|
On and on Coeurl prowled. The black, moonless, almost starless night yielded reluctantly before a grim reddish dawn that crept up from his left. It was a vague light that gave no sense of approaching warmth. It slowly revealed a nightmare landscape. Jagged black rock and a black, lifeless plain took form around him. A pale red sun peered above the grotesque horizon. Fingers of light probed among the shadows. And still there was no sign of the family of id creatures that he had been trailing now for nearly a hundred days. He stopped finally, chilled by the reality. His great forelegs twitched with a shuddering movement that arched every razor-sharp claw. The thick tentacles that grew from his shoulders undulated tautly. He twisted his great cat head from side to side, while the hairlike tendrils that formed each ear vibrated frantically, testing every vagrant breeze, every throb in the ether. There was no response. He felt no swift tingling along his intricate nervous system. There was no suggestion anywhere of the presence of the id creatures, his only source of food on this desolate planet. Hopelessly, Coeurl crouched, an enormous catlike figure silhouetted against the dim, reddish sky line, like a distorted etching of a black tiger in a shadow world. Opening of "Black Destroyer" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Destroyer
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2020 23:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 21:36 |
|
|
quantumfoam posted:I suspect it was 1986 SFLer's conflating Flight of the Navigator + the 1985 film Explorers into one film. I mention what people post in the SFL Archives, fact-checking all the bizarre-ness posted would have me much further back (literal years) in this readthrough project. That's really funny to me that they'd conflate the titles. I also definitely understand that you wouldn't have time to factcheck/correct things they messed up with how much content there is. (And I love reading these updates every time you post them.) Against my better judgement I looked up "My Living Doll" and oh boy it sure was the 60s back then: wikipedia posted:Bob's initial goal is to teach Rhoda (side note: she's a military-developed android) how to be a perfect woman, which he defines as one who "does what she's told" and "doesn't talk back." He also strives to keep her identity secret from the world.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2020 23:35
|
|
|
DurianGray posted:That's really funny to me that they'd conflate the titles. I also definitely understand that you wouldn't have time to factcheck/correct things they messed up with how much content there is. (And I love reading these updates every time you post them.) Thank you, comments like this keep me encouraged on the SFL Archives readthrough project. The Explorers 1985 had a spaceship built by and piloted by kids going into outer space, so I can understand how SFLer's of 1986 might have mixed the two movies up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 04:27
|
|
|
I also love the SFL summary posts. So I fact checked something for you.quantumfoam posted:-A weird event from 1836 gets mentioned, and yes 1986 SFLer who posted it, a short story about why rats looted 28 bottles of Uranium Oxide from a Hatton-Garden chemical storage warehouse and what exactly the rats were doing with them for 2 years would be amazing. The 1836 source for this is available on Google books. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=BiM2AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA208&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false The Magazine of Popular Science and Journal of the Useful Arts" (published by John W. Parker, West Strand, London) Volume the First (1836) page 208: Unaccountable Theft of Chemicals by Rats posted:Unaccountable Theft of Chemicals by Rats This could be the basis for an amazing story
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 06:16
|
|
|
Time for a Rats of Nimh/Breaking Bad crossover fic.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 06:20
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I’m still working on it, I just don’t know if it’ll be done soon or done later. If I get a day job, for example, that might slow things down. Take your time and get it right. You've got three amazing acts to follow; if your publisher starts getting antsy about the 4th book, let 'em talk to us. We'd rather wait than get a weak ending. Book 3 proves you can pull it off. Aaaaaaand if you need a break, there's more HH novels to rewrite...
