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Kesper North posted:I didn't know he was also writing anime now. The last book of the Looking Glass series has a literal 'Anime Zone' bit when the magic FTL drive artifact interacts with the force field around the macguffin space station that siphons the energy from an entire star to flouresce the ordbiting gas giants as a sort of cosmic rock stage complete with a joke about how the PoV character becomes a ridiculous buff dude with gel-winged hair and a huge sword while in the Anime Zone and then they defeat an enemy armada by having the hot super-intelligent linguist (who's Anime Zone form is a big-eyed schoolgirl) sing rock and roll/j-pop to create magic-tech avatars in space that tear up spaceships. It's pretty much the most loving ridiculous anime thing ever.
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May 13, 2015 20:48
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Fried Chicken posted:That style is further compounded by having the antagonists be a mindless horde so you don't have the ratcheting tension of move and counter move. I haven't read the Posleen/Aldenata stuff in forever, so I'm not sure if it was that bad in the first few books, but you do eventually get more characterization of the 'mindless horde', a few leader-types start to recur (although the grunts are always just canon fodder).
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May 14, 2015 16:24
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I started reading the Bio of a Space Tyrant books recently (am about half done with Mercenary at the moment) and I kind of feel like they qualify as space opera. The writing style and political mapping is in a very archaic style that makes it read very differently from more modern sci-fi. There's some gender issue... issues with it (casual misogyny, men are stronger than women, a woman's place is with her man, that sort of thing) that I can't quite tell whether it's the author himself or just the world he's building. The first book (Refugee) was really bad with the pirates and raping and cannibalism, the second book has been better about that sort of thing so far though...
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May 25, 2015 22:25
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Idunno, Deepness was a great book but it didn't hook me like Fire did. Something about the predicament and the way the one female got treated really creeped me out, and not in a good way. As for Fire, IIRC at the end the weapon thing burns out/cauterizes all the zones 'above' the planet, but the rest of the galaxy isn't effected. There's a paragraph about one system that's right at the endge of the effect and suddenly gets cut off from all its trade partners or something...
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May 30, 2015 02:23
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Fried Chicken posted:it gets the whole galaxy. It has to, otherwise The Beast would have survived somewhere, and the point was to kill it, leave the remnants disconnected from the whole. The comparison was a tide, that the slow zone was going to expand to cover the galaxy and Magellanic clouds and even up to parts of the fastest zone, and then slowly recede over millions of years. The epigraph of the system calling out was supposed to show that, that now everyone was isolated and alone, trapped in the darkness I didn't get that impression, more that it burned out the area of the galaxy that the Beast could have spread to. leaving the rest untouched except for a huge slow zone gulf cutting all the way through one 'side'. It's been a while though so I could be misremembering...
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May 30, 2015 04:07
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Internet Wizard posted:Other than, you know, the Inhibitors, which will make you go "oh so THAT'S where Bioware got that idea" Pretty sure Saberhagen's Berserkers predate the Inhibitors by a good bit.
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Jun 2, 2015 04:02
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Just about done with Bio of a Space Tyrant. You guys were right, they're pretty bad books, but I go through stuff so fast I guess I've developed a tolerance (I also red all of the Drizzt stuff when I was a teen, ugh). The thing that finally got to me though was the sixth book, which is supposed to be basically the events of the first five from the point of view of the sister, but is actually about 80% literally lifted paragraphs from the other books with occasional new text. Lazy as gently caress.
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Jun 6, 2015 19:57
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Finished the last bit of Bio over lunch, was thoroughly offput by the final chapter where all the spooky stuff that had happened off and on during the series but could usually be explained by fits of madness or fugues turns out to be, nope, it was magic all the time. The gently caress. Started Consider Phlebas based on the suggestions here (and also my vague memory of having read Player of Games years ago - so long ago that I couldn't give you plot details, I basically remember "I read that book") and it's pretty good so far. I especially like that even though the Culture is portrayed as near-practically all-powerful they still go out of their way to mention other races (like the Dra'Azon, if I spelled that right) which even they don't want to mess with.
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Jun 7, 2015 20:08
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kalleth posted:I have to say I'm impressed by Evan Currie's On Silver Wings set of books. They're definitely weber-esque, but without the creepy sex (which makes them better, imo). Point of order: You're mistaking Weber for Ringo. Weber doesn't do creepy sex, he just masturbates over missile volley numbers. The rest sounds good though, gonna have to track this down. e: Googling Evan Currie also led me to his Odyssey One series which I have obviously not read yet but the description of the first book seems possibly appropriate to the thread? WarLocke fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Jun 9, 2015 |
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Jun 9, 2015 15:42
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reads like it's trying to be hard scifi but that gets somewhat lost in the other books with the introduction of some handwavium, but they're good reads. On the other hand, it's pretty schlock milfic, but it takes place in space, and there's at least some political machinations happening in the last book.
