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a foolish pianist posted:pretty much just rightwing anti-liberal strawman, the novel: That crown (for me) is currently held by Directive 51 by John Barnes, which I was tricked into reading because he had a story in Lightspeed that I liked. A political sci-fi thriller where the antagonists are brainwashed tree-huggers being played as pawns by a cabal of nefarious plotters "somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan".
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Oct 24, 2019 22:43
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Orson Scott Card's Empire has it's semi-retired marine protagonist rhetorically own his liberal college professor in class before being called on to thwart a leftist robot coup.
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Oct 24, 2019 22:53
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wizzardstaff posted:That crown (for me) is currently held by Directive 51 by John Barnes, which I was tricked into reading because he had a story in Lightspeed that I liked. A political sci-fi thriller where the antagonists are brainwashed tree-huggers being played as pawns by a cabal of nefarious plotters "somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan". John Barnes is semi-unique because his mind broke years before everyone else's did. The 1990's Bosnian War was John Barnes 9/11 event, and Barnes's very hosed up Kaleidoscope Century was the result.
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Oct 24, 2019 23:39
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The first book was decent, and had a hell of a cliffhanger. I thought it was gonna be a bangin new sci fi series. Then I tried to read the second one and yea, it was a combination of a sad trombone noise and a fart. I liked the idea of "nanoplague destroys all plastics and metals, what happens to civilization? DUHN DUHN DUUUUNNNNN" as a plot, but then it kinda meandered into just dumb poo poo. Honestly I was hoping for aliens to show up.
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Oct 24, 2019 23:46
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Speaking of Simmons I had real trouble with the Terror because my god he had to repeatedly have pov characters obsess over how animalistic and slutty the natives were. Like in the first fifty pages I got to read two different descriptions of a young woman's public hair and how evil and alluring she was. Plus a comparison to how cold and distant this guy's wife was and how he only saw her pubic hair once. I was so deep into studying this tragedy that I had multiple nonfiction books out about it and I thought the Terror would be a cool supernatural take on it but no! Racism and sexism and pubic hair.
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Oct 25, 2019 01:22
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I knew Orson Scott Card was a raving right-wing weirdo, but didn't realise Dan Simmons was. I was pretty young when I read the Hyperion series, which I think is all of his that I've read, but he didn't strike me as the type. Speaking of Simmons, I haven't read the book and have heard mixed things about it, but the TV adaptation of The Terror is absolutely amazing. Easily one of the best TV series of the decade, stellar performances, fantastic period set design, pitch perfect writing and dialogue, go and watch it if you haven't.
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Oct 25, 2019 01:23
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freebooter posted:I knew Orson Scott Card was a raving right-wing weirdo, but didn't realise Dan Simmons was. I was pretty young when I read the Hyperion series, which I think is all of his that I've read, but he didn't strike me as the type. I might just, thank you. It's an incredible concept, a horrifying tragedy, and fascinating to learn about.
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Oct 25, 2019 01:27
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Thranguy posted:Orson Scott Card's Empire has it's semi-retired marine protagonist rhetorically own his liberal college professor in class before being called on to thwart a leftist robot coup. Goddamn, you just reminded me of this poo poo. The thing is, your description, while accurate, doesn't even touch how absolutely schizophrenic that book was. Dunno if y'all knew this, but it's been adapted into a series, called Decker
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Oct 25, 2019 02:47
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Wasn't that also the big plot bit of that Trigger Warning book? Where the ex marine guy owns the libtards and then has to save em all from a school shooting terrorist or something like that?
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Oct 25, 2019 02:57
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I mean, rough manly soldier protects the civilians who despise him goes back to at least Kipling, and likely was longer. It's not surprising it pops up several times.
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Oct 25, 2019 03:32
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WRT Simmons and OSC and so on, I gather that Liu Cixin has been defending the Chinese concentration camps in recent interviews, so I figure I can cut a few books off my backlog.