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 06:31
|
|
|
tiniestacorn posted:Finished Baru 3, and there was so much to love about it, but my very favorite small thing was the reappearance of the dancing seagull. Finished it recently as well and I really enjoyed Baru's reintroduction to Taranoke customs and her revenge on Farrier, since the most charming part of the series for me was always her provincial past. I'd say the series is 1 > 2 > 3 for me; the presence of the Cancrioth and the whole Barhu consciousness thing were strange, but overall, I'm happy that the story made a "nice" arc back to the beginning.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 17:22
|
|
|
I recently re-read Hunters and Collectors by M. Suddain after several years and forgetting most of it. I really enjoyed it, it's written as a series of letters and reports from a food critic travelling around in a future where there are thousands of settled planets and multi-galaxy empires. Halfway through there's a big shift and it goes from fun exposition and setup to an almost horror story, but somehow manages to keep a consistent tone. The writing is really good, tight and funny without being tedious. The world building is almost incidental to the story because it's written as letters to another character, so at no point do they talk about how spaceships work or anything that would be common knowledge in that that world, but it still builds up enough to place the story and throw in some fun side tracks. I'm not sure what else to say without giving too much of the story away except to recommend it. Also based on this thread I read Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. It was much lighter and faster paced than I was expecting based on the descriptions and I blew through it. It was a lot of fun, thanks to everyone recommending it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 19:15
|
|
|
The Inheritance Trilogy (Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Broken Kingdoms, and Kingdom of Gods) by NK Jemisin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JJ86YA4/ Fire & Blood (Song of Ice and Fire prequel) by George RR Martin - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JJ86YA4 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000TO0TDK/
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 19:55
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:-SFLer's start discussing the Flight of the Dragons TV-movie, and the 1979 book it was based on ( The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson). All this made me retroactively realize where Terry Pratchett got the clever stuff about swamp dragons in Pratchett's 1989 novel Guards! Guards! This is one of my favorite coffee table books. Great art and a fun read with weird tangents about flying bricks with dinner-plate wings, with a perfect veneer of 'yes yes I completely believe this outlandish theory i'm arguing'
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 21:49
|
|
|
Finally finished reading SFL Archives Vol 11. 11 readthrough updates in total, it took over 50? 60? 80? hrs to read, and killed the battery on my kindle device three times. Most annoying thing was getting having to play around with font sizes and page locations to get accurate bookmarks. SFL Vol 11 update 08 will be going up here in a few minutes. Still thinking about doing a few SFL Archives "SA readers respond" mega-summary posts but need the help of readers/fans of these SFL Archives summary posts to find them all. Either PM me directly, or comment on the off-site blog. Urcher posted:I also love the SFL summary posts. So I fact checked something for you. Yes. The person who posted about it in 1986 also posted that full article text too. I wanted readers of today/2020 to find it themselves, because the sheer weirdness and it's amazing story potential would have been washed out being reposted alongside everything else in SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 07. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Sep 28, 2020 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 23:05
|
|
|
<re-posted from off-site SFL Archives readthrough blog> SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 08 70% completion, 208 bookmarks 20 items of interest. <re-posted from off-site SFL Archives readthrough blog> quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Aug 29, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 23:57
|
|
|
Destroyenator posted:Also based on this thread I read Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. It was much lighter and faster paced than I was expecting based on the descriptions and I blew through it. It was a lot of fun, thanks to everyone recommending it. Tor released a sequel to this last month, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It. I haven't picked it up yet as it's unfortunately a full-sized novel price of $9.99 for a 400 page novella. It's getting good reviews so I will probably pick it up once I've thinned out my queue or when I have a few more digital credits to throw at it. https://www.amazon.com/How-Rule-Empire-Get-Away-ebook/dp/B0827TJHT8/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=kj+parker&qid=1601253613&sr=8-1
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 01:46
|
|
|
Ninurta posted:I haven't picked it up yet as it's unfortunately a full-sized novel price of $9.99 for a 400 page novella is there some joke I'm missing here
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 01:51
|
|
|
pradmer posted:The Inheritance Trilogy (Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Broken Kingdoms, and Kingdom of Gods) by NK Jemisin - $2.99 How is the Inheritance Trilogy for someone who hasn’t read Jemisin yet?
