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wizzardstaff posted:The Blending by Sharon Green. I'm amused by the "villains are bad because they do BDSM" thing, because Green's books from the early 80s were BDSM wank fantasies aimed at the Gor audience (although in Green's books, the women were occasionally allowed to get on top).
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Oct 8, 2019 13:56
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I always liked the "Silverglass" series from the 90s, which is basically What If Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser Were Women. There's a fair bit of casual bisexuality, including both of the protagonists, but it's not a major part of the story. The author, "J. F. Rivkin," is a pen name for two writers whose identity seems to still be a mystery (although one of them also wrote under the names Ellen Foxxe and Jeri Freedman).
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Oct 11, 2019 05:30
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In the Annals of Names That Have Not Aged Well, I just picked up Doris Lessing's The Sirian Experiments (published 1980). The protagonist/narrator is named Ambien II. (and no, it is not the sort of book that puts you to sleep.)
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Oct 13, 2019 15:47
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A Proper Uppercut posted:How do people keep track of the books they want to read? Piles of stuff here and there. But then, I still mostly read physical books.
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Oct 19, 2019 17:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Reverse werewolf is a swearwolf, obvs In D&D, there's a creature called a wolfwere, a wolf that can turn into a human.
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Oct 24, 2019 14:06
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General Battuta posted:I think knowing how fast you read is roughly on the same level as knowing your IQ Evelyn Wood could supposedly read 2700 wpm. Speaking of fast reading, I'm surprised no one has tried to revive the Reader's Digest Condensed Books line. I guess audiobooks fill the same niche now.
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Nov 7, 2019 22:33
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm looking to start a long(er) fantasy series for the holiday season because that's when I'm simultaneously my most mentally taxed at work and have the most free time. What are some good longer fantasy series that aren't Discworld, Wheel of Time, or LE Modesitt? Doesn't need to be the greatest books ever known to humankind, just something engaging and fun that'll keep me busy for a while. The Dark Tower books, perhaps? If you like swords and sorcery, you could try Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or Karl Edward Wagner's Kane books. For urban fantasy, Ben Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" series is a fun read.
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Nov 11, 2019 21:22
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Neurosis posted:A long shot here but are there any fantasy books with much in common with the setting for King of Dragon Pass and Runequest, ie Glorantha? I'm not even going to try to explain it to those not familiar with it because it's too hard to do so without writing a thousand words. You want Joy Chant's The Grey Mane of Morning. While it's not Glorantha-based, it's the story of a plains-dwelling nomadic barbarian tribe slowly becoming aware of the bigger world around them, and it feels very much like KODP. Chant's other Vandarei books (Red Moon and Black Mountain and When Voiha Wakes) are well worth seeking out too.
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Nov 16, 2019 01:59
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ulmont posted:Yeah - the Timegod stuff is some of Modesitt's earliest books and I think he at least got better about writing with practice if not coming up with interesting new stuff to write about. I remember liking The Fires of Paratime, which was the original novel he reworked into the Timegod books, but it's been at least a couple decades since I read it and I have no idea if the Suck Fairy has visited.
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Nov 22, 2019 00:12
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StashAugustine posted:Hey, asked an offsite for book recommendations for a present. Anyone read To Say Nothing of the Dog? It sounds like a good fit and I'd like impressions It's a lot of fun, as long as you're okay with time travel. (There are basically two kinds of time travel stories: the ones where it's just a plot convenience for getting a character from the future to the past or vice versa, and ones that delve deeper into the mechanics of time travel and play around with time loops, questions of causality, etc. To Say Nothing of the Dog is more the second kind.)
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Dec 16, 2019 01:44
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Clark Nova posted:I remember a thread on the scifi subreddit where a woman was looking for a starting point to get in to science fiction and multiple people recommended Heinlein Yeah, there are quite a few people around who think that Heinlein's YA novels are still the best intro to SF.
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Dec 24, 2019 18:50
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dudeness posted:The first CJ Cherryh book I read was Faded Sun Trilogy and the one I recommend the most. You don't have to know anything about the other Alliance-Union books even though it's technically in the same universe. I'm not hugely well-read in Cherryh, but the Faded Sun books were well worth the time.
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Feb 20, 2020 18:14
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TheAardvark posted:To turn it around, who other than Bujold has done romance well in SF/F? Any good love stories? Book 4 of The Dark Tower comes to mind. Tanith Lee, particularly The Silver Metal Lover (please ignore the completely unnecessary sequel) and some of the stories in "Tales from the Flat Earth." As for the flipside, stories of friendship without sex or romance are a bit harder to think of. Honestly, the strongest example I can think of is LOTR, with Frodo and Sam.
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Feb 24, 2020 18:11
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PawParole posted:give me a book about either first contact, or generation ships. Robert Charles Wilson's Spin is intriguing, although first contact is almost incidental to the story.
