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Rough Lobster posted:Can anyone recommend some good Harlan Ellison? I've read The Region Between and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. I loved both and they've made an impression on me. The Last Dangerous Visions, of course! Seriously: he's mostly famous for his stories, not novels. Deathbird Stories is good, and Neil Gaiman's made a decent living off it, too. The SF Encyclopaedia is really good for this kind of question.
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Sep 21, 2013 23:14
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Fideles posted:I recently read the original Dune series by Frank Herbert and I see that there have been a number of prequels written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson. I was wondering if these prequels are worth the read or do people think they don't stand up to the original. I have never heard anyone who wasn't trying to sell them say anything good about them, and I'm surprised the OP doesn't say that they're generally considered bad, not unlike the Foundation prequels. Or Star Wars. Or Star Trek Enterprise. Hmm, I think I notice a pattern forming.
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Sep 22, 2013 13:26
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Italo Calvino's "Our Ancestors" trilogy too, especially The Non-Existent Knight. And Kafka, and for some reason I find myself compelled to mention Chesterton too, although I prefer his novels.
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Sep 23, 2013 21:32
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systran posted:Unfortunately I have already read ficciones twice. I'm reading gene Wolfe now because he was heavily influenced by Borges also. Unfortunately Wolfe is significantly harder to digest than both Chiang and Borges. I wanted to compare Chiang to Wolfe, but I think the comparison ultimately fails because Chiang's much more wedded to science fictional techniques. Pop into the thread, or onto the Urth mailing list if you want to stare into the abyss... I think a writer you're looking for without realising it is R. A. Lafferty, especially his short stories (I've read one novel which was pretty baffling).
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Sep 24, 2013 17:06
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systran posted:Most everything by Hesse features a moment like this and it generally is always done quite well: Steppenwolf has Haller temper his restlessness and suicidal thoughts by reconciling all the different aspects of himself (the Steppenwolf, Maria, Hermine, Pablo, and the Bourgeois Harry); Narziss and Goldmund has each character achieve a similar insight about the nature of the universe by very different means; the Glassbead Game is about a game that tries to capture "the universe" into a game, and the climax is Knecht's decision to give up the game and the society that created it. I think part of the reason for this is the nature of sf/f as something that's obviously not about the real world. Jane Eyre may not have been a real person but you can imagine a 19th century England differing from ours only in that it's true; but The Left Hand of Darkness (or American Gods, say) is obviously made up. This is part of a John Clute interview (probably not online, copied from an old Interzone) discussing this: quote:[A]lthough they are not mimetic literatures, they do address how reality is addressed by us... Sf, after all, was the 20th-century literature that was about the 20th century. ...The Dark-Twin 20th century, which haunts our hindsight and mocks our hideous innovations, is ... a mask we recognise every time we look in the mirror. And the literatures of the fantastic know it. Modern sf and serious fantasy treat the planet as a countenance to be tweaked. And here's a recent blog post from Walter Jon Wiliams on something similar. He's discussing Never Let Me Go, and the relevant bit goes: quote:And that is the big difference between this book and genre. If this were an SF novel, and the characters knew that they were in a system that was set up to kill them, the characters would spend the novel trying not to be killed. They would try to escape, they would go into hiding, they would attempt revolution, they would try to hack the system, they would exchange information, they would do research about what’s going on, they’d steal a boat and sail across the Channel, they would riot, they would blow up Parliament. They would obsess about not being killed, all their conversations would be about how not to be killed, and they would make one attempt after another not to be killed. Not