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fritz posted:Judith Tarr is in a bit of a financial bind: https://twitter.com/dancinghorse/status/1214985798421889024 I found I had one of her books already on my amazon wishlist so I grabbed it; I hope she gets help. I've not read her stuff before, but I recognize the name from this thread alerting me to her horse-themed posts on tor.com, I always chuckle when one shows up. When Janny Wurts had similar issues and this thread called attention to it, I grabbed her Master of Whitestorm and enjoyed it and picked up To Ride Hells Chasm after but haven't gotten to it yet.
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Jan 10, 2020 07:29
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eke out posted:the octopods in children of ruin are kind of the opposite of a hivemind though?
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Jan 10, 2020 09:51
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So I read Luminous Dead based on this thread gushing about it some months ago and I don't get why. It was kind of neat, I liked it, but the ending and they fell in love happily ever after felt kind of contrived and there were certain plot threads that were just completely left hanging like, were the bodies preserved in tunneler piss or what? and what actually happened to Elias?.
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Jan 11, 2020 01:52
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General Battuta posted:'Pandora's Star' by Peter F. Hamilton has one of the creepiest and most, uh, aggressive hiveminds I've encountered in fiction. Someone once said its actions seemed to be modelled on an aggressive RTS player, which I thought was a pretty apt description.
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Jan 11, 2020 02:01
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Doorknob Slobber posted:So I read Luminous Dead based on this thread gushing about it some months ago and I don't get why. It was kind of neat, I liked it, but the ending and they fell in love happily ever after felt kind of contrived and there were certain plot threads that were just completely left hanging like, were the bodies preserved in tunneler piss or what? and what actually happened to Elias?. Welcome to the mostly silent majority. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 11, 2020 02:28
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quantumfoam posted:If you go way back in time, AE Van Vogt's "Voyage of the Space Beagle" has two separate encounters/short stories with hive-mind entities. Read it anyway, there's some great encounters on that trip.
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Jan 11, 2020 02:34
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:Welcome to the mostly silent majority. Your hatred of those emotional irrational women is shared by all the silent people who don't post!!! Doorknob Slobber posted:So I read Luminous Dead based on this thread gushing about it some months ago and I don't get why. It was kind of neat, I liked it, but the ending and they fell in love happily ever after felt kind of contrived and there were certain plot threads that were just completely left hanging like, were the bodies preserved in tunneler piss or what? and what actually happened to Elias?. They are absolutely terrible for each other and their 'romance' will end in horrible drama, or one/both of them dead taking some dumbshit risk the other enabled. Part of what makes the book great is the intensely interior perspective on a codependent spiral.
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Jan 11, 2020 03:58
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FuturePastNow posted:it's unrelated but I just remembered this: Somewhat related, I ended up getting Janelle Shane's You Look Like A Thing And I Love You book a day before you posted that and finally finished reading it today. Book managed to be light in tone yet informative without getting bogged down in specialist AI terms and doomsday scenarios most other recent books about Artificial Intelligence usages in modern society do. If you like bizarre AI generated recipes, phantom giraffes, cute drawings of robots, cockroach farming parables and amusingly presented data set/image recognition training methods, read this book. "Spartan Gandalf" and "Mordenkainen's Pie" are my favorite out-of-content AI generated concepts from that book. mllaneza posted:Read it anyway, there's some great encounters on that trip. First story in Space Beagle is my favorite, the 3rd story in Space Beagle is so good Hollywood stole it and made an entire blockbuster movie franchise (w/ comic and video-game spinoffs) from it.
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Jan 11, 2020 04:20
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Doorknob Slobber posted:So I read Luminous Dead based on this thread gushing about it some months ago and I don't get why. It was kind of neat, I liked it, but the ending and they fell in love happily ever after felt kind of contrived and there were certain plot threads that were just completely left hanging like, were the bodies preserved in tunneler piss or what? and what actually happened to Elias?. I was not a big fan of this book. The depiction of the relationship building between the caver and her handler was well done, but the book never did anything interesting with its setting and I lost interest in the plot well before the end. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jan 11, 2020 |
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Jan 11, 2020 04:48
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General Battuta posted:Your hatred of those emotional irrational women is shared by all the silent people who don't post!!! My boredom and bemusement with those emotional irrational women is at this point shared by quite a few people who have posted. The inner emotional lives of girls rock climbing turned out to be of as much interest and import as a good hair braiding and gossip session, just with a higher body count and budget.
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Jan 11, 2020 05:08
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Kesper North posted:
i mean, 'inferior to blindsight' isn't saying much i'm a big fan of both and excited about book three whenever it comes out
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Jan 11, 2020 05:23
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:My boredom and bemusement with those emotional irrational women is at this point shared by quite a few people who have posted. The inner emotional lives of girls rock climbing turned out to be of as much interest and import as a good hair braiding and gossip session, just with a higher body count and budget. a good hair braiding and gossip session is of great interest to me, so thank you for the recommendation.
