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BaPH is pretty whatever. My fave conspiracy classic is The Day After Roswell which can be read almost like an alternate history novel.
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Jul 12, 2019 23:13
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GreyjoyBastard posted:i have complicated but generally positive feelings about every Jacqueline Carey novel I have read Same, I should read more of them But at the moment I'm reading Survival by Julie E. Czerneda and enjoying the poo poo out of it, thank you whoever recommended it
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Jul 12, 2019 23:59
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ToxicFrog posted:But at the moment I'm reading Survival by Julie E. Czerneda and enjoying the poo poo out of it, thank you whoever recommended it It's so good and the second volume arrives in the mail for me next week and I'm dying of impatience over here Playing God by Sarah Zettel just didn't hold a candle to it - like it was okay, but it started getting real depressing and wasn't nearly as compelling so I'm just here reading fantasy and wishing I was reading Czerneda instead.
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Jul 13, 2019 00:24
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fashionly snort posted:
i dunno about all that, but i think a lot of people (myself included) def thought james was joking when he announced over social media that he was gonna write an epic fantasy series with lengthy worldbuilding digressions then 2-3 years later it was like "oh gently caress he actually went and done it" PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jul 13, 2019 |
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Jul 13, 2019 01:04
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Read/powerskimmed a bunch of books recently about the alt-right and other books about belief in conspiracy theories making a overwhelming return in modern social media. Ha. I thought I was the only sane person that ever looked through this haystack of poo poo. One of my former employees swore by it.
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Jul 13, 2019 02:32
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fashionly snort posted:Halfway through 'Black Leopard Red Wolf' by Marlon James and loving it. Ymmv but it has all the things I want in a fantasy novel: an unreliable narrator, a fantasy world that doesn't draw on a European tradition, a narrator that loves the sound of his own voice, and gay stuff. A bunch of reviewers have characterized it as 'difficult' and ... maybe? I guess? It's not a straightforward narrative, but it's also not obtuse for-the-sake-of-it. Threads of trauma and pain weave their way through the narrative, and there's a lot of violence so a content warning is probably justified; I'm gonna quote the NPR and LA Review of Books discussions rather than try and summarize it: I bounced off of this kind of hard, but it is certainly different and interesting. I will come back. I finished the first book of Anthony Ryan’s steampunk dragon series. Pretty indifferent/workmanlike. No real desire to continue.
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Jul 13, 2019 02:46
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Halfway through The Iron Dragon's Mother. It's good. Not as morbidly depressing as Daughter, as our protagonist is less at the whims of the universe. Nor is it another bildungsroman, and it has more of a traditional plot than Dragons of Babel. A couple of things annoy me but I don't think it's fair to comment on them until I see what Swanwick does with them. If you like Swanwick's other books, check it out. I also saw he recently put out another Mongolian Wizard short story. These are set in a kind of alternate-history early 20th century. I don't want to say they show an ersatz or magical WW1, because the world and conflict depicted are far too different. The protagonist is a morally inflexible and serious young German man who begins working for the British. They can all be read online here: https://www.tor.com/series/mongolian-wizard-stories-michael-swanwick/ Each story stands on its own pretty well and they're quick reads.
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Jul 13, 2019 02:46
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So I finished Children of Time based on thread recommendations. It was on of those 50/50 recommendations, where it was a clear miss for me. The characters on both sides were bland on both sides, slow and disjointed storyline and bad ending. The spiders were basically spiders in human form, despite the intention. Slower than light travel is almost always going to be bad from a story telling perspective. the ending was bad partly cause it felt rushed, was kinda deus ex machina. Also when you spend an entire book highlighting internal strife within two species which is then solved in a magic way, it feels kinda off. In a way the book was like Aurora, and I would guess people who liked that one, likes this one for similar reasons.
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Jul 13, 2019 10:44
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Cardiac posted:Slower than light travel is almost always going to be bad from a story telling perspective. There are some counter-examples where it actually helps. See House of Suns, where it added to the Gothic grandeur of the book.
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Jul 13, 2019 12:24
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gvibes posted:I bounced off of this kind of hard, but it is certainly different and interesting. I will come back. The final two are about the same quality, I wouldn't stress. He's never written anything as good as his scifi short series 'slab city'
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Jul 13, 2019 12:46
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Finished Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Tom Sweterlitsch last night over a couple hours. Any of y'all read this guys work before? I'm quite interested in what he does in the future.
