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Tanith posted:He sets himself up for both new storylines he's planning on following in this, by which I mean MY FULFILLMENT Oh goodie. A friend of mine introduced me to the first four last year just before book 5 was due to be released and I've been meaning to get 6 myself.
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Jun 4, 2010 06:54
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MacGyvers_Mullet posted:Hung Yuri, if I were in your position I'd hold off on getting the next book until Hamilton's done with the trilogy and check out the Commonwealth saga in the meantime. About a third of the significant characters are really established in that series, and a lot of the tension and mystery came from which powerful characters and factions were missing, but hinted at in the Void trilogy. I recently got Pandora's Star, Judas Unchained, and The Temporal Void (for later). I'm halfway through chapter 1 of Pandora's Star and currently he's putting me to sleep, though I think this is how it was until about 200 pages into The Dreaming Void, so I'll stick with it.
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Jun 5, 2010 14:13
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Tanith posted:He sets himself up for both new storylines he's planning on following in this, by which I mean MY FULFILLMENT This is great so far. Seems to be going in a much less predictable direction, and I love the fact that from his own perspective he's gone from a Commander to Fleet Admiral in about 2 months!   : "I'm not qualified for this." : "Sure you are!": "No really, I'm not qualified for this."
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Jun 6, 2010 18:31
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I do wish he were more visually descriptive though, since space opera is something you want to imagine, and he's very sparse with mental imagery and background stuff. Shark-like being the only indication of what the Alliance ships look like is not helpful, especially when it doesn't come to book 6, and is only relative to a different fleet. I'm not asking for flowery nonsense, but a little help in this department would be nice.
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Jun 6, 2010 20:44
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I do kind of get the idea that he's using a Star Fleet Battles design aesthetic; i.e. "the small ship is a smaller exact copy of the basic design, and the big ship is a larger exact copy of the basic design". Although it's better than the Honor Harrington series where everyone rides around in flying death kazoos.
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Jun 6, 2010 21:45
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Tanith posted:I do wish he were more visually descriptive though, since space opera is something you want to imagine, and he's very sparse with mental imagery and background stuff. Shark-like being the only indication of what the Alliance ships look like is not helpful, especially when it doesn't come to book 6, and is only relative to a different fleet. I'm not asking for flowery nonsense, but a little help in this department would be nice. I literally see all his space battles and the screens the characters are watching them on as the ships and interface from the old game Imperium Galactica becaues I have no other frame of reference.  Edit: Just finished it, it was awesome. It actually covered more ground than I thought it would, and rather quickly. A great wrapup to that arc. Can't wait for more! Astroman fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Jun 7, 2010 |
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Jun 6, 2010 23:20
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Hung Yuri posted:I recently got Pandora's Star, Judas Unchained, and The Temporal Void (for later). I'm halfway through chapter 1 of Pandora's Star and currently he's putting me to sleep, though I think this is how it was until about 200 pages into The Dreaming Void, so I'll stick with it. Stick with it - the first 200 pages of Pandora's Star become a shitload more interesting after you've finished the book. When you go back and look at how everything got set up, it becomes pretty loving awesome.
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Jun 7, 2010 23:50
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Miss-Bomarc posted:flying death kazoos. Excuse me what.
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Jun 8, 2010 04:56
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Tanith posted:Excuse me what. The ships kinda look like a kazoo. All the warships look like this because of quirks with the universe's technobabble:  That's a pack of ship miniatures for the wargame based on the Honor Harrington books. http://www.genreconnections.com/shop/index.php?p=product&id=237&parent=122 3D movement on the tabletop !
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Jun 8, 2010 05:11
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mllaneza posted:I never knew they made a game out of that.  I really liked the first 5 or so Harrington books. They're not exactly literary masterpieces, but "Horatio Hornblower in Space" is pretty entertaining. Later on the series starts plodding though, when it starts focusing more on galactic politics and junk. Some of the side stories and spin-offs are pretty good, though. And while I guess it doesn't really count as space opera, Weber's newer Safehold series is really drat awesome. Except for naming the enemy aliens Gbaba.  We need an alternative history thread in here so I can discuss Flint's 1632 series with other nerds. 
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Jun 8, 2010 06:54
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WarLocke posted:
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Jun 8, 2010 07:55
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WarLocke posted:I never knew they made a game out of that. It's a good one too, plenty of detail, 3D fully Newtonian movement, an operational scale for trying to maneuver the other guy away from the convoy. And done by an SFB refugee with a knack for using play aids to simplify math and procedures.
