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bowser posted:Looking for fiction or non-fiction about hostage scenarios, preferably told from multiple perspectives. You might like Stanley Ellin's thriller Stronghold from the 70s about a Quaker community that gets taken hostage and has to manage the situation without betraying their pacifist beliefs
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Nov 16, 2021 01:33
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Are there any decent modern “sword and planet” books that scratch the same itch as John Carter? There seems to be no shortage of schlocky derivative crap. I was recommended Ginger Star by Leigh Brackett and In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling. Anyone else I should know about? If you're including Leigh Brackett and S.M. Stirling I'm assuming modern means "post-war". Rice Burroughs was so dominant that most talented people tried to move outside the shadow of his influence as the worst of his progeny flooded the cheap pulps. So there's not much great "sword and planet" stuff out there especially if you're chasing all three legs of the stool "sword", "planet" and "John Carter-like" in addition to well written. You might on the whole be better off chasing non-SF adventure fiction. Have you read Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure series or Big Planet? The Old Mars/Venus etc. collections edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin should also have stuff you'd like (although there's a lot of stories that go meta-textual rather than homage). There's also The Good Stuff collection/s edited by Dozois but that runs the gamut of tones. Maybe Mary Gentle's Orthe series or stuff by Walter Jon Williams and Matthew Hughes
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Nov 17, 2021 23:46
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wheatpuppy posted:Kinda similar, any recs for historical *fantasy* mysteries? I am thinking like medieval beat cops like Simon Green's Hawk and Fisher, or PIs like Randall Garrett's Darcy. Not opposed to romances if they're decently written. The Mongolian Wizard series of stories by Michael Swanwick might fit, it's more espionage and pre-WWI though: https://www.tor.com/series/mongolian-wizard-stories-michael-swanwick/ The Penric And Desdemona series has a fair bit of magical mystery solving ( in fact all the World of Five Gods books are functionally mysteries even if they're heavily disguised, read the novels before the Penric and Desdemona if you want a proper introduction to the world and it's metaphysics). fez_machine fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Nov 22, 2021 |
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Nov 22, 2021 08:18
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Grifter posted:I will be reading all the recs, except maybe 11/22/63. Where does it fall in terms of horror? I'm not up for Pet Semetery level stuff. It's not a horror novel, it's an essay on the Kennedy assassination with some supernatural stuff mixed in.
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Nov 27, 2021 13:58
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sloppy portmanteau posted:Can I get some recommendations for long fantasy/sci-fi series which stick with the same main or small cast of characters throughout and follows their growth? I recently read the Wheel of Time series and that's what I found I liked about it. The payoff with Rands, Matts, and Egwenes evolution especially, I enjoy the shifting power dynamics from the beginning of the series. Then I moved on to the Cradle series and found that satisfying for similar reasons. Currently reading Forge of Destiny due to recommendations in relation to Cradle, but finding it too meandering and will be dropping it. The Foreigner series by C. J. Cherryh Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold The World of Five Gods series by Lois McMaster Bujold (read through them in publication order but by the time Penric and Desdimona you should have your small cast characters) The Dragaera series by Steven Brust There aren't many Science Fiction series like this because they tend to go for epic scope across time and space
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Jan 26, 2022 21:28
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LifeLynx posted:I've always liked weird fiction, but ever since I got "The Weird" by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, I discovered I like reading a lot of it at once instead of bits and pieces I stumble across. Are there any anthologies anyone can recommend? Nearly every author in that anthology has an individual anthology of their stories out or has novel length books. Anything by Michael Cisco is going to be pretty dense on the weird. The VanderMeers have edited or published (as Cheeky Frawg Books ) various anthologies or novels of weird fiction. The Thackery T Lambstead collections are pretty good.
