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.

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Baron Von Awesome posted:

From someone that's read all three, which one would you say is the best place to start? I'm not quite certain I'll be willing to read the entire series from any of them, so just consider the first titles for now.

Just flip a coin or something, worst case scenario is you read a good book.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2009 04:48

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:03

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

WarLocke posted:

John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata books.

isn't that the one where the only dudes bad enough to lead Earth's armies are a bunch of hundred and twenty year old nazis (<-- literal nazis of the 1940s German kind not modern nazis, skinny and monocled not fat and tattooed )

# ¿ Nov 5, 2009 02:48

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Chairman Capone posted:

I mean, is that serious? There's no way a book like that could actually be serious, right? I see it's on the Baen website for free, I kind of want to download it and check it out to see if it could actually be as bad as the summary makes it seem.

here is a review: http://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html with an excerpt

quote:

He knew that at heart, he was a rapist. And that meant he hated rapists more than any "normal" human being. They purely pissed him off. He'd spent his entire sexually adult life fighting the urge to not use his inconsiderable strength to possess and take instead of woo and cajole. He'd fought his demons to a standstill again and again when it would have been so easy to give in. He'd had one truly screwed up bitch get completely naked, with him naked and erect between her legs, and she still couldn't say "yes." And he'd just said: "that's okay" and walked away with an amazing case of blue balls. When men gave in to that dark side, it made him even more angry then listening to leftist bitches scream about "western civilization" and how it was so hosed up.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2009 01:52

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

CaptainCrunch posted:

Edit: As an aside, right before he passed away, for some reason Jim Baen seemed to have a hard on for utterly wacked out right wing conservative writing.

The hard move right came well before his death, Baen was the one that published Newt Gingrich's alt-history.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2009 20:01

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Good god, I hated the Honor Harrington books.

Rob
S.
Pierre

# ¿ Jun 12, 2010 03:20

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Velius posted:

Vinge was explicitly calling back to the old days of BBS postings and usenet.

Except that /Fire/ came out in like 1992 which was literally the golden age of usenet. (And supposedly one of the microcharacters is vaguely based on an actual usenet person)

# ¿ Jun 15, 2010 06:13

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Trig Discipline posted:

The Door Into Summer as well. I liked it anyway.

Alexei Panshin posted:

"The romantic situation in this story is a very interesting, very odd one: it is nothing less than a mutual sexual interest between an engineer of thirty and a girl of twelve ('adorable' is Heinlein's word for her), that culminates in marriage after some hop-scotching around in time to adjust their ages a bit."

# ¿ Aug 22, 2010 21:38

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Trig Discipline posted:

Classic Heinlein.

Although actually I think his best time travel story was probably the short story "By His Bootstraps".

Come to think of it, The Stars My Destination by Bester was sort of a time travel book in a way, and I thought that was pretty good.

I got linked to some Heinlein drama on a few other sites recently and I just want to post two posts from a Heinlein forum (they were in different threads by different posters but) :

quote:

Poster 1 :
Maureen's ca. 1952 treatment of her children with Brian, Donald and Priscilla. They went to live with Brian and their stepmother, and later they showed up on Maureen's door having left Brian and Marian. Maureen discovers that they have an incestuous relationship, and to show that she is cool with that, she gets naked and jumps into bed with them and counsels them that their physical relationship is okay.

Poster 2:
think they are too young for Citizen and I know they are too young for SIASL and God help us the day Maureen finds out who she was REALLY named afte

The only good time travel story is All of an Instant but that's not space opera (also Back to the Future but that's not books, even its novelization)

# ¿ Aug 23, 2010 01:46

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

ThaGhettoJew posted:

His young adult books are his best material, probably precisely because he ignores his bizarre theories on marriage and sexuality to better cover the action and some light and silly political stuff. Space Cadet, Citizen of the Galaxy, maybe Farmer/Tunnel in the Sky, etc. They're dated and not a little sexist, but they remain fun to read once you break through the 50's-era stylistic background.

