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Nebula award finalists announced: Marque of Caine, Charles E. Gannon (Baen) The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK) A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor) Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey; Jo Fletcher) Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing) A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley) I’ve only read Gideon, any others that are unmissable?
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Feb 20, 2020 18:16
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2024 14:03 |
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Reported for not reading the thread 
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Feb 21, 2020 14:59
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PawParole posted:give me a book about either first contact, or generation ships. Well the natural answer has to be Children of Time even though Aurora is objectively better.
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Feb 25, 2020 08:32
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shrike82 posted:Are there any good virus/pandemic/apocalypse books people would recommend? Top 5: The Stand Parable of the Sower The Andromeda Strain Earth Abides Station Eleven Bonus The Road (not really a pandemic book) The hot zone Zombie apocalypse books are cheating or I’d recommend The Passage. buffalo all day fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Mar 19, 2020 |
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Mar 19, 2020 02:20
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pseudanonymous posted:A Canticle for Leibowitz Great book but I will arbitrarily exclude it as a nuclear apocalypse book and part of a top five that includes on the beach.
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Mar 19, 2020 02:23
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StrixNebulosa posted:I haven't read it yet but my friend suggests Priory of the Orange Tree, as at least one of the subplots is a magical person infiltrating a kingdom. This is literally true but it is not at all like a spy novel. The "infiltration" is backstory so basically it's "main character has secret". The book is also real long and real bad.
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Apr 1, 2020 18:33
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Tim Power's Declare This book rules. "City of Stairs" by Robert Jackson Bennett would also fit the bill.
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Apr 1, 2020 18:42
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Black Griffon posted:I thought Priory of the Orange Tree was very well received (haven't read it myself). is it one of those "by any metric this is actually bad" books or is it just divisive? It's bad. The author is trying to capital-W write, so it's not bad the way Kindle Unlimited self-published stuff is bad, it's just long and boring in a way that a story about good dragons vs evil dragons, magic swords and immortal witches really shouldn't be boring.
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Apr 1, 2020 22:54
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Broken Earth was influenced by Wheel of Time (particularly the...lol...magic system) so I don’t think the recommendation is as far off as you might think. No dragons. It’s good! Rebecca Roanhorse is writing post-apocalyptic / Shadowrun style fantasy with magical earth spirits, set on Navajo land in the Southwest. The writing is iffy but the stories are reasonably fun.
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Apr 3, 2020 13:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
Earthsea is a good call, it was intentionally written as fantasy that featured POC. She could just read Tombs of Atuan which has a female POC protagonist.
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Apr 3, 2020 14:25
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Jedit posted:Er, no it doesn't. The Kargs are explicitly white. Gah I knew Ged was a POC, I just assumed Tenar was too!!!!!!
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Apr 3, 2020 15:56
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Thank you so much for this. i don't think they're whitewashed based on her wiki bio
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Apr 3, 2020 20:04
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TOOT BOOT posted:Anything under 500 pages seems like a short story to me now. gotta alternate ginormous SFF tomes with jack reacher books, it's the only way to stay sane
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Apr 4, 2020 13:38
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pradmer posted:
Get this book!!!!
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Apr 5, 2020 19:52
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gvibes posted:12 MB. The only books on my kindle larger are two dictionaries and, weirdly, Oathbringer (by Sanderson). One other Sanderson Stromlight book is also 12 MB. He has a lot of generic maps and pictures in his books to liven up the generic prose
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Apr 7, 2020 18:11
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pseudorandom name posted:Hugo nominees were announced today: https://conzealand.nz/blog/2020/04/08/hugo-and-retro-hugo-finalists-announced Goondolences to the novella nominees not named Ted Chiang
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Apr 8, 2020 00:12
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Solitair posted:Everything else on the list is new to me, so I guess I'm gonna be plenty busy during the next few months. I'm a pretty fast reader but Memory called empire was a total slog for me. The main character does basically nothing for the entire book. I think someone else in the thread pointed out - she's completely passive. I loved the plot hook - diplomat investigating her predecessor's death under mysterious circumstances - but it all just ends up being so drat boring.
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Apr 8, 2020 20:46
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Selachian posted:Plus Mother Abagail in The Stand. detta walker cruisin into the thread like WHATUP HONKEY MAFAS
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Apr 9, 2020 20:31
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A human heart posted:It just seems like making the most prominent award for a particular type of book akin to one of those online polls where harry potter wins best novel ever because it's very famous might not be conducive to literary quality. Why not simply report the sci fi book that sold the most and skip the award ceremony? That would be more or less the same thing as far as I can tell. popularity with the hugo voters isn't the same as overall sales though  if you made a list of "best selling" SF novels of the last 25 years probably the only one that won a hugo was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. None of the other HP books won. Ready Player One wasn't nominated (not that it's any good, but it's gotta be the sci fi book that sold the most). it basically judges popularity of a book among people who take SF seriously, which is at least interesting to know
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Apr 10, 2020 17:25
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withak posted:In the membership form: if you pay $25 to cast a vote for something, you probably give a poo poo about it. is that always true, no. and giving a poo poo about SF doesn't mean you have good taste, obviously. it's just a data point. jo walton's "among others" is like the dictionary definition of a book with unique appeal to hugo voters.