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 02:14
|
|
|
I finished KJ Parker's "The Folding Knife" which I picked up on sale. I've read a previous book of his, Sharps, but had no memory of it other than it had a fencing competition. Reading this one, I recognized a few names of the countries, so they seem to be in the same world. Yeesh, it's a grim book at the end. I've heard Parker's works compared to Abercrombie, but Abercrombie spreads the grimness around. Characters are dying or facing bad turns or start off in a bad place from the beginning. Basso in "Knife" has one very bad thing happen to him near the beginning of the book, and then things seem to go swimmingly for him after that. There are attempts on his life and threats of bankruptcy and a number of political challenges but with incredible luck and ability he triumphs over all of it. And there's not a sense that any of these things was a real threat to him. The tension is kept by periodic intrusions of his sister into his life. She is bent on destroying him because of the bad thing that happened near the beginning. So in among Basso's numerous accomplishments, the reader is always thinking "So when is the other shoe going to drop and the sister finally get her revenge?" Then Parker orchestrates a very tight conclusion that undoes all of Basso's accomplishments. His business and city-state face ruin, but it seems to come out of nowhere, the freak accident of a plague. Then, once he's on his way out of the city, it's revealed his immigrant wife was behind this final failing, and that her antipathy toward her countrymen disguised a deeper desire to have it not taken over by Basso's imperial ambitions. The sister never orchestrates a revenge, and has her son taken from her as a result of this wife's plot. Part of the source of the grimness in Abercrombie's world is due to immortal wizards that control things, keep the people down, and prevent positive change. The grimness in Parker's world seems to stem from a much more nebulous place, the general ignorance of another person's thoughts and motives. The idea that we don't even know our own reasons for doing something, to the point that positive changes can result from pure self interest as opposed to noble goals and rampant death can happen because a simpler solution just didn't occur to the orchestrator. The ending is so monstrous in how things come apart that it makes me pine for the worlds where the wizards are behind it all. In fact, to go even further into the Abercrombie comparison, Basso is like Bayaz but if this were the real world. He's exceedingly competent at statecraft and finance, but that can't save him. The world is too complex. Ccs fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Sep 28, 2020 |
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 02:21
|
|
|
MockingQuantum posted:is there some joke I'm missing here *shrug* The paperback is $16.99 retail, no discount. The first novella Sixteen Ways was a couple of hours to read, so was Prosper's Demon. Both are great reads, however the base price leaves much to be desired. Tor started overpricing novellas with Murderbot(worth it), and the Armored Saint where each novella is literally one act each in a novel. The 400 pages comes from the estimated length on my Kindle, which is generally an over-estimate. I mean the Prince of Nothing series would include What comes before, the dramatis personae and appendix into the total page count and by the last novel the actual book was only around 2/3 of the novel length. Not that it was a bad thing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 07:43
|
|
|
Today I finished Traitor Baru. drat. What a ride. I immediately jumped into Monster Baru. Well-titled.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 08:43
|
|
|
Yoked posted:How is the Inheritance Trilogy for someone who hasn’t read Jemisin yet? too romancey for me, characters I didn't really care about the dreamblood duology is her best work imo
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 09:51
|
|
|
Ccs posted:I finished KJ Parker's "The Folding Knife" which I picked up on sale. I've read a previous book of his, Sharps, but had no memory of it other than it had a fencing competition. Reading this one, I recognized a few names of the countries, so they seem to be in the same world. nicely put, parker is one of my favorites but I admit he's a very cynical bastard
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 09:54
|
|
|
Ninurta posted:
The paperback is listed as 400 pages. A 400-page long book is not a novella.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 11:31
|
|
|
Doctor Jeep posted:nicely put, parker is one of my favorites but I admit he's a very cynical bastard One recurring theme in Parker is good intentions, and the road paved by them. (Another is bad intentions, which seem to pave another road to the same destination.)
