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

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General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

fookolt posted:

Just finished Abaddon's Gate in The Expanse series and really enjoyed all three books; what should I read next for more space opera?

I'd also be down for something harder/darker like Revelation Space or more optimistic/progressive like The Culture series.

Try Downbelow Station, I guess!

# ¿ Aug 18, 2013 12:53

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 07:59

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

If any of you are into short fiction I have a piece up on Strange Horizons, one of my favorite pro markets. Even comes with a podcast!

quote:

A problem of scale:

Why does it matter to Naveen that this relationship should or should not endure, when he spends his nights in the arms of the single most disruptive element in the history of human knowledge? How many lives could Hayden alter or save or enable if he just made himself available to science? There must be a means by which he retains his youth, some technique by which the preference for a cold beer becomes spontaneous refrigeration, some nonlocal tunneling effect, some daemon of computation or transmission�

Why is Hayden and Naveen important compared to Hayden and the world?

This is how Naveen realizes that he is in love.

e: For those of you who are constantly looking for good space opera, I also wrote a big stupid post about why I like Scott Westerfeld's Succession so much. Might be of interest.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Aug 19, 2013

# ¿ Aug 19, 2013 19:09

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Glad you guys liked it, and well spotted Hedrigall - I wrote the story after spending time with her at the Alpha workshop, though I think the homage is almost purely structural. Story of Your Life wasn't a conscious influence, I think it's one of Chiang's weakest.

I have pieces coming up in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Lightspeed, though I'm not sure precisely when. Also, as general advice to people trying to break into short fiction: don't shoot too low. Check what kind of rates the market pays before you submit. If it's less than five cents a word, avoid them unless they have an established reputation (Ideomancer, Giganotasaurus, etc - something that publishes known names). Some people might disagree with this advice, but I'm personally of the opinion that a sale to a subpar market is worse for you than no sale at all.

Assuming rejection is good. You will be rejected lots and lots and lots.

You want to start at the best market and work down. My list of go-to markets, in roughly this order, would probably be

Clarkesworld
Lightspeed
Asimov's
Analog (if hard SF)
Fantasy and Science Fiction (print submissions only)
Strange Horizons
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Apex
Daily Science Fiction
maybe Ideomancer, maybe Giganotasaurus, maybe Shimmer
and, last, Tor.com, which pays excellent rates and gives you fantastic exposure, but which has very long response times and a very low acceptance rate

But I've probably missed something important. Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet is quite excellent.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Aug 21, 2013

# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 05:26

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Perdido Street Station starts with an almost unreadably difficult passage about a man sailing up a river into a terrible place. I'm not sure it remains comfortably young-adult-safe much past that point, but the opening at least could do...

# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 08:49

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

buildmorefarms posted:

Thanks to you both!

I think explicit language isn't as much of a deal-breaker as more adult themes (like perhaps sexualised violence or extremely detailed torture) would be, so that's perfect.

I would definitely worry about both of those things in Perdido. It gets fairly dark.

Ah - how about some LeGuin? A later Earthsea book, maybe? They're very accessible but Tehanu in particular complicates the traditional fantasy narrative of the earlier books a great deal.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 09:08

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I am a huge Banks fan and yeah I didn't like Consider Phlebas much either, though the ending does bring something to the table.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2013 21:06

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Hedrigall posted:

I'm nearly finished The Uplift War by David Brin. It's good but not as good as Startide Rising - probably just because I like the fins more than the chims.

I wanted to ask though (please no spoilers) do the central mysteries get answered in the second trilogy? Or is more of a side story? It definitely sounds like a side story from the blurbs I've read. By the time I finish this six book series will I know definitively: a) about the Progenitors, b) who uplifted humanity (if anyone), c) exactly what the Streaker found, and d) what happened to the Streaker and its crew after Startide Rising?

Or has Brin yet to write all of that?

The second trilogy (Uplift Storm) is deeply, deeply frustrating. You will get the answer to d), and maybe some hints towards c), but nothing really about a) or b), and barely a mention of Creideki and the crew left behind on Kithrup.

Antti posted:

The best YA novel I've ever read, that is to say the best novel that has been called YA (it almost feels like a pejorative these days, in that a good novel can't also be YA), is Sabriel by Garth Nix.

But I suppose this recommendation misses the mark if you want to read "proper" YA as it's commonly understood, i.e. stuff like Divergent or Beautiful Creatures.

I can't second this enough. Sabriel is a bafflingly successful book - so good that even the author doesn't seem quite sure how to replicate it.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2013 14:21

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

The sex scenes in Altered Carbon are certainly silly, but aren't they all consensual sex between adults? By genre standards they're doing okay!

