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Don’t remember who posted about Tchaikovsky’s Ironclads recently and can’t search bc Awful app, but I read it and enjoyed it, so thank you!
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Nov 2, 2024 09:32
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So I read Consider Phlebas a few months ago and thought the story and the characters were pretty compelling, and honestly didn't really enjoy any of it much at all. Started Player of Games just now, and I'm 20% through, and...I'm not at all sure I'm enjoying this one either? Like I think I just don't like reading the inner monologue or narration of either main character, and maybe that's a sticking point for me. Not that the character has to be a good person, mind, but that there has to be something funny, or sweet, or anything at all other than...this. I dunno. I'll probably read a bit more, see if things change since I just got to where the actual story starts, but I'm not tremendously confident I really want to finish this, or read any more Culture.
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Nov 2, 2024 12:07
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Come to think of it, probably the best moral argument against the Culture is right in front of us. Almost all the characters we meet are self important prima donnas  Wasn't someone posting that they're all basically pretentious anarchists straight out of the Scottish 80s scene? Poor Banks...
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Nov 2, 2024 12:20
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Jedit posted:I took the simpler route and read different poo poo. I'm sorry for your loss.
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Nov 2, 2024 15:17
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Halfway into the second book in the Praxis series. There's a worldbuilding glitch that stands out to me. One character is living under a stolen identity. They solve the problem by burning the fingerprint off the right thumb, and that's all it takes. The books were written in the early 2000s, well after the OJ Simpson trial. e: And there's a passing mention of artificial reproduction, so "they don't allow discussion of genes" fails.
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Nov 2, 2024 16:29
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Halfway into the second book in the Praxis series. There's a worldbuilding glitch that stands out to me. One character is living under a stolen identity. They solve the problem by burning the fingerprint off the right thumb, and that's all it takes. The books were written in the early 2000s, well after the OJ Simpson trial. It's not a very secure system, but I figure as with most things in the Praxis it's explicable through "Every institution was set up thousands of years ago by god-aliens who didn't understand or care to understand anything about their minions, and selects for the most moronic snd self-absorbed of those minions" The Shaa are the same guys who went "hmm seems like you humans like to rub your junk together...well, here's a tube to do it in so you don't knock over the good china, which there's a lot of aboard this antimatter-burning torchship" Less flippantly, it makes sense to me if the Shaa did not actually care who the Peers were, so long as there were Peers, and if every system set up to verify someone's lineage was just consent-manufacturing theatre. The whole system's an overbred pekingese whose eyes pop out of their sockets when it sneezes, is what I'm saying PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Nov 2, 2024 |
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Nov 2, 2024 17:14
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Pyramids (Discworld #7) by Terry Pratchett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W964S6/ The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur #1) by Hannu Rajaniemi - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ULPVN6/
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Nov 2, 2024 18:29
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Eason the Fifth posted:Blood Meridian always cheers me up in that Schindler's-List-poo poo-could-be-worse sorta way Blood meridian made Bakker seem like a feel good story.
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Nov 2, 2024 19:00
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Cardiac posted:Blood meridian made Bakker seem like a feel good story. Nobody does evocative prose like McCarthy though.
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Nov 2, 2024 19:43
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PupsOfWar posted:It's not a very secure system, but I figure as with most things in the Praxis it's explicable through "Every institution was set up thousands of years ago by god-aliens who didn't understand or care to understand anything about their minions, and selects for the most moronic snd self-absorbed of those minions" It's not quite that bad. It's more that the Shaa don't care why the Peers do what the Praxis expects of them as long as they do it. The original Peers were thus selected for their willingness to follow. Witness Enderby's suicide at the start of the first book - he's enraged when Martinez tries to talk him out of it, even though Martinez's stated reason is for the good of the Empire. It doesn't matter to Enderby whether it's right or wrong to expect some of the Peers to kill themselves whenever a Shaa dies; it is expected, and that is enough. That's why so many of them have names originating in countries that aren't world powers - Martinez's family are from Mexico IIRC, Sula is an Armenian name I think, and so on. These are places that couldn't fight back and where people might immediately place themselves at the Shaa's disposal to get on top of the heap. As for the Shaa, most of what they do can be summed up in the first maxim of the Praxis: "Everything that is important is known". They're not totally inflexible - there's the race that can't live in temperatures above -60 Celsius and so are excused from any duties to the Praxis that would force them to leave their homeworld - but they're still absolute fascists with all that entails. They have ways that they want things to be done and they vary those only as necessary. Their method of identifying an individual is going to be something unique to their species and it's going to be something that they instructed the race to choose for themselves rather than something they researched. In the case of humans we'd immediately think of fingerprints first, so that's what humans would come up with. Then, to keep it simple, they'd be told to always use the right thumbprint unless the person doesn't have one. Possible spoiler for Arsenic Lupin: They do still keep genetic records of Peers, though; Sula rejects Martinez's proposal of marriage after she finds out she'd need to take a genetic test. So it's not just theatre.
