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I had a really, REALLY good time doing Shards of Honor and Barrayar back to back.
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Aug 16, 2021 02:22
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The Vorkosigan Saga was written out of order, and there's a cut-off point after which the books switch from decent to truly excellent and I have to reverse engineer where exactly it happened every time the topic comes up.
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Aug 16, 2021 02:22
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I think Cetaganda onwards are the great ones. edit: nope, I was looking at chronological order, not publication order, it's Barrayar onwards. pseudorandom name fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 02:26
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StrixNebulosa posted:I had a really, REALLY good time doing Shards of Honor and Barrayar back to back. I also did this and it was fantastic.
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Aug 16, 2021 02:32
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Aardvark! posted:I love her. The Vorkosigan Saga, sci-fi but with some political fantasy feel to it, is a great read. A Civil Campaign is a fantastic novel in its own right and may be the high point of Bujold's career. It's also a deliberate and multi-layered homage to Regency romance novels both as a genre and in specifics. There's a fan-made analysis that takes the book line by line and points out all the echoes of, and references to, famous Regency-Era novels. Jane Austen or P.G. Warehouse would have loved the book. So probably will anyone. It's a lot stronger if you know the background details, like why Cordelia pulling a particular couch out of the attic is hugely significant, but I'd say it stands on its own. Hiro Protagonist posted:Is it better to start with Shards of Honor or the Warrior's Apprentice for Vorkosigan Saga stuff? Shards. Because if you start with Shards you get Barrayar as the second book, and Barrayar is a fantastic novel and richly deserves its Hugo award. Without those two books you'll never get that Cordelia is the original badass in the series. And that would be a drat shame. Cordelia is a huge influence on Miles, not knowing her means you can never truly understand him, which will detract from your appreciation of the rest of the series.
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Aug 16, 2021 03:01
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packetmantis posted:e: nah never mind I don't want to do this again, no one gives a poo poo i'd be interested in hearing about it if only because i thought gideon was a book that left me feeling really disappointed. providing it's about the book, that is.
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Aug 16, 2021 03:17
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mllaneza posted:Shards. Because if you start with Shards you get Barrayar as the second book, and Barrayar is a fantastic novel and richly deserves its Hugo award. Without those two books you'll never get that Cordelia is the original badass in the series. And that would be a drat shame. Cordelia is a huge influence on Miles, not knowing her means you can never truly understand him, which will detract from your appreciation of the rest of the series. Also there's lots of great dramatic irony later in the series when Miles is discussing what happened in the first two books - it's way better if you know the real story.
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Aug 16, 2021 03:24
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Horizon Burning posted:i'd be interested in hearing about it if only because i thought gideon was a book that left me feeling really disappointed. providing it's about the book, that is. It's not. Just about me being an easy target.
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Aug 16, 2021 03:32
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Aardvark! posted:I love her. The Vorkosigan Saga, sci-fi but with some political fantasy feel to it, is a great read. See, I would have said I would never voluntarily read a regency romantic comedy, but by the time A Civil Campaign came around I was too involved with the characters to care. Such is Bujold's genius. The only real issue with the series is that reading it through has a rather uneven tone, jumping from "Miles and Ivan have fun on vacation" directly to "clones, identity, and psychological coping mechanisms while under torture".
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Aug 16, 2021 05:09
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SF/F has an insane recency and epic bias so I'd like to recommend Nancy Kress who mainly works in shorter forms but whose work people should read much more of. Luckily she has a best of collection!
