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

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Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

It's about as rapey as a sci fi novel can get and still have a plot / characters / not be Gor.

It didn't feel pornographic to me, unlike what I know about Gor, but to reiterate, there is a lot of rape and sexual violence. It is meant to unsettle the reader, and it sure did that to me. I got through the first book but stopped partway through the second, as it just got to be too much. Not that it necessarily got worse, that's just when I didn't want to deal with it anymore.

Pretty much the entire cast of characters are on a spectrum from unlikable to horrible monsters, so reading the books is unpleasant even when horrific poo poo isn't directly happening.

That said, none of this is the author trying and failing, Donaldson is doing exactly what he sets out to do, so in that sense the books are well written.

Writing super-rapey books full of horrible monsters is basically Donaldson's thing, but it's only going to be readable/enjoyable/likable by those with a high tolerance for that kind of thing.

EDIT:

Cardiovorax posted:

So... pretty much a normal contemporary sci-fi series, then.

This is far beyond even the F/SF norm.

Azathoth fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Aug 11, 2014

# ¿ Aug 11, 2014 18:02

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 10:01

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Cardiac posted:

The big question is:
Better or worse than Bakker?

Although better is probably not the right word.

I've read Bakker as well, and gave up for different reasons.

I'd say that rape comes up about often, but they each treat it vastly differently. Bakker's rape is gratuitous and almost pornographic in nature and description, and while he does write it as an evil act, it never seems to have the utterly shattering and horrifying effect that it has in Donaldson's stories.

Bakker's super-rapey stuff didn't have an effect on me because he didn't do a good job of making it psychologically real. Donaldson, on the other hand, makes it seem very real, and he goes deep into the psychological consequences, and the rape stuff is a critical part of the story, as opposed to something that happened because Bakker needed a quick way to convey something as evil.

In terms of reading, it's far more unsettling to read it in Donaldson's books, though I think that Bakker doesn't intend it to be unsettling in the same way that Donaldson does, so take that with a grain of salt. On the whole, I think the comparison between the two is apt. They're both good writers who choose, for very different reasons, to write horribly unreadable books that can only be enjoyed by a small subset of F/SF readers.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 13:23

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

regularizer posted:

The other type of book I'm looking for is something that's a bit deeper/more cerebral and well-written than more action-y or pulpy sci-fi/fantasy. It doesn't have to be straight-up genre fiction, but I'd like it to at least have some sci-fi/fantasy elements. Some examples of things I've enjoyed in the past are The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North, The Humans by Matt Haig, and The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer.

Please check out The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman. It's a story set in a secondary world with heavy similarities to Old West America, and while it does have a good amount of action, there are allegorical undercurrents running throughout. However, it's not going to beat you over the head with it's message, and provoked quite a bit of thought from me after the fact.

There is a loosely-connected book in the same world, The Rise of Ransom City, but it is set chronologically after The Half-Made World. Although they each stand alone, read The Half-Made World first.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2014 18:50

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

fritz posted:

The SF community has had a lot of trouble the past few years (and, really, its entire history) with toxic people.

She's right about Bakker tho.

As much as I love reading about someone getting their comeuppance for past bad behavior, couldn't find much to disagree with in her post about Bakker. He's a terribly broken individual who thinks he's writing LotR-meets-Lolita, but his reach exceeds his grasp and he ends up with a series that is deeply unsettling for all the wrong reasons.

After reading a little deeper about her, there are waaaaay better examples of her being a toxic piece of poo poo than the Bakker post.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 01:10

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Cardiac posted:

You don't think this is simplifying his writing a lot?

It is also one of the few truly original fantasy series that have been published the last 10 years.
Can we please avoid this pointless discussion that pops up every 50 pages or so. Also, who gives a gently caress about a lovely blogger that most people haven't even heard of.

No, he's a decently talented genre writer who thinks he is way more talented than he actually is. He thinks he is creating this incredibly subtle work of art where he deftly plays with the reader's perceptions of morality or psychology or something, but it's nowhere near as effective or clever as he thinks.

I think the biggest problem is that he also uses the books as a soapbox for his creepy as gently caress opinions about gender relations, without which the books would be top-shelf GRRM-derivative epic fantasy. However, those opinions color the entire work, which is technically well written but deeply flawed.