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Jun 8, 2010 08:05
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Just finished House of Suns. Reynolds still needs to work on his characters and pacing a bit but drat, he does "Big Space" like no other. He's one of the few authors that doesn't "do" ftl and it just works well. His books have that wondrous feel that is lacking in most Spess operas. So yeah, another decade so he can polish his writing skills and the guy is going to be a classic. fake edit: he also has some of the best ship names.
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Jun 8, 2010 14:30
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WarLocke posted:I never knew they made a game out of that. This isn't a bad idea. Between Flint and Turtledove alone, there's a lot to talk about. As bad as some of those books can get, I'm a sucker for the premise.
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Jun 8, 2010 16:57
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WarLocke posted:"Horatio Hornblower in Space" Since I love everything Horatio Hornblower ever UP UNTIL FORESTER KILLS BUSH could you elaborate on the parallels?
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Jun 9, 2010 02:23
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Tanith posted:Since I love everything Horatio Hornblower ever UP UNTIL FORESTER KILLS BUSH could you elaborate on the parallels? I'm honestly probably not the best person to list them, since I've never actually read the Hornblower stuff. After reading the Harrington books and finding them compared to it so much, I tracked down a series of Hornblower flicks with Ioan Gruffud (History Channel I think for some reason) and the general character arcs are very similar. Weber himself has admitted that Harrington is partially based on Hornblower. I even remember thinking that some setpieces were lifted nearly intact, although it's been so long since I saw the flicks the specific ones get fuzzy. There's the core group of noncoms that end up following along with her through the series, the rival captain/noble (several of these) who have it out for her, being captured by the enemy and escaping from a prison, a few others. Oh and I think her duel with Pavel Young is another direct lift, if memory serves. Some quick googling found a page with short summaries of each book. The first few books (through The Short Victorious War) are pretty much just space navy goodness. After that the series starts to shift into more relationship and politics stuff (although there's always some military stuff going on too) as Honor gets promoted and starts dealing with nobility and hobnobbing with admirals and such. Personally I think Field of Dishonor through In Enemy Hands are some of the better books in the series, where much of Honor's actual personal growth takes place. The last few books have some nice stuff from the People's Republic of Haven's perspective (the 'bad guys') but the good guy stuff tends to be more affairs of state type stuff since Honor has become too influential to lead fleets herself by then. And of course, in At All Costs Honor was supposed to die at the equivalent of the Battle of Trafalgar but Weber backed out of that at the last minute. Baen has a bunch of their books online if you want to try reading them to see if you like them, while the first Harrington book is here. Edit: And since this is the space opera thread, Weber's Path of the Fury (or In Fury Born which is some sort of reprint with a huge extra lump of content that's almost an entire 'nother book on the front end) is pretty much the quintessential space opera. And there's the Dahak books which are kind of the antithesis of the Harrington stuff - the tech is mindblowingly advanced and over the top, he doesn't even try to depict 'realistic' space warfare what with battle planetoids the size of moons slashing into fleets composed of hundreds of thousands of ships. WarLocke fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Jun 9, 2010 |
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Jun 9, 2010 03:02
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Tanith posted:Since I love everything Horatio Hornblower ever UP UNTIL FORESTER KILLS BUSH mllaneza posted:[The Honor Harrington tabletop game is] a good one too, plenty of detail, 3D fully Newtonian movement, an operational scale for trying to maneuver the other guy away from the convoy. And done by an SFB refugee with a knack for using play aids to simplify math and procedures. Incidentally, if you want space-opera ripoffs of Horatio Hornblower, one of the "Sten" novels is basically a Cliff's Notes version of the Hornblower series up to "Ship Of The Line". (After that it turns into "The Great Escape".) WarLocke posted:...there's the Dahak books which are kind of the antithesis of the Harrington stuff - the tech is mindblowingly advanced and over the top, he doesn't even try to depict 'realistic' space warfare what with battle planetoids the size of moons slashing into fleets composed of hundreds of thousands of ships. Miss-Bomarc fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jun 9, 2010 |
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Jun 9, 2010 03:59
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Miss-Bomarc posted:(Hornblower spoiler discussion) And a total gently caress-you ending, too; it's just "oh he got blown up offscreen, poor Bush I guess I'll cheat on the love of my life now" Wait did he manage to screw up Lord Hornblower more than I remember, or are you referring to that nonsense in Flying Colours? And did he do it again in Commodore Hornblower? It wasn't specified in the text, but I thought it might have been implied that he hosed up like that then too. Geary is actually pretty Hornblower-like, but I think it's not done as well, or not with enough variety. He has his problems, and they keep getting repeated. Hornblower's insecurities, while following a general theme, at least evolve or change such that they're at least not practically verbatim. Campbell said in an interview that he wanted people to sort of be able to pick up the later books in his series without being totally lost, but still, it gets a bit much. Take a shot every fleet council where Geary gets mad, says something and didn't realize it until everyone stared at him etc. I hope he doesn't go with that in his new stuff, because it's annoying and his prose can get terribly redundant. Also the ending of the Void Trilogy is coming in August 
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Jun 9, 2010 06:04
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If you really want Hornblower in space, you should look for David Feintuch's Seafort Saga, starting with Midshipman's Hope, which really nails the "angsty captain who can't live up to his own standards but everybody else thinks is the bollocks" part of it.