being killed would become their, I dunno, raison d’être in the most literal way. Sf/f is set in obviously made worlds - alternatives to our own - and sf protagonists know in their bones that they have alternatives. There's no alternative to the real world, but novels set in it pretend there isn't an alternative to the "real" world in which they're set. They swim with the world, they take it as a given, and so do the authors. The novel is about characters within a world. An sf/f novel is about a world embodied by its characters. The world is the point of the story, in a way. Sf/f (in a way) doesn't need psychological realism. It makes its point otherwise. Of course there are exceptions and I'm terribly oversimplifying. Historical novels are a big obvious counterexample on one side of the divide, and on the other there are plenty of character-focused sf/f writers; the end of Neuromancer was the one I was thinking of. In a way sf/f are closer to premodern genres than realist and modern ones (though it's also bound to describe the world it inhabits, which generally involves realist techniques). I was even originally going to say that sf/f are "almost allegorical", although the way sf/f worlds embody their ideas as things which are also real in that world is a key difference. E.g. the time dilation in The Forever War is 100% real for the characters in the novel, it's not symbolic, but it also symbolises how people who've had a certain experience and those who haven't can't relate to each other. Tl;dr and less pretentiously, you're right, but it's not because sf/f writers are idiots who just like smashing spaceships into each other and shouting "Boom!" Not that I thought you were saying that. You might like David Zindell too (read in publication order, starting with Neverness.) Neverness is set in a baroque and fantasy-tinged far-future, mostly consumed with philosophical problems. It's about a man in a quasi-monastic order a bit like Castalia who meets a "goddess" and comes to metaphysical revelations about a lot of stuff. I can't really summarise it without making it seem stupid. The sequel trilogy goes a bit further and has lots of discussion of relativism and accepting the world. They're kind of Timothy Leary-ish, but I thought they were great when I was a teenager. Oh yes and here's Adam Roberts' review of The Name of the Wind. I'll shut up now, honest.
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Sep 25, 2013 21:13
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Jedit posted:Classic Elric reading order: This is accurate but leaves out the later Elric stuff. Simplest thing to do is get the big "Tale of the Eternal Champion" omnibuses from the mid-90s; I think there are two Elric books. The only new ones are the "Dreamthief's Daughter" trilogy. Or you could get knee deep in Moorcock's confusing bibliography (quick: which book in Jedit's post is The Sleeping Sorceress? And how many Corums are there?) There are six bibliographies here... just remember to read Elric of Meliniboné first and Stormbringer last and you're halfway there.
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Sep 27, 2013 16:33
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I've only read some of his short stories, which were mostly very very good. (He's the only sf author I know of who's had a book written solely about one of his stories.) His reputation is very high; Wolfe and le Guin class. (The Science Fiction Encyclopaedia is king for questions like this, btw.) My will to live just became a bit too strong... I'm glad he didn't go with Dumbspeech as a title.
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Sep 28, 2013 17:40
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nessin posted:I've been on the lookout lately for something I'm not 100% sure how to describe. Comparison wise I'm looking for more stuff like the Taltos series. Something with a core protagonist who isn't necessarily evil or good, but a solid middle ground, and isn't as weighty as Song of Ice and Fire or even something like The First Law series. Just getting real tired of the overly "good" heroes, and have given up on any kind of decent anti-hero, especially since I've been looking at a lot of books lately that have heroes that the author tries to continually present as middle of the road but end up in situations where they're always playing the knight in shining armor. Jack Vance's Cugel books (the middle two volumes of the Tales of the Dying Earth compilation) and Hugh Cook, whose only book in print, The Walrus and the Warwolf, fits the bill perfectly. Try looking for older stuff labelled as sword and sorcery rather than fantasy in general.