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Jul 13, 2019 20:18
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Now read Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Charles Sheffield
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Jul 13, 2019 20:37
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less laughter posted:Now read Tomorrow and Tomorrow Its good OP
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Jul 13, 2019 21:16
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https://twitter.com/dchiasso/status/1149873705545359360 70s sci-fi still relevant today!
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Jul 13, 2019 21:33
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Serious question, has anyone ever seen a goodreads score below 3.5? What would it take I wonder...
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Jul 13, 2019 22:06
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tooterfish posted:Serious question, has anyone ever seen a goodreads score below 3.5? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25713795-higher-ed
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Jul 13, 2019 22:09
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tooterfish posted:Serious question, has anyone ever seen a goodreads score below 3.5? super obscure sci-fi: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6476748-lukan-war extremely poorly written fantasy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1266421.The_Wolves_of_Autumn jane yolen: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43226652-the-last-tsar-s-dragons SN Lewitt gets a bad rap on goodreads :C https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1090281.Angel_at_Apogee newer sci-fi: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30212707-a-perfect-machine John Brunner: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6255214-meeting-at-infinity weird newer sci-fi: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38643813-green-jay-and-crow Nightrider by David Mace: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/876484.Nightrider basically goodreads has garbage taste
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Jul 13, 2019 22:19
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So I was thinking if anything it'd be Mein Kampf or something. But no. To be fair, naval gazing Londoners are worse than Hitler. At least his writing career is over. edit: anyway, so now I'm reading Mein Kampf reviews on goodreads. My favourite so far: quote:If you agree with him, you're some kind of Nazi scumbag. tooterfish fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Jul 13, 2019 |
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Jul 13, 2019 22:28
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tooterfish posted:Serious question, has anyone ever seen a goodreads score below 3.5? It seems not uncommon for short story collections. I looked at Sanderson's considerable output at random and all of his actual 3.5s are that.
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Jul 13, 2019 22:33
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tooterfish posted:Serious question, has anyone ever seen a goodreads score below 3.5? I'd really like it if there was some kind of website like Pandora, but for books, and you ranked books on maybe 10 different dimensions, plus you know tags and it used your own ratings to influence what you rate. Like if you give everything a 10 then giving something a 10 is less valuable than someone who gives something ratings that are varied. Probably an idle dream of mine, but goodreads is basically unusable imo.
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Jul 13, 2019 22:38
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I just use Amazon for recommendations nowadays. I browse through the "Customers also bought" list and click on anything that looks interesting. I've found a lot of good books that way. To be clear, I absolutely do not use the Amazon homepage recommendations because those are universally poo poo; I look at what people buying generally the same books as me are also getting.
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Jul 13, 2019 22:49
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Ornamented Death posted:I just use Amazon for recommendations nowadays. I browse through the "Customers also bought" list and click on anything that looks interesting. I've found a lot of good books that way. I use this thread and my friends and generally turn up with cool things - e.g. a friend recced Czerneda to me, and this thread pointed me to David Mace. Amazon meanwhile wants me to read every single Warhammer 40k novel and like, I get it, but go stuff yourself algorithm, I ain't reading anything by CS Goto.
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Jul 13, 2019 23:04
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Just read The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin. The plot follows a man who has "effective dreams" that alter reality. It begins with minor changes, but he goes to a psychitriast in an effort to stop dreaming. Instead, the doctor begins trying to use the dreams a way to improve the world, with escalating global consequences. Let's just say the dreamer tends to find ironic, monkey's paw type solutions for humanity's problem. "I want you to dream that we have moved past racial intolerance." *every human on Earth becomes the same grayish blend*. "Hmm... okay, let's try this again. I want you to dream that we put an end to the overpopulation problem." *billions of people are wiped out of existence* I found the overall tone, description of then-near-future technology, and especially the ruminations on the nature of reality to be very reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, so I was not at all surprised to read that LeGuin considered the book an homage to him. Although I would say that also leads it to suffer from a problem I find typical of Dick, in that the story is imaginative and engaging, but sort of peters out narratively speaking.
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Jul 14, 2019 03:07
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Can someone recommend something that would be on par with Iain M. Banks? I'm looking for good space opera I haven't read already
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Jul 14, 2019 05:51
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thats a bit broad what do you like about Banks
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Jul 14, 2019 05:55
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FuturePastNow posted:https://twitter.com/dchiasso/status/1149873705545359360 3.75 rating loving Goodreads
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Jul 14, 2019 06:59
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PupsOfWar posted:thats a bit broad The way he tells little stories in a huge universe I guess. I loved his culture novels
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Jul 14, 2019 07:04
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Bilirubin posted:3.75 rating loving Goodreads That's higher than the Gor books...must be hot stuff.
