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90s Cringe Rock posted:Black Company's a pretty great trilogy about weird fantasy poker, although later trilogies may be hit-or-miss depending on what you liked about the first one. Tonk is very real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonk_(card_game)
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Jan 21, 2020 21:31
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The Tor.com and NPR scifi+ fantasy book rec's in the OP are beyond stale. Send me links to anything newer and I'll update the OP. Had no idea that kindofbook.com + https://www.bookbub.com/ existed, will be add them to OP too.
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Jan 22, 2020 02:08
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quantumfoam posted:The Tor.com and NPR scifi+ fantasy book rec's in the OP are beyond stale. Send me links to anything newer and I'll update the OP. I’ve bought a lot of books from the Bookbub email. I’ve been subscribed for several years. It’s decent. There is a fair share of self published Amazon drek, but there is a lot of good stuff too.
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Jan 22, 2020 02:16
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XBenedict posted:I’ve bought a lot of books from the Bookbub email. I’ve been subscribed for several years. It’s decent. There is a fair share of self published Amazon drek, but there is a lot of good stuff too. As someone who saw the sales of my self-published Amazon drek skyrocket when I once got accepted into a Bookbub deal, I strongly urge everyone to sign up to Bookbub 
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Jan 22, 2020 02:41
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Lmao, just got started on the new Gibson book and he spins the alternate history Clinton win as potentially being due to a “reduction in Russian manipulation of social media” Terminal Succ
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Jan 22, 2020 10:11
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shrike82 posted:Lmao, just got started on the new Gibson book and he spins the alternate history Clinton win as potentially being due to a “reduction in Russian manipulation of social media” What's sucky about that? afaik the Russians did tamper with our social media.
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Jan 22, 2020 11:41
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StrixNebulosa posted:What's sucky about that? afaik the Russians did tamper with our social media. Not to go all C-SPAM in here, but the Dems ran a bad candidate with a poo poo campaign. Trump brilliantly harnessed the hatred white America has against minorities and poor people. Russian meddling did happen, but it did not influence the outcome.
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Jan 22, 2020 13:01
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Also if you check his twitter feed, Gibson is a dull blade having sensible chuckles at resistance drivel these days.
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Jan 22, 2020 13:12
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Not to go all C-SPAM in here, but the Dems ran a bad candidate with a poo poo campaign. Trump brilliantly harnessed the hatred white America has against minorities and poor people. Russian meddling did happen, All of this is also true quote:but it did not influence the outcome. This is, at this point, unproven at best. For just one example, we know that the Georgia election was very likely hacked, because the whole election routed through one server and there's a federal lawsuit over the server records being hacked. quote:Lamb also said he determined that computer logs — which would have been critical to understanding what might have been altered on or stolen from the server — only go back to Nov. 10, 2016 — two days after Donald Trump was elected U.S. president. Two years later, Brian Kemp won the Georgia governor’s race by a narrow margin over Democrat Stacey Abrams. https://apnews.com/39dad9d39a7533efe06e0774615a6d05 We also have at least some evidence that that server was targeted by Russian interference: quote:This changed on Friday, however, when the Justice Department unsealed the indictment against 12 Russian intelligence officers who oversaw an operation that, the department says, included targeting county websites in Georgia. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/18/mueller-indictments-georgia-voting-infrastructure-219018 The best you can argue is that Russian interference in the election did not provably alter the results. It has not, at this point, been affirmatively proven that Russian interference either did or did not sway the election. All the other factors you mention did sway the election, sure, but Hillary's defeat had more than one single cause. The election was close enough that anything that shifted the results a hundredth of a percentage point could arguably be a "cause," so all sorts of small effects arguably mattered in a way they normally wouldn't. edit: That said, whoops, we're in Book Barn not D&D. I apologize for the derail! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Jan 22, 2020 |
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Jan 22, 2020 13:13
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Not to go all C-SPAM in here, but the Dems ran a bad candidate with a poo poo campaign. Trump brilliantly harnessed the hatred white America has against minorities and poor people. Russian meddling did happen, but it did not influence the outcome. Not gonna argue that Hillary was a garbage candidate with a bad campaign (because boy howdy she sure was bad), but I do think Russian meddling influenced the outcome enough for Gibson to be able to use it in his book. There is something inherently fascinating about the father of cyberpunk struggling with our modern world. I need to hurry through Spook Country so I can read his more modern stuff.... but I don't want to hurry because his way with words is so good and I want to savor it.
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Jan 22, 2020 13:44
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Gibson’s still a good writer but his personal political views are OK Boomer level
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Jan 22, 2020 13:55
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shrike82 posted:Gibson’s still a good writer but his personal political views are OK Boomer level At least I guess he has the excuse of actually being a boomer.
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Jan 22, 2020 14:08
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Groke posted:At least I guess he has the excuse of actually being a boomer. He’s also a Canadian.