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Jan 11, 2020 05:27
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:My boredom and bemusement with those emotional irrational women is at this point shared by quite a few people who have posted. The inner emotional lives of girls rock climbing turned out to be of as much interest and import as a good hair braiding and gossip session, just with a higher body count and budget. getting this book thanks for the rec
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Jan 11, 2020 06:16
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:My boredom and bemusement with those emotional irrational women is at this point shared by quite a few people who have posted. The inner emotional lives of girls rock climbing turned out to be of as much interest and import as a good hair braiding and gossip session, just with a higher body count and budget. The Venn diagram of people who call adult women ‘girls’ and people who have poorly coded issues with women is, if not exactly a circle, definitely a butt e: You’re the poop in the butt General Battuta fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Jan 11, 2020 |
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Jan 11, 2020 06:19
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Like the issue is not you disliking the book, it’s that you made it clear you disliked the book because you don’t like women.
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Jan 11, 2020 06:21
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quantumfoam posted:First story in Space Beagle is my favorite, the 3rd story in Space Beagle is so good Hollywood stole it and made an entire blockbuster movie franchise (w/ comic and video-game spinoffs) from it. Isn't the one Hollywood ripped off the first story in the book? It also inspired a D&D monster.
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Jan 11, 2020 09:16
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"hair braiding and gossip session" Gotta make jokes about those women doing "women things" or else who would you be huh
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Jan 11, 2020 09:17
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I did not like Luminous Dead at all, had to put it down halfway through. However, I would like someone to play with my hair.
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Jan 11, 2020 11:11
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NikkolasKing posted:Are there any good scifi or fantasy books that prominently feature a hivemind entity/race? For those of you who have played System Shock 2, I am new to it and realized that The Many greatly interest me and I'd like to see more of the same or similar. I am no good at FPSes so Halo and the Flood are out. Besides, as much as love me some video games, nothing beats a good book with regards to bizarre alien lifeforms. CJ Cherryh did good insects in serpents reach.
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Jan 11, 2020 11:28
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Fallom posted:I was not a big fan of this book. The depiction of the relationship building between the caver and her handler was well done, but the book never did anything interesting with its setting and I lost interest in the plot well before the end. Pretty much what I took away from it. Thought it was promising but fell short of its potential (had some good creepy stuff but could have done more with that, etc.) so the end result was merely OK. Like, didn't feel that I wasted my time reading it, certainly didn't hate it, but also didn't feel it deserved quite as much praise as it had been getting. Absolutely not unwilling to try future books by same author. But, I guess I'm just a drat fence-sitter.
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Jan 11, 2020 13:24
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mllaneza posted:Read it anyway, there's some great encounters on that trip. Van Vogt very much belonged to his time and it's not difficult to understand why he's not more widely read these days, but man, he could imagine up some weird poo poo.
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Jan 11, 2020 13:25
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Safety Biscuits posted:Isn't the one Hollywood ripped off the first story in the book? It also inspired a D&D monster. Right the displacer beast, at least visually. And the salt-monster from Star Trek: TOS I think. Third story is the Xenomorph encounter abducting crew and implanting eggs in them. Vogts monster was bright red and didn't have the huge banana cranium/extending secondary jaws.
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Jan 11, 2020 15:24
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General Battuta posted:Like the issue is not you disliking the book, it’s that you made it clear you disliked the book because you don’t like women. When is your military sci-fi book coming out?! Also why is it so hard to find information about books and authors in this era of information overload?
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Jan 11, 2020 20:40
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NikkolasKing posted:Are there any good scifi or fantasy books that prominently feature a hivemind entity/race? For those of you who have played System Shock 2, I am new to it and realized that The Many greatly interest me and I'd like to see more of the same or similar. I am no good at FPSes so Halo and the Flood are out. Besides, as much as love me some video games, nothing beats a good book with regards to bizarre alien lifeforms. The short story Swarm by Bruce Sterling. Might be better if you've also read his novel Schismatrix, although I think it was published first. a kitten fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Jan 12, 2020 |
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Jan 12, 2020 00:39
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I was reading the blurb for William Gibson’s new book that’s coming out in a couple weeks’ time - it’s a follow-up to the Peripheral. That’s cool but the present day narrative takes place in an alternative timeline where Hillary Clinton won. Gibson has been exhibiting terminal centrism for sometime now on Twitter so I hope he doesn’t bring it into the book
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Jan 12, 2020 00:50
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I liked The Luminous Dead but I do agree that the ending was a little meh. It kind of feels like it just wraps stuff up a little too neatly. Other than that I enjoyed the book.
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Jan 12, 2020 00:53
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shrike82 posted:I was reading the blurb for William Gibson’s new book that’s coming out in a couple weeks’ time - it’s a follow-up to the Peripheral. That’s cool but the present day narrative takes place in an alternative timeline where Hillary Clinton won. Gibson has been exhibiting terminal centrism for sometime now on Twitter so I hope he doesn’t bring it into the book The thing about Trump is that he has a way of making national and world affairs revolve around him. Maybe Gibson wanted to follow his already planned plot idea for a Peripheral sequel and didn’t want Trump getting in the way.
