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specklebang posted:Monument is out of print and unavailable in ebook but it looks terrific so I just bought the paperback used and I can't wait to see it. My kind of hero! Since Joe Amercrombie (First Law) and Richard K. Morgan (Land Fit For Heros) are very slow writers, this will help fill the gap in my bad guy as good guy reading needs. Joe Abercrombie is a very fast writer. I don't think Morgan is particularly slow either - the Kovacs novels came out over a 3-4 year period, for example.
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Jun 19, 2013 11:22
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Hedrigall posted:Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter is meant to be amazing, simultaneously a short story collection and a chronological encyclopaedia of an entire universe's history. I want to read it soon. Vacuum Diagrams IS really good. I tried to read a couple of Baxter's novels and couldn't really get into them, but the short stories worked much better. It feels like the fact short stories are less about characters works in Baxter's favour. The pacing - which I have found interminable in his books - is also improved.
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Jul 4, 2013 02:25
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muike posted:How fantasy, how much magic? Something I've wondered about the City and the City. The idea has been done before by Jack Vance. Two cities co-existed in the same spot. Those wearing one colour could not see those of the other colour, and were shocked by the revelation when some of their number were disrobed. Mieville was aware of this story, surely? He may have commented on it, I don't like his work that much so I don't follow his interviews. I found the book kind of boring.
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Jul 5, 2013 12:07
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Antti posted:To be fair, "Jack Vance already did it" must be a pretty common stumbling block in science fiction and fantasy. Jack Vance loving owns and everyone needs to read Tales of the Dying Earth.
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Jul 5, 2013 18:41
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I hope it is more impressive than Dying of the Light. That was pretty mediocre.
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Jul 12, 2013 14:25
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I am a bit right of the average SA poster on issues of economics and I didn't find Mieville too objectionable, having read The City & The City, Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Embassy Town. Ursula Le Guin on the other hand...
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Jul 15, 2013 01:50
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General Battuta posted:I don't think there's anything wrong with LeGuin - she's an amazing writer and Dispossessed is a great book. But if you disagree with its very explicit, very didactic politics, it's probably going to be an obnoxious read; it will seem naive and superficial, because it comes from a very different worldview. This is pretty much how I felt about the book. While both societies were flawed, she was stacking the cards pretty hard against the capitalist society. Some of the characters from that culture were caricatures at best, and I don't believe she has much of an understanding of economics. I've an economics degree and work as a commercial lawyer so I'm probably not the right audience. I did like The Left Hand of Darkness. Kind of uneventful but with some okay ideas and development, and it was short enough it didn't start to seriously bore me.
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Jul 16, 2013 00:51
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To be fair, it's pretty explicit that seemingly magic technology like FTL is possible in the Vinge books... Just not in Earth's locality.
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Jul 17, 2013 02:36
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RightClickSaveAs posted:Also that may not be a thing that happens, it could just be me making assumptions based on some of the covers. I mean look at this, would you buy this if you knew nothing about the author? These covers are really bad. I just started The Red Tree today. Kind of boring so far but I'm only 15% in.
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Jul 23, 2013 11:29
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Cardiac posted:Ironically, scifi is a product of its time. Isn't Asher also a fascist? I mean, I didn't get that so much from the books - sure, there are elements of it, but he could just be a big believer in strongly superhuman AIs and their potential for bettering humanity - but he may have made some statements elsewhere.
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Aug 9, 2013 16:46
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House Louse posted:Have you tried M John Harrison's "Light" trilogy? I've only read the first ([i[Light[/i), which is about two characters in the very far future and the dysfunctonal present-day inventor of their spaceship drives. It's dark. Light is really good. Very dark, there is rarely any unmitigated good. Two of the characters are brokenly dysfunctional and almost completely deplorable. But the setting and writing is so cool it remains awesome. I had trouble getting through Nova Swing. Just didn't feel the same. Felt downright facetious at times. Taking a breather before book 3.