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Sep 30, 2013 19:52
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Megazver posted:Dying Earth is excellent, but come on, Cugel makes Walter White look like a Peace Corps volunteer. I dunno man, some of the PCVs I've met... anyway, most of Cugel's schemes are aimed at people who richly deserve it or are him attempting to survive and find his way home. The worst things he does are mostly accidental (e.g. the village that gets eaten by a lake monster or eating the universe) and he has such awful things done to him that he got a bit of sympathy from me by the end. coyo7e posted:You can find Hugh Cook's stuff here and there, and Walrus and Warwolf is free online (and is the third in the series iirc?) In the US the first couple books can be found under different (worse) titles. I'm still trying to get my hands on the others after the first 3 or four but I really loved how it seems to be (small spoiler if you haven't read more than one of the books) the same world and time frame from different characters' perspectives. Yes, although some of the books are more closely interconnected than others. 6 & 7 are basically a mini-series in the series, and 8 & 9 are only tenuously connected to the others. It's occasionally interesting to see characters develop s Cook writes them, but as long as you read book 6 before 7 and 10 last, you're ok. Now everybody stand back, she's gonna  :The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness is ten books, all of which were published in the UK, and all of which have titles in the form of The W--- and the W---. Book 4, The Walrus and the Warwolf, is in print in the US. Books 2, 9, and 10 were free on Cook's website, but that vanished recently; you can probably find them on the internet somewhere. For the rest, eBay is probably your best bet. The first first third of the 10-book series was published in the US; the first as Wizard War and the third as The Oracle. The second and shortest volume was split into two, called The Questing Hero and The Hero's Return. And the first third of Walrus & Warwolf was published as Lords of the Sword... but not the rest. If it's not obvious, the series had major commercial trouble; the first book sold 150,000 copies and the last few under 10,000, so if you see a copy of The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster buy it and flog it on eBay. One of the reasons they sold so poorly is that they're very various in terms of length, setting, character, genre, and tone, so do consider reading a couple before you decide they're all bad. Generally, they get weirder as you go on, and I think the best ones are in the middle. Inadequately posted:I recently picked up a Golden Age science fiction anthology and quite enjoyed it. It's fun reading early science fiction and seeing how the genre has changed over the years. Does anyone have any recommendations for good Golden Age/pulp sci-fi? I found an old copy of Triplanetary at a local store, so I think I'll start off with the Lensmen series. Here.
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Oct 1, 2013 10:03
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Neurosis posted:He rapes a woman and sells her into slavery to barbarian rapists. He's pretty loving evil. Awesome books, though. He does become a little less evil later on, I'll admit, but that is not setting a high level of achievement.  I don't remember this... I'll stop defending him now. I didn't suggest Rhialto because one of the stories is about the wizards stopping an uppity witch who's trying to turn them into women, and the wizards say things like "the Murthe must be thwarted if we are not to witness the final triumph of the female race!"E: To be clear, I like complex, amoral, and ridiculous characters, but this story, "The Murthe", is flat-out misogynistic. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 14:29
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Neurosis posted:It's pretty strongly implied in one line where Cugel is talking about his first 'coupling' with her. I can't remember the exact phrasing but it was pretty clear. Do you remember which story this was in? I don't, not that I doubt you. Neurosis posted:I also don't agree the story about the Murthe was misogynistic at all. Rhialto and his pals just felt like a pathetic little boys' club with a "NO GIRLS ALLOWED" sign stuck to the door, and the story said very little about women that didn't come from that kind of juvenile mentality which the characters had but I have no belief the author possessed. Zachack posted:The characters in Rhialto are portrayed as complete buffoons who keep control because they hoarded enough trinkets. Yeah, they don't want their boys club ruined, and the reader isn't supposed to pity them. The Murthe is bad because she wants to be part of club, not because the book hates her. They beat her in the end and their reward is going back to their stupid existence where they wait for the world to end and act jealous of Rhialto. I agree that the wizards are pretty ridiculous (not even able to cast their own magic), but I think the story portrays them as ridiculous people responding to a serious situation, like "Morreion". It has more weight than just wizards screwing around while the world ends, like "Faders Waft". The witch/wizard war is one woman trying to turn all the men into women reads like a parody of feminism, and the end of the story, showing that the Murthe's motive is being in love with the wizard who defeated her back then (and is the only half-way admirable character), and she acts on it by turning to misandry, looks particularly bad from this point of view. It's not just that the characters are terrible people, but when it's bound up in gender themes and the only woman is this awful, it turns nasty.
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Oct 2, 2013 20:45
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ManOfTheYear posted:The last time I read fantasy was when I read Hobbit for the hundreth time when I was nine years old, after that I've been dwelling on non-fiction, reading history, political history, criminology, true crime and some popular science stuff. Learning new things is fun. Now, though, I'm having an urge to check out some fiction, but my criteria is that it shouldn't be pure entertainment. Well written and exciting is all fine, nothing wrong with that, but I want books that in one way or another make me think. Like if the books have some interesting philosophical stuff or the theme is morally or otherwise (for example it's about political or racial issues) interesting. Well written is a huge plus. If the books are adult and mature fantasy, that would be fun. Apart from the pro recs you've already had, The Female Man by Joanna Russ, Neverness by David Zindell, almost anything by Samuel R. Delany, and Dune by Frank Herbert.
