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Beefeater1980 posted:Depressing to read about Eddings, I liked his stuff as a teen and it always seemed very innocent, standard fantasy stuff. Megazver posted:Jules Verne's Mysterious Island? Mysterious Island really suffers from the main characters lucking out in finding caches of materials just when they need them, multiple times. Beefeater1980: that's a very specific story niche. Have you tried checking out some of the early Hugo Award winner short-story/novelette collections? Roughly half of the first decade of Hugo award winners seemed to be variants of "off-planet/fallen human colonies rediscover and implement 500 years of technology within 15 years....". On another note: Looked around for English translation ebook editions of the Strugatsky brothers Noonverse stories/books and found two books (Snail on the Slope + newer english translation of Hard to be a God). Then remembered I already own physical copies of all the Noonverse books, and that the personal MJ Harrison book2epub conversion project I just finished up wasn't too painful. hahahaha  . Plus I wouldn't have to deal with all the crammed together + inbred English naming/slang terms that made me wish 'Brexit is too a good of a fate for the UK". Thoughts?
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Aug 5, 2019 04:24
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Thanks all. I guess I really just mean low stakes, plausibly grounded stuff. KJ Parker but less soul-crushingly depressing.
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Aug 5, 2019 04:45
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The Chad Jihad posted:If I wanted a book or series that was as close to the Dominions computer game series as possible, if not in content then aesthetic/feel, would there be any good options Pretty much Malazan, I think a goon made a dom 3 or dom 4 mod for the Malazan's. Patrat posted:I find his books the most addictive not very good books I have ever read. The first one starts off kind of rough, the second I really liked a lot, the third was a notch below the second. I didn't know he followed up the initial trilogy? I thought the books were okay. The setting felt like a weird Hunger Games meets Warhammer 40K mashup which was kind of amusing. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Aug 5, 2019 |
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Aug 5, 2019 06:38
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Neat, new Craig Schaefer book out in October, 5th book in the Harmony Black series called A Time To Kill. Looking forward to his next. The latest was non-SF/Urban Fantasy, I liked it overall. However it really felt like it should've been set in the 60's rather than present day. But I am still looking forward to the next one in the series as well as Harmony in October and Faust in the near future.
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Aug 5, 2019 06:46
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Mysterious Island really suffers from the main characters lucking out in finding caches of materials just when they need them, multiple times. This is a staple of the genre (see the impossible ecosystem in The Swiss Family Robinson, for example), but Mysterious Island does at least provide an explanation. It's not luck; that island is Captain Nemo's secret base, and he's been looking out for them.
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Aug 5, 2019 11:44
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Beefeater1980 posted:Depressing to read about Eddings, I liked his stuff as a teen and it always seemed very innocent, standard fantasy stuff. Earth Abides. The whole plot is a group of people trying to build a settlement after a devasting plague.
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Aug 5, 2019 16:12
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Alhazred posted:Earth Abides. The whole plot is a group of people trying to build a settlement after a devasting plague. In grade school our teacher would read grown-up novels to us at lunchtime. This was one of them. The only thing I can remember from the book is that at one point the protagonist meets a guy who has the same first name as the author and has hooked up with two women because he's such a successful survivor. Not an indictment of the quality of the rest of the book, just all that I retained from such a young age. That, and a very detailed passage about a water main that failed because the inspector on the assembly line didn't notice a defect. To the OP, The Martian has a lot of practical detail about being stranded on a space mission. I've heard it described as "competency porn".
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Aug 5, 2019 16:44
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There's also Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang about a bunch of clones who sets up a settlement after nuclear war and pandemic. A large portion of the book is dedicated to people going on supply runs.
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Aug 5, 2019 18:51
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Alhazred posted:Earth Abides. The whole plot is a group of people trying to build a settlement after a devasting plague. This is true but it's more like they actively refuse to build a settlement, everyone but Ish preferring to live lazily off the remains of the past than make any attempt at restarting civilization. It's a neat book, with some depth and a good examination of how people would really react to a civilization-ending disaster.
