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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Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Piell posted:

Oh you have not seen half of Honor's Marysue-ness. She's the best gun duelist and sword duelist and gets a sweet robot arm and laser eye and teaches her cat how to do sign language and has a polyamorous marriage and fires literally a million missiles all at once.. The series starts off pretty god but each book is worse than the one before, so just stop when it gets to be too much.

Edit: Also you can get almost all of the series/side stories totally and legally free here (Torch of Freedom link).

She gets captured and raped but thats ok she just falls in love with her rapist and goes to war against her former homeland.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 04:48

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 03:44

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

I read all of falkenberg's legion over the last 4 days and it reminded me a lot of black company, are there anymore black company in space series that are good?

# ¿ Apr 5, 2015 07:37

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

hannibal posted:

Did you read the other three novels? Falkenberg's Legion is just the first one.

Yeah I read a book a day when I actually have something to read, problem is finding stuff now that I haven't read before, I actually reread it because I had forgotten about it.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2015 11:17

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Pyroclastic posted:

But, it's kinda neat to see how a century of pointless war made everything change and how disruptive Geary is to all that. He's skirting mary sue-dom, though. I love that every cover is depicting a Geary in battle armor with a rifle, but he literally never leaves the ship and during any 'ground' engagement he's either ordering bombardment or watching over a Marine's helmet cam from the flagship bridge.

I quit reading because he never loses.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2015 08:37

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Drone posted:

I really want to get to know pulp better, since the only thing I've ever read that qualifies were all licensed works from Star Trek/Star Wars/40k. It's just not really easy when I can't stop myself from reading it critically

His stuff is dreck even where pulp is concerned, in like the 3rd book she get kidnapped, has stockholm syndrome with her rapist and then switches sides. I think I threw the books away when that happened. There is a ton of pulp out there that is well written.

I can normally hoover up pulp scifi at a rate of a book a day and read the entire series without stopping, but the honorverse just repelled me with the over the top mary sue and backwards morality.

Washout fucked around with this message at 09:35 on May 8, 2015

# ¿ May 8, 2015 09:30

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Stop before the pedophilia.

# ¿ May 26, 2015 00:25

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Shakugan posted:

Legend of Galactic Heroes. Multiple movies and hundreds of episodes with many OVAs etc (lookup a suggested watching order before starting). Yes, it's not a book. But it's basically GoT in space, and honestly, is much better.

It's fine for the first 20 episodes or so but very quickly goes downhill after that. Like after they capture the deathstar just quit watching.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2015 07:09

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Fried Chicken posted:

Aldenata has its own set of women rebuilt by alien technology to be super horny blonde bombshells with the bodies of 18 year olds.

I remember because their story was far more compelling than the men. Having your body completely reconstructed against your will by an automaton acting on its own directives is a much more interesting plot than "mindlessly slaughter putties while complaining about anyone to the right of Franco"

The fourth novel Hell's Faire includes some Sluggy Freelance guest strips by Pete Abrams since the popular internet comic strip is featured somewhat prominently in a way. (A massive armored military vehicle is named after Bun-Bun the mini-lop from the strip.) Some of the strips are samples of the actual comic strip and others are an exclusive alternate timeline setting where the Sluggy characters have to deal with the Posleen invasion.

:what:

# ¿ Jun 24, 2015 18:18

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Is there much out there where Humanity is the Villain? I mean most sci fi has human villains, but the race as a whole?

Secondly what else out there is similar to The Damned by Alan Dean Foster? I.e. humanity is the most crazy badass alien race in the milieu?

Finally I've realized I don't see The Damned mentioned much as a book, it's pulp but its a great example of seeing a perspective of humanity as the warmongers of the universe.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2015 07:54

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Chairman Capone posted:

In the early Berserker stories, weren't the various human planets each specific analogues to 1500s European countries and the Berserkers analogs for the Ottomans?

I didn't recognize anything like that, but the timeline is so all over the place and there are so many authors that it would be easy to see something like that.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 10:11

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

ToxicFrog posted:

Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata, where humanity is recruited by the (pacifistic) Galactic Federation as the only thing badass enough to fight off the invading Posleen.

Thanks for the recommendation this really fits the bill of humanity as the bad asses, but it's even more pulpy than The Damned was. I want to murder his poo poo Mary sue characters so bad. And the cally's war bullshit is where I could not take it anymore and quit. His constant Sluggy Freelance references make me want to puke. Ringo has some seriously warped political views too. The cap of it all was his totally poo poo dues ex machina at the end of the first trilogy was about as ham handed an ending as I've ever seen.