I read the first two Prince of Nothing books and got some way into the third before it got creepy enough for me to start poking around online for reviews of the second trilogy, as I wanted to understand if I should keep going, and that inadvertently led me to a critical blog post that dug into his views, and then I felt like I needed a long shower.

As a rule, I don't read about author's beliefs via blogs or their own sites, as I prefer to not know about their intent and would rather let the work succeed or fail on its own merits. However, R. Scott Bakker is the one place where I would encourage people to dig into the author's views.

I have read plenty of schlocky writing and I have read plenty of writing from people with horrible opinions, and goodness knows I have enjoyed a lot of it, but Bakker hits a certain nerve in me that only blatant political fiction usually hits. I think it is the way he presents his biotruths bullshit as objective fact that irks me so much.

That said, I wouldn't discourage someone from reading Bakker in the same way I would Terry Goodkind, but I would make sure that the prospective reader understood Bakker's views before starting into his books.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 04:01

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Cardiovorax posted:

"Hate" is saying a bit much. His style just doesn't do anything for me. They're certainly not much nerdier than most of the stuff in this thread. Certainly more self-indulgent, though.

The issue with Stross (Scalzi too for that matter) isn't the writing itself, it's the association with a particularly annoying strain of nerd culture that writes endless wish fulfillment stories about the smug and arrogant nerd, who saves the day and gets the girl because of some particular aspect of his nerdiness.

I don't know if there's a proper term for that kind of writing, but it sets me on guard in the same way that steampunk or zombie stories do.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think Stross or Scalzi themselves write stories that fall within that, they more play with or partially subvert it, but it can't help but rub me the wrong way.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2014 19:16

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

I'll toss in a recommendation for Felix Gilman's The Half-Made World. It has a unique world and strikes a good mix between page-turning action and layered meaning. It goes in interesting directions and doesn't beat you over the head with symbolism and allegory, while still managing to make some thought-provoking points. It's not Gene Wolfe, but it scratches a very similar itch.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2014 03:38

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

coyo7e posted:

While reading Abaddon's Gate I finally had the realization that James Holden really is heavily based on Holden Cauffield - the entire utopian wanna-be rebel who seems to consistently have no awareness of what he's doing outside of desperately wanting to be a martyr/hero. At first I was like "ha ha, his name is Holden!" and then in every novel he does the same poo poo and never really seems to learn from it, while everyone around him is telling him to grow the gently caress up.
I didn't say that, but Black Company reading like something a 15 year-old wrote in his school notebook doesn't make it better than something which is definitely trying to be difficult and complex.

Is Kellhus really the protagonist? And 60 pages in was what, basically the sequence where he sublimates the drunk trapper, iirc. You didn't even meet Achamian, Cnaiur, or Esmenet, I think.. The conflicts between characters (especially around their women, which probably is a :trigger warning: for the Bakker RAPE RAPE RAPE crowd,) are what drives it, and aren't really any characters but one who's really just kind of a cipher, that far in. Cnaiur, shitbird-crazy Breaker of Men and Horses, is also the best foil for an unlikable superman that I could imagine.

He's equally unlikable, but for different reasons. And you're right about Kellhus not being the protagonist, if it's anyone, it's Achamian, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant to read.

As much as I may not like or agree with Bakker's biological/psychological in-text expositions, the primary failure of his books is that large sections of his books are downright unpleasant to slog through, and the payoff doesn't justify reading hundreds of pages of horrible people doing horrible things to each other.

I stuck it out long enough to understand that Bakker's payoffs are usually either unpleasant in and of themselves or not interesting enough to justify what I had to go through to get there.

I consider myself to have a high tolerance for unpleasantness, and I have gotten through some incredibly graphic and disturbing stuff and been glad for the experience, even though I may not gave necessarily enjoyed the process.

That said, Bakker's stuff just isn't worth it. He's not a bad writer from a technical standpoint, and he does have some really great world building, which is what kept me going as long as I did. However, he feels like a second-rate Stephen Donaldson, but with all the negatives taken to 11 and much less interesting philosophical questions being explored.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2014 02:33

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Cardiovorax posted:

Did we read the same Donaldson? Because I do not remember anything that could be considered an interesting philosophical question even in the loosest sense.

Sorry, poor choice of wording. I think Donaldson is interesting as a deconstruction of Lord of the Rings and I didn't know how to compare that to Bakker's exploration of how men are hard-wired to rape. Perhaps I should have gone with thematically more interesting.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2014 02:40

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Am I the only one who didn't give a crap about Whiskeyjack?

