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Kchama posted:Also, is that Sam Lake there suppose to be Sam Kean? Yeah, my mistake. Correcting it thanks.
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# ? Oct 29, 2019 15:18 |
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 08:06 |
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i read a lot of books when I was still in the air force. if you read about 100 pages in an hour, you can get through an astounding amount of trash in a 12 hour night shift
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# ? Oct 30, 2019 00:22 |
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Larry Parrish posted:god i hate Weber lol. if he was able to glen cook his way past the details into a good story it wouldn't matter but welp. im like 90% sure at this point that the honorverse was written when he watched a samurai movie and then imagined how much better it would be if it was a hot british chick versus a cowboy, and everything is in service of making that scene happen hell, I'd read that book that's probably why I've read all of these books
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# ? Oct 30, 2019 04:02 |
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I just discovered that there's a TENTH Safehold book? I thought he was not going to write these for a while after the grand finale that happened where the entire book was just everyone getting married and absolutely no plot happened. Ugh ugh ugh I don't want to read it.
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# ? Nov 1, 2019 16:21 |
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I think that was the 10th one.
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# ? Nov 1, 2019 19:02 |
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Nope. The story is unfortunately not over yet. On the other hand, it keeps him from making GBS threads out more Honorverse. I'm not sure whether this is actually a relief or not. (I don't think Uncompromising Honor is going to be the last one in that series, given the Mesan Alignment is still a thing.)
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# ? Nov 1, 2019 20:02 |
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Kchama posted:I just discovered that there's a TENTH Safehold book? I thought he was not going to write these for a while after the grand finale that happened where the entire book was just everyone getting married and absolutely no plot happened. Ugh ugh ugh I don't want to read it. That's exactly what the Baen intern-editors said too. Finished the biography of James Wilkinson. Overall: James Wilkinson, confirmed spanish spy while commander in chief of the US Armed Forces would have soared on twitter and his block list would have numbered in the millions. Started a Dean Ing techno-thriller about a stealth murder-plane with "pixel-skin" that is nuclear powered and described as "tiny" despite having a 60+ foot wingspan. A cruel person could compare Dean Ing to Tom Clancy and not be that factually wrong. However, Dean Ing has a "next-next-gen" techno-fetish writing style that Clancy, and all of Clancy's ghostwriters, could never replicate.
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# ? Nov 1, 2019 20:14 |
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Aerdan posted:Nope. The story is unfortunately not over yet. I'm not sure how he's gonna get more than one more book out of the Honorverse considering the last one basically defeated 99% of all foes forever. Unless he spends a dozen books copy and pasting previous books.
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# ? Nov 1, 2019 22:55 |
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Yeah, I doubt very much there's gonna be any more "main line" novels. But I think I read somewhere that he has another espionage-themed collab with Eric Flint lined up.
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# ? Nov 1, 2019 23:08 |
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Aerdan posted:Nope. The story is unfortunately not over yet. I didn't tackle this earlier but... So what is the next-gen story suppose to be about the actual Gbaba fight? Who even cares about them anymore after 10 books of nothing. Anshu posted:Yeah, I doubt very much there's gonna be any more "main line" novels. But I think I read somewhere that he has another espionage-themed collab with Eric Flint lined up. I guess you can do endless amounts of this with the endless new pirates, Mesan Alignment, and random jerks.
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# ? Nov 2, 2019 00:21 |
Kchama posted:I'm not sure how he's gonna get more than one more book out of the Honorverse considering the last one basically defeated 99% of all foes forever. Anshu posted:Yeah, I doubt very much there's gonna be any more "main line" novels. But I think I read somewhere that he has another espionage-themed collab with Eric Flint lined up. I thought he said in the postscript that Uncompromising was the last book with Honor as the main character, but that he's got plans to advance the timeline, bring in some new protagonists and use Honor as the wizened senior officer that the new kids go to for advice, but that Honor's seen her last day in a command chair. Which is fine by me, I've always thought that Honor herself was one of the weakest parts of the Honor Harrington novels.
