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Hiro Protagonist
Oct 25, 2010

Last of the freelance hackers and
Greatest swordfighter in the world
I know what you mean. I've gone through the first book in short bursts before getting bored and putting down multiple times over the past few years. I think my problem is the characters don't really hook me that much, despite a very cool setting and an interesting plot (at least as far as I got).

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Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Directive 51 by John Barnes - As someone keenly interested in information theory, the first third or so of this book is fairly interesting. Twenty minutes into the future, the end of the world as we know it comes crowd-funded and locally sourced, its agents recruited and radicalized through discord chats and memes, its weapons built in garages and make-spaces. Unfortunately, a plot has to come along and rip apart that veneer of a vaguely interesting idea to reveal the ultra-right-wing boomer wank over the end of western civilization at the hands of those dastardly liberals. And, unable to give liberals too much credit, the whole thing turns out to be a magic thought-virus from space because aliens.

Sigh. Tricked into reading one of these, though I started skimming by about the halfway point. Barnes feels like a man who understands what modern movements like antifa are angry about, but cannot fathom why.

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!

Cythereal posted:

Directive 51 by John Barnes - As someone keenly interested in information theory, the first third or so of this book is fairly interesting. Twenty minutes into the future, the end of the world as we know it comes crowd-funded and locally sourced, its agents recruited and radicalized through discord chats and memes, its weapons built in garages and make-spaces. Unfortunately, a plot has to come along and rip apart that veneer of a vaguely interesting idea to reveal the ultra-right-wing boomer wank over the end of western civilization at the hands of those dastardly liberals. And, unable to give liberals too much credit, the whole thing turns out to be a magic thought-virus from space because aliens.

Sigh. Tricked into reading one of these, though I started skimming by about the halfway point. Barnes feels like a man who understands what modern movements like antifa are angry about, but cannot fathom why.

I remember quitting that one halfway through, right after the liberal president created a uniformed Youth Corps to rough up journalists who were saying bad things about him. And also the chapter where anonymous villains cackled about their plans to destroy the US from their cold, wet bunker in a cave in Afghanistan.

Larry Parrish
Jul 9, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
to be fair, whichever fascist makes a youth corps in real life will undoubtably present themselves as a liberal.

but yeah its depressing how much near future sci fi is written by insane boomers. its especially bad in military stuff. like I posted a week back or so about how the third zone war book goes all boomer in the last 100 pages for Reasons. which is setting aside how the author apparently thinks the nepalese and specifically ghurkas are some kind of fascist warrior aristocracy. ajaya's family comes off as... mythologized. maybe that's real and I'm an idiot but who knows

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
I haven't read the directive 51 book in a long time, but I did like the "Oh gently caress, the world is ending" and it actually WAS pretty well hosed.

I didn't continue past it though, cause it was just kinda lamely comical in parts that should have been played for seriousness.

Was a neat idea for an apocalypse though. Grey Goo but instead of making, well, goo, it just eats all the electronics and rubber stuff.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Was a neat idea for an apocalypse though. Grey Goo but instead of making, well, goo, it just eats all the electronics and rubber stuff.

Then the super nukes. Then the EMP bombs from space launched by aliens.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
Don't remember those. Were they in the sequel books? It's been years since I read the first one though, so there's probably a lot I don't remember.

Edit - The only thing that I remember was some scene towards the end where the genius guy who had implants and whatnot to live ended up getting infected with the plague so his girlfriend had to shave all the hair off her body to visit him in whatever isolation ward he was in.

There's a 50% chance I'm getting that wrong, but it was one of the weirder moments in the book, besides the evil bad guys calling some dude's girlfriend a cocksucker before blowing up a big nuke bomb on a boat, but it was made with GOLD! so it was way ~weirder~ and therefore somehow plot relevant.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Nov 27, 2019

Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010


Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Cythereal posted:

Then the super nukes. Then the EMP bombs from space launched by aliens.

