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Peter Watts is generally really good and he even puts his books online for free after he's made "enough money" I guess?: http://www.rifters.com Anyway the third book of the Starfish/Maelstrom/Behemoth trilogy has these awful intensely explicit chapters about a sexual sadist. Luckily they're all named "Portrait of the Sadist as [some age]" and you can easily skip them. For some reason, sci-fi authors tend to be really into writing out their sexual hangups.
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Oct 18, 2015 03:22
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I think Demon is saying that unless you write at least as well as Atwood, don't put genital mutilation in your book. Handmaid's Tale is really good, also Oryx and Crake. The sequels to the latter annoyed me a little because the world became too small. It was like every named character had had 2-3 run-ins with as many other named characters.
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Oct 18, 2015 05:05
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Tiggum posted:I just tried reading Netherwood by Michele Lang and the first chapter was definitely so bad it's good, but unfortunately the second chapter was just dumb and boring, so I gave up. That first chapter is pretty amazing though. I like that the badass self-insert has an even more badass online persona.
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Oct 28, 2015 17:14
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outlier posted:While I'm dissing SF giants: William Gibson. Re the last point, Pattern Recognition goes into the "mirror world" feel when travelling, where everything is not quite the same as your home country. Outlets are different, street signs use different fonts, etc. So it's porbably on purpose.
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Nov 11, 2015 11:47
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Roller coasters twist and turn all over the place, and the protagonist is a twisted goddamn psycho. / 
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Nov 15, 2015 03:57
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DavidAlltheTime posted:I found a book called <b>The Intelligence of P-1</b> in a campground library. I'm a sci-fi fan and the cover illustration is ridiculous so I read it. Unfortunately, I've loaned it to a friend so I don't have access to a picture of it. Google doesn't know about it either. The Adolescence of P-1. It had some merit because the AI literally runs on IBM mainframes, self-distributes across phone-lines & communicates via tele-types, but the main character is a really annoying know-it-all who is amazing at sex.
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Nov 23, 2015 12:34
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hackbunny posted:What's the deal with visual novels? They're still a mystery and a "young people these days" thing to me, but I get the impression that they're a big deal idk visual novels. i mean books have had illustrations since they were even a thing. Not all of them, but a good part anyway. "Graphic novel"s are for children who are just slightly too old to read about superheroes, but not old enough to not read comic books.
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Dec 5, 2015 05:18
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For some reason I've always confused House of Leaves and The Cider House Rules. I just realized this now.
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Dec 7, 2015 03:43
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Oh my was it really John Irving? He is poo poo. It's always a young boy talking about his weird family and how he succeeds at everything despite the odds. Also he fucks an old pro at some point, usually German, haha goddamn. Formulaic as hell.
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Dec 7, 2015 04:20
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Samfucius posted:There's just so much leadup to it, and then "We hosed until it was quite dark outside." He should've bookended it with a description of the dusk. It was quite dark, really. Like a forest pond in the shade of a looming oak. Around it, reeds and ...
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Dec 12, 2015 21:28
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GottaPayDaTrollToll posted:What I really want to know is, where was Diogenes during all this? You'd think a guy who eschewed property and spit in the face of social norms would be the perfect character for a screed about anarchism that uses Greek philosophers as mouthpieces. I'd put money on the name Aristotle, and possibly Plato, being the full extent of the author's knowledge of Greek philosophy.
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Dec 12, 2015 21:55
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Hellequin posted:Shame that Hegesias of Cyrene's book Death by Starvation never survived. Cicero mentions it in a letter, it was a philosophical tract that hung around a dialogue between a man who is resolved to die by starvation and his friends; the man convinces them over the course of the dialogue that death is preferable to living because misery and pain is unavoidable. Apparently its depictions of human suffering were so overpowering that numerous people killed themselves after reading it. The Cyrenaics were an interesting school, extreme hedonists. Wow it's like some kind of mashup between Goethe's Werther and BLIT. An idea or argument so persuasive, you have to follow it and kill yourself. See also Max Barry: Lexicon which is very entertaining. Carthag Tuek has a new favorite as of 01:03 on Dec 13, 2015 |
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Dec 13, 2015 01:00
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Darkhold posted:Nobody does Satanic wizardry like Lucifer. He really is the best Satanist. If anyone is, he's the satanest satanist.
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Mar 25, 2016 04:38
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flosofl posted:Probably why it got greenlit. Maybe that's an influence, but Interview with a Vampire was a pretty big success albeit some years ago. E: Oh wait sorry, there was that Queen of the Vampires with Aaliyah (rest in peace) that didn't draw any crowds.
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Mar 28, 2016 03:35
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When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, also by Doctorow, is so bad. I forgot the catalyst exactly, but there's a virus or something that kills the majority of people, but a bunch of computer janitors maintain order by sitting in their server rooms and emailing each other.
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Apr 26, 2016 11:20
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Arivia posted:The book is weird, but what the hell is up with that table? i think its a chair with what looks like horse leather maybe. definitely some kind of animal skin
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May 21, 2016 09:54
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Gabriel Pope posted:I am listing LOTS OF THINGS. This makes me a GOOD WRITER, just like listing famous ballet dancers makes me A FASCINATING CONVERSATIONALIST ON THE TOPIC OF DANCE. You forgot that most words aren't bolded (say bold 10% of the words) & also a very few should be in italics or underlined. It's gotta resemble the cadence of speech you see...