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Oct 25, 2019 04:32
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Dunno who'd be interested in knowning, but if you are a Crowley fan, James A Moore has put out 2 books recently that has him in there and gives a bit more of his backstory. Boomtown and Where The Sun Goes To Die. Both are pretty good. Western fantasy, I guess, since you can't really call miners and horse thieves and whatnot "urban". I'm really enjoying the character of Slate. He makes a nice addition to the character of Crowley.
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Oct 25, 2019 04:54
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C.M. Kruger posted:WRT Simmons and OSC and so on, I gather that Liu Cixin has been defending the Chinese concentration camps in recent interviews, so I figure I can cut a few books off my backlog. The best part/strongest writing in 3 Body Problem was the Cultural Revolution/concentration camp stuff for me. Worst part of 3BP was the 70+ pages "5000 years of chinese history" presented as parables which I originally thought were mandated by the PRC for publishment worldwide. But I guess I was wrong, and now the best secretly subversive communist scifi book series award gets reverted back to the Strugatski(Strugatsky) brothers Noon Universe setting.
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Oct 25, 2019 04:58
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Honestly I was hoping for aliens to show up. I got to the end of the series and actually they did, everything was manipulated by mysterious aliens all along
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Oct 25, 2019 06:09
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StrixNebulosa posted:Speaking of Simmons I had real trouble with the Terror because my god he had to repeatedly have pov characters obsess over how animalistic and slutty the natives were. Like in the first fifty pages I got to read two different descriptions of a young woman's public hair and how evil and alluring she was. Plus a comparison to how cold and distant this guy's wife was and how he only saw her pubic hair once. I guess I have a higher tolerance for that after having been exposed to Lovecraft for a long time. The Terror is easily among the best things Simmons have written, although it (like so many other Simmons books) take a rapid plunge in quality in the latter part of the book. Also, seconding the TV adaption, which is great so far.
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Oct 25, 2019 07:01
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not sure how anyone got through all the remembrance of earth's past books and went 'oh yeah this dude is a commie'. the universe is such a horrible, hostile place. I really liked the first book and by the time I finished the third I loving hated it. anyway the concentration camp thing is whatever. if you need your sci fi author to be vocally anti-concentration camp you pretty much cant read any sci fi published in the last 20 years. theres very little leftist media out there in general, and in sci fi especially the best you can get outside of aforementioned soviet era novels is like, stuff by liberals that think big companies are bad.
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Oct 25, 2019 07:47
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Larry Parrish posted:anyway the concentration camp thing is whatever. if you need your sci fi author to be vocally anti-concentration camp you pretty much cant read any sci fi published in the last 20 years. theres very little leftist media out there in general, and in sci fi especially the best you can get outside of aforementioned soviet era novels is like, stuff by liberals that think big companies are bad. I don't think you have to be "leftist" to be against concentration camps. And there's a difference between wanting your authors to be "vocally anti-concentration camp" and wanting them to not be actively pro-concentration camp.
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Oct 25, 2019 10:29
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freebooter posted:I knew Orson Scott Card was a raving right-wing weirdo, but didn't realise Dan Simmons was. I was pretty young when I read the Hyperion series, which I think is all of his that I've read, but he didn't strike me as the type. In hindsight, the bit about the Muslim planet in the first book was kind of hinting at things to come. It also makes sense considering his portrayal of the evil Catholic church in the last 2 books, he's just doing the same thing as other vaguely anti-religious people in ignoring that Muslims are a religious minority with nowhere near the power and influence of Christian churches. Also he wrote stuff like Song of Kali long before going nuts and the portrayal of Indians in that is pretty goddamn racist (disclaimer: I initially liked it but looking back on it now... Yeeesh). quote:Worst part of 3BP was the 70+ pages "5000 years of chinese history" presented as parables which I originally thought were mandated by the PRC for publishment worldwide. Really? Those parables were cool and the mentions of figures from Chinese antiquity that I didn't know about was interesting.