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Finished Consider Phlebas earlier. Great book, although I'm kind of conflicted on the ending. It just seemed so... depressing. If Banks was trying to illustrate the uselessness/waste of war, did he loving ever succeed. Started On Silver Wings. Seems pretty decent so far. Pretty milporn-ish, lots of words dedicated to talking about awesome power suits and corneal implants and blood-borne super-healing bacteria and such. But the... antagonists are straight out of more fantastic sort of sci-fi. It's giving me a kind of 'Star Wars by way of Tom Clancy' vibe that's strangely palatable. e: On the third of Currie's books. They're nothing really special, but fun mil-scifi. There's one sequence in particular in the third book where the main character is riding down a space elevator on top of the car and in a gunfight with alien snipers on the ground that's ridiculous as hell in the most awesome way. WarLocke fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Jun 14, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 01:41
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Mars4523 posted:I opened On Silver WIngs and five minutes in I found a reference to "progressive" governments (quotations are Currie's, not mine) allowing "primitive" tribes to maintain their way of life instead of forcing them to join modern society. Oh boy. Honestly it seems like random right wing talking points is part and parcel of most mil-sf. At this point I don't even notice them unless they're really egregious. The series got knd of ridiculous near the end (literal anime mecha, time-travel communication via gravity warp, a tesseract inside every enemy ship...) but there were enough dumb action setpieces to get me through them. And the fourth book is a cold-war skulduggery take that fleshes out the aliens even more.
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Jun 17, 2015 04:35
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Drifter posted:How in the world are any of those things bad? I didn't say they were bad, just ridiculous. Most of the series is pretty grounded mil-sf and then those come out of nowhere. I found those twists to be pretty awesome, but I can see someone expecting straight scifi to maybe feel like it's jumping the tracks. Again, there's literally a section in the third book with the main character standing on top of a space elevator car in power armor 80 miles off the ground sniping alien insurgents as they try to cut the tether she's riding down that's so absurd it wrap around into being awesome.
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Jun 17, 2015 06:20
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ArchangeI posted:("Let's rejuvenate literally SS soldiers to fight against an alien invasion because modern day Germany is overrun by liberals who just don't cut it" is the plot of one of their books) It's a contentious book but that's not the plot. It's more like "literally everyone else is either dead or already fighting, we're desperate enough to rejuvenate literal nazis so aliens don't eat everyone".
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Jun 17, 2015 19:26
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chrisoya posted:I mean, Ringo will write about how his protagonist (him) is all pent-up due to fighting and needs to rape something, so he goes and gets a literal child prostitute and rapes her (that he does so roughly and painfully is mentioned) and then buys her to give her a better, free life (but still has to rape her first) and then goes to a political thing and meets a military guy who likes cruxshadows and dresses gothy on occasion and then the terrorists are going to nuke them so he has to save the day, Ringo is weird and I can't figure him out. Yeah, all that creepy poo poo he actually wrote, but it all happens in one of his book series. The others are mostly free of that poo poo (the Aldenata ones have the blondes in heat thing but it's mentioned maybe twice and never actually means anything to the plot), but hes still the guy ho wrote the Ghost books. I just don't get it. quote:But he's nowhere near as creepy a fucker as Kratman. Yeah, Kratman is pretty drat bad. And I agree that Watch on the Rhine is pretty much him with Ringo's name slapped on.
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Jun 17, 2015 19:38
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Chairman Capone posted:I've only read Traviss's Star Wars Republic Commando stuff, but other than the fact she writes from the view of ostensibly common soldiers (except they're not because they're super elite due to their training and pure ethnic warrior genes) I don't really see much difference between her and Ringo. Just replace "liberal" with "Jedi". Yeah Traviss isn't exactly an example of a good author. Maybe her non-Star Wars stuff is better, I haven't read it, but her SW stuff comes across as having a distinct bias. She really hates the idea of Jedi, they're basically stand-ins for 'useless liberals' in her stuff.
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Jun 17, 2015 22:13
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So I just finished Use of Weapons. God drat, Banks. 'Chairmaker' indeed. 
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Jun 28, 2015 00:56
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PINING 4 PORKINS posted:When I told a friend to read that book I said it had a really good chair in it. You are a really evil person.
