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McCoy Pauley posted: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. Not just super-successful, but enormously super-successful and changed the face of fantasy publishing: 125,000 copies in its first month alone. Compare the fantasy fields of 1976 and 1986 and they're immensely different. Before Shannara, everyone respected Tolkien and what he did. After Shannara, everyone copied Tolkien and (broadly) what he did: fantasy epics became the norm, although soon people were incestuously copying the successful knock-offs rather than looking to Tolkien directly because the latter is much easier to process. Shannara was such a mediocre series, but an incredibly transformative one.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 17:51 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 03:56 |
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DigitalRaven posted: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 The hidden-information requirement and the size of the board seems like it would make it cumbersome to play in physical form, and that's probably the main obstacle. It wouldn't be hard to implement digitally, though. As for the existence of a perfect strategy -- there are lots of classic board games that have a perfect (or at least currently believed to be optimal) strategy. If there are no random elements this usually means always-draw (e.g. tictactoe) or a specific player always wins. If there are random elements (e.g. Clue) this basically means you're playing the world's longest game of coinflip. In either case, though, it hasn't stopped these games from becoming extremely popular. It might actually be a problem now that the board game market has exploded and people are familiar with games that aren't the Nightmare Trifecta of Monopoly, Scrabble, and Clue, but back when TSWR was published I don't think it would have been an issue.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 18:16 |
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anilEhilated posted:You should, they're good. The quirky humor is a huge departure from GRRM's usual abject misery stuff and it's mostly just fun in space. Quoting this because I want to capture this post before you finish reading the rest of the post you posted. tldr: GRRM's Haviland Tuf comes up again 6 or so items later in the SFL Archives Vol 11 update 02 post. Sarern posted: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. Judy-Lynn Del Rey being mostly remembered nowadays for marriage to her (even for that era) sketchy as hell SF author-editor husband is very sad. Judy Lynn did a crazy amount of PR outreach-work with SF fandom and SF writer talent hunts that got heavily marginalized by other SF&F editors as being beneath themselves to personally do. Even if you think most outreach PR work is bullshit, Judy-Lynn broke the editor/upper management gender line in the SF&F similar to how Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier that segregated professional baseball. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Sep 10, 2020 |
# ? Sep 10, 2020 18:32 |
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What has happened to Judy-Lynn (and even her husband) isn't uncommon. Both were legends in their day, Lester in terms of writing and Judy in terms of editing (she received a posthumous Hugo for her work), but a lot of that generation is sort of disappearing into the mists. The genres in their modern forms are comparatively young so we're still seeing exactly how the winnowing is shaking out, but it doesn't look like a lot of what was considered foundational is going to carry forward in the same way that, say, classic rock music has. SF&F appears to have a pretty short memory.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 20:33 |
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eke out posted: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 The Homecoming saga was in the early 90's so if anything the seeds were already planted long before that.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 20:37 |
quantumfoam posted:Quoting this because I want to capture this post before you finish reading the rest of the post you posted. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Sep 10, 2020 |
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 21:04 |
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anilEhilated posted:Right, missed the second mention. I think it's still worth remembering that there once was a GRRM who wrote actually interesting stuff. Yup.The Haviland Tuf stories are great science fiction. No misery, except for what you get if you mess with Tuf and his cats.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 21:21 |
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Anyone have some recommendations for SF novels following Generation Ships? I had a recent thought about a premise where a Generation ship sets off for a new solar system but in the proceeding centuries faster travel methods have allowed ships to make it there before the initial ship so they send someone to pick up the original colony mission and get them there hundreds of years ahead of schedule. I figure someone must have done a story like that already and I'd be interested to see how it played out.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 21:21 |
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Arcsquad12 posted:Anyone have some recommendations for SF novels following Generation Ships? I had a recent thought about a premise where a Generation ship sets off for a new solar system but in the proceeding centuries faster travel methods have allowed ships to make it there before the initial ship so they send someone to pick up the original colony mission and get them there hundreds of years ahead of schedule. I figure someone must have done a story like that already and I'd be interested to see how it played out. I know Star Trek has used the premise quite a few times, with the crew of the Enterprise or whatever stumbling over a forgotten generation or sleeper ship (see "Space Seed" or "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" from TOS, for instance).
