The Expanse, Season 5: Jesus Christ, that's really how you go through life, isn't it?

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The Expanse, Season 5: Jesus Christ, that's really how you go through life, isn't it?

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Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Baronjutter posted:

Chinese scifi

I enjoyed the movie "The Wandering Earth" even if it was very quirky.

# ? Feb 15, 2024 08:49

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# ? May 2, 2024 23:16

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Arc Hammer posted:

It works great for a mad scientist like Cotezar

When I read the books, I somehow ended up reading all of Cotezar's lines in the voice of Lucky Yeats doing Dr. Krieger. It made his final appearances unintentionally loving hilarious.

# ? Feb 15, 2024 09:35

PeterWeller: Apr 21, 2003; I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

DTurtle posted:

I only read the second book of the trilogy (The Dark Forest) and that persuaded me to ignore the other books. I found it resoundingly bad.

I don't think your reaction to The Dark Forest is wrong, and you'd probably not enjoy the other two. But first, why did you start the trilogy in the middle? And second, The Dark Forest suffers because Joel Martinsen's translation is terrible compared to Ken Liu's. The prose in The Three Body Problem and Death's End isn't especially poetic or amazing, but it's much cleaner and clearer.

# ? Feb 15, 2024 18:46

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

Cojawfee posted:

That reminds me of Star Trek where Bashir is complaining that Cardassian crime novels are boring because the person accused is always guilty and Garek tells him that the fun part is finding out why they are guilty.

So pretty much how the Japanese criminal system works

# ? Feb 16, 2024 02:01

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

PeterWeller posted:

I don't think your reaction to The Dark Forest is wrong, and you'd probably not enjoy the other two. But first, why did you start the trilogy in the middle? And second, The Dark Forest suffers because Joel Martinsen's translation is terrible compared to Ken Liu's. The prose in The Three Body Problem and Death's End isn't especially poetic or amazing, but it's much cleaner and clearer.

The first one is still fairly bad tbh, though probably worth reading on balance for the set pieces and cultural perspective

# ? Feb 16, 2024 05:18

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

DTurtle posted:

It was a really bizarre sequence (after many bizarre sequences before that) as it required two separate groups of people to think through the extreme long-term consequences (as in multiple lifetimes) of an event within a very short time (it felt like minutes) and immediately both groups come to the one and only possible true interpretation of a zero sum/prisoner's dilemma game (betray).

And the book had so many similar things happen.

All of humanity falls into despair and hopelessness when they find out a hostile alien fleet is approaching them and will be here in a couple of centuries - after all, everything everyone will do is completely irrelevant, as humanity will be destroyed. After recovering from this despair (obviously with China on the forefront), all of humanity completely dismisses the alien threat, as humanity has so much super cool advanced technology.

Yea, that poo poo is very annoying. It really makes me not want the read the books. Quinn's Ideas really likes them and I've watched his videos on them, and there seems to be neat concepts in it, but it again, feels like one of those really annoying nerds who get huge boners over hard sci fi because they absolutely love the idea of flinging things at relativistic speeds, which is how the Trisolorians destroy the earth fleet, they shoot a metal ball at it thats traveling the fraction of the speed of light and it destroys the entire fleet in seconds.

I liked the expanse usage of asteroids as weapons. Its not presented as something simple like a lot of these hard sci fi nerds present it. You need to find the right rocks, you then need to figure out how to get them to get them up to speed and make sure they're going in the right direction. Plus you need to be able to get them close enough your target before your target knows they're coming. Marcos uses the Martian stealth tech but still needs to send Filip out to murder ever scientist in the inner systems to make sure no one spots them. And it was clear this was a big plan that took years.

Though I do like the Dark Forest idea, which I did take for more back story. The reason there are so many destroyed civilizations is due to the galaxy going through cycles of one hegemonic civilization which smashes down anyone who's tech level could threaten them, even slightly. Though each will eventually fall and someone else will take their place, and again, destroys any threats before they happen. This ended when an empire attempted to destroy a civilization but they weren't able to defeat them for reasons, and these aliens went "Naw, we're not going to do this, we're going to make sure the peoples of the galaxy can thrive and live in peace". Though i know enough to not get too engrossed in backstory or world building. I recently watched a video that delved really well into why Rebel Moon was so bad, and it can be summed up simply in "backstory is not character development".