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Oct 14, 2013 09:48
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ManOfTheYear posted:Woah, that's a lot of recommendations! Thank you guys, now I'll just have to figure out where to start. I'm gonna take the risk and check out the the first of R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing-book, the fact that savinhill says that the books have interesting religious stuff with in them and a lot of people at the same time telling about the problematic sexual views made me really curious. Again, thank you for the answers, you're the best. I can't believe nobody (even me) recommended The Left Hand of Darkness, which is the classic sf novel discussing gender. It's by Ursula le Guin, who wrote the Earthsea books. quote:Hmm, didn't think it this way. Even though I haven't touched any kind of fiction for over ten years, I have a lot of warm memories about fantasy worlds because they were a large part of my childhood, maybe not always in books, but at least in movies and video games. I think you can find good and smart stuff anywhere, even though a lot of the genre would be just light entertainment. He wasn't serious. General Battuta posted:Yeah, Cardiac, I think you're forgetting that a lot of very important SF/F writers are themselves women. I think there are a lot more, and more important, sf writers from marginalised backgrounds than most people notice, though I haven't crunched any numbers.
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Oct 14, 2013 17:41
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Per Wikipedia:code:E: Beaten. andrew smash posted:Oh yeah, I forgot about those. I think battuta has an interesting point though. Nobody calls those books fantasy. They don't get filed with fantasy/sf in bookstores. But they clearly are. They've got sf/f in them, but not a majority of sf/f.
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Oct 14, 2013 22:23
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andrew smash posted:I am honestly not sure what you mean by this. Sf/f is there, but there are other genres in the makeup (school story, mystery, romance, childrens'/YA) that are seen as more important. YA's the most important, so they tend to get thought of as YA and a little forgotten in sf/f more generally. Same deal as those angel-romance fantasies wheich are technically fantasy but sold/though of as romance, or technothrillers. E: Moreover. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 22:29
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Listen up, maggots! We've now got an Ursula le Guin thread, so if you've read any her books go over and post about 'em, and if you haven't, read some of the OP's recommendations and then post about whichever ones you did read!
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Oct 28, 2013 22:33
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Isn't Felix Gilman, the author of Half-Made World, a goon?Play posted:I've mentioned it a couple times but I'll repeat that Emphyrio is one of the best books I have ever read in my life. It's a Jack Vance book which is totally and completely different from the rest of his work. Some of the most compelling world and culture-building I've ever had the pleasure of reading. The only place to find this book may well be from a Jack Vance torrent, fyi. Emphyrio is in print from Gollancz (it's an "SF Masterwork") and I think all of Vance's books are available via his website in a special memorial edition.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:34
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General Battuta posted:Continuing a pretty good year for my short fiction, I've got a story up on Clarkesworld today, a bit of hard SF, a bit of fantasy, a bit of Kerbal Space Program. Good story, thanks. Was there a particular reason you went with the name "Tariune"? I googled it and just found misspellings of taurine, but was it a pun on "tarry"?
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Nov 4, 2013 12:07
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Cardiac posted:The Terror by Dan Simmons is also good at that, one of his better ones. If it has sf/f content, is arguably sf/f, is by a writer best known for sf/f, or is vaguely sf/f related (Gothics or fairy story retellings, maybe), it's fine, unless there's a thread it fits into better... if in doubt, post. Anyway, the World Fantasy Awards, [http://www.locusmag.com/News/2013/11/british-fantasy-awards/]British Fantasy Awards[/url], and David Gemmell Legend Awards have been announced. The big ones are: WFA Life Achievement: Susan Cooper, Tanith Lee WFA Novel: Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove; Corvus) BFA Best Novel (the August Derleth Fantasy Award): Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz) BFA Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award): Last Days, Adam Nevill (Macmillan) The Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel: The Blinding Knife, Brent Weeks (Orbit) The biggest losers were Some Kind of Fairy Tale and The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan, which both lost the Derleth and the WFA.
