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StrixNebulosa posted:by the end one of the characters has made peace with becoming a tree, for example. This sounds tight as hell. Adding Stableford to my to-read ASAP.
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Oct 19, 2019 19:27
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eke out posted:reminds me of Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris novels meets Disco Elysium, if that makes any sense at all Bought on that recommendation alone.
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Nov 10, 2019 01:55
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VanderMeer is a solid dude. Also, takes great bird pictures.
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Dec 20, 2019 06:46
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my bony fealty posted:Finished Jeff Vandermeer's latest Dead Astronauts and it certainly is odd. Definitely one of those "gonna have to reread this to make any sense of it" books. For the most part I liked it. Haven't read Borne so should probably do that now. Borne is good, better at being Oryx and Crake than Oryx and Crake is. IMO the companion novella, The Strange Bird, is one of his best recent works, though it is relentlessly bleak.
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Dec 30, 2019 07:31
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eke out posted:it's also interesting that there's a version of JVDM that went in this more maximalist, china mieville direction he had early on, instead of steadily pruning down his style Personally, I like where VanderMeer's work is going right now, but I'm glad we still have his earlier stuff to return to, too.
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Dec 31, 2019 06:39
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DACK FAYDEN posted:it turns out they forced a split into four books (which may have been undone if the third book is really 752 pages? jeez) When GB turned in Baru 3, he tweeted about needing to start Baru 4, so the tetralogy seems to still be on.
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Jan 15, 2020 19:43
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Thread favorite The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling is $1.99 right now. https://www.amazon.com//dp/B07BJZT8GJ
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Jan 19, 2020 21:20
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BurgerQuest posted:Whoa awesome, almost all recommendations I've never heard of, thank you! Checking them all out now Also A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE by Arkady Martine if you want some poetry in your space opera.
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Feb 8, 2020 08:18
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StrixNebulosa posted:Still: I'd like to hear about other patreons or similar. Robert Jackson Bennett writes semi-frequent essays on craft, and imo they're very good. Yours for the low, low price of $1.
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Feb 15, 2020 05:44
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Another +1 for Dawnhounds.
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Feb 23, 2020 09:07
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TheAardvark posted:To turn it around, who other than Bujold has done romance well in SF/F? Lots of folks. Two recent favorites of mine: Witchmark by C.L. Polk, This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone.
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Feb 24, 2020 06:05
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/fandom-for-robots/ http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prasad_01_17/
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Mar 20, 2020 07:13
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I know 10% of you guys go feral when I mention Robert Jackson Bennett, but if you liked Foundryside and want more action fantasy fun in your life, Shorefall is out and it's good. Even got misty-eyed at a couple of character send-offs. If he follows through on some of the stuff set up in the final act, the next book promises to be maximally sapphic, and that's reason enough for me to keep reading.
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Apr 29, 2020 06:59
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:I was subbed to Analog but too much of it seemed to be not-actually-stories. I’d be thinking “oh, cool setting, wonder what’ll happen?” and the piece would just end. The ones based on a feeling like puberty/depression metaphors are bad for the same reason: there is nowhere to go narratively because a feeling is not a story, so the protagonist just floats around feeling a bit funny for a while and the piece ends. It gets really frustrating reading things like that. Your comments on "puberty/depression metaphors" are bumming me out, but we like what we like, there's no accounting for taste etc. etc., and thankfully there's a lot of good short speculative fiction being published right now, so there's room for a lot of reading interests. Beneath Ceaseless Skies is free and often fairly plotty. Strange Horizons too, for all that is has a lit-adjacent reputation - the fiction editors have a strong preference for stories where things happen. I like a lot of what The Dark, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed/Nightmare, and Apex publish, though ime Clarkesworld emphasizes "stuff happening" maybe less than Lightspeed/Nightmare do, and Apex is closed for the foreseeable future. Fireside, Shimmer, Liminal, and Lackington's are probably not your speed (and Shimmer and Liminal are closed, though their back catalogs are still online), and Uncanny, while often plotty, tends to get a little cute. Fiyah and Omenana have put out a lot of cool stuff in the last couple years. Tor.com has some fun stuff from time to time. Which doesn't begin to cover the short fiction podcasts, like Escape Pod, Podcastle, PseudoPod... Honestly, it's hard to generalize about a lot of these magazines, particularly those with a large editorial staff, because the range of things they publish can vary pretty widely. You might have better luck finding a few authors whose sensibilities work for you and following their careers, or reading around the field until you find a magazine whose output is most up your alley.
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May 5, 2020 08:50
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Murderbot's author is doing an AMA on r/fantasy https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/geiwxa/hi_im_martha_wells_and_i_write_the_murderbot/
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May 6, 2020 19:10
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Kate Elliott has a new space opera out, Unconquerable Sun. Basic premise is genderbent Alexander the Great in space. I saw someone elsewhere compare it favorably to the Vorkosigan Saga.