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Aug 16, 2021 05:31
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Cherryh’s foreigner series, about a human diplomat on an alien planet, is great but asks a lot of the reader in terms of keeping names, made up concepts and events straight. Books are also often not really self-contained plots, so if you go in you’re in for the long haul. It’s interesting to view all the western sci fi culture war stuff from China, where sci-fi & fantasy (and wuxia, and xianxia, and…ugh…LitRPGs) are super heavily influenced by the webnovel scene. That is a pure competition for eyeballs; no curation, no QA, certainly no diversity panels (of experience or background), just absolutely brutal, no holds barred write or die stuff some of which somehow gets enough attention to be actually published. Plus Liu Cixin but he’s like on a different level to everyone else in terms of fame and profile. For anyone who’s curious and can either read Chinese or is interested to struggle through auto translate, this site is quite handy. Yes that is (the novelised) Legend of Galactic Heroes getting plugged near the top of the page; still super popular even now.
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Aug 16, 2021 06:05
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fez_machine posted:SF/F has an insane recency and epic bias so I'd like to recommend Nancy Kress who mainly works in shorter forms but whose work people should read much more of. Wonder why this is? I'm pretty guilty of it myself. I bet 85% or more of my collection is from 1995 or later.
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Aug 16, 2021 06:48
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Beefeater1980 posted:Cherryh’s foreigner series, about a human diplomat on an alien planet, is great but asks a lot of the reader in terms of keeping names, made up concepts and events straight. Books are also often not really self-contained plots, so if you go in you’re in for the long haul. it's also been running for way too long now i'd like a return to the compact space setting, I'm missing chanur, stsho, even the kif i know she's working on a sequel to the hinder stars book as well
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Aug 16, 2021 08:05
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TOOT BOOT posted:Wonder why this is? I'm pretty guilty of it myself. I bet 85% or more of my collection is from 1995 or later. I'd guess it ages less well than other fiction. If you're on Goodreads you can check your user stats and there's a nice little cluster chart of all the books you've read by publication year. Mine is very heavy on post-2000 books, but of the still significant number of books in the prior 100 years, I'd definitely say there's more literary fiction in there than SFF. (And I read about 50/50 in those genres.)
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Aug 16, 2021 11:38
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mllaneza posted:
Yess. Shards is good but clearly a first novel. Barrayar came about five years later and she'd obviously honed her writing skills a lot in those five years. Also it has one of my favourite sequences in all of fiction. You know, the "shopping" bit towards the end. Goddamn.
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Aug 16, 2021 13:42
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Unless you have a very strong preference for female protagonists I recommend starting with The Warrior's Apprentice and read the books in internal chronological order from then on. The Cordelia books work best as a prequel you can drop in whenever, maybe right after The Vor Game.
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Aug 16, 2021 14:06
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Groke posted:Yess. Shards is good but clearly a first novel. Barrayar came about five years later and she'd obviously honed her writing skills a lot in those five years. Bujold has confirmed that the germ of Shards was a Star Trek plot she came up with involving a Federation ensign and a Klingon captain. I started with Shards /Barrayar and Shards is definitely rough but it’s short and painless and Barrayar is so drat good and such a good entry point for the series that I agree it’s the way to go.
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Aug 16, 2021 14:42
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Beefeater1980 posted:Cherryh’s foreigner series, about a human diplomat on an alien planet, is great but asks a lot of the reader in terms of keeping names, made up concepts and events straight. Books are also often not really self-contained plots, so if you go in you’re in for the long haul. I checked out of the Foreigner series after about book 3, when I realized that the things I enjoyed most about it - the culture clash issues and Bren trying really hard to ignore the fact that he may be better at being atevi than being human - was genuinely all just background to the hard scifi, which made my eyes glaze a bit. Of course, I was a teenager at the time, I may take something different from it now. *checks Wikipedia* Holy poo poo, there are like 25 books now, holy poo poo.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:11
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I made it to about book 6 and lost interest. I don't think it got any worse, just it seemed a lot more samey between novels than The Vorkosigan Saga did, maybe?
