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Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

I’m trying to figure out what “underage” means. Young, ignorant, and generally physically and psychologically repulsive goons probably don’t have a good grasp of normal human sexuality today, in the recent past, and in both their own and similar cultures.

Hi welcome to Something Awful dot com. Please :fuckoff: back to the r/libertarian subreddit or whatever other pit you crawled out of with this hot take.

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Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Doctor Jeep posted:

i think it's because his novels and series can be separated by a thousand years so it's conceivable that the studium could become a university in that kind of timeframe or even that it's not the same studium that was mentioned before but something new which kept the name
same goes for "the city", there's always "a city", like today it's "new york" or at least that's the city I think about as "the city" (and i'm not even american)
it used to be london, before that maybe paris, before that rome or constantinople etc.

There's a Parker wikia that tries to document how all the books fit together and what the timeframe is. If they are all meant to be in one world, it's kind of funny how much time passes in Parkerland without the technology changing to any meaningful extent. Parker seems like the kind of guy who to believe that humanity would screw itself over multiple times in the attempt to develop better technology and always just end back up at Byzantium in the aggregate.

Apparatchik Magnet
Sep 25, 2019

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Evil Fluffy posted:

Hi welcome to Something Awful dot com. Please :fuckoff: back to the r/libertarian subreddit or whatever other pit you crawled out of with this hot take.

I don't think it's that hot of a take! You'd expect to find lazy, dumb, and socially maladroit people resent capitalism and seek the solace of socialism and you'd expect ugly unfuckables to resent their hotter and more emotionally mature peers getting it on and seek strangely high legal bars to shut them down out of envy, and it's no mistake that both these trends are popular here on Something Awful dot com.

(USER WAS PERMABANNED FOR THIS POST)

withak
Jan 15, 2003


Fun Shoe
Ok now everyone stop responding to the troll.

artism
Nov 22, 2011

obtuse and unfunny enough to be a troll. tedious and sustained enough to be an exceptionally bad one.

imagine thinking that punditry of that sort would actually work on *checks post-history* goons. goons will
never learn

artism
Nov 22, 2011

Oh also I read past master and it ruled. any other Lafferty recommendations welcome

wait I guess that mansions book would be good

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

seek strangely high legal bars to shut them down out of envy

Are you worried about your activities being shut down, out of envy, by the legal bar of age 18

Elmnt80
Dec 30, 2012


Apparatchik Magnet posted:

I don't think it's that hot of a take! You'd expect to find lazy, dumb, and socially maladroit people resent capitalism and seek the solace of socialism and you'd expect ugly unfuckables to resent their hotter and more emotionally mature peers getting it on and seek strangely high legal bars to shut them down out of envy, and it's no mistake that both these trends are popular here on Something Awful dot com.

Quit fuckin kids you weirdo

Apparatchik Magnet
Sep 25, 2019

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

General Battuta posted:

Are you worried about your activities being shut down, out of envy, by the legal bar of age 18

No, I have a charitable concern about the legal consequences being imposed on minors, doing natural things with other consenting minors, by the new Puritans. Weirdly enough, it's not often the rich white Chad or Becky who get their lives ruined over this stuff when mom or dad catches them!

Elmnt80 posted:

Quit fuckin kids you weirdo

:aatrek:

As a Something Awful mod your odds of projecting and being guilty of this are famously orders of magnitude higher than almost any other category of person, of course.

Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Apr 8, 2021

Elmnt80
Dec 30, 2012


Matt gaetz, that you?

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

May I interrupt? I'm literally sitting here minutes from bed scrolling through books in my kindle wanting some kind of comfort sci-fi. Not fantasy, but sci-fi. There's the thread favorite Murderbot, and Long Way to Angry Planet, but...what else? Bujold kind of fits, kind of doesn't, Cherryh's Foreigner's later books are definitely cozy, and I think it might be time to read more of James White's space hospital series, but it's never a bad time to ask:

Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things?

pseudorandom name
May 6, 2007

Optimism for the future died with the rise of Reagan and Thatcher.

Zore
Sep 21, 2010
willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d’etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

StrixNebulosa posted:

May I interrupt? I'm literally sitting here minutes from bed scrolling through books in my kindle wanting some kind of comfort sci-fi. Not fantasy, but sci-fi. There's the thread favorite Murderbot, and Long Way to Angry Planet, but...what else? Bujold kind of fits, kind of doesn't, Cherryh's Foreigner's later books are definitely cozy, and I think it might be time to read more of James White's space hospital series, but it's never a bad time to ask:

Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things?