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Nov 2, 2024 19:44
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So I recently saw an argument on the internet about Stanislaw Lem. Someone on twitter was praising his works, but referred to him as a soviet author (technically true?) In response people said that talking fondly of any element of soviet culture implies either support of the state itself; or ignorance. No way I'm gonna wade into that argument on twitter, its not the place for nuance. But that seems like an unhinged position to me, and one that would make it impossible to talk about most art throughout history.
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Nov 2, 2024 20:27
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You don’t HAVE to grab twitter brain worms and spread them around, it’s optional
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Nov 2, 2024 20:48
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Yes, that's absurd. Hating artists for the actions of their governments--especially when artists and intellectuals are some of the first against the wall when authoritarian governments turn begin scapegoating their own people--is a bonkers moral high ground to try to claim. Unless the author is clearly advocating for a bad cause, of course.
Eason the Fifth fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Nov 2, 2024 |
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Nov 2, 2024 20:52
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Whether or not having good things to say about soviet culture constitutes support for the soviet state is a moot point if you uncritically believe that doing so is a bad thing.
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Nov 2, 2024 20:54
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Groke posted:Nobody does evocative prose like McCarthy though. Pretty much, yeah. That part was great. How is the Road? Don’t know if I can stomach more atrocities at the moment. I once read American Psycho and Hannibal after one another and that was somewhat too much.
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Nov 2, 2024 21:00
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Reading his Wikipedia it doesn’t even seem like Lem was particularly involved with the Soviet state?
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Nov 2, 2024 21:05
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Cardiac posted:Pretty much, yeah. That part was great. The Road is not going to be for you right now then, it's *bleak*. I think there's a note of hope at the end but it's a while getting there. I do think the prose is incredibly beautiful.
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Nov 2, 2024 21:07
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HopperUK posted:The Road is not going to be for you right now then, it's *bleak*. I think there's a note of hope at the end but it's a while getting there. I do think the prose is incredibly beautiful. This is a completely accurate post. Do read The Road eventually, but yes, it is easily one of the bleakest books out there, and the power of the prose is a part of that.
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Nov 2, 2024 21:18
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Ccs posted:So I recently saw an argument on the internet about Stanislaw Lem. Someone on twitter was praising his works, but referred to him as a soviet author (technically true?) In response people said that talking fondly of any element of soviet culture implies either support of the state itself; or ignorance. It's not technically true, he was Polish, not Soviet. (And some of Soviet sci-fi was clearly criticism of the state).
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Nov 2, 2024 21:27
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Awkward Davies posted:Reading his Wikipedia it doesn’t even seem like Lem was particularly involved with the Soviet state? Yeah in one of the old dead-tree Kandel translations I have stacked somewhere in my cupboard the preface/foreword has some 'backstory' and Lem was stung by the Sov publishing censors on several occasions and he wrote that some of his best work came out of getting his ideas & beliefs into print under the noses of the big black marker pens.
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Nov 2, 2024 21:38
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Cardiac posted:Pretty much, yeah. That part was great. Oh, I made the brilliant choice of reading that right around the time my first child was born. Probably the best book I will never ever re-read. It tops a lot of lists and for good reason but goddamn it's bleak.
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Nov 2, 2024 21:46
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quantumfoam posted:Some Seabury Quinn occult horror stories and C.S. Forester's The Peacemaker are next up on my reading list. Hoo boy Quinn is... an experience. The Jules de Grandin stories range from "sympathy for the Egyptians who are murdering tomb-despoiling archaeologists" through "literal proto-Bond-villain with Dr No's underwater lair and a pet giant octopus" to "yay the heroic Klan save the day" (I AM NOT loving KIDDING WITH THAT LAST ONE) which is extremely whiplash-inducing.