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# ? Nov 2, 2019 00:22 |
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jng2058 posted:I thought he said in the postscript that Uncompromising was the last book with Honor as the main character, but that he's got plans to advance the timeline, bring in some new protagonists and use Honor as the wizened senior officer that the new kids go to for advice, but that Honor's seen her last day in a command chair. That's literally been the plan for like, half the series but he always puts it off every new book. Like, five books ago when the Haven plot was over and the Mesan Alignment plot began was suppose to be when it jumped twenty years so that her kids could be protagonist. But he never follows through (though it didn't help that Eric Flint's books made the Mesan Alignment a now problem). Also the final lines of that book is the Empress/Queen saying that if things ever start up again they can just call up Honor, and this is absolutely not her final day in the command chair.
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# ? Nov 2, 2019 01:18 |
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Yeah Weber's original outline had Honor dying at the Battle of Manticore, followed by a 20 year timeskip when her children would be joining the RMN and become the main characters, along with the characters who'd been Ensigns and Lieutenants before the timeskip as the the higher ranking officers. But of course he didn't follow that plan. I think he's going to take some years away from those characters, work on his other series, and then if he's feeling it later (and lives long enough) come back and do the timeskip he originally planned. I took the way that last book ended, and the author's postscript after, to be basically him saying "please stop asking when the next one is coming," rather than "there's never going to another one." FuturePastNow fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Nov 2, 2019 |
# ? Nov 2, 2019 03:11 |
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So I tripped over a book today that is astonishing in its terribleness, to the point that I am genuinely surprised it got past editing- have you guys ever read Freehold, by Michael Williamson? It comes off like the dude really wanted to write a political screed, but he kept accidentally throwing in creepy sex scenes so his editor was like "Y'know what, add in some spaceships and robots and we can sell this as fiction." In short, it concerns a woman who trips over a plot by her corrupt superiors and has to beat feet off her planet when they try to set her up as the fall guy. She discovers a new planet full of sexy libertarians led by the author's self-insert who tell her that every political, social, economic and personal view she held was wrong, and that the only way to truly integrate into the culture of her new planet, which is ostensibly "Do whatever you want as long as it doesn't hurt others," is to trash all of said beliefs in favor of the ones the author's puppet has. Also, she has tons and tons of creepy sex, goes from being a monogamous christian to a polyamorous wiccan who loves public nudity and drugs, then she joins the military and becomes a war hero. Also rape. I honestly struggle to call it a book, it comes off like author appeal fanfiction in the worst way, but apparently he convinced Baen to let him churn out like nine sequels.
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# ? Nov 5, 2019 17:13 |
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I don't believe the Baen editorial process is any more complex than. 1) Do we think this first book will sell to our readers? Followed by 2) Do we think a sequel will sell to our readers?
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# ? Nov 5, 2019 17:29 |
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Omi no Kami posted:So I tripped over a book today that is astonishing in its terribleness, to the point that I am genuinely surprised it got past editing- have you guys ever read Freehold, by Michael Williamson? It comes off like the dude really wanted to write a political screed, but he kept accidentally throwing in creepy sex scenes so his editor was like "Y'know what, add in some spaceships and robots and we can sell this as fiction." The Freehold books are basically Liberterian porn, through and through. There's a Let's Read on another forum, but I'm totally not gonna ever read it myself as it's far beyond my capacity to even hate-read.
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# ? Nov 5, 2019 17:34 |
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Kchama posted:The Freehold books are basically Liberterian porn, through and through. There's a Let's Read on another forum, but I'm totally not gonna ever read it myself as it's far beyond my capacity to even hate-read. You gotta read the sequels! The good guys of freehold do a space 9/11 times one million to earth and are portrayed as the heroes. Nerve gas on apartment blocks, suicide nukes and even space ship kamakazi.
