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

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

Drakyn: Dec 26, 2012

FastestGunAlive posted:

Read the first book, its a good break from your normal fantasy but don't bother with the rest. And if you do decide to read the rest, do not read The Silver Spike, I could write paragraphs about how that is one of the worst books, of any genre, I've ever read.

Well now, don't just tease us like that. Please, go for it!

# ¿ Jun 26, 2013 19:46

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 04:07

Drakyn: Dec 26, 2012

Zola posted:

A few more possibilities for you

David Eddings. Best known for The Belgariad series

I'm not entirely sure this is a good option. David Eddings can write well enough, but unless you're under thirteen you can predict the content of each chapter as you go and come out with fair reason to believe you're a psychic. Plus the characters can all be summarized in a single sentence list of traits, only you'll never need to because they'll do it themselves every paragraph they're mentioned in.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2013 16:59

Drakyn: Dec 26, 2012

andrew smash posted:

This a thousand times over. I haven't read peshawar lancers so maybe it's different but Dies the Fire made my skin crawl due to creepiness and my eyes roll from frank stupidity.

If you don't like it, maybe you should try his Draka series (no etymological relation)! After all, we've all been dying to hear the alt-history story of how the entire universe gives a country of South African ultra-Nazis increasingly improbable and insane handjobs until they win at everything forever. With lots of gratuitous slavery and sex.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2014 18:05

Drakyn: Dec 26, 2012

Fried Chicken posted:

Here is the thread in question. There is context (such as it is) for things, and you can see what that tumblr decided not to preserve, and who said some of the unattributed quotes

This thing is loving ridiculous to read in the most horrifying and wonderful way. A bunch of familiar names engaged in the most tediously familiar internet dickery-gossip, only in an I-am-old-and-have-decided-that-is-my-identity way, where you can't be assed to try to understand the internet, or copyright law, or any event of the past four years, or that your hairline isn't the only part of reality that changes over time. A dozen cranks who've known each other for multiple decades jammed into a chipped cupboard in a corner of the internet complaining loudly into each other's asses about how ~~young people~~ the Young live in information bubbles. The same handful of female authors repeating sixteen times each that they can't believe how ridiculous it is that anyone could call them sexist because I woman not man woman not sexist woman woman. Raymond E. Feist signing every post he makes because Raymond E. Feist probably likes to also imagine pasting little stamps on them and putting them in the mailbox.
I wonder how he'd react if someone told him Blizzard Entertainment took the same root idea as Riftwar and made more money than he's physically capable of imagining with it. It'd be a nice capstone to the sales-envy chat they were spitting about near the earlier pages.

And I really need to find Iron Dragon's Daughter. I've read the sequel, but not that, and it's one of those things you think to do but never manage to remember.

Drakyn fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Feb 19, 2014

# ¿ Feb 19, 2014 06:22

Drakyn: Dec 26, 2012

freebooter posted:

I've started reading Jurassic Park again because it was one of the first adult books I read as a kid, when I was like 12, and while I still think it's a great sci-fi thriller the writing is also painfully stilted. And terribly sexist.

But the funniest part is how none of the characters seem to twig what's going on - like, Grant is a palaeontologist who receives funding from a genetic engineering company, is informed that said company has purchased an island in Costa Rica, sees blueprints of the island layout which looks like a large game reserve, and receives a phone call from the company's lawyer very anxious to know about an x-ray Grant received from a scientist in Costa Rica who found what appears to be a specimen of an extinct small dinosaur on a remote beach. And at no point does he point any of this together, and nor do any of the other characters involved, despite repeated clues.

Yeah, the only possible out there would've been the willingness of people to not believe the seemingly-impossible when it's right in front of them, and that flies right out the window when Grant gives the faxed fossil an oh-my-goodness-this-is-important reaction. After that, he should've been in the mood to entertain a lot of other ludicrous-yet-obvious things.
Also you have multiple people seeing the mostly-intact carcass of a tiny theropod and ID'ing it as 'some kind of lizard maybe mutant???,' including a trained biologist. I'm pretty sure that was a little implausible even in the 80s, but nowadays with at least increased general quasi-dinosaur recognition across the population (thanks, Jurassic Park), that'd be downright insane.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2016 15:50

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 04:07

Drakyn: Dec 26, 2012

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I'm just gonna decide right now that that type is too small for me to read.

Here, go ahead and zoom as much as you'd like.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2019 17:30

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