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Hello and welcome to the exciting new sf/fantasy thread! All kinds of science fiction and fantasy are welcome, including stuff that falls on the edges of the genres; don't feel you're talking about the wrong sort of sf/f, because someone out there is probably just as enthusiastic about it as you are. Discussing non-sf/f by writers mostly known for their sf/f is welcome as a contrast to the main subject. This thread is probably going to run a while. Don't feel you need to read 100+ pages to post, but likewise, please be aware that discussion of a certain book/series may have come up before and be a bit of a dead horse. Don't be disheartened if you get a cool response. This is the best resource for information on science fiction:  The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction, third edition, constantly updated. Enquire within upon everything sf: books, films, TV series, comics, specific authors, themes, and theory. The site also includes the 1997 Encyclopaedia of Fantasy, an equally good resource, though now dated. There's also the Internet SF Database. And don't forget Wikipedia, goodreads, and Google.Hints on posting:
Speaking of recommendations, here are some other places to get them: Here's NPR's hundred favourite sf/f books (you'll need to download it to make it big enough to read):  Tor.com discusses the best books to start reading authors with A whole site full of recommendations! Awards All these links are to the Science Fiction Award Database; if you click on the Awards tab, the major awards are towards the top of the display. The most prestigious sf/f book awards are the Hugo and Nebula for science fiction and the World Fantasy Award. Hugo Awards - A yearly reader's choice award for just about every form of science fiction. If you're interested in seeing the year's Hugo-nominated works (novels, stories, non-fiction, and comics), buy a supporting membership to the annual Worldcon and you'll receive all or most of them, plus the right to vote. You can see all of 2013's nominees here - five novels, four non-fiction books, thirteen novellas, novelettes, and short stories, along with five graphic novels for only $60! Of course, you then have to find the time to read all of them. Nebula Awards - A yearly author's choice award for novels, novellas, and short stories. World Fantasy Awards - A yearly juried award for fantasy. British Fantasy Awards - A reader's choice award for UK fantasy. British Science Fiction Association Awards - A reader's choice award for British science fiction. International Horror Guild Awards - A juried award for horror and dark fantasy. Seiun Awards - Similar to the Hugo Awards for Japanese writers, but also selects best foreign novels and short stories translated to Japanese. A few of the Japanese language winners have been translated to English (and it's possible to translate the foreign winners back to English with Translation Party! Locus Awards - Best new US novel selected by readers of Locus, sf's trade magazine. John W. Campbell Awards – for the best new writer, and are presented alongside the Hugos. John W. Campbell Memorial Awards - not to be confused with the previous award, this is for the best sf novel published in the US. Arthur C. Clarke Awards - Best new UK sf novel. Philip K. Dick Awards - Best US paperback original. James Tiptree, Jr. Awards - For novels and stories exploring questions of gender. Free science fiction and fantasy online. Here's a list of subgenres of sf, with goon-favourite authors and links to SA threads where relevant. Authors have probably written in more than one subgenre, but are listed in the one they're most famous for. There's a brief list of genre hoppers at the end. Space Opera Spaceships fighting aliens in space. Star Trek and such. But writers like Iain M. Banks do great things with it. Authors: S. A. Corey, Peter F. Hamilton, Lois McMaster Bujold, John Scalzi, E. E. “Doc” Smith, Neal Asher, Joe Haldeman The space opera general thread Iain M. Banks Star Wars Star Trek Hard sf The cold, logical, end of science fiction. Supposedly scientifically accurate, but they still have ftl travel anyway. Authors: Ted Chiang, Alastair Reynolds, Nancy Kress, Larry Niven, Hal Clement, Peter Watts, Greg Egan, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert L. Forward, Vernor Vinge CJ Cherryh Cyberpunk Sf that deigns to notice computers. Stereotypically takes place in pessimistic, polluted worlds, characters rebelling against international corporations. Authors: Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Charles Stross, Simon Morden, Pat Cadigan, Richard Morgan. Hannu Rajaniemi William Gibson Neal Stephneson General sf Alternate history thread. A thread about post-apocalyptic fiction. The Mongoliad by (amongst others) Neal Stephenson "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov, and maybe you can post other Asimov stuff there too? Philip K. Dick Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein are the “Big Three” sf authors up to the 60s and all very influential. Arthur C. Clarke: technology in a world where everyone's really nice. Great short stories. 2001, Rendezvous with Rama. Robert A. Heinlein: sf's strange uncle. Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers. Frank Herbert: drugs and giant worms on Planet Arabia. Dune. H. G. Wells: invented time travel and began the genre. War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau. Jules Verne: nineteenth-century adventure stories that shade into sf. Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Philip K. Dick: paranoia, and the most accurate view of the world and the future. The Man in the High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, short stories. Paolo Bacigalupi: near-future sf about climate change. The Windup Girl. James Tiptree, Jr.: she was one of sf's best, darkest, and most incisive writers. Short stories. Joanna Russ: author of scathing, passionate, feminist sf. The Female Man. Stanislaw Lem: Polish author, SF with a philosophical and sometimes satirical bent. Best known for Solaris and The Cyberiad. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: Russian brothers. Soviet Utopianism, interstellar exploration. Best known for Roadside Picnic, which the Russian 1979 movie Stalker and video game of the same name are based on. Samuel R. Delany: exotic settings, sex, and literary theory. Nova, Babel-17. Connie Willis: Best known for her loosely connected Oxford Time Travel series, wherein future British academics travel back in time to nerd out about things and generally get into a lot of trouble. Often very funny, but can and does take a more serious tone at times. To Say Nothing of the Dog Lauren Beukes: A young white urban South African writer; Zoo City is about criminals bonded to animals to reform them. Alfred Bester: one of the classics, basically invented telepaths as we know them. Also an influence on cyberpunk. Best known for The Demolished Man (which won the first Hugo award for a novel ever) and The Stars My Destination. Anthologies: Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, then-shocking stories from the 60s and 70s, both edited by Harlan Ellison. Gardner Dozois' annual Year's Best SF anthologies. General Fantasy China Miéville Temeraire Let's Read Xanth (You Were Stupid As A Teen, Too) Steven Brust Barry Hughart: A Bridge of Birds, a novel of ancient China that never was. Guy Gavriel Kay: plagiarises history. Tigana. John Crowley: Renaissance magic and fairy stories. A gorgeous writer. Otherwise, Little, Big. Hope Mirrlees: One lovely fairy-story novel, Lud-in-the-Mist. Susannah Clarke: one novel, the Napoleonic magic epic Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel. Catherynne Valente: New spins on old myths from a strong feminist perspective. Impressive use of language. Orphan's Tales duology, Prester John series (starts with Habitation of the Blessed), Palimpsest, Deathless. Richard Adams: Animal fantasies. Watership Down. Philip Pullman: Stunningly imaginative and morally serious (and funny) YA books. His Dark Materials series. Jeff VanderMeer: Metatextual stories about a city where mushroom-people and humans live. City of Saints and Madmen. Jack Vance: Exotic, sharp-tongued, decadent adventures, whether sf of fantasy. The Dying Earth, Lyonesse, Big Planet. Paolo Coelho: Parable-like/allegorical fantasy novel/fairy tales. The Alchemist. Patricia A. McKillip: Her stories have the feel of classic fairy tales, even when they are entirely original. The Riddlemaster of Hed and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. James Branch Cabell: Dark, cynical, funny, highly metaphorical fiction, also mostly forgotten. Jurgen was banned in the 1920's for encouraging adultery and immorality. Anthologies: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror edited by Ellen Datlow with others. Epic Fantasy Magic and maps. Thought The Neverending Story was too short. Authors: Daniel Abraham, Lord Dunsany, Glen Cook, Jo Walton, Mary Gentle, Mark Lawrence, Anthony Ryan Tolkien A Song of Ice and Fire (with spoilers) and A Song of Ice and Fire without spoilers Joe Abercrombie Wheel of Time and Let's Read the Wheel of Time The Malazan Book of the Fallen Brandon Sanderson R. Scott Bakker Patrick Rothfuss Scott Lynch Peter V. Brett Sword and Sorcery/Pulp Smaller scale than high fantasy, often funnier, with less magic, and more amoral. Often published in pulp magazines. Authors: Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard (Conan), Hugh Cook, Glen Cook, Steven Brust, Clark Ashton Smith, C. L. Moore, David Gemmel The Black Library (Games Workshop tie-ins) See also the Weird Tales thread, under Horror Horror Wooo I'm a ghost! Of an axe murderer! Spoooooky! No, it's not necessarily sf/f, but often is. The Cosmic Horror thread centres on pulp writer H. P. Lovecraft's horror/sf. Authors: Joe Hill, Peter Straub, Elizabeth Moon, Tanith Lee, Max Brooks Cosmic Horror and Weird Tales Stephen King and his Dark Tower series Urban Fantasy Doesn't mean fantasy set in cities. It means modern-day fantasy. Authors: Mike Carey, Caitlín R. Kiernan, David Aaronovitch, Neil Gaiman, Charles de Lint, Daniel O'Malley The Dresden Files and general urban fantasy Harry Potter Non-sf/f Either books that aren't exactly sf/f, sf/f from writers outside the genres, or books popular with genre readers. Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series The King Arthur megathread (Some fantasy, some not.) Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale. A dystopian feminist novel. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. “Now I know what it feels like to be God!” George Orwell: 1984. I  Big Brother, don't you?G. K. Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday. A nightmarish spy story. Alasdair Gray: Lanark. Scottish, socialist, and very strange. Haruki Murakami: Japanese writer of oblique, romantic and weird novels. A Wild Sheep Chase. Angela Carter: magical, bawdy, revisionist, complex, and wonderfully written. Nights at the Circus. Comic sf/f As in humorous, not the stuff that goes in BSS. Authors: Robert Asprin, Jim C. Hine, Lawrence Watt-Evans, William Goldman, Esther Friesner (who also edited the Chicks in Chainmail anthologies), L. Sprauge de Camp Terry Pratchett Miscellaneous and genre-hoppers Gene Wolfe Wild Cards Ursula K. le Guin The Traditional Games subforum has its own book club discussing writers who influenced traditional games. Not necessarily sf/f. Michael Swanwick: like Gene Wolfe, writes all over the place, but you can always tell it's him. The Dog said Bow-Wow, Stations of the Tide, The Iron Dragon's Daughter. M. John Harrison: bleak, but brilliant. Literary space opera with Light, dying-earth fantasia with the Viriconium sequence. Roger Zelazny. One of the greats of 70's SF, big influence on Neil Gaiman and other modern SF/F writers. Lord of Light, Isle of the Dead, “A Rose for Ecclesiates”, A Night in the Lonesome October. His Amber fantasy series is also entertaining but very pulpy. Robert Holdstock: Literary fantasy that's similar in style to Gene Wolfe, mainly influenced by Arthurian legend, Greek mythology and Celtic mythology. His plots and themes can get weird and be confusing, Holdstock's works are very rewarding on rereads. Also wrote sf. Mythago Wood. Other perhaps-useful TBB threads: Young Adult books Lloyd Alexander Japanese literature – Haikasoru publishes translated Japanese sf Russian literature German literature Scandinavian literature Audiobooks I intend to keep this list up-to-date; if you start a new relevant thread, or find a good old one in the archives, do PM me or mention it in the thread. Thanks to everyone in the old thread who helped me write this. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Oct 7, 2014 |
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Jun 16, 2013 12:30
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Ugh, five minutes after I post and I realise how to make up for the picture's size issue. I suck. Three things I learned while writing the OP: 1. The John W. Campbell Award for new writers is not the same as the Campbell Memorial Award for best novel published in the US. 2. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians won the Philip K. Dick Award, which is nearly as bizarre as Gravity's Rainbow losing the Nebula to Rendezvous with Rama. 3. Although the term "high fantasy" demands an opposite "low fantasy", it doesn't have one. The term exists, but it doesn't have a consistent definition. Which just cements Tolkien's influence on the genre: it's him, and some other traditions.
