SF & F Mega-thread: I had to google 'spock pirate depilatory'

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > SF & F Mega-thread: I had to google 'spock pirate depilatory'

«‹›3 »

mystes: May 31, 2006

fermun posted:

I have a water carbonator thing where you put a mix of baking soda and citric acid into a compartment and close it up and then it will squirt some sacrificial water into there which generates CO2 and bubbles that CO2 around through a water bottle you hook up to the machine which will carbonate the water and every 4th of July and Labor Day I buy a couple packs of hot dogs, pour out the 30ish mL of packing water and add some fresh water to make a lightly hot dog-flavored carbonated water and bring it to whatever BBQ party I go to. It's both better and worse than it sounds. Better tasting, worse smelling, and also you don't want to drink it when you're actually eating a hot dog, and it for some reason makes everyone whose tried it not feel as hungry come dinner time unless they give it a couple hours, so they don't eat as much as they normally would then they are absolutely ravenously hungry later in the evening and if they're drinking then they often have drank on an empty stomach.

I can't decide if this is science fiction or fantasy, but it probably at least deserves an SCP number.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2023 16:45

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 9, 2024 18:10

mystes: May 31, 2006

I've tried to start A Darker Shade of Magic multiple times and just couldn't get into it. Maybe it picks up if you can make it further though.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2023 18:29

mystes: May 31, 2006

I feel like if you want to refuse to sell your self published book on Amazon you at least need to sell drm free files directly or everyone with a kindle is just going to hate you

# ¿ Aug 22, 2023 21:10

mystes: May 31, 2006

branedotorg posted:

his dragon blood series was the same, a good book followed by some really mediocre ones.

this series was pretty even, although true to form i think the first one was the best.

FWIW I often enjoy the first book in a series the most as the tend to set scenes, have lower stakes, concentrate more on the characters, before the next book or two 'pull out' and focus on the repercussions of the smaller narrative on a bigger scene.

Imo a lot of authors just shouldn't be allowed to write series.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2023 22:57

mystes: May 31, 2006

Hobnob posted:

Also the "impossible to repeal" constitutional ammendments that enshrined slavery couldn't work that way given how the constitution works.

I think there is disagreement among constitutional law scholars on whether there are parts of the constitution that amendments can't change, but if not, theoretically you could amend the constitution to change or limit the amendment process

Of course all this stuff is nonsense that people make up as they go along anyway so the only thing that matters is whether everyone agrees that you can or can't do something when you're actually trying to do it

# ¿ Aug 26, 2023 16:49

mystes: May 31, 2006

Macdeo Lurjtux posted:

Would that've been around the time he was pushing his trans humanist series where anyone could be race/species/alien they wanted to, as long their gender didn't change? And the villains tried to destroy society because they thought body fluidity was destroying the moral fabric of humanity?

that's so dumb wow

# ¿ Sep 3, 2023 17:51

mystes: May 31, 2006

GhastlyBizness posted:

It�s described in an afterword in some editions. She consciously wrote it to be an apologia for Christopher Columbus and his actions in the new world, her idea being that his atrocities, slave taking, etc were mistakes borne of �radical ignorance�. She was reacting to the broader cultural reappraisal of him that accompanied the 500th anniversary of his voyage, trying to get back some of his gloss as a good, if flawed, man.

I quite liked the Sparrow when I first read it but it�s a bit like Fahrenheit 451, where the author explaining their intent and conception of their own work makes it come off as a cruder and worse book.

wow I had no idea lol

# ¿ Sep 6, 2023 13:03

mystes: May 31, 2006

Jedit posted:

Having read a synopsis of the book that says one of the priests gets raped and put through the local equivalent of footbinding but it's OK in the end because the experience helps him recover his lost faith, I'm not sure why you need authorial intent to have a yikes moment. Perhaps it's not entirely accurate, but still.

