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specklebang posted:If we are giving a recommendation, can we post the link to Amazon (or other source)? I'm new here and I want to properly participate. Since this is a new thread, I'm excited to be here. I've gone through hundreds of pages of older threads but here is a fresh opportunity. I've read SF all my life and I have some favorites to suggest and am hoping for new suggestions to add to my library. Don't post Amazon referral links, nobody is interested in lining your pockets. Otherwise nobody will mind if you post links but we can all use google so it might not be worth the effort.
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Jun 16, 2013 19:05
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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. I tend to try to mix up genres and move from fiction to non-fiction so I don't want to get caught up in a series, especially one that is extremely long. I recently read the Colour of Magic since it was on a Kindle Daily Deal and, just as I feared, it ended on a total cliff-hanger with no resolution (although I have heard that the second book does wrap up this particular story). I would prefer swords & sorcery - either high or low - since I don't get enough of that in my reading diet, but I am fairly open in my reading tastes and can find enjoyment in anything. I have followed the flow-chart above and it seems like Stardust by Neil Gaiman is one of the few that matched my criteria. I am pretty set on sci-fi, so don't need any recommendations there. Some fantasy I have read and enjoyed: The broken sword, poul anderson.
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Jun 17, 2013 18:20
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Hugh howey flipped his poo poo and spouted off some pretty misogynistic stuff at a reporter that rubbed him the wrong way a while back and since then I've been unwilling to buy any more of his books, despite the fact that I thought wool was pretty okay. He just seems like a total slimebag now. It's too bad really.
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Jun 20, 2013 06:19
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systran posted:I'm like halfway through book 2 of Hyperion and am not much feeling it any more. Should I keep going? Not really. There isn't a particularly satisfying conclusion to much of the plot threads so you should just drop it when you feel like stopping. There is a big reveal about the time tombs at the end of the book which is nice I guess. Also, the segment when kassad fights moneta is fairly well-written. The rest of it is mediocre.
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Jun 24, 2013 04:13
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In line with simmons chat, i just re-read ilium (not really sure why, it's not that great) and realized I missed an eyerollingly bad callback to hyperion the first time I read it. The moravec society is kind of cool, but that's about as far as it goes. The post-literate human society on earth is so clearly a retread of the eloi from the time machine that I was wondering if he even realized he was doing it until the point where he has a character explain to another that precise reference. Simmons just isn't that strong a writer and hyperion was definitely his high point. andrew smash fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Jul 1, 2013 |
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Jul 1, 2013 12:26
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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.
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Jul 3, 2013 21:56
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gently caress quote's not edit. I also really enjoyed the fact that the lines are basically a love letter to the Qeng Ho.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:02
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Haerc posted:Anyone know of books similar to House of Suns? I really enjoyed it as well. As I mentioned, A Deepness in the Sky is kind of similar. The Qeng Ho are what the lines might have been like in their first circuit or so.
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Jul 4, 2013 02:01
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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. The trojan war bit is fine, and the moravec robots are interesting, but the part that threw me was the GLOBAL CALIPHATE creating an anti-jew virus and a species of anti-jew murderbots
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Jul 7, 2013 17:10
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Decius posted:The part where the Protagonist history professor takes Paris' form and fucks Helena better than Paris ever did is pretty iffy too. Hahaha, yeah, I forgot about that.
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Jul 8, 2013 13:35
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I haven't read stardust so I can't comment there. Between the other two, i think neverwhere is better on reflection but american gods is paced really well and you will fly through it, so I would start there.
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Jul 10, 2013 05:10
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Jedit posted:The problem with American Gods is that if you've read any other Gaiman, you'll know exactly what's going to happen all the way through. It steals too much from other works. Another reason to read it first then.
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Jul 10, 2013 16:28
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The only mieville book I've read is Embassytown and i thought it was excellent so you could always do what I did and start with that.
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Jul 13, 2013 18:04
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it's been a while since i read it but when he finds out it wasn't a training sim or whatever doesn't ender straight up say he would have blown up their planet anyway if he had known the truth?
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Jul 18, 2013 03:15
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I don't get the atheist pagan part. Is that like telling mom that if dad doesn't have to go to the saturnalia neither do you?
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Jul 20, 2013 03:47
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Fallom posted:I don't believe in gods. that's true of me as well so i'm wondering what the point of making the distinction was.
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Jul 20, 2013 05:05
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General Battuta posted:Hey andrew smash I finally got a copy of Ship of Fools. excellent, glad to hear your thoughts on it when you finish.
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Jul 25, 2013 16:39
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along the way posted:Been on a Star Wars kick recently having read the Thrawn Trilogy, Darth Plagueis, Outbound Flight, Deceived, and now Scoundrels. I'm looking to change it up a bit. No poo poo. Is darth plagueis a real thing? What editor let that one go by?
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Aug 4, 2013 21:57
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Fried Chicken posted:Stross, Vinge, and Watts all do hardish scifi with some creepy elements really well. Haha, goddamn.
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Aug 5, 2013 08:29
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Pyroclastic posted:I can't recall if I read Timelike Infinity, but the Manifold books dropped in quality like a rock. I remember Manifold:Space was fine, :Time was noticibly worse, and :Origin was awful. :Origin and Titan are the two books that seriously soured me on Baxter. I don't think I even read Vacuum Diagrams even though I loved Ring. I thought Titan was by ben bova.
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Aug 7, 2013 19:07
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What did he write anyway? I only know him as an rear end in a top hat blogger who occasionally tries to troll pz myers.