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Feb 1, 2022 12:47
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sephiRoth IRA posted:Sorry wrong thread... lol The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
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Apr 16, 2022 11:06
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Senjuro posted:Any hard sci-fi books that heavily focus on the technical details as much as The Martian and Project Hail Mary? Preferably from this century. Closest I've read are Aurora and Blindsight. Seveneves was pretty good until the focus started to shift towards politics past the half way mark. You're not really going to find this at novel length works (unsurprisingly it's hard to maintain at length!). Check out Greg Egan's work both long and short (which is often called impenetrably technical). The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories series might work for you. Timescape by Gregory Benford is very technical. Ted Chiang's stories often focus on achieving engineering feats particularly "Tower of Babylon" and "Exhalation". The MicroCosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon is the original engineering porn story but it's all essentially fantastical. It's not science fiction per se but Radiance by Carter Scholz is about the inner workings of weapons R&D in the American military industrial complex. The book's really good. It's up in its entirety with footnotes here: https://www.gwern.net/docs/radiance/2002-scholz-radiance Also, shut up about this century, you're closing off a vast realm of good and great poo poo for recency bias and most of the stuff I've mentioned comes from the 20th. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Apr 27, 2022 |
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Apr 27, 2022 00:30
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FPyat posted:Other than Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment, I want books about misanthropes, that transfix me with how strongly and convincingly the main characters express their disdain for other people. Literally just read through the Stop Being A Child thread and you'll find tonnes of recs Celine has already been mentioned, but there's William Gaddis, William Gass, Mishima, Thomas Bernhard etc etc etc.
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Jun 19, 2022 23:42
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Senjuro posted:Anything similar in tone and content to Netflix's Castlevania? Dark, medieval, high fantasy with vampires as major characters or even protagonists. Kim Newman's Anno Dracula books might be worth looking into, but they're not really high fantasy and they're of very varying quality.
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Aug 9, 2022 23:02
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PRADA SLUT posted:I liked Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and Lathe of Heaven (I also liked the weirdness in Lathe of Heaven). Anything else worth reading from her? There's no bad Le Guin, just stuff that doesn't work for various people.
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Aug 11, 2022 09:32
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It's old and more a curiosity than anything else but famed gonzo Sci-Fi writer Cordwainer Smith wrote a book on Psychological Warfare as part of his day job https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48612 fez_machine fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Aug 24, 2022 |
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Aug 24, 2022 12:25
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Heavy Metal posted:So I came to ask, any really accessible fun to read space opera adventures? I give it that preamble since a lot of the sci-fi section to me looks a bit inaccessible for my taste, at least at the moment. I enjoy that show The Expanse, but even that book series for example looks a little bit too dry for me at the moment. When I hear space opera, I get the idea that there are a lot of cool fun books out there which might appeal to me. Since I love Mobile Suit Gundam, Star Wars, Captain Harlock, dig Firefly, love Cowboy Bebop, Wrath of Khan, Irresponsible Captain Tylor etc. But when I read the preview pages for most books with spaceships, I'm not finding that kind of fun page-turner for me. Honestly, your best bet is in the EU licensed fiction of tv and movie sci-fi. But if you want mainline science fiction recommendations, here's a few. Much of Sci-Fi swashbuckling also happens under the term Planetary Romance, where there's not much space travel but plenty of incident. Burroughs is the obvious answer here but also check out Leigh Brackett (she wrote the Empire Strikes Back) and C.L. Moore. The works that inspired the phrase "Space Opera" and much space opera anime is E.E. Doc Smith's work. If you like insane solar system destruction anime escalation these set the template. Very very dated though. Jack Vance's Demon Princes series and Planet of Adventure series are both great and should fit your requirements. Especially the Demon Princes series as they're essentially a collection of loosely connected revenge heist stories. Matthew Hughes' Archonate series which ups the swashbuckling in a Jack Vance inspired universe. Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorksogian sequence is very approachable. Edwin Charles Tubb might be worth checking out. Ian M. Banks varies on the amount of swashbuckling but his work is usually pretty fun to read. David Zindell's Neverness Walter Jon Williams has a number of good swashbucklers but check out the Maijstral series.
