|
Necrotizer F posted:I'll add my voice to the throng recommending The Misenchanted Sword. quote:Also, though it's also older, there's Archform: Beauty by L. E. Modesitt. It's a story conveyed through five different first person narrators and I really liked it. I liked this and the loosely linked sequel, Flash, quite well, but my favourite Modesitt is still probably The Parafaith War. Though I do like the Recluce books despite how many of them are so formulaic, because it's quite a satisfying formula.
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2019 05:16
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 16, 2024 21:35 |
|
|
General Battuta posted:'Pandora's Star' by Peter F. Hamilton has one of the creepiest and most, uh, aggressive hiveminds I've encountered in fiction. Someone once said its actions seemed to be modelled on an aggressive RTS player, which I thought was a pretty apt description.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2020 02:01
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:Does Embassytown count? One of my old favourites. Unfortunately Hogan was an advocate of Velikovskyism so the plot in the sequels gets kinda crazy, but the first one is good. H. Beam Piper's short story "Omnilinqual" (free on Project Gutenberg) hits some of the same notes, with a team of scientists trying to decipher the ruins of an ancient martian civilization. It's more biased towards engineering than pure science, but George O. Smiths The Complete Venus Equilateral is a collection of stories mostly about exploring new technologies, and really goes places considering it was written in the 40s. I find Greg Egan's stuff can be pretty dry most of the time but in particular Permutation City is worth trying.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2020 16:43
|
|
|
PeterWeller posted:This is a bad rule because that is a good movie based on a good book. Yeah, and if you really hate Tom Cruise you can watch him die over and over again in it.
|
|
#
¿
May 4, 2020 22:24
|
|
|
algebra testes posted:I just ordered Pandora's Star and I am not thrilled about this!! The Commonwealth stories are noticeably less sex-creepy, from what I remember. But my advice is skip the
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2020 03:43
|
|
|
James White's stuff is really good, as you say especially since pacifism is usually treated so badly in sf. But there are two important caveats: 1. The sexism is kinda grating. This doesn't really get any better until much later in the stories (the ambulance ship ones) where he tempers it a liitle. 2. You will get heartily sick of learning the reason humans are classified as species type DBDG because it occurs in every single story (because they were all originally published separately).
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2020 03:20
|
|
|
pradmer posted:Neuromancer (Sprawl #1) by William Gibson - $2.99 drat, that's some really loving good SF on sale today. Incidentally, thanks for keeping the thread updated with these sales. I'm not motivated enough to go looking all the time for what's on sale, so you posting them is really helpful.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2020 23:11
|
|
|
Selachian posted:The Mote in God's Eye and Footfall are, I think, Niven and Pournelle's least problematic collaborations. Edit: Wait! I'm misremembering. It's Lucifer's Hammer that has the cannibals. I remember it being not awful, apart from that bit. It feels more like an airport thriller though, rather than sf. quote:It's also worth noting that while Larry Niven was no one's idea of a progressive hero (see: his idea to save the health care system by spreading rumors among immigrants that hospitals are dangerous), most of the objectionable elements in the collaborations -- the racism and the Rand-worship -- are allllll Pournelle. Yeah. As I think I've said in this thread before, Niven on his own is usually fine, or at least tolerable. Pournelle is a very bad influence on him. Oath of Fealty in particular is constant libertarian trash. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Jul 2, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2020 04:38
|
|
|
Sibling of TB posted:Maybe I'm misremembering but I thought the point of oath of feality was that they were wrong to build the acrology like a walled community and they should have made it less like a fortress? I also remember that characters at the end were all like "oops, should have done it differently". It's been a long time since I read it, so I'm not sure. I remember there's a point about previous arcologies failing due to being built in the middle of nowhere, and this one working because it was right in the middle of LA. Don't remember much remorse from the characters though - don't they break one of their executives out of jail after he murders someone, then cut off LA's water supply when the police try to search the place? I think they end up spiriting him out of the country, and that's meant to be a good thing. Not ever inclined to read the thing again.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2020 15:22
|
|
|
John Brunner's Crucible of Time is another one set over a long period, basically tracing the enlightenment and industrial revolution of an alien race.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2020 03:32