Been a while, but I thought that the EMP bomb factories were on the moon and set up by the conspiracy/NLP ai that's a remix of One True; I don't think it was ever aliens unless that came up in the sequels.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Don't remember those. Were they in the sequel books? It's been years since I read the first one though, so there's probably a lot I don't remember.

Nope. Definitely in the first book although the first book doesn't say where the space EMP bombs are coming from, just that they're from space and humans couldn't be making them.

quote:

before blowing up a big nuke bomb on a boat, but it was made with GOLD! so it was way ~weirder~ and therefore somehow plot relevant.

That was actually a legit funny bit to me: the bad guys with the boat spent all their cash exchanging it for gold in the expectation of being super rich post-apocalypse and filled a vault on their boat with all the gold, but the bad guys with the super nukes put one in the gold vault because they were planning to detonate it when the boat was in a suitably big port like LA. Just, particle analysis of the nuke's debris shows a shitload of gold in it which the heroes misinterpret as the gold being part of the bomb.

Thranguy posted:

Been a while, but I thought that the EMP bomb factories were on the moon and set up by the conspiracy/NLP ai that's a remix of One True; I don't think it was ever aliens unless that came up in the sequels.

Nah, about the last page of the book is the heroes finishing their analysis of the EMP bombs and realizing they're not coming from the moon but deep space.

Cardiac
Aug 28, 2012

Cythereal posted:

Directive 51 by John Barnes - As someone keenly interested in information theory, the first third or so of this book is fairly interesting. Twenty minutes into the future, the end of the world as we know it comes crowd-funded and locally sourced, its agents recruited and radicalized through discord chats and memes, its weapons built in garages and make-spaces. Unfortunately, a plot has to come along and rip apart that veneer of a vaguely interesting idea to reveal the ultra-right-wing boomer wank over the end of western civilization at the hands of those dastardly liberals. And, unable to give liberals too much credit, the whole thing turns out to be a magic thought-virus from space because aliens.

Sigh. Tricked into reading one of these, though I started skimming by about the halfway point. Barnes feels like a man who understands what modern movements like antifa are angry about, but cannot fathom why.

If you read kaleidoscope country, are you really surprised?

Also, read Gideon the ninth and the initial recommendations for the book itt was stupid as hell. Lesbian necromancers was literally just for sales purposes, it has classic emo protagonist and can only be considered to have witty dialogue if you think teenage dialogue is witty.

That said, I read it in one day due to it being a haunted house story, cool imagery with necromancy and flowing storyline. Given the ending, I have some doubts that the sequels will be as good.

Larry Parrish
Jul 9, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
i read two necromancers, a bureaucrat, and an elf which was good and probably better than that

Kesper North
Nov 3, 2011

EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Larry Parrish posted:

i read two necromancers, a bureaucrat, and an elf which was good and probably better than that

Did they walk into a bar?

As jokey titles go, I'm in.

Larry Parrish
Jul 9, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Kesper North posted:

Did they walk into a bar?

As jokey titles go, I'm in.

unfortunately no

Kesper North
Nov 3, 2011

EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

Larry Parrish posted:

unfortunately no

They had one loving job

Ben Nevis
Jan 20, 2011
Not SFF, but I just finished Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony Boucher. I post here, because while it's a mystery, it's suspects are all members of the Mañana Literary Society and are thinly disguised versions of sci-fi authors of the early 40s. You've got Heinlein, Hubbard, and others masquerading in a murder story. People interested in those authors and a bit of the LA scene surrounding the golden age of sci-fi might enjoy it in mystery form.

Look Sir Droids
Jan 27, 2015

The tracks go off in this direction.

ToxicFrog posted:

I was really hoping the spiders would win, but also didn't see a way for them to do so that didn't contradict the overall theme of the book, so I was very pleasantly surprised at the end.

Just finished Children of Time and have not read this thread at all, so going way back for this quote reply.