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Jun 9, 2010 06:43
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Hobnob posted:If you really want Hornblower in space, you should look for David Feintuch's Seafort Saga, starting with Midshipman's Hope, which really nails the "angsty captain who can't live up to his own standarhttp://forums.somethingawful.com/editpost.php?action=editpost&postid=377984665ds but everybody else thinks is the bollocks" part of it. Hell yeah. I was going to bring this up after reading this page, til I saw your post. Very, very specific about naval life and regulations, the most so of any novel besides Hornblower; and the regulations plus the main character's religion and morals put him in to all kinds of impossible situations he somehow gets out of with amazing ingenuity. Apparently Feintuch was working on the 8th book when he died, but it has yet to be published. Wikipedia posted:Galahad's Hope is the current title of the eighth and final book in the Seafort Saga of science fiction novels, and the sequel to Children of Hope. The manuscript was reported[1] to be completed before the death of author David Feintuch, however orbit have no current plans to publish this book. According to an Orbit online marketing executive, they haven't been approached by anyone connected to David Feintuch with a view to publishing the manuscript.  Tanith posted:Geary is actually pretty Hornblower-like, but I think it's not done as well, or not with enough variety. He has his problems, and they keep getting repeated. Hornblower's insecurities, while following a general theme, at least evolve or change such that they're at least not practically verbatim. Campbell said in an interview that he wanted people to sort of be able to pick up the later books in his series without being totally lost, but still, it gets a bit much. Take a shot every fleet council where Geary gets mad, says something and didn't realize it until everyone stared at him etc. I hope he doesn't go with that in his new stuff, because it's annoying and his prose can get terribly redundant. There's still a bit of that in the latest book but Geary has definitely evolved. At the same time though he does some callbacks to the first book to show the contrast. There's also more references to the changes in society Geary is having to face outside the fleet, which are appropriate and good.
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Jun 9, 2010 17:15
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Tanith posted:Wait did he manage to screw up Lord Hornblower more than I remember, or are you referring to that nonsense in Flying Colours? And did he do it again in Commodore Hornblower? It wasn't specified in the text, but I thought it might have been implied that he hosed up like that then too. I know we're derailing this into a Hornblower Bitchfest, but it's also important to remember that the British Royal Navy and the Horatio Hornblower series have been the inspiration for any amount of space opera.
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Jun 10, 2010 06:23
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Not to forget that hornblower's partial inspiration admiral lord nelson was a famous leg over merchant who lived openly with his mistress despite his wife's disapproval - actually in a manner not at all unlike harrington's marriage in the later books
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Jun 10, 2010 14:19
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...I did not expect certain choice phrases to be simply lifted from CS Forester ("The Lords of the Admiralty, in their infinite wisdom"), but I'm willing to let it slide should these turn out to be good. Does this six-legged psychic cat-thing get more important, or is it just a bit of fun? Also Bomarc why don't you have plat so we can talk British naval fiction without making GBS threads up the thread?  e: Evolutionary Void is out on August 24. Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. I haven't wanted a book to come out like this since reading the Golden Compass.
