind; the first one I read is The Tea Master and the Detective, about a scholar and an ex-military transport ship who team up to investigate a murder, but there are a bunch of others. Leckie cites C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner books as a major influence on the Radch trilogy; I love them, but whether they're a good rec for you depends, I think, on what you liked about AJ. They're fairly slow-paced, politics-heavy books. I'd also recommend The Pride of Chanur, by the same author, which is more swashbuckling space opera and less "The West Wing: Shejidan".
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Mar 29, 2021 17:46
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Just noticed last night that you can now get a subscription to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction if you've got kindle unlimited https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ZFZ4O8/ Pretty good deal.
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Mar 29, 2021 18:24
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thotsky posted:The sad puppies campaigns have at best managed to impact the nominations, with most of those "victories" then getting voted into oblivion. The only award winners to have appeared on their lists seem pretty unconnected to their agenda or outright in conflict with their stated goals, being Guardians of the Galaxy and, you know, works by women of color. Oh, sorry, I meant the nominees for the Nebula and Hugo awards, not just the winners.
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Mar 29, 2021 18:40
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Since someone's asking for recommendations for a specific thing, the people at risk of being spoiled are bystanders already planning to read the book being recommended. In that case, spoilering the title but not the author is effective - they can recognise the name of an author in their to-read pile and choose not to find out if it's the book they're planning to read. it's not really necessary but it's not like it hurts, I guess?
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Mar 29, 2021 18:42
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Since someone's asking for recommendations for a specific thing, the people at risk of being spoiled are bystanders already planning to read the book being recommended. In that case, spoilering the title but not the author is effective - they can recognise the name of an author in their to-read pile and choose not to find out if it's the book they're planning to read. The trouble stemmed from people misreading the intent of the post, not the post itself. That said, I was also confused before I reread it to figure out why he blanked out the title.
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Mar 29, 2021 18:55
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Copy pasting from the GOT thread, I talked about this book in Discord already. It was a bit of a disappointment. GRRM is wokrking on an adapation of Who Fears Death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Fears_Death It's a sci fi/fantasy distopyc novel set in africa, written by a nigerian american black woman. Those were the reasons I read it. It wasn't exactly to my liking. It reminded me a lot of Parable of the sower. Young black girl has to leave her town after a tragedy, her journey may change the face of the ruined earth she inhabits forever. It was more fantasy than sci fi, I hoped for the other way around. I guess one could say its concerned with how the circumstances of our birth determine our future, and how one can fight against it, despite the expectations of society. Hey, that's also a thing in GOT! It got some explicit rape, violence and other sexual violence. All in all, perfect fit for GRRM.
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Mar 29, 2021 20:05
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edit: I can't read
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Mar 29, 2021 20:23
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General Battuta posted:I don’t understand how a title as generic as “The Artifact” can be a spoiler. It’s the title, the author wanted it to be the first thing you know about the book. in the uk your book is called the traitor so im not suprised you're defending this haberdashery
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Mar 29, 2021 20:57
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