The Science Fiction and Fantasy Thread: Read the OP, Bridge of Birds, and Murderbot

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coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Slavvy posted:

Additionally, what are some cool books about colonisation? I've only read a few novels on the subject, most of which I can't remember right now besides Niven's Destiny's Road.

Allen Steele's "Coyote" series may be up your alley, I rather enjoyed them.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2013 21:26

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 14:11

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Play posted:

Are these actually good? I got one for 25 cents at my local deli and I'm wondering whether to dive in.

As for what I've been heavily enjoying:
\

The first is almost a YA space colonization of Mars (with the ensuing sketchy landing problems, disaster responses, exploration of the planet, frontier political intrigue, etc) and the rest deal a lot more heavily with dealing with the rest of humanity when later generations make the 200 year slower-than-light journey to the planet (which was originally colonized by people who hijacked the ship due to political discontent.)

I wouldn't recommend reading them out of order but if that sounds interesting, that's what you'll be getting.

systran posted:

I did not like Anathem. I am avoiding that author from now on. It is a very long book that starts out slow and has a second act that feels like a different book. Nothing is very satisfying and it has a twist that will make you roll your eyes. There is a lot of tedious poo poo where the author reinvents Socrates, Plato and the cave metaphor. When I say "re-invent" I actually mean "gives a new name to every aspect of Platonic thought but doesn't change any of the elements."

Let me introduce you to Neal Stephenson, who regularly goes off on pages-long tangents about middle level mathematics and physics and philosophy. He just usually doesn't invent a pseudo language to do so.

Without the hoopy frood slang in Anathem, it probably would have been half as long and half as interesting.

And I could not stand Soldier of the Mist, the premise made it kind of unreadable to me, it got super old with everything beginning "I have lost my memory so I'm writing this poo poo down in my journal so I will remember", and I put it down after 100 or 150 pages. I personally felt that the entire amnesia and journal was a terrible, terrible narrative crutch.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Jun 19, 2013

# ¿ Jun 19, 2013 15:24

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Peel posted:

I was also underwhelmed by Anathem. I liked seeing the Avout and how they lived in the first half, but the second half mostly left me cold, and the philosophy just wasn't all that interesting. The replications were familiar and the speculation was unconvincing.

I enjoyed it overall, but I wasn't blown away.

This, entirely for me. I lost interest once they were off-roading around the landscape, and forgot to pick it up again. The monk stuff was fun.

I guess I am used to Stephenson rehashing stuff that your average :spergin:

learned about in middle or high school, and just consider it part f his style - like Douglas Adams' tangents on space fish, bad alien poetry. and zoning permits in locked cabinets in disused bathrooms with signs posted reading "Beware of leopard".

# ¿ Jun 19, 2013 18:57

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

PlushCow posted:

Last week I started reading Chronicles of the Black Company on ebook, an omnibus of the first three novels by Glen Cook. I remember hearing good things about it, and Steven Erikson cites it as a major influence of his for the Malazan series that I love, so I though I'd give it a go - and I couldn't get more than 10% through it before I stopped.

It's the way it's written. The first-person narration was really stilted and slightly jarring. The novel skips scenes it shouldn't, such as "Ok we need to go kidnap this important guy and ask him some tough questions" immediately followed by in the text "that was a tough kidnapping and he's answered some of our questions after we worked him," glossing over events that really should be shown, and Cook does this over and over again. It's nothing but lulls; reaction scenes that are telling me what's going to happen, what has happened, but never showing it happening, which is really boring!

Maybe it gets better later on but I can't power through it.

I was never impressed with the prose either, it's very "workmanlike", I guess is the term for when some random veteran writes a bunch of books with arguable skill at writing prose. I see it a lot in pulp military novels, which is why I mention veteran, specifically - I assume their target audience's not too finicky about that stuff most of the time.

The story itself was OK but I quickly lost interest when he brought the silly romance stuff in and left it front-center for the following books, and changed the focus of the books a bunch. It just felt like some kind of power fantasy where the author dreams of seducing the queen of the Amazons.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2013 23:35

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Play posted:

Like someone else said, it serves as a prologue and is meant to be the logs of a mercenary company and so it is mimicking the style of a ship's log, which obviously is not written like a novel.

My problem with them was that they quickly became a somewhat ludicrous series of 'penthouse pet' letters to Playgirl magazine, from one veteran scribe of middle years, writing said "log".

