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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm beginning to think I never actually read Dragonsbane ten years ago because I remember nothing about it and it's really, really good. Why have I been avoiding it all these years? ...because you're dumb? Nah, it really is a very good book. The sequels are... different.
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Jun 28, 2020 23:17
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fritz posted:RH should have stuck with going after people like Bakker. Alternatively, don't harass and threaten people for writing books at all dumbass.
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Jun 28, 2020 23:40
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Groke posted:...because you're dumb? Nah, it really is a very good book. Because past me was dumb, current me is smart and knows what's up. I suspect past me wanted more dragons and adventure and less character drama and worldbuilding, but who knows. Whatever, I'm enjoying it now! I do have the sequels, from what I understand they're a trilogy that goes in weird places.
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Jun 28, 2020 23:48
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General Battuta posted:I finished Jade War. It was definitely slower than the first one but I liked it a fair bit. Yeah, I've enjoyed the series, although it certainly wasn't going where I thought it was going from the beginning. Much more protomodern.
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Jun 29, 2020 00:27
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StrixNebulosa posted:Everyone look at my giant book from New Zealand!! Personally I thought it was super ambitious and didn't always hit what it was going for, but I couldn't help but admire that ambition and cheer when it pulled some ridiculous poo poo off.
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Jun 29, 2020 04:22
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Of all of the stupid SFF community poo poo to come up this week, Benjanun Sriduangkaew coming back and trying to pretend that she's nice now somehow manages to still be Top 3. Have you got a link to this? quantumfoam posted:Dr Robert Forward discloses his contract with Ballantine books for DRAGON'S EGG royalties [...] Read it and weep. These sales figures are an order of magnitude higher than established midlisters today.
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Jun 29, 2020 04:35
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In awe of the size of this volume. Absolute book
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Jun 29, 2020 04:42
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Definitely review this one once you're done: The Absolute Book is probably the most divisive book I've ever seen. It's either THIS WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE or 1-star DNF and basically nothing in the middle. Will do, but it'll be a while. Also fair warning: Black Oxen by Elizabeth Knox was one of the best books I've ever read. I'm going into this one super biased.
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Jun 29, 2020 04:42
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StrixNebulosa posted:Will do, but it'll be a while. Also fair warning: Black Oxen by Elizabeth Knox was one of the best books I've ever read. I'm going into this one super biased.
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Jun 29, 2020 05:26
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Elizabeth Knox also wrote a romance novel about angels but used such gorgeous language that the literary establishment decreed it Literature and they made a very serious movie out of it. The sheer balsiness of taking a romance novel to lit festivals in the goddam 90s and coming away with a movie deal is just ... yeah she's something else.
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Jun 29, 2020 05:33
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I've never read anything by Knox but have had her book Wake on my TBR list for ages because of the really excellent eerie cover drawn for it by Dylan Horrocks: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18629384-wake
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Jun 29, 2020 06:22
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Safety Biscuits posted:Have you got a link to this? Are ebooks factored into today’s numbers? Or people are just reading a lot less? Also if Elizabeth Knox is a pretty big deal why can’t I buy that book anywhere but Australia? No ebook option either? Ccs fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 29, 2020 06:36
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That's just sorta how NZ publishing works—a lot of releases never go much further abroad than Australia, particularly literary fiction. She's a literary author who loves SFF tropes, who publishes almost exclusively through the same university press. I'm not sure she's been a "big deal" before The Absolute Book got that writeup in Slate and suddenly she was signing big US publishing deals, but she's been a consistently extremely high-quality author for three decades and the international sales have only recently started to reflect that.
