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Terminal autist posted:Anyone read Demon in White I read the first two in the series and was digging setting and world building but man its getting pretty grating having this space opera series where earth was destroyed millennia ago and those halcyon days are barely remembered but the main character can't help but relay every experience through some ancient greek parable. I liked it more than the two before it fwiw but the classical allusions are as prevalent as before. It is kind of mentioned though that the empires history is very much a fiction to support the politics. Didn't really think about your second paragraph at all. There is talk of misgendendering because the aliens have 3 genders and that judging them by human reason or emotions reflects on the viewer.
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Sep 9, 2020 12:46
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Silly Newbie posted:I didn't know anything about the author's politics going in, but I feel like I really, really did after the first book, and yikes. Books 2 and 3 are a little more (modern) politically neutral, to my reading, although super depressing. like seriously it's a shame that the universe in the books is so cool cause it's definitely in the John C. Wright box for me, where I love the ideas in the books and I hate every single character and everything about the way the author expressed everything
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Sep 9, 2020 15:47
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Getting way close to a derail here, but he's expressed support for Chinese government concentration camps among other things, and that's not exactly neutral.
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Sep 9, 2020 15:55
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Black Griffon posted:Getting way close to a derail here, but he's expressed support for Chinese government concentration camps among other things, and that's not exactly neutral.
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Sep 9, 2020 17:07
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Anne McCaffrey is a moron about sexual orientation. This is her answering questions in 98:quote:A: The situation will arise where two males will enagage in sexual activity. Greenriders, have to be homosexual. You can read the whole thing and the context here: https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Tent_Peg_Statement#The_Quote a foolish pianist fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Sep 9, 2020 |
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Sep 9, 2020 17:11
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Right, I wasn't characterizing his (abhorrent) personal views, just the political stances as published in the books (which still lean authoritarian) Aah, got it, misunderstood your post.
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Sep 9, 2020 17:14
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Has anyone posted about Exhalation by the Chiang around the time it came out and can link me to the thread pages? I-d like to read what people thought.
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Sep 9, 2020 17:18
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Mr. Nemo posted:Has anyone posted about Exhalation by the Chiang around the time it came out and can link me to the thread pages? I-d like to read what people thought. We didn't talk about it hardly at all but here's some from search. Personally, I'm always down to talk about it more, it's real good. I enjoyed the button that disproves free will a ton, off the top of my head. Harold Fjord posted:Ted Chiang's story "Exhalation" is real cool. It's about argon pressure powered robots who discover that their source of power is losing pressure. I'm only disappointed there wasn't a group of them that decided to depressurize even faster. I call them exhalerationists Mr. Peepers posted:Exhalation by Ted Chiang is a remarkable short story about a scientist trying to understand the inner workings of their own brain. A lot of Chiang's stories will fit the bill to some extent, really. TA Metis posted:I'm reading Ted Chiang's latest story collection, Exhalation. Turns out I've already read quite a few of the stories in this one but that's fine, they're good stories! And from "what did you just finish": Sock The Great posted:Exhalations: Stories by Ted Chiang Another collection of short stories from the same author of the short story which inspired the film Arrival. The highlight to me was the titular "Exhalation", which also happens to be one of the shortest stories in the book, is a beautifully written piece about androids dealing with the end of their existence. To me the worst was "The Lifecycle of Software Objects". It was so much longer than every other story and I just don't find the relationship between pet animal AI and their owners interesting. "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" probably has the most potential to be another feature film. There is definitely a world to explore there. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Sep 9, 2020 |
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Sep 9, 2020 17:28
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Tyrant Baru Cormorant question: Does Baru ever get and use some real agency as a cryptarch again? I'm on Act 2, Chapter 16, where she's down with meningitis, and it feels like I'm just watching a woman be battered around by the winds of fate while dithering over the fate of Yet Another Island that is not Taranoke, which is what I was hoping we were done with after Monster. Her right side having a mysterious plan is interesting, but I dearly miss the Baru from Traitor who was constantly doing interesting things to further her goals, even if they frequently backfired. It's halfway through book 3 at this point and no signs of Tyranny are evident, just a mostly-defeated woman blindly trusting in her broken brain to do what she is incapable of doing, while more capable or more violent people abuse her again and again.
