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I would say 2312 is accessible*, but it's pretty dry and I've seen some people develop a strong dislike for the protagonist. It's not the sort of novel that grips you with a driving plot, it's more like a slice of life look into what the solar system and human beings are like 300 years from now. (I suppose it had more of a plot than "a future history of Mars", I guess?) I am not at all surprised it didn't fare well in an online vote. I haven't read any of the other books on the fantasy nominee list but The Apocalypse Codex is the weakest Laundry novel**, but again, not at all surprised it won an online vote. *Granted, I may not be the best person in the world to gauge this. When I think "inaccessible" I think Pynchon. And I'm the sort of person who grins at finding the word "escarpment" in a KSR novel. **The Jennifer Morgue is Fleming, The Fuller Memorandum is le Carré, and The Apocalypse Codex is Clancy. Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Jun 30, 2013 |
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Jun 30, 2013 13:14
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This is a tendency of mine when it comes to deeply divisive works of fiction but I didn't think it was terrible nor did I feel it was a masterpiece. I just enjoyed it for what it was (having read the Mars Trilogy), and can understand people being upset if it wasn't quite what they had hoped for. I didn't even find Swan that grating, and Wahram is a great character. My favourite parts were the interludes KSR put between chapters about future history and the development of science and would read a book by KSR that is nothing but those. I will reserve giving an opinion whether it's the Dune of the 21st century until it's the 22nd century.  I'm kinda doubtful it will have the same sort of genre impact Dune did, in that I doubt we'll be seeing anything like the subsequent flood of Feudalism In Space. (And it's kind of descriptive that that is what most took away from Dune, instead of the mysticism and the ecology.)
Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Jun 30, 2013 |
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Jun 30, 2013 13:45
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Heads up that there's a new Humble ebook Bundle available, including Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold and Spin by Robert Charles Wilson.
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Jul 3, 2013 21:16
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Guy A. Person posted:He mentions it briefly in this interview: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/unsolving-city-interview-with-china.html To be fair, "Jack Vance already did it" must be a pretty common stumbling block in science fiction and fantasy.
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Jul 5, 2013 18:17
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Loving Life Partner posted:Just jumping into Red Seas Under Red Skies, already howling at Lynch's writing. The comedy in the card game was brilliant. Every time a deal happened and he'd talk about how terrible Jean and Locke's hands were slayed me. I think one line was like, "Locke smirked openly as he surveyed his cards, which were an amazing constellation of crap." I'd read a whole book of the two of them just travelling around the known world starting up thieves' guilds in different towns and cities with all the misadventures and complications that would result in. Who knows, maybe Republic of Thieves will be something like that. Lynch already seems to have a proclivity for writing novels in episodic form.
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Jul 24, 2013 21:52
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General Battuta posted:E: For those of you who are constantly looking for good space opera, I also wrote a big stupid post about why I like Scott Westerfeld's Succession so much. Might be of interest. Oh damnit, I didn't know The Risen Empire went by that name abroad so when I read your post I assumed Westerfeld had written more awesome space opera.
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Aug 20, 2013 08:17
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General Battuta posted:Perdido Street Station starts with an almost unreadably difficult passage about a man sailing up a river into a terrible place. I'm not sure it remains comfortably young-adult-safe much past that point, but the opening at least could do... What about The City and The City? Not as complex as Perdido maybe, but I would love to have a class of 16 year olds read that (or any Miéville). It's fantasy depending on how you want to interpret the latter chapters; it's about two cities that share the same space physically, but not socially.
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Aug 21, 2013 10:22
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Wangsbig posted:I've also decided to read a YA book or two since I basically never have in my life. I think I'm going to be book sad for a long time. The best YA novel I've ever read, that is to say the best novel that has been called YA (it almost feels like a pejorative these days, in that a good novel can't also be YA), is Sabriel by Garth Nix. But I suppose this recommendation misses the mark if you want to read "proper" YA as it's commonly understood, i.e. stuff like Divergent or Beautiful Creatures.
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Aug 27, 2013 12:04
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Fried Chicken posted:My mistake on Abercrombie. Stross just wrapped up a complete re-write of the Merchant Princes series where he went back and added a bunch of stuff that the publishers originally had him axe due to contract issues. I bought the first two books of Merchant Princes just last week (the original editions). How do I go from there? I'm already almost done with the first book. Should I grab the combined editions of books 3+4 and 5+6 instead of the old separate editions?