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Sep 2, 2022 01:38
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Heavy Metal posted:Appreciated! On the licensed books thing, do you have any that you particularly like and recommend? I haven't been too interested in that so far, just mentioned titles from other mediums to kinda show some stuff I enjoy in the genre. I don't read much but Dan Abnett's Warhammer work is great (and honestly check out his comics work (the Annihilation mini-series from Marvel are a good place to start) it's almost exactly what you want, Al Ewing too) The two dedicated threads should help more: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3494493 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3951863
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Sep 2, 2022 02:15
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm going on vacation shortly, and my partner is looking for some book recommendations for lighter vacation reads. She wants something centered on heists or charismatic conmen (conpeople?), ideally nothing too heavy or dark. She loved Lies of Locke Lamora but is a little burnt out on sci-fi and fantasy, so something realistic and ideally relatively modern would be best. She also loves the shows Leverage and Better Call Saul, and the movies Catch Me If You Can and The Sting so something along those lines tonally would probably be great. Donald Westlake wrote a ton of these, the creator of Leverage was a big fan of his. The Dortmunder series is precisely light hearted heists. Drowned Hopes is probably the best one. But every one after that is very readable as well. Elmore Leonard is great for that Better Call Saul vibe. Lawrence Block can be very light especially his Bernie Rhodenbarr books (although they're more murder mysteries featuring a burglar) and the John Keller series. Thick as Thieves by Spiegelman should be good as well. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 23:16
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CaptainCrunch posted:Another request, if you will. Since we're getting close to October, I've been hankering for a style of horror novel I don't think I've seen in a while. Something along the lines of IT, or Summer of Night by Dan Simmons, or Stinger by Robert McCammon. Stranger Things also is in this vein. It's not horror but you might enjoy Brittle Innings
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Sep 21, 2022 03:09
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Tea Bone posted:I'm loooking to re-live my first time reading through A Song of Ice and Fire (particularly the first three books), something to really sink my teeth into. I read a comparisson of ASOIAF and Tolkein saying Tolkein's world has depth (as in a lot of intricate history and languages etc) where as ASOIF has bredth (lots of moving parts and things happening at the same time, but not historically rich), so with that I'm looking for something with more bredth if that makes sense? Something with a lot of intrigue, strategic politics, backstabbing etc. Doesn't necissarily have to be fantasy, but preferably low magic if it is. A Dragon Waiting by John M For was very influential on GoT and will hit the mark most accurately. Aspects is pretty good as well but unfinished. Anything by CJ Cheryh Ken Liu's The Dandelion Dynasty, James S. A. Corey's work (they worked with GRRM for a long time), Daniel Abraham's Long Price and The Dagger and Coin series, Steven Brust's Taltos series, Paul Park's Starbrige Chronicles. Dorothy Dunnet's Lymond chronicles. Bilirubin posted:I only read Dancing Aztecs and really enjoyed it a lot, not sure why I didn't keep reading in his oeuvre as they are funny and breezy Dancing Aztecs is great but I don't typically recommend it because it has some problematic racial depictions.
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Sep 21, 2022 19:47
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regulargonzalez posted:I'm looking for non-Lovecraft cosmic horror that is available on Audible por favor The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell The Cipher by Kathe Koja The Ceremonies by T.E.D Klein
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Sep 27, 2022 01:08
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regulargonzalez posted:Thanks! Are these listed in order of your rankings of them? Nah, they're just good stuff but YMMV
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Sep 27, 2022 04:45
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ovenboy posted:My book club will be looking for a detective novel soon and, being scandinavian, the market is pretty saturated in nordic noir which I am not too interested in. I've read and enjoyed some Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, but besides that I remember Kiln People, A Study in Emerald, the Watch books by Pratchett, and recently The Wolf and the Watchman. Peter Dickinson specialised in these. Hindsight and Sleep and His Brother are the ones most recommended. Avram Davidson's The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy is unlike anything else.
