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Just started in on Between Two Fires thanks to this thread and I’m loving it. Added a load of other stuff to my backlog too including the Northworld trilogy and Redliners. Always nice to check back in and see so many good things recommended. Every time I think I’m burnt out on sff y’all have cool poo poo to look into I didn’t know about. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Mar 21, 2021 |
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Mar 21, 2021 17:35
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and I’m burnt out again. The thread giveth and so on. gently caress. I wish I understood why the communities around sff are like this? Obviously there is a solid counterpunch from a younger cohort of readers, authors, and fans. Kinda screaming at clouds here, but I am legit curious if anyone’s done a deep dive into the subculture’s more problematic corners in book or documentary form. Come to think of it wasn’t there an Ellison doc put out some years back? Anyone see it? Any good? unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Mar 21, 2021 |
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Mar 21, 2021 21:46
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I'm just about to finish The Company by Parker and holy jeez these are some awful people. Where's the next place to go with Parker. I know there's some big fans in this thread.the only other one I tried was the first in the Scavenger trilogy or something? Protagonist with amnesia. Loved the style, didn't care for the plot.
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May 7, 2021 23:35
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Yeah that’s a great point. I was just thinking about the grit of his work. It shows. I love those little peculiarities that say a ton about what the author is into. There’s tons of weird logistical and bureaucratic nerdery in The Company and I just adored it. Needless to say when I started 16 Ways and saw:Parker posted:I was in Classis on business. I needed sixty miles of second-grade four-inch hemp rope—I build pontoon bridges—and all the military rope in the empire goes through Classis. What you’re supposed to do is put in a requisition to Divisional Supply, who send it on to Central Supply, who send it on to the Treasurer General, who approves it and sends it back to Divisional Supply, who send it on to Central Supply, who forward it to Classis, where the quartermaster says, sorry, we have no rope. Or you can hire a clever forger in Herennis to cut you an exact copy of the treasury seal, which you use to stamp your requisition, which you then take personally to the office of the deputy quartermaster in Classis, where there’s a senior clerk who’d have done time in the slate quarries if you hadn’t pulled certain documents out of the file a few years back. Of course, you burned the documents as soon as you took them, but he doesn’t know that. And that’s how you get sixty miles of rope in this man’s army. I knew I was in for a great time. That’s how you start a book. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 23:14 on May 8, 2021 |
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May 8, 2021 19:00
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I wish I could find the interview with him when he was still hiding his identity where he just went into absolutely excruciating detail about arms, armor, and sieges. Sometimes somebody’s fascinations can be infectious that way. Anybody know what interview I’m thinking of?
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May 8, 2021 19:58
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Deptfordx posted:Do you mean this one? Yes! That’s the one. Ten-ish years turned an interesting essay into an interview. Time is weird. Thank you. That other one is fantastic too. I think I’ll do Sharps next. It’s what I’d have gone for absent a suggestion.
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May 8, 2021 22:54
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I like Abercrombie just fine, but after enough books, you start to see that he’s not upending tropes because he’s clever, he’s doing it because he’s petulant. I think he was embraced largely because nobody of note or high profile enough cared to take up the task. And what appears to be grounded, world-weary dialog very quickly grates as affectation once you’ve read enough of his books. I think he would be better served outside of fantasy. I won’t say it was his best, but Red Country felt like a book where he felt comfortable, and that’s basically just a western.
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May 9, 2021 19:26
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DACK FAYDEN posted:no, Bester's great even if parts of his stuff hasn't aged well at all, it's Bradbury I have an axe to grind with (dude is overrated as gently caress) What's so wrong with him? I'm definitely not as familiar with his stuff as I could be but my vague half remembered impressions positioned him as having held up pretty okay.
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May 11, 2021 15:18
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Oh my bad I meant Bradbury.
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May 11, 2021 16:05
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Bradbury's not actively awful in his writing (although I believe he went hard on the anti-Islam at some point, or at least I have a vague recollection of that) but his writing is mostly... I don't really know the right way to put it. Aggressively folksy? It's like, small town Americana, and I understand why that gets canonized in a genre mostly defined by white men before the modern era but it's not actually good. Oh I get it. That style doesn't really bother me so much but I understand why it could put someone off. I'm just super used to finding out that authors are trash for one reason or another and I never remembered him getting nailed for anything egregious.
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May 11, 2021 18:44
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Are those novellas cool to read if you’ve not finished Paladin of Souls and Hallowed Hunt? I fell off Paladin for some weird reason. Was really digging it but at this point I’d have to start over.
