Jet Jaguar posted:

I really loved the warchive and the combat armor of Revelation Space. Speaking of Reynolds, I have most of his Conjoiner/Demarchist short fiction in various Dozois "Year's Best Science Fiction" anthologies, but have they ever been published as a whole?

Shampoo posted:

I found the beginning of Revelation Space to be pretty slow, but rest assured things get better from there. I would almost say you can skip Revelatio. space entirely and not lose out on much. I preferred the second book, Chasm City much more.

Morlock posted:

Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy. Great fun except for an incredibly sucky ending that was actually telegraphed all through the books. Except I thought it couldn't possibly be that crap and obvious. Fool that I was. It was worse. He's written other space operas too, but I'm staying off him so someone else will have to oblige.

Velius posted:

I don't recall people being sanguine about death due to re-lifing. That's not really a spoiler in any event, the concept of re-lifing is a pretty basic premise to the universe.

Velius posted:

Vinge's Marooned in Realtime is more space-mystery than space opera, but it's also good stuff. Pity The Peace War is at least somewhat a prerequisite, since it's really not up to the standards of his other works.

DanceRobot posted:

I don't get the hate for Consider Phlebas. What I always thought would be awesome would be to have someone who knew absolutely nothing about the culture series or that such a series even existed (since that would give them a hint as to the outcome of the novel) and let them read it. Horza's feelings give the impression that the Culture are completely deserving of his hate and are on the verge of losing the war. Plus you never really expect a protagonist in a scifi novel to be on the losing side.

Hobnob posted:

Most people (me included) find the second Uplift trilogy (Brightness Reef etc.) rather weaker than the first books. The plot doesn't advance very fast, and the big reveal at the end doesn't seem all that significant. Unfortunately though Brin is good at creating tension from darkly-hinted mysteries, he's not so good when he actually has to answer those mysteries. (Some of his short stories show the same effect.)

Paul Kemp posted:

Regarding the Brin's two Uplift trilogies, I agree that the first is much stronger than the second. However, if you're not a completist or have limited time for reading, you can easily skip Sundiver from the first trilogy. It does give you a bit of back story but nothing that isn't explained clearly in Startide Rising and The Uplift War. I'm not sure what order the former two are actually meant to be read in (IIRC they take place concurrently) but both of them are absolutely amazing and I can't recomend then highly enough. Startide Rising is probably my favorite SciFi book of all time.

The second trilogy is very forgettable and I honestly don't remember much about it other than the big reveal at the end which wasn't really that big a deal either. Honestly I think I'd rather if they had never been written as Startide in particular would have been better off with the open ending that it had.

Toadsniff posted:

A fellow McDevitt fan, maybe you can recommend some of his books to me. So far I have only read Seeker and Polaris. But he has so many other ones as well.

General Battuta posted:

This is definitely self published. I always feel like that should be flagged.

syphon posted:

Someone else recommended Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth series, and I have to +1 that (even though I think it's a little politics-heavy).

His later books go in the direction you described with over-the-top technology, but I really enjoyed the level of technology Hamilton put into the Commonwealth series. The entire world is based on 2 key technological concepts:
1) FTL travel via wormholes.
2) Being able to 'back up' someone's brain, and then 'restore' it onto a clone-grown body.

I think the most enjoyable part for me was his diverse cast of characters and settings, and exploring how the technology affected their lives. For example, there were practically 0 spaceships at the beginning of the series (since wormholes were all on planets), so interstellar travel is all on trains + wormholes. It made it feel approachable and familiar.

Also, the 'rejuvenation' of a brain backup+restore is really interesting. The super-rich go on life threatening vacations with high fatality rates (because who cares about dying?) while the poor toil for 40-50 years just to be able to afford a rejuvenation (only to repeat the whole process). Prison is almost pointless, so people are punished by having their body killed and their brain locked up in a data center somewhere for 50-100-500 years. They've effectively cured death.

Anyway, I geeked out pretty hardcore over his tech and universe, which is why I recommend it so much.

General Battuta posted:

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh I can never resist engaging with this stupid, endless discussion: the whole 'uploading/teleportation is death, He's Only A Copy' myth is a product of a fundamental misunderstanding of consciousness and the materialism of the mind.

General Battuta posted:

So the important clarification to make, I guess, and what I should've opened with rather than that bit of polemic, is this - brain uploading like that in the Commonwealth series allows continued life, but does not prevent death. The real you has died, but the real you will also live on; the two are no longer mutually exclusive.

savinhill posted:

Sojourn posted:

I know this is from a page ago but I recently found a couple books that were OK. Some of the political stuff was a little over the top (though I think it was on purpose), but if you just want a fun book with explosions they aren't too bad.

Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos
This one starts off strong(ish) and gets worse the further it goes along, though it never gets out and out bad.Kid enlists to get out of the slums, ends up putting down riots in the same kind of slums he came from. Second half goes weird with aliens though.