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Aug 19, 2013 12:15
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BlazinLow305 posted:Hello thread. I came in here a few weeks back and got a lot of really good fantasy recommendations which I'm still reading on. However, I'm almost done with the 3rd book in Reynold's RS series, so I figured I'd go ahead and ask some opinions on a new sci-fi series. Here is what I want - A series(The longer the better) that's at least mostly serialized. I like to invest myself. You can probably tell from context, but by sci fi I mean the spaceships kind, rather than superpowers or something. I don't mind hard sci-fi but it doesn't have to be packed full of technobabble or anything. I prefer something with a good bit of characters, hopefully a more complex story that takes place either over a big distance, or over time. It doesn't matter particularly, just something "epic". I probably should ask this in the space opera thread maybe, but I'm not sure. There should obviously be space travel, battles, etc but it doesn't have to solely focus on only that. Also, I can't stand first person. Before you move off Reynolds read House of Suns. It has most of what you want and is far and away Reynold's best book.
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Aug 21, 2013 05:39
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systran posted:I'm reading Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun... it probably would be too much for high school students though. That's a little too complex. The Wizard Knight is Wolfe's take on fantasy which is actually a lot more straightforward than most of his tales... It'll still go way over the head of a lot of highschoolers, though. The Latro books are historical fantasy which are amazing. Fifth Head of Cerberus is his most concise novel. It is a post-colonial text and a really good one so it has that recommending it given the Heart of Darkness comparisons. Probably his best text to analyse at a high-school level, actually. It's three stories which are interwoven, set on a planet where the natives are shapeshifters that can imitate humans. They assumed human shapes when we came and some have forgotten they were ever shapeshifters. They may have also interbred, but it's difficult to tell. The first is about the son of an important figure in the colonial community who is conducting rather unethical experiments on his son, the second is a story set hundreds of years beforehand, a fable about the natives, and the third looks at the travails of a scientist visiting the planet who takes a native boy under his wing. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Aug 21, 2013 |
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Aug 21, 2013 15:54
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So, I've been reading the Takeshi Kovacs novels - previously I'd started on Altered Carbon but hadn't finished it - and while they are enjoyable on the whole, one thing that's irritating me is the gratuitous sex. Every female character introduced I have to wonder 'So, when is Kovacs going to sleep with her?' I find it all the more irritating because Kovacs doesn't really seem to have that much charisma, Envoy training notwithstanding.
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Aug 22, 2013 03:05
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anathenema posted:He's said he's medicated now, where he wasn't before. Given that he's back to doing con tours and being outgoing, I'd say it's working. He's always been one of the less industrious writers, so while he won't be pumping books out once per year he'll probably not take another seven years to write one. Medication for depression usually just puts a floor under your emotions, rather than being an easy fix. It can sometimes put a ceiling over them as well, which can be substantially better than the alternative. Or it might not matter, it depends on what mental state he has to be in in order to write.
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Aug 28, 2013 08:02
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I find his sex scenes a bit over the top. In the Takeshi books they seemed to rarely add anything to the storyline and little to the characters. I still like his books, though. I find Land Fit for Heroes better than the Kovacs books, but they're okay.
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Aug 29, 2013 12:53
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The Land Fit for Heroes books are his best poo poo anyway, who cares. The mythos building in those is really cool, although (LAND FIT FOR HEROES SPOILERS) Dakovash is totally Tak Kovacs and Kellgris is totally Quellcrist.
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Aug 30, 2013 11:12
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savinhill posted:I always just attributed it to being the internet and people like acting like somethings are way worse than they really are. Abercrombie's sex scenes don't feel over the top and actually affect characters and their relationships. His books generally have this kind of dark humour to them which is great. I actually found the First Law trilogy hard to take seriously because it felt like the whole thing was written with a smirk.
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Aug 31, 2013 08:55
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Some books I haven't seen discussed: does anyone have any opinion on the Jacob's Ladder books by Elizabeth Bear? I'm about halfway through Dust. It's not too bad. A fairly interesting colony ship setup with mad AIs who are fragments of the central AI fighting over the ship.
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Sep 5, 2013 14:48
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DancingMachine posted:Thanks for the recs everyone! I just picked up Revelation Space and A Deepness in the Sky (yeah I know that one doesn't really fit my original criteria). Will probably check out Asher and Westerfeld down the line. Is there no modern cyberpunk that folks wholeheartedly recommend? Blindsight has major cyberpunk elements but the focus of the story is first contact with aliens, so maybe it doesn't get brought up for that reason. Fantastic, fantastic book, though. And its sequel Echopraxia is currently being edited, oh man I am looking forward to that, especially given Watts said he was much happier with this rewrite than the first draft he turned in to an editor that disappeared, never to be heard from again.
