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Just wanted to give a shoutout to my favorite space-opera novel: In Conquest Born by C.S. Friedman. It remains one of my overall favorite novels to date.
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Jun 7, 2009 00:55
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ConfusedUs posted:Have you read her Coldfire Trilogy? If so, how does In Conquest Born compare? The Coldfire books are awesome. I did and loved those books to death. Although, I will say that In Conquest Born is a very different sort of book. No pseudo-fantasy here (not that theres anything wrong with that). Its more of a "hard" sci-fi variety, but Friedman has such a talent for creating fascinating characters that you just cant stop reading even if you're not a fan of hard sci-fi.
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Jun 13, 2009 06:09
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Astroman posted:After reading this thread I'm going to check out Friedman's In Conquest Born. Read this description on Amazon: "The novel is built on the contrast of two protagonists, young people whose talents lead them to the tops of two space-going societies: one militaristic, paranoid and male-dominated; the other pluralistic, with advanced mental powers. The plot follows them from birth to their clash as the two vast space-empires struggle for domination. This is space opera in the best sense: a combination of high-stakes adventure with a strong focus on ideas and characters whose fate an intelligent reader can care about." The description is a bit misleading, but I think you'll still enjoy it quit a bit.
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Jul 7, 2009 22:28
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Miss-Bomarc posted:Try the "Lost Fleet" series, it's even worse. Each segment is a setup to the next pitched battle which is almost exactly like the last pitched battle. This seems like a good place to ask as any, are Drakes Hammer's Slammers books good? I only read the Venus novellas by him and liked them.
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Nov 12, 2009 04:48
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Miss-Bomarc posted:I like them, although it gets a bit repetitive sometimes to read about the awesomest soldiers in the universe being awesomely more awesome than everyone else. It's non-political, in the sense that it's taken as given that any politician is a total sniveling weasely bastard and the Slammers are the only people who can do anything at all. So is it like Cook's Black Company books? Because I like those.
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Nov 12, 2009 05:21
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Just finished Jack Vance's The Demon Princes series and it was solidly awesome, with the first book being the weakest oddly enough. If anyone wants to read them I would recommend skipping the first book The Star King in general, as not reading it wouldnt affect your understanding of the rest of the books. Also, if you get the two omnibus volumes that contain all 5 books, dont bother reading the description on the back, it only describes the first book and is not really representative of the others (the "Star Kings" only appear in the first book and detract from the world of these books in my opinion)
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Nov 16, 2009 20:29
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Mike the TV posted:Up next is Olympos, the sequel. I'm hoping beyond all hope that Simmons doesn't ruin this series as well, but I know it may happen. Olympos is without exaggeration the worst book I've ever read. Bar none. For why its such an abomination I'm just going to quote myself from another thread: The Palestinians with the help of the French create a virus to kill everyone, but the devious Jews find a cure for themselves (and don't share with anyone) and get stuck in some sort of timewarp. Then the Muslims build an army of Jew-killing robots programmed to be servants of the remainder of the population and go into Jew-killing mode at some point in the future when the Jews get out of the timewarp (I think they also try to blow up the earth with a black hole). Further in the future they go into their killing mode but the Jews still arent out so they start killing everyone until some good robots from Saturn's moon show up to save everyone. Also, theres some post-humans playing gods on Mars, and a portal to Shakespeare's imagination or some poo poo like that. I wish I was making this up. I'm spoiling all of this on purpose because nobody should read that book ever.
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Nov 3, 2010 05:19
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papa horny michael posted:
Fixed that for you. That book is irredeemable excrement.
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Nov 3, 2010 05:32
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Sexpansion posted:This was how I felt about the first book. I can't believe people liked it. It's really, really, really bad. Maybe liking it was too strong a word, but compared to the second book its a loving literary masterpiece.
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Nov 19, 2010 06:18
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Chairman Capone posted:I think I mentioned it in this thread before, but the one time I saw Ringo in person, he didn't understand how living under Nazi occupation could have made Paul Verhoeven somehow not like fascism. You see, Ringo was talking about the notion that Starship Troopers is supposed to be an apology for fascism, and Ringo had no problem with that. Well, first of all the government in Starship Troopers was not fascist, and second, the Nazis no longer existed by the time Verhoeven was 6 years old.
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Dec 2, 2010 23:08
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Trig Discipline posted:Why do you say it's not fascist? Because it was democratically elected, and not a single-party state. It was pretty clear that Verhoeven went to great length to make it look fascist regardless. He changed the ethnicity of the main character from Philipino, to the typical aryan look (blond hair blue eyes), he added the propagandistic recruitment campaigns when in the book people were actually discouraged from joining the military unless it was what they absolutely wanted. Basically he went out of his way to twist Heinlein's work into an apparent fascist apology when it clearly wasn't because he had an axe to grind. Edit: ^^^ Ah, I see we are in agreement.