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Sep 9, 2020 18:35
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Kestral posted:Tyrant Baru Cormorant question: Keep going. I found Monster really hard to get through, and the early parts of Tyrant similarly hard. It pays off. But don’t pay too much attention to the names, I would assume they’re publisher dictated.
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Sep 9, 2020 18:43
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buffalo all day posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3365216&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=122#post458895404 The one time BotL was really fun to read. I loved the angry nerds mad that he didn’t like their Gary Stu protagonist. God what a shitheap of a novel NotW was.
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Sep 9, 2020 19:03
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Black Griffon posted:Getting way close to a derail here, but he's expressed support for Chinese government concentration camps among other things I found that rather baffling, honestly, given the vivid portrayal of the Cultural Revolution in The Three Body Problem. Does he not see the obvious parallels between what the Chinese government did then and what it's doing now, or does he just think it's OK when it's directed at religious/ethnic minorities instead of intellectuals? Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Sep 9, 2020 |
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Sep 9, 2020 20:43
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Silver2195 posted:I found that rather baffling, honestly, given the vivid portrayal of the Cultural Revolution in The Three Body Problem. Does he not see the obvious parallels between what the Chinese government did then and what it's doing now, or does he just think it's OK when it's directed at religious/ethic minorities instead of intellectuals? Lots of people think the US state department may be lying or exaggerating. Maybe he's one.
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Sep 9, 2020 21:01
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Silver2195 posted:I found that rather baffling, honestly, given the vivid portrayal of the Cultural Revolution in The Three Body Problem. Does he not see the obvious parallels between what the Chinese government did then and what it's doing now, or does he just think it's OK when it's directed at religious/ethic minorities instead of intellectuals? Probably just saying whatever will keep him out of a camp
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Sep 9, 2020 21:02
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Yeah, I suspect Liu Cixin doesn't have great freedom to express his true beliefs about contemporary Chinese politics. Also, one should read good fiction regardless of the author's politics. E: So you can go ahead and skip The Dark Forest 
PeterWeller fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Sep 9, 2020 |
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Sep 9, 2020 21:32
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There's a relatively recent New Yorker piece interviewing him and he seemed like an extremely unhappy alcoholic who was well aware that he needed to spout the government's line on everything. though the former may be related to the latter quote:After the waiter had brought Budweiser—“I don’t discriminate: beer is beer”—Liu gingerly pulled a bottle of Southern Comfort from his backpack and poured generously into his drink. He had bought the bottle the day before at a liquor store. “I couldn’t make out the labels,” he said, explaining that he’d picked whatever was cheap and easy to reach on the shelf. “I chose wrong—this stuff is way too sweet.” Several times during our days together, he alluded both to his dependence on alcohol and to the need to abstain from hard liquor for the sake of his health. “At least two of my former colleagues have drunk themselves to death,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s not uncommon among engineers. You know the type.” quote:When I brought up the mass internment of Muslim Uighurs—around a million are now in reëducation camps in the northwestern province of Xinjiang—he trotted out the familiar arguments of government-controlled media: “Would you rather that they be hacking away at bodies at train stations and schools in terrorist attacks? If anything, the government is helping their economy and trying to lift them out of poverty.” The answer duplicated government propaganda so exactly that I couldn’t help asking Liu if he ever thought he might have been brainwashed. “I know what you are thinking,” he told me with weary clarity. “What about individual liberty and freedom of governance?” He sighed, as if exhausted by a debate going on in his head. “But that’s not what Chinese people care about. For ordinary folks, it’s the cost of health care, real-estate prices, their children’s education. Not democracy.”
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Sep 9, 2020 21:40
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This chinese author who hasn't been disappeared is somehow holding opinions that align with the chinese government??????????????? Truly a mystery
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Sep 9, 2020 21:55
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Harold Fjord posted:
I'm pretty sure that I could turn two or three of those buttons and a short Perl script attached to a robot hand into a wishing machine, though.