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Aug 5, 2019 20:20
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Carrier posted:Finished Chasm City. I did enjoy it a lot but not as much as Revelation Space. The worldbuilding continues to be great but I think I found the plot kind of fell apart for me a bit when all the threads started coming together. In particular, I think the whole Tanner = Cahuella = Sky Haussmann thing seemed a bit ridiculous and honestly I feel like I've seen that sort of plot so many places now, and never done as well as Use of Weapons . Will probably still read Redemption Ark next though! The Revelation Space series are among my all-time favorites, regardless of genre. I've spent years trying to find other books that were as good, without success. Most space opera books make casual use of FTL, artificial gravity, energy shields, etc which is too hand-wavey for me. On the other hand, most hard SF is limited to a small area of space, and is about as lively as an instruction manual for a dishwasher. In Revelation Space, we have a large interstellar region of interest yet it's still hard-ish SF. No FTL travel (and a very convincing explanation as to why not), no anti-/artificial gravity, no energy shields. (There is a little bit of hand-waving later in the series, but not enough to harm the story) As to other books that I liked: Culture Novels - great (Not very hard SF but it doesn't matter when the writing is that good) Blindsight - great (Too bad it's a one-off; Echopraxia is a poor follow-up) Illium/Olympos - great (Flawed 2/3rds of a trilogy that will never be finished. I liked the juxtaposition of ancient Greece with post-human stuff) Expanse - dull (Great TV show though) Hamilton's stuff - variable-dull (I've only read a couple of his books; they seem over-long and filled with the hand-wavey SF that i usually don't like) Spatterjay stuff - dull (Seems like a lot of torture-porn, which isn't my thing) Hyperian Cantos - pretty good (Again I like the bringing together of classic lit and SF) Lord of Light - great Anubis Gate - great I've read the rest of Reynold's stuff, but nothing else really has the combination of hard-ish SF, space opera scaling and gripping plot. Does anyone have any suggestions?
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Aug 5, 2019 23:57
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I would have suggested David Brin's Uplift Universe books a few months ago to you Rommel1896, but with David Brin recently being publicly revealed as a chud whose personal views are a direct antithesis to everything he's written, I can't make that David Brin author recommendation anymore. Donated my collection of Brin books to charity recently, felt good. Instead I would instead suggest checking out Larry Niven's earliest Known Space stories, which hit similar topics as A. Reynolds and which used real physics as storytelling slash plot devices. Niven's mid-career stage Known Space stories started getting freaky with eugenic panels and finally Niven's Ringworld series introduced the "sex greeter" concept to mainstream scifi, ugh.. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Aug 6, 2019 |
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Aug 6, 2019 00:49
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Niven's kinda chuddy too, something which was lost on me as a child but stands out starkly these days.
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Aug 6, 2019 00:58
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Rommel1896 posted:
A Fire Upon the Deep.
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Aug 6, 2019 01:03
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Having read the past few pages I'm feeling pretty chuffed to have intensely disliked Eddings from the first, and last, book of his I tried. Then again, teen me read the first two Thomas Covenant trilogies (the second mostly due to sunk cost fallacy) so I'm not really one to talk about taste
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Aug 6, 2019 01:15
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uber_stoat posted:Niven's kinda chuddy too, something which was lost on me as a child but stands out starkly these days. True. Early era Niven wasn't very chuddy, and those are the stories I recommended. True Hard scifi is tricky to pin down. Hal Clement had a "physics forever" hard-scifi series featuring hellworld gravity planetoids, and the alien lifeforms able to survive on those hellworld planetoids. Mission of Gravity was the first book in that series, and remains semi-interesting despite being published in 1953.
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Aug 6, 2019 01:20
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Speaking of Hard Sci-Fi does anyone remember the Orions Arm project? Is that still going on?
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Aug 6, 2019 05:52
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To be fair, revelation space starts out as hard sci-fi, but the story being limited to no FTL and known physics is something that disappears quite quickly. Which is good for the story.
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Aug 6, 2019 06:00
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I finished Ash: A Secret History today. Goddamn that's the good stuff. I was riveted to the page from the start. 5 stars, only just missing out on a recommendation to be added to the thread title. There's some very rough material in it though, I'm going to tone down my content warning for the Gap Series based on how broadly recommended Ash is. Hard read or not, Ash is outstanding.
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Aug 6, 2019 06:32
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Rommel1896 posted:I've read the rest of Reynold's stuff, but nothing else really has the combination of hard-ish SF, space opera scaling and gripping plot. ideas perennial TBB recommendations for this type of thing: The Risen Empire + Killer of Worlds, by Westerfeld Machineries of Empire, by Lee The Quantum Thief + Sequels, by Rajaniemi new good things of this type: Empress of Forever, by Gladstone The Stars are Legion, by Hurley oldies (goldies?): Galactic Center, by Benford various Noon stories (no particular reading order) by the Strugatskys others Ventus, by Schroeder Marrow + Well of Stars, by Reed Singularity Sky, by Stross
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Aug 6, 2019 06:57
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my bony fealty posted:This is true but it's more like they actively refuse to build a settlement, everyone but Ish preferring to live lazily off the remains of the past than make any attempt at restarting civilization.
