|
occamsnailfile posted:I was once talking to a guy who didn't think the Honorverse was political. I mentioned the scene in which the only self-identified "Liberal" character in the series proceeded to make a strawman declaration about how the two warring Christian fanatic groups should "just make peace" and kept refusing to engage a proper military solution until Honor punched him in the mouth. He didn't think that was a political statement, just that one guy being an rear end in a top hat. "shooting the bad mans" is absolutely political. It's the kind of political for idiots basically, the kind of idiots who say "I'm not political". Guess what, you're living in a society, you're political.
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 00:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 00:44 |
|
|
The People's Republic of Haven was definitely the most fun and interesting thing in those books. If Rob S. Pierre doesn't make you smile, I don't know what to say. The petty bickering of Oscar and Cordelia. And Citizen Admiral Cluster Bomb.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 00:37
|
|
|
fritz posted:I will never get over "Rob S. Pierre". My favorite part of that is not only is he named that, but he's LITERALLY Robespierre In Space. General Battuta posted:Dude she’s like...fifty plus, maybe past sixty. I mean it’s not ideal, but they do go to great pains to avoid acting on their feelings until they’re out of the same chain of command and any direct military hierarchy. To be fair to them, the setting makes aging largely irrelevant so it's very easy to forget that she's suppose to be fairly old. pmchem posted:yeah, I read On Basilisk Station after seeing that book (and series) on a bunch of "best of" space sci-fi lists. It was an enjoyable book but I couldn't be bothered to get the next one in the series. It wasn't really special in any particular manner. Honestly it struck me as better for like, a teenage girl than a general audience. Role models and all that. On Basilisk Station is easily the best book in the series. The quality drop is immediate once you get to book two and you get to the Chivalrous Chauvinists Who Are All Super Nice Guys, Honest but in reality gently caress Grayson and everything related them. Though On Basilisk Station did its best to tank itself at the very end when it decided to interrupt its climatic battle with a completely irrelevant info dump that could have been placed better anywhere else.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 03:13
|
|
|
dang we had an entire 3-page honorverse chat without mentioning the Space Mormons' magical Instant Shipbuilding Infrastructure powers
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 04:30
|
|
|
I hate them and their magical naval bootstraps so much. Delete them and you could delete all the explanations of armsmen and steadholders and thereby remove at least 10% of the series wordcount. And there would be no katanas of any sort
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 04:35
|
|
|
That said I kind of like the second book, the villains are even worse than the people Honor has to defend, there’s a great final battle and an honest-to-god beam engagement for (nearly) the last time in the books. It would’ve been satisfying if she saved their planet out of duty and then left their lovely planet forever. Imagine if all the Grayson wordcount were spent on Beowulf. gently caress I am embarrassed to know this much about these books.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 04:39
|
|
|
PupsOfWar posted:dang we had an entire 3-page honorverse chat without mentioning the Space Mormons' magical Instant Shipbuilding Infrastructure powers I had actually almost forgotten that. Why did I almost forget that? I also really liked the whole explanation that part of the reason why the Solarian League ships suck is because they made them look cool at the cost of them being worthless. EDIT: Oh man I also almost forgot the whole thing Weber had about how perfect the Grayson religion is, because of its amazing innovation in religion: denominationism! Which is apparently a huge step forward in tolerance and proves how righteous they are (but the moment you step just slightly out of line with orthodoxy you die). Kchama fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Jun 2, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 05:03
|
|
|
Don't forget the space mormons are also space samurai who use the perfect space sword (which is a katana, obv) because of course Weber is a massive loving weeb. I also read some of these terrible books!
