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Aerdan posted:Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are the only even remotely decent books he's ever written. The entire rest of his work can be safely ignored. Ender's Shadow is actually better than Ender's Game, imo, because Bean is inherently a more interesting character than Perfect Boy Ender. Additionally, it doesn't have as much focus on the "Ender is the only one of these super smart genius kids who ever considered using basic tactics" stuff. Neither is actually good, but they're easily the two best things he's ever written.
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Jul 22, 2019 05:04
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i read the ender's game sequels as a teenager and shockingly I remember like, details from Heinlein's godawful books like Stranger in a Strange Land, but not a single loving thing about card's books besides it being notable for being one of like two sci fi series that is magic high technology sci fi but without FTL. usually if a setting has no FTL its because it's an Alistair Reynolds esque depression fest and everyone except for rich people is basically a normal person from today
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Jul 22, 2019 08:09
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What I'm saying is that they're so bad that I burned it out of my memory which is especially hard since I'm one of those weirdos who can easily memorize stuff as long as it's written down
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Jul 22, 2019 08:11
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I also read all of the Ender's Game sequels 15ish years ago and the only little thing I think I remember is the box you could get in and move faster than light with your mind... or something.
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Jul 22, 2019 11:58
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Arcsquad12 posted:So you got to the end of Necropolis. I know a lot of people swear by Necropolis as being "where the series gets good" but the two books that follow necropolis I didn't enjoy that much. I also recall that Abnett had lost his original manuscript for Honor Guard (book 4) and man does it show. Generally willing to endure a mediocre world-building setup novel; example: Yoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit or Paul McAuley's Quiet War; if any of the associated short stories or followup novels are good/engaging. Looking back, I now realize that, that exact Dan Abnett story collection killed off my entire interest, and I never touched another book/story in the Black Library catalog after reading it, even Sandy Mitchell's (relatively light-toned in comparison) Cain series. AKA, I escaped the grim fantasy + hard fantasy settings of Warhammer Fantasy + Warhammer 40k years ago, and aren't going back. I gave Paul McAuley's Quiet War as an example. The first Quiet War series book was 75% world-building setup with beyond-hackneyed amoral corporations/sociopath corporate executive villains, flawless humble main characters getting relentlessly poo poo on by/back-stabbed by the sociopath villains and a To Be Continued(?) ending so telegraphed it was obvious about 40 minutes into the book. Having said that, the Quiet War novellas and short stories in the setting are usually interesting and good and cover the after-affects/ongoing issues of the setting while almost never featuring the boring main characters/hackneyed villains I found so tedious in the 1st book. Having said that x2: I still fear to read any of the full length Quiet War followup novels, because mother-of-satan those main characters and sociopath villains were so loving hackneyed and tedious and aghhh... 
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Jul 22, 2019 11:59
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Vatta's War series has a random moment where the plotters that are trying to take over the galaxy upgrade to completely insane evil and uh, it doesn't even make sense for them to do it.
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Jul 22, 2019 15:00
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Khizan posted:Ender's Shadow is actually better than Ender's Game, imo, because Bean is inherently a more interesting character than Perfect Boy Ender. Additionally, it doesn't have as much focus on the "Ender is the only one of these super smart genius kids who ever considered using basic tactics" stuff. Neither is actually good, but they're easily the two best things he's ever written. I'd call them pretty terrible but also yes, the best he's ever written. Oh man most of the plot escapes me now but Hart's Hope is one of those books where somehow the big bad is the person I rooted for because everyone else was loving awful in every way and she had a drat good reason for wanting to make them all suffer.
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Jul 22, 2019 18:53
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how many people have been tricked into reading bad OSC books due to the great john harris cover art is john harris the sci-fi publishing industry's greatest criminal
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Jul 22, 2019 18:55
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On the other hand, physical Baen Book titles are easily identified, and avoided what you know what to look for. -Overall glossiness of the book cover + book art-cover -Huge ALL CAPS fonts for the author name + smaller font for the title
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Jul 22, 2019 19:20
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:On the other hand, physical Baen Book titles are easily identified, and avoided what you know what to look for. Also being so awful that a dark miasma radiates from them, filling the air with sickening.
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Jul 22, 2019 20:41
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:On the other hand, physical Baen Book titles are easily identified, and avoided what you know what to look for. Kchama posted:Also being so awful that a dark miasma radiates from them, filling the air with sickening. Let me tell you it was the weirdest feeling to pick up the Seer and go "oh I like this coverart" and then see Baen on the spine. It was like I'd walked into a parallel dimension.