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Nov 2, 2024 21:57
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Runcible Cat posted:Hoo boy Quinn is... an experience. I've read Sax Rohmer & Guy Boothby & Talbot Mundy. I'm prepared for extreme whiplash what-the-gently caress did I just read 1890s-1930s moments.
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Nov 2, 2024 22:22
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I haven't reviewed much lately ITT but I have been reading genre stuff the entire time. I read Tchaikovsky's first 3 Shadows of the Apt books. I enjoyed the magic system for a bit, I mostly liked the characters. It was a lot of words but pretty well written. Eventually there just wasn't enough I was looking forward to to keep reading given the pace - the characters had all split up arbitrarily again, the love triangle seemed over  After that I've spent the last month reading my download of the web serial "Worm" by John "Wildbow" McCrae. It's the upcoming of a superhero told in the insanely slow ~slice of life~ style only currently available in web serials. it's addictive for some reason. it's like watching some comfort 2000s show but you have almost 100 hours of it to read. i look forward to being able to actually buy it
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Nov 3, 2024 00:28
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AARD VARKMAN posted:i look forward to being able to actually buy it wouldnt hold your breath
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Nov 3, 2024 00:33
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pradmer posted:The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur #1) by Hannu Rajaniemi - $2.99 I loved this trilogy, it was so exciting and fast-paced and I think it's a great blend of wild sci-fi concepts, a cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship, and Rajaniemi being a huge nerdy Finn. The depiction of a deep-space sauna has really stuck with me.
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Nov 3, 2024 00:42
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Yeah The Quantum Thief owns.
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Nov 3, 2024 00:50
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AARD VARKMAN posted:After that I've spent the last month reading my download of the web serial "Worm" by John "Wildbow" McCrae. It's the upcoming of a superhero told in the insanely slow ~slice of life~ style only currently available in web serials. it's addictive for some reason. it's like watching some comfort 2000s show but you have almost 100 hours of it to read. i look forward to being able to actually buy it lol, rip.
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Nov 3, 2024 01:30
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To be less dismissive: the reception to the sequel, Ward, was so vitriolic and divisive that Wildbow has basically said he doesn't even like thinking about Worm anymore. Around Ward's launch, he said he was going to get a ghostwriter to edit Worm with a 'Worm bible' he was putting together, but a year or two ago he said that had been a lie to get people to stop asking about the prospect of an edited Worm for purchase. Also, upcoming of a superhero, wtf.
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Nov 3, 2024 01:33
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lol was Ward that bad? or just on the same level as Worm but its audience got older
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Nov 3, 2024 01:35
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cumpantry posted:lol was Ward that bad? or just on the same level as Worm but its audience got older Ward was pretty bad. But there's a few reasons for the response. The first is that, well, it wasn't Worm. Worm is rough but it has a simple hook and an interesting superhero world. Worm also moves at a fast pace, especially initially (if AARD thinks it is slow, lol.) Taylor is a real wish fulfillment character, too: the bullied nerd who gets fantastic powers and gets generally justified revenge on everyone. Ward is slow, the hook isn't really there, and the worldbuilding is less interesting and way less coherent. The choice of Ward's protagonist was less than ideal, and she was never as popular as Taylor, and I'd say she was one of the more outright disliked characters in Worm. Worm has a lot of fairly simple superpowers used in interesting ways, Ward's powers are esoteric and overly-complicated. Additionally, a lot of Wildbow's Worm fandom was built around him answering questions, what were called "Word of God" posts, which helped the world feel really cohesive. Well, Ward ignored a lot of those posts, and actively contradicted a particularly major inference between some of the key characters in Ward, which made a lot of the more invested fans upset. Ward also goes hard on a sort of "overly dystopian grimdark" reading of Worm's world, which simply isn't supported by the text. It also invalidated a lot of post-Worm fanfictions, which isn't great when the Worm fanfiction community is quite big. So it annoyed a lot of the bigger fan groups, and especially alienated fans of a particular character. It was also a very different story, and I think some of it is owed to the audience getting older (or, what's probably more accurate, not walking into an established story with an established fan orthodoxy), but some of it is just that Wildbow's weakness as a writer is in intra-character relationships and personal development, which Ward goes really hard on, and tries to be this sweeping epic about personal redemption and overcoming trauma, while still trying to be a Worm sequel of unceasing escalation above and beyond what Worm went with. Ward also had the typical Wildbow issue of being, uh, not so great when it comes to LGBT representation. Personally, I just thought it was a bad idea for a sequel. Worm's ending sets up