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Nov 5, 2013 12:59
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This is a Bookslut blog post with some pro links on race in sf/f. It seemed rude to quote the whole thing, and I couldn't pick just one, but look at them anyway.
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Nov 8, 2013 23:54
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Stuporstar posted:Can anyone recall any stories that use the premise "man turns out to be a spaceship" or vise versa? I'm not quite sure what you mean - you make it sound like a twist ending - but going by other people's suggestions, "The Lady who Sailed the Soul" by Cordwainer Smith?
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Nov 10, 2013 12:37
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Chairchucker posted:Maybe babies are a delicacy. I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.
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Nov 11, 2013 21:45
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systran posted:It's interesting how many Mormons seem into fantasy/sci-fi. Did Orson Scott Card start that tradition, or was it someone else? Joseph Smith  (Yeah, I had to edit it a bit.) Although I'm reliably informed that even if they wear odd underwear and call Jews "gentiles" they're all different people with, you know, personalities and all those high-level characteristion tips and tricks. fritz posted:Who wants to see some horrible opinions from horrible ex-libertarian now-hardcore-catholic John C. Wright? It wasn't, stop posting horrid things in my nice thread  Even when Wright's not talking bigoted crap like this it's just painful to read.
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Nov 23, 2013 22:56
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the least weasel posted:This might be a stupid question but I'm curious whether there's any recommended reading order for the books/stories by Cordwainer Smith. His bibliography is so confusing and probably it doesn't even matter but I just bought The Rediscovery of Man and wanted to make sure I get the right 'effect'. When should I read Norstrilia? What about any other collections of short stories? There's a timeline in most editions of The Rediscovery of Man, but most of the stories only fit into it very loosely and don't really benefit from being read in order. I think Norstrilia comes near the end. IIRC only the NESFA Press version of Rediscovery is absolutely complete, though. By the way, if anyone's intersted in comic sf, John M. Ford's How Much For Just the Planet? is very good and funny, and you don't have to like Star Trek to enjoy it - I don't.
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Nov 27, 2013 17:54
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Irony.or.Death posted:So, Hyperion. Just finished it this morning and I feel fairly confident that it ended on the highest note it's going to reach You're talking about the last story, the one about time dilation, right? Not the embarrassing actual ending where characters sing "We're off to see the Wizard"? The Fall of Hyperion is different - it's a novel and not a short story collection - and I found it a lot more rewarding and interesting, although that's probably because it had a plot... The Endymion books were pants, though.
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Nov 28, 2013 21:57
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tankfish posted:I was wondering if anyone has any recommendation's on books where the main heroine grows into a evil/iron queen? Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter, though she's not a queen. The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers by Hugh Cook, and its sequel, have an iron and ambivalent queen as "heroine" from the start.