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# ? Nov 5, 2019 20:11 |
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Omi no Kami posted:So I tripped over a book today that is astonishing in its terribleness, to the point that I am genuinely surprised it got past editing- have you guys ever read Freehold, by Michael Williamson? It comes off like the dude really wanted to write a political screed, but he kept accidentally throwing in creepy sex scenes so his editor was like "Y'know what, add in some spaceships and robots and we can sell this as fiction." The Freehold series, along with the titular Honor Harrington, were the main inspirations for creation of this thread. Too many insane quotes and discussions of mil-scifi and mil-fiction stories/authors were getting lost in the main scifi/fantasy megathread. Kind of remember the Freehold series popping up a few times in the OP re-quote section, if you're interesting in seeing how insane/WarCrimey that series gets. Personally haven't touched any mil-scifi stories in awhile, attempted to read Dean Ing's 1993 mil-fiction novel "Butcher Bird" last week, but gave up on it quick because it was clear Dean Ing was writing all the stealth-murderplane descriptions and scenarios with one hand (<- masturbation reference ->).
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# ? Nov 5, 2019 21:03 |
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I read through the Risen Empire series by Scott Westerfield last month during the blackouts. It was fine for milSF Space Opera, using relativistic space travel and drones was cool, but I feel the previous recommendations I've seen for it oversell things. More of a B or C+ list book. And of course for the obligatory creepy sex thing it had a cyborg supersoldier brainwashing a militiawoman to love her.
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# ? Nov 5, 2019 23:32 |
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ianmacdo posted:You gotta read the sequels! The good guys of freehold do a space 9/11 times one million to earth and are portrayed as the heroes. Nerve gas on apartment blocks, suicide nukes and even space ship kamakazi. Absolutely not! I did real the Let's Reads on them and that's as far as I go. Even for hate reads, I have my limits.
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# ? Nov 5, 2019 23:45 |
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Kchama posted:The Freehold books are basically Liberterian porn, through and through. There's a Let's Read on another forum, but I'm totally not gonna ever read it myself as it's far beyond my capacity to even hate-read. Mind linking it? I like Let's Reads.
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# ? Nov 6, 2019 00:25 |
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ianmacdo posted:You gotta read the sequels! The good guys of freehold do a space 9/11 times one million to earth and are portrayed as the heroes. Nerve gas on apartment blocks, suicide nukes and even space ship kamakazi. This and the mention of it being one of the inspirations for the thread was enough for me to glance at the second book, and oh my gosh. It reads like the editor thumbed through the first one and said to himself "What if we cut out all the non-military stuff, made the protagonist a virulent racist and kinda-sorta misogynist who constantly reassures us that he's okay with The Gays, then show him torturing and murdering everything he sees?" Edit: ...so this might be the single most offensive piece of fiction I have ever read, holy poo poo. Omi no Kami fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Nov 6, 2019 |
# ? Nov 6, 2019 01:12 |
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Olesh posted:Mind linking it? I like Let's Reads. https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/freehold-commentary-thread.132112/ Here's the original. I'm still looking for the others but this is 30-odd pages of Let's Read.
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# ? Nov 6, 2019 05:00 |
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Olesh posted:Mind linking it? I like Let's Reads. The Let's Reads threads you want are probably buried somewhere in the SpaceBattles forums or the Sufficient Velocity forums. 90's cringe rock did a big effort post about those two mil-scifi/mil-fiction fan-maintained forums back in August that I'm just going to re-quote wholesale at you. 90s Cringe Rock posted:No. You don't.
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# ? Nov 6, 2019 05:32 |
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Weber's going to be real crazy busy for the next couple.. years.. decades? He posted his upcoming books (1) Tom Pope and I need to get the current Manticore Ascendant novel back on track; Tim Zahn has been waiting patiently (fortunately he had other things he could do) for us for entirely too long. Part of that is the concussion effect on my part and part of it is Real Life on Tom's part. The ball is back in my court on the tactical portions of the novel, and that is my next project in line. (2) Jane Lindskold and I have signed contracts with Toni Weisskopff for three more Star Kingdom novels. (3) Richard fox and I will be doing a prequel series to In Fury Born. It won't deal with the characters from Fury but rather with the creation of the Terran Empire under Terrence Murphy. (4) Eric Flint and I are working on the next Crown of Slaves novel, which will be set immediately after Uncompromising Honor and follow Victor and Anton (and new recruits Damien and Indiana) as they go hunting for the core of the Alignment onion. At least some of the Solarian Ghost Hunters will also be making an appearance. (5) Jacob and I are looking at some overhaul of the Valkyrie Protocol after editorial input from Toni, and once that's out of the way, we will be starting work on the next novel in that series. (6) I am looking at a collaborative sequel to The Apocalypse Troll, and I will be discussing that with my probable collaborator tomorrow afternoon. (7) In the next week or so I will be doing a short story for Chris Kennedy's Trouble in the Wind anthology. (8) As soon as I have all of my short stories out the door and have caught up with my part of the collaboration with Tim and Tom, I will be breaking ground on the sequel to Through Fiery Trials, which is my next solo project. (9) My next solo project for Baen will be the sequel to The Sword of the South, which should follow directly after the next Safehold novel. (10) And my next solo Honorverse project will be the story of Alfred Harrington's Marine service.