Long Way has 2 sequels that fit as well if you haven't read them. Final book in that universe is supposed to be coming out soon as well.

Apparatchik Magnet
Sep 25, 2019

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

StrixNebulosa posted:

May I interrupt? I'm literally sitting here minutes from bed scrolling through books in my kindle wanting some kind of comfort sci-fi. Not fantasy, but sci-fi. There's the thread favorite Murderbot, and Long Way to Angry Planet, but...what else? Bujold kind of fits, kind of doesn't, Cherryh's Foreigner's later books are definitely cozy, and I think it might be time to read more of James White's space hospital series, but it's never a bad time to ask:

Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things?

I feel like one of the Pern books about the original settling of the planet was like that.

I also have vague memories of a McAfferty series about a psychic woman who launched ships FTL between planets as her job, but I’m pretty sure that also featured a skeezy May-December romance. Women authors were doing it too, I guess.

Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Apr 8, 2021

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010


I've made a huge mistake.

StrixNebulosa posted:

May I interrupt? I'm literally sitting here minutes from bed scrolling through books in my kindle wanting some kind of comfort sci-fi. Not fantasy, but sci-fi. There's the thread favorite Murderbot, and Long Way to Angry Planet, but...what else? Bujold kind of fits, kind of doesn't, Cherryh's Foreigner's later books are definitely cozy, and I think it might be time to read more of James White's space hospital series, but it's never a bad time to ask:

Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things?

Memory Called Empire and Desolation Called Peace are Cherryh-adjacent and ultimately optimistic

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

StrixNebulosa posted:

May I interrupt? I'm literally sitting here minutes from bed scrolling through books in my kindle wanting some kind of comfort sci-fi. Not fantasy, but sci-fi. There's the thread favorite Murderbot, and Long Way to Angry Planet, but...what else? Bujold kind of fits, kind of doesn't, Cherryh's Foreigner's later books are definitely cozy, and I think it might be time to read more of James White's space hospital series, but it's never a bad time to ask:

Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things?

https://escapepod.org/2013/09/14/ep413-why-i-left-harrys-all-night-hamburgers/

The Callahans Crosstime Saloon stories probably counted as comfy when written but wouldn't now.

Lemniscate Blue
Apr 21, 2006

Here we go again.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

https://escapepod.org/2013/09/14/ep413-why-i-left-harrys-all-night-hamburgers/

The Callahans Crosstime Saloon stories probably counted as comfy when written but wouldn't now.

I got real disappointed in the series after the Lady books and when I tried to go back they all gave me the same creepy feeling. The second half of Deathkiller and Night of Power have ensured that I will never pick up another Spider Robinson book again.

Hobnob
Feb 23, 2006

Ursa Adorandum

StrixNebulosa posted:

Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things?

Maybe Jack McDevitt's Alex Benedict novels (space archeology/ detective stories). Also try Brian Stableford's "Emortality" series, which is about life extension and pretty optimistic about the future of humanity.

Hobnob fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Apr 8, 2021

tiniestacorn
Oct 3, 2015

StrixNebulosa posted:

Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things?

Winter's Orbit is sweet. It's very much a traditional romance with sf trappings but if that's your jam, it's fine comfort food.

packetmantis
Feb 26, 2013

StrixNebulosa posted:

May I interrupt? I'm literally sitting here minutes from bed scrolling through books in my kindle wanting some kind of comfort sci-fi. Not fantasy, but sci-fi. There's the thread favorite Murderbot, and Long Way to Angry Planet, but...what else? Bujold kind of fits, kind of doesn't, Cherryh's Foreigner's later books are definitely cozy, and I think it might be time to read more of James White's space hospital series, but it's never a bad time to ask:

Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things?

The Greatship books feel really cozy to me personally but I'm a big dumb object fetishist. :shobon:

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!
Oh hey, 40 new posts in the SFF thread, I wonder what’s happeni :psypop:

StrixNebulosa posted:

Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things?

The Risen Empire/Killing of Worlds is pretty cozy IMO. Not 100% optimistic and upbeat all the time but neither is Murderbot. Lots of competent people doing competent things...in space!

