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space marine todd posted:What Gibson book to read after Agency? I loved Peripheral and I am enjoying the poo poo out of Agency, but quickly running out of pages and trying to figure out what to read next of his. My friends keep recommending Pattern Recognition, but I also somehow haven't read Neuromancer yet... You should read neuromancer eventually but the trilogy beginning with pattern recognition mewse fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Apr 25, 2020 |
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pradmer posted:Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson - $1.99 Thanks for that. A page earlier, someone without PM's was trying to find some of M John Harrison's early stories. Check archive.org, that's where I've able to strike gold on multiple things, like Vernor Vinge's novella True Names and so on, just searching via the authors name with the Media type =text and the "Always Available" settings, especially if you can read Italian. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Apr 26, 2020 |
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Apr 25, 2020 23:58
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buffalo all day posted:Ive never read them but Honor Harrington? Dunno if there is racism/sexism. Not explicitly IIRC, but they're super into how cool colonialism is because what Weber really wants to be writing is Age of Sail Britain.
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Apr 26, 2020 03:02
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StrixNebulosa posted:Thread, help me! I'm in the mood for relatively light reading, and I want it to be sci-fi. Ideally a 4+ book series with shortish novels (long will do in a pinch) that's fun pulpy star trek-esque adventures. The caveat being that I don't want to deal with any sexism/racism, I'd prefer a protagonist who isn't a dude, and the writing needs to be at least decent. Definitely read Becky Chambers' trilogy it's a super fun cozy read. Not really Star Trek, but if you're interested in something with a bit more of an action twist to it, a previous poster in this thread recommended Tanya Huff's Confederation series. I enjoyed the first five books. Someone had described it as a fairly straightforward NCO gets the job done despite bumbling officers in space with a female protagonist. I read it a few years ago and I just remember it being a fun light read. The Warcriminal thread sumarises it thus: quote:Valor Confederation by Tanya Huff. I think this is interesting since it is very clearly a Mil-Scifi series about a Space Marine Commander, but unlike most of the genre the writer is a woman and the protagonist is a lady as well. The book series had some decent action scenes and some interesting hooks. The first in the series suffers a bit from being Rourke's Drift / Zulu in space, but the next couple of books have a bit more interesting scenario's. Since this genre is overwhelmingly male it makes this kind of just interesting as an anomaly in authorship.
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Apr 26, 2020 03:42
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StrixNebulosa posted:Thread, help me! I'm in the mood for relatively light reading, and I want it to be sci-fi. Ideally a 4+ book series with shortish novels (long will do in a pinch) that's fun pulpy star trek-esque adventures. The caveat being that I don't want to deal with any sexism/racism, I'd prefer a protagonist who isn't a dude, and the writing needs to be at least decent. Vatta's War
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Apr 26, 2020 03:59
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mewse posted:You should read neuromancer eventually but the trilogy beginning with pattern recognition Thanks! I can't get enough of this.
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Apr 26, 2020 04:14
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Xtanstic posted:Definitely read Becky Chambers' trilogy it's a super fun cozy read. I think the ones post the 'big reveal' aren't anywhere near as interesting but they still have a certain pleasure to read. The new KB Wagers book about the space coastguard is very cosy sci-fi imo, there's a bad plot, a bonding plot and an overarching story, none of which get in the way of some characters all bonding.
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Apr 26, 2020 07:30
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StrixNebulosa posted:Thread, help me! I'm in the mood for relatively light reading, and I want it to be sci-fi. Ideally a 4+ book series with shortish novels (long will do in a pinch) that's fun pulpy star trek-esque adventures. The caveat being that I don't want to deal with any sexism/racism, I'd prefer a protagonist who isn't a dude, and the writing needs to be at least decent. Philip Reeve's Railhead trilogy, which is YA but the really good non-formulaic kind of YA.
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Apr 26, 2020 11:05
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StrixNebulosa posted:Thread, help me! I'm in the mood for relatively light reading, and I want it to be sci-fi. Ideally a 4+ book series with shortish novels (long will do in a pinch) that's fun pulpy star trek-esque adventures. The caveat being that I don't want to deal with any sexism/racism, I'd prefer a protagonist who isn't a dude, and the writing needs to be at least decent. Corey J White's Voidwitch Saga is only three books, but it's definitely sci fi, massively pulpy, has a female lead and you'll blast through them pretty quickly. Don't think there's a Star Trek comparison. They're dumb as all hell, but were pretty fun.