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Sep 9, 2020 22:22
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Consider Phlebas (Culture #1) by Iain M Banks - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013TX6FI/
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Sep 9, 2020 23:10
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Finally connected the dots when I went looking back in the old SFF threads to requote my earlier critique-comments on Three Body Problem Back in January 2019 I posted in the SFF megathread 2: "Read 3 Alexei Panshin books(Rite of Passage, Star Well, Thurb Revolution), and they were pretty good. Something weird happened with Panshin's writing career though, almost like he was blacklisted for a decade by the publishing industry. Ace Books, his publisher, was later revealed to been loving around with not-paying authors during that time period." The 1985 SFL Archives clarified this a few times but I didn't connect the dots until just now. Panshin apparently signed a multi-book contract just to get the advance money, then went *I AM A EXCEPTIONALLY CLEVER MAN* and from that point forward in his career exclusively released stories with his wife credited as co-writer. No wonder why book publishers reacted like they did. A new SFL Vol 11 readthrough update will be posted later tonight or tomorrow.
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Sep 9, 2020 23:53
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a foolish pianist posted:Anne McCaffrey is a moron about sexual orientation. This is her answering questions in 98: I read the date and expected something moderately ignorant and dated. Yikes.
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Sep 10, 2020 00:48
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No. No more dancing! posted:I read the date and expected something moderately ignorant and dated. Yikes. She was a 72 year old Irish Catholic with dubious views on consent, I for one wasn't surprised she was bigoted about other stuff too.
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Sep 10, 2020 02:02
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I read the first Malazan book and enjoyed it, and I was weighing my options with respect to continuing the series. I decided on the in-for-a-penny-etc option and spent the 70 bucks on the complete kindle series. The second book just isn’t grabbing me like the first one did, though - it seems a lot less focused somehow. Is this a Robert Jordan situation where the books vary wildly in speed and quality? Did I just make a huge purchasing error?
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Sep 10, 2020 04:19
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a foolish pianist posted:I read the first Malazan book and enjoyed it, and I was weighing my options with respect to continuing the series. I decided on the in-for-a-penny-etc option and spent the 70 bucks on the complete kindle series. The second book just isn’t grabbing me like the first one did, though - it seems a lot less focused somehow. Is this a Robert Jordan situation where the books vary wildly in speed and quality? Did I just make a huge purchasing error? With second you mean Deadhouse Gates I assume. Keep reading. I would say the second one is the best of the series.
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Sep 10, 2020 05:30
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a foolish pianist posted:I read the first Malazan book and enjoyed it, and I was weighing my options with respect to continuing the series. I decided on the in-for-a-penny-etc option and spent the 70 bucks on the complete kindle series. The second book just isn’t grabbing me like the first one did, though - it seems a lot less focused somehow. Is this a Robert Jordan situation where the books vary wildly in speed and quality? Did I just make a huge purchasing error? No, the second one is a somewhat abrupt shift from the first, but the books continue to get better and better as you go along. And, if you're anything like me, characters you hated reading about (Karsa Orlong is my example) later become favorites. Characters shift, change, and grow in all sorts of ridiculous ways, and the characters you were reading about in the first book eventually wind back around to being Very Important. Stick with it. It's worth reading and it's like eight hundred billion words, which is nice for voracious nerdy readers.