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Oct 25, 2019 12:18
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Well, I just finished Peter Watts' Firefall, which is the omnibus of Blindsight and Echopraxia, and while Blindsight was a genuinely fascinating piece of existential horror, wheeeeeeeooo was Echopraxia a huge humming pile of poo poo stinking up my Kindle. It was boring as hell, but I really switched off when the vampires went from scary autistic predators into omnipotent space wizards who can line up beer glasses by stomping on the floor, and give you epilepsy by drumming their fingers.
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Oct 25, 2019 13:08
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Wachter posted:Well, I just finished Peter Watts' Firefall, which is the omnibus of Blindsight and Echopraxia, and while Blindsight was a genuinely fascinating piece of existential horror, wheeeeeeeooo was Echopraxia a huge humming pile of poo poo stinking up my Kindle. It was boring as hell, but I really switched off when the vampires went from scary autistic predators into omnipotent space wizards who can line up beer glasses by stomping on the floor, and give you epilepsy by drumming their fingers. I recently reread Blindsight and it was as great as I remembered it. I liked Echnopraxia just fine when it came out. No idea if it holds up on the reread, but I really wasn't bothered by your spoilers.
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Oct 25, 2019 13:17
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Just a reminder that there's plenty of time to (re)read A Night In the Lonesome October before Halloween.
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Oct 25, 2019 14:44
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Kassad posted:In hindsight, the bit about the Muslim planet in the first book was kind of hinting at things to come. It also makes sense considering his portrayal of the evil Catholic church in the last 2 books, he's just doing the same thing as other vaguely anti-religious people in ignoring that Muslims are a religious minority with nowhere near the power and influence of Christian churches. Yeah, he was really out there with his wild speculations about a majority Muslim society even existing, let alone how it might behave.
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Oct 25, 2019 15:01
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Ben Nevis posted:Just a reminder that there's plenty of time to (re)read A Night In the Lonesome October before Halloween. This is my third time and second year in a row I've managed to read it day-by-day
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Oct 25, 2019 15:08
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Absurd Alhazred posted:This is my third time and second year in a row I've managed to read it day-by-day I wanted to but it was checked out. Clearly I just need my own copy.
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Oct 25, 2019 15:18
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Ben Nevis posted:I wanted to but it was checked out. Clearly I just need my own copy. Just do it, it's so worth it. Such a cute little horror.
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Oct 25, 2019 15:24
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I got three of Martha Wells' Raksura books (the first three of these: https://www.marthawells.com/compendium/)in a humble bundle a few months ago, and I've blown through them pretty quickly. The first one seemed kinda YA, which isn't usually my thing, but I liked Murderbot enough to get through it, and I'm actually starting to enjoy these novels. I'm not sure I'd pay full price for them, but as part of a bundle, they're pretty worthwhile.
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Oct 25, 2019 15:47
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Kassad posted:Really? Those parables were cool and the mentions of figures from Chinese antiquity that I didn't know about was interesting. Blame it on blaseness due to over-exposure thanks to my reading habits (tons of non-fiction) and library browsing strategy. Due to my omnivorous library browsing strategy I've read lots of Chinese histories, ancient chinese myth, China during WW1, China during WW2, The Great Leap Forward/Cultural Revolution so I'd encountered those prehistoric chinese figures and chinese parables a few dozen times in non-fiction alone before reading 3 Body Problem. Also ran across that "one grain of rice/chessboard/doubling the amount each tile" 3BP parable a few times earlier in mathematics/physics/computer books, each time attributed to different ancient near-prehistoric arabic or indian scholars owning ancient rulers with their logic/wisdom. Sort of like how that "Yes Daddy. We Moved...Mommy said you'd probably be here." anecdote I've seen differently attributed to to John Von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Richard Feynman, etc is almost a Wilhelm scream in biographies and histories about great 20th century mathematicians and physicists.
