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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. What's some decent sf where the characters are remotely interesting? Yes I want aliens and strange worlds and space ships and all that poo poo, but why do the people involved have to be two-dimensional silhouettes with a name and gender printed on the front? That isn't to say I haven't read any sf which isn't like this, it's just that the majority seems to be this way and I find it hard to pick something up, regardless of how wonderful the premise is, if the characterisation is non-existent. 90% of the time when I pick up a book that has 'hugo/nebula/whatever winning' written on the front I know there will be at least ten characters you can't tell apart. When I think about it, the same often applies to fantasy. Often someone will have some sort of curse/destiny/hidden role/secret past and their personality doesn't seem to be at all affected or shaped by it. The wheel of time had about a dozen characters who were only differentiated by their circumstance and the colour of their clothes. 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.
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Jun 17, 2013 08:12
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Hello thread. I've read every culture novel (and a bunch of other Banks books) and I was hankering for some actual decent space opera type stuff. I saw a bunch of Peter F Hamilton books at a second hand shop so I grabbed The Reality Dysfunction. Is that trilogy regarded as any good by you guys? Annoyingly I made the mistake of reading one of the liner blurb things which straight-up ruins what I assume to be a major twist by saying that he 'blows open our perception of the book with a colossal eruption of supernatural horror into the space opera we thought we were reading'. I hate whoever wrote that review with a violence approaching the person who spoiled Dusk till Dawn for me before I had seen it. Does it rely largely on that central conceit to keep things moving and interesting, or is it still worth reading if you know about this aspect in advance? Normally I'd just harden up and read the book but it's very bloody long and I don't want to waste my time. e: fixed Slavvy fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 05:39
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Sheeeeiiiit. I believed the hype on the cover 
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Feb 5, 2015 06:03
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Hopefully. Keeping in mind the last book I read was Inversions and I got gleefully excited like a hysterical child when he namedrops Special Circumstances toward the end.
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Feb 5, 2015 06:25
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funakupo posted:Well the costs of animation would be really really low since they could just splice in the same scenes from the first three seasons into the other ten without anyone noticing. Fixed for wheel of time accuracy.
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Feb 10, 2015 22:12
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Blamestorm posted:I think you can adapt something faithfully without adapting it literally and completely. In fact, I would probably argue that the two are often contradictory. A move between mediums should probably involve major changes to ensure the narrative, themes and characterisation are effectively translated. The worst adaptations are highly literal ones that focus on replication of minutiae rather than the important stuff. But then the script would just be blank pages 
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Feb 12, 2015 03:08
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SquadronROE posted:And it has only been true for Snow Crash. And Neuromancer + sequels. Those books read like an 80's movie script.
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Feb 13, 2015 00:31
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I'd say read Player before Weapons just cause it gives a better idea of the internal structure of the culture whilst Weapons is more of an examination of the hosed up poo poo they do when special circumstances call.
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Feb 18, 2015 06:17
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Not sure why anyone would say that. Phlebas was like a...proto culture novel, I guess? It's less a cerebral excercise of wit like the others and more of a swashbuckling pirate adventure in space. In the end the protagonist realises that They Were Right All Along anyway.
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Feb 18, 2015 06:44
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Toph Bei Fong posted:The Culture is weird because no matter what you do, you'll never be as good as the AIs. You can have whatever you want, but everyone else can have it too because there's no such thing as resources or money or limited land. You can do whatever you want, because there are no restrictions or consequences or rules, except perhaps they'll lock you up some place perfectly pleasant and friendly if you attempt genocide. And therefore, there's almost no reason to do anything beyond what feels good. Needless to say, some people find this infuriating. They need to have things others do not, need fences there so that they can jump over them, need rules they can break, people can can be better than, need to know there isn't a hard limit at which they will hit a wall and never, ever get better than the godlike inhuman beings that control every aspect of their lives... And that's before we get into the fact that the future the Culture is handing out isn't evenly distributed by any means, and that the AIs will use people as their pawns as they see fit with no real regard or consideration, throwing the entire "free will" and "anarchy" aspects into question. I love that Banks doesn't come down on whether or not the Culture is good or bad. They just are. I think the point is that they do the arithmetic and work out that this situation is perfect for 99.999% of the billions of people in the culture and that .001% can be put to better use/accomodated otherwise without scratching their nigh-infinite resources at all. Most of the yearnings you describe are the product of growing up in a society where you don't have everything you could possibly want and striving/work are considered ideals. The same way they'll happily completely destroy some random civilization's society because their simulations indicate this is less costly in terms of suffering than letting things happen naturally. Hedrigall posted:Or you'll get meatfucked >:3 I thought being a meatfucker meant you liked humans way too much.
