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systran posted:When I say "re-invent" I actually mean "gives a new name to every aspect of Platonic thought but doesn't change any of the elements." As others have said, that's kinda the point of the whole book. You realise it is supposed to take place one parallel Earth, with a seemingly completely different cultural development?
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Jun 19, 2013 17:35
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andrew smash posted:The trojan war bit is fine, and the moravec robots are interesting, but the part that threw me was the GLOBAL CALIPHATE creating an anti-jew virus and a species of anti-jew murderbots The part where the Protagonist history professor takes Paris' form and fucks Helena better than Paris ever did is pretty iffy too.
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Jul 8, 2013 09:30
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Cranky old men getting taken over by reality and them flailing against it is always entertaining. The cabal of "treating women not like objects and poo poo". That's something that has to be prevented!
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Jul 9, 2013 09:16
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Loving Life Partner posted:That's actually something I wanted to ask, after I made my post I kind of thought about it and wondered how true what I was saying was, because while Malazan does have a lot of significant female characters, they don't really do a whole lot of things that'd identify them as female, their gender for the most part doesn't even matter. I guess I wonder what the feminist take on a piece of media like that is, is it good, bad, neutral? I don't think that's true for all women in his story. For some sure, but Shurq Ellale, Samar Dev, Felisin (surely the most controversal character), Spite and Envy, various Imass, Feather Witch, Sergeant Helian and many, many more are characters for whom being a women is an important part of their character, characters who wouldn't really function as men. I found Daniel Abraham's Long Price quartet had very interesting women in the story. They are not the protagonists though. Also Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven/River of Stars. Decius fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Jul 9, 2013 |
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Jul 9, 2013 19:32
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To interrupt the "I didn't like it"-train, I really do like American Gods and can't wait to see it on TV, but the best Shadow story/story in the setting is still the short story The Monarch of the Glen.
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Jul 11, 2013 09:55
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syphon posted:A lot of people complain that book 2 was worse than Lies of Locke Lamora. I suppose I agree, but where the first book was a 10/10 for me, the second was maybe 8/10 (still a fantastic read). Yeah, it's worse in the sense that a well-made burger is worse than a well-made steak. I still prefer it most other stuff out there. Which reminds me, Amazon sent me a mail again that they still don't know a release date for Republic of Thieves. Apparently I pre-ordered it nearly 2 years ago...
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Jul 25, 2013 08:46
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Megazver posted:Probably the same one who thought Savage Opress was a good name. (He's Darth Maul's brother, I believe.) I can't wait for them to run out of other stupid names and finally name someone Killfuck Soulshitter, since that one is actually vaguely amusing. Both names are indeed feathers in George Lucas' hat. Let's be thankful he doesn't have much of a say in the new movies. I second the Engineer trilogy if you liked Thrawn. All of KJ Parker's books feature similar types of characters to a certain degree, but the world (and outlook) is much, much darker than the Star Wars universe, but great, great fun. Vorkosigan is great too, although probably not all too similar to Star Wars either. I enjoyed Timothy Zahn's Quadrail series quite a bit. Nothing really too intricate or deep, but it is a fun pulp fiction series with a very clever, hard-boild detective hero set on a SF-version of the Orient Express (just don't think too hard on the logistics behind it). Decius fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 5, 2013 18:53
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Fried Chicken posted:Joe Abercrombie has prominent LBGT characters! But it doesn't go well for them... Admittedly nothing goes really well for anyone in Joe Abercrombie's books, except maybe one certain person. Edit: Hal Duncan's Book of All Hours (1/2) also features well done homosexual characters prominently. However the story is really, really weird and hard to follow in my opinion. Decius fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Aug 9, 2013 |
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Aug 9, 2013 08:15
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Darth Walrus posted:Besides, wasn't the main focus in the Culture books the often-horrifying impact that the perfect AI-run utopia had on those nations and species they deemed less perfect? Short and Midterm they might be horrible, but usually long-term (which means thousands of years) they usually were positive, at least were Contact and SC was involved. The hobby social architect AIs were more clumsy.
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Aug 9, 2013 16:43
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regularizer posted:
Just finished it and it was really great. Started off a bit slowly, but holy gently caress the last few chapters.
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Aug 10, 2013 19:25
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Cardiac posted:Mr Norrell and Jonathan Strange by Susanna Clarke Late Georgian/Regency England actually. Napoleonic Wars and all that, very different time.
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Aug 21, 2013 15:39
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Shitshow posted:You're giving a lot of credit to a writer who has aped a subgenre mined by much better writers 20 years before him. As long as the books are entertaining I don't see a problem with writing something in a certain style.
