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Shampoo posted:Speaking of which, whatever happened to Niven? All he does is collaborations with authors I've never heard of, and none of them ever seem that good. I love his old stuff from the 70s, but can't get behind his latest works. General consensus is that the brain eater got him sometime around the writing of Ringworld Engineers (whether it was before or after RE is a contentious point). I'm guessing that he either ran out of good ideas or just got tired of writing about them.
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Jun 28, 2009 00:55
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Fallom posted:I just finished the third book in David Brin's Uplift Series, Most people (me included) find the second Uplift trilogy (Brightness Reef etc.) rather weaker than the first books. The plot doesn't advance very fast, and the big reveal at the end doesn't seem all that significant. Unfortunately though Brin is good at creating tension from darkly-hinted mysteries, he's not so good when he actually has to answer those mysteries. (Some of his short stories show the same effect.)
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Jul 5, 2009 23:32
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Toadsniff posted:They're probably not "Space Opera" but are the John Scalzi "Old Man's War"/etc worth reading? Looking for some good siffy lately. They're more like a more nuanced version of early Heinlein, but yeah, they're worth reading (at least the first two).
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Jul 25, 2009 16:50
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They're all excellent books; AFUtD is probably the most stand alone (since the prequel is only loosely connected), followed by Consider Phlebas (Bank's Culture stuff is all part of a series, but each novel stands on its own feet), followed by Revelation Space, where the major plot threads aren't tied up until several novels later. I dunno. They're all drat good, up their with the best SF novels of the last 20 years or so, and I find it hard to recommend any one over the others. I'd say start with AFUtD, and bear in mind that for the other two, people sometimes find other books in those series as being stronger: Use of Weapons for Banks, Chasm City for Reynolds.
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Aug 2, 2009 00:28
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Chairman Capone posted:That series sounds pretty interesting, but on the other hand it is written by the absolutely terrible John Ringo, so is it worth it? Does the story manage to overcome his atrocious high-school level characterization, plots, and writing? I only read the first two(?), but in my opinion, no. As always, remember you can get the books free and legal online (e.g. here) rather than pay money for this stuff.
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Nov 3, 2009 23:24
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Tanith posted:The alternate title for The Temporal Void is Edeard Tears poo poo Up. I feel like re-reading the first two Commonwealth books now, though this time I think I'll skip the Silfen subplot.
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May 20, 2010 16:03
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If you really want Hornblower in space, you should look for David Feintuch's Seafort Saga, starting with Midshipman's Hope, which really nails the "angsty captain who can't live up to his own standards but everybody else thinks is the bollocks" part of it.
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Jun 9, 2010 06:43
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Slo-Tek posted:David Brin's Uplift Series and other books in the same universe have a ton of deliberately weird aliens, lots of politics, some space battles, and some reverse the dilithium antimatter exchange buckyballs techno babble. Quite a bit of Banks stuff is ME-like. Several of both his Culture and non-Culture books (I'm thinking particularly of The Algebraist) have a bunch of politics driving the plot. Also Reynolds, and later Peter F. Hamilton. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Nov 22, 2010 |
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Nov 22, 2010 02:14
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Chairman Capone posted:I used to give Baen a lot of credit for their willingness to put both old and new titles online for free. But on the other hand, most of their free stuff is poo poo like this. Also the covers to their books are, without a single exception, absolutely terrible. Ah, Freehold. What I love about that is one of the later books in the series has the I'm-obviously-the-author's-avatar protagonist talking about how utterly disgusting terrorists are for targeting civilians, but at the end of Freehold a general kills several billion civilians by kamikazing spaceships at relativistic speeds into Earth's major cities. Of course the general was wearing a uniform (and was targeting the scummy, degenerate, and above all liberal Earth), so that makes him a hero. Also, libertarian wiccan utopia.