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Jan 12, 2020 01:04
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shrike82 posted:I was reading the blurb for William Gibson’s new book that’s coming out in a couple weeks’ time - it’s a follow-up to the Peripheral. That’s cool but the present day narrative takes place in an alternative timeline where Hillary Clinton won. Gibson has been exhibiting terminal centrism for sometime now on Twitter so I hope he doesn’t bring it into the book The Peripheral was about the imminent and unstoppable 'jackpot' which would wipe out most of humanity so I don't think you should expect Gibson to see the Hillaryverse as utopia.
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Jan 12, 2020 01:41
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Silver2195 posted:The thing about Trump is that he has a way of making national and world affairs revolve around him. Maybe Gibson wanted to follow his already planned plot idea for a Peripheral sequel and didn’t want Trump getting in the way. In recent interviews this is basically what he has said; he can’t keep up with the craziness in reality, so doing counter factual stuff gives him more freedom as a writer. He had to rewrite Pattern Recognition after September 11 and he thinks Trump/brexit/etc is just as if not more so disruptive to write around.
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Jan 12, 2020 01:49
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Yeah, Charles Stross and Gibson have both talked about how doing near-future SF is functionally impossible now because everything is accelerating so rapidly.
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Jan 12, 2020 01:51
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lol apparently there’s a vague nuclear conflict looming in the Middle East in the book so talk about reality overtaking fiction
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Jan 12, 2020 01:55
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In recent interviews he has stated the book was massively delayed due to having to rewrite it because Trump won. He has realised that although his books were set in the future, they generally reflected social currents in the present. So it made less and less sense to set novels too far into the future. So while he might be a bit of a short-sighted liberal online, I wouldn't expect a novel set in multiple-universes where Earth undergoes an apocalypse to treat the Hillary surrogate as a saviour. The first novel was clearly concerned with the social decay and environmental destruction of the world at the hands of capitalist hegemony. I could be wrong, but I think Gibson is canny enough to realise that there were more factors than fake news and political meddling that kept Hilary from becoming and being a good president. I guess we will find out soon!
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Jan 12, 2020 01:55
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, Charles Stross and Gibson have both talked about how doing near-future SF is functionally impossible now because everything is accelerating so rapidly. Maybe they’re just getting old.
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Jan 12, 2020 02:23
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pmchem posted:Maybe they’re just getting old. If you're going to say stuff like that I want you to tell me what'll happen in the next ten years, in the format of a sci-fi novel. You'd better be right!
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Jan 12, 2020 02:34
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pmchem posted:Maybe they’re just getting old. Ah, so we *aren't* living in a random hellscape. Got it, champ.
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Jan 12, 2020 02:48
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I love Gibson, he may be my favorite sci-fi author up there with Banks, but each of his major trilogies projected less further into the future. His current series continues that trend. He’s an incredible writer, but maybe it’s time to expect the next generation to step up in writing near/mid term sci-fi? Or did you all think Isaac Asimov would end up writing something like Idoru if he had lived a few more years, and nobody needed Gibson? Gibson was pushing 50 when he wrote that, and it feels like an eternity ago.
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Jan 12, 2020 03:00
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quantumfoam posted:Right the displacer beast, at least visually. And the salt-monster from Star Trek: TOS I think. I was sure the Alien was the first story. Huh.
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Jan 12, 2020 06:22
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shrike82 posted:I was reading the blurb for William Gibson’s new book that’s coming out in a couple weeks’ time - it’s a follow-up to the Peripheral. That’s cool but the present day narrative takes place in an alternative timeline where Hillary Clinton won. Gibson has been exhibiting terminal centrism for sometime now on Twitter so I hope he doesn’t bring it into the book I ended up unfollowing him because he was constantly retweeting the tedious opinions of overpaid blue-check pundits from CNN or the NYT or whatever other places employ boring, well-heeled commentators who haven't had a relevant political thought in at least ten years. There's something very depressing about seeing one of the great counter-cultural writers of his generation age into the epitome of a white liberal boomer. But I got the strong impression it's set with Clinton winning because he simply couldn't be hosed rewriting it, and The Peripheral was the most enjoyable thing he'd written in ages, so hopefully it's good.
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Jan 12, 2020 11:26
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Gibson’s been a white liberal boomer the entire time. It’s frustrating to see how issues of capital, class, imperialism and so on dangle in front of his nose the entire time he is writing about the near future, but he never manages to grasp them.
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Jan 12, 2020 12:03
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With regard to the Attack Heliocopter short story in Clarksworld, the last few days have seen a lot of trans twitter and sf editors/writers side-eying it a lot. In essence as you dig into the story, it's far less of subverting transphobic tropes and is actually reinforcing them. There's also something off about the comments it's had, way, way above the average for anything else the magazine gets, and particularly effusive. Some people have been speculating that this could be a new 'puppies' type thing of ending up with an 'ah ha' if it gets nominate for awards. Alternatively the author just managed to ignorantly hit all the Terf agenda points and it was a well-meaning swing and a miss. (Also Mike Resnick died, and the pearl clutchers are all in a tizzy as people revisit his awfulness and bigotry) https://twitter.com/MariaHaskins/status/1215755339485732864 https://twitter.com/EffInvictus/status/1215994150094626816 PST fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Jan 12, 2020 |
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Jan 12, 2020 13:05
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