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Jan 22, 2020 14:23
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Meanwhile Harry Turtledove found the correct use of twitter: https://twitter.com/HNTurtledove/status/1219070058711769088
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Jan 22, 2020 14:36
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:For just one example, we know that the Georgia election was very likely hacked, because the whole election routed through one server and there's a federal lawsuit over the server records being hacked. Give credit where it's due. Kemp is an exceptionally corrupt motherfucker and pushing for paperless voting systems that can be wiped and made impossible to properly audit was not a coincidence.
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Jan 22, 2020 14:52
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FuturePastNow posted:Meanwhile Harry Turtledove found the correct use of twitter: Learning Harry Turtledove is fairly liberal was a tremendous surprise.
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Jan 22, 2020 15:03
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FuturePastNow posted:Meanwhile Harry Turtledove found the correct use of twitter: Turtledove wrote a seven book series that was basically "what if both World Wars, but we're the Nazis and we're exterminating blacks?" He doesn't do nuance.
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Jan 22, 2020 15:06
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It is pretty obvious if you look closely at most of his work. If I ever unstall my LR thread and get to other books, that would be something I'd point out.
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Jan 22, 2020 15:09
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Tor is trying an old failed marketing gimmick again - and hopefully it'll stick this time. Maybe. I'm reading A Queen in Hiding by Sarah Kozloff, which is billed as an epic fantasy that will be dropping in the span of four months. I don't have to wait, it's been written, every month a new volume and then it's done. Bam bam bam. I have mixed feelings about this publishing schedule because the last times it's been tried, the books came out and then basically vanished. And I have the reading challenge of reading a 450+ page book a month. (Which isn't really a challenge but that's still a hefty amount to ask for.) Anyways. I'm fifty pages into it now and it's interesting. Still in the setup period of course - our heroine is eight, so the focus is more on her mother, a young queen who basically sucks at ruling. She's pushed around by her council, no one respects her, and meanwhile a nearby enemy nation is making threatening overtures towards them. The anime bits: this nation worships water, and queens have magic blue hair. Every queen has a magic power of some sort. The mom has the power to erase memories. Our heroine can talk to animals. The enemy nation worships fire and I presume has red hair for their nobles. Due to cross-breeding between nations everyone has brown hair, and if you have pure colorful hair it means you're a purebred. Which leads me around to my main complaint: that's one hell of an interesting concept. A member of nobility who can erase memories? If used in secret for intrigue that would be one hell of an interesting thing. Naturally this queen is too naive to do that.  Ah well. It's fine fantasy otherwise. Not amazing, but I'm enjoying it and I'll probably check out the sequels as they drop.
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Jan 22, 2020 16:23
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Jedit posted:Turtledove wrote a seven book series that was basically "what if both World Wars, but we're the Nazis and we're exterminating blacks?" He doesn't do nuance. Check his pinned tweet. https://twitter.com/hnturtledove/status/993990434006286336?s=21
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Jan 22, 2020 16:30
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Child of Fire (Twenty Palaces) by Harry Connolly - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002PYFW9S/ House of Blades by Will Wight - Free https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D52X58Y/
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Jan 22, 2020 23:25
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StrixNebulosa posted:
This reminds me of why I probably won't pick up the Winter World sequels. Like I mentioned upthread, it's clumsy and amateurish as far as sci-fi goes, but an interesting and engaging mystery story. But then I finished it, and I realized that the concept–a world overrun by a strange ice age, erasing cities and changing the entire fate of humanity–was just a backdrop. I want to know about the consequences of something like that. How it shapes and forms humanity, but the author just sort of dives into it and then past it, never really exploring it in full. I'm sure it's explored in the sequels, but the potential of the timeline covered in the first book is still wasted. Also, the author deftly sidesteps exposition about the situation on earth by sending the main characters on two separate trips to space, each lasting months, and on both trips they can't communicate with earth because of plot reasons. Black Griffon fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Jan 23, 2020 |
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Jan 22, 2020 23:41
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I've spent today realizing I have a cold (bleh!) and reading Queen in Hiding and now 140~ pages into it I like it a lot more. Our naive queen transformed into a mama bear when she realized her daughter was in danger, learned how to use her memory erasing power to find out who she can trust, and split from the queendom after a neat sequence of events. I won't say it's the best prose I've ever read but I am enjoying reading this book and if it keeps up this pace and quality I'll happily snap up the rest of it as it drops. Black Gryphon: yeah that sucks  Fortunately my book is recovering itself and not wasting potential, but I always hate it when authors have cool ideas and don't properly explore them.
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Jan 22, 2020 23:55
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Jedit posted:Turtledove wrote a seven book series that was basically "what if both World Wars, but we're the Nazis and we're exterminating blacks?" He doesn't do nuance. Turtledove's entire shtick his entire career has been to take history as it actually happened, change one or two things, and publish it as alt history. American Civil War done as fantasy? Check. Fantasy about Britain dealing with the disappearance of the Romans? Check. Basil of Byzantium with the serial numbers filed off? Check. Alt-history where the Confederates stalemated the US? Check. ...that last series is the one that leads into a trilogy about WW1 followed by a trilogy about WW2, but it's just WW1/WW2 stories with the names changed.