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Jun 28, 2015 17:10
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Drifter posted:This is my paperback book cover, though. From the publisher. I can just imagine someone reading that book. "What the gently caress is this chair on the cover?" . . . "Oh, okay, he's freaked out by chairs for some reason? Idunno whatever." . . . . . . "Holy gently caress, what" 
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Jun 29, 2015 21:53
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General Battuta posted:Yes you could, they're superb and they all standalone. Read Player of Games then Use of Weapons, or just jump into Use of Weapons. I think Consider Phlebas is a good introduction (and it is the first book) since the viewpoint character isn't part of the Culture so you get a view of it from the outside before having characters that take it for granted in the next books.
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Jun 30, 2015 02:11
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Taeke posted:I was discussing Use of Weapons with my dad the other day. As I told him, my favourite thing isn't so much the twist, but re-reading the book afterwards. It's like the ambiguity in a sentence like "The officer shot the man with a gun' except as a novel, and it's really cleverly done in many places. Yeah, this. In hindsight everything was set up well in advance, but I'm not quite used to Banks' style and missed the connotations of a lot of it as I read through. So at the end everything clicks together all at once. Like the chapter that ends with Zakalwe shooting himself in the head. Oh, that's why he woke up in a hospital with a messed-up memory. And then later, NOPE  I will say the narrative construction(?) of Use of Weapons is pretty unique - one story progressing 'forwards' and the other starting at the 'end' and working back to the beginning, alternating by chapter I haven't seen done before.
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Jun 30, 2015 15:45
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Fried Chicken posted:gently caress that poo poo, they dumped tons of money and spent years lobbying preventing libraries from offering that service, just so they could turn around and charge you for the same service under their name. Screw those bastards There are lots of places to get ebooks online, even free. Baen has most of their stuff online, then there's Gutenberg.... I'm sure there are others I'm not aware of. Honestly at this point Calibre has been the best thing to happen to my book reading. I actually have too much stuff to read for once.
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Jul 1, 2015 21:13
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Psion posted:Honor Harrington started okay as Hornblower in Space (with a Space France and Space Britain) but it spirals downhill fast. The first two books - On Basilisk Station and The Honor of the Queen are free on baen's website. Try the first, and if it's okay go to the second. If you think "hm that was okay, but it needed another 200 pages of technobabble filler and the protagonist needs to be even more awesome," then continue with the series. Otherwise, don't. This page actually has downloads for all the CDs full of free books Baen places in their hardcopies. AFAIK it's completely kosher since the contents of the CDs are free anyway. This one has the first dozen Harrington book in it, plus some side stories. Honor Harrington is by no means a literary masterpiece, but if you like swashbuckling space navy stuff or intergalactic politics it's a fun read.
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Jul 6, 2015 18:38
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Libluini posted:I stopped reading when the new super bad people looked like they would get schooled by a secondary character soon. Has that happened? Is there a third enemy now, or did the super bad people and their fancy space u-boats get to win this one time? Or did the series end? Most of the plot progress for the Mesa Alignment stuff has been happening in the Torch/Crown of Slaves books, so you only get Honor showing up for a brief cameo every once in a while. The viewpoint characters are Anton Zilwicki (a retired Manticoran super spy dude, his teen daughter is the queen of Torch) and Victor Cachat (who is basically Space France Jason Bourne) and that particular spinoff series is almost completely devoid of spaceship fights, instead it's more about ground-level spy-type infiltration stuff (with the obligatory politics infodumps mostly coming from the Mesan side).
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Jul 7, 2015 22:02
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Yeah, you won't get any argument from me that Weber is running out of antagonists. But what can you expect, the series is seriously at least two dozen books long now if you include the spin-offs and short story anthologies. Weber needs to find a way to just end it. (So he can spend more time writing Safehold books  )
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Jul 7, 2015 22:20
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Drifter posted:So what you're telling me is that the Safehold series is loving terrible? It's not space opera so I don't really bring it up in this thread, but it's a lot better than his Harrington stuff. It's still Weber, if you can't stand his infodump writing style that hasn't changed, but he avoids a lot of the 'new writer' mistakes he made with Harrington, and the setting isn't a lazy 'X but in SPACE' kludge. The main character is still pretty mary sue-ish, but it kind of fits the narrative (state-of-the-art space age android versus muskets and sabers isn't exactly an even contest) but the books acknowledge that no single person, no matter how superhuman, could simply roll up and change a society overnight, so he has to work behind the scenes, gathering allies, supporting them with 'inventions', etc.
