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wizzardstaff posted:Maybe belongs in the "help me remember a story thread" but since we're talking about Ethshar... Which were the Lawrence Watt-Evans books about the hulking mutant fantasy soldier (an "overman"? "halfman"?) who needed to go on a quest to appease the seven gods or somesuch? I started that series as a teen but never found all the books. I distinctly remember one scene where he wrecked a temple of dark cultists whose magic only worked in pitch black.
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Oct 14, 2019 19:33
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In I think the last thread someone was asking about 'The Dragon Waiting' and that got me to re-read it. On the one hand I'm still totally down with '15th century Europe with severely alternate history, wizards, and vampires, but still the same major players as in this timeline'. On the other hand it was a lot more violent and gory and such than I had remembered, and I would have liked a lot more Byzantium and a lot less Britain, but oh well.
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Oct 19, 2019 01:15
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Absurd Alhazred posted:That's a supersymmetric werewolf counterpart, but that theory is bunk. So we're safe from sdraculas and szombies, thankfully. One might think the existence of pzombies might imply the existence of pwerewolves and pdraculas, but a pdracula is just a regular dracula and some care with housetraining can take care of pwerewolves easily.
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Oct 24, 2019 16:43
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm looking to start a long(er) fantasy series for the holiday season because that's when I'm simultaneously my most mentally taxed at work and have the most free time. What are some good longer fantasy series that aren't Discworld, Wheel of Time, or LE Modesitt? Doesn't need to be the greatest books ever known to humankind, just something engaging and fun that'll keep me busy for a while. There's a good suggestion two posts above yours! (Martha Wells' Raksura)
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Nov 11, 2019 21:17
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StrixNebulosa posted:e: So many old sci-fi/fantasy works written by women involve rape, from Serpent to Floating Worlds to Cyteen to Diadem. What the gently caress was going on back then?! Maybe you only notice it from women authors because SF books written by dudes back then didn't really have any women in them?
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Nov 12, 2019 18:22
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professor metis posted:felt that using a fictionalised Nanjing Massacre as motivation for a fictional character to commit a ficitonal genocide is.... Well, perhaps it could be done well, but it felt almost cheap to me. Haven't read the book but in this world 9/11 was enough motivation for real people to want to commit real genocides and actually get a start on same
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Nov 15, 2019 15:04
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FuzzySlippers posted:What's the thread's opinion of the Witcher books? I have a friend who has been bugging me to read them for ages so I grabbed Blood of Elves. It was pretty disjointed and I didn't care for it. Too many of the chapters were characters sitting around just talking about the political situation or whatever. Apparently I did it wrong and I should've started with The Last Wish so I'm giving that one a try to mollify him. I started reading what was advertised as the first one and : it stunk. Didn't finish due to one too many 'oh, gently caress you' moments.
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Nov 20, 2019 00:58
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So what I'm hearing is it's Evangelion.
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Dec 2, 2019 02:37
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Tokamak posted:It is very much a book that your mum who reads Jane Austen will enjoy. Or Jerome K Jerome : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Men_in_a_Boat
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Dec 16, 2019 01:40
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Who needs the pups for hugo drama when the wsfs is doing it their own drat selves : http://file770.com/the-meaning-of-it-all/
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Dec 21, 2019 03:20
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my bony fealty posted:I don't understand any of this but it makes "fandom" seem like a real no fun zone AO3 is a fanfic archive one of whose schticks was 'we have learned from our predecessors' mistakes'. They won a hugo last time round, which was nominally for the actual web site itself and the people running it (or something similar, w/ever). This of course led to the obvious joke where everybody who ever put a fic up there could call themselves a hugo winner, and for the people who are way too into 'organized fandom' this is unacceptable. (There's also the usual armchair lawyer people saying 'well of course they have to be jerks about it to protect their trademarks'.)
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Dec 22, 2019 00:13
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StrixNebulosa posted:okay I've been reading this out of morbid curiosity but here we loving go: Anne Bishop's Black Jewels. I only know this book from weirdos on usenet and also an IDEOTV episode and I'm sorry but : 
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Dec 27, 2019 23:20
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AngusPodgorny posted:But do read Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett even though it has nothing to do with Star Wars. 1000% agree.
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Dec 29, 2019 20:08
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Judith Tarr is in a bit of a financial bind: https://twitter.com/dancinghorse/status/1214985798421889024 (Only book of hers I've read is "Ars Magica", but I remember it as being good).
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Jan 9, 2020 20:06
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How about the Conjoiners in Reynolds's Revelation Space series?
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Jan 10, 2020 01:23
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I had read a little bit of Resnick's stuff back in the day and was underwhelmed, so his latter day antics were what I remembered him as, glad to see it's being talked about.
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Jan 13, 2020 13:14
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Sibling of TB posted:I am looking for something like the Black Company but following a crew of pirates. Something where a pirate crew does clever things, sneaks into legitimate crews and takes over from the inside and such. Does anyone have any recommendations for that? Space pirates are good too. How about 'The Final Folly of Captain Dancy' by thread favorite Lawrence Watt Evans?
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Jan 21, 2020 19:45
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It's interesting but having the Native American parallels be an actual different intelligent dinosaur-descendant species than the colonials was a bit... questionable. Not the first time he's done something like that, he had a book in the 80s where the Americas had been settled only by Neanderthals.
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Jan 23, 2020 23:46
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ToxicFrog posted:Sounds like you haven't read the Chanur books or Serpent's Reach. Cherryh does a lot of aliens, just not in the main A-U books. There's aliens in Serpent's Reach, and space travel in Serpent's Reach, but almost all of the combination between them is planetside. "40000 n Gehenna" is also AU with lots of aliens, and "Downbelow Station" and "Finity's End" are at least alien-adjacent.
