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Jedit posted:gently caress Feersum Endjinn. It's one of the worst books I've ever failed to finish reading. Actually, it's probably the book with the hardest to follow dialect you've ever failed to finish reading. Banks writes a fantastic accent when he sets his mind to it, especially, of course, Scottish. It doesn't make it any easier on the reader, but when you 'hear' the accent in your head, the book clicks too. The downside is, Feersum Enjin is basically Neuromancer. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Jun 17, 2013 |
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Jun 17, 2013 09:36
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DerLeo posted:Red Mars from Kim Stanely Robinson hits both your high points there, but be warned that he spends as much time talking about the politics of colonization as he does about the science and engineering of it. Which is neatly counterbalanced by how he makes Mars itself, its landscape, microbiology, and mythology a central character in the series. I particularly admire how he uses landscape in the series. It's most prominent in the mountaineering section in... Green Mars (I think) about the tour guide; there's a story about climbing Mons Olympus in the short story collection. It's terrific. If landscape can be a character.
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Jun 17, 2013 09:50
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The last of the Instrumentalities series is done, there's another Garrett novel scheduled... so... next year he'll finish a BC novel maybe. Knowing Cook he'll start another series or tack another novel on the oh I don't know, Starfishers or something. I like Croaker's annals. It turns out he's full of poo poo about a lot of things, but his cynicism has a certain charm. The romance is a bit awful. Keep in mind though, the start of it is written from Croaker's perspective. When Lady is writing, she comes off as sincerely in love with Croaker, which is good. The awkward virgin bits makes a bit of sense when you realize she's a virgin at about 400 and is making a sacrifice of power yet again. That said, sure, it could have been better, but as those two characters telling their story in their own voice, I say it works. Besides, the romance helps set up the long con with Blade in She Is The Darkness, which is a novel I adore.
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Jun 22, 2013 05:03
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Cook's talent for plot is readily apparent in the first few books of the Black Company series. How does this sound for a novel: A mercenary company investigates an insurgency, puts down a rebellion, plots with a foreign wizard to betray their employer, hunts a were leopard, assassinates their employer, fights their way out of the city, and takes service with a dark wizard of formidable power and subtlety. That's chapter one of The Black Company.
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Jun 23, 2013 08:06
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Geek U.S.A. posted:Did Robert A. Heinlein write anything that wasn't just one giant incoherent rant about incest/whatever the gently caress else he was obsessed with? Not that I am ever going to waste my time reading any more of his works but I am just curious. Even Dan Simmon's crazy loving self can actually tone down and write a good story (The Terror), but when it comes to Heinlein it just seems to me that he wasn't interested in anything other than putting down his opinions in book form and hitting you over the head with it. Everything before Starship troopers, especially his short stories. None of his shorts suck, many of them are some of the finest examples of the form in SF. Get a copy of The Green Hills of Earth.
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Jul 7, 2013 20:02
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House Louse posted:If I didn't know this I wouldn't have guessed; their styles are very dissimilar. Try the Tuf stories and really see him get creative. Tuf Voyaging is the collection of those stories. I was lucky enough to be an Analog subscriber when those first appeared.
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Jul 12, 2013 10:57
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SUPERFINE CONCUBINE posted:Hey guys, I love me some good hard SF (Alastair Reynolds is a particular go-to of mine). Lately I've been thinking that I'd really like to read some SF that is a bit more various in its depictions of relationships, because I just can't see a future populated entirely by heterosexual people and couples. I'm really not interested in gay/poly/interspecies/whatever relationships being the main focus, but was wondering whether there were any good stories you'd recommend where it's part of the fabric of the universe. I'm specifically interested in the normalisation of homosexual relationships in scifi. I guess if there are any stories with a gay focus you would recommend anyway, I'd still like to hear about them! How about Bujold's "Ethan of Athos" ? That novel takes a naive young doctor from a men-only planet and drops him into some nasty espionage out in the greater galaxy. Good stuff.
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Aug 6, 2013 18:14
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John Charity Spring posted:Player of Games is the other one that's recommended as a starting point. If you're interested at all, just keep reading in publication order, although you'll know by Player of Games whether you want to keep reading or not. Or Use of Weapons. The fluidly shifting timeframes and perspectives might be more annoying. Look to Windward is gaining traction as an intro to the Culture, and it doesn't have any narrative games in it like almost every other novel in the setting.
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Aug 25, 2013 11:03
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ZerodotJander posted:Yeah, Guns of the South is amazing, but a lot of what he writes is pretty run of the mill. I like his Videssos and the WorldWar books but I don't think they are really "good" - just fun reads. His Lost legion series is pretty decent: a Roman legion departs our world for one in which something like Byzantium reigns and magic is real. If you don't mind the LBGT issues too much it's a solid four book series.