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Dec 2, 2010 21:12
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HUMAN FISH posted:I absolutely loving loved the combat in Night's Dawn. Likewise, in Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained, it's a better story if you skip the Ozzie has a magic hippy adventure in the elven pathways sections. That said, having read one of Donaldson's leper leper unclean books, I'd never call him a better author than Hamilton. Maybe that's unfair because I've never read the Gap Cycle or whatever it's called, but he seems way too fond of using ten obscure words where one common one would do.
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Sep 1, 2011 21:25
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It's possible you just don't care for it. Miles definitely develops over the course of the series, and the stories rely less on the "tell lies oh poo poo it worked stuff", but certainly "smart guy underestimated because of what he looks like" remains his strong suit. Komarr is a much-later 2nd entry point for the series that happens after some significant changes to Miles' life, so you might give that a shake. You also might want to try Barrayar since it's primarily following Cordelia, like Shards of Honor (and is its chronological sequel despite being written much later).
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Sep 16, 2011 04:58
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Chairman Capone posted:But in a wormhole, you're not instantly teleporting from point A to point B instantly across light years, you're traveling a few meters through normal space. The two entry points of the wormhole are at a distance apart, but for objects traveling between them, there is nothing to differentiate it from just going back and forth through an area of normal space. If you create a wormhole and go from one side to another, you're not going to just starting jumping through time as well. But for an observer travelling at a high (relativistic) speeds relative to the wormhole entrances, you can definitely get acausal effects. In essence, because for that observer one end of the wormhole will be in effect "backwards in time" and therefore something travelling through it will violate causality. Roger MacBride Allen's Depths of Time (and sequels) is a reasonably good series which is concerned with wormhole travel, though these are temporal wormholes that explicitly link to the past.
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Oct 4, 2011 20:24
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Bass Concert Hall posted:So I just read the first Honor Harrington novel and couldn't really stand it - even setting aside the annoying as gently caress right-wing caricatures in the book's political machinations, the characters are so flat and unlikable and Honor is such a Mary Sue sperg. Ugh. It's interesting to find someone else who likes Heavy Time, it's a great story but not very well known. For anyone who likes Cherryh I'd recommend Bujold's Vorkosigan novels (not heavy on the space opera but strongly character driven), and almost anything by Alastair Reynolds starting with Revelation Space. Neal Asher's stories have a bit of right-wing bias but nowhere near as heavy-handed as Weber - try Gridlinked. And if somehow you've managed to miss Iain (M.) Banks, well, then, read stuff by Iain (M.) Banks. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Dec 17, 2011 |
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Dec 17, 2011 02:07
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mcustic posted:I'm reading Neal Asher's The Departure, or, as I call it The Ravings of a UKIP Lunatic. I find the action scenes enjoyable and some of the ideas not without merit, but his politics are totally crazy. Someone in this thread called him a literal fascist, but I think he's much worse than that. The entire book feels like a revenge fantasy aimed at Brussels and the EU. The Departure is the anti-1984 of our time. It's weird he turned out to be such a reactionary. You can read the Cormac novels without really noticing it (any such opinions are attributable to the characters and are do not obviously cry "this is the author surrogate and thus has the correct opinion"). I'd swear Cowl had a fairly progressive tone (for instance the thinly-veiled Ian Fleming was not portrayed as particularly sympathetic). However it's not a good book and I haven't read it recently, so maybe I missed something. Peter F. Hamilton is also fairly right-wing, which is obvious in the Mindstar/Greg Mandel books, but not particularly noticeable in his later stuff.
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Aug 16, 2012 20:09
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sebmojo posted:the autistic repetition of phrases like 'neural nanonics' becomes teeth-grinding. I actually liked the later commonwealth books, though. At least if you skip the hippy adventures in fairyland sections.
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Mar 12, 2013 06:12
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Count Roland posted:I'm a big fan of Niven, but only of his older classics. Ringworld Throne was trash and glancing through his recent stuff I see more desire for paycheques than uniqueness or creativity. I don't think it's money he's after - if I recall the story, he's independently wealthy because his family really made out in the Teapot Dome scandal - but I do think he ran out of decent ideas long, long ago.
