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It has two sequels that are better and/or worse.
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Oct 7, 2019 09:54
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Grim enough it killed his writing career until he gave Blindsight away for free.
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Oct 23, 2019 07:51
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Science fiction and fantasy are the same thing, except they swap out wizards for scientists. There's a reason "speculative fiction" was created to encompass them both. Also The Traitor Baru Cormorant is alt-history historical fiction and the sequel strays into science fiction.
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Oct 31, 2019 05:34
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I started Sea of Rust but everything about the robots was idiotic, the book was clearly written by somebody unfamiliar with either technology or science fiction and it was just unreadable.
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Oct 31, 2019 18:26
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:On the zombie fantasy books front there's Mira Grant stuff, which I haven't read but seems to have sold a lot They're good if you like stories of how zombies are defeated using the power of blogging.
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Oct 31, 2019 20:27
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Steel Frame is outstanding, it manages to make stupid anime bullshit real and unsettling and tells a great story while doing so.
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Nov 7, 2019 04:20
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Lester Shy posted:I guess by "magic system" I mean all of the other-worldly/supernatural stuff in the story: orogeny, the stone eaters, the guardians, the gates, etc. We understand orogeny because several of the viewpoint characters are orogenes, but how the other stuff works is pretty mysterious IIRC. Which would be fine, but so much of the story revolves around it. I read it about six months ago, so maybe I've just forgotten about it. You gave up right before all this was explained.
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Nov 13, 2019 20:25
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So just to be clear, oppressing minorities is bad but oppressing dangerous minorities is good?
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Nov 14, 2019 18:15
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One might wonder if the point of the story was that oppressing anybody for any reason, even that reason being that they are potentially dangerous, is morally wrong.
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Nov 14, 2019 20:05
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Groke posted:OSC's brain was kiiiiinda pre-broken, I guess. I mean, the cliché about the most vocal homophobes actually being self-hating closeted gays isn't exactly 100% accurate but in his case... on the one hand he's this deeply religious Mormon dude, married with children, arguing not only against the legalization of gay marriage but against the legalization of gay sex itself; then on the other hand he writes stuff like Songmaster which is less heterosexual than some actual gay porn. Don't forget the entire Homecoming Saga, which includes a gay character marrying a woman and having children for the good of society.
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Nov 15, 2019 17:28
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The obvious solution to this situation is to continue exactly as you are right now, and the follow up with all of you reading the Jodi Redford version while he reads the Tara Harper version.
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Nov 15, 2019 20:13
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Larry Parrish posted:my favorite thing about ann leckie is dumb people getting triggered by the GENDERLESS SOCIETY of the radch but if you read closely its just that they don't have gendered nouns and our AI protagonist either doesnt care about the details of biologicals or got programmed to ignore it. which is a pretty cool way to make your hero volcel if you think about it. Uh, this is a complete misunderstanding of Radch society -- the don't have the concept of gender at all, including any kind of gendered presentation. Breq is confused by it because she doesn't know any of the signifiers since Radch people just do whatever they feel like.
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Nov 23, 2019 18:09
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That "immortal psychopath" is terrified that inscrutable aliens will obliterate humanity and is busy conquering as many people as possible to make sure they obey the terms of the treaty she negotiated on behalf of the species.
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Nov 23, 2019 19:01
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The other 20% is assassins killing each other.
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Dec 1, 2019 06:08
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Cardiac posted:Well, the difference between fantasy and sci-fi is whether a wizard or a scientist/alien did it so......... Hey, sometimes they're wizard scientists or computational demonologists.
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Dec 4, 2019 20:30
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Ancillary Justice was interesting because it was told from an alien perspective (both the gender-is-a-construct-of-society thing and ancient-AI-in-a-human-body thing) and it did a good job of that narrative thing where the past flashbacks and present-day events are both leading up to the same revelation and climax. Which is why the second and third books weren't as good as the first, they couldn't rely on the Big Reveal and just had to tell conventional stories.
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Dec 4, 2019 22:55
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Who doesn't read and enjoy Jane Austen?