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 05:41
|
|
|
branedotorg posted:As a hypothetical question is it more moral to uplift animals or create a 'servant' race is interesting and could make a good debate. i'd take her criticisms with a grain of salt while assuming brin is a bit of a dick. any other POVs from the day? I know this is from a day ago but I just want to point out -- the person whose bio you have quoted (Sara the Black) is not the same person who wrote that Facebook post about Brin (Sumiko Saulson). It's the bio of a person she interviewed on her blog. Not to bring back any debate about whether that bio would somehow negate what she wrote in that post, but I think when making that judgment it's important to actually have the correct person.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 06:06
|
|
|
I only read as much Weber as I did thanks to that discontinued BaenCD thing Baen Books used to do(it existed to drum up interest in ebooks before ebooks became mainstream reading options). Most of the details of Weber's Honorverse have been forgotten (happily besides the Honor Harrington = textbook example of a Mary Sue Protagonist), no idea how everyone else is remembering all these random Weber things if they also all read any Abercrombie/Hamilton/Asher/Erikson/Brust/Scalzi/Bujold/Sanderson/LeGuin/Drake/Vinge, etc.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 11:31
|
|
|
It's hard for me to read a book to completion and not retain most of the plot, character and worldbuilding, even if (or perhaps especially if) I had serious criticisms along the way. Weber is right at the sweet spot of "good enough to keep reading" and "annoying enough to start taking notes early". But it's also a factor of the time. I feel like the Honorverse books came out during a time in which there wasn't a lot of good space opera coming out, but that could be false memory.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 11:39
|
|
|
Kesper North posted:It's hard for me to read a book to completion and not retain most of the plot, character and worldbuilding, even if (or perhaps especially if) I had serious criticisms along the way. Weber is right at the sweet spot of "good enough to keep reading" and "annoying enough to start taking notes early". I mean, it's not like Honorverse was good either. Kind of a poo poo sandwich sort of thing. Also I hate not finishing things, and I have a tendency to talk to people about stuff I hate. So I remember a lot of it. Also pretty sure the Pearls of Weber site is still up with all of its bullshit on the Honorverse, direct from Weber. Having said that, even I got tired of Weber's awfulness years ago and stopped reading.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 12:20
|
|
|
I've never read any of the Honor Harrington books, but I'm getting the impression that having read Dread Empire's Fall I don't need to bother.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 12:47
|
|
|
Weber was my first introduction to space opera so I do have a sort of residual fondness for him despite the fact that he's an objectively terrible writer.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 14:43
|
|
|
I don't agree that Honorverse is "space opera". It's tedious Mil-SciFi at best. When I think Space Opera, something like Green's Deathstalker series comes to mind.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 15:32
|
|
|
Today's daily Amazon Kindle deals are actually great - there's Broken Stars, The Raven Tower, and A Memory Called Empire that I noticed right away as things people would care about. Feel free to sing out if anything else is good cause I'm always down to drop a few bucks on good books. (filtering specifically SF also shows the sequel to City of Brass, plus a bunch of other stuff I've never heard of)
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 15:47
|
|
|
Proteus Jones posted:I don't agree that Honorverse is "space opera". It's tedious Mil-SciFi at best. Controversial opinion time: I found Deathstalker to be tedious and boring, to the point that I quit halfway through the first book because the main character was such a gary stu and could get out of anything blah blah blah Meanwhile Honor at least has cool starship stuff going for it. I haven't finished its first book either but I like it better.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 16:07
|
|
|
Kesper North posted:It's hard for me to read a book to completion and not retain most of the plot, character and worldbuilding, even if (or perhaps especially if) I had serious criticisms along the way. Weber is right at the sweet spot of "good enough to keep reading" and "annoying enough to start taking notes early". Looking at his publication order, he got started 4 years before Hamilton as one example. The Gap cycle came out before. And at the same time as Banks. All who arguably seems better than Weber. Possibly he just got lucky with a certain type of sci-fi aimed at teenagers and got lucky with timing, in a similar vein to Twilight or Harry Potter series. Reading a pulpy sci-fi/fantasy series is IMO a requisite to appreciate the field. Dragonlance and battle tech comes to mind here.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 16:40
|
|
|
Has anybody read the books in Linda Nagata's Nanotech Succession series? I picked up the latest one because I heard it was meant as a good jumping-in point but I'm not ready to dive into a new universe just yet. I adore her mil sci-fi.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 16:48
