Charge your lasers, and prepare for lightspeed: The SPACE OPERA thread.

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Charge your lasers, and prepare for lightspeed: The SPACE OPERA thread.

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General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

sebmojo posted:

Has anyone done a TBB post on CJ Cherryh?

She's chronically underrated so if there's not one already I think I'll put in some and do an overview.

You should definitely do this. Cherryh takes a lot of effort to get into, but she was ahead of the curve in terms of writing political conflicts with no clear good or bad guys. Reading Downbelow Station recently it really struck me how well it predicted some of the current trends in media SF while executing them a lot better. She also did a really striking job of making life on a space station feel incredibly fragile and ephemeral.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2012 15:30

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 08:27

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Be warned that March Upcountry contains John Ringo which may be toxic in even small quantities.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2012 19:32

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Nuclear Tourist posted:

Slight derail: did she write the plot for the Republic Commando video game? That game was amazing, even though it was really short.

No.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 01:40

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Moist von Lipwig posted:

If you don't like Revelation Space I'm not quite sure what to say, it's one of the best in the genre. I guess it's kind of a slow burn in the first half though so I can see getting bored if you don't dig the technobabble. If you're willing to give Reynolds another shot then House of Suns is amazing and his style had matured a little more, I'd actually say it's the better novel because it's self-contained.

Reynolds is always very cold and remote in his handling of the characters and narrative. I like it a lot in the right context but I can definitely see being turned off by it.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Dec 31, 2012

# ¿ Dec 31, 2012 04:57

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Titan was a gruesome read. Even for Baxter, something about it just felt really bleak and cruel. Almost petty. I can deal with human extinction but the actual human beings depicted in Titan felt like they deserved it.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2013 04:28

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

nessin posted:

In case anyone is interested I've found a series I hadn't seen mentioned here: The Frontiers Saga by Ryk Brown

http://www.amazon.com/Ep-Aurora-CV-01-Frontiers-Saga/dp/1480121029/ref=la_B00727LG8Y_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362619757&sr=1-1

Essentially Earth becomes significantly advanced and starts a rapid expansion into the universe only to get hit by a computer virus that nearly destroys the human race and leaves it back in the dark ages and now, some time later (generally refered to as a millennium, but the idiot ball affects the author in keeping consistent about that) they've recently found a cache of human knowledge from just before the virus. Now Earth has built a new warship with FTL capability but everything goes crazy on a test run and the ship ends up at the hands of the fresh from the academy junior officers/enlisted a long ways away from home in the middle of a war of religious persecution and tyranny in an area of space colonized by humans in a mad rush to escape the virus.

Don't expect anything great, but it's still a step above the bottom of the barrel. Just be warned ahead of time that the characters get more and more idiotic as you go ahead (at least to book four, which is easily the worst, haven't read the other two out). Definitely the worst case of an idiot ball being thrown around that I've seen in a long time.

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

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 03:03

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

You can hit 'quote' on a post and then type below the block of quoted text to reply to it.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2013 21:37

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Bruiser posted:

About 65% of the way through the Void trilogy by Hamilton. I like it, but hoo-wee it took about a 3rd of the book to get off the ground. I loved the Commonwealth saga.

After that, I'll be picking up Abaddon's Gate to wrap up the Leviathan trilogy by James SA Corey. Looking forward to that one.

It doesn't wrap up the trilogy (the trilogy has been contractually extended to six books) and it's bad.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2013 19:18

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Fallom posted:

I don't think his books talk nearly enough about the problem of having people accept or ignore the fact that they're still dead if they die.

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. I'm always relieved when authors don't waste time on that hoary old chestnut.

There are interesting philosophical quandaries to be found in any situation that involves forking, but 'the real me still dies' isn't one of them. 'A me still dies' is, though!

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jul 9, 2013

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 02:40

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Fallom posted:

No way, dude. These people are storing copies of themselves made months ago. You ain't gonna handwave that away by claiming it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how consciousness works, and regardless of that there's still the issue of having people accept it.

It depends on exactly what objection you're making here. Let's say you (we'll call this You Prime) go in for a brain scan on Monday, establishing a fork - Meat You and Scan You. On Tuesday, Meat You is hit by a car and killed instantly.

If your argument is that Meat You is dead, you're right. If your argument is that You Prime has died, you're right. If your argument is that You Prime is no longer alive, you're wrong.

The only real criteria for 'me-ness' is causal connectivity of the mindstate. In this scenario, causal connectivity between Meat You and Scan You is broken at the instant of the scan, and if either of them dies, there's no salvation. But both Meat You and Scan You are valid descendants of You Prime, possessing all necessary and sufficient credentials to claim to be 'the real you'.

