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flippin' through my hoard, deciding what needs to stay vs what needs to go
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May 27, 2020 22:35
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pradmer posted:
Fuckin' rules.
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May 27, 2020 23:14
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Groke posted:We're going on an adventure! Had strong The Thing vibes off that creature.
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May 28, 2020 00:58
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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers #1) by Becky Chambers - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZP64F28 Reading now and I don't like it as much as I thought I would based on the universal praise. Only half done though. The Rage of Dragons (The Burning #1) by Evan Winter - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L2VKFP5/ The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NMJPD6T/
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May 28, 2020 22:44
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I got into the Wayfarer books on a recommendation because I had just finished the Last Policeman books and needed something optimistic scifi to read and Chambers does that very well.
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May 29, 2020 01:47
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I got into the Wayfarer books on a recommendation because I had just finished the Last Policeman books and needed something optimistic scifi to read and Chambers does that very well. I can definitely see that. The first two have a great balance of a driving mystery with depression around the edges. The last one is just a kick in the stomach.
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May 29, 2020 03:54
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Oh hey, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within: A Novel (Wayfarers Book 4) due on 2/16/2021. I'm in single digits for authors that I;ll automatically mash the preorder button for, Chambers is definitely one of them. Bujold, Brust, Cook, Stross, Wells, Lee, Chambers not necessarily in that order.
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May 30, 2020 05:41
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Groke posted:Fuckin' rules. Seconding this, probably my favorite book I've read this year.
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May 30, 2020 08:59
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The Lord of the Rings (All 3 books) by JRR Tolkien - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007978OY6/
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May 30, 2020 19:16
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fTixQc410o The Nebulas are starting!
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May 31, 2020 01:20
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anilEhilated posted:Well, do they tell you anything about the human condition? Lovecraft doesn't exactly invite you to share his paranoia, Vance's Dying Earth hardly has a message past "people are assholes" and so on. They're just for fun. pulp doesn't mean that the art is just meaningless fun, it's an indicator that it's lowbrow. lots of pulp art has explicit politics.
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May 31, 2020 04:40
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Has anybody got any recommendations for gothy SFF in that sorta Gideon mood? Particularly audiobooks: I've finally caved, and I've found it a really good way to read while I work. I've tried browsing Audible but there's just ... so much porn. Like, a shocking amount of porn that it's apparently impossible to filter out. The Monster of Elendhaven was super good, and that sorta dark/weird/bittersweet is definitely what I'm going for.
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May 31, 2020 05:36
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Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes has that sort of feel to it. Pretty good, but I have literally no idea if it's in audio format or not.
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May 31, 2020 06:46
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Finished The Second Sleep by Robert Harris. Starts off in 15th century England with a priest trying to find an obscure village, but quickly becomes clear (and this isn't much of a spoiler since it's revealed by the end of the first chapter) that it's actually a post-apocalyptic future. I enjoyed it quite a lot while I was reading it, but felt it really didn't bring much new to the genre at all - authoritarian church, fascinating relics of the ancients left behind, what is there to see here in 2020, really? I don't feel like my time was wasted but doubt I'll remember it in a few years and wouldn't really recommend it to anyone.A human heart posted:pulp doesn't mean that the art is just meaningless fun, it's an indicator that it's lowbrow. lots of pulp art has explicit politics. I know I've come to use the term differently than it was intended, but I associate "pulp" with "potboiler" and to a lesser extent "airport fiction" - I don't mean it as a disrespectful description, but rather a phrase for a book that's great fun to read but has a fairly basic prose style and isn't imparting any great message, or at least not in any new or meaningful way. There are basically two different kinds of positive reading experience for me. One is the highbrow type which is full of heavy meaning and beautiful writing and leaves me with the feeling that I've experienced ~Great Literature~, and the other is a fun, enjoyable, page-turning adventure of some variety (maybe it's a space opera! maybe it's a creepy horror story!) that I can read even if I'm sitting on a plane in an unknown time zone with jet lag - exactly the kind of time I wouldn't have the patience for an MFA-style novel. And I guess even on an ordinary day, reading highbrow literature often feels like a chore, like exercising or eating healthily; I know I'll feel long-term benefits from it but I don't feel excited to sit down and read it in the evening. Those two types aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but it's rare to find one that does both. And of course it's all too common to find Serious Literature that sucks, and ostensibly fun lowbrow adventure stories that are actually really tedious.
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May 31, 2020 09:54
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I'm reading Great North Road by Peter F Hamilton, it's pretty good. I'm engrossed in the mystery. After this I might check out his new Salvation series, have they been good?