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Jul 22, 2019 20:48
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Oops, posted this in the wrong thread, reposting in correct thread. Also I remember physical Baen Book hardcovers always being thick in comparison to other publisher's hardcovers. Given how I haven't touched an Baen Book hardcover in almost a decade, this might be memory over-exaggeration though. Earlier in this thread I said the Bolo expanded compilations published by Baen Books weren't worth reading/an active waste of paper pulp better suited for making bathroom sanitary products, the thickness of the Baen hardcover books + the shinyness of the covers makes me wonder what kind of long-term deal Jim Baen signed with his paper supplier. No questions about the printing/printing press contracts though, the sheer volume that Baen Books puts out pretty much assured a good printing contract deal. Was the paper supplier a family member/was someone at Baen really good friends with a papermill owner/or own stock in a wood processing company? Or something more weird like smuggled paper/remaindered acid-free test reams of paper,......or, very fitting for the genres Baen Books specialize in, did the raw wood pulp come from a area in eastern Europe, say around the region of Belarus + Ukraine? <waves Geiger counter at a stack of Bolo/1632/Honorverse hardcovers> cra...crackle.crackle.CRACKLE..CRACKLE.CRACKLE.CRACKLE.crackle.
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Jul 23, 2019 12:20
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Oops, posted this in the wrong thread, reposting in correct thread. I have a feeling Baen hardcovers probably sell at a higher % than most other publishers hardcovers, letting them spend and extra $1 on higher quality paper. Many of their hardcore fans infamously double dip(sometimes triple now with audible) on both the earc and on the hardcover. Also selling your e-arcs are probably one of the most brilliant decisions that has ever been made and I'm still shocked that other publishers haven't started doing it.
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Jul 23, 2019 14:41
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ShinsoBEAM! posted:I have a feeling Baen hardcovers probably sell at a higher % than most other publishers hardcovers, letting them spend and extra $1 on higher quality paper. Many of their hardcore fans infamously double dip(sometimes triple now with audible) on both the earc and on the hardcover. Also selling your e-arcs are probably one of the most brilliant decisions that has ever been made and I'm still shocked that other publishers haven't started doing it. High end slip covers: definitely agree that Baen spent the extra cash on higher quality paper for the Baen hardcover books I saw. Unsure about inside the hardcover book paper, because as I said one post up, it's been almost a decade since I touched one. eARC/e-arc: had too look up that word(wording). Monetizing or pre-ordering digital advance reader copies is definitely trend setting, but after all isn't that what John Scalzi has been doing for the past 3/4 years with his KindleSingles? More serious answer: think being hooked into the Amazon Kindle/AppleBooks infrastructure is a walled garden other major publishers can't easily escape from/are addicted to the effortless cash flow from. Even if they did escape, that would mean spending decent chunks of money self-funding(GASP) a similar program, and suffering through one or three bad financial quarters, which is a big NOPE for 95% of them. I've seen niche publishers not 100% hooked into the Amazon Kindle/AppleBooks infrastructure offer the option of multiple digital formats, ie mobi epub pdf kobo etc,...mostly digital magazine subscriptions or humble bundle's book offerings. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jul 23, 2019 |
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Jul 23, 2019 16:34
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Here's another post on Actually Good Mil Scifi: Zone War by John Conroe. It's the near future, and autonomous warfare is ubiquitous because strong AI exists. Not the typical sci fi version, where they're all basically sentient and hyper intelligent, but the BRIC nations and the USA have been developing increasingly sophisticated autonomous drones to the point where they have limited self learning capabilities. So, some terrorists get their hands on a giant pile of midrange drones and a few insanely powerful command and control platforms designed to run an entire battle's drone component. They load 'em up on a container ship, sail it to Manhattan, and four hundred thousand people die in a night. The government seals it up, and now its basically escape from New York. Large incursions of troops get slapped down by the drone network too easily, but small teams can slip in, so we join our main character jacking poo poo out of Manhattan to sell, which is legal for some reason. Maybe I wrote too much about the set up for the book but it's pretty good. I ain't infantry and I definitely ain't a sniper (which is what the main character is supposed to be) so I dunno how much is pure fantasy and how much is speculation on what 2060's urban combat looks like. It's good as hell though, and cheap
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Jul 24, 2019 10:16
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The bits from Stanislaw Lem's Peace On Earth regarding telepresence robot bodies, and automated drones were sci-fi/mil-scifi as hell and am very sad no one in the scifi or mil-scifi genres really followed up on that. Lem dreamed up a standard spy/police informant robo-cockroach, then there was enviro-weapon drones that hunter/killered out crops/invasive species/fought or enhanced global warming/planted incriminating evidence, then there was a very special swarm style of drones, which being sandgrain-sized could be deployed dispersed over miles and miles over a continent then "swarm" together at the target site and oh possibly blow the gently caress up. The kindle version of Lem's Peace on Earth goes on sale every so often, definitely check it out because the telepresence robot bodies and drone stuff took up a solid 50%+ of the book.