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Sep 17, 2013 09:26
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Guildencrantz posted:Please note that I read them in the original Polish, and from what I hear they lose a bunch in translation. Sapkowski is one of the most popular and influential fantasy authors throughout the Slavic world, but hasn't really broken out in the West despite the success of the games. There's a reason for that. But not a good reason. The English translations of Stanislaw Lem and Henryk Sienkiewicz are very good. If Kosciusko is available, hire him. If not just read his translation of With Fire and Sword
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Sep 28, 2013 18:44
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Tony Montana posted:Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein. One book. $15 bucks. gently caress YEAH. It also has Stanley G Weinbaum and Cordwainer Smith. Both of those authors are vastly underappreciated and should be read by many more people. Weinbaum was one of the very best of the "planetary fiction" pulp writers, he did great things with classic pulp versions of Mars, Venus, Ganymede and other places. Unscientific but fantastic in both senses. Smith built a far future and wrote about the Rediscovery of Man and what it really meant to be human. He's a gourmet prose writer in a largely fast food field.
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Nov 7, 2013 08:27
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I have a hard time reading Cordwainer Smith without thinking "Ok, so this guy is into furries" the whole time. Among the many sins furries have to answer for, one of them is ruining The Ballad of Lost C'Mell. Worse, The Dead Lady of Clown Town. I love the titles Campbell came up with for his stories. The Lady Who Sailed the Soul Think Blue Count Two Scanners Live in Vain Alpha Ralpha Boulevard The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal Golden the Ship Was-Oh! Oh! Oh! The Queen of the Afternoon When the People Fell
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Nov 9, 2013 15:30
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tankfish posted:I was wondering if anyone has any recommendation's on books where the main heroine grows into a evil/iron queen? Glen Cook's Darkwar has this going on. Marika just wants to be a normal person, but her abilities set her apart. Then she saves the world by destroying traditional society and everyone hates her. It's science fiction by the way, Marika's people aren't human.
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Nov 30, 2013 21:29
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Another Frank Herbert recommendation: The Destination: Void series. The first one is about clones building an AI out of analog parts ripped out of their ship's systems. Unfortunately for them, they succeed. The next three books take place on a waterworld named Pandora. Forget Dune, this is Herbert's good stuff; as well as the Pansentiency series (Whipping Star and the Dosadi Experiment). Dragon in the Deep is a good novel and you should read it. It's the most psychological submarine novel you'll ever read.
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Dec 18, 2013 02:43
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PupsOfWar posted:Bolos I'll second this. Start with the Bolo collection by Keith Laumer. If you like where's he's going with that, go for the shared universe anthologies put out by Baen. Everything Bolo is on this page, http://www.baenebooks.com/s-70-keith-laumer.aspx The Compleat Bolo is the collection you want to start with. There are two stories available as samples, both are excellent. Annoyingly, neither of them feature an AI Bolo. One of them is a Retief story, so you get two awesome series in one go. Aha ! The Best of the Bolos collection has Combat Unit in it. That's Bolos in a nutshell right there. quote:I do not like it; it has the appearance of a trap, but the order has been given. I enter the room and the valve closes behind me.
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Jan 4, 2014 05:40
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muike posted:Is there a place where I can read in sperging detail kind of equipment a bolo has The wiki page is a good start, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(tank)#Bolo_offensive_systems Follow that up with a visit to the Bolo wiki where you'll find some images too, http://bolo.wikia.com/wiki/Bolo_Mark_XXIV
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Jan 5, 2014 00:35
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PupsOfWar posted:What are some works that have had a better or more interesting take on a futuristic Middle East? Most everything I've ever read either ignores it (in much the same way that most SF ignores the current developing world) or does this same nonsense. Does Ian McDonald have something maybe? It's set in space, but Sarah Zettel's Fool's War has a Muslim woman as the co-owner of a commercial ship. In a rather nice touch, her sister is the ship's lawyer. The book is mainly about the implications of AI in their society and is a pretty drat good read.
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Jan 5, 2014 17:41
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Tony Montana posted:Has anyone read about Bolo, the super tanks originally created by Keith Laumer? Those stories have been a favorite of mine for decades. I put some links into the Space Opera thread last week. To summarize, check out Baen.com for sample stories and the wikia site for background info. https://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133751/1439133751___2.htm and http://bolo.wikia.com/wiki/Bolo_Wiki
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Jan 13, 2014 16:19
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Slo-Tek posted:David Brin's Existence also deals with a near-future hyper-connected panopticon, but it isn't a very good book. It's true. There's an awful lot of interesting ideas in the book, but the narrative and characterizations are thin at best. I still say it bears attention for anyone looking for an interesting take on the near future.