an interesting prospect for the world, and Ward just basically undoes it in favor of something generic, and then develops the lore in really weird, uninteresting ways. Then you add on things like Browbeat being hastily and sloppily cut out of Worm because people were meme'ing about him in Ward, Wildbow kind of responding to criticisms within the chapters posted, and it was just the kind of mess you get when an author is really, really invested in their community and its discussions. Ward was bad enough that it basically dropped Wildbow from the web fiction golden child to someone who people felt comfortable dragging. Even our web serial thread, which was very Wildbow positive, made the title a Wildbow-flavored Rick and Morty meme ("To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Wildbow...") for a while. I also think you can't discount the effect of Ward being a response to Twig. I think it's a real tragedy that Wildbow never did anything with Worm, especially prior to launching Ward. The first eight arcs of Worm could make a great YA trilogy with some editing and stuff. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Nov 3, 2024 |
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Nov 3, 2024 02:10
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i appreciate the writeup. extreme lol at doing that Word of God stuff and then later going, eh, gently caress it. talk about eating your cake
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Nov 3, 2024 02:22
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Halfway into the second book in the Praxis series. There's a worldbuilding glitch that stands out to me. One character is living under a stolen identity. They solve the problem by burning the fingerprint off the right thumb, and that's all it takes. The books were written in the early 2000s, well after the OJ Simpson trial. I got the sense that the number of weird loopholes is pretty intentional, and that there's lots of stuff that people don't know anymore because Praxis decided it was outside the enforced Orthodoxy.
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Nov 3, 2024 02:25
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MockingQuantum posted:Oh it's definitely a good book, I just didn't know how it fit into the Solar Cycle given that it's not by Wolfe and was written 20 years before BotNS but for clarity, the randomised ordered list of solar cycle titles is not intended to be a genuine reading order suggestion. canticle is a good book though
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Nov 3, 2024 09:32
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quantumfoam posted:I've read Sax Rohmer & Guy Boothby & Talbot Mundy. I'm prepared for extreme whiplash what-the-gently caress did I just read 1890s-1930s moments. Me too, but I really wasn't prepared for that last one! Still gets republished too.
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Nov 3, 2024 13:33
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The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072KDDMTZ/ Viriconium by M John Harrison - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000XU8E6Y/
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Nov 3, 2024 17:32
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pradmer posted:
Anyone have any thoughts on this one? Looks like it could be interesting
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Nov 3, 2024 22:56
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SilkyP posted:Anyone have any thoughts on this one? I have many and they can be summed up as: M. John Harrison is one of the greatest fantasy authors alive or dead Viriconium is a cousin of Dying Earth, but weirder, more meta, and much more surreal. The Pastel City is a great adventure tale and is the most grounded, but its sequel, A Storm of Wings, is Harrison going Super Saiyan and is incredible. In Viriconium is a much quieter and sadder story that follows several artists and a plague, and Viriconium Nights is a collection of short stories. All four books contain lots of incredible prose and dozens upon dozens of haunting or strange or funny or horrifying or dreamlike moment. It's also a series that invites speculation and interpretation, and rewards you for coming up with increasingly insane theories. I find it similar to the Souls type of storytelling in many small and big ways, though it's hard to explain why. It's a vibes thing, I guess. It's an absolute joy but also not for everyone. Still, $5 for all that content is a steal
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Nov 3, 2024 23:35
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WarpDogs posted:I have many and they can be summed up as: M. John Harrison is one of the greatest fantasy authors alive or dead Sold!
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Nov 4, 2024 00:01
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| # ? Dec 11, 2024 13:36 |
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NoneMoreNegative posted:Yeah in one of the old dead-tree Kandel translations I have stacked somewhere in my cupboard the preface/foreword has some 'backstory' and Lem was stung by the Sov publishing censors on several occasions and he wrote that some of his best work came out of getting his ideas & beliefs into print under the noses of the big black marker pens. I feel like this is somewhere on the Wikipedia page too. And it's pretty obvious, if you actually read his work, that he was largely criticizing the regime, at least as far as he could without getting purged. Like there's one short story where the characters are competing to build ever more powerful robots or something, and the protagonists eventually prevail by creating a robot imbued with the most powerful force in the universe - the police force!
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Nov 4, 2024 00:48
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