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.

Fallom posted:

Like, I have trouble believing that some rich dude is ok with parachuting into a volcano because "It's ok, I have a backup I made 2 years ago stored 80 light years away".

This is a beautiful example. Rich Dude At Volcano would be an idiot to jump - he'll die. Rich You 2 Years Ago doesn't care what that fork does; he's still alive in the other fork (he probably does care, actually, since he's also going to die, but at least he has the comfort of knowing he'll live, too.) Rich Dude In Backup doesn't care; as far as he's concerned, the causally disconnected moron leaping into a volcano is another person.

What Rich Dude At Volcano should do is have a backup operating in real time. This is causally indistinguishable from his brain being removed from the volcano and saved.

e: I guess the simplest way to put this is that mind uploading/backup forks you into two new, causally disconnected yous, for whom death is still a real and terrifying concern. It is a very parochial form of immortality, one that offers assurance only to the self who predates the fork.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Jul 9, 2013

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 02:50

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Fallom posted:

If it resembles a belief like "If I die, then my descendents will carry on my legacy" (but much stronger) then I'm cool with that.

I think that's a fair way to phrase it, though it would certainly be much stronger. Remember, both forks who emerge from the backup process are you, in every way that the person you will be thirty seconds from now qualifies as you.

But you need to be very careful to specify the point of view of the observer when you're dealing with brain copying/backups. If you're talking about the self immediately pre-backup, before the moment of recording, the belief would be 'If one I dies, another I will carry on my legacy*.' This self will be causally connected to both resulting forks.

From the perspective of either fork, post-backup, the belief is 'gently caress backups, if I die, it's over!' I replied to your volcano example in an edit above; I think it offers a really good case study. And a lot of my frustration with this argument has more to do with the notion that teleportation is murder than the somewhat convoluted logic of mind scans.

*I do want to make it super clear that I'm not arguing that the 'self' will somehow be stretched across the multiple forks. Once the backup scan finishes, that's it: the resulting forks are on their own.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 03:03

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

andrew smash posted:

Did you ever read Kiln People? It was an interesting take on mind uploading, as the forks only lasted a day or so and had to either be abandoned or merged back into the personality of the primary meat human.

I did. I thought it suffered from Brin's weird gee-golly-whiz style, but it was a super cool concept.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2013 16:44

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

jackyl posted:

I'm a bit unnerved here. I usually like the normal airplane fiction, noir, horror, etc but started looking at a wider variety and this thread was awesome for that. I started with Revelation Space, read all of those, then discovered the Culture, which lead to non space opera books by Iaian Banks, and I read all those.

Now I have finished the Nights Dawn, Void, and Commonwealth series by Hamilton. I'm still on the space opera kick and my current try is Brin's Uplift series, which brings me to my dilemma. Sundiver is loving terrible.

Does this get better?

No, just go to Startide Rising.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2013 15:14

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

It's not a trilogy, they extended it to six or seven books. This is why the third book is so bad, I guess.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2013 18:30

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

savinhill posted:

You might want to spoil that, I think. And in answer: He's just the user interface/avatar for an alien AI.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2013 00:13

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I could skim Honor Harrington's ridiculous wish-fulfillment filler as long as the space battles were entertaining, but somewhere around book three, Weber gave up on the idea of 'dramatic tension' and began to write the war as an increasingly one-sided technological decision. The climactic battle of At All Costs should've been space Trafalgar, but I literally cannot remember anything about it beyond - hang on, let me see if I can work in some Weber prose - 'Abruptly Honor Harrington arrived, and she smiled fiercely as a cataclysmic wave of 7189th generation Super Missiles destroyed the astonished opposition.'

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 18:42

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I can take a look at it, I'm pretty decent at SF (cred: fiction in Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Analog, Asimov's Online, blah blah so on) and might have a few tips for you. I've got to warn you, though, sometimes writing just comes down to 'read and write more'.

sethjosephdickinson at gmail

# ¿ Oct 18, 2013 15:18

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

People are pretty excited by Ancillary Justice right now. I haven't read it yet, but the author is a really capable editor of a really strong magazine and I'd be shocked if it weren't good.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2013 16:35

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Yeah, and I think it suffered for losing all the best characters from Caliban's War and returning to the charismaless vacuum of the central cast.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 23:03

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

John Magnum posted:

Sadly it does have one of his worst endings, but it's still a marvellously fun book. I'd also recommend Terminal World very strongly. It's amazing how much new and incredible stuff he keeps throwing at you.