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Mar 17, 2014 01:55
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specklebang posted:I've been reading this series: It's a hard series to read sometimes, but it's very good. The main character is a reluctant torturer who enjoys his work too much. The society it's set in is a failed multistellar state, the judiciary and the fleet are the only elements still functioning. The senior judges run everything. Oh, and torture has been codified as legal and formalized. It's a fantastic way to play with ethical issues. It's not for everyone though. Baen just re-issued the series as ebooks http://www.baenebooks.com/s-358-susan-r-matthews.aspx.
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Mar 18, 2014 03:57
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specklebang posted:I've finished reading all the books in Susan Matthews' Jurisdiction series and I can't figure out why I got so absorbed in these. Has anyone else read these and what was your take? Matthews has managed to make those books both really awkwardly uncomfortable to read in parts and impossible to put down. She's written some very good explorations of ethical and personal issues. Her setting is very interesting, and subtly alien in a lot of places. They work on base 8, not 10 and have a slightly different timekeeping system. It does a good job of keeping the reader unsettled. Also the main character's people are basically Poles in Space. She's got sample chapters up, http://www.susanrmatthews.com
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May 9, 2014 01:13
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WastedJoker posted:Now I'm hankering for more alien contact books. Any ideas? Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon.
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May 19, 2014 18:20
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Eh. Fragment by Warran Fahy is sort of like that. Not really exoplanetary, but biologists discover an island where everything has evolved in it's own way for something like 60 million years and bad poo poo occurs when they try to leave. It's a by-the-numbers airport book dedicated to the premise that mantis shrimp are loving amazing. Pretty readable.
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May 24, 2014 08:27
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fritz posted:Are y'all ready for more horrible author opinions&behavior: http://dsmoen.livejournal.com/544470.html Holy Crap. I went to high school with her grandkids. We knew something was up, but not that it was anything like that bad.
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Jun 15, 2014 01:48
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) (you, uh, might not want to read that)
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Kalman posted:I recall Destination Void being pretty good. I mean, it isn't Dune, but non-Dune Herbert is still pretty good. Dune is actually not his best work, just his most popular. Destination Void and its sequels are amazing thrillers with heavy doses of psychology and theology; Whipping Star and Doasdi experiment are in a fascinating universe with really different aliens, and Dosadi is arguably pro to-cyberpunk. All of those are more readable than Dune, which even the fans admit can be a bit of a slog at points.
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Jun 21, 2014 03:58
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Jedit posted:It is, I've been curious about it for years, and I can't buy it cheap now because of Nazizon regional lockout. Good news ! It's a terrific book, contains a ton of interesting ideas, and is totally worth the not-cheap price. If you CAN get the cheap price, do so. Fun fact, the producer might never have heard of the book, but the show The Pretender is basically Shockwave Rider set in the modern day.
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Jul 27, 2014 18:54
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Mars4523 posted:Some people don't like the second book, but Stross's The Laundry series is excellent. The latest book is a good reason to get back into the series if you dropped it.
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Jul 31, 2014 06:52
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Megazver posted:Hmmm. Perhaps. Read the Cordwainer Smith's books, perhaps? The Foundation series by Asimov? The Golden Age and Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright? (The guy is bugfuck insane but I still enjoyed TGA.) Cordwainer Smith is mentioned less often than CJ Cherryh. And that's a crying shame because he's simply one of the best prose stylists ever to write science fiction. He wrote a few novels and a lot of short stories (mostly) set millennia in the future. They're all splendid; a few get an emotional reaction from me after many rereads in the course of decades. Baen reprinted most of his stuff recently; Smith balances out Ringo quite nicely.
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Aug 5, 2014 22:30
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Piell posted:The new Humble Book Bundle has Bujold's Curse of Chalion and Gaiman's American Gods, both of which are really awesome and you should get them if you haven't read them already! The Chalion series is really, really good. I'm particularly impressed by how she took the mad aunt in the attic from the first book and made her the protagonist in the second
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Aug 21, 2014 17:58
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Whalley posted:I love that everyone is overpowered though. Like, no poo poo Vlad's a legend; he's got a bigger body count than dudes who have lived hundreds of years. Of course Morrolan is a crazy badass; how else would he have a flying castle of diplomatic immunity? Duh Sethra's basically a god; that's how these books work. No poo poo the random second-tier business owner down the street's a badass, he has access to an instant psychic network and can teleport at the drop of a hat. What, can't you? You have to love an author who decides to write a five volume series in the style of Alexandre Dumas because he thinks it's cool. And then titles a chapter "…in which the plot, after the manner of a soup to which cornstarch has been added, begins, at last, to thicken." And makes it all work. I hope he does more Paarfi books, I really do.
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Aug 27, 2014 17:56
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ConfusedUs posted:To Reign in Hell is my favorite non-Dragaera novel that he's written. To Reign in Hell is one of the best first novels in any genre.