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May 11, 2021 22:58
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uber_stoat posted:buckle up This was fantastic. Thank you for sharing it. She’s the very epitome of the cancerous rhetoric that has grown out of hyperpartisanship and a perfect example of the rock-bottom standards folks seem to have for discourse these days. I don’t want to drag poo poo too far off topic, but this is the kind of person we (progressive-minded people that care about inclusiveness), invite in when we allow inflammatory dialectical strategy to become the go-to. Symptom, more than cause. Once you permit this stuff in the normal day-to-day, sociopathic narcissists like her flock to the banner in order to pull a power play. I think this happens, in small ways, all the time and nobody wants to acknowledge it. Fascinating stuff.
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May 14, 2021 16:10
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Publishers aren't immune from bad decisions I'm just surprised I'd never heard of her before. Seems unreal to me. Granted I don't generally pay a lot of attention to the industry beyond the books themselves.
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May 14, 2021 18:14
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Cold Iron (Masters and Mages #1) by Miles Cameron - $2.99 Man I tried this. I remember The Red Knight being kind of interesting, likewise remembering he was super gross about women, and this absolutely had more of the same. Within the first fifty pages, protagonist is on his way home from a mage university, and stops over at an inn. While there, a carriage arrives. Summarily tossed from the carriage is a woman, presumed to be a consort of royalty, and she’s being treated pretty poorly by the guards, presumably in employ of the duke. Okay, we got damsel in distress, not great, especially considering Cameron’s pedigree, but I’ll roll with it. Our protagonist observes this woman begging after her luggage. The guards don’t want to give it to her. In a jarring fit of weird writing, the protagonist hops up on the side of the carriage, negotiates her luggage out of the clutches of the guards, and genially gives it to her. What a nice guy. Wrong! It’s shortly revealed that our damsel is actually a witchy temptress and controlled the protagonist into doing this. She’s later revealed to be quite the killer herself, sort of justifying? I dunno. The guards’ cruelty? It read fuckin’ weird. Cameron’s whole tone regarding women is like both leering and superior at the same time.
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May 15, 2021 19:53
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quantumfoam posted:Finally got around to reading a KJ Parker story and didn't like it(Devices and Desires). I’m about halfway into Sixteen Ways at this point, and I see where you’re coming from. There’s a weird self-conscious style to his work that screams “Aren’t I clever?” at every opportunity. I think he’s just having a good time, but likewise I can see how it would grate.
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May 16, 2021 19:01
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Gats Akimbo posted:His The Enterprise of Death (about a depressed ex-slave alcoholic necromancer and her exceptionally pissed-off dead ex-girlfriend (also a necromancer)) is amazingly good. Thanks for this. I started Brothers but fell off it, drat lack of attention span. But this sounds right up my aesthetic alley.
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May 25, 2021 00:13
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Groke posted:Yeah, I think he had one of those things where you almost die and get a religious conversion event out of it. But was a turd before and remained a turd after. There is literally no greater evidence on Earth of being a bad person than this. On that note, my Pratchett game is weak. I’ve dicked around with individual books, Morte, Guards! Guards! And Small Gods to name a few. If I needed a dose without feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume, which subseries is the best according to y’all? And why would help, since the topics he covers might influence my level of interest.
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May 25, 2021 17:58
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Cool. Watch it is. Thanks.
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May 25, 2021 18:20
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Yeah the humor is in my limited experience very much of its original time and place. But even if it doesn’t work for you, Pratchett had some very sharp and insightful commentary on a lot of topics.
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May 25, 2021 18:41
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I really wanna change my username to Weird Fanfic Goblin. So I went back and dug into The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart because I guess I should finish things I conspicuously dropped without reason. Hoooooooly poo poo man. Whoever said it goes places, you weren’t kidding. I did not expect bad trips on ergot, mouth covered homunculi, and shifting POVs. I can’t wait to see the bros get hosed. They’ve established quite a rogues gallery of enemies at this point.
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May 27, 2021 14:48
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Here, have an old-ish (2019) interview with Ted Chiang where the interviewer is painfully out of touch with genre fiction. Mostly I just wanna know if I am the only one that’s annoyed by this. https://tinhouse.com/podcast/ted-chiang-exhalation/
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May 28, 2021 22:16
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I loved the Assassin trilogy when I was a teenager, and I recently picked it up for a reread. I’m pretty sure he loses two loving dogs between the first and second books. Like, it’s almost comical. But I love Hobbe’s attention to detail and the lazy pace of the books. I think it’s the salient details she chooses to focus on that make her style work for me. It feels more grounded than a lot of fantasy does.
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Jun 3, 2021 17:02
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Ah yes Richard the sex I write is the sex I've had Morgan.