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Sep 2, 2013 17:52
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Decius posted:He reworked a lot of stuff, especially the first two books, as he was forced by contract to take a hatchet to something that was supposed to be one book. The pacing is better, the books fit together better, he corrected some inconsistencies and made the whole thing flow better. But the basic structure and story is the same. I'm neither American nor do I have a Kindle.  The omnibuses are up on bookdepository for 10 euros a piece or so, but I don't think I can really afford to buy the first two books all over again. However, it will be cheaper to buy the redone part 2 and 3. I'd get the first part from the library, but there's no way they'll be available within the next six months and I'm halfway through The Family Trade. If I hadn't bought book #2 I'd have bitten the bullet maybe. Edit: I did the math and since I only paid 6 euros for book #2, I'll get all three omnibus editions. Book #1 I won't give up because it's a souvenir. I was ready to pay 6 euros a piece for all six books, so paying 44 for the lot isn't that bad, especially if I can get some money back for book #2. Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Sep 2, 2013 |
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Sep 2, 2013 20:09
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Grimwall posted:Word of warning, while the main character of 2312, Swan, is a self indulgent little spoiled poo poo (at 130 odd years old!) don't let it turn you off the book. It has a great and actually plausible solar system that is just lovely to get lost in. Also, Swan can be seen as a warning of dangers of a post-scarcity hedonist lifestyle. There's also Wahram. Of course, I am not the author so maybe KSR had his reasons, but Wahram should have been the primary protagonist. I don't think I could have made it without Wahram.
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Sep 3, 2013 15:19
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Vinterstum posted:I think this is a good point. A good amount of the criticisms against Sanderson seems to be that the magic isn't handwavy Abra-Kadabra mysticism and that he spends too much time explaining the laws in detail, which is fair enough, but viewing it as just another form of science is a much better fit and makes it closer in concept to explaining, say, the details of a warp drive in an SF novel and have that be a major plot driver. And this is why I particularly enjoy Alloy of Law, because it's set in a sort of industrial revolution era where people are really starting to get deep into how allomancy works and have discovered some new metals as well. The role of metal is so ingrained into their culture that it's everywhere and has influenced everything from technology to the kind of clothing people wear. (Admittedly it's almost hokey sometimes.) Also why I'm looking forward to the novel where people are able to turn allomancy into FTL travel.
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Sep 10, 2013 22:44
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I recommend Guy Gavriel Kay for fantasy that's light on magic and is well written. You can start with Tigana or Lions of Al-Rassan. Don't start with the Fionavar trilogy, they are his first novels and it shows. It's kind of like historical fiction in that his novels draw heavily from certain historical periods and regions (Lions of Al-Rassan, for instance, is Spain during the Reconquista) but then mix it up a fair bit.
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Sep 11, 2013 12:48
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So are you saying Salvatore is Monopoly, Sanderson is Power Grid and Pynchon is chess?
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Sep 12, 2013 14:44
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The problem I have with Turtledove is that his alternate history is very deterministic, in the sense that even with a point of divergence that should cause a radically different outcome, there's some kind of regression to the mean except with some of the people and nations changed around. For example, he has one series where the South win independence in the American Civil War. This inevitably leads to a WW1 where the USA and the CSA are France and Germany respectively, and then a WW2 where the CSA is Literally Nazi Germany and the CSA leader is Literally Hitler, with African Americans being the victims of the Holocaust. It's lazy and he does it a lot. Disclaimer: I have not actually read much of Turtledove. This is based on bitching by friends. Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Sep 15, 2013 |
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Sep 14, 2013 23:01
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I finished Spin by Robert Charles Wilson today and found out it's #1 of a trilogy. Spin was fairly self-contained, are the other two books worth picking up if I liked Spin? I can't see sequels really capturing the same concepts and atmosphere.
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Sep 24, 2013 15:41
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General Battuta posted:I haven't read anything past Spin, but I think reports suggest they decline pretty sharply and end up pulling the Endymion Gambit of retconning earlier stuff to make it less interesting. Movac posted:I've read all 3 and can confirm this. If you want to keep reading Robert Charles Wilson, I remember enjoying Blind Lake as a thriller with some cool ideas. Thanks for the advice, I'll look into Blind Lake instead.
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Sep 24, 2013 20:31
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That was a really cool story. And I was taken by surprise by the  ending, I didn't really expect that, but in a good way.