|
|
|
Heh, I've got at least 5 of those books in the same bindings, I recognize the spines. Makes me miss buying physical books, though I really don't have the room for more on my shelves, they're stacked 2-deep already. Lots of good books there , but Inherit the Starts pushes all my buttons in particular, I love a good space archeology tale. The sequels are tempered by knowing that Hogan started believing in what he was writing (in broad strokes - he was a follower of Immanuel Velikovsky), so they get rather loopy.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2020 04:58
|
|
|
pradmer posted:The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner - $1.99 An very good book, one of 4 or 5 must-reads of Brunner, but really depressing. Like perhaps in the "2020 not a good time to read this book"-level depressing. Edit: TheAardvark posted:That does make me want to ask: what are some good sci-fi short story collections? Either one or multiple authors. Try Phil K. Dick's collections. I think he works rather better at short-story length than his novels. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Aug 1, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2020 18:45
|
|
|
Poldarn posted:Brutal twist and an arts and crafts project you can make with your kid! With doing some extremely heavy lifting in that sentence.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2020 05:48
|
|
|
Arcsquad12 posted:Anyone have some recommendations for SF novels following Generation Ships? I had a recent thought about a premise where a Generation ship sets off for a new solar system but in the proceeding centuries faster travel methods have allowed ships to make it there before the initial ship so they send someone to pick up the original colony mission and get them there hundreds of years ahead of schedule. I figure someone must have done a story like that already and I'd be interested to see how it played out. There's definitely an A.E. van Vogt story (maybe just a short story) about something similar (though I think it's a sleeper ship rather than a generation ship), with early interstellar explorers being outpaced by FTL ships. Unfortunately I can't recall the name of the story. It also shows up in the Traveller RPG lore, with several generation ships launched from Earth coming near their destinations after thousands of years in space, being monitored by the Imperial Scout Service. (Though with the background lore of Traveller there were already humans at their destinations before they even left, humanity having been seeded around the galaxy by aliens 300k years ago).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2020 23:02
|
|
|
I'd say Modesitt's Recluce series might count as hard fantasy. Lots of focus on what society/trade/warfare looks like with magic around. Which brings me to a question: any major works with elves/goblins/dwarves etc., but no magic at all in them?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2020 19:33
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:-It is pointed out that one of the main characters in Michael Moorcock's ETERNAL CHAMPION mythos is directly pulled/stolen/borrowed from a series of children's books written by E. Nesbit around 1900-ish. I mean, the name is stolen/borrowed (Oswald Bastable) but I don't really see how you could say the character is stolen. Oswald is a child/teenager in Nesbit's stories and although he would be quite likely to end up as a British Army officer in India, there's no real link to the character in Warlord of the Air other than the name. Also the Nesbit stories with Oswald - The Story of the Treasure Seekers and forward - are some of the few that don't have any fantasy elements, unlike most of her other output (The Enchanted Castle, The Phoenix and the Carpet, etc.)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2020 22:59
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:and now I sort of want to watch SALVAGE 1. Think The A-Team with a manned SSTO rocket, basically. Though mostly what they were doing was salvaging space-junk . There was the requisite government man who wanted them shut down, occasional episodes where they'd help rescue astronauts, badies who wanted the rocket as a weapon, and so on. Seven-year-old-me thought it was great, but 7yo me was content with anything with a spaceship of some kind in it.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2020 23:23
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:The initial casting announcement for TNG was funny, Gene Roddenberry's perv factor was very apparent when it listed Marina Sirtis's previous notable roles. There's a bit in one of RLM's Best of the Worst videos (may have been this one) where they see Sirtis in a very porn-y role and Mike recollects her talk from a convention where see says how glad she was to be cast in TNG so she never had to do any more of those "terrible, terrible movies" and he said she sounded like a trauma survivor.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 19, 2020 20:13
|
|
|