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 21:33 |
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Arcsquad12 posted:Anyone have some recommendations for SF novels following Generation Ships? I had a recent thought about a premise where a Generation ship sets off for a new solar system but in the proceeding centuries faster travel methods have allowed ships to make it there before the initial ship so they send someone to pick up the original colony mission and get them there hundreds of years ahead of schedule. I figure someone must have done a story like that already and I'd be interested to see how it played out. There's a very old short story about the generation/sleeper ship being outraced by later colonists something about Arcturus maybe? I read it as a kid. Sorry that is the least helpful recommendation ever. A significant part of Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds is set on a generation ship, it's quite horrifying! Hull Zero Three is a terrible book about a generation ship gone wrong, don't read it. Okay, thinking about it, none of the ships in the past three paragraphs are true generation ships, they're more of the cryosleep/artificial womb variety.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 21:35 |
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General Battuta posted:The Lastronaut was pretty good. Kind of an airport thriller Blindsight, which I guess is what I was looking for. There's just one very literal plot hole I can't figure out, an actual hole of relevance to the plot why the heck did oumuamua 2: the wormening have airlocks? which were easily operable by people? Narratively I like the way this seems to point towards a friendly alien first contact, but practically speaking I can't figure out the reasons for them. Maybe they're just for scooping up rocks, comets, assorted snacks? Just finished Lastronaut last night. Agree on the "airport thriller" thing, some real cliche dialog/instant romance kinda stuff. Your thought was what I had regarding them being there for picking up space detritus, and I think it's mentioned at one point that it can only get 'so much' by collecting what it gets going through space? I can't explain why it apparently flies rear end in a top hat first, though, or how the things it picks up via the front airlock are actually consumed, but I had trouble picturing the gravity situation in the front. Making the back end the part with the teeth was a weird choice, though.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 21:41 |
Peter Watts wrote a novella called the Freeze Frame Revolution about a crew aboard a ship that is slow boating across the galaxy constructing a wormhole network. occasionally things emerge from the wormholes which may or may not be descended from the humans they left behind. they're planning a mutiny against the AI controlling the ship, the gimmick being that they are only conscious for short stretches of time, going back to hibernation after performing their duties. I just read Ship of Fools which is another generation ship story but I didn't like it that much.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 21:45 |
There must be a reason I have Hull Zero Three on my kindle. Some of you liked, it right?
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 22:13 |
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Black Griffon posted:There must be a reason I have Hull Zero Three on my kindle. Some of you liked, it right? I generally love Greg Bear's work like Queen of Angels. I did not like Hull Zero Three.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 22:34 |
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Black Griffon posted:There must be a reason I have Hull Zero Three on my kindle. Some of you liked, it right? From what I remember, it had a cute gimmick premise and little else going for it.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 22:34 |
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Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson is about a generation ship and is told from the POV of the ship's AI. It does mostly focus on a single generation (as they reach their destination and what happens there).
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 22:47 |
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The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CO7FLFG/ Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DN8BQMD/
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 23:01 |
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Arcsquad12 posted:Anyone have some recommendations for SF novels following Generation Ships? I had a recent thought about a premise where a Generation ship sets off for a new solar system but in the proceeding centuries faster travel methods have allowed ships to make it there before the initial ship so they send someone to pick up the original colony mission and get them there hundreds of years ahead of schedule. I figure someone must have done a story like that already and I'd be interested to see how it played out. There's definitely an A.E. van Vogt story (maybe just a short story) about something similar (though I think it's a sleeper ship rather than a generation ship), with early interstellar explorers being outpaced by FTL ships. Unfortunately I can't recall the name of the story. It also shows up in the Traveller RPG lore, with several generation ships launched from Earth coming near their destinations after thousands of years in space, being monitored by the Imperial Scout Service. (Though with the background lore of Traveller there were already humans at their destinations before they even left, humanity having been seeded around the galaxy by aliens 300k years ago).
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 23:02 |
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pradmer posted:The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey - $2.99 Children of Time looks kinda like what I envisioned. You get to your new planet and find someone has already set up shop before you landed.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 23:37 |
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^^ Children of Time was the other I was going to recommend, I think it's about the closest to what you're looking for that I could think of! Arcsquad12 posted:Anyone have some recommendations for SF novels following Generation Ships? An Unkindness of Ghosts doesn't have the latter bits, but is v much about the day to day life and society that develops on a generation ship.
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# ? Sep 10, 2020 23:48 |
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Arcsquad12 posted:Anyone have some recommendations for SF novels following Generation Ships? I had a recent thought about a premise where a Generation ship sets off for a new solar system but in the proceeding centuries faster travel methods have allowed ships to make it there before the initial ship so they send someone to pick up the original colony mission and get them there hundreds of years ahead of schedule. I figure someone must have done a story like that already and I'd be interested to see how it played out. "Colony Fleet" by Susan R Matthews was pretty good. "Soul, Say What Death Is" by Le Guin is superb. It's in the "The Found and the Lost" collection, which you should all read anyway.
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 00:13 |
forgot to mention the Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun, the long sun in question being the artificial "sun" running down the length of the giant ship.
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 00:41 |
StrixNebulosa posted:I generally love Greg Bear's work like Queen of Angels. TheAardvark posted:From what I remember, it had a cute gimmick premise and little else going for it. Ah well, god knows why I bought it considering I really didn't like the only Greg Bear book I've read (Eon, mentioned it before, weird horny stuff). Probably only paid $3 for it though.