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Dec 16, 2019 01:25
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MockingQuantum posted:Heh same, I would be completely fine with scifi/fantasy authors just kind of giving up on romance plots for the most part. That's more a personal preference than some sweeping statement on the genre, though. But they can gently caress right off when it comes to sex scenes, I don't think I've read any genre book with a sex scene that didn't make me cringe or roll my eyes at least once. You haven't read any Mary Robinette Kowal.
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Dec 20, 2019 20:26
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Shout outs to one of my favorite posters, General Battuta, who’s having a very rough time of it. Please get well, we care about you.
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Jan 13, 2020 04:41
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Groke posted:At least I guess he has the excuse of actually being a boomer. He’s also a Canadian.
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Jan 22, 2020 14:23
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GrandmaParty posted:I just finished Unnatural Magic by C.M. Waggoner. It felt like it she started writing three different novels, didn't finish any of them, half-assedly crammed them together into a single work, and then tacked on a happily-ever-after chapter at the end to wrap up all the loose ends. It didn't deliver on any of of the individual stories' potential, the murderer was obvious from the moment he was introduced, and none of the conflict felt real.
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Jan 28, 2020 21:14
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freebooter posted:What was the deal with Simmons again? He became a Trump supporter or something? Or was it more alt-right than that? He is one of several authors who’s minds were broken by 9/11.
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Feb 9, 2020 16:00
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FuturePastNow posted:Has there ever been a sex scene in sci fi that wasn't awkward and superfluous? Asking for a friend. Mary Robinette Kowal has written a few. It turns out taking an erotic writing class pays dividends, even when the scenes aren't remotely explicit.
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Feb 12, 2020 19:17
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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm going to counter this - I ultimately gave the trilogy a 3/5 stars on goodreads and it's a fascinating, flawed read about a future where humans are minds that can be uploaded and toyed with at will. I haven't yet read his other works, but this one was neat because it went hard on politics in a way I don't normally see in sci-fi, and it had an optimistic, clever ending which I appreciated. Also, the aliens in the final book were really.... interesting, and underdeveloped. I also hate the Corporate Wars, all of his other books are wildly better and they were just a huge disappointment.
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Mar 21, 2020 20:15
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Hugo nominees were announced today: https://conzealand.nz/blog/2020/04/08/hugo-and-retro-hugo-finalists-announced
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Apr 7, 2020 22:35
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Patrick Spens posted:Hahahaha, holy poo poo. Rise of Skywalker got a nom? Look, there aren't very many scifi movies...
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Apr 8, 2020 03:08
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I've read four of the six best novel nominees (The City in the Middle of the Night, Gideon the Ninth, A Memory Called Empire, and The Ten Thousand Doors of January), and I'd be happy with any one of them being the winner, although I think I'm leaning towards The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Or maybe Gideon the Ninth. This is How You win the Time War was good, but nobody competes with Ted Chiang.
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Apr 8, 2020 08:53
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That's a sequel to Cat Pictures Please. Both are fun reads.
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Apr 10, 2020 19:12
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ToxicFrog posted:The Sundering by Jacqueline Carey I've been trying to remember what this series was called for years, thank you.
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Apr 13, 2020 20:22
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Velius posted:FYI Harrow the Ninth’a whole first act is available on Amazon for free. Note that at the halfway point it is not very happy and has invited way more questions than I will have answered until it’s out in the fall. I didn't think Harrow the Ninth would be as good as Gideon the Ninth given the way Gideon the Ninth wrapped up, and the sample chapter released a few months back didn't do anything to change that opinion, but this first act is really something.