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# ? Nov 10, 2019 07:15 |
I honestly don't understand why people think Weber has different books. Much like the Hero with a Thousand Faces, there is the Weber Novel with a ton of reprints. You have the protagonist, some kind of warrior from a proud warrior tradition, whether he is a cursed giant made by the dark gods or a sexy spaceship lady. They are in the service of a heroic divinely chosen monarch, who is opposed by an evil nation of evil that likes raping and slavery*. Fortunately for the protagonists, their enemies are either evil rapists who are incompetent because they spend too much time raping and being evil or honorable commanders serving their nation and fantasizing about their country not being a bastion of evil. The protagonist will win because they have either technology or magic that is so superior opposition is futile, and will trivially crush the slaving rapist badguys. There, I just saved you 50 bux. *I seem to recall the not-SS PoV characters raping their way through prison camps.
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# ? Nov 10, 2019 08:12 |
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SirFozzie posted:Weber's going to be real crazy busy for the next couple.. years.. decades? Weber is getting up in years and is fatter and more unhealthy-looking than GRRM. Anyone who believes GRRM will die soon should believe Weber will die soon. he keeps having weird injuries of the type you only get if you are simultaneously managing the awkward inertia of immense weight and the mounting frailty of age The only reason "Weber gonna die soon" hasn't become a meme similar to GRRM's pending death is that there are not enough people who care like 12 people will register his demise, and 5 of em post here
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# ? Nov 10, 2019 10:11 |
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ianmacdo posted:You gotta read the sequels! The good guys of freehold do a space 9/11 times one million to earth and are portrayed as the heroes. Nerve gas on apartment blocks, suicide nukes and even space ship kamakazi. wait wait wait wait wait the gently caress up freehold...freehold has multiple sequels? not just The Weapon?
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# ? Nov 10, 2019 10:15 |
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PupsOfWar posted:
I see there's mention of 'Recovering from a concussion'. What on earth did he do?
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# ? Nov 10, 2019 10:47 |
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Tbh pretty much every author mentioned in the OP has a bunch of books that are basically identical to Weber's particular flavor of zero effort writing
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# ? Nov 10, 2019 12:23 |
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PupsOfWar posted:wait wait wait wait wait the gently caress up There are three just in the Ripple Creek Security series. While surprisingly good page-turners, they're also shockingly misogynistic.
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# ? Nov 10, 2019 12:55 |
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Clive Cussler, GRRM, David Weber, James E. Gunn: which author do you think will die first? Had to check that Cussler and Gunn were still alive. Cussler had the most active lifestyle/mostly likely to die from misadventure. GRRM has the most money, name recognition and his Gilligan's Island skipper hat/tied with Weber for massively overweight lifestyle death. Weber has the infinity-plus Baen Books contract and teams of ghostwriters lined up for an Tom Clancy 2.0 post-death career/tied with GRRM for massively overweight lifestyle death. Gunn had the most impact on the scifi/mil-scifi genres being taken seriously from a scholarly and educational viewpoint/most likely to die from a chill or bruise. Would personally vote James E. Gunn hands down, simply because he's that old. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Nov 10, 2019 |
# ? Nov 10, 2019 15:56 |
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Cussler is alive? I just assumed he died ages ago and everything was published under his name like Tom Clancy poo poo. I'm going to go with Gunn because he is 96... Weber is like 5 years younger than GRRM and decades younger than Cussler and Gunn. I think he will be the last man standing in this hypothetical. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Nov 11, 2019 |
# ? Nov 11, 2019 07:21 |
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quantumfoam posted:Clive Cussler, GRRM, David Weber, James E. Gunn: which author do you think will die first? i definitely did not think gunn was still alive, so him the man was a peer of edmond hamilton and jack williamson for godsake surely he is the very last of the true and proper pulp writers?