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Aug 16, 2021 16:15
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I somehow powered through 10 Foreigner books. There is no reason to be more than 3 of them.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:20
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Yeah, Foreigner gets extremely formulaic, and like, indulgently monarchist.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:26
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I quit the Vorkosigan series at Cryoburn (book #15), because I got spoiled on something that happens at the end, and it made me so sad I couldn't stomach the rest of the book waiting for it to happen. Amazing a cast could stick around for that many books and still have me that emotionally invested. also random thing that made me Lol from Bujold's wikipedia page: Komarr (1999) won the Minnesota Book Award.[28]
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Aug 16, 2021 16:29
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Stuporstar posted:This is godawful, yes. That loving book has done so much damage to potentially good stories lol. But it doesn’t end there I've been saying this for years. That the problem starts at the top of the industry, not with any individual author. Calls for more diversity in the higher ranks of signing and publishing authors means very little if those people are then forced to act in the same way the industry has behaved for X number of years. Comps are a big thing. "My book is like Y book mixed with Z book, and will appeal to readers of A, B, and C book." The avenue for creativity is reduced when everything is just an iteration on what's gone before, and what's proven to sell. Even the idea that a publisher will market your book isn't true. They're spamming bookshelves with enough books that a few of them hit the zeitgeist, create word of mouth, and rack up sales. And it's important to remember, these people aren't selling what's "good" or "what can influence art, or society, or real prejudice" they're selling what's going to entertain in a slightly new fashion. If a book is good, but it takes effort to sell (because it is so new, or so different,) that's going to be an immediate pass. In magazines there's been a big push for "authentic voices" and the not-so-secret idea behind it is that anyone not established is selling their personal trauma, not their art. People want the voyeurism of looking at an exploited life, not the beauty of a created, fictional world, with a message, with something important driving it. Look at the Cat Person thing, it was (according to many, at least at the time) a perfect accounting of "problematic sex." Then when her collection was released, and it was full of wild and (arguably) artistic takes in short story form people were annoyed that it didn't have the easily accessible veneer of personal tragedy, of a scorned woman, of a marginalised voice. This doesn't just go for publishers, but awards too. There's no personal responsibility taken for what might truly reflect innovation, or marginalised voices, or anything that isn't immediately primed to sell. They're giving people what the want, not what they think has merit. And for all BananaNutkins' complaints about who they read, and what they wanted, that just happens to fall outside of what popular reading is asking for at the moment, and what publishing is offering (because it's easy.)
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Aug 16, 2021 16:38
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A good opportunity to repost Le Guin's 2014 National Book Awards speech about how capitalism is destroying literature! https://www.ursulakleguin.com/nbf-medal
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Aug 16, 2021 17:15
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mrs. nicholas sarkozy posted:A good opportunity to repost Le Guin's 2014 National Book Awards speech about how capitalism is destroying literature! https://www.ursulakleguin.com/nbf-medal I didn't know that was where the "divine right of kings" quote came from. It's so often separated out from being about writing/art.
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Aug 16, 2021 17:30
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buffalo all day posted:Bujold has confirmed that the germ of Shards was a Star Trek plot she came up with involving a Federation ensign and a Klingon captain. Shards is only painless if you know what you're in for and want that, which is to say, a mediocre romance novel with a thin veneer of Space Words over it, spiced up by Vice Admiral TortureRape, the Sinister Bisexual. Shards of Honor killed my interest in the series stone dead, and while I doubt I would have been able to fall in love with the Vorkosigan novels, I suspect I might have stuck with it longer if I'd started literally anywhere else. I know a lot of folks here love the series so I don't mean to knock it, it clearly works for a lot of people, but since we're talking about entry points to Vorkosigan, there's my data point.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:36
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mrs. nicholas sarkozy posted:A good opportunity to repost Le Guin's 2014 National Book Awards speech about how capitalism is destroying literature! https://www.ursulakleguin.com/nbf-medal God she was a treasure.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:40
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My main complaint about Foreigner is Cherryh's writing those instead of more Alliance/Union books.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:41
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fritz posted:My main complaint about Foreigner is Cherryh's writing those instead of more Alliance/Union books. I want to read that series but I got up to Cyteen and it isn't available on e-books. Need to give up waiting and just go find a used paperback already
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Aug 16, 2021 18:42
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Aardvark! posted:I want to read that series but I got up to Cyteen and it isn't available on e-books. Need to give up waiting and just go find a used paperback already Just look for the largest object in the bookstore
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Aug 16, 2021 19:14
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Ursula K. Le Guin posted:Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality. This, my god, this. Please, SF writers, enough dystopias - we know it's bad out there, so give us something to aspire to and hope for.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:13
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Kestral posted:This, my god, this. Please, SF writers, enough dystopias - we know it's bad out there, so give us something to aspire to and hope for. Maybe what people need to write is the idea of it being pretty bad, but it's ok, I'd prefer better things, but it's not horrific. That we're on the verge of true collapse, and we'll be looking back at these days thinkin, "drat, we had it so good." But, then again, this is what many middle-aged people who've been afforded the ability and time to think have thought for ages. "It was better in my days! Damnit!" Maybe you should have appreciated your days then. Plenty of people write about the event, or after the event, are there many examples of just before the event?