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Jun 16, 2013 12:53
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I loving hate Amazon, and Wikipedia's erratic; I'd recommend the encylopaedias linked in the OP or isfdb.org, as Hedrigall recommended. Or the author's own site. Not really worth the effort though, just mention the title and author. E: I'm sure you all care about my opinion of Amazon very much! Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Jun 16, 2013 |
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Jun 16, 2013 19:33
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Slavvy posted:Additionally, what are some cool books about colonisation? I've only read a few novels on the subject, most of which I can't remember right now besides Niven's Destiny's Road. The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe*, The Man in the High Castle by Dick, I think The Word for World is Forest by le Guin, Paul Park's Coelestis (I think), The War of the Worlds, and Peter Watts' rifters books, which start with Starfish, end with some stuff on colonialisation. There must be something that touches on the link between terraforming and colonialism, but I'm not sure what. Man Plus by Fred Pohl, maybe, in an oblique way; it's about a man being engineered to live on Mars. Guy A. Person posted:So I am looking for recommendations on basically any fantasy that is either a single book or so self-contained that I could read the first book in a series without needing to immediately go into the next part. andrew smash and the blind idiot god gave you pro recs. I'd also add Hugh Cook - that's me in the comments raving. It's a ten book series, but each is a readable length and each is self-contained, so you can read them in almost any order - just read number 6 before 7 and the last one last. Also try Mary Gentle's Ash, a long and very gritty (almost self-parodically, really) historical fantasy, and John Crowley, either Otherwise (three short sf novels) or Little, Big (one long fairy story.) e: Wrageowrapper posted:Though she is South African she isn't black. She was on an Australian Show a few weeks back talking about William Gibson and was whiter than white. Zoo City is awesome though and the main character is a black woman. Thanks, that was embarrassing. *I should just get a sig telling people to read this book Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jun 17, 2013 |
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Jun 17, 2013 21:43
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rvm posted:Great job with the OP, but I found an error: Eh, it points to the right thread, who cares. fatherboxx posted:I've read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson some time ago, loved it, and have wanted to get further into his work since, but I was scared by the constant references to his libertarian (and even randian) views on the Internet. Don't really want to take on a brick novel only to discover a sci-fi version of Sword of Truth - what are his less insufferable books in that regard? Not something you need to worry about. They're vaguely there but usually being satirised at the same time (Snow Crash, the modern-day plot in Cryptonomicon). I can't speak for his newer books though. Incidentally, a cool thing I learned from the GBS "fire up old computers" thread is that Cap'n Crunch used to give away free whistles that imitated a dialling tone (or something like), so phreakers would use them to trick the network into thinking they'd hung up. ultrachrist posted:This actually makes a little bit of sense. The setting of Waiting for Barbarians is a made-up world that is supposed to stand in for any frontier town ever. Everything has a generic name - the main character is just the Magistrate. There's the Town, the Barbarians, the Empire, etc. Yet despite it just being a giant allegory, the world feels weirdly real and present. So it's actually a triumph of secondary world building. I was getting at it being cool that the Dick judges/voters took notice of something so different; it speaks well of them. I wouldn't comment on it myself, I've only read Life and Times of Michael K. which is also awesome. specklebang posted:Slow and Fast are subjective terms. I wasn't derogatory, just how it seems to me. Here are 4 of my favorite authors: A book every year or two is an average speed, though.
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Jun 19, 2013 22:46
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I didn't realise the new Gaiman was out yet; I was expecting more publicity. I'll have to take a look at it.systran posted:I'm like halfway through book 2 of Hyperion and am not much feeling it any more. Should I keep going? I was going to say that I liked the ending, but my reactions at the time were actually pretty negative, although it seems I liked the Shrikestuff. Though if you didn't enjoy those two, I'd definitely say not to pick up the Endymion pair.
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Jun 23, 2013 20:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Lawrence Watt-Evans is doing a kickstarter to publish his next novel: That's interesting, as in "interesting times". Someone with a backlist the size of that, who can't sell a book that looks rather easy to sell. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but it's interesting the target is so low - he's figuring a print run of 200 copies. It's nice that the reward tiers are named after aspects of the novel, too.
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Jun 25, 2013 20:56
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Seriously, interesting and/or passionate talk about books you hate is cool, too.BananaNutkins posted:Maybe it's a bad book. The dialogue snippet certainly isn't doing anything for me. Let me tell you about a little million-selling author called Dan Brown. Hieronymous Alloy posted:WAtt-Evans has a long history of doing alternative publishing -- his publishers have told him they want him to write Epic Trilogies because that's what sells, but most of his stuff is more character driven. I've read most of his books and enjoyed almost all of them (although one or two were outright bad, but that's any author with that many books; even Pratchett has a few missteps) but I can totally see why his books aren't huge sellers. OK, cheers, makes sense. It looks like this is doing really well for him (two days in, he's over $4,200) and it does look like he's getting dedicated support - the mean donation is about $30, which is more than the trade paperback level, i.e. most people are tending to go for the limited-edition, autographed, or whatever book. And that's taking into account that over a third of the pledgers are in the $5 ebook level.