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Jun 11, 2010 15:58
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Tanith posted:Does this six-legged psychic cat-thing get more important, or is it just a bit of fun? Yeah, it does. It becomes a pretty big part of Honor's character. Not really the best part of the books, but much more would be spoilers, so I'll leave it at that. I also want to take the opportunity to mention Weber's Safehold books again. If you like his writing/dialogue style (as opposed to the Hornblower in Space plot of the Harrington books) then you may enjoy them. They're much more traditional naval books. Summary of the first book at wikipedia.
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Jun 11, 2010 16:19
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Good god, I hated the Honor Harrington books. I read all of them in a weekend. I couldn't stop. It was like I was injecting a mix of caffeine and industrial caulk directly into my cerebellum. The first two books are decent hornblower in space pastiche if you aren't too picky about "logic" or "physics" or "plots that make sense." After that Honor turns into a Mary Sue of such biblical proportions that I'm pretty sure it's only a matter of time before she beheads Space Jesus with her Space Katana while her Telepathic Space Cat arm-wrestles Lucifer with one paw while firing Space Cannons at the Space French with the others. I bought all of them on my kindle. I read them all. I hope God can forgive me, because I can't forgive myself. Now, if you'll forgive me, I have to go read Vernor Vinge for a while in penance, because his space operas are actually good. Maybe I'll go through all the Patrick O'Brian books as an extra purgative. I keep having people recommend the "His Majesty's Dragon" series to me as Hornblower with Dragons, but I'm so horribly burned by the Harrington books that I just can't bring myself to try them yet.
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Jun 11, 2010 18:32
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Good god, I hated the Honor Harrington books. Rob S. Pierre
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Jun 12, 2010 03:20
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fritz posted:Rob Yeah, I really don't get how anyone can take Weber remotely seriously. IN DEATH GROUND/THE SHIVA OPTION were in some ways refreshing, because he abandoned even the slightest pretense of character development in favor of battle, battle, battle. There was only a small amount of 'boy, those lib'rals sure are stupid', as well. But Harrington is pretty terrible.
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Jun 12, 2010 03:29
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At least Weber figured out he hosed up the Harrington series. The latest books shuffle Honor offstage (she does have a novel coming out this year) and the new main characters are off doing things elsewhere. The SHadow of Saganami and Crown of Slaves spinoffs are working out pretty well. They're still Weber at his most Weber, but they're much more readable than the later Honor stuff.
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Jun 12, 2010 07:38
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Let's pretend David Weber doesn't exist and talk about good authors instead, like Jack Vance or John Scalzi.
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Jun 12, 2010 18:25
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Someone explain why this thread loves Vernor Vinge, because I've read A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky and was not overly excited.
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Jun 12, 2010 18:59
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Tanith posted:Someone explain why this thread loves Vernor Vinge, because I've read A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky and was not overly excited. They both won the Hugo award, as well as receiving many other accolades? They're both filled with interesting ideas, non-cliche aliens, and well realized characters? You're in a 'SPACE OPERA' thread, what else were you looking for, exactly?
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Jun 12, 2010 20:15
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I didn't like this book, please tell me why you think it's good so I can disagree with you
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Jun 12, 2010 21:07
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Magnificent Quiver posted:I didn't like this book, please tell me why you think it's good so I can disagree with you There's no need to be a dick about it, I just didn't particularly enjoy them when I read them and wanted to see what about them inspired others, and if there were a reason for me to try again.
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Jun 13, 2010 00:25
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Tanith posted:There's no need to be a dick about it, I just didn't particularly enjoy them when I read them and wanted to see what about them inspired others, and if there were a reason for me to try again. You're the voice in the wilderness here, pal. it's a widely read and usually well received series. I'm honestly interested in what you didn't like about it.
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Jun 13, 2010 02:19
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I have the same problem with John Scalzi. Everyone seems to like his stuff, but jeeze, if I wanna read a rewrite of heinlein/haldeman junk, or the abominable Agent to the Stars.
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Jun 13, 2010 22:27
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Tanith posted:There's no need to be a dick about it, I just didn't particularly enjoy them when I read them and wanted to see what about them inspired others, and if there were a reason for me to try again. Try mentioning what you didn't like about it, don't make people guess at it.