Morgan did an interview and someone asked him about his sex scenes. He said "the sex I write is the sex I've had." Well man, if you say so :catstare:

# ¿ Aug 30, 2013 17:05

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Yeah, I think publication order is almost always the way to go, and absolutely the way to go in the case of Foundation.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2013 03:12

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Speaking of the Hugos, occasional thread poster Citizen Insane just missed the nomination for Best New Writer by three votes. I don't know if this is cause for celebration or agony but :toot:

# ¿ Sep 2, 2013 16:40

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

specklebang posted:

Ah well, one man's meat is another man's poison. The 7 books are among my favorites but you don't like them. Maybe you would have enjoyed Mortal Engines more if you had started with Fever Crumb and didn't have to go through that huge suspension of disbelief the mobile cities may have challenged.

Just as I can't stand certain greatly loved authors that others may rave about. Still, I check out almost every suggestion made here - often I don't find myself interested - but sometimes you get a match-up.

That's a cat face, dude, not an expression of dislike for the book. He's communicating adoration for the cat illustration you posted.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 01:53

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

DancingMachine posted:

I'm a fantasy reader primarily, but I'd like to try some sci-fi. Either space opera or cyberpunk, I think. I'm aware the genres are riddled with crap so I'm wary of just picking something with a lot of stars on Amazon. On the fantasy side, I've recently really enjoyed Abercrombie, Lynch, Rothfus, and Martin. So I think I want something modern - published fairly recently by an author who is still under 60 or so (preferably younger). Any suggestions?

Edit: on the sci fi side, I haven't read much recently. I loved the first 2 Dune books when I read them a few years back, and failed to penetrate god emperor. I enjoyed some Heinlen and Douglas Adams, but I don't think they're what I'm looking for now. Nor is Dune, really.

I'm gonna buck the trend here and suggest you not go to Morgan. Given your love of Dune, try a space opera - I've lately been on a recommendation kick for Scott Westerfeld's Succession duology.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2013 16:34

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Cardiac posted:

Expecting scifi-writers ie colossal nerds to write sex scenes which are not cringe-inducing is hoping to much.

Hamilton as a writer for WH40k would incidentally be quite interesting, since Space Marines are neutered killing machines, thereby taking that part of Hamiton's work out of the equation.

A lot of SF/F writers can write sex really well! Catherynne Valente's Palimpsest is a book entirely about sex and it's neither pornographic nor cringe-inducing. Sex in that book isn't even particularly erotic.

Naturally, when it went up for the Hugo/Nebula, it suffered a storm of misogynistic and Puritan attacks so vitriolic I don't think she's even willing to talk about the book in public any longer.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2013 16:28

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Darth Walrus posted:

I seem to recall that a chunk of why it's an old shame was less because of the storm of misogyny and more because she looked back on it and decided 'actually, yeah, the sexual politics of this book are a bit on the weird side, and not in a way I adequately addressed'. Not to say that there wasn't a lot of misogyny (because female author writing speculative fiction), just that that wasn't why she's so reluctant to talk about it these days.

I didn't know this, thank you!

# ¿ Sep 7, 2013 01:24

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

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.

Read a book by a woman. You've got pretty good range on display here, from Mistborn's pulpy fantasy schlock through Banks' best work, so why not try some LeGuin? The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed are both pillars of the SF genre.

You're exploring the genre, so you'll get to hit up one of the most important authors working in it and help break the tendency of SF critics and readers to ignore even the most important women.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 16:07

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Carrier posted:

Or, alternatively, read a book because its what you want to read rather than as some dumb attempt to stick it to the patriarchy.

This would be a great idea, and the one I'd prefer, if SF/F didn't still have huge problems with women at every level, and if the recommendations and 'what I've read' posts in this thread weren't so consistently skewed male. It's not anyone's fault, it's not done out of malice, it's just a product of subtle psychological heuristics that can be counteracted pretty easily.

As a male SF/F author I'm convinced by now that we actually do need to make active attempts to stick it to the patriarchy, even in Our Forum Posts.

You're right to have a massive hard-on for everything Banks has written, he's great.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 17:41

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Walh Hara posted:

Before I'm misinterpretated, I don't think Sanderson is the best writer ever. At all, not even within his subgenre however you define that. He's certainly not the best at world building either, the world building in bas-lag is a lot more fascinating for example. There are some books of him I couldn't finish on my first try and I can easily point out badly written things in every single book of him. The only reason I'm making this much fuss about it is because for some odd reason every single time his name is mentioned in here (no matter what context, even when no opinion is asked) there are instantly a bunch of people posting about how bad he is. I wouldn't that so much if they could convince me there are enough better writers in the same genre out there that merit the reading time more, but as it is I don't think that's the case.

It's because Sanderson sells a bunch of books and has basically become the poster child for big fat fantasy. He also has slightly lovely views about gay people, though at least he doesn't seem to act on them.

