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KingAsmo posted:Hey guys I've been on a two year long sci-fi binge and I'm running out of ideas for what to read next, was hoping you had some suggestions for me. Give Charles Stross a try - you might like him. Additionally, even though it doesn't meet all your criteria, I'd recommend Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution series, The Night Sessions, and The Restoration Game. Here's a decent summary of his style: quote:His novels often explore socialist, communist and anarchist political ideas, most particularly the variants of Trotskyism and anarcho-capitalism or extreme economic libertarianism. Technical themes encompass singularities, divergent human cultural evolution and post-human cyborg-resurrection. You've kind of already covered the big hitters, so I think you'll have to branch out a bit. Edit: Oh, and check out "Otherland" by Tad Williams and see if that interests you. Honestly I never ended up finishing the series but I liked the first two books well enough.
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Jun 29, 2013 02:26
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Swan was really a detriment to 2312. Kim came up with this fascinating world and decided to show it through the lens of a grumpy, impulsive, combative and selfish child suffering from an entirely unsympathetic case of boredom.
Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jun 30, 2013 |
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Jun 30, 2013 19:55
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You're doing yourself a disservice if you avoid self-published books as a rule. If you don't want to bother curating them yourself (I don't blame you) at least pick up on some of the suggestions. And, no, the publisher's job isn't to "pick out quality stories". That's crazy and you know it.
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Jul 9, 2013 03:43
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General Battuta posted:There's too much genuinely good writing out there (much of it, alas, not SF/F) to waste time on self-published work. That's a lovely way to look at it. Good writing is good writing, whether it's from a self-published nobody or a published author.
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Jul 9, 2013 03:57
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Nondescript Van posted:I'm a big fan of Alastair Reynolds and i've read and really liked pretty (almost) everything he has written. I wasn't a fan of terminal world because I don't like steampunk Deepness in the Sky and Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge would both fit the bill.
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Jul 17, 2013 01:36
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andrew smash posted:I don't get the atheist pagan part. Is that like telling mom that if dad doesn't have to go to the saturnalia neither do you? I don't believe in gods.
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Jul 20, 2013 04:30
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Darth Walrus posted:Vinge does creepy? Interesting. Not really. Richard Paul Russo does creepy, though. Try Ship of Fools.
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Aug 4, 2013 19:01
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What's up with the weird-rear end availability of Iain Bank's books in Kindle format? I want to continue the Culture series with Excession, but while all the other books are available that one isn't.
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Aug 12, 2013 02:14
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Scalzi seems to be much better at publicizing himself than he is at writing. I enjoyed reading the first book of the Old Man's War series, but he hasn't seemed to have grown as a writer since then.
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Sep 2, 2013 17:21
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Vinterstum posted:I actually enjoyed the contrast between Swan and Wahram quite a bit. One side showing the self-indulgence that a post-scarcity society could allow, the other showing the selfless devotion to causes enabled by the same thing. The Culture novels sometimes play on this as well. I think this nails it. Calling it a contrast between mercurial and saturnine temperaments is way off mark, even if that's what the author intended. Willy Wonka is mercurial, Swan is self-indulgent and immature (by our standards, and based on everyone else she pisses off throughout the story by their standards too).
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Sep 3, 2013 23:40
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I think Dust adequately takes the series to the conclusion the previous books were setting it up for. It did feel a little rushed, but then again I don't think adding more to it would have been appropriate.
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Sep 5, 2013 19:40
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General Battuta posted:Yes, loads. How new are you talking? If you mean new-new, then in the long form, people are fond of Hannu Rajaniemi and Ekaterina Sedia. If you're willing to read short, I'd push Yoon Ha Lee. You should pick Ted Chiang's collection 'Story of Your Life And Others' even though it's not that new. If "Story of Your Life" doesn't wring tears out of you you're a monster. That was my favorite story out of the collection although every one of them is good.
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Sep 24, 2013 00:47
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systran posted:It's free to read too: Yes the link to the author's own webpage is okay.
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Sep 24, 2013 15:25
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The thing that bothers me most in science fiction is characters experiencing metaphysical revelations about the universe relayed as lengthy and rambling stream-of-consciousness passages. I'm on book 2 of the Galactic Center Saga and I'm kind of regretting it.
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Sep 25, 2013 00:44
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General Battuta posted:Was that the part with the axe rising and falling and the sentence running on forever and and? I hated that. I don't think that's the first time and it's certainly not the last. I'm getting flashbacks to Endymion.
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Sep 25, 2013 00:46
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The Washington Post says "This is a sci-fi novel!" I hope he finds a new blurb for the cover.
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Sep 28, 2013 05:49
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Lex Talionis posted:If you don't mind more overtly religious material, there's The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell. I don't think calling The Sparrow "overtly religious material" a la CS Lewis' books really describes it too well in comparison. It's very, very critical. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Oct 13, 2013 |
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Oct 13, 2013 22:28
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:On the other hand, though, the protagonist is a literal Jesuit missionary to an alien race. You don't get much more "I am writing about religion" than that -- even C.S. Lewis's stuff does more to hide the ball ("That's totally not a cross! It's a stone table! Bet you never saw that coming!") The important distinction, to me, is that The Sparrow directly confronts and deconstructs religious philosophy while C.S. Lewis uses allegory (or supposition, according to him). I think they end up being very different in practice and The Sparrow definitely isn't going to have the reader going "waaaait, this book is about Jesus, isn't it?".