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Sep 10, 2020 05:31
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New SFL Archives readthrough update is UP on the off-site blog. It's huge, and I am too tired to copy it over and redo all the vbulletin formatting on that much text so anyone and everyone is free to copy it over and highlight/bold/spoiler what bits in it interest YOU. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Sep 10, 2020 |
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Sep 10, 2020 05:43
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quote:-A few SFL people want to know WTF(and how playable IRL) the FENCE game in John Brunner's SHOCKWAVE RIDER is. (2020 take: Now I do too, damnit.) Brunner wrote the rules, and apparently wanted to release it as a stand-alone boardgame. The rules are at https://sal.host.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Fencing.html, and there was even a version released for DOS in 1990 according to https://www.mobygames.com/game/fencing. However, it was never to see the light of day: per Dave Langford in SFX #60 quote:More games: John Brunner's prophetic novel The Shockwave Rider contains detailed rules for an entire playable boardgame called "fencing", protected by copyright, which he hoped to market one day. Unfortunately, or so he told me, some rotten game-theory expert came up with a perfect strategy that made it pointless. No information about what the perfect strategy consists of seems to exist, however. Then again, get some half-decent art and "premium components" and a little thing like the presence of a perfect strategy (even if widely-known) wouldn't stop you reaching six figures on Kickstarter. Though maybe I'm a tradgames cynic. EDIT The same column gave us this about anagrams of SF writers' names. quote:Anagrams are always popular, the theory of "anagramancy" being that sf authors' names can be rearranged to expose their inner nature. Thus Brian Aldiss is secretly pleased that he contains Rabid Snails, Ian Watson is Now A Saint, macho Colin Greenland belongs to a Non-Lilac Gender, Michael Crichton writes for Rich Catholic Men, and Brian Stableford is inclined to Narrate Bold Fibs. The rot sets in with Piers Anthony, who successively yields Noisy Panther, Horny Sapient and A Thorny Penis. Let's hastily move on ... Ha ha ha 
DigitalRaven fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Sep 10, 2020 |
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Sep 10, 2020 11:29
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a foolish pianist posted:I read the first Malazan book and enjoyed it, and I was weighing my options with respect to continuing the series. I decided on the in-for-a-penny-etc option and spent the 70 bucks on the complete kindle series. The second book just isn’t grabbing me like the first one did, though - it seems a lot less focused somehow. Is this a Robert Jordan situation where the books vary wildly in speed and quality? Did I just make a huge purchasing error? That's a bit surprising, since for most readers Gardens of the Moon is a chore to get through and the series doesn't really start getting good with Deadhouse Gates. (Gardens was, IIRC, written ten years before Deadhouse and the other Malazan books, so it's not surprising Erikson's style changed over the years.) I will note that if you don't like the cast-of-thousands approach that gives you a dozen new protagonists every book, you may have issues.
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Sep 10, 2020 14:11
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I will say that, as someone who loves Malazan (but hasn't finished it, don't judge), Gardens was fun, kinda pulpy, but good. DHG is a bit of a slow burn at first, and replaces that pulp with deep introspection on war, culture, and the grinding down of all by the sands of time. It's borderline nihilistic at times, which makes MoI, the next book, even more interesting, given that it seems to thread the needle between the two. That said, I understand it not hooking you quite as quickly, given that it doesn't start with quite as much excitement.
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Sep 10, 2020 14:27
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I'd say its only the very start of Gardens that people struggle with. Once you get into Darujhistan its all fun and games, and the characters are just as confused as you are. I found DG really frustrating to read. The battle scenes really didnt do it for me. He's trying to go for a chaotic close-to-the ground feel but its fragmented in all the wrong places. It felt like either I or Duiker was periodically blacking out. It does however introduce Pearl, who is the loving worst, and also the loving best.
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Sep 10, 2020 14:29
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(reposted from the offsite SFL Archives readthrough blog) SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 02 Current status: 15% completion in SFL Archives Vol 11, 48 bookmarks. 42 items of interest (reposted from the offsite SFL Archives readthrough blog) quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Aug 29, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2020 14:34
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quantumfoam posted:-A "Secular Humanist Revival" panel hosted by Orson Scott Card at the upcoming INCONJUNCTION 6 in July 1986 gets teased. i just looked up what this was and it's totally wild that OSC was doing a whole act making fun of evangelical preachers in the 80s when exactly did his brain completely break, was it 9/11?