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Jul 24, 2019 14:00
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Larry Parrish posted:Here's another post on Actually Good Mil Scifi: Zone War by John Conroe. That sounds like the novelization of the newest Olympus has Fallen movie.
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Jul 24, 2019 14:51
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:eARC/e-arc: had too look up that word(wording). Monetizing or pre-ordering digital advance reader copies is definitely trend setting, but after all isn't that what John Scalzi has been doing for the past 3/4 years with his KindleSingles? More serious answer: think being hooked into the Amazon Kindle/AppleBooks infrastructure is a walled garden other major publishers can't easily escape from/are addicted to the effortless cash flow from. Even if they did escape, that would mean spending decent chunks of money self-funding(GASP) a similar program, and suffering through one or three bad financial quarters, which is a big NOPE for 95% of them 3-4 years is nothing, Baen's been doing e-arcs for 20 years I think. Yeah Baen escaped that trap because they were selling e-books before kindles and what not were even a thing, otherwise I'm sure they would of fallen into it like all the others. Back in the day they would just email you a html/rtf file to read on your computer or maybe a download link, I just remember having to struggling with Mozilla to have it properly display the book.
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Jul 24, 2019 20:23
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Combat! the old tv series is pretty badass in retrospect and should be required watching for any mil-fiction or mil-scifi writers, and merely highly recommended viewing material for fans of either genre. Watched all of season 1, about to dive into season 2. Movie quality action/combat scenes, streaks of humor, likeable characters getting killed off, and very realistic deadening-inside over time of the main character constantly going on patrol/into combat situations. Only diss for the Combat! series is that it was shot in B&W, and since it was a network tv show, people expecting Saving Private Ryan style gore/blood will be massively disappointed. Just the life of the actors outside of the Combat! tv series is pretty interesting. Vic Morrow was so badass he could only be killed by the literally criminally negligent conduct of John Landis. The brother of the guy playing the Cajun soldier was so badass, he stopped Denis Lortie's 1984 terrorist attack on Canadian parliment single-loving handedly. The season 1 platoon medic was played by a guy named Steven Rogers, who funnily had the exact physique/build of Captain America, pre-SuperSoldier serum injection.
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Jul 27, 2019 00:00
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So, John Ringo and actually competent author Mike Massa out out a joint book earlier this month. It's a sequel to Ringo's zombie apocalypse series, which is basically a love letter to the Marines and the kind of hard core metal only a former army NCO could possibly think is cool in today's day (its nightwish and drowning pool ofc). But, like I said, unlike other Ringo collaboration novels, Mike Massa is actually good. Hes an actually competent author who isnt nearly as bad as Ringo about putting the brain damaged army vet version of Reddit memes directly into his novel. Anyway I re read all the novels prior to this but got tired of the anthology halfway through so I skipped that one. The only truly good story in it anyway was, ironically, one that was by Massa that inspires Massa's follow on novels. The original 4 suck. Ringo's idea for how a zombie apocalypse happens is shockingly not horrible but it's just DRIPPING with 'look at me, I actually googled some poo poo around before I turned in my manuscript!'. In typical Ringo fashion our heros rapidly establish command economy socialism (or in this specific case, call it naval syndicalism), remark about how amazingly well it works, and then say they miss capitalism for some reason. One of the main characters is a buff rear end 13 year old girl which would be cool and/or funny if it wasnt for how many times people point out that shes hot jailbait. Like I get making that kind of joke to gently caress with someone but not like, to the actual teenagers face. Anyway if you've read one Ringo novel you've all four of these. Where it gets good is Mike Massa fleshing out what, exactly, is happening in New York City while the apocalypse slowly unfolds. He even finds a way to plausibly explain Ringo's hilarious setup where all the power and cell infrastructure in NYC goes down at the same time at a tense moment for the original book's heros. Basically these two novels take all the cool side characters from the first act of the first book and transform them into the only actually good writing to fall out of this turd of a series. Everyone is distinct and memorable and I liked them all, even the Specialist that is every Airman/Private Snuffy story come to life like a tasmanian devil of stupid ideas and grift. The book set in New York honestly had me on the edge of my seat, it's basically a mob novel set in the end of the world and its loving great holy poo poo. The second one isnt as tense but is a good follow up and serves up Massa's alternate plot in a pretty good way. Franky this two book departure has a better ending than anything Ringo ever wrote (he hasn't ended any of his series besides march upcountry) Tl;dr read the two new john ringo novels because I dont think he actually wrote a single thing besides the dedication to Capt. Long lol. Do skip the first four books because they have all the subtlety of a tap out tshirt hanging off the skinny frame of an e-3 in the BX. Do not skip Massa's second book where he subtly makes fun of how Ringo makes communism the enemy without actually knowing that he describes communism as the true ideal system of organization Larry Parrish fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Jul 30, 2019 |