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Apr 26, 2020 11:28
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Tanya Huff: something about her writing style puts me off. I've tried not just the first of her Valor series but also her urban fantasy, and I was bored by it.  I love her concepts so the writing not zinging hurts.Vatta's War: oh hey I own that, I should read it. Thanks! KB Wagers: I enjoyed her first novel, this should push me to read more. She can go into the pot for the big book purchase I'm planning! Railhead: Well hello that summary sounds awesome, I'll give it a whirl. I'm trying (vaguely) to actually read more YA instead of snubbing it. Voidwitch: lmao literally everyone on my goodreads friends list has it marked as "to-read" but no one has actually taken the plunge, including me. This thread is on fire with cool recs, I appreciate it!
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Apr 26, 2020 14:11
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StrixNebulosa posted:Railhead: Well hello that summary sounds awesome, I'll give it a whirl. I'm trying (vaguely) to actually read more YA instead of snubbing it. I started reading Reeve when I was like 13 so maybe it's just nostalgia or whatever, but I think he does YA very well because he's just writing fun fantasy and/or sci-fi adventures without it being some kind of deliberate marketing category. A lot of the YA genre seems to hew very close to the Chosen One trope, which the cynic in me thinks is a deliberate ploy to appeal to angsty teenagers who think they're special, whereas Reeve's characters are just ordinary people getting jerked around by events beyond their control and are only ever in a position to save the world by coincidence. I recommended Railhead because you asked for sci-fi, but I also really recommend his Mortal Engines quartet, which is a sort of dieselpunk adventure set thousands of years after an apocalypse. Don't be put off by the dire film adaptation from a couple years ago, they're really great books.
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Apr 26, 2020 22:10
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Just finished The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Great book, highly recommend.
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Apr 27, 2020 01:57
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anilEhilated posted:He also had a sci-fi sort-of detective series thing where the narrator was basically a female Watson for the (guy) detective. Can't remember its name or it being very good but might be worth looking up. The Alex Benedict series, first book "A Talent For War" (which is narrated by the titular character Alex, and the only one that is - the sequels, starting with Polaris, are narrated by his "girl friday" Chase). They're detective books but they're far future detective books mostly investigating stuff that happened a long time ago. They're really more like sci fi Nero Wolfe than anything else, even if Alex isn't quite as... housebound... as Wolfe. I liked them
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Apr 27, 2020 21:51
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Phobeste posted:The Alex Benedict series, first book "A Talent For War" (which is narrated by the titular character Alex, and the only one that is - the sequels, starting with Polaris, are narrated by his "girl friday" Chase). They're detective books but they're far future detective books mostly investigating stuff that happened a long time ago. They're really more like sci fi Nero Wolfe than anything else, even if Alex isn't quite as... housebound... as Wolfe. I liked them Huh. My uncle's collection has A Talent for War. I'll give it a shot, see if I like it at all. e: I'd like it if I got into this author and was able to try Engines of God again because the concept is cool. Nothing to do but start reading, I suppose. Fingers crossed! StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Apr 27, 2020 |
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Apr 27, 2020 22:12
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Holy crap sci-fi and fantasy deals today! Sorry for the wall of deals. Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb #1) by Tamsyn Muir - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J6HWLPR/ The Three-Body Problem (Rememberance of Earth's Past #1) by Cixin Liu - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IQO403K/ A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1) by Arkady Martine - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C7BCB88/ The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive #1) by Brandon Sanderson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003P2WO5E/ The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel by Mary Robinette Kowal - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0756JH5R1/ The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FJZDJ8Y/ The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A Heinlein - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CWGBZ4R/ The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time #1) by Robert Jordan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002U3CCYM/ Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003G4W49C/ The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1) by John Scalzi - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F20E7CO/ Death Masks (Dresden Files #5) by Jim Butcher - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003X0AW6Q/ Two books by Robert Jackson Bennett - $1.99 each The Company Man - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047Y0FIM/ The Troupe - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RD854O/ Whole bunch of KJ Parker books - $1.99 each Evil for Evil (Engineer #2) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002B9MHPO/ The Escapement (Engineer #3) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0010SEMLE The Two of Swords: Volume 2 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y5685GX/ The Two of Swords: Volume 3 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y5K2CK2/ The Belly of the Bow (Fencer #2) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3VX3S6/ The Proof House (Fencer #3) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3VX3UE/ Sharps - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005WK2ZXS/ The Spiritwalker Trilogy by Kate Elliott, I don't know anything about it but Strix brought it up recently - $0.99/$1.99/$1.99 Cold Magic - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JTHYB2/ Cold Fire - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RD856C/ Cold Steel - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A4EHXWU/ A whole slew of Octavia E Butler books, Parable, Xenogenesis, and Patternist series - $1.99 each https://www.amazon.com/Octavia-E-Butler/e/B000AQ1SQE/ Should be something for everyone. Edit: Secret extra deal The Liberation (Alchemy Wars #3) by Ian Tregillis - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BKSLGTE pradmer fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Apr 28, 2020 |
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Apr 27, 2020 23:18
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Thanks for posting all these, v much appreciated. FWIW, it's been a while since I read it but I remember Bloodchild being one of my favorite short stories when I read it. Would definitely recommend the collection!