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Jul 8, 2015 06:44
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I think the thing with the Safehold books being so huge is that he's trying to avoid the trap he fell into with Harrington, where you build up the bad guy, the good guys win... And then where do you go from there? Have to hastily introduce a new bad guy which feels shoehorned in. Safehold (the planet/setting) is actually pretty intricate, and a lot of the extra page count is in giving the reader insights into peripheral countries that may not be the most relevant now, but I think Weber wants them set up for later on down the line.
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Jul 8, 2015 19:35
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Deptfordx posted:I see they're republishing the first two Hells Gate books which if I recall, it was about 10 years since the last one, are unfinished storywise. Time for Weber to pick up another series which he will never finish. I liked those books too. Why can't Weber finish what he starts? 
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Jul 23, 2015 01:02
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Deptfordx posted:Oh god i've just remembered. It wasn't a Safehold book. The last one I read was 'Out of the Dark'. Which was just Haha, isn't that the one where 90% of the book is aliens roflstomping Earth and then the last 10% is vampires literally coming out of nowhere, never mentioned before in the book to save the day? 
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Jul 24, 2015 17:50
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So I started in on Evan Currie's other scifi series, Odyssey. First, a warning: the first book in the series was apparently the first book the guy ever wrote, and god drat does it show. The grammar is strange as hell, people don't talk naturally, and there are way too many run-on sentences that should have been caught in editing. Also, the book seems to average 2 to 3 commas per sentence. It was honestly a slog to get through. But we all know I love terrible books, and there was enough good old grand space opera stuff to keep me engaged. The second book is a huge jump in quality and the scope of the plot/conflict gets even crazier. If you enjoyed his other series, Warrior's Wings, this one is pretty similar stuff, just focusing more on space battleships and fighter craft. There's an odd mixture of cliches (at least one group of the 'aliens' are actually human... somehow, and the bad guys are your typical giant bug race only silicon-based with lava for blood and procreate geometrically by eating dirt) with more interesting ideas (One of the... characters is either a planetary gestalt mind or possibly a telepathic star-based lifeform, jury's still out. And a Dyson Swarm features prominently in the second book, cosmic megastructures are always cool). They're definitely not "good" books, but if you need/want some sci-fi chaff to chew through they're not terrible.
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Jul 28, 2015 23:46
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I just wish authors would finish their damned series instead of just dropping them to work on something else. Weber never did finish the Hell's Gate books.  And yeah, I actually like the Safehold books but by this point it's been established for 3-4 books now that the Church is irredeemable and imcompetent and other than maybe the treasury guy growing a spine Weber is running out of plot room.
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Oct 25, 2015 21:39
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Psion posted:basically any interesting concept you have involving interpersonal conflict or character growth, Weber didn't, and it's a drat shame. Even though it was cliche as hell I was a bit tickled at the introduction of Nimue in the last book. There's a lot of potential for inter-character drama and comparisons between her and Merlin, therefore Weber won't explore any of it.
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Oct 25, 2015 22:13
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Darkrenown posted:The Hell's Gate books were really bad though. Like, really awful, and I like pretty much everything else Weber has done. I do wish he'd finish the Mutineer's Moon series (which oddly include a one book proto-Safehold), or if him and Ringo could finish Prince Rodger - although it seems like there's another book in progress there. Those series are pretty much finished, though? The Dahak books end with the proto-Safehold one, but the end definitely was 'an' end. The Prince Roger stuff ends with We Few, where he fights his way back to the capital planet and dethrownes the usurper (but drat that ending re: his mother was dark). e: Well poo poo, more Roger? He was getting pretty drat Marty Stu by the end, but Weber is apparently a blind spot for me so I'll have to read them...
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Oct 26, 2015 19:09
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^^^: Yeah, that's a good concise way to say it.gfanikf posted:Quick question what general separates hard Sci fi from non hard Sci fi? Is it like Star Wars vs Star Trek (though the former is more fantasy)? I wouldn't even consider Star Trek 'hard' scifi, myself. Asking for a hard definition is asking for an argument, but the way I look at it is 'soft' scifi is stuf like Star Wars ('science fantasy') where the veneer of scifi is there but the 'rules' aren't set and you can wave stuff away with 'space magic' (the Force, Star Trek  )'Hard' scifi is all about rules and realism. Stuff like Asimov's books or scifi where the ships operate on 'real' science (rather than warp drive and antigravity) is what I consider 'hard' SF.