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Aug 30, 2013 11:08
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I like Redshirts quite a bit, but it wasn't really a great novel. Of the books nominated I haven't read Blackout, so I can't say anything about it, but the other three were good, but not really better, and like Redshirts not great either. Throne of the Crescent Moon was a good first book and Ahmed looks an incredibly promising writer, but too slow at places and with a few minor stumbles along the way in my opinion. Really love Vorkosigan, but Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance wasn't really a stand-out book inside the series. Didn't like 2312 at all, but I think I have to give up on Robinson, nothing since Years of Rice & Salt appealed much to me. Rather a weak year for (nominated) novels once again. Decius fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Sep 2, 2013 |
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Sep 2, 2013 12:31
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh lord, there's a complete Merchant Princes rewrite? I don't want to buy like twelve more books! Antti posted:I bought the first two books of Merchant Princes just last week (the original editions). How do I go from there? I'm already almost done with the first book. Should I grab the combined editions of books 3+4 and 5+6 instead of the old separate editions? He reworked a lot of stuff, especially the first two books, as he was forced by contract to take a hatchet to something that was supposed to be one book. The pacing is better, the books fit together better, he corrected some inconsistencies and made the whole thing flow better. But the basic structure and story is the same. It was mostly because he is writing a second series set after the first series about the severe fallout and extreme changes of the events of the first series. However the reworked series is rather cheaply available: http://goo.gl/oZqRnB http://goo.gl/4Y5e2V http://goo.gl/ElYbc2 I would go for the new versions over the old versions. Decius fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Sep 2, 2013 |
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Sep 2, 2013 18:45
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sky shark posted:Best quote I've read about Scalzi's award thus far It surely isn't as bad as Ender's Game. And tons better than Speaker for the Dead. There's a fight to pick: Why did such a bad book get a Hugo? Because the name Scott Orson Card wasn't toxic back then? I don't think its worse than Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire or American Gods (two books I quite liked) either. Re: John Ringo. Criticism coming from a writer who won't even be nominated in thousand years reeks a lot like sour grapes.
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Sep 4, 2013 06:39
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Hedrigall posted:It's meandering, Shadow is a personality-less main character, and Neil Gaiman is clearly better at writing comics than prose. Gaiman writes great prose, but he is far better with his shorter work. I really like American Gods, but I agree that it could have been tighter and more focused.
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Sep 5, 2013 11:43
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fritz posted:Who wants to see more terrible opinions from a white dude about the state of science fiction today? Everybody does? Cool. After thinking "Why the hell would the drummer of the Sex Pistols have an opinion on SF?" I goggled the guy and it seems his claim to fame is that he has taught some famous writers back in the day?
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Sep 6, 2013 06:31
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fritz posted:Dave Freer, Baen author and sometime Ringo collaborator, appears to have gone crazy: http://madgeniusclub.com/2013/09/09/defeating-the-anak/ (his wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Freer) I really enjoy the sour grapes by all those manly-man authors. Especially if they never ever would even get a whiff of a Nebula or Hugo. Too bad there wasn't a Twitter or Blogs when Le Guin got her Hugo back in the Seventies.
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Sep 10, 2013 10:37
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Walh Hara posted: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. You will get this for basically every somewhat known SF author in this thread every few dozen pages. I've read pages of posts making GBS threads on about every single author I like over the years. That's how it is. There are always people disliking a writer. I don't like a lot more writers than I like, and there are even more whose writing simply didn't engage me, even if it was objectively decent. And of those I like or even love many have quite a few flaws in their writing or personality. I guess it is the same for most people, so you will find a lot of people willing to share their dislike for any author at any given moment. Not to say "deal with it", but, well, deal with it. 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. 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. Very, very few writers manage flawless prose with engaging characters, great plot and interesting setting paired with good sales. Personally I like Sanderson's books a lot and I'm really happy he won a Hugo for The Emperor's Soul, which I really, really loved. Which means I mostly skimmed the last few pages of dislike for him. Srice posted:I don't mean to make a judgment either way by saying this, but one thing that really helped Sanderson's popularity was finishing a long running book series that was quite popular. At the very least it made a lot of people aware of his name. Mistborn was already a big bestseller with many positive reviews before he took over WoT (he got the gig of WoT because Harriet McDougal liked Mistborn), he was nominated for several awards (the Campbell twice for example) even before that. WoT surely helped him a lot, but it's not exactly like he was a nobody before. Decius fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Sep 12, 2013 |
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Sep 12, 2013 06:47
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House Louse posted:What people are saying about Redshirts is roughly what I feel about Halting State. I was surprised by how underwhelming I found it. It's a novel of ideas, and has lots of the latter but not much of the former. It's readable and funny and the three main characters are pleasant, but they're also shallow and their voices (including the narrator's/narrators') were too similar. I like most of Stross' stuff (especially Laundry), but Halting State took me years to finish, despite being a rather short book. The second person narration was so very off-putting to me and all the cooperate culture stuff early on is something I hate. I hate business meetings, and business suits and cooperate guidelines and all this poo poo. But once I got into the book recently I found it quite good. Not brilliant, but fun. On the other hand I really enjoyed Saturn's Children, which wasn't well received by most I think and Neptune's Brood even more.