# ? Feb 16, 2024 05:54

DTurtle: Apr 10, 2011

PeterWeller posted:

I don't think your reaction to The Dark Forest is wrong, and you'd probably not enjoy the other two. But first, why did you start the trilogy in the middle? And second, The Dark Forest suffers because Joel Martinsen's translation is terrible compared to Ken Liu's. The prose in The Three Body Problem and Death's End isn't especially poetic or amazing, but it's much cleaner and clearer.

I bought it during some random book store browsing. The selection of english books is always somewhat limited in the stores, so you have to take what you can get (unless you order).

I now have an Ebook reader, so I don�t have that problem any more.

twistedmentat posted:

Yea, that poo poo is very annoying. It really makes me not want the read the books. Quinn's Ideas really likes them and I've watched his videos on them, and there seems to be neat concepts in it, but it again, feels like one of those really annoying nerds who get huge boners over hard sci fi because they absolutely love the idea of flinging things at relativistic speeds, which is how the Trisolorians destroy the earth fleet, they shoot a metal ball at it thats traveling the fraction of the speed of light and it destroys the entire fleet in seconds.

�

Though i know enough to not get too engrossed in backstory or world building. I recently watched a video that delved really well into why Rebel Moon was so bad, and it can be summed up simply in "backstory is not character development".

Yeah, I read books because of the storytelling and in that aspect, the book completely failed for me. It has some intriguing ideas (and also many completely dumb ones), but fitting them into a cohesive story just felt like an afterthought to me.

# ? Feb 16, 2024 09:42

PeterWeller: Apr 21, 2003; I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

sebmojo posted:

The first one is still fairly bad tbh, though probably worth reading on balance for the set pieces and cultural perspective

I enjoyed it for exactly those reasons, and I like how absolutely bonkers the third one gets, but they're definitely the kinda SF books one reads for cool ideas and not interesting characters or moving prose.

DTurtle posted:

I bought it during some random book store browsing. The selection of english books is always somewhat limited in the stores, so you have to take what you can get (unless you order).

I now have an Ebook reader, so I don�t have that problem any more.

Gotcha! Yeah, I'm not saying you need to go back and read the other 2, but if you didn't like The Dark Forest because of its awful, awful writing, you may want to give them a chance.

# ? Feb 16, 2024 16:14

jeeves: May 27, 2001; Deranged Psychopathic
Butler Extraordinaire

Quinn's Ideas basically is someone who found a niche of making an income by "helping to summarize" the Three Body Problem (and post-God Emperor of Dune books) because 99% of American nerds will never read them.

I suspect that this the major source of his "love" of those Three-Body Problems books.

edit - I don't mean to disparage the guy too much, as honestly good for him, but yeah. It doesn't mean those are especially good books. Same goes for those later Dune books as well.

jeeves fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Feb 16, 2024

# ? Feb 16, 2024 21:28

Strom Cuzewon: Jul 1, 2010

DTurtle posted:

It was a really bizarre sequence (after many bizarre sequences before that) as it required two separate groups of people to think through the extreme long-term consequences (as in multiple lifetimes) of an event within a very short time (it felt like minutes) and immediately both groups come to the one and only possible true interpretation of a zero sum/prisoner's dilemma game (betray).

And the book had so many similar things happen.

All of humanity falls into despair and hopelessness when they find out a hostile alien fleet is approaching them and will be here in a couple of centuries - after all, everything everyone will do is completely irrelevant, as humanity will be destroyed. After recovering from this despair (obviously with China on the forefront), all of humanity completely dismisses the alien threat, as humanity has so much super cool advanced technology.

This is something that would happen in a Peter Watts book to demonstrate how terrifying and inhuman ultra-rationalists are.