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Jun 29, 2020 06:53
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Safety Biscuits posted:Have you got a link to this? Keep in mind that book pricing back in 1980/1981 was at least a order of magnitude lower than what book publishers normally set today. (for example, look at the prices Macmillan sets for the murderbot series novellas/novels) The reason why Robert Forward gave out his Ballantine royalty payout numbers was responding to SFL people who had been commenting/complaining about book publishers suddenly jacking up the prices of paperback books. Some SFL posters saw paperback book price increases of 33%, other SFL posters saw price increases close to 60%. The price increases 1980 SFL users were reacting to back then was $1.50 priced paperbacks jumping in price to suddenly cost $2.00 or in some price-gouging cases $2.50. This kind of got lost in LOWTAX LUVS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE drama, however jng2058 running away from this thread after being owned by a 40 year old internet post will remain a thread highlight for me, no matter what happens to the forums. *going to bold the funniest parts* ------------------------------ AQE@MIT-MC 03/19/80 15:12:49 Re: Similarities between "World of Tiers" and "Amber". I just finished reading P. J. Farmer's "World of Tiers" series, and it reinforces my opinion that Farmer should be prevented from writing anything longer than a short novel. His short stuff is good, but his novel series just get totally out of hand. Maybe he needs a good editor. However, when I was only partway through the series, I started getting VERY UPSET because of similarities between it and Zelazny's "Amber" series, which I consider to be an All Time Classic. I figured that "Tiers" was just a low-grade re-working of "Amber". Then I thought of checking the copyright dates, and lo and behold, it is the other way around. "Amber" looks like a high-grade re-working of "Tiers". Here is a summary: The "World of Tiers" series by Philip Jose' Farmer: The Maker of Universes (1965) The Gates of Creation (1966) A Private Cosmos (1968) (my edition has an intro by Zelazny) Behind the Walls of Terra (1970) The Lavalite World (1977) (dedication: "For Roger Zelazny, The Golden Spinner") The "Amber" series by Roger Zelazny: Nine Princes in Amber (1970) The Guns of Avalon (1972) Sign of the Unicorn (1975) (dedication: "For Jadawin and his Demiurge, not to forget Kickaha." Jadiwin and Kickaha are characters from "World of Tiers", and a Demiurge is the Creator of the material world, and probably a pun, too.) The Hand of Oberon (1976) The Courts of Chaos (1978) The similarities: (WARNING: THESE PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN SPOILERS!)l World of Tiers \ Amber The series concerns the exploits \ The series concerns the exploits of an immortal race called "Lords", \ of an immortal royal family, human-looking but of superhuman \ human-looking but of superhuman speed and strength. They possess \ speed and strength. They possess the technology to travel between \ an inborn ability to travel between universes. They almost never trust \ universes. They almost never trust each other, and often try to kill \ each other, and often try to kill each other. They are all descended \ each other. They are all descended from a great artisan named \ from a great artisan named Dworkin Shambarimen. The series begins with \ Barimen. The series begins with a a major character (Wolff) living on \ major character (Corwin) living on Earth and suffering from amnesia. \ Earth and suffering from amnesia. The character is swept up into an \ The character is swept up into an odyssey through the universes, and \ odyssey through the universes, and eventually finds himself to be one \ eventually finds himself to be one of the supermen. \ of the supermen. I'm sure there are more that I've missed. The tone of the dedications and Zelazny's intro seems to indicate that Zelazny plagiarized Farmer with Farmer's permission. Also, Farmer has used many characters created by others, so maybe he doesn't mind sharing his plots. Does anyone out there know anything else about the relation of these series to each other, or other "sharing" by Zelazny? Jef ------------------------------ quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 29, 2020 07:37
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StrixNebulosa posted:Because past me was dumb, current me is smart and knows what's up. I suspect past me wanted more dragons and adventure and less character drama and worldbuilding, but who knows. Whatever, I'm enjoying it now! Based on your discussion I looked up Dragonsbane on Amazon and was surprised to find that its free for Prime Members. It will be a while until I read it, but I went ahead and had it sent to my kindle. Should be available to other prime members as well.
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Jun 29, 2020 08:10
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Safety Biscuits posted:Read it and weep. These sales figures are an order of magnitude higher than established midlisters today. https://faq.brandonsanderson.com/knowledge-base/do-authors-make-more-money-on-hardcover-books-or-paperbacks/ Although this was 15 years ago now, Brandon Sanderson's first novel had breakpoints at 75k and 150k with slightly different percentages. And at the time he didn't seem to expect to reach even the lower one since his debut wasn't especially successful.