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Sep 12, 2013 17:04
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General Battuta posted: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. Adding to this, Charles Stross, himself one of the most successful midlist-authors, wrote quite a bit about the publishing industry and especially about the realities of being an author.
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Sep 20, 2013 15:35
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Xandu posted:Is Codex Born any good? I enjoyed it, better than the first book, and the development of Lena is - while sometimes a bit clumsy - interesting and rather refreshing for a female character in the genre, especially with her origin. And the ending makes one rather interested in the next book. Decius fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Sep 22, 2013 |
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Sep 22, 2013 09:18
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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? Against a Dark Background by Ian Banks is pretty good too. Charles Stross' Neptune's Brood and the predecessor Saturn's Children, although there are no humans there, the protagonists are post-humanity robots. Decius fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Sep 24, 2013 |
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Sep 24, 2013 17:06
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Research reveals that this was actually written by Gurm's man helper... It's written by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the latter being GRRM's assistant. Not exactly sure how his day job is important though. Hannibal Rex posted:Charles Stross has a new Laundry story online at Tor. Don't forget H.P. Lovecraft. Some terrifying unicorns. Napalm, it's the only way. Decius fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Sep 28, 2013 |
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Sep 28, 2013 18:34
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General Battuta posted:Yeah, Cardiac, I think you're forgetting that a lot of very important SF/F writers are themselves women. Yes, indeed. Which makes it sad there is no recommendation for Catherynne Valente or (even if it usually less overtly philosophical) Lois McMaster Bujold on this page!
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Oct 14, 2013 16:27
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Max Awfuls posted:I've heard good things about KJ Parker. Where should I start? Are the trilogies set in the same universe? Are they self contained or are they connected like the Joe Abercrombie stand alone books that end up having a lot of returning characters and are not as enjoyable if you have not read them in order? The books are pretty great, albeit also a bit depressing/downers as his/her main characters tend to be rather unlikeable people or at least people who do bad things for often dubious reasons. Which is also true for Abercrombie, but Parker doesn't have the reliever of comic/funny parts/quips that Abercrombie has. Still, well paced, tightly plotted and interesting characters. Not many flashy scenes though. They are all - as far as I know - set in the same universe, but at different times and only very loosely (far looser than Abercrombie) connected. Decius fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 15:59
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Antti posted:Be warned that the first book ends rather abruptly because the publisher had the first story split into two novels. That's why you should get the re-issue. Stross overhauled the whole series again for the re-release (in three books as originally intended) in preparation for a follow-up series somewhere in 2016.
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Dec 26, 2013 10:46
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gender illusionist posted:So how was Abaddon's Gate? I enjoyed the other expanse books, even the stuff about cleaning spaceships (I'm in the navy so verisimilitude). Just finished it, I liked it, although my favourite characters from the second book were not/barely in it. I think many people were pretty disappointed because it isn't providing a real ending, as the series got extended to six books.
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Dec 31, 2013 06:57
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Cardiovorax posted:I really don't share in that opinion. I don't know about that particular book, but I haven't yet read any other book by the guy that didn't make me want to burn it after the first quarter. Otherland and that thing with the elves are awful. Fair warning. I liked it quite a lot, but I didn't hate the other books by Williams either. Second book I liked less, but that might be because Richard Kadrey did something very similar just two months before.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:52
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Hobnob posted:
Yeah, it gets noticeable later on that Asher is a right-leaning (in the European sense, so about a right-wing Democrat converted into the US spectrum) libertarian. Not to a degree that distracted from my enjoyment though, despite being about the opposite of my political beliefs.
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Jan 7, 2014 07:21
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fritz posted:Neal Asher @nealasher 2h Ok, far more looney than I remembered. BTW where I live it is about 5-10°C for weeks now. Around this time it should be rather -5-10°C. Strategic Tea posted:And I was going to read his stuff too. Can there be one sci-fi author who isn't a massive shitheel (or dead)? Scalzi and Stross might not write the most groundbreaking prose, but at least they have their head screwed on the right way.