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Jun 26, 2013 20:20
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gohmak posted:keep reading. The ending is the whole point of the saga. Of course the ending is the point of the story. But the value of an ending depends on what the reader thinks of the rest of the story. If one doesn't enjoy the writing, care about the characters, or want to know what happens, why continue? I don't mean to put words into systran's mouth but he didn't seem to be enjoying it. torgo posted:Can anyone recommend some sci-fi books about contact with incomprehensibly alien aliens? Blindsight is a good example of what I'm looking for. Spin by Robert Charles Wilson is another book that touches on this theme, but I have the feeling if I read the rest of the trilogy, the aliens' motivations will be revealed to be pretty "human" in the end. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, (I haven't read this one). Roadside Picnic by the Strugatskys - obliquely, as it's about the debris left after aliens visit Earth. "The Colour out of Space" by Lovecraft, if you can stand him, has probably the strangest you'll find, but some of his others have pretty odd aliens. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, I'm really tempted by the $75 level actually, because I'd really like a signed hardback of Ithnalin's Restoration. A magical accident spreads a wizard's personality out over all the living room furniture, which all then runs away, and his apprentice has to recollect them all to restore her boss. That sounds fun. The US reward tiers are pretty good, and it looks like it's a success for him (target reached in 3 days, though it was very modest.)
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Jun 28, 2013 23:16
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NikkolasKing posted:So my question - should I go for The Hobbit or the Children of Hurin? The Children of Hurin, definitely. As for where to go after that, I'd suggest looking into romance, myths, and epics (Malory, Beowulf, Chaucer), and asking in the Tolkien thread about what's in Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth. I think there are a couple of other versions of Turin's story in there.
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Jun 30, 2013 10:15
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Lex Talionis posted:The Locus is basically an online poll, with the caveat that votes by Locus subscribers count double. Guys like Scalzi who have a big online presence naturally can expect to do well. You'll notice Charles Stross won Best Fantasy, and while I haven't read The Apocalypse Codex I'd consider that at least as much of a stretch as Redshirts winning for SF. For similar reasons there's at least a decent chance Scalzi might win the Hugo as well, so start preparing yourself for disappointment now. Well, the Nebula's voted by SFWA members, and there are other juried awards too http://www.sfadb.com/Awards_Directory - the year Diana Wynne Jones was judging the WFA there was a kerfuffle when she was the only person to have read all the books (to be fair, there are ~400 of them) and then walked out. The cross-Atlantic thing also means that we get stupid situations like Declare being up for a BSFA (or BFA?) ten years after it was published. Rolling eligibility is one thing, but look at how peoples' reputation changes in a decade - Perdido Street Station was a surprise winner over Ash, iirc, but now one would probably look back and think "Of course". (Mary Gentle wuz robbed.)
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Jun 30, 2013 12:47
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I know it was covered to death in the last thread but I just finished Perdido Street Station and I absolutely loved it to bits. He repeats himself with the polysyllabic words a bit (ineluctably inchoate in its opaque cacophony) and the last-minute revelation that Yag is a rapist kinda came out of nowhere and did nothing except show off how I thought that revelation showed Yag's cultural differences from the New Crobuzoners (there's something similar with the city garuda, and the cactusfolk, I think), though I'm not sure how it ties into the book's other concerns, or his character. I'm sure he has read The Dying Earth, though, and just forgot it. How could he not have? Megazver posted:recommendations I like this post because you listed a lot of books, there's the titles and authors included, and you described them a little, too.
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Jul 6, 2013 19:13
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Heinlein's earlier books (pre-Starship Troopers, I think) are generally more highly regarded than the later. Look at the SFE entry. Hedrigall posted:Can I get a goonsensus on why I should avoid Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons? I remember there being a reason people don't like them but I can't remember what it was and I'm hearing great things about it on another forum. And I love the idea of posthumans recreating the Trojan war on Mars. It sounds loving awesome. I'm really enjoying The Terror by Simmons so far, and Hyperion will be the next book of his I tackle, but I'm wondering why people say stop there. I thought goonsensus was actually "Read Ilium, avoid Olympos, which is where things go downhill"?
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Jul 7, 2013 19:49
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General Battuta posted:Someone tell me if there's a quick way to tell whether a book is self-published or not. Reading it. Grimwall posted:drat, this is extraordinary! After all this talk of batshit crazy rear end in a top hat sci-fi writers, along comes this fine loving gentleman. Well, Heinlein's one of the batshit crazy rear end in a top hat sci-fi writers, for books like Farnham's Freehold, Starship Troopers, and I Will Fear No Evil, which I put down when (don't read this) the old man who'd just got a brain transplant, or something, into his hot secretary's body, in which she was still conscious, was looking in the mirror saying "I wish I could look at this all day" and she replied "Well it's your body". (See?) That's when I put it down, anyway. On the other hand, being a good writer, writing about hosed-up stuff, and being a good person are three qualities that don't have much to do with each other. And on the third hand one doesn't become as massively influential as Heinlein simply by writing hosed-up screeds.
