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graventy posted:I mean I get that the details there are weird, but man or woman if you wake up in a strange body aren't you going to check yourself out? Not like that, dude. Not with those words.
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Oct 14, 2019 22:16
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wizzardstaff posted:Someone from the previous thread recommended Eifelheim and it finally came in from the library. Thanks for the tip. It's a slow burn but just starting to pick up. That was me, hope you enjoy it  The modern-day timeline is definitely jarring compared to the rest of the book - it makes more sense when you realise he originally wrote it as a novella in the 1980s where it was just the modern-day timeline, with researchers stumbling upon the truth that first contact had already happened, just from examining the historical record. But he uses it kind of cleverly throughout - sometimes you learn of stuff which will happen later on in the medieval timeline based on what the researchers have discovered, but then when it happens it plays out differently to how you expect, etc. And the ending of the book makes the modern story thread feel very much earned and necessary.
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Oct 14, 2019 23:26
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graventy posted:I mean I get that the details there are weird, but man or woman if you wake up in a strange body aren't you going to check yourself out? Uh no, obviously if you woke up in a female body the very first thing you would do is start playing with your own breasts then lasciviously describe their shape, firmness, texture, color, aureola color, nipple color, nipple sensitivity, nipple size, nipple length, and you'd obviously want to invest some time playing with them to see how responsive they, how that makes you feel etc.. Have you not like literally created a checklist for yourself for what you would do if you woke up in a female body? FYI, if you haven't you'll never be a successful sci-fi author, this is literally a huge part of the SFWA application.
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Oct 14, 2019 23:51
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pseudanonymous posted:Uh no, obviously if you woke up in a female body the very first thing you would do is start playing with your own breasts then lasciviously describe their shape, firmness, texture, color, aureola color, nipple color, nipple sensitivity, nipple size, nipple length, and you'd obviously want to invest some time playing with them to see how responsive they, how that makes you feel etc.. I might eventually do stuff like that, but figure one of my first thoughts would be "gently caress! Pissing is going to be way less convenient now! No more playing Lumberjack either."
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Oct 15, 2019 00:20
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freebooter posted:That was me, hope you enjoy it Oh, I definitely appreciate the modern timeline, it casts a third perspective on the medieval timeline because you know the broad strokes of how things end up. (The first two perspectives being Dietrich's POV and what we as sci fi readers can infer about the Krenken. And all three have some degree of unreliability, which is extremely my jam.) So yeah, thanks for the tip.
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Oct 15, 2019 04:11
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Owlkill posted:Children of Time is fantastic - can anyone recommend any of Tchaikovsky's other stuff? He seems to be a pretty prolific writer. I liked the novella ironclads about a libertarian/corporatist future war in Europe with mecha told from a grunts eye view.
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Oct 15, 2019 11:49
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I'm about a third to halfway through Quantum Thief and I'm having a hard time deciding if I like it. I think to some degree I'm kind of over sci-fi novels stubbornly refusing to explain things, but at the same time I'm happy it hasn't taken the time for big exposition dumps. I think maybe I feel like it just has too much going on so far? I like it enough to keep reading, so I'm hoping it all kind of shakes out in an interesting way by the end of the book.
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Oct 15, 2019 19:49
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I'm only a few chapters in and it hasn't quite grabbed me yet, but I'm going to give it more time.
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Oct 15, 2019 20:25
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm about a third to halfway through Quantum Thief and I'm having a hard time deciding if I like it. I think to some degree I'm kind of over sci-fi novels stubbornly refusing to explain things, but at the same time I'm happy it hasn't taken the time for big exposition dumps. I think maybe I feel like it just has too much going on so far? I like it enough to keep reading, so I'm hoping it all kind of shakes out in an interesting way by the end of the book.
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Oct 15, 2019 21:29
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I just got the Nov/Dec 2019 Analog, will try and remember to post which stories I like.
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Oct 16, 2019 02:11
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People who enjoyed Djinn City might want to check out The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by the same author. It's a novella and unlike Djinn City actually has an ending, all while being in the same "universe" as it were.