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Jan 8, 2014 18:10
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fritz posted:The Chalion books are the best things she's written and way better than the lovely recent Vor books. I disagree that the last few Vorkosigan books are lovely (although I can understand if others don't like the more domestic/romance focus), but the Chalion books are indeed amazingly good and rather unique in the Fantasy genre
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Jan 10, 2014 10:56
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fookolt posted:Just finished Felix Gilman's Ransom City (after devouring The Half Made World). It scratched a nice bit of the Bas Lag and Ambergris spot. Any more recommendations for a weird fiction series that delves into issues of colonialism/race/gender/leftist things? Jeff VanderMeer comes to mind. His stuff is a bit similar to Bas Lag although the socio-political themes aren't as deep and the style/topic of the books differ quite strongly, even inside the same universe (Ambergris), far more than the Bas Lag books.
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Jan 18, 2014 08:28
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Didn't it turn out that was the pen name of some historical writer, or historical fiction writer? Yes, he's actually Christian Cameron. ravenkult posted:Can you guys recommend any books that feature wilderness survival? Think Jack London. It's not wholly about wilderness survival, but Sten Nadolny's Discovery of Slowness has an impressive account. Non-Fiction: Krakauer's Into the Wild is also very interesting. Although in the sense of "what the gently caress not do do". In a similar vein is Laurence Gonzales' Deep Survival, only with a somewhat more happy ending for some. Decius fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Feb 3, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 08:20
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Azathoth posted:After reading the first draft, Jonathan L. Howard's editor should have taken away Howard's thesaurus until such time as he could prove that he could use it responsibly. It had a definite "look at this big word I know!" feel and distracted from the narrative flow when I had to look up what puscillanimous or lugubrious meant to understand what he was trying to describe, and this comes from a guy who loves Gene Wolfe, so I'm not afraid or annoyed by obscure vocabulary, just how it was implemented there. Well, I found it less problematic on the Kindle, as the dictionary is only one click away, but yeah, it was a bit annoying in the otherwise great series. But on the other hand using big words to describe normal stuff fits Johannes Cabal's character, so I found it quite fitting, even with the third person perspective.
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Feb 3, 2014 19:09
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TOOT BOOT posted:Why is the cover art for most genre novels so bad? The illustrations in a dungeons and dragons manual or on a magic card are way better than most cover art. Charles Stross explains why (includes references to the cover linked just above too).
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Feb 9, 2014 08:20
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General Battuta posted:
The Cherryh-stuff is some disappointing poo poo. I thought better of her.
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Feb 18, 2014 07:07
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RVProfootballer posted:This would be fine if he let the reader discover the magic system as the story went on, rather than writing tutorial chapters. It's super lazy and reads like a D&D manual. That's the oddest complaint I've seen in a long time. Things get explained in detail all the time in all kind of books outside of dialogue without people calling it "D&D manual" or super-lazy. Especially in a first book of a series. Butcher explains how magic works at least once a book, same with Aaranovitch and the formae, only with the difference that it is in the first person instead of the third. Stephenson has whole chapters just explaining stuff, Patrick O'Brien explains over the course of the series the workings of everything on a sailing ship (granted, in a style, elegance and quality far above anyone else named here). Bujold explains tons of stuff from Necklin drives to Cryosuits over her series without anyone complaining about it. Davis explains at least every second book how the Roman class system works. But hey, Sanderson is the "magic system guy", so him explaining magic systems must "read like a D&D manual". Put in context, btw (it's from the prologue, the first time anything of any magic system is even mentioned in the book or series):   
Decius fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Mar 10, 2014 |
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Mar 10, 2014 07:49
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Kalman posted:Hell, three words can explain the problem with Sanderson's mechanistic systems. They're three very basic words that I have to assume any writer has had beaten into their heads repeatedly. But he does show instead of tell here. The whole passage quoted was showing how it works and how it is used - during an assassination - with one sentence in two pages explaining that the magic he is using is about gravity (in the prologue of a new series, when it is used the first time).
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Mar 11, 2014 06:54
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Haerc posted:I remember reading a kind of detective fiction set in ancient times, I think during the Hellenistic period (might be before or after, I really can't remember). It was set in Babylon (the MC had traveled there for some reason), and had to do with a ziggurat and a ruined (and supposedly haunted) temple, both within the city. Maybe Steven Saylor's The Seven Wonders? It's a collection of short stories about Gordianus the Finder's travels to all seven wonders of the ancient world in his youth. Including Babylon of course. And there is a (seemingly) haunted temple, although I'm not sure if it was in the story about the Hanging Gardens/Babylon. Azathoth posted:I have not personally read it (not a fan of bildungsroman much), but I hear good things about the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series by Tad Williams. I don't see it brought up much in the thread, so perhaps someone who has read it could weigh in. I liked it a lot back in the day, although the first 200-300 pages are a chore. It's probably a bit old-fashioned in style and concept after the new wave of Fantasy in the Nineties/2000s, but still good. Decius fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 07:00
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