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Jul 8, 2013 17:54
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Groke posted:You might like Jo Walton's The King's Peace / The King's Name. It's been called Arthurian but I recall the author stating that she didn't really think it was, as she'd taken enough liberties to ensure a somewhat different kind of story with a different outcome. For instance the closest equivalent to a Lancelot role is occupied by a woman. Jo Walton's dragons book, Tooth and Claw, is a quasi-Victorian will-contention novel where all the characters are dragons. It's really cool. And Ash by Mary Gentle does the "women joining the army" thing with serious historical accuracy, and it's great. At least three major characters are women. It's very dark though. Srice posted:Yikes. Talk about a stellar case study of that geek social fallacy thing. Probably, although SFWA is being precise about what they're doing, which is "considering complaints". This is the best summary I've seen (scroll down to July 4). I read somewhere that part of the issue was that SFWA can't throw someone out without an unanimous vote (it's an organisation of 1800 people) but I hope I'm misremembering; that sounds bizarre. To restore your faith in humanity, I think it's impressive that so many people are treating such relatively small numbers of people, however vile, so seriously, and speaks well for sf fandom that almost all of it is coming together to condemn and so little to defend - and much of what defence there is, is behind closed doors. Or to put it differently, it's an overreaction, but in a good way that's healthy for the field. (E: Calling it "geek social fallacy", though, I think is inaccurate and diminishes the matter. And thanks for spoilering that, fritz.) General Battuta posted:You aren't wrong about any of that, but I just don't think there's much value to found in a purely subjective hugbox discussion. 'I liked it. Sorry to hear you didn't! Have you tried X? May I recommend Y?' makes for a much less interesting forums thread than real critical engagement. Which, I know, I should try to present an exemplar of; I've just finished Connie Willis' alternately frustrating and brilliant Blackout/All Clear and want to do a post about it. I'd just like to say that I agree with this and I, too, feel guilty about not posting something more substantial. I haven't even looked at an sf/f book since I wrote the OP. I heard that Blackout/All Clear was pretty crap; it would be interesting to see what you make of it. (E: Also for anyone on the fence about posting sf/f news like this, it is totally appropriate and I feel stupid for not thinking to post it myself over the weekend. And that was a really good rundown, thanks, General Battuta.) Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jul 9, 2013 |
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Jul 9, 2013 18:31
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I think Gaiman's best novel is Stardust, although Sandman holds up well and Mr Punch was good too.Darth Walrus posted:On another subject, I've heard Daniel Abraham's name mentioned a lot, and was thinking of giving his work a go. Problem is, I have no idea what I'm in for or the quality thereof. Can the goon hivemind deliver its wisdom unto me? I'v only read the first two Long Price books; they struck me as being much more influenced by non-fantastic fiction than most fantasy - their limited scale, scope, and POVs. The magic is neat (it's all done by ideas reified by poems, and the poet who writes the poem controls the resulting creature) and pleasingly central without being overpowering. The characters are good and there are interesting details, like the gesture language (albeit unsuccessful) or how the second book was a rewrite of Macbeth. They're four self-contained novel-length novels. But though I enjoyed them, there's something that held me back from thoroughly enjoying them, probably his prose - they weren't quite brilliant, but better than nine of ten fantasy books, for sure.
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Jul 11, 2013 19:30
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Jedit posted:Daniel Abraham is a protege of George RR Martin. He's done quite a bit of work on Wild Cards, including sole authorship of the most recent comic miniseries. And like Martin, it takes him a while to get where he's going sometimes. The third and fourth Long Price novels are where the real meat is; they're dark and pretty drat good. If I didn't know this I wouldn't have guessed; their styles are very dissimilar. Speaking of Martin his historical horror-adventure novel based on the 19th century Mississippi, Fevre Dream, is much more impressive than ASOIAF, particularly the twon main characters' relationship.
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Jul 12, 2013 07:30
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The thing about other peoples' politics is that they're always more obtrusive than yours. Even when they're not. And as Marxism's not too prevalent these days, it's not surprise that Miéville's sticks out to so many people.General Battuta posted:I don't think there's anything wrong with LeGuin - she's an amazing writer and Dispossessed is a great book. But if you disagree with its very explicit, very didactic politics, it's probably going to be an obnoxious read; it will seem naive and superficial, because it comes from a very different worldview. Tehanu's a good book but I wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for Sparrowhawk's adventure to regain his magic. And yes The Dispossessed is political as hell; I think its politics boils down to pointing out that "this capitalism, and this anarchism, are both bad; seeing that, a better way is more-or-less obvious: it should be...".
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Jul 15, 2013 19:18
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RightClickSaveAs posted:I'm glad to see Caitlin R. Kiernan mentioned in the OP. I've read all her books, although I haven't been able to find most of the short stories. It seems she gets unfairly lumped in with the kind of trashy urban fantasy of, say, your Laurel K. Hamiltons and Kim Harrisons, with their sexy werewolves and other nonsense. Well, you should thank General Battuta for that. I'm boggled that anyone could confuse her with paranormal romance (although Kim Harrison's a pretty cool dude, I think). You'd have to be judging them by their covers, or seriously overrating the psychic-boyfriend thing, to think that they were anything like that. Though I've only read Threshold and Low Red Moon but they struck me as books using Lovecraftian motifs in a mainstream-literary style, early Angela Carter-ish maybe.
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Jul 21, 2013 13:23
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General Battuta posted:If I did something to lump Caitlin Kiernan in with other urban fantasy I'm sorry No, I meant how you called me on putting hardly any female writers in the first draft of the OP.
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Jul 22, 2013 17:33
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colonel_korn posted:I think primarily due to the fact that they were mostly written by Gentry Lee with Clarke sort of consulting on them. You can generally tell these a mile off because the cover looks like this: BIG NAME AUTHOR & some other person - sometimes Bigname doesn't even provide a summary, I think. Although sometimes legit collaborations look this way. Generally Clarke's best writing is his short stories, though as Venusian Weasel says they are very static. His imaginative reach exceeded his ability's grasp, maybe. For instance there's one story where a spaceship is chasing a single, unarmed spy about a little asteroid, which should be thrilling, but the spy has a plan before the story starts, executes it, and it works fine because anything else would detract from Clarke's presentation of his idea, so it's kind of neat, but dull. Schneider Heim posted:Has anyone read anything by Catherynne M. Valente? I'm curious because Haikasoru, an imprint of Japanese SF, released a book of her titled The Melancholy of Mechagirl. Thanks for mentioning this so I didn't have to. It has a really neat cover, if that changes anyone's mind - a bit like Oshii's Ghost in the Shell 2 (hopefully that doesn't put you off):  In other news, there's going to be a new Diana Wynne Jones novel, sort of: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/57900-new-diana-wynne-jones-novel-is-a-family-affair.html posted:Fans of the late writer Diana Wynne Jones – who died in March 2011 – are in for an unexpected treat. In the summer of 2014, Greenwillow will publish a new title from the acclaimed science fiction and fantasy author. Titled The Islands of Chaldea, the book is a standalone novel unconnected to any of the author’s earlier works. It is also the result of an unusual, asynchronous collaboration between the writer and her younger sister, Ursula Jones. She died not long before finishing it and her younger sister's completed it, a la a less commercial The Assassination Bureau. The article also mentions a lot of fragments in her drawers, but I expect most of those are going to stay there; she always said she was an unplanned, instinctual kind of writer.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:05
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There's definitely a Baxter book called Titan, about a voyage to some moon or other, can't remember which. Vacuum Diagrams is a collection, so you can't really say that it's all of a piece, but I don't remember being that excited by it. Old-fashioned hard sf. You'll like it if you like Larry Niven. (E: Whoops, wrong discussion - I haven't read Timelike Infinity.) 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! Look up the Tiptree and Spectrum Awards in the Sf Awards Database (links in the OP) - they're for sf questioning gender and positive portrayals of queer protagonists (iirc) respectively, so you should find something to suit. And don't forget Ursula le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness probably isn't what you're looking for, but The Dispossessed might be. Maybe Crowley's The Deep too. Also that would not be a derail at all, it's completely in keeping with the thread's purpose of discussing sf, so go for it if you have anything to say. Lex Talionis posted:Finally, and this may be a reach for you but more people should read them so I'm saying it here anyway, there's Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond and Niccolo series. They're historical fiction, not F&SF (though they've influenced many F&SF writers) Dammit, now you mention her I wish I'd put her in the OP, although I only know her by reputation. One of those writers like O'Brian who aren't sf but are catnip to sf readers. Oh yes, and the August book of the month is Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick - a great short Nebula-winning novel, and very chewy and interesting. Plus, Tantric sex! Come and talk about it!