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Apr 23, 2020 06:00
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pseudorandom name posted:I've read four of the six best novel nominees (The City in the Middle of the Night, Gideon the Ninth, A Memory Called Empire, and The Ten Thousand Doors of January), and I'd be happy with any one of them being the winner, although I think I'm leaning towards The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Or maybe Gideon the Ninth. OK, I've read the other two Best Novel nominees -- Middlegame is also excellent, and The Light Bridage is fine. It isn't great, but I don't regret the time I spent reading it, its just that if somebody asked me to recommend a book to read it'd never even occur to me to mention it. The bootcamp sequence at the beginning is boring and way too long, but the prose was adequate enough that I stuck with it until I got to the meat of the story, unfortunately the time travel gimmick that makes the story actually interesting doesn't make any sense at all. The Ten Thousand Doors of January > Gideon the Ninth > Middlegame > A Memory Called Empire > The City in the Middle of the Night >>> The Light Brigade, although I think maybe the first two could be reversed? Gideon the Ninth has a voice that is delightful in a way that I don't think I've ever encounter before. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a WOC middle-finger-to-the-british-white-supremacist-patriarchy wish fulfillment fantasy that is very satisfying. A Memory Called Empire is a great scifi detective political thriller. The City in the Middle of the Night is definitely the most literary, but I'm not in this for literary works and it is the kind of downer that I really don't want in 2020's hellworld. pseudorandom name fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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Apr 23, 2020 10:20
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StrixNebulosa posted:What book are you talking about? It's not clear. If you click the "buffalo all day posted:" link in the quote, it'll take you to the original post.
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May 3, 2020 20:07
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Hey, let me save you the trouble of reading Peter F. Hamilton: the
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May 5, 2020 03:08
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The twist in Saturn's Children is that the robots are actually human.
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May 9, 2020 01:42
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General Battuta posted:The bad guys believing that women are intrinsically better at math doesn't make it true either, for example. What about the phrenology?? 
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May 15, 2020 17:50
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What about the thought police running reeducation camps?
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May 15, 2020 20:45
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Speaking of Gibson, I read Agency this week and wow that book is bad. A lot of time spent where nothing of consequence happens, the actually interesting part of the story is completely unexplored and in the end Hillary Clinton saves the day And Then Everybody Clapped.
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May 16, 2020 22:11
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PeterWeller posted:The emergent AI and techbro save the day at the end as I recall. Agency has two interesting ideas, one of them held over from The Peripheral. Eunice together with the Server do set up intriguing possibilities for the third novel, but giving Gibson's penchant for rehashing older ideas, I suspect that will have much the same end result as All Tomorrow's Parties. Nope, Eunice and the Good Billionaire do jack poo poo. The supposed conflict in the future was also overhyped, Ainsley just kills some dudes and that's the end of it.
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May 17, 2020 00:08
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freebooter posted:I'm tempted to read this more now, out of morbid fascination, because Gibson is a writer I genuinely admire but also somebody I eventually had to unfollow on Twitter because he was constantly tweeting and retweeting extremely tedious blue-tick Resistance and I'm With Her crap. Like, I'm fine with somebody having different politics to me, but please don't be boring about it, especially when you wrote loving Neuromancer. William Gibson's Agency plot discussion: Act 1 is the interesting part focusing on Verity Jane's interactions with Eunice, act 2 is nothing but driving around California, act 3 is an art show where Eunice announces her web site. That's it. There's a scene where the characters talk about how She's Got This, there's another scene where the characters basically say "It's a good thing we have a functioning State Department!" "Yes, it is a good thing we have a functioning State Department.", and there's the previously mentioned scene at the end where everybody talks about how Eunice's intervention wasn't necessary after all because the President fixed everything and then everybody Eunice averting the nuclear war isn't supported by the text at all -- the aunties think nuclear war is going to happen but they don't know for sure because 2017 is too technologically primitive for them to do their universal surveillance thing, which is why they're pushing Eunice to bootstrap herself into full agency, but Eunice spends most of the book decapitated and rebuilding herself. So unless we're supposed to read between the lines and assume there are branch plants off influencing the State Department and NATO and the Syrian & Russian & Turkish governments (which is never remotely hinted at), then Eunice didn't have anything to do with Hillary's diplomatic triumph. The actual details of the Qamishli incident are barely mentioned at all. At least Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart was upfront and honest about what it was about. It was terrible, but it didn't lead you along with any kind of false pretenses of quality.
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May 17, 2020 20:53
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I found The Corp Wars unreadably bad, you should read The Fall Revolution instead -- it features anarcho-communists defending humanity against post-Singularity monsters and then libertarians from the libertarian planet decide to negotiate trade deals with the monsters.
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May 18, 2020 03:22
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