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Xenix posted:Except for, you know the wings. And the ability to sing things into existence. i always assumed this was more how they interact with their technology than something posthuman, it's really not any different than how isidore uses his nanotech synthesizer to make food. There's just no mysticism associated with my example.
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Dec 14, 2013 20:21
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The mote in god's eye has a laser figure pretty prominently in the plot. the gleaming light in the nebula - the mote in god's eye of the title - is actually a big laser built by an alien civilization that never discovered FTL. the laser is pushing a solar sail-based craft toward a system that's inhabited by humans. Kind of a cool idea but then a niven/pournelle novel happens
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Dec 17, 2013 06:48
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Koryk posted:If it's pushing a solar sail, how can anyone see it? even lasers manufactured to extremely tight specifications have spread, presumably it just bled over the edges of the sail. anyway who cares
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Dec 17, 2013 17:20
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fritz posted:Go read the one about science fiction fans saving the day in a world where the new global ice age has begun b/c the us government got taken over by environmentals and they shut down all the pollution that was making it look like global warming. You could try the one where jerry pournelle is a mouthbreathing reactionary, or the one where larry niven writes creepy sex romps for his self-insert character.
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Dec 17, 2013 17:25
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All these years later consider phlebas is the only culture novel I've reread more than twice. It's just a ludicrously fun book to read.
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Dec 29, 2013 00:03
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Fremry posted:I haven't read it yet, but when I asked for general Sci-Fi recommendations maybe a year ago, I got ~30 from various different authors, and the only Lem that was recommended was Solaris. Not that I think this helps much, but that's the only Lem on my list that I got recommended from here. It's not sci fi but if you like Lem read A Perfect Vacuum. Be warned though, that book is "literary" as poo poo if that's a turnoff for you.
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Jan 10, 2014 05:35
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Neurosis posted:The Causal Angel gonna loving own. Looking forward to Zoku culture and discovering whether or not they were in fact the 'good guys' (at least as far as our modern sensibilities can recognise such). when is it supposed to come out?
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Jan 10, 2014 20:47
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Neurosis posted:April or May. Echopraxia is also due around then. This year is going to be really cool for sci fi. oh awesome. I graduate school in may and i don't start work until the end of june. I'm gonna read the poo poo out of those books.
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Jan 11, 2014 04:13
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specklebang posted:In a manner of speaking. Addicted since age 12 (I'm 70 now) and hopelessly addicted, COPD, unable to breathe triggering anxiety attacks. Did a 3 day quit and as I started screaming, I picked up an E-cig and now it's 9 months since I touched a real cig. So, yeah, saved my life. Wow. If you don't mind my asking, what made you decide to register here at age 70?
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Jan 14, 2014 00:43
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Jedit posted:He's not even the oldest goon. There's that guy - I think he's a retired cop - who dinged 70 last year. Yeah but tokaii has been a goon for like ten years and also plays tons of MMOs
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Jan 14, 2014 01:41
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specklebang posted:I went rummaging through the internet looking for a forum occupied by highly intelligent people. After many mouse clicks, I discovered this oddly named board. So, I'm here to learn, not to teach. I belong to other forums but while the people are (mostly) nice, they aren't very deep. Thanks, that's an interesting answer.
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Jan 14, 2014 03:13
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Cardiac posted:Also, why don't we ever call out Mieville for being a communist/socialist that still believes in the revolution? you say this like it's a bad thing.
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Jan 24, 2014 04:31
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It ties in with being well-written, but his characters also aren't bomb throwing radicals either. Isaac was by far the most so of all his protagonists, the rest of them (of the books i've read anyway) are generally socially conscious but hardly revolutionaries.
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Jan 24, 2014 04:48
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Anybody read Terminal World by Reynolds? I picked it up on a whim at a bookstore recently, haven't cracked it open yet.
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Jan 31, 2014 18:51
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General Battuta posted:Yes. It's probably his single worst book. Ugh great. I should have gotten the stats textbook I was looking at instead.
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Jan 31, 2014 19:00
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I wouldn't discourage you from reading it now that you've got it, but man.