All of the power levels jumping to 11 and epic battles and silly premises are fine but the series quickly turns into a mildly boring weird fantasy of an author having sex with Athena or Kali or something while huge battles go on around his sex life.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2013 02:29

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

VanSandman posted:

Does anyone have any good recommendations for a fantasy novel or series that is relatively optimistic? I'm just not very into the whole GRRM grim-and-gritty-'realism' schtick. If you don't mind a bit of a rant, I like my fantasy to be, well, fantasy. I already know people suck, I'd like to get away from that for a while. I've tried reading the Wheel of Time series and didn't like it very much. I also like urban fantasy quite a bit - I've read the Dresden Files, Rivers of London, Felix Castor, the Rook, and some others.
Now I don't mean to imply I dislike it when bad things happen, I'm ok with horrific destruction so long as it's treated with gravitas and anguish and it all ends on a somewhat upbeat note.

Neil Gaiman. Try Stardust and Neverwhere.

General Battuta posted:

Someone tell me if there's a quick way to tell whether a book is self-published or not.

I dunno, I've seen a few books lately that I really thought were self-published and then later realized they were just bad OCR or something accounting for the vast majority of reading difficulties I encountered.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2013 20:20

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Oh, what the hell, can we say Wheel of Time for female characters in? I feel like that's too much book to recommend to a new reader to the genre.

Dude, I nearly reported you for trolling for that.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 22:18

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

e:fb

# ¿ Jul 9, 2013 22:56

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Geek U.S.A. posted:

Christ, I have bought the three Gaiman works that everyone recommends and they are still sitting on my bookshelf untouched. I really should get around to starting them some time.

Which would you guys pick for a first read: American Gods, Stardust or Neverwhere?

Depends on your mood. Do you want to read the old-timey fable of a boy who visits elf-land, a grungy/punky urban alice in wonderland with lots of puns about locations in London, or a dark road-trip story about a guy who works for the old gods of society and fighting the new gods of society?

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I just don't think it's that good a book. It's too derivative and predictable and come on don't name your African-American protagonist Shadow.

Shadow was black? I'd like a source for that. I'm pretty sure I can find a couple of places where Gaiman is quoted as saying that Shadow had no determined race.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Jul 10, 2013

# ¿ Jul 10, 2013 18:54

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

He's pretty consistently going to do the same stuff however, a lot of his books are not like those two at all - often they have a children's story quality to them, as people were mentioning above.

You should just re-read the last few posts about Gaiman though, because they all say that he does tend to stay on the same tracks regardless of the project.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2013 19:07

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Jedit posted:

I lost a lot of respect for Gaiman's creativity when I found that the Silver Age Sandman and Prez Rickard appear in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2. The title for Neverwhere was also lifted from a Roger McKenzie series that was stillborn due to DC's collapse in the late 70s. It didn't matter too much in the long run because The Sandman was always about retelling stories, but Gaiman didn't look too far to find them.

President Rickard was a thing in the '70s. Did Gaiman claim that it was his character that he created? Hell, The entire premise was lifted directly from a film/novella originally, anyway.

And the Sandman complaint makes even less sense, honestly. I don't see why the characters showing up in that weird CCC printing that happened, has to do with anything, tbh. Gaiman even had the sandman meet the silver age sandman at one point, if I recall correctly? And wasn't the original sandman killed because nobody cared?

# ¿ Jul 10, 2013 22:54

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Jedit posted:

Say I'd been comparing and contrasting stories by two dozen authors and you thought I was extremely well read. Then you find out all the stories I've been talking about have been collected in a single volume. How would you feel about me then?

I'm not complaining that the things in Sandman aren't original. I'm saying that because Gaiman got them from a narrow set of sources, he is much less erudite than people make him out to be.

I guess I'm glad I never preened myself as extremely well-read in front of others, and I don't really grok the two dozen authors thing.

And two examples has nothing to do with his erudition regarding a broad range of mythologies and lore from a ton of cultures. I have trouble even researching some of the stuff he drops in American Gods and Anansi Boys..

# ¿ Jul 11, 2013 00:24

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Blog Free or Die posted:

Everyone disappointed by American Gods can try The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. A similar setup, except by Douglas Adams, so it's great.

Most embarrassing author write-in sex scene ever.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2013 21:26

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

mdemone posted:

You know, it's somebody's actual job to put together these book covers. Sometimes I wonder just how much they're getting paid.