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Jan 23, 2020 05:27
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There's also his series about aliens invading during WWII, which I remember chiefly because I read it in middle school and it had sex scenes.
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Jan 23, 2020 05:36
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Turtledove's now started publishing a series of unconnected stories in Analog, set in a world where intelligent life on Earth developed from dinosaurs rather than from mammals. The first one, Bonehunters, is a take on the Fossil Wars in the American West. It's interesting but having the Native American parallels be an actual different intelligent dinosaur-descendant species than the colonials was a bit... questionable. The second one, The Quest for the Great Gray Mossy, is a take on Moby Dick, and thankfully doesn't delve too deeply into these more dubious aspects of his worldbuilding.
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Jan 23, 2020 05:59
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wizzardstaff posted:There's also his series about aliens invading during WWII, which I remember chiefly because I read it in middle school and it had sex scenes. As with all Turtledove works, they were really bad sex scenes. Even Tom Clancy did a better job when trying.
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Jan 23, 2020 06:08
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Gnoman posted:As with all Turtledove works, they were really bad sex scenes. Even Tom Clancy did a better job when trying. At least the Turtledino tales don't have sex. Yet.
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Jan 23, 2020 06:10
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ulmont posted:Turtledove's entire shtick his entire career has been to take history as it actually happened, change one or two things, and publish it as alt history. He also did WWII as fantasy. It was so .. so so bad. Like 5 books he doesn't once describe what a "behemoth" (tank) actually looks like or anything. It's mind-boggling to me he's a published author.
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Jan 23, 2020 15:08
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I did a reread of Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover and I'm kind of amazed that it still holds up. It's definitely got some dated parts (Kierendal and Berne) but for the most part the action scenes are good, the political commentary isn't stale and the action is really entertaining.
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Jan 23, 2020 22:07
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Jedit posted:Turtledove wrote a seven book series that was basically "what if both World Wars, but we're the Nazis and we're exterminating blacks?" He doesn't do nuance. God drat that's a good series.
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Jan 23, 2020 23:28
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If I remember right it was a ten-book series. Eleven if you count the 19th-century prequel.
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Jan 23, 2020 23:36
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It's interesting but having the Native American parallels be an actual different intelligent dinosaur-descendant species than the colonials was a bit... questionable. Not the first time he's done something like that, he had a book in the 80s where the Americas had been settled only by Neanderthals.
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Jan 23, 2020 23:46
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Daughter of the Empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073TJH5XR/ Oft recommended as the best Riftwar trilogy.
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Jan 24, 2020 00:05
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pradmer posted:Daughter of the Empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts - $1.99 It is. The handful of times Pug shows up is ok because you get to see Pug passing judgement on the Empire's cruelty at the Warlord's Games from the other side and a better feel for the impact of that event. e: I think that event is in the 2nd book though.
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Jan 24, 2020 01:32
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fritz posted:Not the first time he's done something like that, he had a book in the 80s where the Americas had been settled only by Neanderthals.  Quite. Funny what you can get away with when you're an established white cis-man who is just liberal enough.
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Jan 24, 2020 03:08
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All Systems Red (Murderbot! book 1) by Martha Wells - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYZ8X5C/ Finally cheap enough I can justify buying it. The Consuming Fire (Interdependency book 2) by John Scalzi - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078X255Y1/ Contentious series with some liking it and some really hating it. Haven't started it myself.
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Jan 26, 2020 20:24
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anilEhilated posted:Sounds like bargain bin Malazan. I've been reading Marc Turner's Chronicles of the Exile, and that is extremely bargain bin Malazan - convoluted political situation, strange ancient magics popping up and wrecking poo poo/getting their poo poo wrecked, casual interplanar travel, lower-g-gods meddling in human politics,  potsherds
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Jan 27, 2020 18:23
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Is it any good, though? I mean, potsherds aside.
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Jan 27, 2020 18:38
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shrike82 posted:Lmao, just got started on the new Gibson book and he spins the alternate history Clinton win as potentially being due to a “reduction in Russian manipulation of social media” This is the one thing they can readily identify as a difference between the alternate timelines. All they really know is that "something" happened in 2015 and that "something" was a sociopath from an alternate future messing with the timeline to cause forever wars that spawn ever more advanced military technology. The book is full of unsubtle indicators that things are not magically better in the alternate present. California's wildfires loom in the background of the opening chapters. The protagonists from the alternate future speak about how the people in the alternate present aren't any happier or more prosperous and that they're all still heading towards calamity. StrixNebulosa posted:Not gonna argue that Hillary was a garbage candidate with a bad campaign (because boy howdy she sure was bad), but I do think Russian meddling influenced the outcome enough for Gibson to be able to use it in his book. Russian meddling is also very on theme in a novel about people from the future meddling in alternate pasts through the internet. You'll adore Agency if you like Spook Country.
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Jan 27, 2020 23:14
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