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Are there any good scifi or fantasy books that prominently feature a hivemind entity/race? For those of you who have played System Shock 2, I am new to it and realized that The Many greatly interest me and I'd like to see more of the same or similar. I am no good at FPSes so Halo and the Flood are out. Besides, as much as love me some video games, nothing beats a good book with regards to bizarre alien lifeforms. I've gotten some great recs in the past in here and was hoping for more of the same. Thanks in advance. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Jan 9, 2020 |
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Jan 9, 2020 23:43
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So I know at least some people who watch or read scifi actually know something about this here science stuff. I do not. I just watched an X-Files episode about a potential parasitic infection out break and while it was a parasite and not a virus it reminded me of stories like Crichton's The Andromeda Strain or King's The Stand. I love stories like this but whenever I talked about how realistic they made the horror people came along and said actually bioweapons suck and viruses wouldn't really spread and be that dangerous. I just believed them but given the current state of the world, I've grown skeptical. So, scifi readers who know science, are viruses and bioweapons actually as deadly as stories claim or not? i
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Apr 17, 2020 05:47
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Is "pulp" a derogatory term? I always thought it was as I recall first hearing it to describe pretty cheap, sort of superficial stories. Fantasy and scifi have their greatest strengths when they use fantasy and scifi stuff to address real things. The One Ring isn't just a dumb magic ring, it represents Sin and its temptations. That sorta thing. I thought pulp was just a way to describe vacuous genre fiction. But so many figures who are described as pulp fantasy/sci-fi or writing for pulp magazines are now considered classics these days. Lovecraft, Vance, probably others that the actual historians of pulp can tell me about. This came to mind when I was thinking of reading Vance's Dying Earth series and saw folks like Neil Gaiman have praised Vance as a writer. And of course Lovecraft's influence is everywhere. Also that guy who wrote the Lensman series which seems decently important, too.
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May 25, 2020 11:20
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So I read al the Song of Ice and Fire novels back in 2014. I enjoyed it well enough, glad I always steered clear of the TV show. Anyway, then I read Brandon Sanderson's stuff since he was the other guy who got talked about a lot on a forum i frequented. Individually these were all pretty big books and they were part of a series so quite a time investment for me. But I still reread all the present Stormlight Archive in preparation for the next book I would say I enjoy TSA more than ASOIAF but even if I didn't, the motivation of seeing where the series will go got me to do it again. It was a joke in 2014 about Martin dying before ASOIAF would be finished. It's not so funny any more in 2020. I don't think I could ever bring myself to reread the books given the fact there may very well be no ending or satisfying resolution to any of it. I'm not the most avid fiction book reader, though. Any of you had to deal with this? The crushing reality of "there will be no ending"? Does that put a damper on things for you?
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Nov 2, 2020 02:13
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I wonder how you gauge a novel's success in the long term? I was just notified that Jurassic Park will be having its 30th anniversary on the 20th of this month. All of Crichton's books sold well but easy come and easy go. I think some of his books are popular enough still but hard to really tell. In any event I always preferred he novel to the film for a few reasons. The novel actually has more action for one thing. Love the section with the raft and the T-Rex or when the raptors corner the kids in the computer room. Might have to do a reread.
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Nov 10, 2020 12:00
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freebooter posted:Loved the novel as a kid - I think it was the first "adult" book I ever read - but I revisited it a few years ago and, while I still like it, the film is the superior piece of art. The book is a classic sci-fi/airport thriller novel in the sense that it has a fantastic premise but a dim grasp of how human beings work and (as an example) has really bad dialogue and character writing. It's darker than the film, which makes for an interesting contrast and is classic Speilberg, but darker doesn't necessarily equal better. As much as I enjoy the book, the ending really annoys me, to the point I just skip it. I don't mean the dinos escaping, I mean hunting down the raptor nests. The highest suspension levels in the novel is when the raptors attack the main compound and most of our heroes are trapped in one of the lodges and the kids are in the computer room. Once power is restored and the raptors are dealt with, it's a great moment of triumph. And then the novel just keeps going and going and going. We've reached the peak and now we just trudge along. I really do like how much more detail the dinosaurs breeding is given because the movie just has one scene that comes and goes and adds nothing. But there had to have been another way to write about killing all the raptors without also dragging the story out so much. As for dialogue, no arguments there. Crichton did so love his big speeches and using his characters to espouse his views. But I've always loved this one: “You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away — all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive gas, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.  Out of curiosity, did you read/like Sphere? I did a binge of Crichton years ago and Sphere was my favorite book by him for a lot of reasons. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Nov 12, 2020 |
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Nov 12, 2020 18:02
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freebooter posted:No, I should check it out; I think I tried reading The Lost World and bounced off it, partly because it was boring and partly because retconning Malcolm's death irritated me, and I never tried any Crichton again. Well, Film and Book Hammond are night and day in their purposes in their respective narratives so very different endings makes sense. Book Hammond was a clear sociopath or narcissist, superficially charming but entirely obsessed with himself. I always recall how it's described in the book that he's just calmly eating ice cream while everything goes to hell and people die. The movie wanted him to be, well, the comparison is always Walt Disney. I don't know anything about Disney but Movie Hammond is certainly portrayed sympathetically as a man who just wants to bring wonder to the children of the world but had no idea what he was doing. In the novel he's like "we can charge people whatever we want These animals belong to us! Exploit everyone and everything!"" Crichton never portrays corporations or businessmen positively, if we want to look for positive political messages in his stories.