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Oct 12, 2022 14:54
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ScienceSeagull posted:What are some good collections of microfiction, flash fiction or short-short stories? I'm not totally clear on the cutoff points for those terms, but I mean like a page maximum in length, maybe only a few sentences. I'm especially interested in fantasy, horror, and weird fiction in this format. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis https://www.amazon.com.au/Collected-Stories-Lydia-Davis/dp/0241969131 For sci-fi check out Terry Bisson
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Oct 20, 2022 08:58
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Mordiceius posted:Looking for a book recommendation for my wife - The Accursed Kings by Maurice Druon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Accursed_Kings I, Claudius by Robert Graves She'd probably like Michael McDowel's books, especially Gilded Needles and The Blackwater Saga Bellefleur and My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates Oh, if she really wants something to chew on there's Les Rougon-Macquart by Emile Zola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Rougon-Macquart not every book is about a criminal but there's a streak of criminality in the family and it contains several of the great French tragic novels. It's not a crime family drama but it is Japanese, Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama The most Yakuza like fiction is on film unfortunately, but she should check out the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_Without_Honor_and_Humanity and Kitano's Yakuza films fez_machine fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Nov 14, 2022 |
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Nov 14, 2022 02:44
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regulargonzalez posted:Looking for novels set in the intelligence community but not spy stuff or Jack Ryan per se, more the diplomat / ambassador / handler level stuff. Something like Count Fenring in Dune, or Laird Barron's story The Siphon, except not fantasy or horror. Thanks! Le Carre has a bunch of novels about handlers and diplomats The Antrobus stories by Lawrence Durrell The Slow Horses series which is mainly focused on data analysts being asked to become proper spies Rubicon was a great tv series about data analysts edit: oh poo poo I forgot The Sandbaggers is probably the greatest intelligence community television series, there's a conspiracy theory that the writer was killed for leaking state secrets through the show. Anyway, it's primarily about the handlers having to deal with the fact that their ultra-component spies are a very rare commodity that wear down and get killed and have to be saved for the most important missions only. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Dec 3, 2022 |
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Dec 3, 2022 10:21
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SEX HAVER 40000 posted:maybe a longshot: anybody have recommendations for books on film theory? could be analyzing a specific work, or going through a movement, or just an introduction to the topic, whatever you've got. i just want to learn to read movies better David Bordwell and Kitstin Thompson's books and blog are a good starting point for understanding how film technique, technology, and form shape our experiences watching. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/
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Dec 8, 2022 22:11
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PupsOfWar posted:This is gonna be weird but does anyone have reccs for Choose Your Own Adventure style books or gamebooks of similar stripe? First things first, have you tried comics/manga? They're very very approachable, there's a huge list of them appropriate for all ages and genders and the Shonen Jump app for example has a very cheap subscription for basically unlimited amounts of exciting comics suitable for kids in their teens. Game books are a passion of mine and the bad news is that they basically died in the 90s and were almost exclusively marketed towards boys. Mainline CYOA books that have been reissued might still be attractive at 11. They certainly have the widest of topics (although boy skewing) You can look at the big list here for recent stuff but it's pretty dire in terms of targetting the kid your describing: https://gamebooks.org/Items/ByYear fez_machine fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Dec 15, 2022 |
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Dec 15, 2022 09:17
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Anno posted:I’ve been out of the fantasy novel game since book two of the Stormlight Archive (so….2014?) but want to get back in. Sanderson stuff aside, any suggestions on books that have come out since then? Especially if they’re of the “epic fantasy” series sort. Graydon Saunder's Commonweal books are very popular here. There's a thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4006013
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Dec 19, 2022 05:24
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Good-Natured Filth posted:I'm looking for a recommendation for my wife. What she reads today is mostly autobiographies or self-help / self-help-adjacent books, but she wants to try to get back into fiction. The last fiction series she read and really enjoyed was Harry Potter nearly two decades ago. So this may be a challenge. Has she read Terry Pratchett? She might like the Tiffany Aching series especially.