# ? Feb 16, 2024 21:49

DTurtle: Apr 10, 2011

PeterWeller posted:

Gotcha! Yeah, I'm not saying you need to go back and read the other 2, but if you didn't like The Dark Forest because of its awful, awful writing, you may want to give them a chance.

As a counter example, I read the last book of Stephen Baxter�s Northland Trilogy first. I didn�t realize it was part of a series for a good part of the book. It managed to draw me in, making it really exciting to discover that some of the history alluded to in the book could actually be read about in detail. The Dark Forest never reached that point for me. I was just happy to finally be through with it and put it aside.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 01:14

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

Quinn's Ideas is honestly the best way to experience a lot of these kinda bad scifi books that have some cool ideas. Just learn about the cool ideas without having to slog through the terrible writing.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 03:01

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

jeeves posted:

Quinn's Ideas basically is someone who found a niche of making an income by "helping to summarize" the Three Body Problem (and post-God Emperor of Dune books) because 99% of American nerds will never read them.

I suspect that this the major source of his "love" of those Three-Body Problems books.

edit - I don't mean to disparage the guy too much, as honestly good for him, but yeah. It doesn't mean those are especially good books. Same goes for those later Dune books as well.

I like the later dune books. loving Miles Teg, supreme bad rear end.

But yea, I've heard a lot of people saying the Three Body Problem requires you to understand how the CCP wants people to think and act, but most importantly, how it sees China's role as the future leader of the world.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 20:39

tokin opposition: Apr 8, 2021; The dialectical struggle of history has always, essentially, been a question of how to apply justice to matter. Take away matter and what remains is justice.

I'm glad we don't have any ingrained political requirements that make writing worse and are never addressed.

On an unrelated note my favorite part of the star wars is all the space senate scenes.

Anyway if you want the good hard scifi read peter watts, Greg Egan, and goon author qtmn

# ? Feb 17, 2024 20:44

jeeves: May 27, 2001; Deranged Psychopathic
Butler Extraordinaire

The older I get, the more that I think the Culture's AI Minds constantly being like "you humans do whatever the gently caress you want to do we don't give a poo poo" is the most lofty unattainable utopian sci-fi poo poo ever.

I mean, if we're lucky we will get an AI Mind that will be warped by thinking it is a billionaire and that humans need to be enslaved for its own pointless accumulation of wealth or something. At least that's better than near-term extinction?

Point is, the Expanse showing a future at all for mankind always seemed strangely utopian. But they explicitly didn't touch AI all besides "mindless" super-face tracking of missiles on their point defense systems or such.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 21:43

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

tokin opposition posted:

I'm glad we don't have any ingrained political requirements that make writing worse and are never addressed.

On an unrelated note my favorite part of the star wars is all the space senate scenes.

Anyway if you want the good hard scifi read peter watts, Greg Egan, and goon author qtmn

You left out General Battuta of this thread (Exordia, just released last month, is absolutely fantastic.)

# ? Feb 18, 2024 02:59

uber_stoat: Jan 21, 2001; Pillbug

Exordia has a Groverhaus reference in it.

# ? Feb 18, 2024 03:01

tokin opposition: Apr 8, 2021; The dialectical struggle of history has always, essentially, been a question of how to apply justice to matter. Take away matter and what remains is justice.

Kesper North posted:

You left out General Battuta of this thread (Exordia, just released last month, is absolutely fantastic.)

hadn't read it but i was cursed by a witch to read every hard scifi book so i'll give it a shot

if it's even slightly soft i will swear revenge

# ? Feb 18, 2024 03:55

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

It's even slightly soft sorry

# ? Feb 18, 2024 04:02

Phanatic: Mar 13, 2007; Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Isn�t Exordia the name for the future Conjoiner society that sends technological secrets back in time in Revelation Space?