|
|
|
the Honorverse is bad for so many reasons, not just Weber's awful politics (which can most charitably be called fascist). I mean he's not Kratman, but he's getting close (Am I the only poster who has read A Desert Called Peace? If you haven't, don't). For example the entire 'science' setup to make the only way for spaceships to fight each other be with large, close range broadsides is loving awful. Also devoting literally 100 pages in the first Honorverse novel to the politics of the Manticoran navy -- when you don't know who any of the characters are because there's no exposition. Also, is Jerry Pournelle a creep? I have always had a suspicion reading the way he writes women (cringe). Seven Hundred Bee fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Jun 2, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 17:02
|
|
|
Literally the introduction to Honor as a character is derailed by a ~20 page section discussing the details of a debate over how to arm ships when you don't even know what the plot of the book is or any characters
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 17:06
|
|
|
DACK FAYDEN posted:Today's daily Amazon Kindle deals are actually great - there's Broken Stars, The Raven Tower, and A Memory Called Empire that I noticed right away as things people would care about. Feel free to sing out if anything else is good cause I'm always down to drop a few bucks on good books. These are some good ones--def recommend Kingdom of Copper if you liked Brass at all, she's improved her pacing from the first book. Also there's A People's Future of The United States which is a short story collection I've been wanting, and The Luminous Dead.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 17:30
|
|
|
Seven Hundred Bee posted:Literally the introduction to Honor as a character is derailed by a ~20 page section discussing the details of a debate over how to arm ships when you don't even know what the plot of the book is or any characters And people complain about the first 100 pages of LotR.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 18:22
|
|
|
People complain about the Catalogue of Ships, so loving what
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 18:33
|
|
|
I only read the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy because one of my friends loved it and gave me the books, but it was worse than the worst Honor Harrington novel
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 18:35
|
|
|
also David Weber started a series with an ok concept -- humanity is attacked by a genocidal race of aliens who detect technology, and the last survivors are placed on a planet with a manufactured religion that suppresses technology -- and turned it into a 10 book and counting series about mid-17th century church politics and detailed descriptions of a semaphore system he and Ringo also did a series about a prince who crash lands on an alien world with his marine bodyguard and spends 3 books genociding his way to freedom. lots of great descriptions about shooting unarmed civilians and why that's a good thing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 18:45
|
|
|
ill admit i enjoyed the bits of the March Upcountry series where they were just sorta tackling the logistics of doing Pike+Shot tactics with ten-foot alien hexapods overall though the only Weber I'd ever actually recommend to anyone is Path of the Fury (the original one, not the awful extended edition) FuturePastNow posted:I only read the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy because one of my friends loved it and gave me the books, but it was worse than the worst Honor Harrington novel dread empire's fall is good imho it's probably bad if you're expecting it to deliver on swashbuckling space opera action, but when i read it i figured "oh, this is some sort of weird Comedy of Manners, wasn't expecting that but cool" (also maybe a bit of satire of the modern western MIC)
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:00
|
|
|
the only good part of march upcountry was the prince's name. david weber isn't really that hard to understand, his entire worldview is 'the british colonial empire in the 1700 and 1800s was humanity's peak' and therefore any non-humans in his books are stand ins for colonized people that are being helped by the grace of humans because the white man's burden is real and good.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:06
|
|
|
Ferrosol posted:Weber was my first introduction to space opera so I do have a sort of residual fondness for him despite the fact that he's an objectively terrible writer. This is pretty much where I stand, I couldn't re-read those books these days but they were fun 20 years ago or whatever, and I tried. Seven Hundred Bee posted:also David Weber started a series with an ok concept -- humanity is attacked by a genocidal race of aliens who detect technology, and the last survivors are placed on a planet with a manufactured religion that suppresses technology -- and turned it into a 10 book and counting series about mid-17th century church politics and detailed descriptions of a semaphore system The Safehold books had some interesting ideas but got really stretched thin. It's the same type of thing that affects stuff like Star Wars - the desire to explain every single character's backstory and play out multiple stories in this world. Which might be