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Jul 14, 2019 08:26
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adary posted:The way he tells little stories in a huge universe I guess. I loved his culture novels You might like the uplift Trilogy by David Brin, especially the 2nd and 3rd books, the first book (Sundiver) doesn't give you much of a sense of the larger universe, but the latter two do.
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Jul 14, 2019 09:51
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pseudanonymous posted:You might like the uplift Trilogy by David Brin, especially the 2nd and 3rd books, the first book (Sundiver) doesn't give you much of a sense of the larger universe, but the latter two do. ehhh....Brin's 2019 reveal as being an arrogant condescending rear end in a top hat, especially toward women, makes the weird really sexist bits in Brin's Uplift Trilogy stand out more. adary posted:Can someone recommend something that would be on par with Iain M. Banks? adary posted:The way he tells little stories in a huge universe I guess. I loved his culture novels If you like little stories in a huge universe, try out some of the short stories in Paul J. McAuley's Quiet War series. The 1st Quiet War novel was bland/mostly setting up the situation + factions + characters for the series, but the short stories and followup novels are much better. On another totally unrelated note, want to discuss A. Reynolds(can never remember how to correctly spell his first name, so why bother?) Relevation Space series a bit, realized Reynolds abandoned most of the hard scifi stuff in series when I tried dreaming up improved ice-shield ideas for lighthuggers then realized ice-shields stopped appearing 3/4 through the first book, vaguely mentioned in the opening of Chasm City...then nothing. Btw, my insane idea for ice-shield was why not peanut-butter? Yes, peanut butter. It's insane at a few levels but for the Ultranaut FuckYouGotMine flaunting culture kinda perfect.
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Jul 14, 2019 12:37
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:ehhh....Brin's 2019 reveal as being an arrogant condescending rear end in a top hat, especially toward women, makes the weird really sexist bits in Brin's Uplift Trilogy stand out more. I didn't know that we'd disavowed Brin, from what I recall there was some mild controversy because he made some remarks at a conference or something? But maybe this shouldn't be rehashed in the thread I dunno. NoNostalgia4Grover posted:On another totally unrelated note, want to discuss A. Reynolds(can never remember how to correctly spell his first name, so why bother?) Relevation Space series a bit, realized Reynolds abandoned most of the hard scifi stuff in series when I tried dreaming up improved ice-shield ideas for lighthuggers then realized ice-shields stopped appearing 3/4 through the first book, vaguely mentioned in the opening of Chasm City...then nothing. Btw, my insane idea for ice-shield was why not peanut-butter? Yes, peanut butter. It's insane at a few levels but for the Ultranaut FuckYouGotMine flaunting culture kinda perfect. It seemed to me there was less discussion of ice-shields because the series slowly shifts from science fiction to science fantasy and because the technology improves so they are using more advanced ships which don't use ice-shields anymore, but I could be wrong. Also I think water is common and cheap and frequently useful because it has three phases which are easily attainable. Also you can drink it in an emergency, and none of those things are true of peanut butter? Although I guess you could eat it.
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Jul 14, 2019 12:54
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pseudanonymous posted:I didn't know that we'd disavowed Brin, from what I recall there was some mild controversy because he made some remarks at a conference or something? But maybe this shouldn't be rehashed in the thread I dunno. Brin was progresive for his time, but always chud-like when interacting with other authors + fans was where things left off with Brin chat, i think. ice-shields: water is common, and cheap and frequently useful as you said. Ice-shields kinda got mentioned in the beginning of Chasm City, but even within Relevation Space, ice-shields stopped being mentioned by the time the neutrino emitting moon became a major plot point. The material I mentioned is not so easily created but matter transmutation technology was shown to exist on lighthuggers in the R.S. series...and years of transit time exists between star systems. High relativistic impacts on The material would render The material into its more elastic form, which is a pretty thick quasi-liquid and might distribute the impact-load better than the basic frozen-ice converted instantaneously into liquid/steam could. The material could also be used as a trade good for colonies, because Ultranauts don't give a gently caress about WHAT they sell to rubes, and worse case, yes could be used by the crew in case of emergency issues. Plus the Ultranaut culture is pretty drat weird, could see poisoning/messing with another lighthuggers The material being a Ultranaut non-violent way of counting coup vs other lighthugger crews in high trade star systems. Lighthugger technology + crews weren't really covered much by A. Reynolds because Cojoiners became something vastly more interesting to write about I guess. All of this The material guesswork coming from a idea about alternative technologies in R.S. series I dreamed up during a run to distract myself, so who knows really?