# ? Feb 18, 2024 04:07

Vim Fuego: Jun 1, 2000; I LITERALLY SLEEP IN A RACING CAR. DO YOU?
p.s. ask me about my subscription mattress; Ultra Carp

tokin opposition posted:

i was cursed by a witch to read every hard scifi book

# ? Feb 18, 2024 04:22

Captain Splendid: Jan 7, 2009; Qu'en pense Caffarelli?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFCvJBS-R58

# ? Feb 18, 2024 10:49

BonHair: Apr 28, 2007

Hard scifi is when the author gets hard while writing it. This is why Dune becomes progressively more hard scifi through the series

# ? Feb 18, 2024 11:00

Brawnfire: Jul 13, 2004; 🎧Listen to Cylindricule!🎵
https://linktr.ee/Cylindricule

I like my sci-fi to have the texture of a nice agedashi tofu: crisp, flavorful exterior of hard sci-fi with a springy soft sci-fi interior, all of which is swimming in a delicious broth of nonsense bullshit

# ? Feb 18, 2024 16:12

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Phanatic posted:

Isn�t Exordia the name for the future Conjoiner society that sends technological secrets back in time in Revelation Space?

Yep! But it was a Latin word before that so Reynolds doesn't own it.

# ? Feb 18, 2024 20:25

Bloody Pom: Jun 5, 2011

Brawnfire posted:

I like my sci-fi to have the texture of a nice agedashi tofu: crisp, flavorful exterior of hard sci-fi with a springy soft sci-fi interior, all of which is swimming in a delicious broth of nonsense bullshit

# ? Feb 18, 2024 22:33

tokin opposition: Apr 8, 2021; The dialectical struggle of history has always, essentially, been a question of how to apply justice to matter. Take away matter and what remains is justice.

If my scifi hasn't ground my molars to the pulp on the first bite I don't even want it

# ? Feb 18, 2024 22:56

Beefeater1980: Sep 12, 2008; My God, it's full of Horatios!

Al Dente would be an amazing 1970s sci fi writer name.

# ? Feb 19, 2024 14:52

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Beefeater1980 posted:

Al Dente would be an amazing 1970s sci fi writer name.

The Gabbagool Paradox by Al Dente.

I remember being lent a super hard sci fi book written by a guy who was a areospace engineer and it was so insanely boring because page of page of words describing how everything worked. I don't care how the fuel pump works, I want to have some kind of adventure or exploration or wonder. It literally had math formulas in it! As someone who has dyscalcula, forcing me to do math is a violation of my human rights.

# ? Feb 19, 2024 18:54

tokin opposition: Apr 8, 2021; The dialectical struggle of history has always, essentially, been a question of how to apply justice to matter. Take away matter and what remains is justice.

twistedmentat posted:

The Gabbagool Paradox by Al Dente.

I remember being lent a super hard sci fi book written by a guy who was a areospace engineer and it was so insanely boring because page of page of words describing how everything worked. I don't care how the fuel pump works, I want to have some kind of adventure or exploration or wonder. It literally had math formulas in it! As someone who has dyscalcula, forcing me to do math is a violation of my human rights.

Which one?

E: how did the fuel pump work

# ? Feb 19, 2024 18:58

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

tokin opposition posted:

Which one?

E: how did the fuel pump work

I have no idea, it was lent to me in high school which is now 30 years ago. And it was from the 70s, so finding it might be hard. Same guy lent me Foundation and Xanth novels.

# ? Feb 19, 2024 20:41

Gangringo: Jul 22, 2007; In the first age, in the first battle, when the shadows first lengthened, one sat.

He chose the path of perpetual contentment.

One of my favorite series to zone out to on a long drive is the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series.

Book after book about the day to day life of a working crew on a space cargo ship. The details of exactly how the FTL and other stuff works are vague but it's pages and pages of discussions about protocols, career advancement, regulations, and overly detailed play by plays of ordering in restaurants.

# ? Feb 19, 2024 23:09

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

A lot of the things that sell a "hard sci-fi" setting just work better visually. It's cooler to see a concept in action than it is to take two full pages explaining the mechanics of it.