The first trilogy seemed like some sort of crazy racist perspective about how america is going to be destroyed and defeated because of all the wimps and liberals and when the Chinese and Indians finally storm our boarders after defeating the rest of the world the true men of america will rise up and defeat them with bravery and superior american technology.

Washout fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Oct 2, 2015

# ¿ Oct 2, 2015 07:46

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Wait, I think I just won't read them.

Like it started to get to "Bio Of A Space Tyrant" level of bad in the 4th book before I even finished it. Although I shamefully read that whole series when I was younger.

Washout fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Oct 2, 2015

# ¿ Oct 2, 2015 08:06

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

chrisoya posted:

Please read the sequel with Tom Kratman, then tell us what you think about the originals.

I can blow through one of these in about 2-3 hours so I'll give one a shot and then come back here and write a tirade.

edit: I made it through the first paragraph of watch on the Rhine and rolled my eyes so hard I almost hurt myself, I take back everything and I'm not going to read it.

Washout fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Oct 2, 2015

# ¿ Oct 2, 2015 11:05

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

ToxicFrog posted:

I didn't say they were good

I actually enjoyed them when I read them years ago, but this is largely down to me being in a mood to read about a lot of poo poo blowing up and not thinking too hard about anything else.

I'd recommend the first one to anyone, it's a bit ham fisted but still really cool and gives a great sense of being up against the wall but fighting back at all odds. The second book is actually pretty good too, but in the 3rd one the wheels completely come off and the sluggy freelance poo poo is the main story line and it's just ugh.

Reading it is a bit like trying to reread your favorite Heinlein novels, after a while the veneer manages to come off and they are just not as good as you remembered.

Washout fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Oct 2, 2015

# ¿ Oct 2, 2015 13:40

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

I just read angles of darkness and it really surprised me with the kind of weird duality, typical 40k dreck was a bit less prevalent that in other space marine books.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2015 13:45

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

pile of brown posted:

I'm gonna dis-reccomend this... I read and loved all of Cook's Black Company, but dragon never sleeps is an endless barrage of future space jargon and never has any exposition at all. It has too many plot lines and never serves any of them satisfactorily. It would have been a great duo or trilogy but as it is its kind of a slog. It does have a couple cool space battles and some of the various intrigues/scheming has payoff but it's too much work to get there for too little reward.

If you liked culture you should check out Against A Dark Background and The Algebraist, both also by Banks, if you haven't. They're both one-offs and both in very different universes than the Culture, but both great.

There is always the Known Space series/universe. Some of them are pretty bad but there is a lot of good in them. All the man-kzin wars stuff is very skippable unless you want to know where the idea for wing commander came from.

Washout fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Oct 6, 2015

# ¿ Oct 5, 2015 23:36

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Does anyone else remember the story about the space dentist that saves the universe? I can't remember for sure but I think Piers Anthony wrote it in his pre-pedo days.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2015 07:09

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Hobnob posted:

Prostho Plus I believe. I've never read it, but it's by Anthony and about the only SF-dentistry story I've ever heard of.

Hey that's the one! I'll be damned.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 05:26

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

tribbledirigible posted:

Thanks for the reminder as well, I need something that moves more than 5 mph after slogging through the last Safehold novel. It wasn't bad, but there just wasn't a lot of movement. I keep seeing Weber's writing process as setting up a very large Domino Rally; hours of set up and maybe 45 seconds of action.

This is just a sign of bad editing. Every drat time some author starts to be popular the original publisher loses editorial control and usually the books get worse.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2015 18:35

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

chrisoya posted:

I always thought the big selling point of Safehold was "We got Weber a real editor to cut out the bloat this time!" At least for the first book.

But when an author gets big I'm sure they must have more control over the final product, like edit approval or something, and for 90% of writers this is a bad thing.

Ironically all the self published stuff I've read is the reverse and the editing gets better as time goes on.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2015 21:34

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

So I just finished all the Laundry Files by Stross, is there any Cthulhu in space?