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Jul 14, 2019 13:28
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pseudanonymous posted:You might like the uplift Trilogy by David Brin, especially the 2nd and 3rd books, the first book (Sundiver) doesn't give you much of a sense of the larger universe, but the latter two do. Read all uplift related stuff from Brin already. Great books
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Jul 14, 2019 14:25
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:ehhh....Brin's 2019 reveal as being an arrogant condescending rear end in a top hat, especially toward women, makes the weird really sexist bits in Brin's Uplift Trilogy stand out more. I actually started re-reading Startide Rising for the god knows how manyth time a few days ago. The sexual harassment subplot has aged particularly poorly.
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Jul 14, 2019 18:10
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I just finished reading Record of a Spaceborn Few and was unfortunately disappointed by it. I preferred the first two books in the series. Is there anything else in the "chill/fun slice of life" niche that those books are in? I need something fun and relatively low-stakes to scratch the itch. I've read The Goblin Emperor already, which is usually suggested in this thread in the same breath.
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Jul 14, 2019 21:36
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fritz posted:I actually started re-reading Startide Rising for the god knows how manyth time a few days ago. The sexual harassment subplot has aged particularly poorly. Yeah that plotline was just  all the way. Especially when the victim eventually concluded that the aggressor was just acting in harmless fun, really! I enjoyed the book on the whole but man there are some definite 'old man' ideas in there. Also the fact that Uplift War just completely abandoned the cool mystery plot was annoying, even if it was a pretty good novel.Edit: to ^^ Did you read the Ancillary novels? They're pretty similar in tone and content in many ways. People complain about them as 'nothing happens' in the same way.
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Jul 14, 2019 23:57
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i...its been long enough since i read Startide that i dont remember who got sexually harassed w...was it a dolphin did a dolphin sexually harass somebody i dont remember the humans in those books Xtanstic posted:I just finished reading Record of a Spaceborn Few and was unfortunately disappointed by it. I preferred the first two books in the series. Is there anything else in the "chill/fun slice of life" niche that those books are in? I need something fun and relatively low-stakes to scratch the itch. I've read The Goblin Emperor already, which is usually suggested in this thread in the same breath. my usual recc of this type is the vorkosigan saga, which can be very cozy depending on the book but most people here've probably read the vorkosigan saga already, so how about : - Stuff by Doris Egan (Gate of Ivory) - Stuff by Elizabeth Moon. Principally the Serrano Legacy, maybe the first couple of Vatta's War books before it goes full gonzo - the first book is similar in format to Small Angry Planet or bujold's Warrior's Apprentice - Stuff by Robert Reed, who wrote some high-concept but lighthearted and optimistic New Space Opera a while back (i think of him as like...Chill Banks, or maybe as Good-At-Writing Baxter or Non-Culture-Appropriating Mcdonald) - Stuff by Jack McDevitt, whose usual mode is explicitely Cozy Mysteries in Space Also, historical fiction is chill a lot of the time, so you could try rustling up some Edith Pargeter or something PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Jul 15, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 00:01
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Xtanstic posted:I just finished reading Record of a Spaceborn Few and was unfortunately disappointed by it. I preferred the first two books in the series. Is there anything else in the "chill/fun slice of life" niche that those books are in? I need something fun and relatively low-stakes to scratch the itch. I've read The Goblin Emperor already, which is usually suggested in this thread in the same breath. If you don't mind fantasy, Ithnalin's Restoration by Lawrence Watt-Evans.
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Jul 15, 2019 00:02
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Has anyone in here ever read the Seer by Sonia Orin Leyris? I'm about halfway through it and cannot put it down. It's about a young woman on the run, a man who is potentially consort to the princess (and the king is very old), an assassin, and a mage. It's about domestic politics in a complicated Kingdom (a counterfeit coin conspiracy is my current favorite subplot), what it's like to live on the run constantly, and growing up. I have no idea why this wasn't published by someone else, it's so well-written and intricate it doesn't feel like a Baen book at all!
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Jul 15, 2019 00:34
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PupsOfWar posted:
the greatship is a good place to start, the first book is Marrow. basically these's planet sized spaceship abandoned it on a circuit of the galaxy, humanity gets lucky and claims it, colonising it while other races use it as a base to travel. it's got a xelee meets majipooor kind of feel, maybe a bit of those short stories set in the red mars world.
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Jul 15, 2019 01:00
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