Maybe it was the general crappiness of the first book, but I was sick of hearing about how awesome he is when the text mostly just makes him out to be a weary, but supremely competent soldier.

When he got killed I was so drat happy, but then I accidentally got spoiled that he comes back later, which made me more than a little ambivalent about continuing.

I genuinely enjoyed the world building and really appreciated how so many of the races/creatures felt truly original and how well all the world's pieces fit together, but I just couldn't keep going with his never-ending PoV swapping between what are essentially interchangeable characters.

Once I met Snarky Military Person #43 and got to see the world through their eyes, it really made me notice just how similar they were to Snarky Military Persons #1 through 42. So many characters that only have superficial differences made it really tough to remember who did what, so when I finally lost steam and stopped reading for a while, I just couldn't pick it back up.

I don't regret reading as far as I did, which is, I think, somewhere into the 4th book, but I just couldn't make it to the payoff everyone told me was coming.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 01:50

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

coffeetable posted:

If the series is meant to be a satire then The Wise Man's Fear's hundred pages of elf sex is real dedication to the joke.

After reading the first book, I was hoping that the series would turn into a clever deconstruction of the hero myth, but it's looking unlikely at this point.

I will reserve judgment until the last book is out, but the second book was the polar opposite of where I was hoping the series was going and I don't have a lot of hope that it will pull out of the goony tailspin that the second book dove headlong into.

It really is a shame, since the first book had so much promise.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2014 02:57

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Zeitgueist posted:

I'm going to say something that is probably going to get me made fun of:

I read The Wizard of Earthsea and didn't really love it. It was OK.

Did you accidentally lose your sense of joy and wonder to a trickster god or something?

# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 01:46

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

A A 2 3 5 8 K posted:

I finished The Half-Made World and liked it enough. I'm 60 pages into the sequel and not enjoying Harry Ransom's story. Should I stop reading, or does it get back to the stuff left open at the end of the first book, or The Gun and The Line in general?

It only addresses it indirectly, so while you will get resolution, it really is Ransom from end to end. The stories end up intertwining in a way that was very satisfying to me, but I enjoyed Ransom's story in and of itself.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2015 02:08

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Megazver posted:

The new Nebula nominations are considerably less laughable than the Hugos:

Personally, I'm cheering for the Goblin Emperor.

I really enjoyed Annihilation, though I haven't read anything else on the list to compare it to.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2015 23:12

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:

It should be both that and to encourage non minority writers to write outside their comfort zone.

I think a big part of the problem is the level of perceived risk involved for a non-minority author relative to the perceived reward.

Using their own culture represents an essentially neutral choice, but incorporating one that is outside of their own introduces an element of risk if they get the culture wrong.

If the author is able to integrate the culture into the story in a meaningful way that doesn't feel tacked-on or unnecessary, it definitely elevates the work as a whole. These are the kind of books that win awards, and rightfully so.

However, if it comes off as superfluous to the story or unnecessary, then it ends up being wasted research time for the author. Writing about an unfamiliar culture, even one that the author has a genuine interest in exploring, takes time and energy that could be spent improving the work in other ways, or on other writing.

Worse still, if the author executes poorly, it stands a very real chance of dragging the work as a whole down. What might have otherwise been a decent story ends up falling somewhere between on the spectrum from tonedeaf to racist.

Given that the fantasy and scifi genre seems to expect authors to crank out books very quickly, it doesn't surprise me to see authors look at the difficulty involved and decide to stick within their comfort zone.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2015 04:07

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

The Ninth Layer posted:

Name of the Wind was a fine book. It would have been a great first book in another trilogy. Sadly it's followed by Wise Man's Fear which was more or less a training montage stretched across 800 pages. The second book is where poo poo is supposed to get escalated; it's a bad sign that the final book of the trilogy has basically no immediate plot threads to resolve or address from the previous book.

This really sums up my thoughts. Name of the Wind was flawed, but promising, in that it was the author's first book. However, I probably should have taken the huge gap between releases as a sign that something was up, as Rothfuss said in an interview that he completed drafts of all three books before the first one was published.

Honestly, I wonder what was happening between him and his editors/publisher during all that time, since it seems like Wise Man's Fear took all the worst crap from The Name of the Wind and cranked it up to 11. I guess I was naively hoping that with all that extra time between books, there would be a tempering of the goony poo poo, but no such luck.