If you like Sanderson and precocious quippy teens then check out Skyward.

ClydeFrog
Apr 13, 2007
Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot

pseudorandom name posted:

Yeah, I can't imagine why a book about time travel and destiny manipulation would need to remind you of details in the first book that you read four years ago.

There are much much better ways of doing it and being a sci fi and fantasy nerd I've read far far longer series that literally didn't stop the action occuring for the character to reminisce about a main plot point. Plot points in fact that if you can't actually remember happened, then you shouldn't be reading the third book as nothing would be making sense.

It's like watching Return of the Jedi and suddenly someone stops in the middle of the Ewoks to say "hey remember when you found out Darth Vader was your Dad and cut off your hand", and then everything just carries on as before, and then round a campfire someone thinks really hard about that time the Death Star got blown up and how it happened and why.

It's just clumsy and I really really enjoyed the other two books immensely. Also the second book didn't do it at all. It almost feels like a runaway editor fired off some kind of exposition macro.

Oh God. I just caught up with everything else. Interesting (not really) take on how laws protecting the young are just, you know, oppressing them! There are well established Romeo and Juliet clauses to stop 15 year olds sleeping together being prosecuted. Sorry guy, still creepy for older people to sleep with non-adults.

ClydeFrog fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Apr 8, 2021

Collateral
Feb 17, 2010
The age thing was absolutely about groupies, allowability, and opportunity. And cons. It's grooming through words. Sorry to bring it up again.

Runcible Cat
May 28, 2007

Ignoring this post

artism posted:

Oh also I read past master and it ruled. any other Lafferty recommendations welcome

wait I guess that mansions book would be good

Any of his short story collections will see you right.

I'm also possibly most fond of Space Chantey, at least today. Or maybe Arrive at Easterwine; the more Epiktistes the better.

DACK FAYDEN
Feb 25, 2013

Bear Witness

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

The Callahans Crosstime Saloon stories probably counted as comfy when written but wouldn't now.
yes to both halves of this

they're just full of puns!

...and sexual harassment!

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
Yea, they did not age well.

I enjoyed em for what they were (which was a product of the times) but boy howdy you gotta take a step back and realize how hosed up it was for a girl to be a fan of sci fi back then.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

StrixNebulosa posted:

May I interrupt? I'm literally sitting here minutes from bed scrolling through books in my kindle wanting some kind of comfort sci-fi. Not fantasy, but sci-fi. There's the thread favorite Murderbot, and Long Way to Angry Planet, but...what else? Bujold kind of fits, kind of doesn't, Cherryh's Foreigner's later books are definitely cozy, and I think it might be time to read more of James White's space hospital series, but it's never a bad time to ask:

Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things?

It wasn't my cup of tea but it was many other people's: Tillie Walden's graphic novel On a Sunbeam, which is free online: https://www.onasunbeam.com/

And this probably doesn't quite fit your definition - there's some dark stuff in there about child abuse that maybe I flitted past when I was younger - but The Golden Globe by John Varley is a really fun jaunt across the solar system with a chatty, amiable first-person narrator who's half stage actor and half conman, and I really love it.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Waking up to lots of recs is my favorite, thank you!!!

- Memory Called Empire: on my kindle already, I need to start reading it!
- Callahans: I read the original omnibus when I was a teenager and enjoyed it but now I'm not sure I could revisit it for those exact reasons. :sigh:
- Alex Benedict: hey, I might be able to read these if I get 'em as ebooks, as ebooks won't have the same problems I had with them. Warning: if you inherit a bunch of books from your uncle, they might be too associated with him to read, as you tear up just looking at some of the volumes.
- Brian Stableford: I LOVE this author, he does weird and wild things and sometimes his writing is dry, and sometimes it isn't. Thanks for the reminder to keep reading him!
- Winter's Orbit: I somehow missed this one entirely? Ooh, romantic space opera. I enjoy light n' fluffy things, in fact that's exactly what I'm asking for!
- Greatship: uh, is this the Marrow by Robert Reed? What book is this!
- Scott Westerfeld: huh, I didn't know he wrote adult books. I'll check these out!
- I don't like Sanderson or teenagers, so that's a dud, sorry!
- On A Sunbeam: eyyy something free to look at, thanks!
- Huh. The Golden Globe is in my uncle's collection and I don't have any emotions when I pick it up, so I might be clear to just read it. Thanks!

