SF & F Mega-thread: I had to google 'spock pirate depilatory'

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Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Orson Scott Card's Empire has it's semi-retired marine protagonist rhetorically own his liberal college professor in class before being called on to thwart a leftist robot coup.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2019 22:53

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 10:34

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Baru's world is one of modern rationalism, possibly gone wildly astray, but still, more like a Mievillian new weird than the traditional fantasy mindsets.

Honestly, the only thing all that close to the kind of pure Fantasy being regularly published right now are Bujold's Penric and Desdemona novellas. And even they have a magic system informed by a modern understanding of thermodynamics.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2019 00:34

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Cythereal posted:

Then the super nukes. Then the EMP bombs from space launched by aliens.

Been a while, but I thought that the EMP bomb factories were on the moon and set up by the conspiracy/NLP ai that's a remix of One True; I don't think it was ever aliens unless that came up in the sequels.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2019 00:49

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Palmer, Bujold (I much prefer her fantasy over her SF), Willis (Early better than later). Czernada and Kress. In fantasy, Susanna Clarke.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2019 08:24

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Groke posted:

I had the good luck to come across Illuminatus! as a teenager, a couple of years before I read loving Atlas goddamn Shrugged. Made reading the latter a... less intolerable experience.

Realizing that that inexplicable 30 page sequence in the middle of the second book was an Atlas Shrugged parody retrospectively works almost as well as in the other order.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2019 21:44

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

'dollars to donuts' used to be very generous odds for a wager...

# ¿ Jan 17, 2020 15:25

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Black Griffon posted:

What's your favorite "scientist sci-fi"? By this I'm talking about sci-fi that takes a scientific, exploratory approach to the plot, in either characters, writing style or both. It would probably involve discovery (see earlier Big Dumb Object discussion), but not necessarily always.

In my opinion, what makes a good story in this style is that it conveys the joy and excitement, or even better, terror of scientific discovery without turning into a fictional textbook or writing so dry it'd self-combust. It gives answers willingly, while leaving unexplained mysteries with compelling reasons for why they can't be explained. Blindsight, one of my favorite books and also mentioned in the BDO discussion, is the candidate I can come up with right now.

Most of Steven Baxter fits; although he can be on the dry side at times. The episodic format of Evolution helped to overcome that a bit, and the ideas in the Manifold trilogy were big enough to overcome it.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2020 05:12

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

David Gerrold, if you count his Star Trek screenwriting work as the start date of career

Thranguy fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Apr 20, 2020

# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 16:52

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

The 16xx/Grantville books are a contender, though I have no idea what the total words to it is by now. It does have the "lots of authors but a strong editorial hand" thing going. But it's open ended rather than heading for a big finish AFAIK.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2020 06:24

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

The real answer is Fallout Equestria.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2020 22:29

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Harold Fjord posted:

I enjoyed the button that disproves free will a ton, off the top of my head

I'm pretty sure that I could turn two or three of those buttons and a short Perl script attached to a robot hand into a wishing machine, though.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2020 22:22

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Midgetskydiver posted:

Looking for a recommendation for a novel or series. These are the qualities I'm looking for.

-somewhat serious / gritty without going overboard (ASOIAF-like, also liked Lies of Locke Lamora)
-low magic fantasy setting (think Conan or Abercrombie)
-intrigue a plus, but more concerned with interesting characters and themes

I've read GRRM, Abercrombie, Howard, Tolkien, Scott Lynch, Robert Jordan, and liked those well enough. Wasn't a fan of Malazan 's Five because when god mages are that prevalent I just lose interest because the plight of regular people just isn't that important in the grand scheme.

I guess I'm just looking for something comparable to ASOIAF but with an author who still writes.

Thanks!

Bujold's Five Gods books and novellas.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 07:18

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is good (based on reviews and what I've read so far), very recent, and short.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2020 00:33

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

TheAardvark posted:

I've actually never read a superhero novel. Any recommendations?

Soon I Shall Be Invincible (Austin Grossman) and From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (Minister Faust)

# ¿ Nov 14, 2020 04:49

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

freebooter posted:

The centaur sex is weird obviously, but it was the fact the Gaea trilogy was so loving boring that was unforgivable for me. I would say it's weird but on the other hand I liked Steel Beach, found The Golden Globe to be one of the best and most engaging scifi novels I ever read, then found Irontown Blues to be really disappointing and boring. And I'm pretty sure those are widely held views. So, hey, every author contains multitudes!

