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madmatt112 posted:Baxter wrote The Long Earth with Terry Pratchett. I really enjoyed it back in my 20s. An imaginative romp through alternate worlds, and IIRC a bitchin’ eco-climax that really made me want to read the next one to find out how they wrote the aftermath. It’s fun when the two authors are so different, almost every chapter is quite clearly written by one or the other. I was 90% sure I recognized the name from reading The Long Earth ages ago, but I immediately got distracted and forgot to look it up. It's been long enough that I don't remember much about it, except for it understandably being a tonal shift since I read it at the tail end of working through all the Pratchett books I could find at the library. I should give it a re-read, it's popped into mind occasionally as something I should do, just never when I'm actively looking for something to read.
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Apr 4, 2024 16:06
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The Long Earth series is more Baxter than Pratchett, I've found.
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Apr 4, 2024 16:18
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Captain Hygiene posted:The first book intrigued me enough to continue, but I gave up by the second for a lot of these reasons, the gender characterizations in particular. On the sci-fi side, for all its big ideas, I felt I was constantly getting mad at it for getting too far into magical hand-wavey technology plot shortcuts by the second book, I just stopped reading it after that. I wish I could remember more specific complaints, but it just kinda disappeared from my memory once I gave up on it. Oh yeah I liked the first book but got bored with the second and didn't bother with the third. I remember weird slapstick where someone almost gets eaten by furniture and a giant space battle where a fleet is being wiped out fast but the crew stops to have long melodramatic conversations. It does have the funny aspect of world in crisis books written by non-Western authors where the United States happily defers to the UN including putting military forces under their command. Apparently the Chinese billionaire who was an executive producer for the Netflix series for Three Body Problem in hopes of it becoming a Star Wars franchise got murdered by one of his executives before the show came out: quote:The Bizarre Chinese Murder Plot Behind Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ quote:Lin Qi was a billionaire with a dream. The video game tycoon had wanted to turn one of China’s most famous science-fiction novels, “The Three-Body Problem,” into a global hit. He had started working with Netflix and the creators of the HBO series “Game of Thrones” to bring the alien invasion saga to international audiences. quote:As Mr. Xu plotted his revenge, Caixin reported, he built a lab in an outlying district of Shanghai where he experimented with hundreds of poisons he bought off the dark web by testing them on dogs and cats and other pets. Caixin said Mr. Xu was both fascinated and inspired by the American hit TV series “Breaking Bad,” about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher who teaches himself to make and sell methamphetamine, eventually becoming a drug lord. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/01/...&smid=url-share Hyrax Attack! fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Apr 4, 2024 |
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Apr 4, 2024 17:39
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What the  But yeah, that probably would make for a more interesting movie
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Apr 4, 2024 18:08
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redshirt posted:I wash my hands of any responsibilities. I've given my warning. I agree there's not much in the way of plot, but I'd disagree on the characterisation. That's almost the point of the series. Like the opening chapter of Red is from Maya's pov, with a strong focus on interpersonal dynamics, then you get Nadia's pov chapter which includes a page-long list of tools and swiftly dismisses all Maya's angst and politicking as teenage melodrama. Everyone's on the same planet but inhabit very different worlds. But yeah there is the big question of "why are the megacorps funding this" or at least "how are the characters paying for their food and socks." I wonder if that's a result of its super early 90's publication date, back when "corporation" conjured up some vast and sprawling zaibatsu or whatever, rather than e.g. Musk or Zuckerberg, or Google slowly poisoning its own algorithms with ai garbage. Narzack posted:If you're in to hard scifi, I recommend my very favorite science fiction authors, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds. Reynolds is real good, but I'm not sure his sci fi is "hard." Dark, definitely. madmatt112 posted:Baxter wrote The Long Earth with Terry Pratchett. I really enjoyed it back in my 20s. An imaginative romp through alternate worlds, and IIRC a bitchin’ eco-climax that really made me want to read the next one to find out how they wrote the aftermath. It’s fun when the two authors are so different, almost every chapter is quite clearly written by one or the other. I wound up liking it less and less as it went on. It combined Pratchett's hard science with Baxter's wit and wordplay. Uhh.
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Apr 5, 2024 00:04
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I’m reading The Sparrow. I hope the hosed up poo poo starts soon, I hate it when I’m promised a hosed-up spectacle and it fails to materialize.
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Apr 5, 2024 00:11
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I just picked up a copy of The Coming of Conan and I'm pretty stoked about it honestly. And copies of Ker Nethalas, What Lies Beneath and the first book of Fabled Lands, but those are more games than books. Gamebooks.