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Apr 27, 2020 23:47
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RIP ZEEZ
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Well. This post will be e/n in nature, sorry for that. I picked out Engines of God and A Talent for War from my uncle's collection and tried to give them both a shot and immediately had vivid, strong flashbacks to sitting in my uncle's room at the nursing home in the months before he passed. That's when I first tried Engines of God, and yeah. I can't even read enough to judge the writing, it's too strongly associated with being there. The smells, the awful food, the way he looked.... I'll try the author again in a year or two, but right now I can't do it.
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Apr 28, 2020 02:09
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The Calculating Stars is a good novel with an interesting premise and lots of cool stuff about the early days of space flight. Also, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress may be Heinlein's best non-Juvenile novel. It's one of the ones I point to when people try to claim he's pro-fascism.
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Apr 28, 2020 02:48
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How is The Citty in the Middle of the Night? The premise sounds interesting enough.
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Apr 28, 2020 09:12
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Couple of Kindle reductions in the UK store for books that have been mentioned in this thread. Middlegame which is Hugo nominated and a few people have been talking up - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07HF2ZK75 Engine Summer, which I have on my wishlist list because someone in here recommended it at some point - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AJ1ZO7Y/
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Apr 28, 2020 10:40
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Thread favorite and all around great book The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the Tor free book of the month.
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Apr 28, 2020 14:03
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Captain Monkey posted:Thread favorite and all around great book The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the Tor free book of the month.
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Apr 28, 2020 14:15
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Promo for the (sadly delayed) launch of book 3, I expect. Tor’s current strategy is to promote book 1 in a series hard.
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Apr 28, 2020 14:55
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Captain Monkey posted:Thread favorite and all around great book The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the Tor free book of the month. Just got the email for this! A little confused by this line, though: quote:THE TYRANT BARU CORMORANT is the thrilling conclusion to the award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling Interdependency series, an epic space opera adventure from Hugo Award-winning author Seth Dickinson.
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Apr 28, 2020 15:31
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rocode posted:Just got the email for this! Do I not recall that the planned split in Tyrant was cancelled, thus sparing GB the Martinesque mountain climb of trying to find a title for the extra book?
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Apr 28, 2020 15:51
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rocode posted:Just got the email for this! Amazing plot twist
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Apr 28, 2020 16:01
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When Vox Day declared me the new John Scalzi, little did he know that I was in fact John Scalzi's mini me.
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Apr 28, 2020 16:07
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General Battuta posted:Promo for the (sadly delayed) launch of book 3, I expect. Tor’s current strategy is to promote book 1 in a series hard. Are you free to share to what extent Tor's free e-book club impact's sales positively? I've been curious. I kinda expected the project to peter off after it's first year but it's still going on strong. I mean I guess it definitely worked for me and Murderbot's first book. I immediately snapped up the rest of the series (with prodding from the thread). I just download them and stick up in a folder and then when I'm in the mood to try something I go digging in the folder to see if there's anything I recognize.