The spiders did win. They had humanity on its knees and could have killed them all. I’m still mulling over the ending, but it’s arguable the spiders enslaved humans just as they enslaved ants. The last few pages did a bit to soften that and true mutual acceptance is consistent with the theme. But it’s not necessarily as pat as the author (I think?) wants it to be.

How is the sequel? I’ve seen mixed reviews.

Look Sir Droids fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Nov 28, 2019

Doktor Avalanche
Dec 30, 2008

Look Sir Droids posted:

Just finished Children of Time and have not read this thread at all, so going way back for this quote reply.

The spiders did win. They had humanity on its knees and could have killed them all. I’m still mulling over the ending, but it’s arguable the spiders enslaved humans just as they enslaved ants. The last few pages did a bit to soften that and true mutual acceptance is consistent with the theme. But it’s not necessarily as pat as the author (I think?) wants it to be.

How is the sequel? I’ve seen mixed reviews.

IIRC it's specifically said that the spiders implanted into humans the same virus/whatever that the humans implanted into them, which gave them a concept of "this being is like me maybe I won't kill it", while they domesticated (enslaved?) the ants not through messing with their dna but through figuring out how their pheromones worked and manipulating their perception that way

Look Sir Droids
Jan 27, 2015

The tracks go off in this direction.

Doctor Jeep posted:

IIRC it's specifically said that the spiders implanted into humans the same virus/whatever that the humans implanted into them, which gave them a concept of "this being is like me maybe I won't kill it", while they domesticated (enslaved?) the ants not through messing with their dna but through figuring out how their pheromones worked and manipulating their perception that way

You are correct and I get that, but when it was being explained what the spiders released in the ships air system, and how Kern advised them to kill humans, it was said what the spiders really wanted was to “control” humans like they had learned to do with ants. Domestication is a fair characterization, but my interpretation from the book is that the ants were also an uplifted species. Uplifted by the nanovirus. Either way, then it’s arguable spiders domesticated the humans. Point being, humans did not come to accept spiders of their own free will. It can be interpreted as heart warming or sinister what the spiders did. Obviously heart warming is the author’s intent.

Look Sir Droids fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Nov 28, 2019

team overhead smash
Sep 2, 2006

Team-Forest-Tree-Dog:
Smashing your way into our hearts one skylight at a time

Look Sir Droids posted:

You are correct and I get that, but when it was being explained what the spiders released in the ships air system, and how Kern advised them to kill humans, it was said what the spiders really wanted was to “control” humans like they had learned to do with ants. Domestication is a fair characterization, but my interpretation from the book is that the ants were also an uplifted species. Uplifted by the nanovirus. Either way, then it’s arguable spiders domesticated the humans. Point being, humans did not come to accept spiders of their own free will. It can be interpreted as heart warming or sinister what the spiders did. Obviously heart warming is the author’s intent.

Imagine that you could release a magic virus that destroyed racism and caused people to judge each other on the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. Would that be sinister and count as people not accepting each other of their own free will?

occamsnailfile
Nov 4, 2007



zamtrios so lonely
Grimey Drawer

team overhead smash posted:

Imagine that you could release a magic virus that destroyed racism and caused people to judge each other on the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. Would that be sinister and count as people not accepting each other of their own free will?

This is an interesting question and there is evidence that some brain structures are more prone to racist/fearful behavior, to the point that certain brain diseases or injuries can change those attitudes so I wonder if we can be considered to always be 'choosing' acceptance or not of free will now. Of course changing someone's biology without their consent is also pretty uncool and I think it's a fair debate.

team overhead smash
Sep 2, 2006

Team-Forest-Tree-Dog:
Smashing your way into our hearts one skylight at a time

occamsnailfile posted:

This is an interesting question and there is evidence that some brain structures are more prone to racist/fearful behavior, to the point that certain brain diseases or injuries can change those attitudes so I wonder if we can be considered to always be 'choosing' acceptance or not of free will now. Of course changing someone's biology without their consent is also pretty uncool and I think it's a fair debate.

