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A lot of people have been talking about Paul McAuley's 'The Quiet War' and Michael Cobley's 'Seeds of Earth' recently. Some say they are great no nonsense political hard-sf, but I've heard one or negative comments that they are space opera by numbers. What do goons think?
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Mar 25, 2010 22:57
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In the middle of reading the Cordwainer Smith collection 'The Rediscovery of Man'. I'm really enjoying the strange whimsical style he writes in, can certainly see the influence on Banks. The physics is a bit weird though, and doesn't seem too consistent between stories. Edit: Oh and there are some jokes in Stross's 'Glass House' that make much more sense now.
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Mar 31, 2010 22:24
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I read 'House of Suns' over the summer. Fantastic, unapologetic, intelligent hard space-opera. I really liked the art-deco aesthetic and the awesome sense of deep time the story imparted. The rise and fall of galactic civilisations harked back nicely to Aasimov and, outside of sf, the historical accounts of Toynbee and Ibn Khaldun. It was dark but humanistic. As a major Reynolds fan, I'd defend Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap. Their plots aren't as strong as Revelation Space, and Chasm City leaves them all standing, but they aren't so bad as people are suggesting, plenty of strange warped characters, extreme technology and strange worlds. The short story collection Galactic North helps tie up lots of the loose ends from the series. I've picked up Eternal Light by Patrick McAuley. Anyone got an opinion of him as a writer?
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Nov 3, 2010 01:31
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Hedrigall posted:Should I still try his other stuff? I'd recommend giving Chasm City a shot. It's much better written than Revelation Space and has the most compelling plot and characters of any of his novels. Century Rain is great as well, but it is noirish-mystery meets sf, not so much of a space opera. Velius, Absolution gap - yeah it is no question the worst of the main sequence of revelation space novels. I think in some ways it was too constrained by the short story Galactic North, which removes the emphasis from the inhibitors. The 'twist' also seemed too massively improbable to me, too brittle a plan by far. Still some interesting threads in the novel though, such as the saga of the Nostalgia for Infinity itself.
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Nov 9, 2010 06:42
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alkanphel posted:I was wondering, are there any books similar to Iain Bank's The Algebraist, where there is like an ancient mystery or secret waiting to be unveiled, and the story moves them along to slowly solve or reveal it. The Engines of Light trilogy by Ken MacLeod (starts with Cosmonaut Keep)uses a similar device of a mystery built into the stellar civilisation it deals with, slowly unravelling it over three books. He's a fellow Scottish left-leaning sf writer like Banks. MacLeod can be a love him or hate him writer though, so YMMV. Personally I think he's the bees' proverbial. Smart science, good pacing, a sleetstorm of ideas and references to everything from libertarian politics, to theology, to bong addled pot-head culture, to evolutionary biology. Oh and communists in space. All his books have communists in space.
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Nov 29, 2010 02:48
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WarLocke posted:I'm wondering if any of you goons know of examples of such (or really any type of mega-engineering, such as the Ringworld) in books (most likely in stuff that would qualify as space opera I suspect, which is why I'm asking here)? There is an anthology of stories about mega-engineering and super-projects coming out in the near future called Engineering Infinity. Contributors include Baxter, Stross, Bear. Linky.
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Dec 22, 2010 09:02
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boneration posted:I finished the Night's Dawn books. Space combat was great. Everything else fell somewhere between eyerolling and loving awful. I kept hoping that the neutronium alchemist was the main plot and the stupid, stupid bullshit with the resurrecting dead souls was a terrible side plot, but no. Also the ending. gently caress that ending, it was some phoned-in poo poo. I liked the space-seahorses living on a mechanical space-station orbiting a red-giant, that was pretty cool although unrelated to the plot. I can't help feeling sorry for his wife given his obsession with the supple bodies of 18 year old nymphomaniacs. Edit: I'll say a bit more in defence of Hamilton. Everyone knows he is a great writer of planetary extraction sequences and of space battles. I think this is because he is really very good at conveying scale and a sense of the forces involved in something as epic as space warfare or combat in a planetary gravity well. Planets are, you know, really loving massive things and interstellar combat is a pretty ridiculous proposition. Those sequences in his books always feel like they have real impact because his descriptions can live up to the size of the canvas he is painting on. Big things happen in his book, and he does manage to convey a sense of scale. But I agree, the actual style of his prose is nothing special and the long sections of exposition, dialogue and tying up of threads that the 1000+ page books all need to chug towards a conclusion can be pretty wearying. The creepy sex and wackier ideas don't help either. Ebethron fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Sep 1, 2011 |
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Sep 1, 2011 20:47
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