Re: Pern, I've only read one of them, Dragondawn, which I think was a later prequel. It's basically the origin story of the setting, with a technical society (a new planetary colony) having to resort to dragons (which are indigenous to the planet) to combat the unexpected menace of the Thread, when other methods fail. The only thing I really remember about the story is that some kind of distress beacon is set off by the colonists that'll summon a rescue ship/mission, but since it's all STL it'll take hundreds of years to get there. It was kind of interesting to have an SF time-bomb ticking behind a fantasy setting, but not sufficiently interesting that I read any more of the series to see if there was ever a pay-off.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2020 20:25
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:There Will Come Soft Chairs  The Book of the New Sun-Lounger The Last and First Ottoman The La-Z-Boy of Heaven
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2020 00:39
|
|
|
genericnick posted:I can't for the life of me remember what novel that was, but the protagonist was researching elephants and being a great embarrassment to his family's business empire. Then the matriarch died and he gets pulled into the search for the McGuffin she hid. Involves travel in the solar system. Somehow I mixed that up with Robinson's 2312, but that wasn't it, was it? Reynolds' Blue Remembered Earth? I kinda bounced off it (despite generally liking Reynolds) so I may be wrong.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2021 15:30
|
|
|
DACK FAYDEN posted:it's the goddamn military hope that helps david brin you fascist prick I've seen Brin mention this before and according to him it's ETs parents who are the bad guys, for doing the equivalent of leaving their toddler behind at the zoo. I've never really gotten any fascist vibes from Brin
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2021 16:22
|
|
|
I didn't mind the silly internet jokes in Gideon/Harrow. Sure it has stupid meme references (many of which I'm sure I missed), but it also references molesworth out of nowhere that made me giggle.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2021 15:48
|
|
|
PupsOfWar posted:Consider Phlebas *feels* very different from other Culture novels, I think because Banks was thinking in this mode of "what if I made a Star War, but bigger?" and hadn't yet settled on the what the main Idea of the Culture itself was. One early interview I saw with IMB said that Horza was meant to be a sort of Heinlienian competent man protagonist, and through him you would sympathize with the Iridians trying to preserve themselves from being assimilated by the decadent-seeming Culture. Then by the end of the book you'd realize the Iridians are actually quite evil, and that none of the action of the book really meant anything in the context of a massive interstellar war. The trouble was, he'd made the Iridians a bit too alien to ever be sympathetic, and by the time he'd re-written the story for publication he was too enamoured of the Culture and Minds to make them seem authentically like the bad guys. So really all you're left with is the futility of war bit. Also he really wanted someone to make a movie version just to see the under-hovercraft fight scene on the big screen.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2021 18:35
|
|
|
theblackw0lf posted:What other detective or mystery fantasy/sci-fi novels would people recommend? Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2021 20:56
|
|
|
ClydeFrog posted:I too contemplate my non-descript body in the mornings before I boobily go off to do something (whilst wistfully remembering how much firmer they were when I was young as they flap around my hips.... or something) There's a bit of excuse here - this is someone whose memory has been erased and is essentially seeing her own body for the first time. I'd still recommend The Rook to people, though not the Starz miniseries which didn't seem to know what to do with the story.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2021 16:55
|
|
|
rollick posted:I don't think it gets said enough: pradmer rules for posting those deals every day. 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2021 17:02
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:Are there good cozy sci-fi novels? Ones with really optimistic themes and good characters doing good things? Maybe Jack McDevitt's Alex Benedict novels (space archeology/ detective stories). Also try Brian Stableford's "Emortality" series, which is about life extension and pretty optimistic about the future of humanity. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Apr 8, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2021 04:20
|
|
|
Cicero posted:If you ever thought, "I wish there was something like Cradle, but a little more YA and also not as good," you're in luck: Mage Errant #5 is out today, and 1 - 4 are currently free - https://www.amazon.com/Mage-Errant/dp/B07PHPLHX5 Thanks for posting this - I started the first one and it seems pretty decent so far (and you can't beat free). Also your review/recommendation is low-key hilarious.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2021 20:33
|
|
|