It's war. You're allowed to kill someone in self defence which is the ultimate change to their biology. I don't think curing specieisism is comparable or something where much thought is needed over which is worse as an alternative.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

team overhead smash posted:

Imagine that you could release a magic virus that destroyed racism and caused people to judge each other on the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. Would that be sinister and count as people not accepting each other of their own free will?

Stanislaw Lem's the Twenty First Voyage short story did this idea {pick one} 39 years, 44 years, or 58 years before Tchaikovsky did with much more brio than Tchaikovsky managed in the entirety of Children of Time.
Respective datings used are the publishing dates for the English translation, Russian translation, and original Polish language editions of Stanislaw Lem's The Star Diaries.

Look Sir Droids
Jan 27, 2015

The tracks go off in this direction.

team overhead smash posted:

Imagine that you could release a magic virus that destroyed racism and caused people to judge each other on the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. Would that be sinister and count as people not accepting each other of their own free will?

That’s exactly what I find interesting about the ending. It’s a good philosophical question that I’m not sure was intended since it gets handwaved as having no downsides.

BadOptics
Sep 11, 2012

Finished The Scar last night and it was a great story, but if I ever see the word "puissant/puissance" again I'm gonna have a stroke.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

BadOptics posted:

Finished The Scar last night and it was a great story, but if I ever see the word "puissant/puissance" again I'm gonna have a stroke.
So I've got some bad news for you about the rest of Miéville's books...

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



"bathos"

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

Look Sir Droids posted:

How is the sequel? I’ve seen mixed reviews.

I’m curious about this as well. The first book ending was not what I expected but it was interesting. I think the reason for the collapse early in the book was bullshit though.

youre telling me a super advanced intergalactic human empire was also too stupid to have its life support systems isolated? Even modern governments have critical systems that are closed and wouldn’t be able to receive a doomsday computer virus, allowing them to keep on running properly while everything connected to the space internet went to hell.

Evil Fluffy fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Nov 29, 2019

Orv
May 4, 2011

BadOptics posted:

Finished The Scar last night and it was a great story, but if I ever see the word "puissant/puissance" again I'm gonna have a stroke.

Would you say the prose was quite puissant in your recollection?

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
how does it stack up next to Kraken's "retroeschatonaut"?

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

how does it stack up next to Kraken's "retroeschatonaut"?
To be fair that is just Kraken being a lot more playful when it comes to language - it's a word invented to fit the situation; on the other hand, bathoses and puissances in descriptions are just Miéville having showing off this new thesaurus he bought.

genericnick
Dec 26, 2012

anilEhilated posted:

To be fair that is just Kraken being a lot more playful when it comes to language - it's a word invented to fit the situation; on the other hand, bathoses and puissances in descriptions are just Miéville having showing off this new thesaurus he bought ate.

Scar talk: It is still my favourite book of his and I don't really love BasLag

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

genericnick posted:

Scar talk: It is still my favourite book of his and I don't really love BasLag

I agree. PSS is enjoyable but all over the shop, Iron Council has that one good bit with the Wild West montage (with the sort of magic daemon cowboy... IIRC?), but The Scar had the most compelling storyline, situation and characters. From what I remember. Still flawed as hell, but the standout of the trilogy and a book I really enjoyed reading.

The City & The City is also flawed as hell and I don't remember it any better than Bas-Lag, five years down the track from when I went on a Mieville kick, but I definitely remember it being the most polished and genuinely good of his books that I've read.

I randomly read This Census Taker earlier this year, and I only remember it because I'm now going back over my list and thinking about my top ten for the year, and gently caress me dead that was a bad book. Textbook example of an SFF writer thinking they finally had the chops to go full literary and failing in spectacular fashion.