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May 31, 2020 13:46
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freebooter posted:Finished The Second Sleep by Robert Harris. Starts off in 15th century England with a priest trying to find an obscure village, but quickly becomes clear (and this isn't much of a spoiler since it's revealed by the end of the first chapter) that it's actually a post-apocalyptic future. I enjoyed it quite a lot while I was reading it, but felt it really didn't bring much new to the genre at all - authoritarian church, fascinating relics of the ancients left behind, what is there to see here in 2020, really? I don't feel like my time was wasted but doubt I'll remember it in a few years and wouldn't really recommend it to anyone. 'serious literature' doesn't necessarily have an overt meaning in the way you describe, and plenty of airport fiction type books are trying to be 'about' some particular topic. like what's the heavy meaning in a lot of Pavic for example? his work is far more about formal play than any strong theme or message. but really I don't see how any of this conflicts with the idea that pulp is mostly about whether something is lowbrow rather than any particular quality of the writing.
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May 31, 2020 13:51
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Annihilation (Southern Reach #1) by Jeff VanderMeer - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EGJ32A6/ Never read any VanderMeer. Worth picking up? Wool (Silo #1) by Hugh Howey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088SY4GSD/ The Loot (Charlie McCabe Thriller #1) by Craig Schaefer - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L2V8GYW/
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May 31, 2020 18:13
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pradmer posted:Wool (Silo #1) by Hugh Howey - $2.99 I liked Wool. The series started to go increasingly off the rails as it went on, but it was satisfying post-apocalyptica that didn't involve roving biker gangs.
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May 31, 2020 18:27
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pradmer posted:Annihilation (Southern Reach #1) by Jeff VanderMeer - $2.99 It’s one of my favorites, genuinely creepy and atmospheric and disturbing. The prose is pretty good, too. I don’t want to say much more because it’s worth going in blind. It’s not a long book though, and at that price it’s worth it. The sequels are diminishing returns although if you played and liked the game Control you will probably like Authority (the first sequel).
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May 31, 2020 18:34
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pradmer posted:Wool (Silo #1) by Hugh Howey - $2.99 just a heads up that Wool (and probably a few others in the series, I haven't checked in a while) is free on Prime Reading, if you're a Prime member
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May 31, 2020 19:12
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freebooter posted:Finished The Second Sleep by Robert Harris. Starts off in 15th century England with a priest trying to find an obscure village, but quickly becomes clear (and this isn't much of a spoiler since it's revealed by the end of the first chapter) that it's actually a post-apocalyptic future. I enjoyed it quite a lot while I was reading it, but felt it really didn't bring much new to the genre at all - authoritarian church, fascinating relics of the ancients left behind, what is there to see here in 2020, really? I don't feel like my time was wasted but doubt I'll remember it in a few years and wouldn't really recommend it to anyone. is that 'fatherland' robert harris? didn't realise he was still writing, or even alive.
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Jun 1, 2020 03:19
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branedotorg posted:is that 'fatherland' robert harris? didn't realise he was still writing, or even alive. He wrote a narrative account (I guess you’d call it historical fiction?) of the absolutely batshit crazy Dreyfus Affair a few years back. It’s really entertaining, called An Officer and a Spy
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Jun 1, 2020 04:19
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buffalo all day posted:He wrote a narrative account (I guess you’d call it historical fiction?) of the absolutely batshit crazy Dreyfus Affair a few years back. It’s really entertaining, called An Officer and a Spy i'll give it a go thanks!
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Jun 1, 2020 05:14
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If anyone is in the mood for some stupid-but-entertaining space opera, I've been reading the first Deathstalker book by Simon R. Greene and would suggest trying it. It seems to revel in it's own 40k-grade story and going all-in on "oh yes of course the masked swordsman is secretly the dandy nobleman and of course he's secretly in love with a woman from a rival noble house" style stuff. The writing is, at least, somewhat better than the usual self-published stuff.buffalo all day posted:He wrote a narrative account (I guess you’d call it historical fiction?) of the absolutely batshit crazy Dreyfus Affair a few years back. It’s really entertaining, called An Officer and a Spy I read this a while back and recall thinking it was pretty good.
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Jun 1, 2020 08:52
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C.M. Kruger posted:If anyone is in the mood for some stupid-but-entertaining space opera, I've been reading the first Deathstalker book by Simon R. Greene and would suggest trying it. It seems to revel in it's own 40k-grade story and going all-in on "oh yes of course the masked swordsman is secretly the dandy nobleman and of course he's secretly in love with a woman from a rival noble house" style stuff. The writing is, at least, somewhat better than the usual self-published stuff. I read deathstalker and deathstalker rebellion years ago and I think I have the rest of the main series somewhere. Have you ever read the later books/prequels? I really liked the first one but I thought it got very samey by the end of the second.