I don't think that is presented as good in the book

# ¿ Sep 6, 2023 13:24

mystes: May 31, 2006

There's no way stephenson would just use Microsoft Word. If not fountain pen then emacs, wordperfect for dos, wax tablets, or something, but not a normal word processor that normal people use.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2023 01:39

mystes: May 31, 2006

I guess GRRM is the person who actually uses a weird dos word processor but it's something even older than word perfect

# ¿ Sep 12, 2023 01:46

mystes: May 31, 2006

I want to say I originally heard about the Iron Dragon's Daughter from a book list by China Mi�ville on amazon when anyone could create and share book lists on amazon, which was pretty cool

# ¿ Sep 17, 2023 20:16

mystes: May 31, 2006

fez_machine posted:

I'm always in the market for huge fantasy series, what are people's thoughts on Modesitt?

I read a bunch of his books at some point when I was a teenager and perhaps it says something that of the different authors I was reading around that time, I have by far the least memory of anything that happened in his books.

Like literally even though I read a ton of his books, I hadn't even thought of him in like 20 years before I read your post, whereas even other series that looking back were pretty dumb I do usually do still think about from time to time.

I think all his books were basically the exact same thing over and over again, too.

mystes fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Sep 22, 2023

# ¿ Sep 22, 2023 01:16

mystes: May 31, 2006

I think it was "spoiler - free fire - zone" rather than "spoiler free" although it took me a second to parse as well

# ¿ Sep 30, 2023 03:43

mystes: May 31, 2006

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

PHM just bugged me because the whole marketing campaign for it was basically just ANOTHER HARD SCI FI NOVEL FROM THE GUY WHO WROTE THE MARTIAN WHICH HAD ~NO~ FICTIONAL SETTINGS OR SCIENCE IN IT OTHER THAN A GIGANTIC WINDSTORM!

Then PHM comes out and shits itself with 🕷️. Don't sell me a book that's marketed as a hard sci fi thriller with minimal fictional stuff and then renege on that premise. That's annoying.

I think that's a fair criticism although it might be somewhat difficult to warn people that the book is still a series of problems to be solved set in the near future but it also involves magic alien technology without spoiling it

# ¿ Oct 5, 2023 08:55

mystes: May 31, 2006

How can something be like the foreigner series and also "cozy"?

# ¿ Oct 11, 2023 18:36

mystes: May 31, 2006

lol so that's how you ended up with that avatar? It's a funny avatar though

# ¿ Oct 14, 2023 17:38

mystes: May 31, 2006

a lot of puzzle games are too hard

# ¿ Oct 14, 2023 17:42

mystes: May 31, 2006

Jedit posted:

Funny you should mention Aaronovitch in the context of pasting names on, because he's admitted that he didn't do all his research on Rivers of London quite as well as he should have. Specifically, he didn't visit Russell Square before locating the Folly there and wound up describing a building that doesn't exist. This is a major annoyance to fans who want to take a photo of themselves outside, and that annoyance is passed on to him.

Sounds like the mistake is having fans who are obnoxious as gently caress

# ¿ Oct 17, 2023 11:12

mystes: May 31, 2006

I started reading Fated and I really don't like it. It feels like it's just alternating between tedious infodumps and random events suddenly happening to the protagonist. To the extent that things that sound potentially interesting have come up so far, they've also all been things that happened earlier/off screen just being described. Also it already feels like the protagonist's power is already poorly defined/inconsistent even in the very beginning because he apparently has the ability to pull a name out of nowhere by looking at every possibility but then in other cases he can't do things that seem 100% equivalent to that?

StrixNebulosa posted:

Epic fantasy doorstoppers you should read, Strix edition:

I don't think I've read any of these and I've been looking for more fantasy stuff to read so I'll have to check them out.

mystes fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Oct 17, 2023

# ¿ Oct 17, 2023 17:05

mystes: May 31, 2006

Doesn't urban fantasy effectively just mean fantasy set in a normal modern society in modern times instead of a fantasy world without technology or a wizard school that theoretically exists in a location on modern Earth but is totally separate from normal society?