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Jun 7, 2014 05:07
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Chairman Capone posted:May not specifically be "space opera", but... Moving Mars by Greg Bear, worth getting? I saw it on the Kindle sale today, and I like the idea of student protest on Mars, but looking at Wikipedia it's apparently part of a series, so would reading it blind be not worth it? I read it when it came out, and eh, it was OK but not brilliant. I was expecting something on par with Blood Music or Eon, and it was a bit of a let-down. It's loosely connected to Queen of Angels and / (Slant), which are much better books, and most strongly connected to Heads which is a quirky little novella. But if I remember it can be pretty much read stand-alone. jng2058 posted:That's pretty wrong. Has SyFy made anything worth a drat since they went "SyFy" instead of "Sci-Fi"? I like Continuum, it's developed a fairly strong plot as it's gone on. Also somewhat amusing to see a SyFy show that doesn't try to hide that it's filmed in Canada.
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Aug 7, 2014 21:38
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Bolow posted:If I did this with enzyme-bonded-concrete in the The Commonwealth Saga, I would be dead. Neural nanonics, is all I have to say. Hamilton desperately needs his editor to forcibly disable the text-macro function of his word processor.
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Sep 8, 2014 18:21
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Internet Wizard posted:I'm on the lookout for some scifi, preferably milsf, that has ancient astronaut themes. Quality isn't necessarily a priority, so long as it isn't like, weird Ringo style stuff like child rape or reenacting Mogadishu with super soldiers or whatever. For MilSF, I guess Weber's Dahak/"Empire from the Ashes" series, starting with Mutineers' Moon. (You can get them here for free, under "Dahak series".) It's by no means MilSF, but my favourite ancient astronauts story is James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars. (The sequels get progressively loopier, though, so don't bother with those.)
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Apr 26, 2015 20:04
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Darth Walrus posted:And Imma second that Vorkosigan rec. That series is one of the go-tos for light, fun political space-opera. That's true, but be wary that the level of light and fun can vary quite a bit. It can go from "Miles and Ivan have fun on vacation" (Cetaganda) to some fairly grim stuff (e.g. Mirror Dance) without much notice.
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May 14, 2015 21:46
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The funniest thing about Vinge is that he is arguably a Golden Age writer. His first published story was sold to John W. Campbell, the editor who basically shaped Golden Age SF. Vinge just didn't get famous till the 90's. His novella "True Names" (1981) got him quite a bit of attention (early cyberpunk, and it was quite influential in establishing a bunch of themes common in cyberpunk), and I enjoyed his Realtime novels when they came out. But his writing definitely improved over time and AFUtD was where he hit his stride.
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May 29, 2015 22:41
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If you like the Sector General books (and I think everyone should at least try them - they are so very 50s in some ways, like the misogyny, but quite unusual in their pacifism) - then try finding a copy of The Complete Venus Equilateral by George O. Smith. It's really, really 40s-50s SF at beginning (the titular space station is an interplanetary relay station between Earth and Venus) but goes in some surprising directions with technology in the later stories, ending up with a kind of post-scarcity semi-utopia that seems way ahead of its time. Well worth pushing through to the end.Washout posted: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. 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. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 04:03
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It's been a good long time since I read Revelation Space but I recall some talk of the effect of their non-FTL travel on society. People travelling across space essentially leaving everyone they knew X-years behind them, while they don't really age. Isn't that why one of the characters (Sylveste?) travelled in the first place, to get away from past acts? Assuming that it doesn't really matter physiologically how long you are frozen, then the length of the trip in your frame doesn't really make much difference to you, it's more the societal effect of "having spent 15 years (according to everyone else) frozen" that would be more important.
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May 5, 2017 15:13
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