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Chairman Capone posted:I actually was just going to bring that up, since I just started reading Juggler of Worlds. Actually, I think a lot of Niven's stuff fits well in space opera; even though it's "hard sci-fi", stuff like Ringworld and the Smoke Ring or the Man-Kzin Wars are essentially the definition of space opera. They could make 100 Man-Kzin Wars collections and I would read them all.
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Jun 28, 2009 03:12
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Chairman Capone posted:I'm considering reading some of the newer ones but looking them up it seems the past four or five volumes have almost entirely been written by Hal Colebatch or Matthew Joseph Harrington and I'm not really familiar with either of them - are the later ones worth reading, then? I remember remarking on that fact to myself, especially Colebatch who had X entirely to himself, and half of the stories in XI. But he's in there for a reason, they are pretty good. I also liked Paul Chafe's Destiny's Forge, which is a complete novel and has no number. I don't remember Harrington specifically (I binged on them all a while ago so they all blur together) but I don't remember disliking any of them too much. The last one I remember not liking as much, and only because it didn't really fit the tone of the universe, was Gregory Benford's "A Darker Geometry" in like VI and VII. I like Benford and it's a good story, and I really like the idea of the Outsiders generally. But their backstory in those, while it would be a good one in itself, just feels wrong for them somehow, like it's something written for another universe but shoehorned into Known Space. Maybe I just like it better to leave them mysterious. Fortunately I think Niven agrees.
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Jun 29, 2009 05:09
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Astroman posted:This was one of the best modern space operas I've read in awhile...KJA is a great author, never read any of his stuff I didn't like. I'm kinda pissed because I never bought the last book and now they've reprinted them, so when I do buy it the spine and cover will be different. Ah, are they all out in paperback? I was waiting to start it until I got the last two, but they weren't out yet and I had such a big stack of other books to read that I pretty much forgot about it. Also while I wouldn't say KJA is a "great" author, I have liked his books despite his faults at least. I think I'm like the only person on the planet who thought the Butlerian Jihad Dune prequels were fun to read.
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Jul 8, 2009 01:27
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Have to hit a used bookstore I guess. He created a very rich universe there though.
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Magnificent Quiver posted:Three stories into the first Man-Kzin Wars book and I've already hit interspecies furry erotica. Thanks for the QC, Niven. If it's any consolation, that's pretty much the last of it too. Although I think that same author has a sequel in II or III.
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Aug 5, 2009 14:03
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Magnificent Quiver posted:Can anyone recommend a book with a humanity uber alles theme? I have a weakness for books where humanity gets beaten or starts out as the underdog, then proceeds to kick rear end. Sort of like the first three books of the Uplift series, or that weird Niven book where the elephant aliens invade the solar system. Timothy Zahn likes to do that; the Cobra trilogy and Conquerors trilogy are both variations on this theme. In the former, humans are either stalemated or losing a war with aliens until the introduction of Cobras: cybernetically-enhanced supersoldiers who can pass as normal humans. In the latter, the aliens have virtually indestructible starship hulls and humans have to pull out all kinds of tactical tricks because their weapons aren't good enough.
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Aug 7, 2009 09:05
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Chairman Capone posted:I just got S.M. Stirling's The Sky People today. For those who don't know it's set in an alternate history where in the early 1960s the first US and Soviet space probes to Venus and Mars found, instead of the dry dead worlds of reality, worlds teeming with life - Venus a jungle-like planet with dinosaurs, Mars a Barsoom-like planet, both with human tribes and kingdoms and whatnot on them. So instead of someone like John Carter meeting Dejah Thoris you have NASA astronauts meeting the kings of Mars. If you share his Christian viewpoint, or can at least read it as the same kind of counterfactual as life on Mars and Venus, I won't hesitate to recommend the first two books of C. S. Lewis's space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra). The first describes a college professor abducted by a couple of colleagues after he discovers their spaceship, and their trip to Mars. It's not "teeming" with life, but in the lowlands there's enough atmosphere to make it habitable and it's home to several different intelligent species. The second describes his trip to Venus, which is a near-total ocean world just receiving its Adam and Eve. Lewis himself said that Perelandra was his own favorite of the books he'd written in his life. If you're solidly anti-Christian and can't stand even reading about it, then I guess they wouldn't be for you, but otherwise they are worth your while.
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Aug 9, 2009 18:08
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Babylon 5 doesn't count, or you didn't like it?
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Sep 30, 2009 18:40
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Of course, I just started reading that, and then when the sequel comes out I'll have to re-read it because I'll forget most of the details.
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Dec 15, 2009 04:53
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