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Apr 5, 2024 00:32
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Nigmaetcetera posted:I’m reading The Sparrow. I hope the hosed up poo poo starts soon, I hate it when I’m promised a hosed-up spectacle and it fails to materialize. Its not going to be enjoyable hosed up poo poo lol. That book and its sequel are heavy asf. Tho the author stating that part of her inspiration was weird Columbus apologia kind of soured me on them a bit.
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Apr 5, 2024 01:06
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Lil Swamp Booger Baby posted:Its not going to be enjoyable hosed up poo poo lol. That book and its sequel are heavy asf. Tho the author stating that part of her inspiration was weird Columbus apologia kind of soured me on them a bit. Heavy poo poo doesn’t get me down, my anti-depressants and ketamine infusions are working and I’m now able to engage with negative content without getting down in the dumps about it. What enjoyable hosed up poo poo do you recommend, though? I’m into sci-fi, fantasy, conventional horror, and extreme splatterpunk horror provided the author doesn’t seem like they’re getting sexually aroused by their own writing. I’m also, reluctantly, willing to check out literary fiction, I guess, or at least I’ll pretend to read it so I can seem like less of a dullard to other goons.
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Apr 5, 2024 01:19
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Nigmaetcetera posted:Heavy poo poo doesn’t get me down, my anti-depressants and ketamine infusions are working and I’m now able to engage with negative content without getting down in the dumps about it. I just finished the sequel to the Sparrow and I liked it much less than the first. It goes through a tonal shift about halfway through and treads on some really uncomfortable territory alluded to above and isn't fully successful. Also much less hosed up poo poo happens compared to the first. It might be worth reading if you enjoy the first though If you're looking for literary fiction F Scott Fitzgerald is a revelation if you haven't read him yet. I feel really stupid at having a schoolboy bias against him in the past but it was great getting to read through his books for the first time. Edit I also just read Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems vol 1 and really enjoyed it. Almost all of them were nature poems that implied much more than they said and many were profound. I just started reading the complete stories of Franz Kafka so that should be rad.
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Apr 5, 2024 01:34
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Just finished World War Z and I really liked it. It did move too fast sometimes and didn't really flesh out much, but I liked what was there and it was a story about the whole of a zombie war. Everything focuses on the beginning and this at least went through the middle and the end. I can definitely see how this could never be made into a movie. There was just so much that could be a cool anthology series, especially the Indian general. Next up is The Perfect Horse which is supposed to be about how the Allies saved world class horses that the Nazis stole. Supposedly its a real thing that happened, and is something I feel like I've heard of before.
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Apr 5, 2024 04:48
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everyone in World War Z sounds the exact same except for the cartoon villain chapters
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Apr 5, 2024 12:25
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There's an entire subforum for discussing books. Go there.
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Apr 5, 2024 12:50
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Apr 5, 2024 13:15
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Apr 5, 2024 13:17
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so what
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Apr 5, 2024 13:17
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seriously, try the book barn, live a little. it's good, there's some guy in the scifi thread who posts all the latest kindle deals so you can get schlock for cheap
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Apr 5, 2024 13:31
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also canpakes keeps getting banned whenever he tries his dogshit routine there so you can post without fear of encountering him
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Apr 5, 2024 13:32
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book barn can leave a bad impression at first cuz about 99% of all threads are genre fiction and YA, but it at least has this https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3643994&perpage=40&noseen=1#post431148682
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Apr 5, 2024 13:33
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Unfortunately it also has thiscumpantry posted:book barn can leave a bad impression at first cuz about 99% of all threads are genre fiction and YA, but it at least has this
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Apr 5, 2024 13:36
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lol
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Apr 5, 2024 13:36
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Apr 5, 2024 13:36
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It's healthy for GBS to have cross over threads with other sub forums. I'm currently reading through Shogun as quickly as I can. Have a friend who wants to watch the new Netflix adaptation.
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Apr 5, 2024 13:37
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i decided to skip the mars trilogy and am giving solaris a read. two chapters in and its already a better book than three body problem.
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Apr 5, 2024 15:05
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Tree Bucket posted:I agree there's not much in the way of plot, but I'd disagree on the characterisation. That's almost the point of the series. Like the opening chapter of Red is from Maya's pov, with a strong focus on interpersonal dynamics, then you get Nadia's pov chapter which includes a page-long list of tools and swiftly dismisses all Maya's angst and politicking as teenage melodrama. Everyone's on the same planet but inhabit very different worlds. Well said, you made me think about it. I do enjoy this trilogy, but like I said, I am obsessed with the subject matter. I am enjoying it, but I realized these books lack "the hook" that drives much of my reading, which is the desire to "Find out what happens next". And since these books really don't have much of a plot at all, much of a story, that drive is almost completely absent. Which makes for a more academic, almost obligatory sense of reading, rather than an active hunger to keep reading.