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Aug 16, 2021 20:20
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There was a trilogy of collections called Before the End, During the End, and After the End, edited by Jeff Vandermeer IIRC, and several of the stories are continued through all three books including one by Charlie Jane Anders. Obviously not all of the stories were great but I really enjoyed the experience overall.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:28
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Mrenda posted:Maybe what people need to write is the idea of it being pretty bad, but it's ok, I'd prefer better things, but it's not horrific. That we're on the verge of true collapse, and we'll be looking back at these days thinkin, "drat, we had it so good." But, then again, this is what many middle-aged people who've been afforded the ability and time to think have thought for ages. "It was better in my days! Damnit!" Maybe you should have appreciated your days then. I could argue that 'Random Acts of Senseless Violence' is about as much before the collapse of America as during it, I suppose.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:30
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I think my main beef with dystopic or apocalyptic themed fiction—and I don’t think she was pointing strictly at that type of fiction in the speech fwiw—is that it’s lazy and comparatively easy especially when things are bad. Fear and anxiety, along with dread and ill omen are perpetual motion machines of the mind that will do most of the imagining for you, if you allow them to. Creating a ppiece of imaginative fiction that both pays heed to impending catastrophe and does not treat it as inevitable, that takes real imagination. It requires the power to believe in humanity in a way I think people just don’t want to right now. I think that’s what she’s getting at. And in an atmosphere like ours, it also takes a lot of guts to say to a well-informed, cynical populous that despite its preconceived notions, despite the data, despite reality itself, human beings are phenomenal creatures. That’s why I don’t have much patience for grim poo poo. It’s lazy and defeatist. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 20:57
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I dunno. I bristle a little at the 'we need more hopeful fiction' rhetoric. I really strongly believe you need a full dynamic range, including acknowledgment of how bad things can get and how terribly humans can behave, and why they behave that way. There's a certain catharsis in just making a clear accounting of how things are hosed, how they got that way, and what's in the way of them getting fixed. Even if at the end you say "I don't know how to make it better" at least you understand what's happening and why. Look at The Wire, a great work of art that's mostly about articulating why poo poo stays hosed up in Baltimore: at no point in the show does anyone Fix Baltimore, but attempts are made, and the show thoughtfully examines the good and bad that comes from those attempts. People aren't all motivated by the same psychological stimuli. Some people are paralyzed and inhibited by the same accounts of evil that galvanize others to act. I found the Last Policeman trilogy really useful in processing my feelings about climate change, and that's a series that makes it clear from the beginning that there's no hope, we absolutely are all going to die: so what do we do with the time we have, what matters, what doesn't? How do individuals exist in the face of a catastrophe that individual action is mostly powerless to avert, and how do they claim power within their own lives as a result? Is there a point where hoping things will turn out okay prevents us from taking the next step of acknowledging that no, things aren't going to be okay, they are going to be much worse than before, and we need to figure out how to grapple with that reality rather than clinging to the one we have right now? Another reason I push back a bit against the calls for 'less grim more hope' is because, no matter how well-intentioned and genuine, they end up being used to generate opprobrium against anyone whose writing contains and engages with bad poo poo. Figuring out why things are bad and how they got that way isn't necessarily lazy or easy. Hell, getting anyone to acknowledge that there's anything wrong at all is in some cases the toughest challenge (again see climate change). Plus I just can't imagine more anything cynical than turning hope into a brand. Rebellions aren't built on hope, you twitterbrained blue check fucklets, they're built on very specific and contingent events which you need to understand and study if you want your rebellion to go well! If you're going to sustain a useful, durable, viable hope to actually changes things and make a difference, that hope has to be predicated on knowledge of what it's up against, not denial. Everybody listened to Hamilton a bunch and then we elected Donald Trump.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:19