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Jul 30, 2019 12:19
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I've always thought zombie fiction was basically what john ringo wanted to be writing all along, it just took him a decade and a half to realize this as a microgenre the zombie apocalypse already tends to feature all of your standard john ringo fare - a faceless morally-null enemy who can be punished with infinite ultraviolence, the collapse of decadent modernity, the rise of the gruff independent survivalist, etc posleen are more or less zombies from space already Larry Parrish posted:One of the main characters is a buff rear end 13 year old girl which would be cool and/or funny if it wasnt for how many times people point out that shes hot jailbait. Like I get making that kind of joke to gently caress with someone but not like, to the actual teenagers face. it's amazing he's been able to use this same character so many times in so many different series without getting frankowski'd Larry Parrish posted:(he hasn't ended any of his series besides march upcountry) legacy of the aldenata had an ending! he just never got 'round to writing the sequel series he implied he was gonna write, about genociding the Space PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Jul 30, 2019 |
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Jul 30, 2019 13:56
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i should probably do a legacy of the aldenata effortpost in here at some point if ringo is gonna keep coming up quote:October 9th, 2004 47th panzer korps is pressured by leftists
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Jul 30, 2019 14:51
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PupsOfWar posted:i should probably do a legacy of the aldenata effortpost in here at some point if ringo is gonna keep coming up quote:WATCH ON THE RHINE BEGINS
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Jul 30, 2019 15:02
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PupsOfWar posted:i should probably do a legacy of the aldenata effortpost in here at some point if ringo is gonna keep coming up Please do! I read some of them years ago, and all I remember are: - a gigantic artillery piece that fired antimatter shells - the Army Corps of Engineer going all out on boobytraps - some dude in power armour getting flung through a building by a nuclear explosion So they had some decent spectacle, but since it's Ringo I'm assuming there was a bunch of awfulness that I didn't bother remembering.
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Jul 30, 2019 15:31
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The giant artillery piece was named after the sluggy freelance rabbit because all the soldiers loved that comic and read it and printed it out.
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Jul 30, 2019 15:39
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90s Cringe Rock posted:sluggy freelance rabbit Oh good lord that's a blast from the past.
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Jul 30, 2019 15:44
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You know what also owns? loving Crüxshadows. Winterborn truly captures the spirit of a true soldier and by saying some of the lyrics you can tell if another soldier is the real deal.
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Jul 30, 2019 16:15
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"Pause to Plug a Band" is the most iconic john ringo maneuver or perhaps the third-most iconic after "Bad Depictions of Dubiously Consensual Sex with a Suspicious Emphasis on Age Difference" and " Happenstance Genocide of Ethnic Group the Author Dislikes" the high point of the Plug a Band maneuver was when he went on an evanescence kick for several books that's...that's fine, john, but you're stretching credulity on the grim hard soldierly persona at this point
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Jul 30, 2019 16:45
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He listens to the same bands my 50 year old ESL teacher tia does, who definitely does not think of herself as a 'metalhead'
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Jul 30, 2019 19:28
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Also he keeps referencing that stupid rear end comic with the bit about there being no such thing as overkill in the zombie series (theres a reference to it in the mike massa ones but someone immediately slaps them down and calls them an idiot lmfao) but theres no invader zim esque murder rabbit thank god. In the council war series he straight up has it as a character
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Jul 30, 2019 19:29
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John Ringo makes the HH books look like high art
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Jul 30, 2019 19:33
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ToxicFrog posted:Please do! im gonna fucken do it, you degenerate cant stop me now
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Jul 30, 2019 19:34
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shovelbum posted:John Ringo makes the HH books look like high art Let's not say things we can't take back, now. 90s Cringe Rock posted:You know what also owns? loving Crüxshadows. Winterborn truly captures the spirit of a true soldier and by saying some of the lyrics you can tell if another soldier is the real deal. I actually totally forgotten Crüxshadows was a Ringo thing. When Ringo's stupid band loves was brought up I was just thinking "Man, at least he wasn't that loving Crüxshadows weirdo." but no, no he was.