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Sep 6, 2013 01:08
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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'd recommend his short stories if you want something that's a little easier to break down into manageable portions. They can still be deceptive but you don't have to be cross-referencing thousands of details to get an idea of what's actually happening beyond a surface reading of the narration.
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Sep 24, 2013 04:12
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Can I get any recommendations for (really, really good) space science fiction without ftl and not primarily about military conflict? House of Suns lacks FTL and the setting in general terms can be summed up by how a human diaspora without FTL might look. Definitely Reynolds' best work.
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Sep 24, 2013 11:19
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andrew smash posted:As mentioned, house of Suns, the quantum thief. I didn't mention TQT because it's pretty out there, even if it technically has no FTL, but if we're going to mention that I'd add The Golden Age. Don't read anything else by the author and especially don't read anything he has written outside of his books if you want to enjoy it; these are awesome idea-dense books but he's pretty crazy. One of the central conflicts is about whether humanity should colonise outside the solar system or not. They are constrained by light. And as someone else mentioned, Blindsight, but I didn't recommend that because it comes up so much and I just assumed people would know of it by now! Great book, though. Really looking forward to the sequel, once Watts' editor is done with it. quote:Near the end of Book of the New Sun, Severian experiences an epiphany that pretty much blew my mind when I first read it and remained wonderful upon rereading. Naturally it means nothing without the context but for anyone who's read the book recently I'm talking about the sequence that ends with him throwing his boots into the ocean, that he "might not walk shod on holy ground". In general, Book of the New Sun is structured such that the story's climax is not something about the plot (which is "spoiled" on the first page) but a sequence of revelations about the nature of the universe That is an awesome and beautifully written passage in a series with many awesome and beautifully written passages. People may criticise Wolfe for being needlessly opaque and obtuse but the man's prose is fantastic when he's on his game.
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Sep 25, 2013 10:05
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Syle187 posted:I just finished Dark Eden after having been disappointed by the Iron Druid Chronicles. Dark Eden was quite good. I really thought the ending was quite fitting. Definitely one of the better Science Fiction books written recently. I didn't mind it but it felt like something that has been done before. Also, the characters were far too self-aware. The dumb follower character thinks to himself which can be paraphrased fairly easily as "I am a dumb follower".
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Sep 27, 2013 10:51
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coffeetable posted:
OH GOD OH GOD YES UGGGGHHHHHH
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Sep 28, 2013 08:36
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House Louse posted: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. 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. Edit: I actually think Rhialto the Marvellous might be a little closer to what's desired. He does some pretty questionable things but isn't as out and out evil as Cugel. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 11:10
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Zachack posted:I remember the second part but not the first. 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. Zachack posted:I think the only "good" person in the entire series is literally in another dimension (or world, I don't recall where the initial story was meant to portray), everyone else is on one tier or another of FYGM. There's the guy who had his face stolen. And that guy who's really curious and is sent as a ritual sacrifice while on some sort of pilgrimage of curiousity. And arguably the protagonist in the story about the city where the inhabitants wear different colours and are oblivious to each other. The dude who makes those towers for that ridiculous village where the husband sun themselves on pillars wasn't so bad, he at least took a drifter like Cugel in and fed and clothed him. Probably some I am forgetting. The characters in the independent short stories are really not all bad. The world is pretty clearly inhabited by absolute pieces of poo poo, though. 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. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 2, 2013 07:25
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General Battuta posted:Blindsight. Pretty much also where you should stop, outside his short fiction. Starfish is all right, don't read the sequels. Disagree. While the Rifters books do decline in quality they're still above average sci fi and worth reading.
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Oct 11, 2013 07:36
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Rough Lobster posted:I wanna see Richard Morgan write a book with a female protagonist. His gender stuff is a lot better in Land Fit for Heroes. The Kovacs books... Every female character felt like a prop for Kovacs to gently caress. It rarely added to the plot. But yeah, he hosed them, because.