I guess a bunch of definitions say that it literally has to take place in a city but that seems like taking the name overly literally to me

# ¿ Oct 17, 2023 19:31

mystes: May 31, 2006

I thought the ending of house of suns was fine although it's kind of similar to the ending of Contact (at least the movie; I haven't read the book)

# ¿ Nov 20, 2023 05:49

mystes: May 31, 2006

I read some of the amber books years ago but the only thing I remember is that it felt like each subsequent book really obnoxiously retconned everything in a way that rendered the plot of the previous book 100% meaningless

# ¿ Nov 25, 2023 18:57

mystes: May 31, 2006

yikes

# ¿ Dec 10, 2023 01:29

mystes: May 31, 2006

I mean sometimes series go downhill after you stop reading them but I don't think you could reasonably have predicted that it was going to randomly turn into that

# ¿ Dec 10, 2023 01:37

mystes: May 31, 2006

thotsky posted:

Murderbot skews feminine-coded

What makes you say this? I haven't read the whole series but nothing about it seemed gender coded at all to me

# ¿ Dec 15, 2023 16:13

mystes: May 31, 2006

mewse posted:

But yeah how are they even going to do murderbot's inner dialog - voiceover? Seems like tough material to adapt

I wonder if they're even going to seriously try or if they're just going to take the absolute barest elements of the setting/premise and throw away everything else

# ¿ Dec 15, 2023 21:59

mystes: May 31, 2006

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

If they embrace the satire like starship troopers, it'll be amazing. Just imagine the opening with a montage of sec units massacring post after post, and then our like mb rolls up and is like "I'd kill all humans but honestly I'm working my way through my shows. The meatbags live for another day."

That sounds less like an adaptation of the murderbot books and more like burn notice in space

# ¿ Dec 16, 2023 00:01

mystes: May 31, 2006

Remulak posted:

Also, it�s great reading about people�s takes on Murderbot�s gender. I could have sworn that facial stubble was mentioned repeatedly, but I�m a cis man��.

I don't think so?
From the second book

quote:

Then ART said we also needed to change the code controlling my organic parts, so they could grow hair.

My first reaction to that was no loving way. I had hair on my head, and eyebrows; that was a part of SecUnit configuration that was shared with sexbots, though the code controlling it kept SecUnit head hair short to keep it from interfering with the armor.

quote:

I told ART that I preferred it that way and extra hair would just draw unwanted attention. It replied that it meant the fine, sparse hair humans had on parts of their skin. ART had done some analysis and come up with a list of biological features that humans might notice subliminally. Hair was the only one we could change my underlying code to create, and ART proposed that it would make the joins between the organic and inorganic parts on my arms, legs, chest, and back look more like augments, the inorganic parts that humans had implanted for medical or other reasons. I pointed out that many humans or augmented humans had the hair on their bodies removed, for hygienic or cosmetic reasons and because who the hell wants it there anyway. ART countered that humans didn�t have to worry about being identified as SecUnits, so they could do whatever they wanted to their bodies.

It's somewhat vague but I take this to mean that it originally just had head on the top of its head and eyebrows, and after the modifications that ART advised it got the minimum of stuff like light arm/leg hair to look more human, but not other types of hair like facial hair that would actually grow out

# ¿ Dec 16, 2023 01:46

mystes: May 31, 2006

I guess my best idea for what I would want murderbot to look like would be to sort of ape the kind of ageless/distant look from Halo Forward Unto Dawn (although I think murderbot may have been described as having darker skin):

mystes fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Dec 16, 2023

# ¿ Dec 16, 2023 17:15

mystes: May 31, 2006

I suppose you could probably turn it into an episodic show about murderbot going around saving people from the perspective of the people being saved but it would turn it into something very different

mystes fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Dec 16, 2023

# ¿ Dec 16, 2023 22:24

mystes: May 31, 2006

I haven't read a mercedes lackey book in a really long time

I remember when I read Magic's Pawn as a teenager I was really mad at the blurb on the back because it made it sound like the entire plot of the book was just a result of the protagonist being dumb and I had to reread it a few years later to be like "oh yeah that was pretty much true"

it probably deserves some points for having been so relatable as a teenager

# ¿ Dec 26, 2023 23:35

mystes: May 31, 2006

Slyphic posted:

I can't recall what book it was, other than one I recommended to a friend. He was listening to the audiobook format, and the reader hit a big number with a superscript power notation, and read it in a rising tone. Like 36,822x10³ as "thirty six thousand eight hundred and twenty two times one hundred and thrᵉᵉ?" in a rising hesitantly inquisitive form.
It's been a running gag ever since with us.

Some book had something like "...gravity well, then" and the person reading it apparently didn't know the term gravity well and misunderstood it as "... gravity, well then..."