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Jul 30, 2019 21:19
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Basically the entire lyrics of a cruxshadow song is the little foreword quote for some chapters in one of the epic zombie novels actually lol
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Jul 30, 2019 21:22
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Larry Parrish posted:Basically the entire lyrics of a cruxshadow song is the little foreword quote for some chapters in one of the epic zombie novels actually lol Maybe the real reason why Ringo was afraid to publish Ghost wasn't because it was just a thinly veiled masturbation guide as he claimed (though he seemed pretty eager to tell people about it and then get it published so I assume him saying that was just a way to hype up Baen's Bae over it) was because he was afraid people would think him lame for his musical choices. Which they should, to be fair.
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Jul 30, 2019 23:27
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Yes....the John Ringo discussion has started, as predicted in the OP many phases of the moon ago. Most memorable "Genocide of the Ethnic Groups that John Ringo hates" for me, was in the last Ringo book I bothered reading, Ringo's Troy Rising series aka the nu-ConnecticutYankee main character vs In that Troy Rising series, the StuffyCorruptAliens were so pissed at the main character, who was dark skinned + black haired, existing....that the aliens did the normal revenge orbital bombardments PLUS released a mutating airborne-bloodborne virus Earth-wide that made all future human babies into white-skinned/light haired Nordic godlings, effectively doing a Double Ethnic Genocide. My current favorite quasi-mil scifi story involves elements of alien lifeforms being forcibly deported to Earth in interstellar spaceships that never ever slow down, ragtag bands of human survivors living + flying around on the edges of the nu-Wasteland, the aliens atmosphere being toxic to Earth life while Earth air is similarly toxic to the alien lifeforms, downtown London being ground-zero impact point, human survivors using hand-lasers and grenades vs the horde of alien lifeform claws/psi-telepathy and literally winging-away on scavenged alien tech (you have no idea) when the danger is too immense, one of the side characters speaks exclusively in BBC presenter/UK Govt quotes, and oh yeah the alien lifeforms are 11 -15ft long dragonfly-beetle aliens. Would highly recommend others check it out, but unlikely you'll be able to find it easily....this story is very out-of-print.
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Jul 30, 2019 23:43
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Troy rising is probably Ringo's worst series on an ideological level because it consists nearly entirely of a ultra rich douchebag crying about mob democracy. Also, once again, it has an unnaturally badass hot blonde for Reasons
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Jul 31, 2019 00:15
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Oh and it's very anti hispanic lol. There is a lot of things wrong with the quasi-aristocratic section of the bougioise in South America but they are not, in fact, all womanizing racist stereotypes. Which they are in his book. If he wasnt portraying rich people I swear to god he would have dressed them all in ponchos and big mariachi hats
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Jul 31, 2019 00:17
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:My current favorite quasi-mil scifi story involves elements of alien lifeforms being forcibly deported to Earth in interstellar spaceships that never ever slow down, ragtag bands of human survivors living + flying around on the edges of the nu-Wasteland, the aliens atmosphere being toxic to Earth life while Earth air is similarly toxic to the alien lifeforms, downtown London being ground-zero impact point, human survivors using hand-lasers and grenades vs the horde of alien lifeform claws/psi-telepathy and literally winging-away on scavenged alien tech (you have no idea) when the danger is too immense, one of the side characters speaks exclusively in BBC presenter/UK Govt quotes, and oh yeah the alien lifeforms are 11 -15ft long dragonfly-beetle aliens. Would highly recommend others check it out, but unlikely you'll be able to find it easily....this story is very out-of-print. Well, it's pretty hard if you don't provide a title or author, yes!
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Jul 31, 2019 01:25
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Research for ringo Effortpost underway Kchama posted:
mysteriously he stopped overusing his former favorite song, March of Cambreath, after the singer came out as trans & transitioned
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Jul 31, 2019 03:10
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