Is it my bad memory or wasn't Irontown supposed to be on Mars and Blues supposed to give us our first real look an Eight worlds Mars? That was my biggest disappointment, though not the only one...

# ¿ Dec 17, 2020 22:51

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

"In three years, the pillow will be obsolete," said the recliner.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2020 20:33

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Collateral posted:

More licensed fanfic like Star Wars EU.

Have you considered that KJA stories are hot derivative garbage, and exercises in how to shoehorn the most ridiculous deus ex contrivance into 1000 chapters of flimflam.

Who came out of the star wars EU fanfic mill.

Has any ex EU writer become big in their own right?

Judy Blundell looks like the only real case for that. Wrote a lot of EU under the pseudonym Jude Watson then had success writing YA/MG under her real name. Otherwise it's people with careers entirely in novelization and media tie-ins, or already recognizable genre authors dipping in to write a few SW books like Zahn, Hambly, Kube-McDowell, etc.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2021 09:12

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Zore posted:

I mean isn't one of the basic premises of the Vlad Taltos novels that resurrection magic is widely available and few people permanently die from that poo poo?

Like you have to kill people in specific ways with special 'no resurrection' macguffins which are super illegal to make sure they stay dead.

It is, but that's a recent invention of the past thousand years or so and so can't explain the previous hundred thousand or two...

# ¿ Apr 5, 2021 04:58

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Ccs posted:

Yeah I love Night Watch. When I first read Discworld as a teenager I had the sense that it was going somewhere, that there was a specific climax focusing on the rulership of Ankh Morpork that Pratchett was building towards. Later I realized that wasn't really the point, and that it was more about using his characters to satirize different aspects of our world. But Night Watch definitely feels like the climax to Vimes' arc.

No, the problem of Vetinari's successor is a very real thread through the back half of the series. It's just that Pratchett never solved it.

# ¿ May 26, 2021 00:23

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Simmons' Science Fiction is his weakest writing (Hyperion aside.). His horror is fine, his historical+supernatural books are often quite good, his mysteries are perfectly adequate. If you stay away from the Sci Fi you'll be okay. Especially Flashback. Don't even read the back cover of Flashback.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2021 19:15

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota is in line with your list, and the last part is coming this month.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2021 17:56

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Sibling of TB posted:

The thing I had in mind was the stuff about pretending you can't understand the language you don't identify as as your primary spoken language. It's plausible to me that society has that as a norm but I really can't tell if anyone else thinks that.

The language stuff is really weird. People keep treating other languages as unbreakable codes, which sort of implies that they have less capable machine translation than we do, and that surveillance is so complete that it is literally impossible for someone to have secretly taught themself modern Greek.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2021 03:54

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Perhaps the Stars, I guess the Headley Beowulf if that counts, then a fairly steep drop to Project Hail Mary, the Penrics if either was 2021, and Fugitive Telemetry for me then, if Piranesi is 2020.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2021 03:28

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Lampsacus posted:

Does anyone know of a sci fi story where an object suddenly appears? For example, a giant pink triangle in the sky. Or an odd enormous sleeping hermit crab on a hill. And it's at least somewhat about people's reaction to the unexplained apparency rather than any answers.

Robert Charles Wilson's The Chronoliths, sort of.

Donald Barthelme's The Balloon is spot on but may or may not actually be Sci fi. But the question is essentially describing Magic Realism in general, so...

# ¿ Dec 15, 2021 11:52

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

General Battuta posted:

I think we're going to see a lot of categories weren't won by the story that received the most first place votes but by a story everybody ranked second or third.

There were a couple exceptions but for the most part the eventual winners had the most 1st place votes. It was such for Novel (and Piranesi came third, also after The City We Became. Second most 1st place votes.)

The biggest swing was in Novelette, where the Helicopter Story had the most 1st place votes but ended up 5th out of 6.

http://file770.com/wp-content/uploads/2021HugoStatistics.pdf

# ¿ Dec 19, 2021 09:21

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Hiro Protagonist posted:

I was feeling the need to read something sci-fi, something that's a longer series, that doesn't have a nihilistic bend like so much of modern stuff. Slight preference for space opera, maybe with a hint of spirituality, or at least something besides pure logic super atheism. I have a couple ideas, but I was thinking something a bit more modern if it exists. I feel like most modern sci-fi is super hard super nihilistic or fun but incredibly lovely series.

Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series hits all or almost all of these marks.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2022 04:33

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

StrixNebulosa posted:

https://www.tor.com/2022/01/10/five-obscure-but-interesting-publishing-experiments/

This guy gets it.