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Feb 25, 2020 12:51
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Calling Xenocide an excellent anything immediately renders your opinions dubious.
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Mar 3, 2020 21:18
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Off the top of my head, you might enjoy: Le Guin's Earthsea books Patricia McKillip's Riddlemaster trilogy Evangeline Walton's adaptations of the Mabinogion (Prince of Annwn et al) and, of course, Dune, with the usual caveats.
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Mar 6, 2020 22:37
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I like Erikson generally, but yes, Willful Child is a complete misfire. As Star Trek pastiches go, it's not even as good as Redshirts.
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Mar 12, 2020 04:50
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pseudanonymous posted:PKD had mental illness problems exacerbated by serious drug use. I doubt he had a clear confidence in there being a single observable reality. See also VALIS, where he declares that all of human history between the crucifixion of Christ and Richard Nixon's resignation is somehow a fake, perpetrated by a conspiracy and/or mental virus called the Black Iron Prison.
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Mar 17, 2020 14:23
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I recommended Doomsday Book a while ago. Yeah, it can drag in spots but it's also great at communicating the end-of-the-world feeling people had during the Black Death. Seconding Station Eleven as well. Might also enjoy (if that's the right word) Norman Spinrad's Journal of the Plague Years, which was inspired by the 80s AIDS epidemic. (For nonfiction on the same topic, you want Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On.)
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Mar 19, 2020 13:31
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By the way, on the post-apocalypse front, I forgot to also mention Riddley Walker, although it's post-nuclear rather than post-plague. So, read Riddley Walker.
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Mar 20, 2020 02:04
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I'd recommend Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring but that's urban fantasy, not swords and sorcery. Does it have to be by a black woman? If S&S by a black man is okay, then Samuel Delany's Neveryon books. Or Charles Saunders's Imaro, which is an African take on the mighty-thewed barbarian hero type.
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Apr 3, 2020 19:52
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uber_stoat posted:it's YA about a dystopian caste system dedicated to terraforming Mars. sort of hunger games-ish. I stopped after the first one. It's basically The Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and Lord of the Flies run through a blender. I've only read the first one, and it was okay, but I'm in no hurry to pick up the rest of the series.
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Apr 5, 2020 20:55
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Loucks posted:Can anyone recommend apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic fiction that doesn’t make me want to punch the author? That is, no characters who exist only to be sex objects and no obvious self-insert supermen. Bonus points for female or POC authors and major characters. Obviously Heinlein is right out. Any favorites? Bonus points for interesting and logical world/culture building. I've mentioned Riddley Walker before, but while I still think it's a great book it falls down a bit in your criteria. While there's no overt sexism it's still a sausage fest -- I can recall only one female character and she's only in the book for two pages. And no one's race or color is mentioned that I can remember. On the other hand, no, Riddley is not a self-insert superman.
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Apr 6, 2020 17:19
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Gnoman posted:While cleaning and organizing my book collection, I discovered something called "The Secret Books Of Paradys I & II" by Tanith Lee. Can anyone give me some information about this series, and if this is a good point to come into the series if I decide it sounds worthwhile? As the local Tanith Lee fan: The Paradys books stand alone; they share a setting but not characters, so you can jump in anywhere. From what I remember, the Paradys books are Lee at her most Gothic. If you like horror, blood, sex, death, rape, debauchery, curses, cruelty, drugs, rape, black magic, revenge, bad ends, insanity, ghosts, vampires, and doomed romances all piled on top of each other, Paradys is your place. (Yes, I did deliberately set up the "you said rape twice" joke. I am nothing if not obliging.) I'd say the Paradys stories are also Lee at her purplest, but honestly, the prose is well beyond purple and into the ultraviolet. If you expect everything to be explained and loose ends to be tied up, this is not the book for you. Selachian fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Apr 7, 2020 |
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Apr 7, 2020 18:33
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Gnoman posted:So starting the author with this book wouldn't be a terrible introduction, and would be a fair representation? I'd say so, yeah. Lee was insanely prolific, so she worked in a lot of different styles, but this sort of Gothic horror/romance is what she's best known for.
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Apr 8, 2020 04:29
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StonecutterJoe posted:IIRC, Green Mile was one of the two big trope-namers there (the other was The Legend of Bagger Vance.) Plus Mother Abagail in The Stand.
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Apr 9, 2020 14:03
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Huh, is there not a YA Hugo? I feel like basically all the HP books were the best YA SF/F of their year. Say what you want, those books were compelling to young me. There was a lot of fighting in the WSFS back in the early 2010s over adding a YA category to the Hugos, driven by the success of Potter and The Hunger Games, among others. It was finally settled by creating a separate award, the Lodestar, which is only open to YA books. The Lodestar has only been awarded since 2018, though. (If you're curious, this year's nominees for the Lodestar: Naomi Kritzer, Catfishing on CatNet Frances Hardinge, Deeplight Yoon Ha Lee, Dragon Pearl T. Kingfisher, Minor Mage Fran Wilde, Riverland Holly Black, The Cruel King)
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Apr 10, 2020 18:50
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:Frederick pohl says hello! Roger Zelazny says yo. So, unfortunately, does Patrick Rothfuss.