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Jul 20, 2020 07:27
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Does anyone have short fiction recs? I'm looking for stuff from the last five years, ideally weird and dark. I'm less interested in hard SF and slice of life stuff, but I'll check out just about anything. Huge plus if it's free to read online.
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Aug 20, 2020 04:48
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SimonChris posted:https://lackingtons.com/2020/05/01/the-capacity-to-serve-by-simon-christiansen/ Lackington's rules, happy to check this out!
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Aug 20, 2020 07:42
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space marine todd posted:Anyone have recommendations that hit the spot? Foundryside doesn't seem to do it for me. You gotta read Sascha Stronach's THE DAWNHOUNDS. He won the Sir Julius Vogel Award this year, and he posts in this thread!
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Aug 20, 2020 07:45
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General Battuta posted:Anyone have any good cosmic horror American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett is cool, if flawed.
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Aug 28, 2020 01:30
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Just finished Baru 3, did I miss any indication that the spinal surgery to remove a slice of Abd's tumor was going to paralyze him before it was revealed that it had happened? I thought they said they were super good at that thing so I assumed it would not happen. ah heck I accidentally clicked this and got spoiled Anyway, I just read that section, and Iscend implies it's a very real possibility: "The nerve gives me the most concern," Yawa said. She'd been very quiet. "Justifiably so." Iscend marked a certain vertebrae with a long needle, flagged with red cloth. "Any injury to the spine above this point will kill him. A lower injury might only cause paralysis." [...] "Do you think you can keep him alive?" "At spinal operations my success rate is better than average. Hesychast trained me himself." "Tell us the exact rate." Yawa's grip on the magnesium mirror began to shudder. She transferred it to her other hand. "Seventy percent. If you discard those who came into the theater already dying." Barhu groaned in worry. "Abd is weak. He hasn't been eating well. He has a fungal infection. I can't let him die." "There are no certainties once the skin is open, Your Excellence." It's on page 461 of the print edition, if you're curious.
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Sep 18, 2020 22:09
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C.M. Kruger posted:
drat, talk about a hook.
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Sep 22, 2020 02:12
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Finished Baru 3, and there was so much to love about it, but my very favorite small thing was the reappearance of the dancing seagull.
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Sep 26, 2020 08:57
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Mr. Nemo posted:Things I dont like so far: Tain Shir, she seems a bit cliché? [...] Baru's father being alive, I grand that it makes sense for a 3d chess player like Farrier, but it seemed a bit comic booky. Tain Shir is cool. My read on her is that she's trying to teach Baru that same thing Tau-indi is, that other people exist in the world, but from a completely different framework. I think Baru needed both educations to eventually internalize that lesson. I'm okay with her being mysteriously, uh, hardy. What sat weird with me was the overlap of Tain Shir and Ormsment. They're both out for Baru's blood, they're both chasing her across the sea... I realize Ormsment's situation is necessary for Aminata's development (plus: boat stuff cool), but I found her a lot less compelling than Tain Shir, so I wasn't especially jazzed whenever her turn came up on the POV dance card. On the Baru's dad thing, I read that as reader bait destined to receive a hook. We're told he's alive, but we never see him, it's just hearsay. Then Baru tells her parents it's true, he's alive, and her frenemy Tain Shir is going to rescue him. Everyone is stoked by this development, and no one questions it. It's so not the way things usually shake out in this universe that I don't trust it at all.
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Sep 29, 2020 21:30
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pseudorandom name posted:Some other little things I found delightful: Personally I enjoyed the two separate occasions characters took a moment to explain that Sandersonian magic systems aren't magic at all, but rather game manuals (or, if you want to be generous, "science"). Shoutout to the GOATs Tau-indi and Ulyu Xe.
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Oct 4, 2020 03:54
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mewse posted:I've forgotten most of Baru 2 and I'm currently reading Baru 3 but yeah I agree that was a wonderful part of 2's story IMO "Baru and Tau-indi escape a sinking ship" is one of the single best scenes in the series, but yeah the Llosydanes arc is a lot of fun.
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Oct 12, 2020 04:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:also if you really want to stretch yourself outside the SF&F comfort zone, check out our Book of the Month threads -- there's a list in each thread of prior books we've done and it's basically a curated list of good poo poo. I started ANABASIS because of that thread and it's good. Looking forward to combing through the rest of the BOTM content.
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Oct 12, 2020 20:45
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I'm like 40% through Blindsight and I want to watch this real bad but I will be strong 
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Oct 12, 2020 23:12
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Clark Nova posted:I find it heartening that any community on racist misogynist hellsite reddit dot com would put Jemisin at #2 The mod team on r/fantasy is pretty proactive about nipping that poo poo in the bud.