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Nov 29, 2013 22:03
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General Battuta posted:Who am I forgetting? Mary Gentle, for one. Her novel Ash (a series in the US) is about a mediaeval mercenary - Gentle has an MA in history, so you're in pretty good hands for accurate detail - mid fifteenth century, and working for the Burgundians IIRC. Except the invaders are invincible Visigoths from North Africa, and not all of the details are correct, and the text is actually a translation being done by a modern historian, making footnotes and doing his own research in between chapters, and the ending is great. Her other books are set in interesting societies, such as the first White Crow book, set in a city where giant bipedal rats rule humans for the city's gods. I haven't read P. C. Hodgell, just about her, but they sound as if The Supreme Court might have a positive opinon of her. Do you? The Supreme Court posted:Who are authors particularly skilled at weaving well-realised worlds behind a book's plot? It seems there's some authors who've created full worlds that are so magnificent it's hard not to find an interesting story in them (e.g. heist novel, noir-detective), rather than the common fantasy tale of conquering an empire/ saving the world by coming-of-age. Daniel Abraham's "Seasons" books (A Betrayal in Autumn, etc) are set in a quasi-Asian world without being all Orientalist, all the wizards are poets who create beings that can do one sort of magic and want nothing more to un-exist, and the people use sign language to bolster their speech, although this is a bit clumsy. The first one's a love triangle, the second's a political coup and a rewrite of Macbeth. I haven't got round to the others yet. Hugh Cook, for brutality, humour, and idiosyncracy - start with The Walrus and the Warwolf - and The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick, for the interest of the warped reflections of modern America. It has a sequel called The Dragons of Babel which didn't work for me so well. I don't rate Earthsea quite as highly as General Battuta, but the first trilogy is probably the best fantasy trilogy ever. (E: And her worldbuilding is elegant and unusual, which is what you were after.) Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Nov 30, 2013 |
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Nov 30, 2013 13:13
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field balm posted:I'm looking for some gothic influenced sci fi - as in, inspired by traditional gothic lit and ideas rather than a pulpy space-gothic aesthetic. Philip K Dick is something that comes to mind, but googling just gives me loads of nu-Frankenstein (which makes sense, being both gothic and proto sci fi) and random space vampire poo poo. How precise do you want to be? Because a lot of sf is gothic-inspired, and I can't see a distinction that includes Dick without vast swathes of other sf. The sf encyclopaedia entry is very broad. I you want to be really specific, though, there's a Brian Aldiss novel called Frankenstein Unbound, a sequel I think, and Michael Bishop's Brittle Innings has the Monster as a character.
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Dec 4, 2013 22:44
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Fallom posted:The first book is by far the rapiest. Probably because the plot revolves around a woman being kidnapped and treated as a sex slave. In the second book the same woman is involved in an at best unhappy relationship with, at worst raped by, the man who saves her from this.
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Dec 8, 2013 15:02
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andrew smash posted:Kind of a cool idea but then a niven/pournelle novel happens This describes everything by Niven I've read. gatz posted:I finished Neuromancer and hated the ending, along with not liking William Gibson's writing style. I'm interested in cyberpunk, but I'm probably not going to pursue any more of Gibson's work. Any recommendations? I'm specifically interested in writers who speculate about the effects of combining technology with our own bodies. Gibson sort of touched on this in regards to identity, but his prose obscured it too much. Cyberpunky stuff - Bruce Sterling, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany (in Nova at least). Pat Cadigan and Pynchon if you want to go into identity rather than just bodies.
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Dec 17, 2013 09:58
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Fremry posted:Reposting from the recommendation thread because I didn't get much there: Try The Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski and Starfish by Peter Watts (available free on his website.) Starfish is the first of a trilogy that gets worse as it goes on. Maybe Neal Stephenson's Zodiac, which is almost all above-water but might scratch that itch? I don't remember how bad the ending is though.
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Dec 17, 2013 23:42
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Actual reason I recommended it: I can see my copy from where I'm typing.Cardiac posted:Ian Mcdonald should be mentioned as well?? I'm not leaving him out for any good reason, I know how big a noise he is these days, it's just that I've only read Desolation Road and that didn't really seem to fit the bill.
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Dec 17, 2013 23:54
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Quick note, I'm attempting to read Stone by Adam Roberts, and I am about 4-5 pages in, and the main character basically is going on and on about nanotech and how he's not sure he's a guy anymore cause his genitals all shrunk off, and he scratched his crotch enough to give himself a vagina. Has anyone read this, and if so, does it get better? The plot sounded interesting but this is just sorta... weirdly hosed up. I haven't read that one but Adam Roberts is a pretty cool dude with a cool blog, I wouldn't expect him to turn into late Heinlein.
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Jan 6, 2014 14:37
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systran posted:China Mountain Zhang. http://goo.gl/cbuvey Thanks for this; I loved the book when I read it, but don't know nearly enough about Chinese culture to know how accurate that is. It's nice to know McHugh was respectful enough to make it accurate. (I was quite wary of the narration, which seemed a bit stiff and cliched, but when focus switched to other characters you realise it's just how he is.) I don't remember the ending exactly but I liked it, and the discussion of engineering, a lot. I think the kite flying is a tribute to the dragon wrestling in Babel-17, too.