Take the plunge! Okay!
Feb 24, 2007



The Scar, as I se it now, is about a protofeminist from an oppressive society falling in love with an utterly toxic jerk. I don’t really appreciate it anymore. Iron Council is much better, at least it deals with themes of colonialism and workers’ solidarity in a somewhat meaningful way. PSS is just bleak and worthless, the author piling one horror on top of another until everything becomes meaningless.

pradmer
Mar 31, 2009

Follow me for more books on special!
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StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Obligatory warning: Girl with All the Gifts is a good book, but it's hardcore horror with child abuse in it, so read at your own risk.

ToxicFrog
Apr 26, 2008


Look Sir Droids posted:

Just finished Children of Time and have not read this thread at all, so going way back for this quote reply.

The spiders did win. They had humanity on its knees and could have killed them all. I’m still mulling over the ending, but it’s arguable the spiders enslaved humans just as they enslaved ants. The last few pages did a bit to soften that and true mutual acceptance is consistent with the theme. But it’s not necessarily as pat as the author (I think?) wants it to be.

...yes? I didn't say "the spiders don't win", I said that before reading the ending, I couldn't see a way for them to win that didn't involve just killing the humans, which would go counter to the other 90% of the book showing that the spiders operate by befriending, subverting, or controlling threats to them. So, the ending was a pleasant surprise in that it revealed a solution to the human problem that was consistent with the rest of the book.

Xenix
Feb 21, 2003

Evil Fluffy posted:

youre telling me a super advanced intergalactic human empire was also too stupid to have its life support systems isolated? Even modern governments have critical systems that are closed and wouldn’t be able to receive a doomsday computer virus, allowing them to keep on running properly while everything connected to the space internet went to hell.

They were what came after said empire collapsed. Their technology was based on what they could scavenge from the ruins of that civilization an untold number of millennia later once the planet was more livable again. I got the impression they scavenged enough to make their ark ships and shoot them into space as quickly as possible to find a viable place for humanity to live for the long term.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
I read two more books from the library over the holiday, and rarity of rarities, neither sucked!

Geist by Philippa Ballantine is a fantasy book with a rather original and interesting system of magic, fun if shallow characters, and a reasonably compelling plot. While this is apparently the first book in the series, I get the feeling there were short stories published before this because the book drops you in with virtually no explanation of the setting or rules and expects you to pick it up as you go along. The protagonist was too blatantly a wish-fulfillment character for me to like her very much, but the other characters picked up the slack and I'm interested to see what happens in the sequel. Didn't amaze me, but enjoyable enough.

Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold is a book that leaves me with mixed feelings. I can't decide if it's an unusually well done white savior in the land of noble savages (with a sci-fi twist) or if it's trying to take the piss out of white saviors and noble savages. Either way, it's a fun little sci-fi adventure and I quite like Artemis as a setting - it's a galactic empire's vacation pleasure world gone feral after that empire fell ages ago. I'd probably call this outright a YA novel if not for dealing heavily with sexual assault (in a respectful way, mind) towards the end of the book. Like the above book, I'm interested to see what happens next.

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Larry Parrish posted:

i read two necromancers, a bureaucrat, and an elf which was good and probably better than that

I'm having trouble figuring which one is the cook, which one is the thief, which one is his wife, and which one she's loving.

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Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

Xenix posted:

They were what came after said empire collapsed. Their technology was based on what they could scavenge from the ruins of that civilization an untold number of millennia later once the planet was more livable again. I got the impression they scavenged enough to make their ark ships and shoot them into space as quickly as possible to find a viable place for humanity to live for the long term.

I know, but the reason for the collapse being so total is because of the thing I said. A thing that wouldn’t have happened in a super science civilization because hardened, remote setups for critical systems is not some unrealistic thing and that they just didn’t exist in the empire is nonsense. Especially since even the arkship techs knew how to do it and why.

It’s just a point that came across as nonsense and a desperate attempt to explain wipe no the slate clean, more or less.

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