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Sep 10, 2020 14:58
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quantumfoam posted:(reposted from the offsite SFL Archives readthrough blog) As someone who read and loved both series as a teenager, this is silly. quote:-Sime/Gen Householding and whatever the hell it is comes up a few times. Channels, Rensimes, Companions, Gens, and Sosectu's are name-dropped. Guessing Sime/Gen is some version of pre-Internet LARPing Sime/Gen was a novel series written by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah (who were also well-known early Star Trek fanfic writers). It was really popular for a while, but I can't say why because I've never read any of the books.
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Sep 10, 2020 16:20
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quantumfoam posted:-George RR Martin's Haviland Tuf short stories gets brought up a few times. They sound interesting but I am not dropping my "NEVER READ GEORGE RR MARTIN STORIES" rule He actually used to be a decent writer of short stories before the whole fantasy saga thing. Also, quote:-A "Secular Humanist Revival" panel hosted by Orson Scott Card at the upcoming INCONJUNCTION 6 in July 1986 gets teased. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Sep 10, 2020 |
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Sep 10, 2020 16:30
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Selachian posted:As someone who read and loved both series as a teenager, this is silly. Yeah it's kind of a baffling comparison to draw. Maybe redheads in books was notable in the 80s. I can't understand what other salient connections between the books you could point to as being "ripoffs". Also lol that they reached that far to criticize the Belgariad for plagiarism, given that the first book is literally Reader's Digest Lord of the Rings (which tbf puts it in generous company, for fantasy of that era)
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Sep 10, 2020 16:40
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MockingQuantum posted:Yeah it's kind of a baffling comparison to draw. Maybe redheads in books was notable in the 80s. I can't understand what other salient connections between the books you could point to as being "ripoffs". Does anyone know of other successful mediocre LOTR ripoffs of the era? I'm having trouble thinking of others, that's always the example I use. It was interesting to read that shout out for Judy-Lynn Del Rey; the only place I know her and her husband's names from is their role in the Belgariad and the Eddings's careers generally, which at this point is probably not a positive thing to most of the posters in this thread.
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Sep 10, 2020 16:52
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Sarern posted:Does anyone know of other successful mediocre LOTR ripoffs of the era? I'm having trouble thinking of others, that's always the example I use. Depends on what you count as successful. Been a while since I read the Belgariad or Pyrdian (which I don't think I finished anyways) and I don't remember them being that close to each other. But then again when i think of ripoff I imagine LOTR to the Iron Tower Trilogy by Dennis McKiernan. Or to use a different example, Star Wars and Star of the Guardians or Deathstalker. Compared to those examples most claims of "ripoff" are more of a somewhat inspired by. Maybe Shannara is a better example for your question. I've heard it's early books are very similar to LOTR but I could never even finish the first. nessin fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Sep 10, 2020 |
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Sep 10, 2020 17:16
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Sarern posted:Does anyone know of other successful mediocre LOTR ripoffs of the era? I'm having trouble thinking of others, that's always the example I use. The Terry Brooks Shannara series is the first one that would come to mind. The trilogy certainly reminded me a lot of LOTR when I turned to it as a kid looking for a next thing to read after Tolkien. And feel like I've read somewhere that the Del Rey's found the book after looking around and realizing that people didn't want to read more fantasy books kind of like LOTR, but rather wanted more books that basically were LOTR. And I assume Shannara was super successful for Brooks given how many more of those he cranked out.
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Sep 10, 2020 17:22
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Writing Tolkien knockoffs was a thriving business for fantasy mid-list authors in the 70s/80s. The first Shannara book is an utterly shameless ripoff of LOTR down to individual story elements. And yeah, Dennis McKiernan's stuff is pretty derivative too. Besides that, I can also recall the terrible Urshurak by the Hildebrandt Brothers (nice art though), and Niel Hancock's Circle of Light books, which was a bit more original but still blatant -- one of the main characters is an aged, mighty wizard named Mithramuse Cairngarme, for instance. I think that's the only basis you can compare Prydain and the Belgariad -- the Tolkien influence in both (which is particularly obvious in the ways Prydain differs from the Mabinogion stories it's also derived from).
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Sep 10, 2020 17:47
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a foolish pianist posted:Anne McCaffrey is a moron about sexual orientation. This is her answering questions in 98: 
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