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Nov 2, 2013 11:09
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I just finished Greg Bear's duology of The Forge of God and Anvil of Stars. Previously from Bear I've read Blood Music, the first three The Way books and Hull Zero Three, so I had mixed expectations. HZ3 was opaque until the very end where it almost clicked together brilliantly, Blood Music was amazing and The Way books were sometimes indecipherable because Bear brings a lot of hard science to the table in that series, but I still enjoyed them (the math and physics stuff was just over my head). Forge and Anvil are two really different novels so calling them a duology feels a bit strange, even though the latter picks up from where the former ends. It's just that the milieu changes dramatically because of what happens in the end of The Forge of God. Forge reminds me more of "old time" science fiction in the fashion of Clarke and Asimov where scientists discover something and that something turns out having immense consequences for the human race. It's written from several points of view and the main characters are scientists (and a scientist turned author/journalist). It's old but I'll spoiler tag anyway. Premise: The book deals with the apocalyptic cultural impact of first contact and the impending end of the world. First contact is made simultaneously in the US and Australia, by what appears to be two different sets of aliens. The US alien says the Earth is about to be destroyed, the Australian set promise the standard cornucopia of cooperation and technology. Everyone's confused. Chaos ensues. And one of Jupiter's moons just up and disappears without explanation. Discussion/ending stuff: Ultimately it turns out that it's all a big ruse by the aliens, who have arrived in the solar system to destroy the Earth for reasons that are never really explained - they are surmised to be machines so it may just be some incomprehensible replicating agenda. The ruse was, apparently, meant to confuse and befuddle the humans while the planet killers do their work, even though it's obvious the planet killer technology is centuries ahead of us and mankind could have done jack poo poo. The most interesting part of it all, I think, was how the President of the United States simply gives up. A superficial reading suggests it's because of religion, but it's made clear that the President was never very religious until first contact happened, and the religious authority who the President confers with turns out to be just as confused and baffled by the President just giving up. This leads to widespread fracturing in American society since most of the population refuses to just lie down and die. In the end, the entirety of Earth is destroyed into a cloud of debris and energy, while a remnant of mankind bears witness, rescued by a secretive alien coalition called the Benefactors who have taken up the destruction of the Killers. I actually thought the destruction of the Earth was the most intriguing part of the story because of how the aliens go about it. It's not exactly easy to bring an entire planet down to smithereens. On the other hand, it felt like it could have tightened up considerably. There's an entire subplot with a geologist (who discovered one of the decoy aliens) going on a road trip and arriving in Yellowstone to watch the world end. It doesn't really go anywhere, though it does give a fairly rosy image of an end of the world that goes against the grain: people helping each other, firemen responding to fires because in the end, that's what they would want to be doing when they die, and so on. I just don't think it deserved all the pages it got. This segues us into Anvil. Talking about it is difficult without ruining Forge so I'm just gonna put more black bars here. But it's a very different novel. It's about an isolated society of young adults, the development of that kind of society, the kind of turmoil it faces, the politics (especially sexual politics) of such a society. The premise: Earth has been wiped out, the Benefactors help humans colonize and terraform Mars, but there's a price: the children who bore witness to Earth's destruction are dispatched to hunt down and destroy the Killers, watched over by "moms", artificial intelligences manufactured by the Benefactors. So you have a ship with a hundred or so young adults who are kept perpetually healthy and sterile by the ship's technology. Who has sex with whom takes on a pretty important role in that kind of society. Bear handles it with... care, I suppose, it never goes into outright creepy territory, which is more than I can say about a lot of authors. There's no rape, but there are hints at sexual manipulation. Anyway, these kids are being raised and taught to be warriors. They are basically gonna be like Killers themselves which ultimately is not lost on them and which is the primary theme at play here. And then what happens, and thoughts on the theme (don't read this if you plan to read the book at this point): After many travails they wind up faced with a solar system that looks to be the origin of the Killers. However, the system is also inhabited by trillions of other beings, essentially a vast and rich multi-species culture that the Killers appear to have cultivated and which by all rights has the right to exist on its own. This causes a severe fracture in the society (with the added complication of one of my favourite parts of this story, the Brothers, a snake-like race of aliens who feel more human than the actual humans), because they have to decide between destroying the system with all its innocent sentient beings on scant evidence, or let the Killers get away with it. Their leader, elected before but who has now assumed the airs of a tyrant, orders the destruction of the system and enough people follow him for it to happen. In the end, once the system has been wiped out, they do find conclusive proof that they were in fact the Killers, and they have carried out the job they were sent out to do. But they are left a mentally and socially broken people, although slowly on the mend, because of what they went through to accomplish it. And, poignantly, they got really, really lucky. I don't really know what to think about this novel. It started slow but the exploration of the society involved, the alien race and the philosophical dilemma in the end was engaging, and even though the running theme was "vengeance makes people commit that which called for vengeance in the first place," it didn't feel hackneyed like it should at face value. It's more layered and nuanced than that. I think I recommend them, but not strongly. If you've enjoyed Bear's work, it's not as good as Blood Music, but I think I'd rank Anvil higher than The Way books. Can you read Anvil without reading Forge? I think you can. Should you? If it sounds more interesting, then sure. They are very different stories.