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Oct 25, 2019 15:59
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I'm going to venture a guess that most Western readers of T3BP have little familiarity with Chinese history
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Oct 25, 2019 16:05
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True, was merely explaining WHY I was so blase on the 70+ pages of chinese parables in 3BP to Kassad. Each of the 3BP followup books had one or two interesting ideas. And thinking back, the final 3BP series book with the speed of light stuff/centuries dead missed hookups is pretty much how I envisioned Poul Anderson's 1970 Tau Zero ending really turning out. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 16:36
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Thank you thread for recommending Son of the Morning, it was a delightful surprise. How is the sequel? It’s so cheap I will get it anyway, but curious since these books don’t have much for reviews.
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Oct 25, 2019 16:39
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quantumfoam posted:Blame it on blaseness due to over-exposure thanks to my reading habits (tons of non-fiction) and library browsing strategy. Oh, that makes sense, yeah.
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Oct 25, 2019 17:10
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Hand Row posted:Thank you thread for recommending Son of the Morning, it was a delightful surprise. How is the sequel? It’s so cheap I will get it anyway, but curious since these books don’t have much for reviews.
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Oct 25, 2019 17:40
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Someone tell me about E E Knight's Vampire Earth series before I make an ill-considered decision.
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Oct 25, 2019 18:30
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StrixNebulosa posted:Someone tell me about E E Knight's Vampire Earth series before I make an ill-considered decision. I read four or five of them as they made my way around my family's "buy everything in the Waldenbooks sci fi/fantasy aisle" book club we had back in the day. I don't remember much about them but we kept buying them for a while. It was probably about on par with D&D novels, just featuring an animal themed military outfit going up against alien vampires occupying earth. Looks like its up to 11 books, so it must have some kind of following. Trying to think back on it (my memory is terrible), The Passage and Walking Dead come to mind, though I'm pretty sure these vampires were less feral. We eventually dropped it to keep up with the Saga of the Noble Dead books by Barb & JC Hendee coming out around the same time, and then those got dropped for Dresden Files and the urban fantasy witch and werewolf stuff before we all got kindles and went our own way.
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Oct 25, 2019 19:35
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are there any "classic feeling" fantasy adventure books where the protagonist is explicitly a gay man
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Oct 25, 2019 21:10
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tinaun posted:are there any "classic feeling" fantasy adventure books where the protagonist is explicitly a gay man https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005FPWUSA/
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Oct 25, 2019 21:17
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tinaun posted:are there any "classic feeling" fantasy adventure books where the protagonist is explicitly a gay man Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series came to mind though Wikipedia says the main characters are bisexual and they are about fantasy thief/spy stuff rather than classic fantasy adventure. So not really what you are looking for but I'll go ahead and post the mention.
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Oct 25, 2019 21:20
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bagrada posted:I read four or five of them as they made my way around my family's "buy everything in the Waldenbooks sci fi/fantasy aisle" book club we had back in the day. I don't remember much about them but we kept buying them for a while. It was probably about on par with D&D novels, just featuring an animal themed military outfit going up against alien vampires occupying earth. Looks like its up to 11 books, so it must have some kind of following. Trying to think back on it (my memory is terrible), The Passage and Walking Dead come to mind, though I'm pretty sure these vampires were less feral. Heck with it, I'll give Vampire Earth a shot. Thanks.
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Oct 25, 2019 21:28
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tinaun posted:are there any "classic feeling" fantasy adventure books where the protagonist is explicitly a gay man Might want to check out Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson. It's a novella about on a group of soldiers for hire guarding a shipment through a dangerous area, so very much classic fantasy there. But the focus is on the relationship between one of the men and the captain. Pretty brief read, but I liked it.
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Oct 25, 2019 21:54
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The Copper Cat books has a co-protag that's gay.
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Oct 26, 2019 00:38
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