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Yea, they did not age well.

I enjoyed em for what they were (which was a product of the times) but boy howdy you gotta take a step back and realize how hosed up it was for a girl to be a fan of sci fi back then.

I'm 29 now and looking for women-friendly fantasy/sci-fi has been a ride my entire life. You'd think reading the women-authored sci-fi would be a haven but some authors (Jo Clayton) love to use writing to examine what rape does to a person and so on, and that's, hm! Valuable, yes, but jarring when you're trying to read sci-fi without sexual assault in it.

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.
I am permabanned poster Apparatchik Magnet. i first started reading the Science Fiction & Fantasy Megathread when my girlfriend was about 12. by the time she was 14 i got really obsessed with the concept of "Age of consent" and tried to channel it constantly, until my thought process got really bizarre and i would repeat things like "My boredom and bemusement with those emotional irrational women is at this point shared by quite a few people who have posted" and "I’m trying to figure out what “underage” means" in my head for hours, and i would get really paranoid, start seeing Chris Hansen in the corners of my eyes etc, basically prodromal schizophrenia. im now on permanent house arrest. i always wondered what the kind of "I'm really just concerned for 15 year olds having sex with each other" style of advocating for ephobophilia was all about; i think it's my unconscious leaking in to my conscious, what jungian theory considered to be - and isn't it funny that 'jung' kind of sounds like '''young?''' i would advise all people who "get" libertarianism to be careful because that likely means you have a predisposition to a mental illness. peace.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Apr 8, 2021

SSJ_naruto_2003
Oct 12, 2012



General Battuta posted:

I am permabanned poster Apparatchik Magnet. i first started reading the Science Fiction & Fantasy Megathread when my girlfriend was about 12. by the time she was 14 i got really obsessed with the concept of "Age of consent" and tried to channel it constantly, until my thought process got really bizarre and i would repeat things like "My boredom and bemusement with those emotional irrational women is at this point shared by quite a few people who have posted" and "I’m trying to figure out what “underage” means" in my head for hours, and i would get really paranoid, start seeing Chris Hansen in the corners of my eyes etc, basically prodromal schizophrenia. im now on permanent house arrest. i always wondered what the kind of "I'm really just concerned for 15 year olds having sex with each other" style of advocating for ephobophilia was all about; i think it's my unconscious leaking in to my conscious, what jungian theory considered to be - and isn't it funny that 'jung' kind of sounds like '''young?''' i would advise all people who "get" libertarianism to be careful because that likely means you have a predisposition to a mental illness. peace.

:bravo:

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.
Are you a Shivan superjuggernaught named Naruto

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Weird that guy registered in 2019 but took until 2021 to go fully insane.

Yngwie Mangosteen
Aug 23, 2007

General Battuta posted:

I am permabanned poster Apparatchik Magnet. i first started reading the Science Fiction & Fantasy Megathread when my girlfriend was about 12. by the time she was 14 i got really obsessed with the concept of "Age of consent" and tried to channel it constantly, until my thought process got really bizarre and i would repeat things like "My boredom and bemusement with those emotional irrational women is at this point shared by quite a few people who have posted" and "I’m trying to figure out what “underage” means" in my head for hours, and i would get really paranoid, start seeing Chris Hansen in the corners of my eyes etc, basically prodromal schizophrenia. im now on permanent house arrest. i always wondered what the kind of "I'm really just concerned for 15 year olds having sex with each other" style of advocating for ephobophilia was all about; i think it's my unconscious leaking in to my conscious, what jungian theory considered to be - and isn't it funny that 'jung' kind of sounds like '''young?''' i would advise all people who "get" libertarianism to be careful because that likely means you have a predisposition to a mental illness. peace.

:hmbol:

Bayham Badger
Jan 19, 2007

Secretly force socialism, communism and imperialism types of government onto the people of the United States of America.