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Feb 12, 2014 09:54
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andrew smash posted:IMO Rajaniemi doesn't incorporate enough real neurology or psychology to make it worthwhile for that purpose but I dunno. I think blindsight was the best suggestion. I think Blindsight is too deep inside sf for most people to get it. Perhaps Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers, whose heroine's body is inhabited by four consciousnesses, or I think one of Pat Cadigan's novels (Synners maybe?) deals with the same territory. Blog Free or Die posted:The Mieville chat reminds me that I enjoyed his YA book Un Lun Dun. You should wrap your eyeballs round some Diana Wynne Jones; The Time of the Ghost is pretty good on that score, and so's Archer's Goon. E: Also, Jonathan Ross, why on Earth. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Mar 8, 2014 |
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Mar 8, 2014 08:50
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Been more or less afk for a while and I've just updated the OP; let me know if I missed anything.Srice posted:So seeing all that SFWA nonsense over the past year or so, I just gotta ask: Are there any notable authors in that organization? No, there are no notable authors in the main American sf/f professional organisation, certainly not any who can be found by googling "SFWA members". anathenema posted:Voting membership for the Hugo costs $40. He is said to have purchased several people memberships who agreed to vote for him. Hahahahaha well at least someone's making money from writing.
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Apr 20, 2014 06:14
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Kraps posted:I noticed that the chart in the op has GoT as low fantasy and the Stormlight Archive as high fantasy. I was recently thinking about genres because I was explaining to my brother what "sword and sorcery" is. I would have thought GoT is also high fantasy; is it not because of the relatively low amounts of magic use? That seems kind of arbitrary to me. They're there because people said they should be there. For what it's worth,  fantasy was originally labelled "epic fantasy". The etymology of "high fantasy" is that Tolkien described his writing as "'high', purged of the gross" (googling it, I found it attributed to his Collected Letters, no 131), i.e. "no sex please, we're Elfish". High fantasy began as imitations of archaic poems, then changed to Tolkien-imitations, and now means whatever it doesn't mean; low fantasy is just a backformation.Popular Human posted:For me, what makes BotNS so amazing is a number of things: the way Wolfe applies Proust to a dying earth fantasy world (seriously, the ruminations at the beginning of the book about Sev's childhood among the torturers is achingly well-written), the Nabokovian games he plays with time and memory, and prose that's head and shoulders above any other fantasy author I've ever read. You might enjoy John Crowley's "AEgypt" quartet, which is not only beautifully written but touches on some of the themes you mention enjoying here - time, memory, and recollections of childhood. RVProfootballer posted:I quite liked it when I read it a few months ago, but I've come to appreciate the more modern style with a comprehensible, overarching plot line. BotNS and a few other older fantasy books I've read lately (Viriconium comes to mind) have been good and interesting, but I rarely had any idea what the next stop in the story would be. Stuff just happens and leads to the next interesting vignette. I don't know exactly how to describe it better than that except by contrast. For example, even when something unexpected happens in, say, ASoIAF, it is understandable and fits some overall plot: everyone tries to gently caress over everyone else to get more power, the various separate groups are each working towards a somewhat more specific goal, that kind of thing. Does that seem like a reasonable description of the difference in style when it comes to plot or did I really miss some big plot hints in BotNS? As systran sez Wolfe is playing a different ball game. He's really not a writer about the rational and explicable; the events are following a logic that's more to do with emotion, dreams, the unconscious, and characterisation. It does allow you to enjoy New Sun on a surface level as a picaresque, though. ~ The only thing I've read this year that fits in this thread is "Beowulf". What struck me is that fighting people inevitably leads to revenge, but Beowulf doesn't really do this; he goes after monsters without clans to look after them - Grendel does, of course, but he's only got the one dam so she's easy to deal with. In a way it makes me think that the poem chickens out of dealing with the consequences of violence (one man's death being small beer compared to a possible cycle of revenge going on for generations) because of its use of fantasy. I suppose another way to read it is that it advises prospective heroes to choose targets without family and clan behind them, so you can be sure to annihilate them and be safe from either vengeance or other people writing the history.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:29