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Apr 12, 2020 04:47
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I would have said Robert Silverberg, but it looks like he finally retired a few years ago.
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Apr 20, 2020 16:39
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AlternateNu posted:I read Stand on Zanzibar a few weeks ago and am in the middle of The Sheep Look Up. I love Brunner's sociological interjections which flesh out the world without being exposition dumps. Also, he's probably the most prescient author I've ever read considering how hosed up our world is right now. I assume you already know about The Shockwave Rider and The Jagged Orbit as well. Beyond Brunner, the first name that comes to mind is Norman Spinrad. He's not always on the mark -- Bug Jack Barron's view of the media is hilariously naive in retrospect. But you might like Russian Spring, Little Heroes, Pictures at 11, and/or Greenhouse Summer.
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Apr 28, 2020 18:10
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Ninurta posted:Birdman is reading the Baen Bar and is not pleased at all. 
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Apr 30, 2020 01:16
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I feel like House of Leaves might fall into that category too. And Malazan.
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May 4, 2020 19:52
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tildes posted:So basically you’re looking for the Becky Chambers Murderbot novel. Vance is occasionally pervy, but he's also an unique and funny writer who's well worth checking out. Try one of his Dying Earth books -- I'd recommend The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld,, or Rhialto the Marvellous.
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May 11, 2020 04:38
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HopperUK posted:I think it was someone in this thread who mentioned Engine Summer, and I want to thank them because I just finished it and it was excellent. Dreamy and confusing and not much happens in it, but I loved it. If you liked it, you really need to try Little, Big. I also enjoyed Crowley's Aegypt novels.
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May 17, 2020 20:06
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StrixNebulosa posted:I think so. Thank you. There's one problem: I'm not cultured enough to recognize any of the significance of the ship names. Several of them seem to be references to the decadent literature movement in the late 19th century -- Les Fleurs du Mal is Baudelaire, Strange Great Sins and Atalanta in Calydon are from Swinburne, Trilby is from George du Maurier's novel, and Oscar Wilde frequently wore a green carnation as his personal symbol.
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May 20, 2020 18:07
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Tea with the Black Dragon is interesting because it's basically urban fantasy before "urban fantasy" was a thing (see also: Emma Bull's War for the Oaks).
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Jun 8, 2020 18:28
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Clark Nova posted:So was John Norman an irl sex pest or did he just write volumes and volumes of shameful, cringey, problematic kink? I can't say I've ever seen any stories about Norman behaving badly in real life. In fact, everything I heard about him suggests he was rather confused by the idea of people trying to do Gorean-style kink in the real world (or Second Life, or wherever). This interview of Norman by Charlie Jane Anders is pretty interesting: quote:I know nothing about "real-life Gorean slavery among some people in the BDSM community." The "BDSM" reference worries me. I dissociate myself from BDSM, at least as I understand it. I may, of course, misunderstand it. I wonder if one would settle merely for "real-life Gorean slavery," because, as I understand it, BDSM is not Gorean. If something is not beautiful, it is not Gorean.
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Jun 17, 2020 22:01
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StrixNebulosa posted:Before I throw down money to order Dragonbone Chair, someone answer me this: how is the author's Otherland series as a sample of his writing style/feel? Because I've got book one of that on hand and I've never read it. I'm really in the mood for vanilla fantasy adventure so Dragonbone sounds great, but, well, trying to save money for the steam sale. (Also I bought a Barbara Hambly lot, Black Lamb & Grey Falcon and a book on Napoleon so I've spent my book money this month, aha) If you got more vanilla than Tad Williams, you'd be, like, the complete absence of ice cream. Or Dennis McKiernan.
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Jun 18, 2020 14:58
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If you want a sample of Tad Williams, Otherland is as good a place as any to start. I did find it a bit more innovative than his other work, but that's relatively speaking. I try not to be too rude about Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, because I have a friend who thinks it's the awesomest fantasy series ever. My favorite Williams is still his first book, Tailchaser's Song, which is a weird mashup of Tolkien and Watership Down with feral cats instead of rabbits.
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Jun 18, 2020 16:09
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quantumfoam posted:-An early collaborative fantasy-scifi world setting called Darkover keeps getting mentioned over and over again in the SF-LOVERS. However, this is one of the things that have aged super badly because Marion Zimmer Bradley was a major contributor to the Darkover series...and keeps getting praised for writing strong female characters in the Darkover stories. Ughh. I was under the impression that Darkover was entirely MZB's baby, although she occasionally brought in collaborators. It certainly wasn't a shared world the way the Thieves' World or Wild Cards books were.
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Jun 21, 2020 03:57
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