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Oct 26, 2015 19:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:So something like Niven's "Neutron Star", which is story literally about neutron star physics, is hard SF I always like Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg as an example of 'Hard SF' that still manages to include aliens and vast timescales.
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Oct 26, 2015 19:39
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^^^: I haven't read that since someone described Saturn's Children as 'literal scifi porn' to me.  Hieronymous Alloy posted:Charles Stross almost singlehandedly killed off hard SF space opera (at least for me )by starting a series where he dealt with the impossible, causality violating difficulties of FTL travel in a way consistent with Einsteinian science, all explained clearly in a way i could understand, then refusing to finish the series because even he admitted it just wasn't workable past a certain point. Which series was that? Glancing at his wikipedia page, the only thing of his I've read is Accelerando, which from what I remember probably qualifies as 'hard' SF, but not a space opera. WarLocke fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Oct 26, 2015 |
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Oct 26, 2015 19:51
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gfanikf posted:Funny enough I might wind up in a different direction after looking at Stoss's wiki page I came across the Atrocity Archive and while clearly not space opera, seems to fit into my love of the trashy, yet fun military and gov't fights monsters in non PA settings. I tried to read the first book but couldn't get into it. On the other hand I liked Ringo's Princess of Wands which is basically the same thing but from a fantasy/cthulhu angle (plus it's Ringo) so what do I know.
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Oct 26, 2015 21:08
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chrisoya posted:How was the sequel? I never read it, despite hearing it was set moments after the first book. If you liked Dragon's Egg then you'll probably like Starquake. It's been a few years since I read it but it's basically more of the same, just as 'crunchy' but instead of an emerging civilization the Cheela go through Armageddon to Mad Max and then surpassing our own technology while the human ship/crew is dealing with Apollo 13 stuff I started Joel Shepherd's new book, Renegade today and something about the guy's writing style always hooks me. The Kresnov books were great but cyber-cop stuff isn't my favorite; this one is full-on space navy with politics and intrigue and I can't put it down. Also thanks for the comments on Saturn's Child, I'll hunt down a copy and give it a try.
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Oct 27, 2015 19:38
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Mars4523 posted:Also, between Sasha Lenayin, Cassandra Kresnov, and this series, I don't think Joel Shepherd is capable of writing a leading female character who isn't a total badass. Major Thakur is pretty drat awesome. Yeah, I liked the Kresnov books, it's just that space navy stuff is inherently more cool to me than cyber-cop stuff. Plus the semi-Indian society infodumps were kind of weird (I am the whitest dude alive living in the Bible Belt, I have no frame of reference for that). Still great books though. And holy poo poo, I finished Renegade today and that Alo reveal/tease. This book definnitely qualifies as space opera. And Major Thakur is indeed an awesome character. The writing for the marines in general was pretty impressive. RIP T-Bone, no making apple cider for you. e: Well poo poo, I googled 'Joel Shepherd Sasha' and not only does he have a fantasy series I haven't read, but there's a sixth Kresnov book? I know what I'm tracking down next... WarLocke fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Oct 28, 2015 |
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Oct 28, 2015 19:39
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Mars4523 posted:Likewise in Renegade, there's maybe one explicitly white person in the entire book. Trace is darker skinned Indian, and I believe Erik is some kind of brown. He also goes out of his way a couple times in the book to drive home that hardly anyone knows or cares about old racial divides. Hiro (one of Lisbeth's bodyguards) gets called out as being proud of his Japanese heritage when nobody else seems to care about that stuff. Also the ship tech is mostly crunchy. The way FTL jumps is described is a bit weird, and the 'pulse' acceleration stuff is kind of out there, but ships obey Newtonian laws, and Human ships at least use rotation for gravity instead of magic antigrav generators. Which makes the whole grapple smaller ship and use it as a hostage/shield bit near the end of the book even more ridiculous/awesome.
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Oct 28, 2015 20:21
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Miss-Bomarc posted:I'm taking a plunge here because the description on Amazon sounds like something a twelve-year-old who played all the Halo games nine times each would write. ... Kind of? I mean I can see the parallels, but the writing isn't juvenile, Shepherd is pretty good. But the universe and basic background I can see being similar if you squint just right. Started on Saturn's Child yesterday, was kind of dreading the sex stuff going in. But it was strangely clinical, which I guess makes sense considering the premise. Which is kind of depressing, actually, a whole society of robots that still, deep down, carry programming to obey/serve humanity - which is new dead and gone so what do these robots do with themselves? 
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Oct 30, 2015 18:20
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