It made me wonder how many more mistakes misparsing sentences I would notice if I actually compared it with the text, because most of the time with an audiobook you wouldn't notice an error as long as it still makes sense on it's own

mystes fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Dec 27, 2023

# ¿ Dec 27, 2023 14:57

mystes: May 31, 2006

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I think it benefits from having been competently written YA fantasy with a solid grounding in actual mythology . . . in the 1980's, when that was pretty revolutionary.

They were written in 1965 to 1977, so they started even before e.g. the John Bellairs YA series

So yeah lots of other books have done similar things but the Dark is Rising series predates most of those books

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 01:42

mystes: May 31, 2006

Kestral posted:

I was talking with my D&D players, who are young folks (teens and early college years) who have all become bigtime readers over the last couple years, and one of them raised a question about genre fiction I was surprised I couldn't answer: since so much modern SF/F is now being written by millenials who grew up on the internet, why aren't we seeing furry fandom / anthro novels outside of urban fantasy "pounded in the butt by a werepanther" stuff? This seems like such a slam-dunk, the furry market is big and spends money like crazy, and all it demands is that your otherwise-normal fantasy races be foxes, wolves, and lizards instead of whatever you've pulled from Tolkien / the Player's Handbook. Alternatively, am I completely wrong? Is this already a thing that I've just missed somehow?

I don't know about that but about there are probably going to be more sf/f books with anthropomorphic animals as kids who read stuff like warrior cats and wings of fire get older

# ¿ Jan 3, 2024 04:11

mystes: May 31, 2006

I enjoyed the first Scholomance book for what it was but I gave up on the second one about 3/4 of the way through. Like a lot of YA series which involve the protagonist being put in a mysterious/dangerous situation like The Maze Runner, it feels like the concept was only barely fleshed out enough to make the first book work, and the resolution to the plot to the first book eliminates all the qualities that made the first book interesting, so there's no real way to make it hold together for more books.

mystes fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jan 3, 2024

# ¿ Jan 3, 2024 16:20

mystes: May 31, 2006

I guess if it comes to a somewhat decent ending I might pick it up again and try to finish it. At least she didn't write herself into a corner in that case.

But I feel like the other problem is that the thing that made the first book the most interesting was the situation the protagonist was in without anyone to trust, and without that element the second book just didn't seem that interesting

# ¿ Jan 3, 2024 16:29

mystes: May 31, 2006

I thought the Magicians was okay on its own but the subsequent books didn't really go in a direction I was interested in. You basically have to really want the books to be about not-Narnia rather than wanting not-Narnia to be a sort of gimmick in the advancement of the plot of the first book.

Also even for just the first book you have to want to read a book where the gimmick is basically "harry potter but extremely burned out college students"

mystes fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jan 3, 2024

# ¿ Jan 3, 2024 18:53

mystes: May 31, 2006

Leng posted:

I enjoyed Scholomance and thought it ended well. But if what you wanted from Scholomance was for El to keep being the hated loner who can't trust anybody, then you might not. Learning to trust and gathering a community about her was kind of the point of El's character arc.

I don't have a problem with that changing in general, and it makes sense for it to change for character development; it's just that that situation was responsible for creating most of the suspense in the first book, and it felt like there wasn't really much to replace it in the second book. There was also some novelty in the setting in the first book that was naturally not there in the first book. But I don't know what happens in the third book so maybe if it's outside the school it's more interesting again?

# ¿ Jan 3, 2024 19:51

mystes: May 31, 2006

I probably will finish the second book and then read the third book though. The main reason I stopped was because I thought it was unlikely the third book would be good based on how I was feeling about the second, but based on what people are saying it sounds like that concern was unwarranted.

Its been a little while so I might just reread the first book first too

# ¿ Jan 3, 2024 20:10

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 9, 2024 18:10

mystes: May 31, 2006

Poldarn posted:

There was a Star Wars novel that used "dopplering" as a verb and I was like "Hey doesn't this take place in the past?"

you realize that english wouldn't have existed either, right? the doppler effect is at least a physical phenomenon that they would likely have a word for

# ¿ Jan 4, 2024 16:51

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > SF & F Mega-thread: I had to google 'spock pirate depilatory'

«‹›3 »