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Oct 16, 2019 23:02
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My review of Steel Frame by Andrew Skinner: Rook is the protagonist, a women who flies giant mechas, who spent her career rescuing downed jockeys from battlefields and getting them to medics. PTSD caught up with her, and a traumatic incident put her in jail, into a chain-gang on a giant starship stationed in the broken part of outer space. The Eye. The ocean, a region of space that has so much debris and strange physics going on that it's an ocean instead of void. Time works differently here. The various megacorps who constantly fight each other for the rest of space have a tense truce in the Eye, because it's all unexplored and there are treasures inside. Maybe. So Rook has been taken from prison and put into this region of space and because her megacorp isn't sure this place is profitable, its ships are crewed by an increasing ratio of convicts. This is where she meets the Juno. Her new giant mech, her shell. It's an antique, a prototype that's violent when she first meets it: it's rebelling, breaking from its restraints and trying to eke out a bit of space in its hangar. The only reason they can talk it down from more violence is because Rook is given its old jockey's helmet, which she uses to talk to it - but it forgives the deception and takes her as its pilot. Juno's old and traumatized from losing its old pilots. Rook's traumatized from losing jockeys she couldn't rescue in time. They're both traumatized but they fly well together, and if you as a reader cannot approach these two characters ready to try to understand them, this book won't work. It's entirely from Rook's POV. The plot? The plot is: Rook's part of a four-man unit of jockeys sent to explore some of the ruins in the ocean. They don't so much find horror as it finds them, and the plot escalates in action and horror: there's a devastating virus, there's an imprisoned thing, there are the other megacorps, and there's Rook's unit: Hail, another convict who leads them all. Salt, a giant of a man who carries his own trauma. Locust. Andrade. This book goes surprisingly wide, filling in details about the wars outside the ocean, where these broken convicts came from. It fills in the story of the megacorp they work for, the ones they're aiming against, everything. The book stays narrow, staying in Rook's head and following only what she's involved in. It's so deep, though. Rook is so, so compelling and understandable, and the Juno alien in the right ways, understandable in the right ways. I didn't know I could find a sci-fi book that hits everything I want: military sci-fi action, deep introspective psychological drama, horror, alien things, etc. Everything in this book sings just right and I didn't know it could exist without me having to write it. Author? You did good. Reader of this review? You gotta read this book. You gotta. The prose is hypnotic and you could drown in it. You deserve to enjoy this book.
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Oct 16, 2019 23:32
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That's quite a sales pitch. I'll check it out.
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Oct 17, 2019 00:00
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He sighed as he unsheathed his credit card.
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Oct 17, 2019 01:35
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help, i'm drowning in hypnotic prose!
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Oct 17, 2019 01:54
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Only 7 bux too. :-/
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Oct 17, 2019 03:23
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a foolish pianist posted:The Rook is incredibly aggravating in a men-writing-women-badly sort of way. There's lots of poo poo like this: Holy poo poo lmfao. I have a lot of sisters so I've always known how bullshit the... I guess you'd say, cultural conception of what men think women think like? is. It's so completely wrong its funny; it's like what a Tarantino villain would think. And this guy apparently wrote it straight out like it was clever Anyway yall mentioned the Goblin Emperor a while back and I gotta say I loved it. I really didn't think I'd ever get a fantasy book to make me feel sorry for a noble. They're always either just despite their unjust place in the world, or cartoon evil. But this guy is very relatable. Larry Parrish fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Oct 17, 2019 |
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Oct 17, 2019 09:19
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Larry Parrish posted:Holy poo poo lmfao. I have a lot of sisters so I've always known how bullshit the... I guess you'd say, cultural conception of what men think women think like? is. It's so completely wrong its funny; it's like what a Tarantino villain would think. And this guy apparently wrote it straight out like it was clever You might wanna look at the Seer by Sonia Orin Lyris, as it also features a dude who aspires to become a noble and succeeds and then spends a good chunk of the book drowning in way too much goddamned work. It's also a solid fantasy work about a girl who can see the future (sometimes, imperfectly) and the assassin/kidnapper sent to retrieve her. I enjoyed it a lot. Note that it's standalone but with room for a sequel, and the author wrote a sequel and then got into a thing with Baen so she's now publishing it via patreon.
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Oct 17, 2019 12:03
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I have other reading obligations, so I've only read one story from Analog so far. An Eye for an Eye, a first contact story between humans and an alien species with a very peculiar form of initial greeting. Continues from the same author's earlier story, published in 2018, about the events leading up to the human landing from that species` perspective.
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Oct 17, 2019 13:36
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StrixNebulosa posted:My review of Steel Frame by Andrew Skinner: e: At least it seems short. And hey, giant robots. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Oct 17, 2019 |
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Oct 17, 2019 17:43
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Started Children of Time and finding it really, compulsively readable. One tiny detail I loved (spoilering this even though I'm pretty sure everybody who hears about it will learn what kind of alien/animal the book is about) was how one of the spiders off-handedly mentions another should take "maybe 24 warriors" with her, the same way we'd say "maybe 20 or 30." Because of course they think in multiples of eight.
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Oct 18, 2019 08:59
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I'm starting on The Belgariad for the first time in several years, and it's a refreshing break from all the grim, serious sci-fi and fantasy and history I've been reading lately. They're not perfect books, and ideal for a YA audience, but I think there's something to be said as an adult for books that are just plain clean, wholesome fun.
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Oct 18, 2019 17:23
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Cythereal posted:I'm starting on The Belgariad for the first time in several years, and it's a refreshing break from all the grim, serious sci-fi and fantasy and history I've been reading lately. They're not perfect books, and ideal for a YA audience, but I think there's something to be said as an adult for books that are just plain clean, wholesome fun. Shame it was written by a child abuser.
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Oct 18, 2019 17:31
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Cythereal posted:I'm starting on The Belgariad for the first time in several years, and it's a refreshing break from all the grim, serious sci-fi and fantasy and history I've been reading lately. They're not perfect books, and ideal for a YA audience, but I think there's something to be said as an adult for books that are just plain clean, wholesome fun. Wholesome fun like locking children in cages.