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Lowly posted:It's hard to analyze Beowulf in any authoritative way, since it's origins are fairly clouded in mystery and even translations are debatable. Pretty much every aspect of Beowulf is subject to some kind of debate, and people can't even agree on when it was composed and who composed it, let alone what the major themes of the poem are. But I would argue that rather than ignoring the consequences of violence, the poem does acknowledge them, as they are very much a part of the Anglo-Saxon world, but they are also a side occurrence in Beowulf, because the poem's main purpose is to describe Beowulf's heroic deeds. Yes, they're a side occurence to Beowulf's heroism. And I sidelined it a bit, but for all the praise he gets, his valour and responsibility are truly admirable - especially, I felt, fighting the dragon. It's more the fact that the heroic ethos minimises dealing with enemies, which seems more praiseworthy to me. But then, I'm not a tenth-century Anglo-Saxon. quote:But there are references to the consequences of violence within the poem (Beowulf's own family history, which leads to his obligation to King Hrothgar, and Beowulf's thoughts on the marriage of Hrothgar's daughter to an enemy clansman, for example) and examples of Beowulf engaging in battles against enemies of his clan (fighting alongside Hygelac in Friesland and later avenging Hygelac's death). These are just not the main setpieces of the poem, which are Beowulf's epic battles against the monsters. I think what makes him a hero is not that he is choosing battles that won't result in revenge, but that he is taking on battles that no one else will fight. And he doesn't choose these battles because of their targets. In the case of Grendel and mom, it is due to the obligation his family owes to King Hrothgar and in the case of the dragon, it is because he is the king and the dragon has attacked his throne-hall and his villages, and it becomes his duty as king to avenge himself and his people. I was sloppy in my original post. I shouldn't have said that Beowulf "goes after monsters without clans"... The fact that loners are more vulnerable than entire families is just a consequence of the importance of kinship. Beowulf's obviously not choosing battles based on his enemies' family trees; it's more that the text hands him those fights in his ignorance. He does have to fight humans, but they're interludes in the text; the meat is the monsters. And because those monsters are inhuman, monstrous, and demonic ("Cain's clan"), Beowulf doesn't deal with them in a way that he'd have to deal with other humans. Can't marry his relatives off to them, pay weregeld, or demand/offer submission. It's violence alone, and it's depicted as working. In other words, the poem acknowledges the cycles of revenge, and then fantasises that they can be stopped through violence. And that seems a weakness to me. I think you're making a bit much of the Grendels' relation to Cain, by the way; it's one (iirc) explicit line and a lot of demonic imagery. Not so much the dragon and the ancients' hoard, though. quote:Anyway, it's fun to talk about Beowulf, because almost nobody really knows much about it for sure. If you are a linguist, you can even get into debates about what individual words mean. It's actually kind of more fun to read all the various debates and interpretations surrounding Beowulf than it is to read the poem itself. The author really is dead. Which translation do you prefer? I read Heaney's but didn't think it was that good, and some of his word choices were very Latinate and didn't fit the Germanic setting at all. Didn't really mind the Irish ones though.
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Apr 30, 2014 17:15
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General Battuta posted:Hahahaha holy poo poo I just got a three book offer from Tor for The Traitor Baru Cormorant and whatever I do next. I'm stratospheric. I never thought this would happen so fast. Congratulations! ...but you know, that's not obnoxious at all. Looking forwards to putting you in a brand new Goon Authors category in the OP.
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May 1, 2014 05:06
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Whalley posted:systran, you mentioned Maureen F. McHugh - what would be the best "start here" book by her? Should I just jump into China Mountain Zhang, or is there something that better encapsulates her style? I don't know if China Mountain Zhang is the best starting book by her, but it's amazing and you (everyone reading this) should definitely read it - it's well-written and moving and very aware of the fact that it's an sf novel (lots of Delany and ironised genre sf motifs), yet it's moving the genre forward. It's very historically important.
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May 9, 2014 17:26
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