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Jun 4, 2021 02:42
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Ccs posted:The only collections I've read are Rogues, which is an anthology, NK Jemisin's How Long Til Black Future Month, and both KJ Parker's collections of short stories. And both GRRM short story collections way back. How is Rogues? It’s been on my to-read pile for ages.
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Jun 4, 2021 19:28
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Stuporstar posted:It’s like Piranesi but poo poo Glad someone said it. Tone was insufferable, and it felt like the very definition of style over substance. You’re meant to want to unravel the mystery, but there were no compelling people so it felt like an empty, self-indulgent exercise.
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Jun 7, 2021 23:27
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mllaneza posted:Those two really do go together as almost sort of a set. Both are to a greater or lesser degree the story of the progress of a Saint. That's rare in literature. As a third I'd suggest Lord of Light which shares themes with the other two. Fourth... okay, I like the Paksennarion saga, but I wouldn't put them in with the first three. Kind of tangential but still related is The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Sci-fi instead of fantasy, but very heavy on themes of guilt/martyrdom/faith. Also just a loving awesome book in general.
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Jun 12, 2021 16:37
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quantumfoam posted:-Anytime people asked for help finding SFF material in deaf or blind friendly formats, they were told to gently caress off or met with stone cold silence Access has improved drastically over the last fifteen years, but attitudes have definitely not. I’d be curious to know more about this, because if it’s significantly notable enough for you to remember, it must be worse than I’d have imagined. Like silence? Yeah, used to that poo poo. But gently caress off? Seriously?
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Jun 15, 2021 19:05
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Yeah when Baiaz or whatever is introduced with blood up to his elbows butchering an animal, and Abercrombie leaves him unnamed until he speaks and tells us who he is, you can practically hear old Joe huffing his own farts. Not a bad series per se, but tremendously overrated and he was definitely riding Martin's coattails.
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Jun 29, 2021 04:31
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Look at Abercrombie over here working like a schlub while Martin dashes off half-baked video game lore and sleeps on money piles. lol What’s up with Abercrombie’s latest trilogy anyway? Saw someone mention it. Did he dial down the excess misery? Is it more YA style stuff or back to the main universe of the first set? I’m like a hundred pages into The Golem and The Jinni and it is absolutely incredible. I especially enjoy that the Jinni’s desire for freedom and the Golem’s hyper empathy and need to serve are fantasy concepts that illustrate very human states of being. It’s really artful. Why do I feel like my heart is going to be wrenched by this book?
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Jun 29, 2021 14:56
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Yeah fantastic article. Though it breaks my fuckin’ heart. I wish her the best. The internet was a mistake. Also, so that’s where Emily VanDerWerff ended up. I loved her work at The A.V. Club before it declined into garbage.
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Jun 30, 2021 16:37
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Really draws a stark line between allyship and insecure people with a tenuous sense of self-worth who are far too online. That’s for sure. I mentioned this when that last article from the Thai elite adjacent author came up. This is what happens when inflamed rhetoric becomes the go to. It’s too tempting for people to bathe in the glow of their false hero narrative. Right wing shitheads dragged the whole discourse down, and well-meaning people embraced hostility and paranoia to their detriment as well as the detriment of actually marginalized folks. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Jun 30, 2021 |
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Jun 30, 2021 18:42
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multijoe posted:I dunno they could have read the story to see what it's actually about or just not launched off on one based off of zero information, good satire is challenging and plays a little with the fire. I don't think culture should have to be produced around the whims of twitter people who have eroded their higher brain functions whipping themselves up in rages over twitter links they don't read loving cheers. It just takes one idiot to start an outrage fire. This whole thing is new to me, how was Jemisin involved?
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Jun 30, 2021 23:47
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Llamadeus posted:Not direct involvement, but screencaps of her tweets in this other article about the thing: https://theoutline.com/post/8600/isabel-fall-attack-helicopter-moralism Yeah I’d say that’s about on brand. That’s a great article too. The Article posted:Stories like “Attack Helicopter” are vital to unpacking the webs of intersecting forces which make up every human consciousness. They constitute an outlet for the suffering of marginalized artists raised in bigoted, imperialist cultures, a way to process the poison we’re spoon-fed from birth into something that awakens and lays bare. Calls for the destruction or censorship of such stories constitute a rejection of life’s intrinsic complexity, a retreat into the black and white moral absolutism of adolescence, or theocracy. These rigid moral strictures strip marginalized communities of their full humanity and of their history as makers of painful, difficult art stemming from their experiences as outsiders. They rob audiences of the space and tools necessary to engage art thoughtfully and in good faith. They make our world a poorer, harsher place, clannish and merciless, and smother beauty in its cradle. As a marginalized person that very much cares about making quality art, it’s kind of scary to think the frothing mob might be so loud as to shut me up for talking about my lived experiences in a way they deem insufficient. People would rather perform their rightness than actually care about marginalized people. It’s loving wild. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jul 1, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 01:24
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Harold Fjord posted:I don't even know if I'd go this far, but it's complicated. If everyone I trust us telling me a book or story with a grotesque title is full of offensive garbage, I'd probably trust them. I mean I think trusting your own critical faculties over the spew of an irrational mob is probably the better call here. This is why SA is good poo poo. I know that at least here, someone is going to critically dissect, or if they didn't, someone else will call it out. Like if you're gonna rely on word of mouth, at least pick good sources. Twitter at large is definitely not one of those.