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Aug 7, 2013 19:54
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Look up Big Dumb Object in the SF Encyclopaedia.SUPERFINE CONCUBINE posted:That's fair. I think discussions about the depiction of sexuality, and also of women, are open questions in scifi and should absolutely be discussed/criticised/analysed. I just wasn't sure whether the first volume of the thread had already covered it Even if people had talked about it (as I'm sure they have) it's not as if it's a used-up topic. Some topics do get repetitive but this isn't one. Megazver posted:You think being a socialist in Britain in the eighties makes you an starry-eyed idealist? Surely the other way round, being a socialist under Thatcher required starry-eyed optimism  Stuporstar posted:When I want progressive SF, it seems like the only stuff I could find was from the 60s and 70s. I got the impression sci-fi has kind of pulled back from it since, as the publishing industry has taken less risks over the past three decades. [...] For years I thought the big imprints were taking nothing but heteronormative cyberpunk and military SF What do you mean by progressive, though? I think sf's become more socially progressive and less weird since the 70s, but it's part of a continued move away from sf's pulpier roots to more literary styles that began in the 50s; less gonzo wackiness and more nuanced characterisation, and while I like wackiness I'm also glad every sf book doesn't have rishathra. And there's a bit of social background here too; the 60s and 70s were times of massive social changes and liberation, when political issues (particularly sex and feminism here) were much more visible and obviously important than they are today. Is it any wonder contemporary sf writers are writing about stuff that's more relevant today?
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Aug 10, 2013 11:58
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fookolt posted:poo poo, I think things like feminism and anti-racism and all those other nice progressive things are just as important today as they were in the 70's. They definitely aren't as visible though. I didn't mean to imply that they were less important to society; more that there are newer concerns in sf and there's only so much rhetorical space the genre can occupy, so the less visible nice progressive things can seem less important to put in one's novel. Or, not putting in 2013's concerns dates a writer's work immediately, and there's only so many pages in a novel. Counterexample: Charles Stross deals with up-to-date concerns and also tries to be progressive with it (how successfully I don't know). Joramun posted:FWIW, I really disagree with this. Sex and gender do seem to get brought up an awful lot in this thread (at least compared to similar threads I follow on other forums), and since neither topic interests me at all and are not what I read sci-fi for, I wouldn't mind if they got their own thread. But it's not a huge deal or anything, as is I'll just keep scrolling past all the posts about it to get to the posts about other topics. Fair enough but it's not like Honor Harrington ("What's it like?" "Crap." "Crap." "Crap." "Rob S. Pierre.") - there's actual discussion. What's that guy's problem with Robespierre anyway, I'd've thought he loved him?
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Aug 10, 2013 23:39
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The World Fantasy Award nominations are up. Here's the novel nominees:
• Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz; Doubleday) • The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc) • Crandolin, Anna Tambour (Chômu) • Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove; Corvus) The Lifetime Achievement is shared between Tanith Lee and Susan Cooper.
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Aug 15, 2013 10:12
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fritz posted:Oh in other news related to Jemisin, did y'all see that SFWA kicked out Vox Day/Theodore Beale this week? Thanks for being the bearer of good news! Hopefully this'll also make things easier should someone else need throwing out. E: Beale confirms his disgrace. quote:Well, so long as the consideration of the evidence was careful.... The reference to Lem is pretty amusing; Lem had a special membership as a mark of his reputation (during the Cold War, natch), which was revoked because he wouldn't stop criticising other members' writing. The parallels are, um, so plain I shouldn't even have to point them out for you... Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Aug 16, 2013 |
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Aug 16, 2013 09:31
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General Battuta posted:Iain M. Banks had a distinguished career as a realistic lit author under the clever code name 'Iain Banks'. Any Banks books without the M are nominally literary rather than genre. There are a few writers who do things like that; Michael Marshall Smith dropped his last name to write thrillers. And thanks for reminding me that Jon Courtenay Grimwood's got a new mainstream novel out under the pen name "Johnanthan Grimwood" - I read a good review of it a while back. Nevvy Z posted:Can anyone recommend some SF writers who also write great non-S Fiction? I'm currently listening to an audio of "Welcome to the Monkey House" by Vonnegut, and I really enjoy things like "Who are we today." I also quite like Theodore Sturgeon shorts, which range from SF to fantasy to just odd little tales about real people. http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/mainstream_writers_of_sf, http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/fabulation, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipstream_%28genre%29 should be good places to start. Lots of more literary sf writers have dabbled in the mainstream (le Guin, Crowley) and plenty of literary writers contrariwise (Doris Lessing was the first Nobel laureate to have been a Worldcon Guest of Honour).