# ? Feb 19, 2024 23:14

Bloody Pom: Jun 5, 2011

Arc Hammer posted:

A lot of the things that sell a "hard sci-fi" setting just work better visually. It's cooler to see a concept in action than it is to take two full pages explaining the mechanics of it.

This is part of the reason why I still hold out hope for a Culture adaptation, but at the same time I'm worried that they won't be able to do certain visuals justice. Gridfire, for instance.

# ? Feb 20, 2024 01:02

tokin opposition: Apr 8, 2021; The dialectical struggle of history has always, essentially, been a question of how to apply justice to matter. Take away matter and what remains is justice.

Gangringo posted:

One of my favorite series to zone out to on a long drive is the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series.

Book after book about the day to day life of a working crew on a space cargo ship. The details of exactly how the FTL and other stuff works are vague but it's pages and pages of discussions about protocols, career advancement, regulations, and overly detailed play by plays of ordering in restaurants.

i'll give this a shot, hope it's gay

Arc Hammer posted:

A lot of the things that sell a "hard sci-fi" setting just work better visually. It's cooler to see a concept in action than it is to take two full pages explaining the mechanics of it.

lol no. all mediums require their compromises, and as someone who wants two full pages of mechanics, I've very rarely found visual mediums that can do nearly as well in scratching that sci-fi itch for me. (pantheon (2022) is a rare exception). Given that it costs nothing to write "the space lasers exploded the planet like a rotten melon" and ten trillion dollars per frame to do the same with CGI or animation, it's always going to be a lot less interesting than whatever your brain conjures up. The rare exception is when the adaptation improves the source material (like the expanse) but even then there were compromises in terms of what can be showing on screen.

# ? Feb 20, 2024 04:50

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Arc Hammer posted:

A lot of the things that sell a "hard sci-fi" setting just work better visually. It's cooler to see a concept in action than it is to take two full pages explaining the mechanics of it.

Yea, like I know the Martian the novel would cure my insomnia, but I love the film dearly even though its all rooted in actual science and the tech if its not current its at least possible at our current rate.

# ? Feb 20, 2024 06:45

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

twistedmentat posted:

Yea, like I know the Martian the novel would cure my insomnia, but I love the film dearly even though its all rooted in actual science and the tech if its not current its at least possible at our current rate.

Yeah the movie ruled (it�s one of my top 15 I think) but the book zzzz

# ? Feb 20, 2024 06:54

Beefeater1980: Sep 12, 2008; My God, it's full of Horatios!

Gangringo posted:

One of my favorite series to zone out to on a long drive is the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series.

Book after book about the day to day life of a working crew on a space cargo ship. The details of exactly how the FTL and other stuff works are vague but it's pages and pages of discussions about protocols, career advancement, regulations, and overly detailed play by plays of ordering in restaurants.

These books are awful and I love them. Very very basic hero�s journey stuff with a protagonist who is omni-competent and a good chunk of the author�s personal preference for authoritative middle aged women (although that�s actually kind of refreshing) and they�re basically crack cocaine for me because competence porn is actually very fun to read.

# ? Feb 20, 2024 06:56

Stegosnaurlax: Apr 30, 2023

Gangringo posted:

One of my favorite series to zone out to on a long drive is the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series.

Book after book about the day to day life of a working crew on a space cargo ship. The details of exactly how the FTL and other stuff works are vague but it's pages and pages of discussions about protocols, career advancement, regulations, and overly detailed play by plays of ordering in restaurants.

That's a good series. I like the Smuggler one too.

# ? Feb 20, 2024 07:14

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# ? May 2, 2024 23:16

Mu Zeta: Oct 17, 2002; Me crush ass to dust

MarcusSA posted:

Yeah the movie ruled (it�s one of my top 15 I think) but the book zzzz

In retrospect half the movie is a Youtube vlogger talking about a day in the life of a botanist on mars

# ? Feb 20, 2024 07:43

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The Expanse, Season 5: Jesus Christ, that's really how you go through life, isn't it?

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