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Oct 18, 2019 17:33
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StrixNebulosa posted:Shame it was written by a child abuser. Wait, what? This is the first I've heard of that.
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Oct 18, 2019 17:39
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StrixNebulosa posted:Shame it was written by a child abuser.
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Oct 18, 2019 17:39
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Cythereal posted:Wait, what? This is the first I've heard of that. It's in their wikipedia page with links to newspaper articles. I'm on phone so I can't link but IIRC they adopted children and the kids were found with lots and lots of bruises. e: oh and they went to jail for it
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Oct 18, 2019 17:47
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StrixNebulosa posted:It's in their wikipedia page with links to newspaper articles. I'm on phone so I can't link but IIRC they adopted children and the kids were found with lots and lots of bruises. gently caress.  I never thought to look into who Eddings is as a person.Welp. That just ruined my current reading experience.
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Oct 18, 2019 17:48
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Cythereal posted:gently caress. It sucks and I'm sorry.
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Oct 18, 2019 17:49
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StrixNebulosa posted:It's in their wikipedia page with links to newspaper articles. I'm on phone so I can't link but IIRC they adopted children and the kids were found with lots and lots of bruises. When I was a teenager I bought all their books. That included The Losers, an allegory written in the 70s but published decades later, after their success. There's a lot of anti-social-worker and anti-government content in it. At the end of the book, the protagonist delivers a few pages of monologue which a judge applauds while government lawyers look on impotently. It resembles those Facebook memes that go: "...and that student was Albert Einstein." At the time, I thought it was just some Randite wanking but after finding out about the child abuse and jail time... It looks a little different, particularly the venom directed at social workers.
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Oct 18, 2019 18:07
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StrixNebulosa posted:It's in their wikipedia page with links to newspaper articles. I'm on phone so I can't link but IIRC they adopted children and the kids were found with lots and lots of bruises. And lost custody of the kids. In 19 goddamn 69.
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Oct 18, 2019 19:25
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Well, the good news is you are free to enjoy the stories without having to worry that you are financially supporting a horrible person. Both he and his wife are long dead.
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Oct 18, 2019 19:27
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Owlkill posted:Children of Time is fantastic - can anyone recommend any of Tchaikovsky's other stuff? He seems to be a pretty prolific writer. I really enjoyed The Expert System's Brother
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Oct 18, 2019 21:05
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Well, the good news is you are free to enjoy the stories without having to worry that you are financially supporting a horrible person. Both he and his wife are long dead. Their estates are in trust at Reed College in the Language Arts section, with a direction to fund student tuition for scholars seeking to study secondary languages. So you can read about blue rocks in relative peace.
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Oct 18, 2019 23:16
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Anias posted:Their estates are in trust at Reed College in the Language Arts section, with a direction to fund student tuition for scholars seeking to study secondary languages. So you can read about blue rocks in relative peace. And the college library has a bunch of author notes and other materials in their special collections archive, which is neat to see. Still stinks that someone(s) who created such a formative series for me and many others turned out to be so horrible, though.
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Oct 18, 2019 23:25
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Anias posted:Their estates are in trust at Reed College in the Language Arts section, with a direction to fund student tuition for scholars seeking to study secondary languages. So you can read about blue rocks in relative peace. The relative peace of enjoying books about magical small girls who love to tease and kiss old men and sit on their laps as a form of control.
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Oct 18, 2019 23:28
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There wasn't much small girl being all kissy controlling old men in the belgariad or malloreon. There is a princess, but she was actually more commanding (literally, eventually) and whatnot than all girly hair and ponies and love. That was mostly in the other series he did. Kinda weird in retrospect but I still laughed when she confused the poo poo out of the troll gods by kissing one.
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Oct 18, 2019 23:59
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:There wasn't much small girl being all kissy controlling old men in the belgariad or malloreon. There is a princess, but she was actually more commanding (literally, eventually) and whatnot than all girly hair and ponies and love. Yeah. Ce'Nedra's annoying, but imo she's a pretty accurate depiction of a spoiled 15 year old girl. I did notice though, reading this series with adult eyes, that one of the heroes is a rapist and absolutely no one but his victim calls him on it. Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Well, the good news is you are free to enjoy the stories without having to worry that you are financially supporting a horrible person. Both he and his wife are long dead. I'm not financially supporting them, my local library is. 
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Oct 19, 2019 00:16
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I haven't read it in years but I must have missed the rapist part, who was it? Edit - oh poo poo, I just remembered the tale of belgarath and the dryads. drat, eddings did have some hosed up views.
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Oct 19, 2019 00:32
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I haven't read it in years but I must have missed the rapist part, who was it? Barak. When the gang departs Viking land, his wife talks about how she does her 'wifely duty,' even when Barak breaks down her locked bedroom door and forces her. She's his wife and will do her 'duty' no matter how brutal he may be at the time, as she puts it. No one comments that uh, Barak, buddy, you raped your wife. Instead because the rape produced a son it's treated as a magical thing that fixes everything between them.
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Oct 19, 2019 00:35
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