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Aug 16, 2013 02:11
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Lol that "read what you wanna read good books only" is followed by a rec for Brandon fuckin sanderson
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Sep 10, 2013 04:42
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Wangsbig posted:Please go on. Save yourself some time and read the fluff text from a d&d manual
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Sep 10, 2013 05:03
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muike posted:I don't know either. When I started reading it I was amped for solar system only space opera, but when it got to the actual characters it was just a struggle for me to bear with them. Then the reveal of the horrible evil plot was just completely lackluster and almost laughable. I like solar system only space drama too but i thought the quantum thief was much better. The system in TQT/TFP seems so much larger than the system in Leviathan Wakes despite the technology of TQF being considerably more advanced. Also if you like single solar system no-FTL type settings, Banks' Against a Dark Background is pretty good.
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Sep 18, 2013 23:22
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If you like Ted Chiang's short fiction and have not read Borges you should pick up Ficciones and give that a shot.
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Sep 23, 2013 21:14
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General Battuta posted:I think it's one of his weaker stories Hell is the absence of God is amazing
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Sep 24, 2013 01:24
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But a lot of the other stories in the collection are fantastic!
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Can I get any recommendations for (really, really good) space science fiction without ftl and not primarily about military conflict? As mentioned, house of Suns, the quantum thief.
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Sep 24, 2013 14:43
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I just started an audible account to use at the gym and I've got to say the dune audio book is loving fantastic.
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Sep 30, 2013 14:23
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andrew smash posted:I just started an audible account to use at the gym and I've got to say the dune audio book is loving fantastic. After getting through this a bit further I'm a little disappointed with parts of it. They got some really good voice actors to play important characters but in some scenes the narrator speaks those lines instead of the VAs. The most jarring one is the baron harkonnen, the VA has a really deep voice and the narrator doesn't so when he gives a line as the baron it's just disappointing.
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Oct 2, 2013 05:14
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savinhill posted:I've never understood this attitude where people feel the need to "disrecommend" something. Also, I find "If you want to read books about rape and all the ways that labiaplasty is like female genital mutilation by an author who 'writes with male readers in mind', I guess go for them;" pretty insulting. You yourself may have some problems with his books, but acting like anyone who reads them is doing so for "rape" and "labiaplasty" is just being a jerk. This isn't a hugbox, if one poster brings up points they consider positive about an author anyone else is entitled to bring up things they find negative. If this is something you feel strongly about maybe you should bring up some salient points in his defense instead of complaining about people being mean on the internet.
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Oct 14, 2013 04:20
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General Battuta posted:I'd actually guess that the best-selling fantasy/SF authors of all time will all be women and all be from the last twenty years. We don't tend to talk about them as SF/F authors, perhaps because they've become so successful. JK Rowling, Stephenie Meyer...?
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Oct 14, 2013 21:54
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syphon posted:... Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games)... Oh yeah, I forgot about those. I think battuta has an interesting point though. Nobody calls those books fantasy. They don't get filed with fantasy/sf in bookstores. But they clearly are.
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Oct 14, 2013 22:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:20 years is somewhat arbitrary unless you're deliberately trying to exclude Tolkien :P He didn't artificially limit it to the past 20 years, he said the bestselling SF/F authors of all time would end up being women from the past 20 years. He's right too, I'd bet Harry Potter outsold the lord of the rings and probably by a huge margin.
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Oct 14, 2013 22:04
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DontMockMySmock posted:A short list of best-selling English-language non-children's sci-fi/fantasy authors, distilled from here: Haha, my mom read dean koontz novels when i was a kid and i stole some of them. They're basically proto-twilight. Horrible romance novels with bad sex scenes and dumb sci-fi themes such as time-traveling nazis (seriously).
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Oct 14, 2013 22:23
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House Louse posted:They've got sf/f in them, but not a majority of sf/f. I am honestly not sure what you mean by this.
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Oct 14, 2013 22:25
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systran posted:In Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space series there is a subplot about a man being a spaceship. There is also a disembodied brain running a spaceship in one of his short stories set in the Rev. Space universe. There's a 3-(4?)-generations-removed human consciousness that controls a ship in house of Suns as well.
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Nov 10, 2013 15:59
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Snuffman posted:So I just finished "Inverted World" by Christopher Priest and I really really liked it. I just loved how the strange setting was revealed layer by layer. I liked inverted world as well although I thought the climax fell a little short.
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Nov 12, 2013 23:53
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Irony.or.Death posted:So, Hyperion. Just finished it this morning and I feel fairly confident that it ended on the highest note it's going to reach but somehow there are three(?) more books. I remember seeing a couple people in here say that Fall was also good, which seems totally implausible but I am curious enough that I have to at least ask for more opinions. Stick it out for one more book, or abandon ship now and pretend he never wrote another word so I can say I genuinely liked the thing? Walk away.
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Nov 28, 2013 20:01
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Any recommendations for good audiobooks? I am nearing completion on the 6 dune novels and have Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell queued up but I have a credit to burn on audible and would like to find something to use it on. I don't much care if it's a novel I've read before, i'm more interested in good performance.
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Dec 10, 2013 21:52
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Hedrigall posted:Mark Bramhall reading Lev Grossman's The Magicians is my favourite audiobook performance I've ever heard. He perfectly captures the atmosphere of the book, and does the characters' voices excellently. I've read it, thanks. I'll keep it in mind. FWIW Dune is awesome, i've mentioned it before but the audio cast is phenomenal, especially the VA for the baron harkonnen.
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Dec 11, 2013 04:48
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