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Apr 28, 2020 16:16
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General Battuta posted:When Vox Day declared me the new John Scalzi, little did he know that I was in fact John Scalzi's mini me.
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Apr 28, 2020 16:34
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Somebody from this thread asked him to do a piece on me, iirc, so he did. I don't remember much, it was five years ago and never really led to anything more. Have you really arrived until Vox Day has done a hit piece on you?Xtanstic posted:Are you free to share to what extent Tor's free e-book club impact's sales positively? I've been curious. I kinda expected the project to peter off after it's first year but it's still going on strong. I mean I guess it definitely worked for me and Murderbot's first book. I immediately snapped up the rest of the series (with prodding from the thread). I just download them and stick up in a folder and then when I'm in the mood to try something I go digging in the folder to see if there's anything I recognize. I have never received a royalty statement and genuinely have no idea how many books I've sold. I try to estimate from Goodreads review numbers occasionally, but that's basically divining. I imagine it's positive!
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Apr 28, 2020 16:55
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General Battuta posted:
If it's anything like the baen free library used to do, the numbers are really really good.
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Apr 28, 2020 16:57
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Probably at least 100!
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Apr 28, 2020 16:57
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I read Stand on Zanzibar a few weeks ago and am in the middle of The Sheep Look Up. I love Brunner's sociological interjections which flesh out the world without being exposition dumps. Also, he's probably the most prescient author I've ever read considering how hosed up our world is right now. Any other New Wave or Post-New Wave recommendations that try to peer into our current era/near future?
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Apr 28, 2020 17:47
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withak posted:Amazing plot twist
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Apr 28, 2020 18:03
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AlternateNu posted:I read Stand on Zanzibar a few weeks ago and am in the middle of The Sheep Look Up. I love Brunner's sociological interjections which flesh out the world without being exposition dumps. Also, he's probably the most prescient author I've ever read considering how hosed up our world is right now. I assume you already know about The Shockwave Rider and The Jagged Orbit as well. Beyond Brunner, the first name that comes to mind is Norman Spinrad. He's not always on the mark -- Bug Jack Barron's view of the media is hilariously naive in retrospect. But you might like Russian Spring, Little Heroes, Pictures at 11, and/or Greenhouse Summer.
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Apr 28, 2020 18:10
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I loving KNEW Baru was SF!
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Apr 28, 2020 19:36
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AlternateNu posted:Any other New Wave or Post-New Wave recommendations that try to peer into our current era/near future? Seconding Shockwave Rider, also by Brunner. It's almost scarily prescient about a few things.
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Apr 28, 2020 20:07
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space marine todd posted:What Gibson book to read after Agency? I loved Peripheral and I am enjoying the poo poo out of Agency, but quickly running out of pages and trying to figure out what to read next of his. My friends keep recommending Pattern Recognition, but I also somehow haven't read Neuromancer yet... As others have said, the Big Ant trilogy (Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History) is your best choice because it's stylistically the most similar to The Peripheral and Agency (especially Agency, which was going to be a return to the contemporary dystopia of Big Ant before getting subsumed into the Stubs). You should give Neuromancer and the rest of the Sprawl trilogy a go at some point simply because they're so seminal to the genre. But you should also read the Bridge trilogy at some point. They're about as dated as the Sprawl novels in terms of envisioning a future that isn't going to come to pass, but they're also still quite timely in their focus on consumerism, reality television, immigration, and interstitial communities. And they're his best plotted and most tightly written novels featuring some of his most enjoyable protagonists.
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Apr 28, 2020 20:15
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General Battuta posted:Somebody from this thread asked him to do a piece on me, iirc, so he did. I don't remember much, it was five years ago and never really led to anything more. Have you really arrived until Vox Day has done a hit piece on you? Being told how many books you've sold is the kind of information that I'd assume a publish has to provide you even if you haven't hit a point to receive royalties (which is hard to know if you aren't told how many copies you've sold).
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Apr 28, 2020 22:13
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Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YFIV5Y/ Horror sci-fi. Germline (Subterrene War #1) by TC McCarthy - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047Y16NU/ Journalist covers a combat squad in the crazy future-tech Russian war and gets obsessively hooked on the experience. The Magician's Apprentice (Black Magician #prequel) by Trudi Canavan - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001RTKITG/
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Apr 28, 2020 23:54
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