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Jan 25, 2023 05:20
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deep dish peat moss posted:Hey TBB, can anyone point me in the direction of any notable fiction books that are almost exclusively world-building, instead of character-focused stories? Here's a few off the top my head: Dunsany's Gods of Pegana Austin Tappan Wright's Islandia Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men and Star Maker Jean D'Ormesson's The Glory of the Empire Milorad Pavić's Dictionary of the Khazars Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home fez_machine fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Jan 31, 2023 |
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Jan 31, 2023 07:36
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PRADA SLUT posted:Can someone rec me a “comedy of errors” genre book? If you've not read Wodehouse that's the rec, read all of Wodehouse. Past Wodehouse, there's Donald Westlake's comedic novels especially the Dortmunder books. Depending on your taste you might like Connie Willis' Oxford Time Travel books.
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Feb 7, 2023 01:14
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SEX HAVER 40000 posted:i just finished both Silence and Fires on the Plain, and Canticle for Leibowitz and The Book of the New Sun are two of my all time favorite novels. what are some similarly unique/complex/outsider works on catholicism? i've been trudging through The Name of the Rose for what feels like years now, but i crave more Hyperion by Dan Simmons (although it's much less authentically Catholic than the other recommendations)
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Feb 7, 2023 22:17
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If you like Tom Holt you'll love K J Parker (a lot of his work is focused on professionals being good at their profession)
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Mar 9, 2023 04:53
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Selachian posted:Donald Westlake, too. Donald Westlake's the king (although he's funnier when he's meaner writing as Richard Stark and his non-comedy books, The Ax is very funny for example)
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Mar 23, 2023 09:19
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ScienceSeagull posted:I'm interested in stories that deal with infinity, eternity, and related concepts -- truly enormous expanses of time and space, or huge numbers more generally. Such as Borges' Library of Babel, and Steven Peck's Short Stay in Hell (which is based on the Borges story). Check out: Olaf Stapeldon Stephen Baxter Alistair Reynolds (especially House of Suns)
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Apr 2, 2023 09:37
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Smiling Knight posted:Hello thread, Have you read Last Seen Wearing.. by Hillary Waugh or the Martin Beck books?
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Apr 14, 2023 04:39
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Smiling Knight posted:Will be reading while traveling, so nothing too too cerebral. tuyop posted:Oh and a shorter rec: The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe I know the OP said they enjoy Gene Wolfe but lmao
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Apr 14, 2023 11:47
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:What's a good starting point for the Philip K Dick bibliography? Something a little more narratively clear than I think he's know for. I'm kind of dumb. But not Man in the High Castle, I'm looking for sci fi. His short stories are probably the best place to start for clarity, get one of the collections.
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Apr 27, 2023 07:26
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sbaldrick posted:So I’m really tired of the grim dark, rapey turn fantasy has taken recently (GRRM, Abercrombie, the Malazan books, I’m currently reading the most recent Kagen book and if he talks about rape in the creepy way he has again I’m going to throw my phone across the room). Michael Bishop's Brittle Innings about Frankenstein's Monster playing Minor League baseball in the post-war south.
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May 3, 2023 10:07
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ahobday posted:Does anyone have any recommendations for books about a person who takes over as the ruler of a place, and does a good job? I don't really mind if it's historical, fantasy, science fiction, or any other genre, but I'd prefer it be a fictional story. Lyndon B. Johnson biographical series, The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro, is occasionally great for this because as terrible as LBJ often was, his entire method of politics got poo poo done. There's genuinely thrilling moments of good governance in there.
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May 3, 2023 22:41
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Charles Palliser's The Quincunx is a massive Dickensian puzzle novel that has a strong cult following. Particularly because as wikipedia says, "Many of the puzzles that are apparently solved in the story have an alternative solution in the subtext" He also wrote Betrayals which is a big meta book of many different stories, maybe there's a puzzle here, maybe there's not I didn't enjoy it all that much.
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May 20, 2023 03:55
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ScienceSeagull posted:What are some books like Einstein's Dreams or Invisible Cities? Short stories exploring weird alternate worlds or thought experiments. Greg Egan's work
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Jun 16, 2023 03:10
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