Uh I just want to caveat this with the general opinion that these are two of his worst books. Which is good, I guess, because it means you've got nowhere to go but up! I personally found some stuff to like in Century Rain, but I'm afraid Terminal World is totally unsalvageable.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2013 06:12

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

fookolt posted:

Recommendations for space opera similar to The Culture series by Banks? Earnest, quirky, and socially progressive is my sort of style.

Scott Westerfeld's Succession is earnest and socially progressive, though, alas, not too quirky. I'd still recommend it.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2013 01:16

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

The cat makes her telepathic and helps her locate soul mates too. She also has a gun in her finger.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 17:07

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Sneaky Fast posted:

So after talking a long break from reading, I'm looking for some of the best books in the genre to start in on. Any suggestions?

If you're looking for Real Literary Quality try Iain Banks (Player of Games is a great place to start with the Culture). Alternatively, though I still haven't read it, everyone in the SF/F community is agog over Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2013 17:11

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Steakandchips posted:

You're supposed to start with Consider Phlebas.

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

# ¿ Jan 1, 2014 23:10

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I can only speak to the consensus here and in the SF/F thread, but in general people feel Phlebas is a lovely introduction a) because it's probably one of the least good Culture books (not the worst, but nowhere near the best and b) because it's a huge tonal departure from the others, a big-screen action-adventure populated with grotesqueries, spectacle, and jerks.

The Culture books aren't really a series and with maybe two exceptions there's no real point in worrying about what order you read them in after your first.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2014 00:00

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Don't read Consider first. If you're going to put something in the OP then the consensus that always comes up in these discussions is that it should be Player of Games.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2014 16:37

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Since a reader going in has no idea which book is a good fit for them and we don't have any idea about the traits of the reader you might as well go with the intro that most people think fits best.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2014 20:11

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Cardiac posted:

It was also the first Banks I read, and that stopped me from reading Banks for a couple of years.

Yeah, I think I'm with you. It's a really rough starting point - while Banks' prose is charming, it takes forever to get anywhere interesting.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 16:21

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

His problem is not so much that he's perfect as that all his flaws and struggles are profoundly familiar, trite, and boring.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2014 01:25

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

One thing I'll say in Reynolds' defense is that the mechanistic coldness of his characters fits his setting and his prose style to a T. There's a certain consonance there I don't mind.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 07:51

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Well, when you move from Banks' socialist leanings to libertarian, you'll definitely get some, uh, differences in opinion on the essential underpinnings of civilization.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 06:46

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Vaz posted:

If fourth book doesn't have grandma character then I need to be convinced to bother to continue.

Yes same. I just want her to take charge of everything and tell the erstwhile protagonist he's an idiot.

# ¿ May 6, 2014 17:29

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Chairman Capone posted:

Is the second book generally considered better than the first? I've heard a lot of people say that the character roster is pretty dull, but maybe I'm confusing it with the third book.

The second book has the most interesting characters. Unfortunately it still contains the dull-as-dirt main cast.

# ¿ May 6, 2014 21:00

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

fookolt posted:

After chilling in weird fiction for a bit, I got back into space opera with House of Suns and Blindsight (not sure if that's space opera) and I realize I really, really love space opera. Anything new out lately I should check out?

Ancillary Justice is all the rage. The Expanse books starting with Leviathan Wakes are very popular too.

# ¿ May 8, 2014 06:10

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Vaz posted:

Seems to be in GRRM mode... Are there something else similar to Vorkosagin Saga?

Not really a good analogy at all.

# ¿ May 8, 2014 19:05

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Isn't it the fourth book, not the sixth?

# ¿ Jun 6, 2014 05:42

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

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.

Read the Zahn and Stover books, quit and never go back.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2014 03:46

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

PupsOfWar posted:

Scott Westerfeld isn't known for Space Opera, but he did write one duology that features some bitchin' space battles (well, more like one bitchin' space battle that takes up most of the second book, then some other skirmishes).

Westerfeld's a better writer than most dedicated MilSF authors, and the books are relatively concise by genre standards. The hard-to-find collected edition is probably the size of an average Honorverse novel.

These books are really excellent in a whole ton of respects. I recommend them wholeheartedly.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 00:44

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I think the action scenes in Downbelow Station are absolutely fantastic. She doesn't spend much time bogged down in the specifics of how the weapons and systems work, but the battle of momentum and positioning really gets me.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 21:06

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 08:27

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

One of the most frustrating things about Weber is his willingness to set up interesting conflicts and then sabotage them completely by painting one side as Right and Competent.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 22:52

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Charge your lasers, and prepare for lightspeed: The SPACE OPERA thread.

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