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Nov 17, 2013 15:26
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regularizer posted:Just a heads up, Promise of Blood is $1.99 on the Kindle right now. I haven't read it but it looks pretty interesting and has received a ton of positive reviews with 4-5 stars on Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble. Promise of Blood (and London Falling upthread) both get a thumbs up from me. Promise of Blood has first-of-trilogy-itis, it's self-contained enough but it's obviously the first part of a series so it takes a lot of time putting pieces into place and introducing the setting and characters. It's a series I'm looking forward to, though. The technology is roughly 18th century but it's not steampunk, which is pretty fresh for a fantasy novel. I also like the flavour of the setting which I think is supposed to be Central European. Like someone said earlier London Falling is kind of rough in the beginning but it improves a ton. I got special enjoyment out of it since I follow English football. But it's not necessary.
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Nov 24, 2013 10:08
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Waltzing Along posted:I read through the OP and noticed something: The OP has Asimov and Clark, it should probably have Adams as well. I can totally see why no one realized he should be in there though. I mean who hasn't heard of Douglas Adams? But then who hasn't heard of Asimov or Clarke?
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Nov 25, 2013 09:09
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Xandu posted:I just started reading The Family Trade by Charles Stross. So far, it seems like a better version of The Long Earth. Be warned that the first book ends rather abruptly because the publisher had the first story split into two novels.
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Dec 24, 2013 13:43
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Decius posted:That's why you should get the re-issue. Stross overhauled the whole series again for the re-release (in three books as originally intended) in preparation for a follow-up series somewhere in 2016. Yeah, I got the reissued first book of the trilogy (The Bloodline Feud) and it was better that way. If you already have the first book of six though, eh. I think you can get away with reading the first two separately but then you should probably move to the reissue. So you read 1.1, 1.2, then 2, 3.
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Dec 26, 2013 12:01
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fritz posted:Neal Asher @nealasher 2h I have Gridlinked and Line of Polity I got used from a yard sale. I'm now contemplating ritually burning them instead of reading them. I'm not even kidding. drat you, SF author derangement syndrome. (I do believe they're supposed to be good and not-obnoxious books, though.)
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Jan 8, 2014 07:30
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I have a very visceral reaction to "Global warming? Then why is it so cold outside?  " because it's a strong indicator of an enormous rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 9, 2014 07:18
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Fried Chicken posted:Deepness in the Sky Fire Upon the Deep, and Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge, a pretty loose trilogy. His non humans are very non human and very well done, and certainly not reskinned humans I wouldn't call them "reskinned humans" either but they're not utterly incomprehensible either. They're somewhere between starfish and Klingons in that you can still perfectly relate to them. Deepness actually has a pretty clever conceit to make this work well (you are essentially being treated to a translation of alien society into human language and concepts).
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Jan 30, 2014 23:39
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Megazver posted:Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert are poo poo writers. The only book I've read by Robert J. Sawyer (Red Planet Blues) was a weak 3/5. And L. Neil Smith as far as I know is a crazy libertarian type (even for an SF author).
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Feb 2, 2014 00:50
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RightClickSaveAs posted:The Martian by Andy Weir comes out on Tuesday. It's a near future hard sci-fi that's basically Hatchet (Gary Paulsen's book Hatchet, not the horror movie) set on Mars with an astronaut MacGyver as the main character. It was very fun to read and I blew through it way more quickly than I usually read books. That sounds really really familiar, was it a self-published ebook at some point?