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Oct 12, 2013 19:30
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Azathoth posted:I just finished the sequel, The Rise of Ransom City and I highly recommend it (along with The Half-Made World for those who haven't read it first. I disagree a little with the interpretation of the Half-Made World. Or, at least, I think there's more than that. The war between the Line and Gun is representative of the corporatisation and social and economic changes as the wild frontier gave way to the modern US. The Line had a lot of stuff going into them and it's not that clear cut but that's what I got out of it. I really liked both the Gun and Line and my big problem with The Rise of Ransom City was we did not get to see enough of either! I didn't like The Rise of Ransom City as much but I would still recommend both books to pretty much anyone. The Half-Made World is also a book I am comfortable recommending to non-fantasy/sci-fi readers.
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Nov 2, 2013 05:14
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Laird Barron's The Croning has some good monsters from the dark who want to eat humans. It suffers a little because it's kind of obvious it's his first full length novel, but the actual monsters and tone are creepy as gently caress. It's not really so much of a thriller as the request asked for but I enjoyed it a lot. His short stories are good, too, but they don't all involve the same specific set of antagonists.
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Nov 6, 2013 09:48
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Reynold's characterisation totally sucks and is bland and flat. It is by far the weakest part of his writing and I remember his characters only because I found them remarkably bland. I would still recommend reading House of Suns because it is just outstanding in every other way.
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Nov 13, 2013 07:16
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TQT is not complex for the sake of complexity, it is idea-dense and awesome. 
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Nov 21, 2013 05:44
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Cardiovorax posted:I'm currently trying to read Christopher Stasheff's "Her Majesty's Wizard," and it might just be the worst thing I've ever laid eyes on. It's like reading Terry Goodkind, but instead of shoving Objectivism down your throat, it's medieval Catholicism. This thing really is loving bad. I read a little bit of 'A Wizard in Rhyme', which is the first in that series, I think, because I found the idea of magic being worked by poetry cute, but holy poo poo is it badly written. The prose is garbage of the highest order.
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Nov 22, 2013 08:17
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Mi-go would've been much cooler and a better use of his suspense building since that is one thing he is good at and the mi-go are loving creepy.
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Nov 22, 2013 20:21
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fritz posted:Who wants to see some horrible opinions from horrible ex-libertarian now-hardcore-catholic John C. Wright? John is trying his best to make me recant on my affection for The Golden Age. Nah, it still owns.
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Nov 24, 2013 06:38
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navyjack posted:For some reason I picked up the Pern books for a re-read after 15 years and WOW there's a lot of rapin' goin' on. The women end up liking it in the end, naturally, but yeah...rapin' all up in those weyrs. Geez, and most people who read these read them as kids.
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Nov 25, 2013 02:53
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fookolt posted:Let's not forget the whole story bit in that other Simmons sic fi two part series (Ilium?) where the protagonist can only resurrect this woman who is the salvation for our world by ejaculating inside her while she is in a coma but it's totally not rape because, uh, hm Ugh. I remember this happening in the Merlin Cycle of the Amber books... Except the woman involved was Merlin's cousin. When told to gently caress her while she was unconscious by a reality-defining force he puts up about 30 seconds resistance before going ahead with it. loving sci-fi writers. Edit: Oh God, and now I remember Corwin loving his 16 year old niece in the original books. Yeah, it wasn't Simmons related but loving hell you read some creepy poo poo in sci-fi/fantasy. Compounded by the fact it's rarely treated in the text as being as creepy and weird as it should be. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Nov 29, 2013 |
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Nov 29, 2013 03:44
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Stuporstar posted:I stopped reading The Chronicles of Amber halfway through, basically at the PoV change because Merlin seemed so loving boring I could not go on, especially after all the melodrama of the first half, which I was getting pretty sick of as it was. I no longer regret that choice. The Merlin books sucked. It really felt like Zelazny was trying to take the quickest, dirtiest root to set up the mythos for a planned final arc. The mythology got changed comprehensively, he clearly did not give a gently caress about some plot points, and it was just generally messy. Would the final arc have been good? Maybe. Although I feel Zelazny's best days were past him. And God I wish there was a decent publication of Creatures of Light and Darkness, I haven't read it since I found a dusty old copy in my high school!
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Nov 29, 2013 12:17
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Cardiovorax posted:I'll have to go and defend Zelazny there. His books are all about how essentially normal people holding reality-shattering godly superpowers get their sense of right and wrong all hosed up by it. "Creepy and weird" is exactly how you should be feeling. When did Merlin ever have anything act on his sense of right and wrong? When was he normal?
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Nov 29, 2013 17:20
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