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 00:53 |
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Arcsquad12 posted:Anyone have some recommendations for SF novels following Generation Ships? I had a recent thought about a premise where a Generation ship sets off for a new solar system but in the proceeding centuries faster travel methods have allowed ships to make it there before the initial ship so they send someone to pick up the original colony mission and get them there hundreds of years ahead of schedule. I figure someone must have done a story like that already and I'd be interested to see how it played out. It's only a small spoiler but Non-Stop by Brian Aldis is a classic of the genre. "Far Centaurus" by A.E. van Vogt might be the first story to feature the idea you outlined. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Sep 11, 2020 |
# ? Sep 11, 2020 02:05 |
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Finally reading Tyrant and almost done. I loving love it. it's all so cool and neat especially the stuff with the command hierarchy and the trim and the sorcery. Excited to go back and read the spoiler posts. Renascent prediction just stabbed bel where I'm at, shortly after hooking up with baru in a river
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 04:09 |
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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 first volume of Wheel of Time is LOTR by way of Arthurian legend. The Two Rivers is the Shire, Rand is Frodo, Mat and Perrin are Merry and Pippin, Moiraine is Gandalf, Lan is Aragorn.
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 11:02 |
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Finished Harrow the Ninth last night. I feel I have to reread both Gideon and it again to fully grasp what's going on. It's been a while since I read Gideon and the constant gaslighting made it hard to refresh my memory of it. One thing in particular though: Am I supposed to know who the Sleeper was?
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 11:16 |
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Qwertycoatl posted:One thing in particular though: Am I supposed to know who the Sleeper was? Wake., geddit?
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 11:18 |
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quantumfoam posted:I have repeatedly stated in this thread and the last SF&F thread that Cordwainer Smith aka Paul Linebarger was the god-father of the furry movement. His cat obsession and really wanting to gently caress cats, more specifically one pet cat he owned became more and more overt as he wrote. FYI.... I found the story mentioned in my re-quoted posted inside the April 1978 issue of Galaxy Magazine someone uploaded to archive.org https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v39n04_1978-04/page/n1/mode/2up It is the featured story of the month (Queen of the Afternoon by Cordwainer Smith). quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Sep 11, 2020 |
# ? Sep 11, 2020 12:20 |
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Arcsquad12 posted:Anyone have some recommendations for SF novels following Generation Ships? I have a terrible memory for names, so maybe someone else can figure out the title: I read one novel about a generation ship, where a minor collision caused the main engines to be stuck at full throttle. The book is about them trying to figure out ways to fix the engine without dying, as the ship keeps accelerating to relativistic speeds. I remember liking the book, but that was also 20 years ago so IDK if it holds up.
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 12:51 |
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Ceebees posted:Wake., geddit? Well that makes sense
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 13:07 |
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BadMedic posted:I have a terrible memory for names, so maybe someone else can figure out the title: Tau Zero by Poul Anderson.
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 14:04 |
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In the latest GRRM news, his attempts to build a castle are foiled again: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8711007/amp/Game-Thrones-author-George-R-R-Martin-wants-build-fantasy-castle-backyard.html Those plans!
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 15:30 |
I mean, if you have that much money, might as well build weird poo poo with it. Surprised he hasn't just moved.to the wilderness though.
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 15:35 |
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Leng posted:In the latest GRRM news, his attempts to build a castle are foiled again: Well, it's nice that he included a powder room.
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 15:39 |
Leng posted:In the latest GRRM news, his attempts to build a castle are foiled again: loving nimbys ruining fun yet again
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 15:41 |
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Black Griffon posted:loving nimbys ruining fun yet again "It'd spoil the view" is such a hilarious argument. Like unless his house is in an area with sweeping vistas and not just generic upper class suburbia the only view is the tops of other houses through whatever fences these people have up on their properties.
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 17:16 |
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Evil Fluffy posted:"It'd spoil the view" is such a hilarious argument. Like unless his house is in an area with sweeping vistas and not just generic upper class suburbia the only view is the tops of other houses through whatever fences these people have up on their properties. It's actually probably the former rather than the latter. New Mexico is really beautiful in a reddish harsh kind of way. Sante Fe is surrounded by big mesas, and I'm sure this would probably block a bunch of people's views.
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 17:23 |
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Ya know I think this goes in here too: https://twitter.com/MikeBrooks668/status/1304347212550467585 In short, this is a novel from the alien's pov. It's about a band of space orks being violent and having fun and I cannot wait for it to drop, and if it's as much fun as I think it'll be, y'all non-Warhammer fans should check it out!
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 17:41 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 03:56 |
StrixNebulosa posted:Ya know I think this goes in here too: Ooh, have they finally dropped the "rule" that novel-length 40k books shan't be written from the alien POV?
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# ? Sep 11, 2020 17:56 |