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Feb 7, 2014 14:32
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I've read Book of Jhereg, the first three stories in publication order, and the setting didn't come across as incoherent to me. But I enjoy the sort of setting where the author holds information back and the rest is up to you to figure out or decide. My biggest issue was that I really struggled to put my finger on the kind of technology they actually have, and there were a few modern sounding concepts and technologies that seemed out of place.Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:I'll take a stab at getting this thread back to talking about actual SF/F. Well without spoiling anything, no, it doesn't really pick up. The main intrigue is resolved but it doesn't build up to a climax in as much as the resolution just shows up. My experience with 2312 was very much like yours, a brilliantly realized universe with a poorly realized protagonist (Swan; Wahram rocks) and a muddled plot. Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 23:48
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Darth Walrus posted:The Waters Rising is pretty bizarre by all accounts as well. That article has my least favourite thing and my most favourite thing this week: an extended debate on horse rape, and quote:Gene Wolfe is the Blessed Walrus of Obliqueness
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Feb 23, 2014 13:20
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Fried Chicken posted:
I realize there's a Laundry thread here somewhere but I have a friend who met Stross and they chatted about the upcoming Laundry stuff and I think what you are describing are The Laundry universe's version of elves.
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Feb 27, 2014 17:21
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Oh, believe you me, I'm incredibly jealous. But yeah, it's in spoiler tags, mouse over at your own peril.
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Feb 27, 2014 17:30
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My friend is a cool person and lives in Boston and all, but no, not Paul Krugman. This is probably a good excuse to link Krugman's 1978 paper on interstellar economics.
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Feb 27, 2014 17:36
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Yeah if it's any consolation, I was fully aware of the naming convention and still not entirely hip to the jive on what was going on with the space traders besides the generalities. I was far too engaged by the spiders in sports cars.
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Mar 2, 2014 14:13
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(Big Deepness in the Sky spoilers) Yeah, basically, he became such a legendary figure that people named their children after him, and they their children, so he can use the name and no one will catch on. He disappeared for such a long time and grew older in the process so no one has an inkling it could possibly be him. Adolf Hilter would be the same if Hitler was a hero instead of a villain and if he'd been in cold storage and only emerged in the year 2500.
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Mar 3, 2014 15:42
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Darth Walrus posted:Regarding magic systems, I think the problem with Sanderson's 'magic is a science' approach is that he doesn't go far enough. His magic is very limited, generally restricted to a chosen few and primarily based around combat. It doesn't really shape society, except on an abstract, macro level - all it does is add a layer of videogame sperg to his fight scenes. This seems to me like precisely the opposite of the best reason for demystifying magic - to democratise it, to turn it into a known property built into society and to see where that society gets taken. Show me clothing that reshapes itself to best suit the season and its owner's body thanks to the clothing golem sewn into it, and show me the vicious internecine politics of the fashion-priests who decide the golems' tastes. Show me sweatshops crewed by summoned daemons, and what happens when they try to unionise. Show me an agricultural system kicked into overdrive by localised weather-manipulation, and show me how the law regulates it (or doesn't) to keep farmers from (literally) raining on each other's parades and to avoid it generating a climate catastrophe elsewhere. This is why I think his best use of a magic system is in the Mistborn trilogy and Alloy of Law, because he's going for the "what does it do to all of society?" angle in that universe.
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Mar 10, 2014 13:50
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There's so much of good Kay to read (Lions of Al-Rassan, Tigana, A Song for Arbonne, Under Heaven, the Viking one whose name eludes me) that I don't think there's a point to reading the Fionavar books unless you're a Kay enthusiast or a completionist.
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Mar 17, 2014 13:55
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Yeah, while I haven't read River of Stars, I consciously left it out based on what I'd heard. Under Heaven was good but it wasn't Al-Rassan good, either. I think Tigana and Al-Rassan are necessities as far as his oeuvre goes.
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Mar 17, 2014 14:03
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Megazver posted:The Goblin Emperor is a joy to read. This sounds like a book that I've wanted without knowing I've wanted it. Also an interesting example of the phenomenon where if your first novel(s) sell poorly, the only way to get published again may be to adopt a new nom de plume.
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Apr 3, 2014 12:14
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anathenema posted:Mark Lawrence is also boasting that his series is going to be make it onto TV, as well. So I guess audiences are really hungry for uncomfortable, heavy-handed nihilism? I think it's more that TV networks are hungry for the next Game of Thrones.
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May 1, 2014 22:47
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