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Jun 14, 2010 01:05
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papa horny michael posted:I have the same problem with John Scalzi. Everyone seems to like his stuff, but jeeze, if I wanna read a rewrite of heinlein/haldeman junk, or the abominable Agent to the Stars. actually, wait, I do know why. OMW has a really interesting dust-jacket summary--aliens come to Earth to recruit humans into the galactic army, but there's a catch. They don't want dumb cannon fodder, they want elite supertroopers, so they only take people who've got plenty of life experience--i.e. they only want old people who've been around the block a few times and know what's what. I think "hey, this sounds cool, I bet they use all sorts of remote-operating vehicles, or maybe the whole army is just robots and the geezers basically just play Starcraft only for real--" Turns out it's possibly the biggest Mary Sue story ever. In fact, the entire premise of the book is that Mary Sue is a real thing. The best and most awesomest (although physically inferior) people on Earth get to go into space and have their minds transferred into incredibly sexy super-soldier bodies and you get to wear cool power armor and shoot neat guns and it basically turns into a generic Tom Clancy Rainbow Six power fantasy in space. To sum up, there's nothing that Scalzi writes that Ringo didn't write better earlier--and, for that matter, that David Drake didn't write better and earlier than Ringo did. ********* Speaking of which, what about David Drake's Leary/Mundy series? I think that's my guilty pleasure, my equivalent of the "Black Jack Geary" series. I know it's just trashy generic sci-fi, but dammit I can't help but buy 'em right as they come off the press... There was also Drake's "Venus" trilogy, but that was back before he'd started taking lithium or whatever he did, and so it's unrelentingly grim (and also bloody violent.) Miss-Bomarc fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Jun 14, 2010 |
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Jun 14, 2010 04:22
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TLDR:  and "pew pew zoom zoom"I just don't really "get" his universe. In medias res does not do justice to what seemed to me to be a lack of exposition in AFOTD, which I've read more recently. On one level it was interesting in the sense of being a reader who's about as baffled as Johanna and Jefri were by the Tines, but that gets old after a while and never really having enough information to put together a full mental picture frustrated me. Likewise with his description of the universe and the different levels of it was over my head. Maybe I never bridged the gap of plausibility/enjoyment because I was too busy still trying to figure out what was going on instead of having some sort of implicit understanding that allowed me just to let it go. The conclusion wasn't particularly fulfilling either, and the purpose of traveling to the planet in the first place beyond simply rescuing the children, if this even merits spoiler tags? seemed vague. I felt that he didn't do a good job bridging the events of the very beginning and explaining their significance to the intervening book. The pace of exposition wasn't to my liking, and the fact that a great deal of the book takes place in a decidedly non space-operatic setting turned me off. The net-style bits of conversation didn't appeal to me much either, because while maybe true to the style of the universe and helping convey the actual dialogue between characters, it doesn't make for interesting reading. I was about as enthused by that as by the interaction in Hyperion or the Fall of Hyperion with one of the greater sentient intelligences. If he'd limited these sections to some net article at the beginning of each chapter about the current events or as some other form of associated fluff to help flesh out the universe, I would have liked that more. Feel free to disagree with me and point out why I should reread the stuff, but in general it just really didn't fit with my interests. Maybe Vinge is too cerebral an author for me, but space opera is supposed to be pew pew zoom zoom. E: can we also all agree that Peter Hamilton writes the most debilitatingly awkward sex scenes in the genre, or is there someone who can give him a run for his money in that regard?
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Jun 14, 2010 04:25
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papa horny michael posted:I have the same problem with John Scalzi. Everyone seems to like his stuff, but jeeze, if I wanna read a rewrite of heinlein/haldeman junk, or the abominable Agent to the Stars. Agent to the Stars was his first unpublished book, they just threw it on the 'net for free once he became a "name." Scalzi's first and foremost a professional writer, and Old Man's War is just him writing a heinlein-style military space opera because he figured out military SF sells. What makes the series worthwhile is that he puts in a lot of subtle digs at Heinlein's worldview, rampant militarism, etc., throughout the series -- he's subverting the tropes, not just repeating them. His best book to date is "Android's Dream," which is more of a Douglas Adams + Vernor Vinge knockoff than a Heinlein knockoff. It's genuinely funny, fairly observant, and he gets free of Heinlein's shadow.
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Jun 14, 2010 04:33
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What makes [the Old Man's War series] worthwhile is that [Scalzi] puts in a lot of subtle digs at Heinlein's worldview, rampant militarism, etc., throughout the series -- he's subverting the tropes, not just repeating them.
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Jun 14, 2010 04:40
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