interesting if the stories came to some point of completion, but they end up being re-treads. (Tangentally, this is why I don't like most MMO storylines/game design and much preferred games with campaigns and discrete missions. There's a story flow and an ending eventually.) If you want a real treat, check out Weber's Dahak series. If you thought Honor was a Mary Sue wait until you read about the main character in those books. He wrote them just before the first Honor Harrington books so the feel is the same. Here, let me just paste the Wikipedia summary, it does a good job of laying it all out (pretty sure this is just the jacket cover text or something): quote:For Colin MacIntyre, it began with a routine training flight over the moon. For Dahak, a self-aware Imperial battleship, it began millennia ago, standing guard against an unknown enemy which once devastated the galaxy - and now has returned. So Dahak grabbed MacIntyre's ship and informed him that he was drafted to be its new captain and lead the fight against the ancient enemy. MacIntyre had doubts that he could handle the job, but Dahak had definitely picked the right man.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:11
|
|
|
Dahak's rad though because the premise is "the moon is an alien battleship." Shame about the development of that premise, because Weber, but it's better than Honor Harrington because instead of torpedo salvo spreadsheets, you get a giant spaceship that's been pretending to be the moon.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:18
|
|
|
Another early Weber that isn’t terrible is The Apocalypse Troll.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:19
|
|
|
there's clearly a demand in the public for fiction that simply presents expert people doing things expertly hence The Martian becoming such a smash phenomenon i think this is probably because in modernity we're all so alienated from the process of production & creation (like half of us have jobs that shouldn't exist or whose function we do not really understand, etc) that the mere premise of problem-solving thru skilled labor is as much of an escapist fantasy as looting temples and banging hot aliens/elves whatever the reason, i would probably respect MilSF more as a subgenre if most of it consisted of harried staff officers trying to figure their way out of some thorny unglamorous technical conundrum, a la kj parker's 16 Ways PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jun 2, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:20
|
|
|
PupsOfWar posted:dread empire's fall is good imho This right, as a study of its two main characters bumping into their static society and knocking pieces off it’s good.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:42
|
|
|
PupsOfWar posted:
The comedy of manners just made me root for all the characters to die horribly. YMMV
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:43
|
|
|
PupsOfWar posted:there's clearly a demand in the public for fiction that simply presents expert people doing things expertly There's also a lot of people who believe that Hard Men Making Hard Choices ends up for the greater good, rather than what we actually end up with. MilSF is far too often about how our civilized pretenses must be urgently set aside or we will die/become communist and how we should be grateful to the Jacks Bauer out there and not questioning their need to commit atrocities. But yes, I would like MilSF more if it was about the actual process of doing military stuff and less masturbation over weapons systems--Weber is perhaps the most grievous offender but certainly not the only.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:43
|
|
|
PupsOfWar posted:there's clearly a demand in the public for fiction that simply presents expert people doing things expertly I think the farce of modern SJW praise for weakness and fringe status as a supposed moral good has made people wistful for arete.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:47
|
|
|
Drone Jett posted:I think the farce of modern SJW praise for weakness and fringe status as a supposed moral good has made people wistful for arete. That’s dumb as poo poo, congrats.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:52
|
|
|
Drone Jett posted:I think the farce of modern SJW praise for weakness and fringe status as a supposed moral good has made people wistful for arete. What the gently caress does this even mean
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:54
|
|
|
Drone Jett posted:I think the farce of modern SJW praise for weakness and fringe status as a supposed moral good has made people wistful for arete. Drone Jett posted:I think this is an example of the phenomenon where the very bright leftists know certain uncomfortable truths that they don't think the people can be trusted to deal with so they lie as a matter of course and punish those who tell the truth in concert with the mid-wit true believers who really think that stuff is actually true rather than merely necessary to pretend to believe for the greater good. Not sure if age or a growing realization that modern genetics is inevitably eroding the ability maintain the cover story is the reason for his break in this case. Haha I think we all know what ‘uncomfortable truths’ were about to be revealed by ‘modern genetics’ now 
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 00:44 |
|
|
hoo boy
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2019 19:57
|
|