That is a rather indicative cover of what the book is, though. All it needs is to be clearer that the background is a gravestone (the protagonist is a stone carver who made gravestones).

But Towing Jehovah was a much, much better read imho. I also wasn't a huge fan of Only Begotten Daughter, but City of Truth was an amazing premise when I read it at the time.

James Morrow rules.

BlazinLow305 posted:

Redoing this post to make it more succinct. Basically I need a fantasy recommendation. Something that's a Trilogy or longer preferably.
As you can see, I'm not above reading cheesy things with elves and dwarves,etc such as Forgotten Realms(which if there's a well regarded series that's anything other than Salvatore, let me know). I just want something to get invested in and have a few books to read. As long as something is interesting about it, whether it's the world, or just the story I can deal with it being kind of bad.

David Gemmell. He has single novels, trilogies, and longer series. Also the majority of his books take place in the same overall universe and it's fun to recognize elements from one series, in a seemingly entirely different one. He died though, so don't start with Ironhand's Daughter because that trilogy will never be finished.

I'd recommend beginning with Legend and then reading the rest of that series in order.

Night Angel series is pretty fun, it's a bit naively grimdark, but it has fun characters. It's not as good as The Lies of Locke Lamora was in terms of gritty fantasy street kid stuff, but it wasn't trying to do the same thing, and goes in a very different direction. The romantic stuff in the later books starts to get embarrassing though, close to Sword of Truth in that regard for star-crossed ludicrous premises.

Also if you dig Forgotten Realms, you might enjoy Ravenloft. Also the Elminster series was fun.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jul 17, 2013

# ¿ Jul 17, 2013 18:36

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

BlazinLow305 posted:

I got about ~100 pages in to Gardens. Yeah, I've been thinking about trying Gardens of The Moon again. From what I could understand things seemed interesting. I was just confused. It's been a while so my memory is already hazy, but I remember reading about Tattersail and those mage dudes trying to gently caress with that flying castle

Same thing happened to me, getting lost and putting it down. Then when I went back later and read through the first three books, THEN I went and re-read Gardens of the Moon and :aaaaa:

# ¿ Jul 17, 2013 18:58

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

DontMockMySmock posted:

poo poo, this turned into a bit of a long one. Ender's Game spoilers abound. TL:DR, pretty sure Card is anti-genocide.

Except for genocide against homosexuals, and anyone in the US Government who upholds laws that he disagrees with.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2013 22:25

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

^^^^ NIMBY genocide? :haw:

Jedit posted:

The Hawk Queen is complete in two books. Gemmell went back and covered much of the same ground in the Rigante novels, too.

Gemmell's stuff is split into two big blocks - the Drenai Saga and the Sipstrassi Tales - plus three minor series (Hawk Queen, Rigante, Troy) and two standalone novels (Dark Moon and Echoes of the Great Song). There's four books that don't obviously fit into either of the big blocks, but the Parmenion novels feature Sipstrassi and the country where Knights of Dark Renown and Morningstar are set is off the northeastern coast of the mainland in the Drenai world.

The Rigante and Troy were also set in the sipstrassi universe I believe, along with the Jon Shannow ones which I assume you already had included. Echoes of the Great Song as well, iirc.

DontMockMySmock posted:

But Ender is still a young child, and it's hard for him to understand other people, and make morally correct decisions, simply because he is inexperienced in the ways of human beings.

Other Ender's game readers: am I completely off base here?

Yeah I think thats the take-away - Ender is representative of humanity as a whole and ends up becoming Jesus Christ, Space Martyr over it.

I always felt though, that he was never given a chance to learn to make moral decisions - he was too young in the first instance, and had already been taken somewhere which trained him to destroy threats with extreme prejudice by the second fight - that's the entire quality that they selected him for really, despite the lip service in the opening exposition dialogue between the controllers reading his brain chip, regarding how he's a little more like Val than Peter was, but Peter was what they'd really wanted/needed - however he was simply too unstable.

Only Mazer Rackham displays any real amount of morality which he is able to impart to Ender, that I can recall anywhere in the book (except for the bit where he's burnt out and floating around on a raft with Val and she is worried about how he deals with the wasp).

It's very much a tragedy about hubris turning to anagnorsis in that regard, for me.

Humanity has the hubris to destroy the buggers by uising Ender as a tool, but they still can't deal with Ender having done it so they must exile him for their sins. Ender has the hubris to think of it all as a game, and then realizes the consequences of his actions after the fact (and Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide).