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Aug 6, 2019 11:22
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Rommel1896 posted:
My general rec for relatively hard SF space opera with page-turner plots is Vernor Vinge's Fire on the Deep / Deepness in the Sky series; there is some FTL and other "rule breaking" but it's explained in universe rather than handwaved (the universality of physical laws doesn't hold; speed of light as maximum speed is valid for earth but not elsewhere. Also, "applied theology" is the study of advanced AIs). If you really want hard hard SF Stross's iron sunrise / singularity sky series is great -- FTL exists, but it is time travel and breaks causality --- but he's said he'll never finish the series. From what I recall John C. Wright's Golden Age series is hard SF, relatively little physics breaking, single solar system, BUT Wright is a massive chud lolbertarian. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Aug 6, 2019 |
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Aug 6, 2019 12:32
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mllaneza posted:I finished Ash: A Secret History today.  Mary Gentle is insanely talented!
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Aug 6, 2019 13:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you really want hard hard SF Stross's iron sunrise / singularity sky series is great -- FTL exists, but it is time travel and breaks causality --- but he's said he'll never finish the series.
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Aug 6, 2019 13:12
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StrixNebulosa posted:
Read her Golden Witchbreed for a stellar example of the Anthropological Sci-Fi subgenre.
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Aug 6, 2019 13:15
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The_White_Crane posted:Read her Golden Witchbreed for a stellar example of the Anthropological Sci-Fi subgenre. I've been meaning to, but I hear its sequel is devastating and I'm a little worried, because if you're describing a Gentle book as devastating that means I will be laid up sobbing for weeks.
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Aug 6, 2019 13:18
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StrixNebulosa posted:I've been meaning to, but I hear its sequel is devastating and I'm a little worried, because if you're describing a Gentle book as devastating that means I will be laid up sobbing for weeks. It's less "devastating" and more "not nearly as good". It's not necessary to read, since GW is a complete story, so read that and ignore the sequel.
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Aug 6, 2019 14:19
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xcheopis posted:It's less "devastating" and more "not nearly as good". It's not necessary to read, since GW is a complete story, so read that and ignore the sequel. This.
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Aug 6, 2019 15:18
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Okay, I'll pick it up next time I book shop! Thanks!
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Aug 6, 2019 15:39
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The_White_Crane posted:Read her Golden Witchbreed for a stellar example of the Anthropological Sci-Fi subgenre. Ok! Thanks!
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Aug 6, 2019 15:59
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mllaneza posted:I finished Ash: A Secret History today. StrixNebulosa posted:
I have to reread Ash now - it's been probably 15 years.
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Aug 6, 2019 16:30
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All right, goddamnit, you've sold a copy.
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Aug 6, 2019 16:34
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anilEhilated posted:All right, goddamnit, you've sold a copy. +1 I read a summary and it sounds fantastic so I ordered a copy as well.
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Aug 6, 2019 16:58
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The Grey House is on sale as an ebook for a dollar. That's a good price for how crazy long it is, and also for how good it is.
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Aug 6, 2019 20:40
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Oh dang. Apparently there's a TV series adaption of The Rook. I didn't know it was already out. Thought it was coming up next year sometime. On starz if you are interested.
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Aug 6, 2019 21:01
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Oh dang. Apparently there's a TV series adaption of The Rook. I didn't know it was already out. Thought it was coming up next year sometime. it bad like, Stephanie Meyer probably left because it was too bad for her bad
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Aug 6, 2019 21:04
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Oh dang. Apparently there's a TV series adaption of The Rook. I didn't know it was already out. Thought it was coming up next year sometime. lower your expectations no, lower than that keep going little bit more okay now you should watch it
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Aug 6, 2019 21:04
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 After The Boys knocked it outta the park I had some high hopes they'd get this one looking good as well. Welp, will still watch it, but gonna lower those expectations a bit.
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Aug 6, 2019 22:42
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The Boys got that loving diabolical Bezos money. Starz are the Popclaw of TV production.
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Aug 6, 2019 22:47
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Just got around to the latest Laundry book and it's been a while, but something stood out to me and I think I have some backstory wrong. Spoilers. Mhari said that all the other men who have ever said "I love you" to her are dead, but I thought her relationship with Bob was implied to have been long-lasting and reasonably strong - thus why he was really unhappy to see her/have to work closely with her when she showed up after their rough breakup. Was that not the case, or is this a retcon, or did he just die and nobody told me which I'm certain is not the case? I get that it's been 12+ years in-universe but you don't just forget that kinda thing. I'm pretty sure I'm just dumb. But like, gotta make sure.
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Aug 6, 2019 23:51
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Bob is dead and possessing his own corpse. Irene evicted his soul from his body so they’d have an empty vessel to summon the Eater of Souls except the Eater of Souls was already summoned and bound to a body (Angleton), and they hosed up the scripting in their invocation so the uninitialized variable that should’ve referenced the Eater of Souls ended up referencing Bob.
pseudorandom name fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Aug 7, 2019 |
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Aug 6, 2019 23:59
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