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andrew smash posted:Anybody read Terminal World by Reynolds? I picked it up on a whim at a bookstore recently, haven't cracked it open yet. Well I started reading this despite advice and it's like a fluff novel for a painted minis game.
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Feb 1, 2014 03:42
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Khizan posted:I've never made it more than a few hours into ME1 because the combat is so awful. ME2 and 3 got a lot of things wrong, but going from half-rear end-shooter to 3/4-rear end-shooter wasn't one of them. if you approached mass effect from the expectation that it was not a shooter but an action RPG it was considerably better. The shooter gameplay is poo poo but for a diablo in space it's not as bad.
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Feb 4, 2014 20:58
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Khizan posted:Yeah, but you still have to play through the lovely gameplay no matter how you look at it. I may try it again and just use a character editor to supercharge myself enough to utterly trivialize the combat. That's how I handled Planescape: Torment which I had the same "awesome story lovely gameplay" problem with. You don't need a character editor, ME1 is ludicrously easy no matter what you do.
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Feb 4, 2014 22:07
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From what I've been told it's not that the English translations are bad but more that Lem's polish is extremely witty and a lot of that specifically doesn't survive translation.
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Feb 16, 2014 03:39
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If you are, like me, bothered by an author being a massive shitlord don't read SM stirling.
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Feb 18, 2014 03:51
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General Battuta posted:Everybody's* coming up shitlord in the SFWA debacle over this past week Oh yeah? I don't follow this drama particularly, fill us in.
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Feb 18, 2014 04:32
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Ornamented Death posted:It's pretty much the same debate that's been going on since the summer (longer?) with maybe some new names involved. Considering, as I mentioned, I don't really follow it, i appreciated GB's summary. Edit: who was the old white guy? Jerry Pournelle? andrew smash fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 05:02
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anathenema posted:Is this the dude that wrote stories where society collapses and all pretty young girls are enslaved and it rings a little like a nerd revenge fantasy or am I thinking of someone else? Same guy. Except not a little bit at all, the world is literally taken over by SCA dorks because they know how to swing swords around and poo poo.
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Feb 18, 2014 05:23
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anathenema posted:That seems like a benign nerd thing. Did the sex slave thing happen in his books or am I thinking of another creepy dude? Sex slave thing did happen in that series. It was egregious, the scene I remember involved "pretty college girls" wearing dog collars and translucent clothes calling everybody 'my lord' while acting as wait staff in king nerd's new castle. I found it particularly creepy due to the fact that the novel takes place in the city where I grew up, came out while I was in college, and the university the "college girls" came from was heavily implied to be my university meaning the girls he was creeping on and fantasizing about enslaving were literally my friends and classmates. Shitlord status extends to him because he goes out of his way to defend his creepy bad novels online. I wish I had kept the link but honestly it was nothing special, basically just "you're too stupid to appreciate my genius". andrew smash fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 14:57
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Jedit posted:I'm not bothered by it, "death of the author" and all that. In the case of SM Stirling, though, I wish death of the author applied literally so he wouldn't write any more lovely books. "Excellent genre fiction" is not a sin of which he can be accused. 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.
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Feb 18, 2014 15:00
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spider bethlehem posted:I'm sort of loath to bring him up in this thread, in case it turns out he's also an unbearable twit, but has anyone else here read Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick? The rumor has it that he was so sick of fantasy authors recapitulating the Lord of the Rings that he tried to write something which applied a radically new take on the classic forms. In the book, dragons are basically jet fighters that can hate, and a changeling girl enslaved in a factory meets one that has broken the bonds of slavery and now seeks freedom. I think (and the ending has some regrettable hallmarks of the era's fiction, and so is unclear) that he ends up trying to destroy the matrix of the universe as revenge for daring to create him with her help, and it's pretty metal. There was a sequel recently, Dragons of Babel, I haven't read yet. I read this book about 10 years back and remember really enjoying it. I might reread based on your post.