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 11:57
|
|
|
Alright, SFL Archives readthrough project meta-status update. Completing Vol 11 puts me around 33% completion on the SF-LOVERS mailing list Archives if you go by years (1979-2000), and roughly the same progress if you go by SFL Volume count(34 total). Happily, not many of the remaining SFL Volumes are as long as SFL Volume 11, and merely average out at 5mb/800k wordcounts per remaining unread SFL Volumes...So it's just the equivalent of reading the entire serialized Varney the Vampire corpus plus the first 3 HitchHiker's Guide to Galaxy books; 23 more times, in rapid succession. Going to be working on the off-site SFL Archives readthrough blog for awhile. Don't like how I have been highlighting author names/people of interest there, so will be changing that and adding tags to give clues what is inside each readthrough update post. SFL Vol 11 summary updates 09, 10 & 10 will all get reposted here before Sunday. tldr: Remaining SFL Archives content is HUGE but manageable <insert whatever variants of suicide & comissar smilies you want> quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Sep 28, 2020 |
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 12:52
|
|
|
Ninurta posted:Tor released a sequel to this last month, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It. I haven't picked it up yet as it's unfortunately a full-sized novel price of $9.99 for a 400 page novella. It's getting good reviews so I will probably pick it up once I've thinned out my queue or when I have a few more digital credits to throw at it. Confusion over what constitutes a novella aside, is that really the American Kindle price? Is $10 typical for novels on Kindle in the states? That book's listed at £5.99 on the UK store and, uhhh, the exchange rate hasn't been that favourable in years.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 15:11
|
|
|
xiw posted:This is one of my favorite coffee table books. Great art and a fun read with weird tangents about flying bricks with dinner-plate wings, with a perfect veneer of 'yes yes I completely believe this outlandish theory i'm arguing' Yeah, the book is wonderful and gorgeous. And now I know there is a TV movie I need to watch.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 15:24
|
|
|
KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Confusion over what constitutes a novella aside, is that really the American Kindle price? Is $10 typical for novels on Kindle in the states? 11.99 usually, sometimes $16 if its a really long novel that's a new release. I dunno about novellas, but 400 pages sounds like novel length.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 15:27
|
|
|
Yoked posted:How is the Inheritance Trilogy for someone who hasn’t read Jemisin yet? I hated the first one so much it put me off reading Jemsin's good books for years. Not just that it took an interesting idea and turned it into the cardboard backdrop for a romance, that's not for me but still fine, but the romance was also garbage. Twilight tier "oh I know I shouldn't gently caress the enslaved literal god of murdering idiots but he's ~so dreamy~".
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 15:38
|
|
|
^^^ I had like a four year gap between reading the first and reading two and three for exactly this reason. Yoked posted:How is the Inheritance Trilogy for someone who hasn’t read Jemisin yet? As per the other poster, I would read Broken Earth and Dreamblood first. The Inheritance Trilogy switches PoV characters every book, and they end up feeling fairly different. I would recommend skipping the first book, unless you like very heavy romance, reading a synopsis, and just going through books 2 and 3. It feels a lot less grounded than her other work (a good portion of the characters are Gods) but is still ok. It still has an interesting world (particularly after the first book) but it's definitely not as good as her other stuff imo.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 15:40
|
|
RIP ZEEZ
|
quantumfoam posted:-A Heinlein Defense Squad member dismissively recommended John Steakley's ARMOR if RAH's view of interstellar warfare grated on you. This counts as one of the first mentions of John Steakley's ARMOR in the SFL Archives. I loved Armor as a teen, but I’ve been scared to reread it as an adult.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 16:02
|
|
|
Ceebees posted:I hated the first one so much it put me off reading Jemsin's good books for years. Not just that it took an interesting idea and turned it into the cardboard backdrop for a romance, that's not for me but still fine, but the romance was also garbage. Twilight tier "oh I know I shouldn't gently caress the enslaved literal god of murdering idiots but he's ~so dreamy~". I haven’t finished 100K Kingdoms but I have to say that wanting to gently caress the thing you’re not supposed to gently caress is an extremely human and believable motivation. Also I think Jemisin was purposefully writing to market after she found it hard to sell her earlier novels.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 16:04
|
|
|
ulmont posted:I loved Armor as a teen, but I’ve been scared to reread it as an adult. Armor isn’t bad. There’s some kind of weird treatment of  but I don’t remember it being super gross or anything.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 16:18