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Sorry just drank a lot of coffee.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:19
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General Battuta posted:I really strongly believe you need a full dynamic range, including acknowledgment of how bad things can get and how terribly humans can behave, and why they behave that way. I completely support this statement, it just feels like we've lost / given up on the portion of that dynamic range that isn't dark, cynical, or depressing. We absolutely need fiction that takes the real world to task for its failings, and The Wire is a fantastic example of that, as are your own books for that matter. But we need something to dream about, and if we're going to take positive-outlook fiction to task for that, then this thread needs to immediately turn its fangs on, say, the entire romance genre, "cozy" fiction, and thread favorites like Discworld.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:31
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This all touches vaguely on a thriving tendency lately (or maybe forever) to read works as if the author must be experiencing the same emotions the reader is: they put the sex scene in because they were horny, they put the violence in because they were angry, they put the despair in because they believe there's no hope. It don't work that way. Books aren't hash functions of an author's soul. They're intentional works. Authors assemble words in specific sequences to create effect. Their primary emotion while doing this is probably self-loathing or frustration, not lust/rage/despair (well, maybe despair). That sex scene was probably written by an author thinking about clause length and synonym fatigue, not writhing bodies. That ultraviolent fetishistic paragraph that got picked over on Twitter was probably picked over just as much by a nervous author, adding and deleting words, rephrasing it in search of some intangible middle way where not a single image or simile can be read as a dogwhistle message to one hate group or another. (Obviously the author failed.) If followed further, this rhetorical pathway leads you to the belief that authors are actually doing things to people in their books: murdering people, mutilating people, rewarding people, praising people. Killed a character because you needed to break up a stagnant character dynamic? "Cool motive, still murder." Didn't arc a character into a full understanding of their wrongs, and a total repudiation of their past mistakes? "You're letting them get away with it." And if you accept that authors are basically gods over little pocket universes, of course you want them to be just and righteous gods who assign punishment and reward based on characters' karma. I've certainly felt that myself, I've been angry with authors who I felt neglected or wrote off characters I cared about. I'm not even mocking this—there's nothing wrong with wanting justice in what you read. But not everything people write is necessarily going to be for you. I don't know, I don't really have anything cogent to say past this point. I just wanted to lay out some thoughts.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:33
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Kestral posted:I completely support this statement, it just feels like we've lost / given up on the portion of that dynamic range that isn't dark, cynical, or depressing. We absolutely need fiction that takes the real world to task for its failings, and The Wire is a fantastic example of that, as are your own books for that matter. But we need something to dream about, and if we're going to take positive-outlook fiction to task for that, then this thread needs to immediately turn its fangs on, say, the entire romance genre, "cozy" fiction, and thread favorites like Discworld. I don't think the way to that full range is to turn fangs on anything. I'm arguing against turning fangs on 'insufficiently hopeful fiction', not arguing for turning fangs on something else. No fangs. Many kinds of fiction for many needs.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:35
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