There are loads and loads of fantasy writers more worth the reading time, though specifically in the epic fantasy subgenre I'm not as sure.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2013 19:19

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Decius posted:

SF is a genre, where often a lot of writing isn't that great objectively ("workmanlike" as it was used a couple of times here), but you tolerate it because of the ideas, the theme, the characters, the setting, the worldbuilding, the story, the humor, the love the writer pours into his/her work etc, even if the writing itself is flawed.

You don't have to do this! Find the authors who can write good SF and good capital-L literature. They do exist. You don't need to settle for one or the other.

Decius posted:

But of course it means said writer is more easily criticized and disliked than authors who write more major "L" literature, which might have near flawless prose but is boring.

This is a false dichotomy. A good Real Literature writer will write an engaging story just as well as anyone working in genre.

The subjectivity thing keeps coming up and again I want to raise the uncomfortable position that not all tastes are equal. Readers develop and become more talented just like writers do. You can see this in the way tastes change over time - there are loads and loads of readers who once thought R. A. Salvatore and Tim Zahn were probably the greatest human artists (myself, for example!) but who moved on to bigger and more complex things as they grew up. Never, to my knowledge, do you see the opposite - nobody goes from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to R. A. Salvatore.

Yes, everybody has different tastes, and yeah, taste is subjective. But opinions on literature can be substantiated, which is part of why we have this thread. We're not operating in a vacuum of isolated preferences in which the only possible discourse available to us is 'some people like it, some people don't.' When the thread shits on a writer for pages and pages there are often a lot of really good points made (and, sometimes, not). I've been on both sides of that process, and my feeling is that it's generally pretty good at drawing out real flaws.

The Emperor's Soul was pretty good though.

e: This really is the same discussion that constantly flares up in the TG board games thread. :tinfoil:

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Sep 12, 2013

# ¿ Sep 12, 2013 14:20

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I think you're absolutely right - it's a case of expanding palate - but part of that should include the ability to criticize and discuss. As a personal example, I was the world's biggest Battlestar Galactica fan while the show aired; now, having watched The Wire and a bunch of other TV, I can look at BSG from a lot of angles I didn't have before.

And yeah, it's worth reinforcing that not all capital-L Literature is inherently better. Jeffrey Eugenides is a great gateway to 'realistic fiction' (whatever that means), but Middlesex is a massively better book than The Virgin Suicides. And I'd put any of Connie Willis's books up there as great literature about the human condition.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2013 15:05

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Haha, good example - I think there's probably a lot of criticism to be made of her work, and I really shouldn't have said 'any of her books' when I've only read Blackout/All Clear, Doomsday Book, and Passage. She has an interesting project as a writer, trying to make something out of narrative obstructionism, but I think that same tendency can make her work hard to approach - it all feels so meandering and banal before it explodes.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2013 15:11

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Dryb posted:

Why does he need a kickstarter? He's a previously published author writing a book, for gently caress's sake.

Other people have already pointed this out, but I just want to reinforce that getting a novel published is the start of your struggles, not the end. Most writers basically work book to book, and if one fails, their career under that name's done.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2013 01:44

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

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.

They are spectacularly awful.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2013 15:12

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Fideles posted:

Thanks for the advice - I guess they are worth missing then. This does leave me with the problem of what to read next. I have been feeling pretty uninspired recently. Are there any new/ up and coming Sci-Fi authors people would recommend?

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.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2013 17:06

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Fallom posted:

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.

I think it's one of his weaker stories

But a lot of the other stories in the collection are fantastic!

# ¿ Sep 24, 2013 01:10

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Ratios and Tendency posted:

Can I get any recommendations for (really, really good) space science fiction without ftl and not primarily about military conflict?

As ever, I'm gonna recommend Blindsight by Peter Watts, a first contact story that challenges some of our fundamental assumptions about the human experience and the nature of alien life.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2013 15:08

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Antti posted:

I finished Spin by Robert Charles Wilson today and found out it's #1 of a trilogy. Spin was fairly self-contained, are the other two books worth picking up if I liked Spin? I can't see sequels really capturing the same concepts and atmosphere.

I haven't read anything past Spin, but I think reports suggest they decline pretty sharply and end up pulling the Endymion Gambit of retconning earlier stuff to make it less interesting.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2013 16:07

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

TOOT BOOT posted:

I've never understood why some people are bothered by things like aliens and FTL in science fiction.

You can go on a no-aliens/no-FTL kick for all sorts of good reasons - a lot of good stories are told within constraints, for instance. Or you might be looking for a specific kind of mood or conflict that's often associated with these traits.

It's certainly kind of silly to say 'no, ugh, I can't deal with that FTL travel in my fiction, it destroys ~MY IMMERSION~', but I think it's perfectly valid to look for a story that engages with the vast indifferent cosmos or whatever.

Fallom posted:

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.

Was that the part with the axe rising and falling and the sentence running on forever and and? I hated that.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2013 00:44

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

YES

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 05:47

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

He should use his best blurb. "Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts."