# ¿ Nov 10, 2015 02:13

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Baloogan posted:

Abaddon was REALLY bad. Cibola was just bad. The series had 2 good books, then 2 poo poo books and I liked nemesis games. I have high hopes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaPTweZ2_fI

# ¿ Dec 13, 2015 20:15

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Was re-reading expanse 1, and decided to read the whole series this time. Got to the middle of book 4 and sick of seeing a crew member get captured for the 20th time and couldn't finish the book. It's like he totally ran out of ideas for 3 and 4 and was leaning on tropes the entire time and it turned into a slog that's really not worth finishing.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2016 10:27

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

PupsOfWar posted:

I've heard about Perry Rhodan off-and-on for a long time and kinda half-heartedly wondered about getting into it.

Unsure of the availability of the material stateside.

That does sound entertainingly batshit, though.

I looked around and could only find the oldest stuff, it's caught in licensing hell afaik.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2016 21:09

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Libluini posted:

Years ago I checked this and there was an American version at about the halfway-mark compared with the main series. What happened to that? Perry Rhodan-SF has basically no overlap with other SF, what kind of licensing trouble could they run into?

The rights were sold to some company that sold it to someone else that went bankrupt etc. Wikipedia talks a lot about it.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2016 23:54

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Buncha people all getting butthurt in here. Neal does have a lot of faults as a writer, I certainly would not compare him to asimov or whatever sci-fi great. But he does introduce a lot of pretty great concepts and monsters and characters somewhere in between all the (mostly boring) action sequences. That is what really keeps me reading his stuff. And to the end of a series you start to get a real Mary Sue vibe as his characters conquer everything with aplomb. Maybe his newest series is just a little too full of the bad side of his writing, from reading the synopsis it seem like more of the same and not really worth reading, I'll probably end up getting too curious eventually and reading it anyway tho.

I could see someone new to his writing just thinking it was a mish-mash of other concepts and authors. It kind of snuck up on the setting over time since he's now combined the ideas of uplift, AI, Post humanism, nanotechnology, berserkers, rogue von neumann machines etc.

Washout fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Feb 25, 2016

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 22:56

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Velius posted:

Asher can be an enjoyable author. The Polity stuff is generally exciting and not too bogged down in the author's politics. The settings are very diverse and if the characters are cardboard, it's not much worse than the genre as a whole.

Then there's the Owner trilogy he wrote, which is unbelievable tripe. I've ranted about it before and won't belabor the post, but it's almost impossible to see it as the same author. Maybe he got a brain tumor?

Don't authors usually get more editorial control the more popular they are? It really seems like his newer stuff is a lot less coherent than his earlier books. The Owner had a lot of really odd jarring sequences that really detracted from the story (torture sequences, bizarre sex scenes, pointless megadeath etc), but there was some pretty cool stuff in it as well, the 3rd book was pretty terrible. The dystopian cyberpunk stuff was good when you found it.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 21:31

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Cythereal posted:

Yep. Anvil of Stars is about a crew of fifty or sixty people, only about twelve years old at the start, who launch into the stars on a mission of genocide against the mysterious alien race that murdered Earth in a ship built for them by another enigmatic race that they fundamentally know nothing about. It's an incredibly hosed up society, and that's even before they start encountering aliens.

Those books are both super good, bear is probably one of my favorite authors.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 13:48

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Libluini posted:

So those FPS-players pretending to be soldiers are not only dangers for everyone around them, they can also be reused to kill more of their own side's soldiers? Sounds great. How many times can they revive before the trauma of dying over and over again finally shatters their mind so they have to be replaced?

Oh wait, sorry. I think I have already thought more about this than the author.

This is exactly how to make a book that drives me into a frothing rage, the idea is kind of neat or has a genuine angle, and then the author squanders it with way too many terrible ideas and bad writing. Reading a realistic book about an experimental government program that uses top tournament FPS players to control or program drones and then watch as the experiment unfolds in an interesting and logical way would make a great novel, and instead we get whatever this book is.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2016 23:50

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Internet Wizard posted:

This is kinda dumb because humans are pretty weak for Earth creatures, even compared to the other apes. Pretty much all of them physically superior to us in most ways.

About the only things humans have going for them is we're pretty okay at walking and our brains are pretty good.

Wide range heat/cold adaptation, highest stamina of any being on earth, highest intelligence, omnivorous, we are a pretty good apex predator and make wolves look tame by comparison. Even removing tool use and language humans are superior to almost any other animal in many categories.