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Nov 13, 2020 01:59
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I make no pretenses to be a great judge of writing, I can only say what I liked and why. It's like how in the Sanderson thread I mentioned my vague knowledge of the fandom is that Mistbon Era 2 is held in lesser regard than Era 1 and a lot of folks were like "actually, Era 2 is way better written." I guess I can see this but The Final Empire is far and away my favorite Sanderson novel. (Oathbringer is second place.) I guess it could be the bias of it was my first novel of his I ever read but I dunno, I never had any special attraction to A Game of Thrones even though it was my first Martin novel, and goddam Fellowship of the Ring is so interminably boring for me up until until the Council of Elrond. I have relistened to TFE three times, enjoying it more each time. It has a great set of characters and world and it introduced me to the meticulously detailed Sandersonian way of writing magic. And it is a wonderful standalone story to boot. I think you can just read it and be satisfied while The Way of Kings leaves you with so many unanswered questions.
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Nov 13, 2020 19:24
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wrong drat thread, sorry
NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Dec 11, 2020 |
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Dec 11, 2020 16:12
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navyjack posted:Anne Rice just died. Aw gently caress, I was just starting a reread of Interview and the Chronicles... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo6T0J1wxFA Rest in peace. However much I think she became too much of a Lestat fangirl, she changed vampire fiction forever, and mostly for the good, IMO. I still love Interview.
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Dec 12, 2021 09:10
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Leng posted:Edit: In all my years of either reading him or hearing about his works, I've never seen him attacked for "forced diversity" or whatnot. Syl has a whole thing about how there are more than two genders and it's a human construct - that's just begging for these losers to take to YouTube or Twitter but I've seen nothing. The opinions in the novels of his I've read are pretty affirming and heartening, not just to LGBTQ, but to folks with mental illness. I think this is one reason Kaladin is so beloved.
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Mar 12, 2022 06:48
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The best understanding of HP's success I've seen is this:quote:Several critics have noted the creative blend of genres that is rolled into the series. Anne Hiebert Alton has pointed to elements of pulp fiction, ghost and horror stories, gothic elements, narrative structures from the detective genre, aspects of the Bildungsroman, the Victorian boarding or public school story, the sports story, elements of fairy and folk tales, aspects of the quest fantasy but also adventure plots, and quest romance (Alton, 2009, p. 221). In Alton’s view, Rowling blends all these genres while moving towards the epic and in doing so is original. I grew up in the late 90s/early 2000s and another very influential Fantasy series, Buffy, is similar in how it blended horror, comedy, teen/paranormal romance, coming of age, and many other genre to make something with broad appeal. Whether you think Rowling handled the transition to more mature storytelling well or not, I think it was vital to the success of her books that they aged with the audience. I and a lot of other fans of the books basically grew up with Harry Potter the character. If they had stayed kids books, they'd have been shunted into that Artemis Fowl category maybe and been forgotten.
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Apr 5, 2022 19:35
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This is kinda random but I was thinking about all the Fantasy stuff on my mind lately - Xena, Conan, things like that - and I wanted to know what "Pulp" means to you all? 'cuz it's kind of a derogatory label in my experience but Lovecraft was "pulp" and he's a very famous, influential author now. Robert E. Howard was also fairly influential, probably others I'm unfamiliar with. So is Pulp a bad thing, an insult?
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Apr 16, 2022 20:19
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How would you describe these Riftwar books? Not just in terms of quality but tone and the like? Are they about characters, or more about action or...? I know absolutely nothing about them. I was just browsing reddit and somebody used the empire in them as a good example of Chaotic Evil. (I will never outgrow D&D Alignments any more than I can outgrow DBZ Power Levels)
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Apr 18, 2022 01:38
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Thanks for the inputs on the books, everyone. I guess I'll just add it to my Maybe Someday list.Khizan posted:Also, the Empire would be Lawful Evil, not Chaotic Evil. It came up in this Reddit thread. What does a chaotic evil nation look like? quote:Another example I can think of would be the Dasati from Raymond E Fiest's Riftwar books. A multiplanet empire where death, betrayal and struggle are considered sacred. (incidentally, this reminds me of a guy I knew who really hated the Drow because he was convinced CE societies just aren't really possible or believable)
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Apr 18, 2022 07:32
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I read Pendragon Cycle, at least the first book, years ago and enjoyed it. But now the Daily fuckin' Wire is adapting it? Gross. What did I miss in that book. (edited) I did admittedly get turned off by how super Christian things got in the sequel. Maybe that's it.