I think the promise of the first book, despite the flaws, and the unusually long wait for the follow-up, along with the known long wait for the final book really didn't do the second book any favors. It's possible that Rothfuss could pull off a good ending, essentially redeeming Wise Man's Fear retroactively, but I'm going to need to see good reviews from people who didn't like Wise Man's Fear to even consider giving it a shot.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 01:48

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Arcsquad12 posted:

Are there any decent Gunpowder Era fantasy novels out there? And don't say Harry Turtledove.

The Temeraire series is the only one that comes to mind, and it has an interesting world, if you can deal with the paper-thin characters. I stopped after a couple books, but I don't regret reading as far as I did.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2015 20:33

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Seldom Posts posted:

The Half-Made World is about a conflict between magic train demons and magic gun demons in a U.S. style old-west colonial expansion setting.

It's also really drat good.

I'm going to second this. Awesome book.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 16:50

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Peel posted:

Ultimately organised politics and voting is always going to have an advantage over disorganised politics and voting, and an organised counter-slate would just make things even of a farce, so it's not clear to me how the Hugos can recover from this. They weren't a great award before, but this is a new level.

As for Vox Day, his views have been known for a long time. By this point everyone in his baffling support group knows who they're lauding as the foremost mind of SF.

If anyone was hoping to use the Hugos as a reading list, the Nebula is still sane and contains thread favourite The Three-Body Problem. If you want to know what this 'feminist SF' stuff that people are so mad about is, the Tiptree recently announced the 2014 winners and honour list. Likely little to none of it would have actually seen the Hugos but a firm grip on reality has never been necessary to get mad about ~~race mixing and communism~~ ~~political correctness~~ SJWs.

If something doesn't change, this year's Best Novella category is a grim portent of things to come. How horrible would it look if the majority of the categories didn't give out an award?

# ¿ Apr 5, 2015 14:42

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Patrick Spens posted:

I'm broadly sympathetic to puppies' claims of cliquishness and a liberal tilt, but man they are making it hard to take them seriously sometimes.

They crossed the line for me when it started to be about getting every spot in a category, rather than getting something on the ballot. What they're doing is retaliation for being made to look like fools last year when some of their chosen candidates placed below "no award".

By doing the equivalent of pissing in the pool so no one can swim just because they don't like the pool's management, they've made irrelevant any valid points they may have had.

I sincerely hope that "no award" places above anyone on a puppies slate who didn't refuse the nomination, even if they're not affiliated with the puppies at all and even if it means that no award is given.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 00:02

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

I always figured that K.J. Parker was a pseudonym of Kij Johnson. I assume anything that K.J. Parker puts in bios or interviews is fake, intended to obfuscate the trail.

From my understanding, Kij grew up in either Minnesota or Iowa, and would have been a young adult during the huge farm crisis that hit in the early 80s. Tons of family farms, many which had been in the same family for generations, were failing. It really hit the area between her birthplace and college hard.

Even if the failed farm didn't happen to her family personally, she likely would have known people drastically affected by it. I live in southern Minnesota and people still occasionally talk about how bad it was, enough where I don't think it's weird when it keeps coming up in casual conversation.

Also, I could see wanting to use a pseudonym to avoid complications with her editing career, as the implication I've gotten from discussion concerning their identity is that the person is known within the industry and keeping their identity hidden makes a lot more sense if they aren't an author, but are involved at a high level on the editorial side.

Finally, the initials.

I'm probably wrong, but I'm used to that. I am looking forward to finding out tomorrow.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2015 23:07

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Admittedly, the vastly different styles is pretty damning to my argument. I think such connections as I drew could be drawn for any number of potential authors. I find such speculation fun, in its own way.

Toph Bei Fong posted:

Or J.K. Rowling.

I want this to be true so goddamn bad.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2015 00:35

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

robotox posted:

Thanks for all your recommendations, guys. I appreciate it!

Out of curiosity, if you guys were to recommend a fantasy novel to someone that doesn't particularly care for fantasy, what would it be?

Lies of Locke Lamora is a good choice. Lots of action, interesting setting, and stands well on its own.

Edit:

Forgall posted:

Half-Made World.

Also this.

# ¿ May 11, 2015 19:51

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

VagueRant posted:

Can't go into the Abercrombie thread for fear of spoilers

I really don’t understand the purpose of author-specific threads where you need to have read everything the author has written if you don't want to get spoilered to hell.