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Aug 28, 2014 18:57
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systran posted:Oh drat, the "second one" is a prequel. I didn't realize that. The third one is another stand-alone in the same world. Paladin of Souls is not a prequel. It picks up a minor character and makes her the hero of the next story. The third one is largely unconnected to the first two, which makes it a bit less approachable. It's still good though.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:45
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ulmont posted:It's kind of a shame that Bujold's fantasy hasn't taken off more, IMO. And then she goes off and does four volumes of The Sharing Knife. It's good character-driven romance in a fantasy world, but the Miles fans don't want that.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:23
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Cardiac posted:Although descriptions of the Gap Cycle by Donaldson is even more depressing when it comes to this, and one reason why I haven't read it yet. The Gap Cycle is really, really good but hoo boy is it ever depressing.
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Oct 29, 2014 16:11
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Phanatic posted:Especially when you realize you're rooting for the violent psychopathic rapist. That'd be some pretty amazing character development if it weren't for the three words at the end of your sentence. It's still amazing, It's just that he doesn't get any credit for it. As for the writing in the Black Company, all of Cook's early stuff was written while working on a GM light truck assembly line. As in, he had a notepad and enough time between parts he had to work on to write down a short sentence or two. Amazingly enough, his output dropped after he moved to a different line. Even if you didn't like all the narrator shifts in BC, there's still Dread Empire, Shadowline, Doomwalker, the Garret Files, and a bunch of standalones to consider before writing him off.
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Oct 30, 2014 06:35
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Antti posted:Yeah, but he asked if he should keep going, and if he's getting bored 150 pages in of Red, he should bail out. That's a damned shame. Mars itself is a character in the books, and the landscape scenes are its characterization. I loved it, but then again, the mountaineering sequences in the trilogy (and the book of short stories) are some of my favorite bits. If you need near-future SF, try some Alan Steele. Coyote is an amazing tribute to American storytelling all the way back to Mark Twain; and his early novels about smoking pot in space are good stuff.
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Nov 5, 2014 11:06
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I just finished The Man in the High Castle in a run through some of the early Hugo winners. Holy poo poo. This starts as a pretty tight, but standard, political thriller in an alternate history, and then it waxes philosophic. Waxes like the full moon crashing down on your head. I'm not even going to try and describe where it goes, except to say that's a drat big twist right at the end.
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Nov 6, 2014 21:56
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I'm continuing with reading the early Hugo winners (Demolished Man was awesome). I just finished Heinlein's Double Star and man am I pissed off. He gets crap for being a fascist for writing Starship Troopers. He gets called out as a weird racist for Farnham's Freehold. Does he ever get credit for taking a stance that humanity must be more ethical if we're going to make it to the stars ? Does he get credit for flatly stating that whites did terrible things in Africa and Asia, things we must not do again ? How about creating a pan-species society. Nope. On a more positive note, I only just noticed than Manny in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is part of the Stone family.
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Nov 7, 2014 08:36
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Just a reminder that Glen Cook's Instrumentalities of the Night series is set during a fantasy version of the Dual Papacy.
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Nov 21, 2014 05:53
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mllaneza posted:I'm continuing with reading the early Hugo winners (Demolished Man was awesome)… I've added Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, as well as Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang to my Hugo Winners checklist. Left Hand of Darkness is a damned good novel. It's sort of a travelogue, a lot of the page count is taken up with an epic journey above the local arctic circle. But the whole thing is indeed taken up with how gender issues in society vanish or change when everyone in the society alternates between male, female, and neuter roles. This is one of those novels where one reading won't give you everything in it. The Dispossessed, This is a goddamn good novel. I seriously believe that this may be the best novel to ever win a Hugo award. It was uplifting, sad, educational, deep, obvious, subtle, and… I can;'t even say. There's an awful lot in this novel. I was pulled back into it every time I had to put the book down to sleep, eat, get a job, anything. There is a human society in here that doesn't obey our rules, true anarcho-communism. The protagonist still finds ethical/moral fault with society after stumbling into conflict with an established power structure that simply shouldn't be. I've rarely been so forcefully drawn back to a book when I've had to put it down. Read this book, read it right now. Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang. Kate Wilhelm knocks it out of the park with this one. It's about cloning. It's about twins and their special bond. It's about the value of misfits and artists to a tight, survival-oriented community. It's about the apocalypse and what anyone might do to make a future for their people. I was as drawn back to this book as I was to The Dispossessed, but for very different reasons. WLTSBS is depressing, scary, sad, morose, and introspective where TD is the opposite of those things. Kate Wilhelm has a master-crafted piece of fiction here, it's all put together very well, and the ending manages to have far more hope in it than the preceding story would admit as possible. Also read this book as soon as possible. It has beautiful prose, interesting themes, and a compelling story.
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Nov 22, 2014 08:54
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