General Battuta posted:

I am permabanned poster Apparatchik Magnet. i first started reading the Science Fiction & Fantasy Megathread when my girlfriend was about 12. by the time she was 14 i got really obsessed with the concept of "Age of consent" and tried to channel it constantly, until my thought process got really bizarre and i would repeat things like "My boredom and bemusement with those emotional irrational women is at this point shared by quite a few people who have posted" and "I’m trying to figure out what “underage” means" in my head for hours, and i would get really paranoid, start seeing Chris Hansen in the corners of my eyes etc, basically prodromal schizophrenia. im now on permanent house arrest. i always wondered what the kind of "I'm really just concerned for 15 year olds having sex with each other" style of advocating for ephobophilia was all about; i think it's my unconscious leaking in to my conscious, what jungian theory considered to be - and isn't it funny that 'jung' kind of sounds like '''young?''' i would advise all people who "get" libertarianism to be careful because that likely means you have a predisposition to a mental illness. peace.

:ck5:

Phobeste
Apr 9, 2006

never, like, count out Touchdown Tom, man

StrixNebulosa posted:


- Alex Benedict: hey, I might be able to read these if I get 'em as ebooks, as ebooks won't have the same problems I had with them. Warning: if you inherit a bunch of books from your uncle, they might be too associated with him to read, as you tear up just looking at some of the volumes.

This is ironically a very apropos thing to associate with the Alex Benedict novels

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

freebooter posted:

It wasn't my cup of tea but it was many other people's: Tillie Walden's graphic novel On a Sunbeam, which is free online: https://www.onasunbeam.com/

And this probably doesn't quite fit your definition - there's some dark stuff in there about child abuse that maybe I flitted past when I was younger - but The Golden Globe by John Varley is a really fun jaunt across the solar system with a chatty, amiable first-person narrator who's half stage actor and half conman, and I really love it.

This reminds me of Colin Greenland's _Harm's Way_ which is a great little gaslamp space opera. Not quite SF but a great story well executed. Greenland is Susanna Clarke's significant other.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

General Battuta posted:

I am permabanned poster Apparatchik Magnet. i first started reading the Science Fiction & Fantasy Megathread when my girlfriend was about 12. by the time she was 14 i got really obsessed with the concept of "Age of consent" and tried to channel it constantly, until my thought process got really bizarre and i would repeat things like "My boredom and bemusement with those emotional irrational women is at this point shared by quite a few people who have posted" and "I’m trying to figure out what “underage” means" in my head for hours, and i would get really paranoid, start seeing Chris Hansen in the corners of my eyes etc, basically prodromal schizophrenia. im now on permanent house arrest. i always wondered what the kind of "I'm really just concerned for 15 year olds having sex with each other" style of advocating for ephobophilia was all about; i think it's my unconscious leaking in to my conscious, what jungian theory considered to be - and isn't it funny that 'jung' kind of sounds like '''young?''' i would advise all people who "get" libertarianism to be careful because that likely means you have a predisposition to a mental illness. peace.

This is amazing and I wish we'd had it in time to make that the lepers colony entry

Anyway yeah sorry I didn't catch that quickly last night, I was at the emergency vet with my dog (he's fine now) and didn't have access to buttons. Thankfully Jeffy did the needful.

Since nobody else is gonna top Battuta's comment let's just let that discussion end with a thunderclap and get back to book talk.

uber_stoat
Jan 21, 2001



Pillbug
finally got rid of 'em, god bless. ever thus to an-cap pedophiles.

lmao

edit: anyway bout to start in on this

uber_stoat fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Apr 8, 2021

team overhead smash
Sep 2, 2006

Team-Forest-Tree-Dog:
Smashing your way into our hearts one skylight at a time

uber_stoat posted:

finally got rid of 'em, god bless. ever thus to an-cap pedophiles.

lmao

edit: anyway bout to start in on this



Just googled this and sounds super cool. Please let me know how it reads.

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anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Ccs posted:

Anyone read this and what did you think? I haven't read any Witcher but I wasn't a fan of the tv show.
From the last page, in case anyone's still interested: The Tower of Fools (and two sequels) are written in a style very similar to the Witcher novels so that may not be everyone's cup of tea. It's a set of misadventures of a medieval medic/alchemist as he follows (mostly) his dick throughout fifteenth century Poland and Czechia. There's a whole lot of intrigue, some magic, and an extremely cynical narration - I am not sure how much people would make the parallel, but the English-writing author Sapkowski reminds me of the most is Joe Abercrombie.

I can't speak for the quality of the English translation, though; haven't read that.

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