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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:Sounds good. The Player of Games is also only 250something pages so it should be pretty quick either way. I'd read Player of Games first, but Use of Weapons is my favourite.
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Jun 17, 2013 07:05
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Slavvy posted:Can anyone recommend me hard-ish sf with at least halfway decent characterisation? I've found that when I read cheesy space opera with a panoply of interesting characters, the 'science' makes me cringe. Yet the vast majority of hard sf, and even just plain ol' regular sf, has characters who are barely distinguishable from eachother, let alone interesting unto themselves. LE Modesitt JR is the worst example of this I can think of; I am incapable of reading another of his books because I don't want to read two paragraphs about what sort of sweater vest the guy is wearing and what type of meal he ordered. I feel like those two terms are in complete opposition. It always seems like hard sci-fi focuses on systems, and space opera focuses on characters. Anyway, you should (if you haven't already) try Ian M. Banks's novels. The characters are deep, and the science isn't retarded.
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Jun 17, 2013 09:09
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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. The Gap series by Stephen R. Donaldson has aliens that are completely alien. The human are all terribly broken though (this is a Stephen R. Donaldson series we are talking about).
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Jun 28, 2013 09:18
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torgo posted:Thanks for these recommendations. I'm hoping at least some of them will turn out to have some real alien conflict, instead of the "whoops, we just didn't quite understand each other at first, but it turns out we are all the same" endings I've come to expect from alien contact stories. About the Gap series; the aliens are pretty ancillary. They are an important part of the story, but they aren't even mentioned until the 3rd book IIRC.
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Jun 29, 2013 03:25
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WoTchat: If you really want to read them, I'd suggest 1-6, read 7-11s summaries (http://www.thonky.com/wot/) and then read 12-14. If you aren't sure, I agree with this: systran posted:As someone who has read all but the last Wheel of Time book, I recommend not reading any of it. I enjoyed parts of it, but it just drags so badly and so many pointless plot arcs are introduced along the way. If you stop early you'll feel like you wasted your time, if you finish you'll spend too much time. Just don't read it. IMO 1-3 are the best, 7-11 are poo poo, the first two Sanderson ones are good, and the last book is horribly rushed because all the loose ends have to be tied up (a lot of them still aren't, I guess Jordan was going to write a kind of epilogue after the series was over). Haerc fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Jun 29, 2013 |
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Jun 29, 2013 20:34
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andrew smash posted:I just finished house of Suns. I think it's by far the best of Reynolds' novels. It's a bit softer than the revelation space series, which is okay. My one complaint is that purslane and campion often sound like the same person, although given that they are clones I guess that's intentional. Anyway it can get a bit unclear when the viewpoint changes from one to the other. Anyone know of books similar to House of Suns? I really enjoyed it as well.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:52
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Has anyone read River of Stars? I'm about half way through and not enjoying it as much as I did Under Heaven.
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Sep 2, 2013 02:28
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savinhill posted:I enjoyed it although I felt some POV characters were much more interesting than others and wished the book focused on just them. I think that is my problem as well... Some of the characters are just kind of boring.
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Sep 2, 2013 05:08
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Kalman posted:Fred Pohl passed away today. I don't know what his output was like in more recent years, but I may have to find the box I put Gateway into and give it a re-read. That's too bad. Gateway was a good read, and from what I read of it (I think I got to book 3) the rest of the series is good too.
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Sep 3, 2013 06:51
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I remember reading a kind of detective fiction set in ancient times, I think during the Hellenistic period (might be before or after, I really can't remember). It was set in Babylon (the MC had traveled there for some reason), and had to do with a ziggurat and a ruined (and supposedly haunted) temple, both within the city. Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? I want to say it was a side short story in a series of novels. Edit: I'm fairly certain it was a short story in one of those anthologies that Gardner Dozois and GRR Martin collaborated on recently, I'm not sure which one.
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Mar 24, 2014 11:04
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specklebang posted:Maybe http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Pigs-Marcus-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0041T51DC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395696849&sr=8-1&keywords=silver+pigs or that author. Maybe. I looked her up, her website says she doesn't really write much short fiction, and the list provided there didn't have anything I had read. Thanks though.
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Mar 24, 2014 23:09
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Decius posted:Maybe Steven Saylor's The Seven Wonders? It's a collection of short stories about Gordianus the Finder's travels to all seven wonders of the ancient world in his youth. Including Babylon of course. And there is a (seemingly) haunted temple, although I'm not sure if it was in the story about the Hanging Gardens/Babylon. Thanks, this was it. The short story I read must have been republished in a different anthology though, because I've never read that particular one.