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Jan 29, 2023 20:34
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Kestral posted:Mine was Catcher in the Rye. As soon as I finished the book report on it, I took it outside along with a metal pot, tore out half the pages, and lit it on fire. Good riddance. It's actually kinda funny the near-universal hatred I've seen from people who read that book in school. If you ever have a talk about "real literature I hate", Catcher will always be there and maybe also The Scarlet Letter. Of course, I think TSL's negative reputation is more a victim of bad education than the quality of the book itself. "Please list all the symbolism in the book" Symbolism is great but this method of learning is probably why we got "the curtains are just frickin' blue."
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Jan 31, 2023 22:27
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My favorite book read in high school was To Kill A Mockingbird. It's been 20 years now but I remember just eating that book up and never being able to put it down and I don't remember feeling that way about any other mandated reading. We didn't get Macbeth, we got Romeo & Juliet which, again, most people complain about having been forced to read. I still maintain more teenagers would relate to Antony & Cleopatra but...oh well.
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Feb 1, 2023 17:08
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VostokProgram posted:Not being facetious - what else are you supposed to do with these kinds of books (Gatsby, catcher, etc) if not look for symbolism and themes and all that analytic stuff? Copernic posted:This treats reading like a search-and-find for various literary devices and is tedious. My 4th grader has to circle the nouns and verbs on his worksheets, and it is still that, except you are now supposed to find metaphors and allusions. The educational intent seems to be to reveal the inner workings of great literature, like opening the back of a clock, so you can marvel at the complexity. But whatever this is, it is alien to why the author wrote the book and why the reader reads it. Certainly it is not entertaining. It also devalues the plot, the characters, the setting, and the overall intended effect. Like reading Steinbeck for his use of color metaphors, and failing entirely to mention the labor history of the United States. It tends to treat literature as practically gnostic. Books turn into puzzles that must be thoroughly examined to reveal their many secrets. The lesson learned is that books are hard and unrewarding absent unstinting effort and multiple close reads. It isn't even accurate to college-level literary criticism, which correctly treats this kind of analytics as mere technical analysis. This, basically. The Scarlet Letter might resonate with kids more if you talk about what it's actually about. The plight of women, religious intolerance. how good people can do bad things. "Find the symbolism" makes it, as said, a math problem to be solved.
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Feb 1, 2023 18:56
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Everyone posted:The play premiered in 1597. Here in the advanced, enlightened United States of America, we didn't fully restrict work to 16 and older until 1949. The history of childhood in Western societies is really fascinating. The entire concept of a "child" has changed so radically in recent times. Would recommend anybody who is interested Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 for a good overview.
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Feb 1, 2023 22:42
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So the Sanderson article is whatever to me but it harped on how he isn't a big talked about name like Martin. From what I've been told, no Fantasy author gets mainstream recognition unless they get a movie or TV show or the like. No "regular normie person" cared about George RR Martin before Game of Thrones, even as ASOIAF sold pretty well. I brought up Harry Potter and while it's a unique phenomenon, people also told me "it's YA, not Fantasy." Why is the demographic important? Why is YA talked about like it's its own genre?
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Mar 26, 2023 12:26
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DurianGray posted:YA can be a total Hey don't worry, I also remember Hatchet. It was the poo poo for the kids I knew who actually read back in 6th grade or so. But that all makes sense. Thanks.
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Mar 26, 2023 13:40
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but:
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Kind of a random question but I recently reread Eye in the Sky by Dick, and I'm also thinking I'll reread Sphere which is always gonna be my favorite Crichton novel. Putting these two thoughts together, I think I have a weakness for "the fraility of the human mind manifesting into reality and nearly killing everyone" stories. Can anybody recommend me stuff like that? "Eye" and Sphere have nothing in common besides roughly that so really, anything where circumstances lead to neurotic people being given realty warping abilities is what I'm after.
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Jan 9, 2024 12:58
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General Battuta posted:Have you seen FORBIDDEN PLANET? It’s a bit old but pretty much in that vein. I have, although it's been a long time. I figured Sphere especially was inspired by it given "we're meeting alien life, no wait, we're meeting our own personal issues." I appreciate all the recommendations, everyone. Thank you.
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Jan 9, 2024 22:40
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