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Oct 13, 2013 23:26
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Man, Gregory Benford's Galactic Center series gets waaaaaay better after the 2nd book. I don't know what the hell happened, he just goes in a completely different direction and it's so much better than the first two.
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Oct 24, 2013 02:19
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Also, you're not going to find anything close to The Gap Cycle in sci-fi. It's thoroughly unique.
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Nov 22, 2013 01:44
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Abandon ship.
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Nov 28, 2013 20:00
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I wish I could extract the image of a cat licking cream out of a saucer from my mind.
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Nov 29, 2013 01:49
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General Battuta posted:I'm going to regret asking why, but... Have you ever thought about giving oral pleasure to an underage girl in zero g? Dan Simmons has.
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Nov 29, 2013 02:28
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LmaoTheKid posted:So I started reading The Gap series. I'm halfway through the first book and I have a question... The first book is by far the rapiest.
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Dec 7, 2013 22:39
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You can dislike both for being huge bigots and writing stories based on their bigotry. It's not a competition.
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Jan 5, 2014 02:58
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fritz posted:Neal Asher @nealasher 2h Haha god dammit.
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Jan 8, 2014 01:56
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DontMockMySmock posted:Did an e-cig drag you out of a burning building? Being in a burning building probably gives you better odds of avoiding horrible injuries than smoking, so I don't see why that'd be a controversial statement. My issue with Asher is that sci-fi is already so full of Libertarian bullshit and even a couple dumb statements from him are enough to tell me how his books are going to go. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 22:23
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I really disliked Player of Games and loved Consider Phlebas and Use of Weapons. Those are also apparently the books everyone says aren't much like the rest.
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Jan 14, 2014 01:09
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Yo, if you read The Explorer by James Smythe and were interested in its sequel, The Echo, I'm pretty hesitant to recommend it! It's another dose of nihilistic existential torture with an increased focus on how hosed everyone is. It does live up to its title, though, so I'll give it that. http://www.amazon.com/The-Explorer-James-Smythe/dp/0062229419 http://www.amazon.com/Echo-James-Smythe-ebook/dp/B00DB3D6AY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391473011&sr=1-1&keywords=the+echo Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 01:16
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I think it's far from the worst but ultimately pointless.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:44
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I wonder what the relationship is between the author and the science advisors he references because the sequel is full of the same poo poo, though he does learn about light lag.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:53
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gvibes posted:I felt this was terribly cheesy but I nevertheless could not put the thing down. Yeah it was the good kind of cheesy. It also has a pretty solid ending after he's back on earth!
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Feb 11, 2014 04:40
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General Battuta posted:Pretty good Nebula ballot this year! Just checked it out and bought most of the novels in the list. Female authors seem to be well represented, is this typical with the Nebula?
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Feb 26, 2014 04:33
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Ancillary Justice and Hild, to nobody's surprise, but I'm happy to see Six Gun Snow White up there too.
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The Light of Other Days, by Stephen Baxter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days quote:The wormhole technology is first used to send digital information via gamma rays, then developed further to transmit light waves. The media corporation that develops this advance can spy on anyone anywhere it chooses. A logical development from the laws of space-time allows light waves to be detected from the past. This enhances the wormhole technology into a "time viewer" where anyone opening a wormhole can view people and events from any point throughout time and space. Less about government use and more about all of society having the capability, though.
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Mar 17, 2014 01:41
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corn in the bible posted:I've read Brin's Uplift books and nobody can do that without developing a seething hatred for the man. I think like the first three were pretty good and then he decided to detach the rest of the novels and start them off with alien kids rolling around on bio wheels so I gave up and looked up the series ending and it turns out the big mystery was something that was obvious from the first novel.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:31
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Quim, the lady.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:33
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I must have forgotten about that one
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Mar 18, 2014 04:51
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Question about God's War: Does it ever stop using wacky far out sci-fi with cars exhausting bugs and people using bug magic and selling their wombs for bug cash? I won't criticize the series over it, but if there's anything that turns me off of science fiction books it's technology and society that's so completely unrelatable to anything we have that the author might as well be making up magic spells and setting the story in Azeroth.
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Apr 2, 2014 02:10
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I hope SyFy rewrites parts of The Expanse to be less terrible. Rarely see a series nose-dive so quickly after a promising first novel.
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Apr 12, 2014 05:20
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Hedrigall posted:I actually just wrote a blog post about the space horror subgenre, and I mini-review 5 works (Unto Leviathan, Blindsight, Hull Zero Three, The Burning Dark, and the Revelation Space series) while giving comments on the horror elements, SF elements, and mystery/resolution elements of each work. Revelation Space gets a 9/10, top banner 50% Alastair Reynolds books? PR mole spotted. (just kidding, bookmarked your blog)
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Apr 17, 2014 01:28
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