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Jun 1, 2020 11:39
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Simon R. Greene's Deathstalker books are alot like the naval mil-scifi Lost Fleet series in that they repeat the same plot beats over and over and over, etc. If you're read one Deathstalker/Lost Fleet book, you've read all of the Deathstalker/Lost Fleet books. For fans of space opera, Shannon Appelcline's The Science Fiction In Traveller (RPG) is pretty informative, and covers alot of science-fiction stories that most modern scifi fans don't even know exist. First third of the book is devoted to the various now-forgotten space opera style stories of the 1960's & 1970's that inspired big chunks of the background setting and FTL travel of the Traveller RPG system. The remainder of the book is devoted to the various Traveller RPG licensed fiction that most sci-fi fans also don't know exist due to limited physical print runs, bankruptcies, and no-big author name involved syndrome. For people interested, here's some spoilers for the 1st third of The Science Fiction In Traveller H Beam Piper. Keith Laumer's Retief series. Poul Anderson's Flandry series. E.C. Tubb's Dumarest. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 15:17
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Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XD75HGV/ The Lord of Castle Black (Viscount of Adrilankha #2) by Steven Brust - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003H4I4W2/ This Alien Shore by CS Friedman - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002VB3F2Q/ The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BKR14LA/ Ghosts of Gotham by Craig Schaefer - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GZGXP13/ Wool: The Graphic Novel by Hugh Howey plus multiple - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DL6CY4K/
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Jun 1, 2020 16:48
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pradmer posted:This Alien Shore by CS Friedman - $1.99 I love this book, I've read it twice, and I still need to buy a replacement copy after I gave my brother my copy for his birthday.
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Jun 1, 2020 16:55
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quantumfoam posted:Simon R. Greene's Deathstalker books are alot like the naval mil-scifi Lost Fleet series in that they repeat the same plot beats over and over and over, etc. This is true for all of Simon R. Greene’s series, and even between the series there is many a repeated motif. Deathstalker is probably one of the best versions though.
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Jun 1, 2020 17:04
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It's the easiest thing in the world....
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Jun 1, 2020 18:56
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quantumfoam posted:Simon R. Greene's Deathstalker books are alot like the naval mil-scifi Lost Fleet series in that they repeat the same plot beats over and over and over, etc. And if you like Iron Maiden style metal Slough Feg's Traveller (which is a concept album about the band's Traveller campaign) is amazing and ridiculous.
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Jun 1, 2020 19:48
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Spite posted:And if you like Iron Maiden style metal Slough Feg's Traveller (which is a concept album about the band's Traveller campaign) is amazing and ridiculous. This poster speaks truth. Legit great album.
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Jun 1, 2020 23:47
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pradmer posted:Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 These posts have increased my backlog substantially.
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Jun 2, 2020 00:16
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holy poo poo the tor ebook of the month is GREAT https://ebookclub.tor.com/ four novellas: Miranda in Milan A reimagining of the consequences of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, casting Miranda into a Milanese pit of vipers. Every Heart a Doorway The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well what it feels like to tumble into their own magical world. And each of them is seeking a way back. Sisters of the Vast Black The sisters of the Order of Saint Rita are on an interstellar mission of mercy aboard Our Lady of Impossible Constellations, a living, breathing ship which seems determined to develop a will of its own. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps The Sorcerer follows the Captain, a beautiful man with song for a voice and hair that drinks the sunlight. The two of them are the descendants of the gods who abandoned the Earth for Heaven, and they will need all the gifts those divine ancestors left to them to keep their caravan brothers alive.
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Jun 2, 2020 14:06
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StrixNebulosa posted:holy poo poo the tor ebook of the month is GREAT sisters of the vast black is good, read it when it came out. It's sort of nun-firefly-in-an-organic-ship. Fun read and i'd preorder a full length if i could!
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Jun 2, 2020 22:50
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Read the two H Beam Piper novels (Cosmic Computer & Space Vikings) mentioned in the "The Science Fiction in Traveller (RPG)" book I discussed earlier in this thread. Verdict: H Beam Piper wrote good space opera. Piper was a halfway point between the storytelling methods & tropes of the "golden age of scifi" space opera fiction and space opera fiction published in the past 20 yrs/aka "modern space opera". Piper's Cosmic Computer was set in a mil-scifi world but ended up being more about revitalizing a fading civilization than space opera hijinks. Space Viking had a basic Monte Cristo set in space revenge plot, but the main character in it chose differently than what both golden age & modern space opera would normally do.
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Jun 3, 2020 17:04
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The Forever War by Joe Haldeman - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PI184XG/
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Jun 5, 2020 00:06
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Anyone know of a story where humans are conquered by aliens and it’s set in the aftermath? ( no ai, vampires or weird poo poo). I just want to read about humanity crushed by aliens and quislings and all that PawParole fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Jun 5, 2020 |
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Jun 5, 2020 20:28
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Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood trilogy
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Jun 5, 2020 20:31
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Llamadeus posted:Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood trilogy “She learns that the nuclear war had left the earth uninhabitable. Humans are all but extinct. The few survivors are plucked from the dying earth by an alien race, the Oankali. Lilith has awakened 250 years after the war on a living Oankali ship.” not what I wanted, and not my type of book, but thanks
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Jun 5, 2020 20:35
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