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Apr 10, 2020 18:56
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Selachian posted:
holy poo poo
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Apr 10, 2020 18:56
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Selachian posted:
just thinking about a dog typing in a dark room quietly woofing to himself as the letters CATNET glow on the screen
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Apr 10, 2020 18:58
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Lester Shy posted:Does Dune work as a stand-alone novel? It's been on my to-read list forever, but I know most people are unhappy with how Herbert's son finished the story, and I don't feel like jumping into a huge epic series right now anyway. yes you need not - and in fact should not - read all the dune books. read them until you don’t like one and then quit. You can also just read the first one and be perfectly happy
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Apr 11, 2020 20:12
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Uncle Lloyd posted:Just read Sixteen Ways To Defend A Walled City by K.J. Parker and absolutely loved it. It was the first of his books I've read, any suggestions for what to read next by him, or is one as good as another? I guess his other works are lean more grimdark(?), which doesn't really bother me. Read The Folding Knife next. And maybe his short story collection.
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Apr 12, 2020 15:40
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Patrick Spens posted:Are you just playing thread sheriff here of do you actually care whether or not an author would like you? Last thread that dude posted: quote:
So yeah I think it’s cool for GB to run him out of town
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Apr 20, 2020 01:04
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SF is best when it’s not escapist which is why the left hand of darkness is the best SF book. 
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Apr 20, 2020 02:30
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ianmacdo posted:Next I read Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky, it was good. [camera outside an anonymous suburban home] adrian tchaikovsky knocks on the front door. "hey, i called about the insects for sale?" the door opens and he walks in. chris hansen is sitting on a stool holding a picture of larva for the camera. "this grub had a family, adrian." tchaikovsky turns white and falls to his knees.
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Apr 24, 2020 20:05
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StrixNebulosa posted:
Becky Chambers? Are there more than 3 Vorkosigan books that center on non-male protagonists? I can think of Falling Free, Shards of Honor and Barrayar. Vernor Vinge’s Deepness books? Ive never read them but Honor Harrington? Dunno if there is racism/sexism.
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Apr 25, 2020 18:37
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Dune 
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Apr 25, 2020 18:39
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StrixNebulosa posted:Chambers: I should get out my copy of Small Angry Planet and read it, hmm It’s going to be exactly what you’re looking for, I’m like 95% sure. I assumed you would have read it because it’s so on point.
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Apr 25, 2020 19:32
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algebra testes posted:
Counterpoint: the setting was standard Foundation/giant bureaucracy with Aztec words. Gods of Jade and Shadow, which is just set in 1920s Mexico, is way more interesting and fresh (and also by a female POC).
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May 3, 2020 16:13
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StrixNebulosa posted:What book are you talking about? It's not clear. A Memory Called Empire. And honestly I wish she’d just set the book in Byzantium.
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May 3, 2020 20:10
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eke out posted:yeah! i started Gods of Jade and Shadow but never got into it, i'm going to give it another shot There’s a side of it that feels like a standard faery story complete with humble scullerymaid meeting a dark, brooding handsome prince but it has a really cool mix of post-revolutionary Mexico mixed with pre-Christian mythology.
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May 3, 2020 20:14
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Schneider Heim posted:Is there an action-fantasy series that would be great reading for a Dark Souls fan? (and yeah, I'm reading Berserk, so it doesn't count) i always thought the gameplay was the appeal of dark souls, what is it that you're looking for in a book?
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May 4, 2020 16:52
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quantumfoam posted:And for pseudanonymous, why do you loathe Sanderson so much? The writing style? The Asimovian output? Sanderson debasing a favorite Intellectual Property? etc? speaking for myself: - completely dead writing style, like reading a walkthrough of a video game. everyone always goes back to the first assassin chapter in TWOK which is basically like describing how to do the castle stealth level. - inept at writing humor, even by the extremely low standards of genre fiction. i read TWOK and the Wit stuff is just embarassing - books that are so long that they keep you from reading not just another good book, but like 2 or 3 other good books. - the most extreme example of setting out rules for your magic in lieu of using imagination, as though having characters rules-lawyer their way to success is appropriate in a fantasy novel
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May 4, 2020 17:28
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biracial bear for uncut posted:You mean where the main character dies repeatedly and has to try again? Gonna throw out Matt Stover's "Heroes Die" for Dark Souls guy. Might be the toughest request for rec since the Pong fan was in here asking for suggestions.
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May 4, 2020 18:02
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Nevvy Z posted:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GD46PQ...d_i=11552285011 Absolute classic and well worth your money.
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May 10, 2020 17:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:This all checks, and I would be interested to see if the author has Murderbot ever decide to take a different pronoun. Like, not to say that I'm not enjoying Murderbot as nonbinary, but I would love to see a genderfluid person explore their gender identity over time to the point where they're comfortable claiming another pronoun. I don't think I've ever seen that in sci-fi/fantasy fiction. Yoon Ha Lee (a trans author)'s machineries of empire series (Firefox Gambit et al) go into gender identity quite a bit although it's not exactly what you're talking about here. I'd be interested to read an analysis of the books from a trans perspective as a lot of it deals with a character dealing with a male consciousness that's been put inside her head.
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May 12, 2020 14:46
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pradmer posted:A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought #1) by Vernor Vinge - $2.99 anyone who HASN'T read the book about superintelligent telepathic puppies...now is your chance (it's good!)
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May 13, 2020 03:19
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2024 14:03 |
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BananaNutkins posted:seminal work 
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May 15, 2020 19:30
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