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# ? Nov 11, 2019 09:30 |
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James E. Gunn within the past decade wrote a not-terrible scifi trilogy that wasn't racist or sexist. For a scifi author that old, that's nearly impossible. Can't think of anyone else near his age who managed that. Gunn's not-terrible recent scifi trilogy managed to be amusing at times, and featured a staggering amount of alien forms that were developed/had fleshed out backstories. Everyone should try to track down and read Gunn's KAMPUS. It is terrible-amazing without any outside knowledge, and KAMPUS is made 170% better once you realize Gunn was actively teaching at Kansas University when he wrote KAMPUS. Always wondered if Gunn reserved his B+'s and A's semester grades for students who made token attempts to abduct-kill him? Did he get angry if students asked him to sign copies of KAMPUS? In honor of Veterans Day today and the USMC Birthday yesterday, plan on spending most of today playing Jagged Alliance.
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# ? Nov 11, 2019 16:40 |
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Jack2142 posted:Cussler is alive? I just assumed he died ages ago and everything was published under his name like Tom Clancy poo poo. 'standing'
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# ? Nov 12, 2019 04:39 |
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Reread Red Storm Rising against my better judgment. Highlights: -ground and air combat kinda interesting when Soviets are allowed to be competent. -my spouse was born at the Air Force base in Keflavik, Iceland and is amused that the Soviet invasion missile strike has enough detail to figure out her mom’s classroom was incinerated but not her dad’s Lowlights: -I remembered Tom Clancy naval combat always being “something something absolute best ship in the Soviet fleet something something US sub commander presses one button something something Soviets explode. Yup, except sometimes it is a US frigate wiping out fleets of subs -I remembered the Air Force weatherman hiding on Iceland being interesting. Nope, Soviets barely look for him, and the segment where he rescues the Icelandic woman is terrible. Lots of attention to her being the blondest Viking possible, but I forgot she falls in love with him and goes back to America. Assaulted, had her parents murdered in front of her, and saw many more deaths. (Shrugs) better forget that instantly, there’s a weatherman here! —combat gets boring and predictable fast. After the first third Soviets just march/sail/fly into American technological meat grinders. So yeah, I don’t think there is anything in the Clancy Canon that ever needs to be read. Is there any good WWIII fiction? I think the best I’ve seen was World in Conflict, as the Russian master plan included invading Seattle and blowing up the Kingdome, and sending Spetsnaz to seize the Statue of Liberty. Dammit I wish that had been a trilogy.
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# ? Nov 20, 2019 01:07 |
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Hyrax Attack! posted:So yeah, I don’t think there is anything in the Clancy Canon that ever needs to be read. I recently read Hunt For Red October for the first time, because I love submarine stuff and it's a well-known thing in the genre. Even knowing Clancy's reputation, I was astonished at how frequently the book went completely off the rails to rant about how primitive Russians were or how communism could only flourish because they didn't have enough religion or whatever. What really surprised me is that at it wouldn't have been hard to edit down- if someone had cut out every single author screed they would've been let with maybe 70-100 pages of fun submarine hijinks, which is a good spine to build a real book on.
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# ? Nov 20, 2019 20:18 |
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To be fair that is not just Tom Clancy, a bunch of novels from the 80s and similar that feature Russians will go out of its way to have evil Russians in ill fitting suits, or comment on how (evil) Russian women are smoldering temptresses who then instantly turn into shriveled Baby Yaga figures, unlike wholesome American women. Etc. Actually I think that Russian main villains are allowed to have clothes that fit, but Russian goons always wear ill fitting suits. Apparently tailoring is not allowed east of the Iron Curtain.
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# ? Nov 20, 2019 21:41 |
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 08:06 |
To be fair, Dostoyevsky did the evil Russian rapid-aging women thing first.
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# ? Nov 20, 2019 21:51 |