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Feb 7, 2020 19:45
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Megazver posted:I've lost some respect for McGuire after the whole Jonathan Ross brouhaha. Since that also involved her being weird in the context of cons, I'm willing to believe that guy's friend as well. She was right about Ross tho.
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Feb 13, 2020 16:18
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Katharine Kerr's new Deverry book is out. Thought it was the best in the series since books 5-8, helped in part by it being a few hundred years later with (almost) all new characters and a new arc. I'd call it a pretty good jumping-on point for the series, altho there are a few parts that might only make sense with context. (Like forex some of the Haen Marn stuff).
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Feb 20, 2020 21:07
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eke out posted:I looked up what this was and.. just jumping in on Literally Book 16 does not sound like a great idea First four absolutely yes, next four if you liked how the first four ended.
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Feb 21, 2020 03:58
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sebmojo posted:preteen me remembers them being vaguely hot in an overheated repressed catholic kind of way, idk if that holds up Those were probably Katherine Kurtz's Deryini books.
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Feb 21, 2020 03:59
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StrixNebulosa posted:As someone who enjoyed the first two Caine novels as fun thriller space opera novels, they're not award worthy and I hope it doesn't win. This is his fourth nebula nomination (2014/15/16) for those series, seems a little weird.
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Feb 21, 2020 16:24
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quantumfoam posted:Peter Watts, master of self-infection, has views on the COVID-19/Coronavirus outbreak: Maybe dude ought to stick to space vampires.
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Mar 16, 2020 01:35
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I've put The Dawnhounds up for free for a week, if anybody wanted a quarantine read and/or a plague book with a hopeful ending Thank you!
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Mar 27, 2020 00:01
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Like, Jemisin is a WoC and she's very very good but it doesn't feel like a good recommendation for what's being asked. I think her 'Dreaming Moon' books are a lot more up the asker's alley.
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Apr 3, 2020 13:16
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Patrick Spens posted:Hahahaha, holy poo poo. Rise of Skywalker got a nom? Hugo media categories tend to be pretty lousy.
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Apr 8, 2020 01:07
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Re: Murderbot and character voices, this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gS4nzSWmCs has to be some bot on a corporate rim station. Martha Wells has some go-to tropes and they showed up in Murderbot 5, i.e. 'unknowable intelligence controlling individuals via implants', but that's the only negative about the book, and I want another one.
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May 10, 2020 17:12
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ToxicFrog posted:I'm two books into Tim Pratt's Axiom trilogy and enjoying the hell out of it. Space squid, mysterious alien megastructures, a ragtag crew embroiled in events of galactic consequence, lesbians. This probably fit's iospace's request for recommendations earlier in the "semi-hard" vein. I read the first one and decided not to read any more, didn't care for most of the characters and the setting wasn't compelling for me to want to continue.
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May 26, 2020 21:26
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Patrick Spens posted:They're around but they don't play a huge role. They do in the later books.
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Jun 7, 2020 15:40
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branedotorg posted:I knew some goths back in the 90s who had a gorean relationship. AKA "GORths".
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Jun 18, 2020 12:15
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More sex pests: https://www.alexandrarowland.net/single-post/2020/06/25/On-Scott-Lynch-and-Elizabeth-Bear
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Jun 26, 2020 21:25
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TOOT BOOT posted:My personal feeling about this is that I feel sorry for Bear. Bear's been on borrowed time since 2009 for other reasons: https://twitter.com/sf_boswell/status/1276364713794973696
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Jun 28, 2020 00:55
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Of all of the stupid SFF community poo poo to come up this week, Benjanun Sriduangkaew coming back and trying to pretend that she's nice now somehow manages to still be Top 3. She's trying to write off her past like she was a bit snarky when she went on months-long harassment campaigns where her sockpuppets would tell other authors to get raped to death by dogs. One of her targets killed themselves, ffs. "I've been lovely in my past" is such a colossal understatement and not even close to the apology the community deserves. RH should have stuck with going after people like Bakker.
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Jun 28, 2020 21:21
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quantumfoam posted:Further SFL Vol 03 points of interest. I looked this up on wikipedia and: holy poo poo.
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Jul 2, 2020 21:20
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quantumfoam posted:Pournelle ... had legit access to the ARPANET email system. Not for too much longer!
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Jul 6, 2020 00:07
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mllaneza posted:Garret P.I. is good up until the sexy UFOs show up in Angry Lead Skies. And it gets good again afterwards and ends strongly in Wicked Bronze Ambition. I agree with 'good until "Angry Lead Skies" '. "Whispering Nickel Idols" was fine and I remember pretty much nothing about "Cruel Zinc Melodies", but "Gilded Latten Bones" was a slog and I actively disliked "Wicked Bronze Ambition". Maybe this weekend tho I'll do a re-read of the series, at least the first few, it's been a bunch of years.
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Jul 15, 2020 17:31
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mllaneza posted:Yoon Ha Lee's hexarchate series should scratch that itch nicely, it's got nothing at all to do with Earth cultures or this part of the galaxy. It's got all sorts of weird cultural details and sufficiently advanced technology to get really weird. Yeah but it's got a whole bunch of military stuff.
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Jul 20, 2020 14:13
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fritz posted:I agree with 'good until "Angry Lead Skies" '. "Whispering Nickel Idols" was fine and I remember pretty much nothing about "Cruel Zinc Melodies", but "Gilded Latten Bones" was a slog and I actively disliked "Wicked Bronze Ambition". I couldn't find book 1 so I re-read book 2 ("Bitter Gold Tears") and holy poo poo the anti-women stuff was so much worse than I remembered. A real shame too because the rest of it held up. Don't think I'll continue, at least not right now.
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Jul 25, 2020 16:50
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