Poor Man's Fight by Elliot Kay
Starts off weaker than the end of the book(but isn't bad), gets better as it goes along. Kid enlists because he botches some exit exams that determine how much money he owes the state after graduation and he can't earn a living any other way. Stereotypical boot camp scenes ensue. poo poo happens and it turns into Die Hard in space in the second half of the book. Has a really well done pirate story arc that it switches to occasionally to cover your ships with lasers quotient.

Both books are fun, but definitely not literature by any stretch of the imagination. Poor Man's Fight is (in my opinion) the better of the two just because the action ramps up as the book goes along instead of starting off strong and just kinda turning meh like Terms of Enlistment does.

General Battuta posted:

No you're not, general consensus is that it's a bad introduction. No reason not to begin with Player of Games.

Hedrigall posted:

Read The Icarus Hunt instead, which is a standalone and totally awesome.

Hedrigall posted:

This may absolutely shock and astound you, so be ready for your world view to be shattered forever, but sometimes books come out in the US later than other countries.

MarksMan posted:

Where would you guys recommend starting with in the "Star Wars" series of books? There seems to just be an endless number of them and spin-off's, it's a little overwhelming trying to decide where to begin.

MarksMan posted:

After using the powers of Google/Wikipedia, are you guys referring to the "Thrawn Trilogy":

Heir to the Empire (1991)
Dark Force Rising (1992)
The Last Command (1993)

Or these too?

Hand of Thrawn series
Specter of the Past (1997)
Vision of the Future (1998)

Other Star Wars novels
Fool's Bargain (1 February 2004)
Survivor's Quest (2004)
Outbound Flight (2006)
Allegiance (2007)
Choices of One (2011)
Scoundrels (January 2013)

FordPRefectLL posted:

I really enjoy the books but I thought Elvi was a terrible character and at the end Miller dying got rid of my favorite character. The Elvi Needs A Good Hard Dicking subplot was awful.

kalleth posted:

So I'm reading the Spinward Fringe series (https://www.goodreads.com/series/55775-spinward-fringe) at the moment, and drat if they're not as engrossing as the Lost Fleet series. Surprised I've not seen them mentioned

I like them, they've got a bit more worldbuilding in them than the Lost Fleet stuff too... though they're not literary by any stretch of the imagination.

Shooty space battles, pirates, clones? Yes please.

Chairman Capone posted:

It's not really space opera, but I started reading The Martian. I'm about a quarter through and I'm really hooked. Though I have no idea how it's going to work as a movie.

Cardiac posted:

Also, Asher is hardly fascist. He qualifies for the Bechdel test better than most authors as seen in the last book.

Arglebargle III posted:

I'm reading The Forever War ... no drone weapons,

WarLocke posted:

So I just finished Use of Weapons.

God drat, Banks. 'Chairmaker' indeed.

Reason posted:

I did not like Aurora.

thehomemaster posted:

Y'all joking, right?


Welcome to KSR, I guess it's personal taste. None of it was thrown together though, and I suppose it wasn't fun? But hey, again, personal I guess. I mean, if you missed the whole narrative voice of a computer being a computer, then no one can help you. And you can't really say the in-depth stuff was boring then turn around and say stuff was glossed over. Did they even say what happened to Iris, I don't think it mattered anyway.


It knows exactly what it wants to be about, how can you miss it? And I hardly see how he glossed over something he went into quite stringent detail about, such as the geography and how they overcame it. Also, the problem they have to overcome is, uh, pretty much unsolveable for their intended goals. How the gently caress can you say 5 pages of text when a literal revolution took place before a decision was made?

What I'm saying is I just understand either of you.

thehomemaster posted:

They were dealing with an unknown pathogen (no even strictly bacterial/viral) so yes it's pretty clearly an almost impossible problem to solve.

thehomemaster posted:

Did you even read the book?

thehomemaster posted:

Yeah fair enough, sorry for the outburst.

And yes fair enough on your point. Maybe I just can't see how he could have really brought out more in that section? Like, is it necessary? I thought the scene with Euan dying was pretty powerful tbh, really haunting and beautiful. Then again maybe KSR had his agenda and wanted to get on with it.

Blitter posted:

Alright, yeah, it's clearly waay too much effort to you know, flip the book open and see the giant loving list of books previously written in the Polity world. Prador? Gosh, no chance that they were you know, developed in the previous books or anything.

Anyways, thanks for posting your dumb poo poo, so I know to take your view on any other book with the grain of salt it deserves.

mcustic posted:

Greg Bear's The Forge of God/Anvil of Stars is an extremely depressing duology that is also his best work IMO. The less I tell you about it, the more you'll enjoy reading it.

Lord Hydronium posted:

Cibola Burn is a bit of an odd man out, and the closest thing the series has to a standalone. The next two books are a lot more focused on the near future space opera stuff.