I think Ender's Shadow is pure pulp, and threw Shadow Puppets away in disgust within the first like, 10-20 pages.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jul 17, 2013

# ¿ Jul 17, 2013 22:33

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

^^^ I seem to recall in Troy that he met what's his face, king of Atlantis guy who's in all of the Sipstrassi.

mdemone posted:

Read the title on that cover more closely.

Oh... Oh!

# ¿ Jul 17, 2013 23:01

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Stuporstar posted:

Flowers for Algernon is pretty much exactly both these things at once, and it is awesome.

That is not quite fair though, since you seem to be coming from a background of literature, while it sounds they may have a more pulp background in which first person often tends to be nigh unbearable and they may be gunshy.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2013 08:36

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Has anyone read Seventh Son or whatever the series is that the movie is coming out soon? Looked interesting, even though it had Jeff Bridges doing a horrible Bane impression.

I was really confused why someone would make that Card novel into a movie with Jeff Bridges pretending to be Batman. Then I was wondering if you were talking about '7th Son' by J C Hutchins (clones who find out they were grown as part of a secret government project and who then go off to catch the psycho who they were cloned from, who has just killed the president before turning to other, less clich�ed terrorism).

Then I found out you were talking about The Wardstone Chronicles, the first of which (Spook's Apprentice) is being made into a movie with Jeff Bridges as the titular Spook. But I've never heard if they're any good, or what level of YA they are (I'm assuming pretty young.)

# ¿ Jul 19, 2013 19:04

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Hedrigall posted:

Hey remember the alien rape-y good times that was "Spar" by Kij Johnson?

Well she wrote a bacon remix.

Good grief. :psyduck:

That is really hilarious.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2013 16:40

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

ed balls balls man posted:

I dunno, he sounds pretty much right.

He also doesn't mention that they even mostly have the same characters performing the same roles. I read the later series before the first one so it was a hilarious wake up to actually read a book that didn't have Belgarath and Polgara as everybody's nannies.

The other series (Ruby Knight?) was okay but didn't have much grip for me, I don't think I finished the third book.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2013 15:28

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Lex Talionis posted:

Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy comes to mind.

Why would you do this to someone who just read the entire WoT series, do you want him to kill himself? May as well tell him to plow through all of the Sword of Truth books, too!

If you're going to read Hobb, do Mad Ship, not that godawful boy quest novel about being an assassin means you have a lovely life, even if you have a magic dog you can talk to.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2013 17:46

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Venusian Weasel posted:

My big problem with the book is that he takes his sweet time tying together the individual plot threads, and I was kind of going from 'cool, I wonder how these plot threads will come together' to 'come on, at least start tying these together so I can see where they're going!'. It was like reading three separate stories, but having my attention for one story broken by the other two stories interrupting it. I also feel like the whole Marly looking for the mysterious artist subplot was recycled wholesale by Pattern Recognition. I'm about 3/4 of the way through Count Zero and it doesn't feel like that particular subplot has diverged all that much from Pattern Recognition.

My big problem with Gibson is that he seems to have frozen himself in time somewhere around, say, 1989. I can't really feel any change in his writing since Neuromancer, more like a refurb of what worked last time..

# ¿ Jul 29, 2013 07:50

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

^^^^ But not reading the climax of MoI ought to be a crime.

Seldom Posts posted:

I read book 1 a year or more ago. Wasn't overwhelmed, but didn't hate it. I found the next two at a used bookstore so I'll probably read them at some point. Is there something online that will refresh the salient plot points from #1 for me so that I don't miss stuff in the next two? Wikipedia just tells me what I can already remember, but I seem to recall some other stuff vaguely, like a magic portal during the garden party that went to some weird place.

The thing is, nothing is explained in book 1 so anything you look up would essentially be spoilers for later books. I'd either re-read it eventually or just keep moving on, you'll remember most of the characters who matter, quickly enough.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2013 22:30

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

So amazon just threw this up at me.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A281B5I/ref=pd_csr_hcb_youra_b_t

It has an Iron Druid short story in it, too.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2013 20:20

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

buildmorefarms posted:

My wife's hunting for some examples (for a class of 16-17 year olds) of "difficult/sophisticated" fantasy novels in order to demonstrate how titles within the same genre can vary wildly in terms of:

I consider To Reign in Hell as sort of fantasy. Actually, Steven Brust's The Pheonix Guard and the other Khaavren romances might fit the bill, as well. Since it is a direct homage as well, that would be potentially interesting trivia about it, although it's pretty hard to get into for some people, and I don't know if high schoolers would mostly be able to stay on top of the florid language.