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Feb 18, 2014 22:48
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Personally I support forming an exploratory committee to look into awarding a Something Awful Forums Readers' Mondo Shitlord in SF/F Prize. We could nominate and award them yearly. God knows most of us have been hanging around this thread a few years anyway.
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Feb 19, 2014 22:58
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If you happen to have not read china mieville's fantasy you should try that. I avoided perdido street station for a long time, mostly because it came out right when some people I knew in college were starting to glue plastic cogs spraypainted with fake brass to top hats and all I could think was ugh steampunk. Despite really enjoying his sci fi throughout the years I never picked up the bas lag books until relatively recently and I regret waiting so long, they're quite good.
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Feb 20, 2014 07:16
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GrannyW posted:Blacklists are bad mmmkay? so is quoting south park
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Feb 21, 2014 06:37
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GrannyW posted:I've never seen South Park. Nor read any quotes from it. *shrugs* Not my style of humor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh7l8dx-h8M looks like it might be more your style than you thought!
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Feb 21, 2014 06:48
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Tony Montana posted:It happens all over the forums, the thread will be quiet for ages about it's actual long-term topic and someone will say something lovely or controversial and suddenly the thread is flooded with all these people just wanting to be part of the pile on. They're not interested in the topic at all, just the drama. That sort of raises the question: if the thread is that quite so much of the time why does it matter if it gets "derailed" by author chat?
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Feb 21, 2014 21:50
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ravenkult posted:I couldn't even finish the first Laundry book. I'll never understand why Stross is popular. I really don't like the laundry books but some of his short fiction was pretty good. I kind of hate cthulhu themed stuff anymore but A Colder War was probably the best thing I've read in that sub-genre. Missile Gap was enjoyable too.
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Feb 28, 2014 16:54
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General Battuta posted:But also this thread, I hope! Speaking of, I've got a space opera/military SF story up in Clarkesworld today, Morrigan in the Sunglare. It is a not-too-subtle tribute to one of my favorite game stories, FreeSpace 2. I know you've mentioned short fiction being available online for free in clarkesworld, etc - is there a SF/F short fiction RSS for the lazy to which i can subscribe, or something similar?
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Mar 2, 2014 22:19
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TOOT BOOT posted:I read Neverwhere, Stardust (I think), and American Gods and was pretty ambivalent about all of them afterwards. This is one of my pet peeves, ambivalent doesn't mean uninterested or bored. Loosely it means something more like conflicted, more closely it means being pulled in two directions, so that while the net effect may be the same as uninterested - no movement/decision/action - that effect is reached for different reasons. It is a subtle and useful word.
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Mar 3, 2014 15:54
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Piell posted:Definitions of words change, sorry for your sperg buddy This one hasn't. Sorry for your worthless posting. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ambivalence
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Mar 3, 2014 16:55
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IMO Rajaniemi doesn't incorporate enough real neurology or psychology to make it worthwhile for that purpose but I dunno. I think blindsight was the best suggestion.
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Mar 7, 2014 22:02
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nucleicmaxid posted:I entirely understand that point, however I have the opposite problem. If there aren't clear cut rules, then there's no real way for me to judge whether someone is truly outmatched. For example, Gandalf: At one point he struggles with a Balrog, nearly dies, and comes back as Gandalf the white. Maybe tolkien should have just made another appendix with character sheets for the fellowship and stat blocks for the enemies
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Mar 10, 2014 03:01
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He's just touchy because he got mocked a little. Sorry dude. It's not personal, we just clearly read very differently. As cardiovorax pointed out you might understand Tolkien a little better if you try to engage with him as a writer of myth instead of a writer of d&d novelizations.
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Mar 10, 2014 18:47
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General Battuta posted:It's not, though, the Sanderson passages being quoted in this thread are just absolutely dreadful writing. This is not a matter of subjective style, it's a matter of one approach being really tricky to execute without falling down in a clattering heap of embarrassingly pubescent exposition. Yeah but that's just, like, your opinion, man.
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Mar 11, 2014 05:21
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nucleicmaxid posted:See, you're getting it! Obviously you're not a golfer
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Mar 11, 2014 05:41
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