If the point is to get new readers to the author/series, the OP may as well just link to the Amazon page for the first book or Wikipedia because there's no way to ask questions in the thread as you're reading without running the risk of having the whole drat thing spoiled.

I ran into this when I was going through the Dresden Files books and had some questions when I was 5-6 books in, so I went into the thread, read the OP and had to back right out, since they spoil the poo poo out of everything but the most recent book (or did when I was reading anyways).

Maybe I'm strange, but it makes me avoid most threads in this subforum.

# ¿ May 19, 2015 04:10

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Bear Sleuth posted:

I listened to Redshirts and between Scalzi's trash-can prose and Wil Wheaton's amateur narration it was the most unpleasant audio experience I've encountered.

But then it won the Hugo so what do I know.

I thought the biggest problem with Redshirts was that the explanation of the mystery was so much less interesting than the mystery itself. Everything from the reveal onwards was just profoundly disappointing.

# ¿ May 25, 2015 18:15

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Strom Cuzewon posted:

It might change. I gave up halfway through book 2. There was nothing to any of the characters, and the magic and history of the world was so poorly explained that it might as well have been white noise.

I got a part way through book 5, I think, and it hadn't really gotten much better by the time I gave up. The world and magic were becoming clearer, but he was still introducing new characters and I just ran out of steam to keep going.

Whether the series will work for a reader depends entirely upon two factors:

The first is being able to deal with the absolute lack of any explanation about the world up front and a glacial pace of revelation through the series.

The second is that the story being told across all the books is that of the world itself, and that the individual people named only matter for the actions they take that shape the world.

I actually enjoyed the former, but just could not deal with the latter.

Complicating this is that the first book is just terrible, which makes just trying out the series a lot harder, since it isn't really possible to know if you will like it until several hundred pages in.

# ¿ May 27, 2015 15:23

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

The Ninth Layer posted:

Malazan is a great series. It's full of action, has a large cast of very memorable characters, and takes place in a world with scope and history.

I agree with everything you wrote except for "memorable characters", as I don't think I've read a series with less interesting characters in my life.

At best, the characters each have a quirk that distinguishes them from the myriad of other identical characters, and he could have swapped most of them for another character at random between books and it wouldn't have affected the story one bit.

The characters are interchangeable cogs who serve to move the story of the world along, and they are all very one-dimensional.

# ¿ May 29, 2015 16:43

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Patrick Spens posted:

Temeraire is pretty good, but later novels drop off quickly and deeply.

The Temeraire series has an interesting concept, which is mechanically explored in minute detail over each successive book. How far into the series one gets depends on how interesting they find that one concept.

The biggest sin it commits is that the explanation of the mysteries of the setting is slightly less interesting than if the mysteries were left unexplained, but the author insists on methodically revealing every mystery anyways.

This isn't necessarily a fatal flaw to a series in general, but becomes one because the of second-biggest sin, which is that the characters are incredibly two-dimensional and lacking in any originality.

Because of this, each book is slightly worse than the one that came before it. As one reads, the slow realization sets in that the series isn't a journey to a destination where there will be a big payoff at the end, but rather an increasingly boring slog with progressively fewer interesting things to see.

I still think the first book is worth reading, because the setting was genuinely that interesting, but with the caveat to stop reading when the reader has had enough. It's one of those series where, with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I would have stopped reading one book sooner.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2015 23:14

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 10:01

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

Mr. Wiggles posted:

I just finished that first Malorum Gates book (because I heard about it on NPR) and really loved it. The writing wasn't exactly first rate, but the world building was fantastic. And it reminded me of how much I used to love fantasy/sci-fi genre. The thing is, I read almost exclusively non-fiction historical works or biography these days because it's been so long since I've found fiction worth my while. My favorite series from old days were Dan Simmons Hyperion stuff, KSRs Mars Trilogy, some things by Tad Williams like Otherland and Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, of course Tolkien, and back in Jr. High I ate up all the Dragonlance books because of course I did (though I picked up my old copy of the Legend of Human and it was atrocious).

So I guess I'm posting this to ask if there is anything really good these days with really high quality writing and an interesting world that isn't GOT.

The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman.

It's got a great world, asks really interesting questions, doesn't fall into traditional fantasy/sci-fi categories, and is one of the better books I've read this decade, regardless of genre.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2015 16:49

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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