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Feb 18, 2015 07:32
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:For fantasy that has a decent world building story but also tons of action, pretty much any Gemmell book works. There's an overarching storyline to most of his novels. The Rigante is sort of a weird setting that goes from fantasy ancient britian and rome to fantasy middle age rome through the series. What was the one where the guy gets into a mustket war with napoleon-era rome, kills some rapists, ~~swordplay lives on~~, lots of people shot with flintlocks? I goddamn love that book. Reading Gemmel is like watching those really formulaic cop shows where it's the same story/situations every time but you just like the taste of it. General Battuta posted:One of the Culture's strengths is that it isn't a polemic. Banks presents a world and trusts you to decide whether you want to be horrified or inspired by it - and trusts that you'll appreciate the craft either way. This. e: Toph Bei Fong posted:For those into that sort of thing, Use of Weapons reads quite nicely as a reaction to/commentary on Isaac Asimov's Foundation books. The entire series could be seen as a reaction to The Foundation, right on down to the name itself, but when Zakalwe is literally dressed up like The Mule in one of the early chapters, and implications this has based on the book's structure... Holy poo poo 
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Feb 18, 2015 07:59
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:That was the last 2? books of the Rigante series. Ravenheart and Stormrider I think. Thanks! No Pants posted:They called the GCU Grey Area that because it liked to read humans' minds without their consent. That was the most recent one I read. I can't remember anything about anything most of the time. Jedit posted:Pretty much every Culture fan I know recommends The Player of Games as the first book to read, because 99% of people who read any of the others first will not read a second. The Culture is basically porn escalation for Trekkies, so unless you feel you would enjoy multiple novels of the GUA I'm Not As Clever As I Think I Am being right at people you should avoid it. A good counterpost. Unrelated: is your Av a Kzin?
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Feb 18, 2015 10:09
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Venusian Weasel posted:Perhaps the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic might be up your alley. No actual alien contact, but it deals with trying to figure out what aliens left behind during a brief visit to Earth. It's got a lot of what you're looking for. Pohl's Gateway is good like that too. Has anyone read the sequels?
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Feb 19, 2015 00:43
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Hedrigall posted:Basically that Use of Weapons spoiler shits all over anything any movie has ever pulled. Oh Keyser Soze was a big twist? Pfft. Got nothing on Use of Weapons. There are a few that I know of that aren't coming to mind but most of them you can see coming and the author can never help themselves and always leave breadcrumbs to telegraph it from a mile away. It's definitely one of the most unexpected mind-fucks I've ever experienced in a book.
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Feb 19, 2015 03:10
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FowlTheOwl posted:There are though, aren't there? They just need more promotion and interest because they might be a tough sell. Once minorities are more successful more would be writing. Maybe they need a award within the Hugos or Nebulas to promote minority writing in some way to help sales. Why is this even a thing? I have a good couple hundred books and I only really know what a few of the authors look like, let alone whether they're a minority of some sort. It's text on a page, if you want equality just stop putting pictures of the author in the liner I guess?
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Feb 22, 2015 05:31
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Oh so it's a publisher side thing rather than a buyer thing? Or do people really avoid books because a woman/minority wrote it?
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Feb 22, 2015 05:43
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Those are some pretty impressive hounds I must admit.
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Feb 26, 2015 00:38
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Hopefully it really is turtles all the way down.
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Mar 13, 2015 01:06
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If Pratchett died and woke up in gor I'm not really sure what would happen...but it would be violent.
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Mar 13, 2015 07:06
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computer parts posted:The Known Space stuff is still pretty good from what I remember, if only in a "let's see what weird stuff there is in the universe" sense (like the mind controlling plant things). Protector was rad. Inferno was pretty good too.
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Mar 18, 2015 06:31
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 02:35 |
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Pratchett is gruesome as gently caress though. Just euphemistically.
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Mar 19, 2015 08:58
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