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Jul 30, 2016 02:00
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Tetracube posted:not hilariously terrible just weirdly surreal I like this
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Aug 6, 2016 22:39
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shelley posted:I always thought the Zen Pencils dude worked on some kinda commission system where people were like "make a comic to go with this quote and I'll pay you", which explains them all being loving awful quotes goon project: have him illustrate a quote from the racist hotdog guy
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Aug 6, 2016 22:40
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Wow I can't speak for the book, but that lil guy looks like the biking mosquito. Danish intensity
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Aug 19, 2016 09:34
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Hey, he got reviewed by at least 4 different people. That's something 
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Sep 23, 2016 22:43
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These are amazing
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Sep 24, 2016 01:09
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Maxwell Lord posted:Book design via GIS yea probably first GIS hit on "brothers" "crime" etc i use the same method when illustrating my books
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Sep 24, 2016 02:46
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im gonna check it out, but "The group’s rich kid" like thats a role thats supposed to be in all stories...?
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Sep 24, 2016 06:43
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I Killed GBS posted:Sounds like you were engaging in some toxic masculinity. sounds like youre a poopty poop
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Sep 24, 2016 07:42
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I Killed GBS posted:Make no mistake, A Little Life is a very bad book Bookmarkin ok
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Sep 24, 2016 07:56
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I like novels about upper middle-class white people whose lives are disrupted by melodrama. Now that's literature. lmbo i was gonna recommend franzen welp, have you tried dave eggers?
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Sep 24, 2016 10:21
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• sex scene containing one bizarre detail that makes you worry a little bit about the author, not in a judgy way, just in a does-he-actually-think-this-is-how-that-works?-how-has-he-been-married-for-six-years? way usually my sex scenes have a lot of public transportation pauses, and cold seasons 
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Sep 24, 2016 11:21
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Yeah to me that's buzzword nonsense, whatever field you're in. Some chinese whisper chain of deans, copywriters, faculty, execs, lawyers, students, their parents, etc, all managed to turn some completely benign draft of a course description into an impenetrable barrier of word salad. Trying to please everyone & so pleasing none as the guy said.
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Sep 30, 2016 00:40
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I'm reading Autumn Rain by David J. Williams and it's mostly alright futurewar cyberpunk idiocy, but it's getting pretty annoying how his characters are constantly super condescending towards each other. Like literally all conversations are like this:quote:“What the hell does that mean?” Also there's a lot of one character saying something, the other saying "Meaning what?", then the first one saying "Meaning blah blah ..."
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Nov 3, 2016 10:14
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ahem, R. Crumb is the weird fetish grandmaster
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Nov 11, 2016 01:25
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The Saddest Rhino posted:are there still a lot of popular sci-fi books with weird sex fantasies in a post-racial and post-gender Hugos They're not there yet. IIRC they've passed a rule change to devalue slate-voting (like the puppy slates), but that won't have an effect until next year. The last couple years, people have had to vote "no award" to the racist/sexist nominations instead of vote for actually good books (with exceptions ofc).
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Nov 11, 2016 15:05
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Tell me more about the gun that makes people love him. That sounds pretty weird!
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Dec 1, 2016 18:29
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Getsuya posted:You program in a target then can set it to either love or hate. Whatever living thing you zap with it the either loves or hates the programmed target. The protagonist uses it to become popular then to fix his broken family. Things don't turn out so well in the end. That seems incredibly dangerous. I'm glad everyone learns their lesson in the end 
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Dec 3, 2016 00:37
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Actually, I've kinda been wondering about "If you just avoid anything that obviously has a harem in it then you're likely to get good and not creepy stuff." I kinda doubt that it's likely you'll get good stuff if you just filter out the harems. I mean that's like saying if you filter out muslim terorrists from Tom Clancy books. They're still not good.
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Dec 3, 2016 01:38
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:Red tiddy up white tiddy down gently caress, I looked back up at the pic & I think I have strabismus now.
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Dec 3, 2016 01:48
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The Saddest Rhino posted:from what i'm told Wattpad is where people post and read them. once in a while you get some gems but usually it's utter rubbish. i read a chapter of some book which involved a transgender judge who gets to shoot people in court with her concealed carry pistol whenever she gets misgendered, so when the website asked me to sign up to read more i didn't bother That sounds 10x better than level 20 nerd gets to *roll 1d4* touch 3 boobs, but also he can *no roll, natural ability* own the world
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Dec 3, 2016 04:18
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Plorkyeran posted:We need a PYF PYF Grudges thread. Pick one: Quotes thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3749412 Anyone remember that thread where.. Lost SA stuff thread http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2701257 Greatest sagas of the SA forums: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3784826 Probably the last one works best, but eh, it's not like any of them are really on point 100% of the time There's also Internet Necromancy -- help others find long lost internet junk http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3005662
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Dec 9, 2016 22:24
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Pytheas was cool as heck
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Dec 14, 2016 18:01
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VoteTedJameson posted:Anthropologist here: Margaret Mead is cool and good and that Australian dude was a dong. Fun fact: the reading at my wedding was from the Episcopal Common Book of Prayer because MM was such a badass that she was co-writing one of the mid-20th century revisions of it while still kicking anthro rear end and taking names. Okay just to get it straight: - she broke new ground in anthropology, regardless of the controversy - she co-wrote a book of prayer - she wore a cape and a wizard staff She was def badass.
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Apr 1, 2017 03:58
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