I think it's specifically imitating Heinlein's Juveniles. Stross did fine with late Heinlein. Varley did well with the adult Heinlein inspired 9 worlds and horribly when he targeted the kids books, and Barnes' take on those books was a trainwreck..

# ¿ Jan 10, 2022 18:22

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

FPyat posted:

That's a Greg Bear book I hadn't heard of.

It is a loose sequel to Queen of Angels (and his FBI thrillers are an even looser pair of prequels to both.)

# ¿ Mar 7, 2022 18:22

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Kestral posted:

Well now I'm curious!

He was active on Making Light (the Nielsen-Haydens' blog), which I think is still up.
(Also in the Steve Jackson Games Pyramid forums, back when it was behind the paywall, but those posts are lost forever.) Not sure where else.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2022 00:27

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Kesper North posted:

See, that's the thing, if the author set those prices and got to keep most of that money I'd be fine with it. It's a publisher-driven decision. If Wells gets more money out of it than the average author, good on her! - but what the gently caress is going on in the whole rest of the market?

Nothing against Wells, it's pretty cheap for me to not buy books I don't want. But I don't get why her work - and, it seems, exclusively her work! - sells at this crazy premium price. It's tor.com, right? Do they charge like this for any other author? Seems weird.

The Penric and Desdemona books are about the same length, cheaper on Kindle but more expensive in paper.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2022 03:22

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

The Jane Austen Book Club was good and We Are Completely Beside Ourself excellent but I just can't get into Booth at all.

# ¿ May 18, 2022 00:37

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

More fantasy settings should look like Varley's Nine Worlds gender-wise, sufficiently high magic implies affordable, perfect, and reverseable gender changing.

# ¿ May 24, 2022 16:00

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

About the same; age of protagonists/narrators is the principal determinant for YA.

Middle grade is aimed lower, to the extent that it still exists.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2022 09:56

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Cardiac posted:

Maurice is one good example of this. Although I never saw a distinction between Pratchetts YA and non YA.

Age of protagonist (or in the case of Maurice, age of the most prominent human coprotagonist)

# ¿ Jun 8, 2022 18:21

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

It's a scale from problematically unhorny to problematically horny.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2022 21:21

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Cacto posted:

John Birmingham is great. He also wrote a fun but simultaneously absurd and overwrought series about America getting eaten by an energy dome and the geopolitical fallout of that.

In this book he managed to completely forget about Puerto Rico, which was well outside the dome and contained the vast majority of American citizens after the event but somehow was never politically relevant.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2022 12:29

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Macdeo Lurjtux posted:

Or it's all isekai if you theorize the existence of a prologue chapter where Jack Ryan is a lonely CoD playing shut in who's se t into the game by the spirit of Ronald Reagan after he killed by a careless bisexual college professor in his way to teach a course in critical race theory.

Clancy's axes are older than that. He was most mad at Ted Kennedy. (At least he changed the name there.) And mad enough at Bill Clinton that he put him in Sum of All Fears as, of all things, a junior FBI agent who does very little but is positioned to get a lethal dose of radiation by the end of the book.

Then we have the last book before he died, in which, after that world has had a mass casualty nuclear terrorism event, a decapitation strike on the US government, and a deliberately engineered plague, somehow when 9/11 happens its a massive national trauma. Write thrillers long enough and they turn into alternate history eventually.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2022 05:00

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Just found this, laughed, thought I'd share.

I'm wondering how often this gets brought up to either author.

I wonder if King ever signed Koontz sober.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2022 08:57

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Sailor Viy posted:

Just finished reading Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. I assume it won't be a surprise to this thread if I say it was excellent, but can I get recommendations of other single-author short story collections? Could be any brand of SF or fantasy, but what I really liked about this one was the way all the stories reflected a singular voice and set of themes, rather than just a grab bag of "here's some stuff I wrote".

Three Moments of an Explosion (China Meiville)
Ladies of Grace Adieu (Suzanna Clarke)
Any of the Gaiman collections, really. The ones with real titles are the more deliberately themed ones.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2022 08:06

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 10:34

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Sibling of TB posted:

Well, is Stevenson's baroque cycle sci-fi /fantasy or something else?

There are genre elements but they are few and far between. And the narrative style matches science fiction more than historical, although the two aren't very distant to start with.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2022 05:46

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > SF & F Mega-thread: I had to google 'spock pirate depilatory'

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