Podkayne of Mars:

wikipedia posted:

The book is a first-person narrative in the form of Podkayne's diaries. Due to the unscheduled "uncorking" (birth) of their three test-tube babies, Podkayne's parents cancel a much-anticipated trip to Earth. Disappointed, Podkayne confesses her misery to her uncle, Senator Tom Fries, an elder statesman of the Mars government. The mistake proves to have a silver lining. Fries pressures creche officials into paying for an upgraded passage on a luxury liner for Podkayne (about 17 Earth years old) and her asocial genius brother Clark (about 11), with Fries acting as chaperone.
...
When Clark vanishes and even the corporation is unable to find him, Tom reveals that he is on a secret diplomatic mission.
...
In the revised version, Podkayne is injured by the bomb, but not fatally. Uncle Tom, in a phone conversation with Podkayne's father, blames the parents � especially the mother � for neglecting the upbringing of the children. Uncle Tom feels that Clark is dangerous and maladjusted, and attributes this to the mother giving priority to her career. Clark still takes over as the narrator, and, again, regrets that Podkayne was hurt and plans to take care of the fairy, this time because Podkayne will want to see it when she is better.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2010 04:48

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Midget Fist posted:

I've had Dragon's Egg on my reading list for a while but have yet to stumble across it in a second-hand bookshop:(

It's not a particularly well-crafted book but it's amazing if you're 12 or so. ("golden age of science fiction is" ec etc)

# ¿ Aug 25, 2010 04:04

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

shrughes posted:

I haven't even read it and now I'm pissed off.

You do know what the Ellison novel is about, right?

# ¿ Sep 10, 2012 03:31

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Don't think Mieville could write a Dr. Who episode. The Doctor isn't explicitly socialist.

Don't get me wrong, Mieville's great, but i've never seen him write anything that wasn't explicitly Marxist in the same sense that Narnia is explicitly Christian.

Only when compared to the usual background noise of science fiction which is full of reactionary dudes like Jerry Pournelle and Tom Kratman and David Weber and basically the entire Baen fleet of non-Bujold authors.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2013 01:28

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Play posted:

I've also recently read the Larry Nivens series _____ (betrayer, juggler, destroyer,etc.) of worlds. Those are really good and are pure interspecies space operas which a lot of people would probably find enjoyable.

I read the first one of those and thought it stunk pretty hard. Don't read Niven after about 1971 and under no circumstances read stuff he co-authored.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 02:35

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

coyo7e posted:

Bonus points for difficulty: it's a zombie versus jarheads book where the only survivors hole up on the British Isles. They go to Africa to fight zombies, who they constantly refer to as "Zulus".

The Amazon ratings are especially telling.

This loving genre. I checked the author's blog, and was a little hopeful when he had an entry about vegan thanksgiving, but nope: http://www.michaelfuchs.org/razorsedge/index.php?story=2007-02-23
nope: http://www.michaelfuchs.org/razorsedge/index.php?story=2007-09-15
nope: http://www.michaelfuchs.org/razorsedge/index.php?story=2008-08-30

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 03:25

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

snooman posted:

Apparently he's considering leaving Amazon now, stemming from Amazon's response to a review that indirectly accused him of plagiarizing David Weber.

Tell me more...

quote:

The purple prose, needless use of 5 dollar words,and sentences like this one "Numerous items of limited pecuniary value stirred a vast reservoir of happy memories and stimulated her lachrymal glands beyond her control."

fritz fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Dec 11, 2013

# ¿ Dec 11, 2013 01:23

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:03

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Fallom posted:

That sentence is hosed.

But his characters aren't!

quote:

Issues developed which Amazon chose to ignore as if they were insignificant. One of their Vines reviewers defamed my good name by falsely accusing me of plagiarism and Amazon would do nothing about removing the review. As all of my readers know, the A Galaxy Unknown series was inspired by C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series, a brilliant, nineteenth century sea-going adventure. As it turns out, another author, David Weber, was also inspired by the C.S. Forester series to create a space opera . The Amazon reviewer, a neighbor of Weber, declared that I plagiarized Weber's work, although on Wikipedia it clears states that Weber was trying to emulate Forester's work. The reviewer is obviously not well read, and certainly not very astute. In another part of his review he complains about the lack of sex in my series. My series is a space opera, not erotica. The man has obvious issues that might best be addressed by a good psychiatrist.

Also, after Amazon reorganized their category system, they established a grouping that lists Space Opera Series. Despite my repeated pleas over many months to have my series listed there, they would never add it to the important selling category which appears to be available to major publishers only. Amazon has sold over a quarter of a million copies of my best-selling space opera yet they refuse to list it with the other space operas on that list.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2013 01:31

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