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Aug 16, 2013 18:03
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fookolt posted:Just finished Abaddon's Gate in The Expanse series and really enjoyed all three books; what should I read next for more space opera? Have you tried M John Harrison's "Light" trilogy? I've only read the first ([i[Light[/i), which is about two characters in the very far future and the dysfunctonal present-day inventor of their spaceship drives. It's dark.
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Aug 19, 2013 11:05
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buildmorefarms posted:My wife's hunting for some examples (for a class of 16-17 year olds) of "difficult/sophisticated" fantasy novels in order to demonstrate how titles within the same genre can vary wildly in terms of: My first thought was Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus, which is sf but has very fantasyish furniture. Peace is a fantasy, but well-disguised as a maintream novel. Also Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber (maybe her "Puss-in-Boots", which is all about the languague), Jack Vance (maybe "Chun the Unavoidable" from The Dying Earth, or an episode from the Cugel books) or an extract from Little, Big by John Crowley or the Titus books (these are long novels). You could also try looking at The Book of Fantasy edited by Bioy Cesares and Borges (or Borges himself) and Italo Calvino's Fantastic Stories for fantasy outside the genre per se, which are fairly catholic selections. That's too big a list, and the Wolfe books in particular are difficult to recommend cos they're so complex and without teaching aids. I also can't think of anybody contemporary or teenagery who'd be an easier sell.
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Aug 23, 2013 00:23
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snooman posted:Piers Anthony's books suffer a lot once you get exposed to other authors I dare say. Though as I recall the only one I read was merely bad with puns and sentimentality rather than... well. Incidentally there's a TG thread about Xanth if you want to piss on his books in different company: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3560541. (E: I just added that thread to the OP under General Fantasy; is that an OK place to put them? Given their reputation I thought listing them under "comic fantasy" might give someone a nasty surprise...) AreYouStillThere posted:Oh, well poo poo. I picked up Mortal Engines from the library assuming it would be the best place to start. Is it that big a deal? Should I send it back and get Fever Crumb? I remember enjoying it by itself v  v
Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Aug 28, 2013 |
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Aug 28, 2013 20:47
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I think people get upset by sex pretty easily for some reason. Look at the Stations of the Tide thread, most of it's talking about the sex and those are integral scenes. On the other hand at least that thread had some actual discussion of the sex rather than people just saying "its poo poo" "no u". Rurik posted:I liked the weirdness of the book, the setting and the world. I liked this but felt it overpowered the book's other qualities; almost as if the plot was wasted on the setting. I enjoyed it a lot but I also found it mildly disapppointing.
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Aug 30, 2013 21:10
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Schneider Heim posted:I googled China Mountain Zhang and got a bunch of books by Maureen F. McHugh, its author. Can anyone tell me more about her? She has a bunch of short story collections that seem cool, as well as a cheap novel at $4 right now (Nekropolis). I've only read China Mountain Zhang but if you're at all interested in good sf I recommend it to you wholeheartedly. It's about a gay man in a Chinese-dominated United States who has no idea what to do with his life, rejects marriage offers, bums around a bit, and becomes an architect. There's a subplot about colonists on Mars, which I think is unconnected in terms of plot to the rest of the novel. It's very much a bildungsroman novel-of-character, very little action, and it's fascinating and gripping and well written. It reminds me of Delany rather a lot (the kites might be a tribute to Babel-17.) There's a review here: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2008/10/zhang which I agree with totally. Note the bit where it's a debut that won the Lambda and Tiptree awards and was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula. The only caveat I have is that Zhang's narration is rather stilted and it looks stereotypical at first, but that's just how he is. Oh, and the idea that being gay would be such a taboo in a world like that seemed a bit odd and early 90s.
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Aug 31, 2013 19:57
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Full list of Hugo & Campbell winners here: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2013/09/2013-hugo-and-campbell-award-winners-in-progress/. Nice to see Pat Cadigan win Best Novelette; I haven't heard of her in years.General Battuta posted:Speaking of the Hugos, occasional thread poster Citizen Insane just missed the nomination for Best New Writer by three votes. I don't know if this is cause for celebration or agony but Congratulations!/Commiserations!(delete as applicable). I didn't realise there were so many published goons or I'd've put a section in the OP. specklebang posted:The drawing I attached are the (drafts) of the ones that adorn the interior pages of Scrivener's Moon. Mr. Reeve drew these in my copy as part of the auction agreement. This is Shrike (or Grike) with my 3 cats. I've only read the (published) first, but 
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Sep 2, 2013 19:01
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specklebang posted:Ah well, one man's meat is another man's poison. The 7 books are among my favorites but you don't like them. Maybe you would have enjoyed Mortal Engines more if you had started with Fever Crumb and didn't have to go through that huge suspension of disbelief the mobile cities may have challenged. No, I enjoyed the first book a lot, I thought the mobile cities were a really neat denunciation of gently caress You Got Mine-esque capitalism (:marx: - don't theye evn call it Municipal Darwinism?) and also cool to think about as if they were real; it's just that there's too many books, and so little time. Maybe one day I'll re-read them. And I also wanted to say that I liked your post that I replied to - it was heartfelt and convincing and had cute cats in it. Thanks. buildmorefarms posted:Apologies in advance for the low-content post; I (and by extension my wife, the high-school teacher) wanted to thank you all for the numerous recommendations a few pages back, we've now got a laundry list of examples and - from a purely selfish perspective - I've got a whole lot of books to try out! Do let us know how it goes.