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Jul 1, 2021 01:38
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buffalo all day posted:this is the SFF thread so it's probably best suited to discussing how identity is expressed in that story...i would be interested in hearing what anyone who actually read it thought about it! Hell, same.
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Jul 1, 2021 03:17
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DurianGray posted:Oh wow, they've written a lot of stuff. Any favorites or stand out titles you'd recommend? (I tend to dig horror/dark stuff.) The Red Tree is really good if you don't mind feeling like you're going crazy.
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Jul 1, 2021 04:27
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I mean art is dangerous insofar as it might plant the seed for someone’s latent poo poo. But I do think it’s overblown to act like it poses a massive threat in and of itself. Depends on a lot of extenuating factors. Is it satire? What was the current political environment in which it was made? How stark is the dividing line between the fiction and the reality? (Turner Diaries is meant to resemble the author’s warped idea of reality, for example which will likely make it more relatable to theoretical readers) How much credibility does the author have? I could go on. It’s not as simple as people want it to be. But it’s also absurd to blithely presume that politically charged art can’t nudge someone over into action. The problem with this is that it cuts both ways. For every repugnant piece of hate-filled artwork, there’s a counter piece meant to promote activism in a positive direction. The goal of good art, or at least lasting art, is to resonate, in my view. Unfortunately, some of it is going to ripple out in very negative ways. There’s never going to be one way to handle this that will satisfy everyone. You sensor poo poo like The Turner Diaries and you risk creating a chilling effect that stops people from making subversive fiction. You let it stand and it inspires scumbags. It’s not the easy answer, but these things have to be handled one by one. No policy will ever suffice because no policy can account for the tremendous array of human responses, feelings, and edge cases. That said, if it’s found that a piece of fiction galvanizes people into hate, action is required. Once the cat’s out the bag, it’s irresponsible to let that poo poo hang. I’d like to think that the publishing industry gatekeeps the worst of this stuff, but there’s enough bad actors in the industry at large that I know it’s silly to think so. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Jul 1, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 15:12
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ravenkult posted:I don't get why people keep asking ''why did the article not name NK Jemisin???'' If a high profile event occurs, I think it’s only normal to want the whole story. Painting people’s intent in a negative light doesn’t really seem the best approach. DurianGray posted:I was finally able to track down a copy of it to read. I'm honestly curious what kinds of stories you personally prefer and consider good. I know you've said you don't read much sci fi, but I'd love to know what sort of stuff you do read. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Def gonna read this now. I’m one of those idiots that could learn a thing or two so this seems right up my street. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jul 1, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 15:24
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ravenkult posted:Looking at the apology tweet the other high profile, queer, non binary, Asian author posted that's just a slew of death threats, ''I hope everyone you love dies'' and other poo poo, I'd say I'm not painting poo poo in a negative light. I certainly didn’t claim that. I don’t want it to be open season on anyone. I don’t do Twitter precisely for these sorts of reasons. It’s too easy to go sensational instead of having a dialogue. If you’re talking about Twitter, I’m not in those spaces. If you’re talking about here, I think the whole exchange has actually been pretty productive overall. My point is there’s no call for turning up the temp on what is a really sensitive topic. Another space I’m in deleted a thread on this subject on principle, which I found really disappointing, because there’s a lot of productive conversation to be had, if people can keep their cool about it.
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Jul 1, 2021 15:40
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Silver2195 posted:I read an interesting article from some counter-terrorism think tank about the Turner Diaries. It argued that what makes the book genuinely dangerous is not that it makes people racist, and it isn't intended to do so - the book assumes the reader is already extremely racist. Rather, the Turner Diaries is designed to convince people to engage in actual white supremacist terrorism instead of just passively having racist opinions, and gives them advice on how to do it. It's the final, or at least the penultimate, step in radicalization, basically. Yeah it’s probably a bad example to use. I’d never even heard of it until it was posted about here, so I was just rolling with the given example for continuity’s sake. But that’s super interesting. Don’t think I could stomach reading it on principle. Don’t suppose you have that link do you?
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Jul 1, 2021 15:43
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