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Jun 29, 2020 08:33
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Ccs posted:Are ebooks factored into today’s numbers? Or people are just reading a lot less? I'm not the person to ask, but ebooks are, I think, about 20% of the market, so they barely begin to close the disparity. As for whether people are reading fewer books than 40 years ago, I think that's certain, thanks to computer games, the internet, and TV. quantumfoam posted:Keep in mind that book pricing back in 1980/1981 was at least a order of magnitude lower than what book publishers normally set today. (for example, look at the prices Macmillan sets for the murderbot series novellas/novels) You're forgetting inflation; $1.50, $2, and $2.50 correspond to roughly $5, $6.50, and $8 today (per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' calculator. Those increases are more like x3-5, which is still pretty significant, of course. I can't explain all of that, but novels today are a lot longer than novels from the 60s or 70s, and consequently more expensive for the publisher and printer to create. Anyway my point was just that, boy, authors could expect to make a lot more money back then. Here's Charles Stross discussing contracts in 2010; if you ctrl+f "escalator" you'll find this: quote:There's an escalator on royalties. I get 10% on the first 5000 copies of each book, 12.5% on the next 5000 copies, and 15% on all copies of each book sold thereafter. I'm assuming that numbers in contracts are assumed to have at least something to do with likely sales, hence my envy of previous generations of writers... e: Llamadeus posted:Those aren't sales figures, they're breakpoints for royalties. Yeah, assumed sales figures; nice catch, I was sloppy.
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Jun 29, 2020 09:02
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Quoting myself from a while back since it's somewhat relevant:C.M. Kruger posted:According to David Drake he was also getting 10k back in 1980, which adjusts for 31k in today's dollars.
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Jun 29, 2020 09:11
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Llamadeus posted:Those aren't sales figures, they're breakpoints for royalties. Safety Biscuits posted:Yeah, assumed sales figures; nice catch, I was sloppy. Damnit Llamadeus. Safety Biscuits immediately jumping to the bit with the numbers and ignoring everything else in the message Forward posted back in 1980 was building up to a nice head of steam, since there is a really interesting paragraph directly below the numbers SB fixated on. "It gets more complicated as we get into trade editions, book clubs, foreign publications, and other rights that Ballantine's staff sells to others. Typically Ballantine keeps 50% of book club license fees (the SF Book Club is paying a royalty of 30 cents or about 5% of their price. I get half of that.), and keeps 25% of foreign rights, which vary widely with country and difficulty of translation. There will be English, German, and Japanese versions of DE. "It {royalty payouts} gets more complicated as we get into trade editions, book clubs," can be seen as precedents/precursors to ebook sales in modern terms, with amazon/apple/other ebook seller sites taking the place of "book clubs". Foreign book rights/translation costs, no idea if much has changed in modern terms. Moving on from 39 yrs past royalty payment disclosures, SFL Vol 02 ended maybe 15 pages after that Robert Forward post. I immediately jumped into SFL Vol 03, and it's January 1981 starting timeframe. All the hopefulness posting about the Space Shuttle program in SFL Vol 03 makes me sad. These 1981 people had no idea what kind of disappointments lay ahead for the Space Shuttle program. "space filling foam" and "picking up shuttle tiles" SFL comments aged particularly badly. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 29, 2020 15:19
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quantumfoam posted:-the heinlein defense squad are also the people whom constantly hypothesize that Leia is going to get knocked up (as all women do in Heinlein stories) and the kid Leia will have is the "Other hope" I mean turns out they weren't wrong, and said kid is even a Jedi!
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Jun 29, 2020 15:34
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feedmegin posted:I mean turns out they weren't wrong, and said kid is even a Jedi! true. I neglected say the Heinlein defense squad were making predictions for Return of the Jedi, and back then SW sequels seemed to be on a 3 year release cycle, the original 12 movie idea got compacted into 9 movies, so everything Star Wars would have finished up by 2002 or so, not in 2019.
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Jun 29, 2020 15:56
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quantumfoam posted:The tone of the dedications and Zelazny's intro seems to indicate that Can't be plagiarism if you have permission. Your point is invalid. 