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Sep 3, 2013 15:04
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Blog Free or Die posted:Hugochat has reminded me of a pretty sweet set of articles, Revisiting the Hugos. Written by (Hugo winning) author Jo Walton, it's a look at all the Hugo winners year by year, from its creation to the year 2000. This is a really interesting series and nearly made it into the OP. Be sure to read the comments; amongst others, Gardner Dozois weighs in quite often. Lex Talionis posted:I actually think the Nebula, absent other issues, ought to be by far the most prestigious SF award. Unlike the Hugo, its voter pool is restricted to what we might call experts. Unlike the Clarke, it's not limited by the UK market requirement or the irritating tendency for publishers not to submit worthy novels for consideration. I was going to post that I respect the Nebulas over the Hugos for these reasons. I don't totally buy the argument that the Nebulas are less reliable because I think that would imply that juried awards are worthless - they seem to be halfway between juried awards and the Hugos' "anyone with the money" model. Although maybe you feel it's a worse of both worlds situation? (And if so what about, say, the BFAs, where members select the shortlists that judges choose from?) I'm not saying it doesn't have the other problems you list, though. Perhaps SFWA could invite non-US writers to have "Nebula voting membership" or something similar? Either way it was an interesting post. Did you notice that Sawyer's figures reveal that he needed less than 5% of the votes to win a Nebula (40 of 930)...
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Sep 5, 2013 14:01
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Lex Talionis posted:The difference between the Nebula and the Clarke is that the Clarke jury reads every single novel before they even make a shortlist. There's an initial filter in terms of what gets published in the UK and what publishers choose to submit, but this still left 54 novels in 2011 and 60 in 2012. From that they pick a shortlist of 6 books, so it's pretty much a straight application of Sturgeon's Law. How many Nebula nominators do you think read 60 novels published in the previous year? It's very possible the answer is zero. Well, as you say, Sturgeon's Law applies - credible nominees get noticed and more widely read and discussed than other books, so the fact that not every Nebula voter reads the hundreds of eligible books isn't that bad. All I'm saying is that I think see the Nebulas as between the Clarkes and the Hugos, although more similar to the latter.
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Sep 5, 2013 22:57
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What people are saying about Redshirts is roughly what I feel about Halting State. I was surprised by how underwhelming I found it. It's a novel of ideas, and has lots of the latter but not much of the former. It's readable and funny and the three main characters are pleasant, but they're also shallow and their voices (including the narrator's/narrators') were too similar. The plot begins nicely but fades towards the end with the international aspect being too big for the main characters to deal with and ultimately sorted out offscreen because there's a backup plan for that, so it has to revert to an earlier and now-underwhelming plot line. Unfortunately the ideas aren't all that interesting, and they're often underdeveloped. The AR glasses are supposed to be key plot points but they're not used all that much, either affecting the plot (and Spooks was just silly) or showing characters using them interestingly, not even little things like cops leaving notes in CopSpace. ("The door had a CopSpace sign reading 'Back at 3 o'clock', so Sue went to Forensics instead.") As for the predictive aspects, they're sometimes embarrassingly old-fashioned, e.g. with the villains being Chinese or the "AR showing real people as orcs" thing - I remember seeing this in one of the Night's Dawn books years before... There's another interesting way they're old-fashioned: the hero's an engineer. There's quite a bit of talk about computers changing the world's nervous system and how they're the real masters of the world, but a lot more about how they're slobby losers. It's like Cryptonomicon without the satirical angle. The subplot involving Jack's nieces is a nice twist on Ghost in the Shell, but doesn't make sense because Jack knows all along they're not real people, so why was he acting as if they were?. Ultimately there seemed like a lot of misplaced effort and keeping the international-politics aspects out, and I think focusing more on the smaller mystery plotlines and Sue (who by the end is a mostly-passive observer, running round after other cops) would have made a stronger book. E: H'm, this other conversation came up while I was wondering whether to post this. Just to chime in, I think Hieronymus Alloy's right; it's not a "ladder" so much as "boxes to check". If you want to read a book with X and Y, you'll pick a book for being good at X and Y, never mind (for now) that it's crap at Z. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Sep 12, 2013 |
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Sep 12, 2013 16:05
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When you're as prolific (two books a year, often) and deliberately varied as Stross being uneven is par for the course.Hieronymous Alloy posted:Stross is a weird author. Sometimes his novels are brilliant thrill rides that fit together like clockwork and sometimes he wastes 100 pages on dumb Iphone jokes and LOOK AT HOW NERDY I AM cockwaving. When he's good he's really really good but when he's bad he's horrid. Some of the geek stuff is writing what he knows and likes, but he implies in the back matter of my copy of HS that he sees geeks as the mainstream sf audience.
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Sep 12, 2013 17:07
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Harrow posted:I come asking for suggestions on what to read next. I haven't had enough magic quite yet. Who are some other writers/what are some other books that portray magic in... well, not necessarily a similar way, but a similarly enthralling way? Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, which is about a small country just on the border of fairyland, which occasionally intrudes, and is the book you want. There's also The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany which is quite similar. For something more modern, John Crowley's Little, Big or Aegypt sequence, both of which are very long and have little magic (Little, Big has more), or Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, a rewriting of Tam Lin and Tom the Rhymer, or Howl's Moving Castle. They're all quite closely tied to traditional beliefs about fairies, magic, astrology, and mythology, especially the Crowley books, and I also think they're great as literature. Crowley's one of those writers where you can read any page of any of his books and find somethng wonderful. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Sep 13, 2013 |
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Sep 13, 2013 10:32
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Stross' articles on writing are really good, and so was that one by Holly Lisle. The big statistic is that British full-time writers who earn over 50% of their income from writing make £23,000 on average, and you can multiply that by 60% if you're a woman. And this was before the financial crisis.Dryb posted:Why does he need a kickstarter? He's a previously published author writing a book, for gently caress's sake. That's probably why. Someone without a career could just say "Screw these rejections, I'm gonna self-publish!". But Connolly presumably needs the money and this is his most marketable skill, to put it crudely. Speaking of money, Strange Horizons is holding its annual fundraising drive; if you like their stuff, please donate a few dollars.
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Sep 20, 2013 17:47
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