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Mar 25, 2014 09:59
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Damo posted:Can someone recommend a good first Alastair Reynolds novel? House of Suns is one of my favourite stand alone sci-fi novels, try that. His other stand alone stuff (sans Century Rain, I didn't care for it, and I usually love detective noir) is good too, as are his short stories. Haerc fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 09:20
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Joramun posted:Yes, sometimes he accidentally starts levitating What actually happened there anyway? I had heard that he had gone on a bender or something, but not much else.
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Apr 10, 2014 00:35
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Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:Nah it wasn't anything like that--pretty sure it was clinical depression. Not to mention he also got all the way through writing the 3rd book before he realized he'd left a huge plot hole open and basically had to rewrite the whole thing to fix it. Ah, that sucks, glad the dude is doing better.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:42
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Welp, that's going off my to read list I guess... One day someone will do space horror right.
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Apr 15, 2014 05:15
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Is Watt's Blindsight separate from the Rifters series (Starfish, Maelstrom, Behemoth)? Should I read it before or after?
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Aug 6, 2014 07:50
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Anyone who liked Starship Troopers or The Forever War might want to check out Armor by John Steakley. From wikipedia: "[The book] concentrates more on the psychological effects of violence on human beings rather than on the political aspects of the military, which was the focus of Heinlein's novel. ... Armor is the story of humanity's war against an alien race whose foot soldiers are three-meter-tall insects, referred to in the book as 'ants'. It is also the story of a research colony on the fringes of human territory which is threatened by pirates. The two sub-plots intersect at the end, with each providing answers and insight into events of the other. The title most obviously refers to the nuclear-powered exoskeletons worn by the soldiers, but also references the emotional armor the protagonists maintain to survive." Haerc fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 07:52
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Syle187 posted:Is the Samuil Petrovitch trilogy worth finishing? I'm most of the way done with the first book after picking it up on a whim. I'm not overly impressed with the writing or story telling. The first book was only ok. I finished it. It wasn't terrible, and I enjoyed the near future ideas thrown out there, but I don't see myself reading it again. IIRC the last one was kind of weak.
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Aug 10, 2014 20:56
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Kraps posted:What's the norm then? There was a short story that won some kind of award where a space woman stranded on a space ship gets endlessly space raped by a squishy space octopus until she's rescued by space men. I still have limited exposure to the sf/f genre and I hope that poo poo's nowhere near the norm because amazingly I'm still traumatized from listening to that. If we are thinking about the same short story, it had some fairly deep symbolism, not at all just some gratuitous smut. fakeedit: Title is Spar, written by Kij Johnson(I read an interview with her about it), the story was a 2009 Nebula Award Winner, 2010 Hugo Award Nominee, 2010 Locus Award Finalist. I didn't think it was fantastic, but it was interesting.
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Aug 12, 2014 07:12
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regularizer posted:About the Powder Mage series recommendation on the last page: I don't think it's that good. The first was original enough that I gave the second book a chance even though the writing is pretty mediocre and the characters are flat, and then the second was just more of the same. The idea is good enough that I'll probably read the third even though it'll be a struggle, since it would be great in the hands of a better author. For instance, the class struggle between privileged/powder mages/everyone else would be really cool flavor if it was a bigger part of the story. I tried to read the second book recently, and somehow can't remember a single detail about the first book, even though I had read it only a few months ago. That usually never happens to me.
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Aug 13, 2014 06:27
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Velius posted:I hated Absolution Gap, and I've enjoyed most of Reynolds stuff. There's virtually no space action that I can recall and most of the book centers on some dumb cultists. Then comes the ending, which I found extremely dissatisfying to the extent of making the earlier books worse in retrospect. I'd recommend stopping at Absolution and reading the other stuff he's written. I might be in the minority but I actually liked Century Rain, although Chasm City and House of Suns are probably his most well regarded stuff. Reynolds newest series I found to be a total snoozer. I agree completely and I enjoy his short fiction a lot as well. Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days, Zima Blue and Galactic North are all good, as are his novellas. Edit: I've not read Deep Navigation, I'll have to see if I can hunt it down somewhere.
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Aug 16, 2014 02:19
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I used to be really into Forgotten Realms as a child/teen, started trailing off after I had started reading more "real" fantasy and sci-fi, and completely quit around the time they did that whole 100 year time jump where the goddess of magic died and blew everything magic up for the 3rd or 4th time. Anyway, are there any "required" books to read since then? I never actually read how the whole cataclysm happened, or how the world had changed or anything, I just read that they were skipping the timeline forward, went :welp:, and dropped the whole series/whatever you call it. Edit: jesus, I just read some stuff and they did it AGAIN in 2013? 
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Oct 6, 2015 00:14
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Yeah, I guess I was reading mainly during the DnD 2/3/3.5 days, and I don't think they really changed anything enough to warrant a big in universe cataclysm or whatever.
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Oct 6, 2015 02:19
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