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I haven’t finished 100K Kingdoms but I have to say that wanting to gently caress the thing you’re not supposed to gently caress is an extremely human and believable motivation. Also I think Jemisin was purposefully writing to market after she found it hard to sell her earlier novels. I could see what she was going for, with forbidden longing and trauma and the weird interpersonal dynamics of royalty, it just struck me as poorly written - every cardboard character consistently made the worst choices possible even when they were supposed to be cunning diplomats and experienced court politickers. It doesn't help that nothing else happens in the book, and it doesn't care about the background setting, so it's just 300 pages of her thinking about things and resolving to definitely not get boned to death by THE NIGHTLORD... (but his ~rippling alabaster abs~). For a plot about internal conflict, there's no conflict. She just keeps telling herself over and over that this would definitely be a terrible idea, but that divine booty tho. With her other books, it's clear she can write realized settings, and dynamic characters, and relationships that are interesting to read. In 100k she just... Didn't. In, admittedly, my opinion. I certainly hope she sold better writing good books than imitation bodice ripper trash, but I won't hold my breath.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 16:30
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I have to say that wanting to gently caress the thing you’re not supposed to gently caress is an extremely human and believable motivation. This is something that I think City of Brass did really well. It doesn't have any pretence about Daraya, and doesn't try to make him a Twilight-esque bad-boy that out heroine tries to fix - Nahri is constantly wracked with guilt and can't reconcile the fact that he's objectively terrible and she still wants to jump his bones. And then in book two she drops the loving roof on him twice
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 17:01
|
|
|
Finished The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Fun book exploring lots of different variations on an idea. However fair warning, I can't remember reading any novel recently that was more nakedly political. Internet nazis, deadnaming, and some extremely overt metaphors for current politics to name a few things.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 17:05
|
|
|
Ceebees posted:I could see what she was going for, with forbidden longing and trauma and the weird interpersonal dynamics of royalty, it just struck me as poorly written - every cardboard character consistently made the worst choices possible even when they were supposed to be cunning diplomats and experienced court politickers. It doesn't help that nothing else happens in the book, and it doesn't care about the background setting, so it's just 300 pages of her thinking about things and resolving to definitely not get boned to death by THE NIGHTLORD... (but his ~rippling alabaster abs~). For a plot about internal conflict, there's no conflict. She just keeps telling herself over and over that this would definitely be a terrible idea, but that divine booty tho. This was my take on it. It billed itself as being about politics and diplomacy with an interesting setting, and it was actually just 300ish pages of the main character and the ~Nightlord~ making gently caress-me eyes at each other.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 17:05
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I haven’t finished 100K Kingdoms but I have to say that wanting to gently caress the thing you’re not supposed to gently caress is an extremely human and believable motivation. Also I think Jemisin was purposefully writing to market after she found it hard to sell her earlier novels. I disagree, I think she is earnestly horny for Sephiroths. Don't forget that the same kind of brooding overpowered jerk is the love interest in Broken Earth 1. Writers inserting Their Sex Thing into their books is the most ancient and time-honored of all SFF traditions and there's no reason Jemisin can't join in. PS: whether or not to gently caress the Dark God is a perfectly good plot and I thought 100K was great. I don't know why 'generic court intrigue' is better than 'should i bang the lord of death'. Copernic fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Sep 28, 2020 |
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 17:06
|
|
|
TheAardvark posted:Finished The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky. How quickly people forget Rejoice: A Knife to the Heart.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 17:18
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:How quickly people forget Rejoice: A Knife to the Heart. i didn't read that, but the very first sentence my eyes caught on the description was "A certain thin-skinned president" lmfao
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 17:28
|
|
|
Three Robert Jackson Bennett standalone books - $1.99 each Mr Shivers - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ZDK0NC/ The Company Man - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047Y0FIM/ The Troupe - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RD854O/ Two MR Carey standalone books - $1.99/$2.99 Fellside - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013HA6WAG/ Someone Like Me - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B88J71D/ Not sure if these are fantasy/sci-fi, but MR Carey is a good writer.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 17:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 21:36 |
|
|
quantumfoam posted:How quickly people forget Rejoice: A Knife to the Heart.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 18:07
|
|