Washout fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jun 27, 2016

# ¿ Jun 27, 2016 00:39

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Internet Wizard posted:

Humans get pretty miserable if the temperature starts dropping below the mid-60s, especially if they get wet as well. Highest stamina of any being on earth is debatable, and certainly not true of the average human from a modern society.

Also the post I was responding to was about writing where humans were considered above the galactic norm in speed and muscle density, and again we're basically the worst of the apes in those regards.

I was mostly responding to "pretty weak for earth creatures", we really are not, the saying, "the combination is greater than the whole", especially applies to us as humans, we are crazy fast adaptable to many situations, modern first world people may be unaware of it in many cases but anyone who trains physically on a regular basis can see how we have a lot of potential, like if I take my highly athletic dog jogging during the day he's pretty much over it after 30 minutes or so, but I can run for much longer, and I'm not in that great of shape compared to people who really train.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2016 01:23

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

FastestGunAlive posted:

Browsing lots of Amazon self published sci fi/fantasy I've also seen many books based upon people being teleported into tabletop rpg games. The one I did buy gave me a few laughs

https://www.amazon.com/Kobold-Wizar...llick+iii+dildo

You're welcome

Washout fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jul 2, 2016

# ¿ Jul 2, 2016 23:15

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Danknificent posted:

Shoutouts to Piers Anthony

I'm totally downloading the blue adept series right now!

# ¿ Jul 3, 2016 05:12

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Washout posted:

I'm totally downloading the blue adept series right now!

Trip report: could not even get halfway through the first book, forgot how poo poo he was in every way.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2016 04:52

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Danknificent posted:

coldblooded

Self insertion porn, long drawn out sex and action scenes, bizzare power fantasy, repeated rape, it's got everything!

# ¿ Jul 15, 2016 23:12

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

That Works posted:

The Stand

Triggered, I remember reading it while home sick and it was the WORST.

Yes the best thing for me while being home alone and miserable is to read a book about someone who is alone and miserable and then even more terrible poo poo happens.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2016 01:42

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Bolow posted:

Finished it today it was pretty meh. The tension pretty much evaporates 1/3rd of the way through the book and the ending is another contrived deus ex machina but not quite as severe as the void trilogy ending. Kind of a let down because Abyss Beyond Dreams was loving great

Yeah totally underwhelming, the premise is good but tired at this point. No where near as good as the original series and totally passable but still better than anything webber ever wrote. :nyd:

Washout fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Oct 2, 2016

# ¿ Oct 2, 2016 21:12

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

Trasson posted:

No, it's legitimately worse here. The more recent books were like a twenty something odd season with a bunch of filler episodes and five or six actual plot episodes distributed thereout. Shadow of Victory is like that, but the five plot episodes are now the previous season's filler, and the old filler episodes are just the Star Wars Holiday Special from different angles over and over.

Cranking out literary garbage while on week long speed benders is a kind of life but not one I'm sure I'd like to live.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2016 08:32

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

dtkozl posted:

The difference is the narrator in Lightning specifically says "this person is aggressive, therefore it makes sense to assign the male gender." There are no assumptions the reader is making. It is specifically upholding the old stereotypes of what it is to be male and female in the 18th or 19th century and then just assigning those pronouns to the character based on their actions, regardless of gender. It is fundamentally at odds with progressive thinking and deeply conservative and bigoted.

If you don't see the difference between that and in Ancillary where the author lets the reader make the assumption and then flips it, well we are just going to have to agree to disagree.

Aside from the gender identity issue, this just sounds like it would be gently caress all annoying to read in the first place. Ancillary specifically lets you as the reader try to figure it out and I thought that was clever, having someone just mush it into your face just seems annoying and arbitrary and like the author is pushing an agenda.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2016 07:04

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 03:44

Washout: Jun 27, 2003; "Your toy soldiers are not pigmented to my scrupulous standards. As a result, you are not worthy of my time. Good day sir"

ArchangeI posted:

Reminder that Tom Kratman believes that the right answer to an alien invasion of people-eating monsters is to revive literal SS-war criminals because they are "motivated to fight" unlike those pinko liberals these days who would just roll over.

not to be too nitpicky, but Weltenbrand is not the author, its the title (worlds aflame is the subtitle and is the literal translation of the Cool German Name). And yes, Red Storm Rising was what I was going for. Glad you liked it.

No one understands tank warfare anymore but the Nazies! let's find them all and give them super rejuvenation treatments so they can take over the war and win it for us!

# ¿ Jan 17, 2017 19:02

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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