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Jun 29, 2020 16:44
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jng2058 posted:Can't be plagiarism if you have permission. Your point is invalid. Ah, the Clifford Irving gambit. Clever.
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Jun 29, 2020 16:54
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SFL vol 03 update. About 6% into SFL Vol 03, lots of 1960's/1970's/1980 era computer hardware failure stories/urban myths have been the exclusive topic of discussion for the past week or so. 4 parts urban myth stories to 3 parts "seen by a friend/me stories" to 1 part "destroying hardware is cool, here is how I *wink* would *wink* theoretically* wink* do so *wink*". That 1 part being so enthusiastic is another chapter in seeing Robert Tappan Morris's hijinks in a more sympathetic light. For people who never saw or dealt with 1960's/1970's/1980's computer hardware, in your head picture the following: the TONKA school of design but everything built is extremely heavy, very fragile, and poorly welded in a era where OSHA compliance was people making you put money in the office swear-jar after you said "OH SHi--" during a nasty hardware failure event. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 29, 2020 19:32
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Anyone know of a book that’s xenofiction, but focused on the alien view of humans? like aliens interacting with humans, but the PoV characters are aliens
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Jun 30, 2020 08:59
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PawParole posted:Anyone know of a book that’s xenofiction, but focused on the alien view of humans? CJ Cherryh's Chanur series has a human in it. It isn't really about the traumatized, shipwrecked alien though. Other than a lot of the plot of course.
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Jun 30, 2020 09:09
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 The Empire of Gold, the second sequel to City of Brass, is out.
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Jun 30, 2020 09:09
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mllaneza posted:CJ Cherryh's Chanur series has a human in it. It isn't really about the traumatized, shipwrecked alien though. Other than a lot of the plot of course. read it and I loved it. Thanks for recommending it, in case another goon hasn’t read it yet. they’d love it too!
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Jun 30, 2020 09:56
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PawParole posted:Anyone know of a book that’s xenofiction, but focused on the alien view of humans? I only read a preview chapter in a magazine so I don't know if it's maintained through the whole book, but A Darkling Sea by James Cambias has first contact through the point of view of an underwater lobster-person.
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Jun 30, 2020 13:56
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anilEhilated posted:
The whole trilogy feels very white-saviour - our super-special heroine with her magical bloodline has to swoop in to stop the oppression of the poor downtrodden underclass. There's no significant shafit characters/PoVs Nahri doesn't count because she never actually indentifies with shafit, like, 3 characters know the truth, and again, super-special magical bloodline I had quite high hopes for it after the bit in the first book where the idiot-prince is secretly funding the equal-rights terrorists, but refuses to actually help them publically or do anything that would put himself at risk, and they make it abudently clear how disgusted they are with his cowardice.
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Jun 30, 2020 14:08
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Strom Cuzewon posted:The whole trilogy feels very white-saviour - our super-special heroine with her magical bloodline has to swoop in to stop the oppression of the poor downtrodden underclass. There's no significant shafit characters/PoVs Nahri doesn't count because she never actually indentifies with shafit, like, 3 characters know the truth, and again, super-special magical bloodline Is that the directions it's going? I read the first one but haven't picked up the second one yet.
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Jun 30, 2020 14:13
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Pretty much, yeah. It's all very toothless.
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Jun 30, 2020 14:59
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I honestly found her the least interesting out of the characters. Not sure about the white-saviour thing either, since her plans have a habit of backfiring. But maybe I'm just less sensitive to this kind of thing and didn't notice.
anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Jun 30, 2020 |
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Jun 30, 2020 15:12
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Sarern posted:Is that the directions it's going? I read the first one but haven't picked up the second one yet. It has been awhile since I read the second book (read on release), but I would disagree with describing this book as white savior. Apart from not really being down with using that term to describe a book where literally everyone is non white, the main character is pretty downtrodden at the outset and is actually a member of the disadvantaged group, though as an outsider it takes time for them to learn that. Maybe I am really misremembering, but I don’t think that the fact that it has the very common fantasy trope of a main character having additional powers beyond normal people is a good reason to discount it. I thought it was good and appreciated that it drew on a background setting/mythology other than white, European medieval. E: I can appreciate preferring it if a member literally of the shafit who grew up there was a POV character, I don’t think Strom’s wrong that that might’ve added to the book. tildes fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Jun 30, 2020 |
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Jun 30, 2020 15:16
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Yeah that wasn't really the best term. It's the same idea of loads of fantasy (Mistborn springs to mind) where someone nice takes power and then decides that we're all gonna do friendly liberal democracy now, just the most boring, simplistic way to tell that kind of story. Nahri is kind of outcast and downtrodden at times, but it's the X-Men/Jemisin style of being an underclass that is also super-special and magic and awesome. Which is also kinda dull. There's a lot to like about the trilogy though - Alizarayah is the enjoyable kind of idiot, the Marids and Ifrit are nicely mysterious and magical, it never flinches from how tyrannical and awful Ghassan is, even if in the midst of his rants about stability and order, etc.
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Jun 30, 2020 15:44
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PawParole posted:Anyone know of a book that’s xenofiction, but focused on the alien view of humans? Well there is CJ Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg, which can be I've come around to the conclusion that Honor Harrington, the best-selling creation of David Weber is actually unknowingly in a Fantasy Island/Westworld land where everyone else is robots/aliens pre-programmed to genuflect/tokenly oppose/act as cartoonish villain threats to them. Sort of like what Watchmen 2019 did with the Veidt character on Europa, only Veidt got bored, or any of the seemingly 5 billion holodeck episodes from Star Trek TNG, DS9, Voyager, and spoiler alert Enterprise. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jun 30, 2020 |
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Jun 30, 2020 16:10
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Yeah that wasn't really the best term. It's the same idea of loads of fantasy (Mistborn springs to mind) where someone nice takes power and then decides that we're all gonna do friendly liberal democracy now, just the most boring, simplistic way to tell that kind of story. You might want to check out The City of Silk and Steel (Aka The Steel Seraglio) by Mike Carey (and his wife and daughter) if you like this kind of thing.
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Jun 30, 2020 16:30
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Yeah that wasn't really the best term. It's the same idea of loads of fantasy (Mistborn springs to mind) where someone nice takes power and then decides that we're all gonna do friendly liberal democracy now, just the most boring, simplistic way to tell that kind of story. Ah I see what you’re saying, that’s definitely a fair critique of the story I think. The setting adds to the novelty a bit I think but the overall story beats are definitely following that pretty standard arc.
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Jun 30, 2020 17:12
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PawParole posted:Anyone know of a book that’s xenofiction, but focused on the alien view of humans? There's some of this in A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky -- they basically alternate between human and alien POV. Children of Time too, but the "aliens" and humans don't actually encounter each other until most of the way through the book. CJ Cherryh has written a bunch of other first-contact and human-among-aliens books, but IIRC Chanur is the only one written from the alien perspective, although Cuckoo's Egg features a human raised in an alien society.
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Jun 30, 2020 17:19
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PawParole posted:read it and I loved it. Thanks for recommending it, in case another goon hasn’t read it yet. Glen Cook's Darkwar is also mostly about aliens doing alien stuff. It starts out looking like a fantasy series, slowly turns into science fiction, and then there's contact with humans. Darkwar, along with The Swordbearer, are Cook exploring fantasy tropes. A staple of the genre are super powerful evil sorcerers who wreck everybody's poo poo. The protagonist of Darkwar grows up as the 'different' child and discovers a wild 'magic' talent early. She has no idea of what the larger political agendas in the world are, but leaps at the chance to study her talents and even learn to fly. Pursuing her own interests forward she winds up cutting across everyone's plans and alliances and ends up looking like a world-wrecking evil sorceress. Then she discovers an impending ecological catastrophe and starts projects to save her world. This steps on the toes of a lot of vested interests, so she ends up having to wreck more people's poo poo. Then starfaring explorers find a wrecked human ship and things get really complicated. The theme of having to transform society to save the world hits home, maybe someone really does need to teach AOC the dark arts. Darkwar is good, more people should read it.
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Jun 30, 2020 17:24
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