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Dec 3, 2010 00:17
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TouretteDog posted:When I first read it I got the impression that it was more along the lines of the mandatory service in Germany or the Netherlands, only with the civil service jobs still under the aegis of the military. Isn't it pretty much said point blank that Rico is a massive gently caress-up, not being able to qualify for anything but line infantry? No, the service is voluntary, and people are actively discouraged from joining unless they are absolutely certain they want to. And Rico was not a gently caress-up he just didn't qualify for all the other positions he applied for such as pilot or something. Oh and I think he also qualified for the K-9 unit, but because he never had a close enough relationship with a pet the selection officer recommended mobile-infantry instead (which is also a pretty high-responsibility job, considering they carry pocket nukes and poo poo).
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Dec 3, 2010 06:07
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Midget Fist posted:Wasn't the whole point of joining up to become a citizen? So that you could vote and everything, otherwise you were 'just a civilian' athough most civilians didn't seem too bothered about it. You are a citizen anyways, but you need to serve to get to vote.
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Dec 3, 2010 08:24
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WarLocke posted:I'm trying to remember a book I read at one point that featured a Matrioshka Brain, I want to say it was one of the Culture books but I honestly don't remember. Alastair Reynolds usually has that kind of post-singularity mega-engineering.
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Dec 22, 2010 07:19
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TjyvTompa posted:Has anyone read "In Conquest Born" by C.S Friedman? I read it a long time ago but I remember liking it, and I'm usually a picky reader. Edit: Oh, and if I recall properly, a lot of things that both main characters "know" early in the book turn out to be propaganda fed to them by their respective states. Mr.48 fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Dec 30, 2011 |
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Dec 30, 2011 08:37
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caleramaen posted:I'll cut Weber a little slack on the political front. He was essentially trying to futurize Horatio Hornblower, he injected some of his own political opinions, and the whole thing just spun out of control. I think he was initially trying to do a whole French Revolution homage, complete with Theisman being Napoleon, but then the politics took control in about book four and that got scrapped. If there is one thing David Weber isn't, it's subtle. The Empire of Man books he wrote with John Ringo suffer from this as well. With the bad guys being fanatical......environmentalists! I was enjoying the first book until I got to the first chapter describing the bad guys and just decided to put the book away. As far as I know the only big name military sci-fi author that doesnt harbor terrible right-wing views is David Drake, despite having a name that sounds like a protagonist from a terrible right-wing fantasy novel.
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May 2, 2012 04:49
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Fried Chicken posted:The primary difference there is that Drake fought in a war. Ringo served, but in the 80s. Drake was in Vietnam, so he actually knows how horrific war is. So as a result he doesn't fetish it or buy into the mentality that feeds into creating more war. That makes sense. I used to be a huge gun/military nut myself with some political views I'm really not proud of anymore. After a couple of years in the army....Not so much anymore.
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May 2, 2012 18:46
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Gravy Jones posted:If you don't already know him check out Joe Haldeman. He served in Vietnam and there's an extent to which his books are a reaction against how unrealstic military space opera is. The most well known, The Forever War is also very good. I'm not sure about is politics, but "terrible right-wing" would suprise me. I tried The Forever War but didnt really dig it. In any case when I said military sci-fi I guess what I should have specified that I meant mostly Baen's lineup of pulp writers. Otherwise yeah that are some who are pretty good. Kurt Vonnegut is probably my favorite, although I wouldn't classify him as having written any military sci-fi despite novels like Slaughterhouse 5 being both about the military and sci-fi to some extent.
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May 2, 2012 22:27
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Oh John Ringo NO
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May 3, 2012 06:38
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Chairman Capone posted:For the Baen Free Library, I'd recommend any of the 1632 series there (even if it's not space opera) or Seas of Venus. The latter is a throwback to the pre-space age concept of Venus as a planetary sea (although it's explained as being set in the future after Venus is terraformed), and is populated by a collection of warring city-states in a setting inspired by the mercenary wars of Renaissance Italy. It's a really fun read in a Golden Age pulp mold. Seas of Venus is pretty awesome. I wouldn't recommend the 1632 series because while the setting and idea were pretty cool, the characters were all one-dimensional cardboard cutouts (maybe this is a result of having such a huge cast of POV characters, but other authors like GRRM manage to make it work so thats a poor excuse in my opinion).
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Sep 23, 2012 05:05
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:How bad/good/goodbad/badgood is Drake? If David Weber's Honor Harrington is a 1 and Patrick O'Brian is a 10, and if reading about "Rob S. Pierre" gave me a physical headache, should I read Drake? Drake is a competent writer, and isn't a conservative nutjob like Weber and Ringo. I cant remember too much of what he's written except for the Seas of Venus stories, but those were pretty loving awesome.
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Oct 18, 2013 04:46
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Groke posted:Well, there's Eric Flint, for one. Unfortunately he just isn't a good writer.
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Dec 4, 2013 16:29
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