James Morrow's pretty solid and approachable for a young audience, although I don't know if he's written anything that's swords and sorcery fantasy, and Towing Jehovah might get a teacher into hot water if there's a fundie kid (or parents) who decide to become offended..

# ¿ Aug 23, 2013 00:55

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Just finished The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman, as well as the second book in the series, The Last Four Things the third book is out as well however, I was annoyed to find that it's only available on kindle in the amazon UK kindle store (does anyone know of any issues with buying an ebook from another region's kindle store?)

The books were pretty good and I will definitely be reading the third asap however, I don't know if I agree with the opinions of the series' protagonist as an anti-hero from a different cut of cloth than Kvothe or Jorge. A lot of the novel is directly lifted from other sources, and while the author makes no illusions about it and name-drops as many references as he can think of, it still sometimes comes across as ringing a bit hollow for me.

The similarities between Left Hand and the Prince of Thorns series are many, up to and including both authors creating worlds which are both 'future Earths'. Cale does a lot of violent flailing and cannot control his emotions ("I don't like getting angry, it makes me angry," anyone?) so I really had a tough time seeing him any differently than Jorge - although to my memory of Prince/Emporer of Thorns, Jorge certainly seemed to 'grow up' a lot more in the second novel (still haven't read the third) than Cale ever changes in any way. Cale's also extremely callous with the use of his troops and peers, tends to pick fights at parties simply because he's a little shitheel, and acts like a total creep to his romantic interest. The romance is bog-standard fantasy stuff.

My real criticism of Hoffman comes from his fetish for using extremely obscure words constantly (this is part of why I want the third on Kindle, so I can reference the dictionary to find out if it's made-up or not), as well as a lot of "Anathem"-style made-up or half-made-up words. He also tends to jump forward extremely quickly after barely mentioning many key happenings, to the point where I would sometimes need to backtrack for 5-10-20 pages just to confirm whether or not he'd previously mentioned (the protagonist's romance in the first book had a section like this, where I missed one sentence earlier, and then suddenly the author was going on about how often they were knocking boots and I hadn't even realized there'd been a hook-up).

Hoffman also wrote the screenplay for The Wisdom of Crocodiles, which surprised me (since the essence in 'Wisdom' cropped up in this series as well, in a pretty recognizable fashion) since I definitely thought I recognized some similarites but had assumed it was just another bit that the author had cribbed from another source. Wisdom of Crocodiles is a pretty good movie starring a fairly original kind of vampire, played by Jude Law.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Aug 24, 2013

# ¿ Aug 24, 2013 16:49

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Datasmurf posted:

So I am looking for some new fantasy to read.
I've read everything by Terry Brooks, Tolkien, Rowling, Salvatore and 1/4 of Discworld (and I've loved every book by every one of the aforementioned authors so far), and loads of other fantasy books the past 13 years.

After that list of authors, David Gemmell is a big step up.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2013 06:12

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Mimir posted:

I'm pretty sure I read Excession first and loved it, but I might be alone here on that.

Excession was the last one of the Culture novels I got to, I don't think it held my interest to finish it. I think I may've been burnt out from a Banks binge or something.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2013 17:10

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

I really enjoyed His Dark Materials, although - similar to Left Hand of God - the author obviously spent a lot of time in Catholic schools or something. The movie is only about half of the first book iirc, and the rest of the books in the series are much, much diffrerent (I don't know how they would've pulled them off in a movie, tbh).

I went to Catholic high school so I'm probably extra-lenient about this kind of over-the-top thinly-veiled criticism of organized religion.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2013 17:40

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Shitshow posted:

I'm rejecting the idea that a B-grade writer is using lovely sex scenes as some sort of social commentary and putting forward that they're simply lovely sex scenes.

I'm putting forward the idea that the majority of people who complain so vocally about this are American and raised christian or were heavily influenced by christian values on sexuality, so they get uncomfortable, regardless.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2013 18:09

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

I had a good time with Petrovich, although it got a bit over the top by the end. And that's coming from someone whose name is an anagram for "Jesus Hacker".

# ¿ Sep 5, 2013 22:04

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Bhodi posted:

That was Fallen Dragon, one of his best novels and it's honestly a pretty good standalone book. Best part, most of the awkward sex happens off-camera.