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Oct 21, 2020 18:27
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StrixNebulosa posted:Does anyone in here know of any lists of fantasy novels that have companion animals? Think Mercedes Lackey and/or the Pern series - the main character is chosen by a magic animal and then they go on adventures. Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series (at least the first two entries) might be what you're looking for. They're also exceptional books! Someone upthread mentioned Robin Hobb... the Fitz books aren't a bad pick necessarily, but know that things don't end well for the animal companion.
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Nov 24, 2020 20:45
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tin can made man posted:Just got to the part of Baru 3 where (mid book spoilers, page 350ish) tau says "okay everyone I'm high and not depressed anymore, and no I won't be apologizing at all for the last few days. anyway, baru's a piece of poo poo who also rules, and her name's on the cover of the book so we're all gonna help her. ps do mushrooms". This is an amazing book and every page has a new turn of phrase or trick of prose which sends me spinning in my chair Tau-indi rules. Every time they're on page I'm like HELL YEAH TAU-INDI'S HERE and every time they're gone I'm like HEY WHERE'S TAU-INDI. They are my favorite character. 
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Dec 2, 2020 05:07
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GD_American posted:I literally will put this guy in the Lovecraft box. Neat ideas, lovely writing, seems to be kind of a lovely person too. Fair. His blog posts about the time he got necrotizing fasciitis are dope though.
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Dec 4, 2020 21:57
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Silly Newbie posted:There might be a better thread for this, but people are active here - Scrivener is the best I've found, particularly for something long and structurally complex. Moving around large chunks of text in Word is wretched, and I'd never touch the program except that publishing makes me. tiniestacorn fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Dec 9, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 03:06
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macabresca posted:I'm looking for some sci-fi about non-binary identities, for example agender alien species or how future technology can change our perception of gender binarity. So not just stories that feature nb characters but the ones that explore the subject in more detail. Something like The Left Hand of Darkness. Do you have some recommendations? Flawed and rooted in a binary view of gender, but Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun might be interesting to you. In a far-distant future, the cities of the world are run by powerful AIs that keep humans in perpetual comfort and safety. Anyone can get a new body (of either sex) any time they like so long as they kill themselves. In search of meaning in their frictionless utopia, the main character and her friends do kill themselves-- over and over and over. It'd probably be shelved in YA fiction were it published today, but it was published in 1976. It was originally released as a pair of novellas, Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine, though today it's collected in the omnibus Biting the Sun. You can read it in a couple of sittings.
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Dec 15, 2020 00:10
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KKKLIP ART posted:I really am at an impasse of what I want to read next. Did a full Sanderson reread and read RoW, read Orcanomics, the Goblin Prince, all of the Baru books. I feel like I want to read a big drat space opera next, but the latest Expanse book isn’t out. I have read some of the Terms of Enlistment series but I can’t remember which one I left off so that’s a bummer. Have you read A Memory Called Empire?
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Jan 3, 2021 06:17
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ToxicFrog posted:I finally got my reading brain back after moving house left me with like a month of being unable to read anything more demanding than the lightest and fluffiest of romance manga, and ripped through the remaining ~200 pages of Tyrant Baru in two sittings. You might like these essays on the Masquerade series now that you're up to date. The author digs into the historical, philosophical, sociological, and mathematical concepts underpinning the series in a way that I found very thoughtful and considered. It's cool.
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Jan 4, 2021 19:54
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Benagain posted:I'm honestly shocked that people think the whole lesbian romance thing was even veiled in Gideon, but otoh I've missed plenty of obvious poo poo in my day. It's your standard "raised together/hate each other/also Feelings" thing. The relationship trajectory Gideon and Harrow have going is taking its cues from fan fiction, which is its own storytelling mode fairly separate from commercial fiction, imo, so I can see how someone not familiar with the genre would miss its cues. It's a slow burn enemies to lovers romance heaped with ten tons of angst. (And it rules.) eta spoiler tags tiniestacorn fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jan 19, 2021 |
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Jan 19, 2021 19:49
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Over on Twitter the tragedy-loving lesbian fan-artists have discovered the Baru books and they're producing just a wild amount of delicious art. https://twitter.com/Marceline2174/status/1355722603374145538?s=20 It looks like a lot of them are finding them after reading the Locked Tomb books. https://twitter.com/AnaKalashnikova/status/1303710400266018817?s=20 C.M. Kruger posted:Also the author's got a amazingly fedorable bio out there where he brags about giving relationship advice to girls in college before he'd had a girlfriend, and how he was a "class clown" and "skilled lover of women" and is a total renaissance man and etc. Or in other words, "that guy." So, his protagonist. lmao
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Jan 31, 2021 05:03
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muscles like this! posted:Also the Baru fanart being posted made me realize that apparently I had interpreted a description differently than everybody else. Namely Baru's "half mask" which I imagined being like a half mask horizontally, not vertically. I also did this.
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Feb 1, 2021 00:28
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pradmer posted:The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville - $4.99 Dope, been meaning to read this.
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Feb 2, 2021 02:14
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