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Apr 5, 2024 15:09
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Tommy Orange’s new book Wandering Stars is very good so far. There There was excellent and I think people are still going to be reading it and talking about it decades from now. Wandering Stars is just as good so far.
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Apr 5, 2024 15:40
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WILDTURKEY101 posted:Tommy Orange’s new book Wandering Stars is very good so far. There There was excellent and I think people are still going to be reading it and talking about it decades from now. Wandering Stars is just as good so far. Yeah I really dug "There There". I will check out Wandering Stars, thanks!
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Apr 5, 2024 15:42
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Tony Loneman made me cry, man.
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Apr 5, 2024 15:48
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Tree Bucket posted:I agree there's not much in the way of plot, but I'd disagree on the characterisation. That's almost the point of the series. Like the opening chapter of Red is from Maya's pov, with a strong focus on interpersonal dynamics, then you get Nadia's pov chapter which includes a page-long list of tools and swiftly dismisses all Maya's angst and politicking as teenage melodrama. Everyone's on the same planet but inhabit very different worlds. I think Reynolds' Revelation Space books would qualify as hard sci fi.
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Apr 5, 2024 17:00
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I just finished Dana Czapnik "The Falconer". I loved it. It's about a teenager in NYC in the early 90s, navigating teenage stuff, playing basketball, etc. Nothing earthshattering content-wise, just perfect for me. I wish it had been around when I was a teenager. I got sad looking at Goodreads and 95% of the reviews were from women and the one guy was like "uhh I couldn't relate to the girl character, too feminist". It was good as hell and I am a dude. Check it out if you are one of the four people on here that don't solely read scifi/fantasy.
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Apr 5, 2024 22:12
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i am reading kwaidan and it's sick. samurai priest with a human head clenched to his sleeve and he's like lol what of it. the last book i read referred to ending a phone call as 'cancelling' it and it happened a lot and the book sucked rear end
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Apr 5, 2024 22:18
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Doctor J Off posted:What translation of War and Peace does everyone read? I've heard that Constance Garnett's is notoriously bad, are there any others someone can recommend? others suggested P+V, but i’m going to  here and say that with Tolstoy, go with The Maudes’ or revisions/updates to The Maudes’ translation. it’s a way better translation
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Apr 5, 2024 23:08
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WILDTURKEY101 posted:Tommy Orange’s new book Wandering Stars is very good so far. There There was excellent and I think people are still going to be reading it and talking about it decades from now. Wandering Stars is just as good so far. My library hold on this just came up, and I'm really looking forward to starting it this weekend. I loved There There and still think about it periodically. Currently finishing American Rust, and it's good but depressing and I'm kinda dreading the conclusion 
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Apr 5, 2024 23:35
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Also the book barn is good, and since people recently mentioned Terry Pratchett, I will in turn mention that April's book club is Guards! Guards! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4013975&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=16#post538724696
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Apr 5, 2024 23:49
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ulvir posted:others suggested P+V, but i’m going to You should try to sample a few of the same passages of each and just choose which you like. There's another one by Bartlett and yet another came out a few years ago, but I heard it sucks.. That being said, Garnett is not the one you're going to like. While we're on the subject of translations, I think you'd be crazy to go with anyone over Seamus Heaney for Beowulf, but I'm sure someone disagrees.
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Apr 6, 2024 02:34
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Anyone know an English translation of The Kalevala that’s still got a good poetry about it, a good groove? Please note that this is the highest brow any of you will ever see me.
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Apr 6, 2024 02:48
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My daughter really likes axolotls so when she saw this alphabet book "A is for Axolotl" she begged us to get it. The first page went great but then things went downhill breathtakingly quickly. It turns out the other letters don't also stand for Axolotl. Our family is in pieces. Rated one star (out of 26)
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Apr 6, 2024 04:20
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Has your daughter seen one of those little weirdos irl op
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Apr 6, 2024 04:32
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All You Can Eat posted:My daughter really likes axolotls so when she saw this alphabet book "A is for Axolotl" she begged us to get it. The first page went great but then things went downhill breathtakingly quickly. It turns out the other letters don't also stand for Axolotl. Our family is in pieces. Rated one star (out of 26) lol get rekt
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Apr 6, 2024 04:38
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anyone know a good book with forum moderation best practices?
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Apr 6, 2024 04:41
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