However it was all about an underage girl who the author had a crush on, so he wrote a book and sent his mary sue back in time to gently caress the poo poo out of her again when he was in his 40s. Sweet jungle fighting space marine scenes, though. Hamilton does pretty solid space marine slogfests.

Maybe we need a :heinlein: smiley involving redheads and boobs.

I really enjoyed the book however, by "goon standards" :dawkins101:

it was pretty obviously cringe-inducing sex scenes and some trappings.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Sep 6, 2013

# ¿ Sep 6, 2013 04:48

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

RBA Starblade posted:

I liked them but really could have done without the incest and justification for why its totally ok at the end of the last one. Also the one character at the very end died because no one knew to just drop the pda. It's an upload, you don't need to do anything else with it!

I came back to work from lunch today, and there was a woman wandering the halls with a wireless keyboard. Just... Wandering, hoping some IT guy would get back from lunch.

She put the batteries in upside-down. Those craaazy complicated logitech keyboards! :ughh:

Real people are plenty dumb enough to spend time carrying a piece of equipment after it's no longer necessary. Especially in a stressful situation.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2013 23:39

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Flayer posted:

I've recently got into sci-fi/fantasy books and have read the following

Mistborn series (loved it)
The Quantum Thief (interesting and fun but not amazing)
Use of Weapons (brilliant)
Neuromancer (found it very boring)
Perdido Street Station (extremely inconsistent quality but had some great moments)

Based on that has anyone got a recommendation for me to start reading today? Ideally I'd like to read something not from one of the above series as I'm exploring the genre at the moment.

Anything by Bruce Sterling, it'll wash that taste of Gibson's cyberpunk away, and you may not want to read the rest of Gibson's catalog, because Neuromancer was probably the best of it. Gibson was a groundbreaker but I've never really been impressed by his prose or stories or characters.

Also if you were digging the Culture stuff by Banks, you may enjoy Vernor Vinge.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 15:04

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Cardiac posted:

I would say The Scar by Mieville. It's set in the same world as Perdido Street Station, but completely stand-alone.

Speaking of The Scar, it really is an amazing book in so many different ways. Reread it for the 3d time last week, purely based on this thread.
First of all, the Bas-Lag world is totally different from basically all other fantasy worlds. The races are imaginative and not another versions of typical elves, orcs and dwarfs. Races are not explained in detail, which just brings flavour to it. I like the fact that everything in Bas-Lag doesn't have to be explained (looking at you Sanderson). The moral ambiguity of all characters is another great thing of Mieville.
And finally the plot in The Scar is so good, layers upon layers of intrigue that works together quite seamlessly. Rereading it a third time really made appreciate the whole story.

This always catches me because I've yet to read the Bas-Lag stuff yet however, The Scar by Sergei and Maryna Dyachenko is a really excellent novel which doesn't get enough love in here.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2013 17:08

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Snuffman posted:

~~Says 7.99 on the site you just linked.~~ durrrrrr...

Amazon isn't reflecting the sale yet...

Perhaps it'll be up later? I hope so, I really want to read that book and 0.99 is impossible to beat.

Funny, it worked for me earlier today. Are you looking at the right tab?

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-Locke-Lamora-ebook/dp/B000JMKNJ2/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1379462371&sr=8-1&keywords=lies+of+locke+lamora

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 01:00

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

Schneider Heim posted:

I've read two books from her The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms. They're part of a trilogy. I haven't read the third book because I'm lazy, but her women protagonists are well-written and interesting.

Oh cool, that's a trilogy? I got The Hundred Thousands Kingdoms on audible a while back and really enjoyed it and its narrator, and although the one dark god dude was kind of a stand-in for sexy Sephiroth, the little Anansi kid made up for him to a great extent. The narrator was pretty solid as well, I assumed Jemisin is a black woman author because of the choice of narrator and characters.

I hope I enjoy the other two as much as the one I did get to.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 17:32

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 14:11

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007; by zen death robot

fermun posted:

He did go through the publisher submission thing. His blog goes into more detail about it, but essentially the publishers he submitted the series to responded that it needed to be more like George RR Martin, that it wasn't grimdark enough.

While Twenty Palaces was, ironically, a pretty grimdark series, albeit with less incest and wolves.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Sep 20, 2013

# ¿ Sep 20, 2013 17:57

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Science Fiction and Fantasy Thread: Read the OP, Bridge of Birds, and Murderbot

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