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 05:56

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Nondescript Van posted:

Is "Ancillary Justice" and good? I've read positive things but all of it just seems like ad copy from the publisher.

I was also wondering if anybody has any idea when "On the Steel Breeze" will be released as an ebook.

A lot of people I know and respect are really, really excited about this book, so while I haven't read it yet, the hype is at least not all ad copy.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2013 04:34

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

apophenium posted:

A few pages back people were talking about a new book by Peter Watts which kinda got me interested. Where should I start with that guy?

Blindsight. Pretty much also where you should stop, outside his short fiction. Starfish is all right, don't read the sequels.

e: Blindsight is free online right here http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

# ¿ Oct 11, 2013 05:36

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

coffeetable posted:

Someone - possibly in here - recommended his Crysis tie-in. I was skeptical, but decided to give it a shot because hey, it's Watts. It was actually non-bad. I won't go as far as good, but certainly above par for genre fiction and shockingly good for a videogame novelization.

This is a correct post. I read it, it's shockingly decent.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2013 22:23

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Rough Lobster posted:

I wanna see Richard Morgan write a book with a female protagonist.

Seriously. He had the perfect setup for this in the Kovacs books, but he never took the chance. One of the running subtextual concerns of his work was the way personality is shaped by the body and neurochemistry - he should've put Kovacs in a female sleeve and either written something really brilliant or (probably) hosed it all up royally with :biotruths:

# ¿ Oct 12, 2013 19:02

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

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.

Science fiction is alright too.

Edit: Oh, and if the books would have something interesting to say about religion, it would be extremely interesting.

Read Blindsight http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

The writing's...fine, but the content is pretty meaty. Cites some sources, too!

# ¿ Oct 14, 2013 01:02

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I would disrecommend those - I loved them a lot as a teenage boy but his writing peaked and then started to slump, and while he's decent at philosophy his science research is awful. If you want to read books about rape and all the ways that labiaplasty is like female genital mutilation by an author who 'writes with male readers in mind', I guess go for them; I don't actively regret reading his books, but if you're looking for sophistication I don't think they will hold up.

e: Probably my first post in the old SF/F thread, maybe one of my first posts on SA, was an extensive defense of Bakker. :sigh:

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Oct 14, 2013

# ¿ Oct 14, 2013 01:14

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

TOOT BOOT posted:

His writing may very well be deeply problematic (I haven't read any yet) but he does engage his critics directly and intelligently defend his own work and that's gotta count for something.

It certainly counts for something, but it mostly counts against him. Professional writers don't respond to reviews, and they don't show up on every blog that mentions their name to start fights. Bakker's reputation would be in much better shape if he stopped Googling himself, learned to say 'Huh, you might have a point' instead of explaining in paragraph-length screeds why You Just Don't Understand, I Have To Write Black Cum Rape Demons, and referring to his opponents as 'femtards'.

Bakker's whole project is predicated on modern neuroscience and behavioral psychology. The problem is that once you start to learn modern neuroscience and behavioral psychology past the undergrad level, you quickly come to understand that he's operating, functionally, at a Reddit-level understanding of these topics.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2013 03:44

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

savinhill posted:

I've never understood this attitude where people feel the need to "disrecommend" something. Also, I find "If you want to read books about rape and all the ways that labiaplasty is like female genital mutilation by an author who 'writes with male readers in mind', I guess go for them;" pretty insulting. You yourself may have some problems with his books, but acting like anyone who reads them is doing so for "rape" and "labiaplasty" is just being a jerk.

I think you're a cool smart guy, even if we disagree about Bakker. You're right, I shouldn't suggest you're reading the books for those things - I certainly wasn't when I read and enjoyed them, and when I proselytized for them in the past. I just want people to be aware of what they're getting into.

Bakker is a frustrating author because I think there's genuinely brilliant material in his work. It's just that he also fucks a lot of stuff up, and when he's called on it, he tends to say 'you don't understand, it's all tied together!' when I don't think it is.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2013 05:47

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Muscle Tracer posted:

Welp, two of 'em did it. Time to write off the whole genre.

Yeah, Cardiac, I think you're forgetting that a lot of very important SF/F writers are themselves women.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2013 15:07

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I'd actually guess that the best-selling fantasy/SF authors of all time will all be women and all be from the last twenty years. We don't tend to talk about them as SF/F authors, perhaps because they've become so successful.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2013 21:35

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 07:59

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

fookolt posted:

That sounds fascinating; I'd love more science fiction from/about South Asia (or really just people of color in general). And preferably by South Asian/poc authors.

You should check out short fiction by Yoon Ha Lee and Benjanun Sriduangkaew. A lot of it's quite free online. I think a ton of people in this thread would enjoy The Knight of Chains, The Deuce of Stars.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2013 01:07

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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