fritz posted:Protektor (1996) This one I remember being a kind of interesting anti-libertarian story. Bad guy is very much "you weak fools, you think society will protect you", while good guy is a cop who is "yes, I stop people like you so society doesn't have to be a constant armed struggle". So not necessarily great from a 2021 perspective, but quite against the typical strain of libertarian sf. Pity Platt turned out to be a racist, and a sexist to boot. Apparently he once got punched by Harlan Ellison so we may have a Piers Morgan-Jeremy Clarkson dynamic happening. Whoever loses, we win.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2021 18:31
|
|
|
Re: Gor, from what I've read (and this may be true, or not), even sf fandom was finding John Norman skeevy at that point, with the vast majority not buying his whole "what uppity women need is a good whippin' and rapin'" stuff he'd been pushing through the 70s. To the point that Norman was saying that sf fans weren't sophisticated and cultured enough to appreciate the mature sexuality of his Gor books.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2021 16:50
|
|
|
ClydeFrog posted:I think this explains a lot of why I didn't gel with this book. Even when explained very few of these memes even work for me - I can only assume I'm an irredeemable old fart, or just not really the intended audience which is of course absolutely fine. I recommended it to a younger friend who bloody loved it. Judging by the stuff written here, about 95٪ of the meme references flew over my head, but I still liked the books. Perhaps I would have liked them less if I did recognize the memes, there's a good change I'd find them grating. As it was I smiled wryly at the few I got, giggled at a fairly obscure molesworth reference in Harrow, and generally had a good time.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2021 20:41
|
|
|
branedotorg posted:I missed that one, which one was it? It was near the beginning of Ch. 10 of Harrow: quote:I come from climes of sulphur gas/I shine in plasma sheet/Er-hem-er-hem-er-hem, surpass/My spot a crimson feat, quote:i come from haunts of coot and hern / i make a sudden sally / and-er-hem-er-hem-the fern / to bicker down a valley
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2021 00:17
|
|
|
Gats Akimbo posted:It's people with a birthmark/whatever the hell it was shaped like a six-spoked ship's wheel on the back of their heads, isn't it? Or have I inadvertently switched realities again? Berenspoon Bears, right? I dont remember that, but I wasn't that engaged with Terminal World and might have missed it. Reynolds is fond of that sort of thing though - in one of his short stories, he has a civilization who's symbol is a tiger fighting over the resources of a system with another group who uses the symbol of a scallop shell. The implication is that they derived from ExxonMobile and Shell.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2021 17:47
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:
Wow, which collection was it?. Misery is not a word I'd associate with Langford's stuff at all. Some of his settings are bleak (especially the state of the world/universe in The Space Eater), but mostly his stuff is jokey references to, as you say, other sf.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2021 17:30
|
|
|
Low fantasy is, according to the original definition, any fantasy where the magic or whatever happens in "our world", usually within a hidden or separated group. Think Harry Potter, the Dresden Files, etc. The opposite is High Fantasy, where the story takes place in a different world - so LotR, Wheel of Time, etc. People don't really stick to this definition any more, though. My personal theory is that people took LotR as the quintessential high fantasy, so that anything with elves and dwarves and poo poo is high fantasy, thus everything else must be low. I've seen GoT described as low fantasy, presumably because it's too grimdark to seem "high". None of this really matters, of course.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2021 20:07
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:I am that sucker who wants to see dragons vs F-14s. I am that sucker who was devastated the Final Countdown film wimped out of its own concept halfway through. There was a bit in one of Stross's later Laundry novels about dragons vs SAM fire that was quite fun. As I recall, elven glamour magic was effective against modern sensor seekers but less so against old-fashioned Rapier optical guidance syetems.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2021 04:49
|
|
|
Recently finished - Fugitive Telemetry (Martha Wells) - not the best in the series, but the adventures of Detective Murderbot is something I can get behind. Catfishing on CatNet (Naomi Kritzer) - fun YA about a cat-picture obsessed AI loose on the internet, and some of its favorite people. Worth reading. Cry Pilot (Joel Dane) ‐ fairly by-the-numbers milsf boot camp story with an intriguing setting. If you liked Rich Man's War etc. you will probably like this.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2021 01:47
|
|
|
Aardvark! posted:I love her. The Vorkosigan Saga, sci-fi but with some political fantasy feel to it, is a great read. See, I would have said I would never voluntarily read a regency romantic comedy, but by the time A Civil Campaign came around I was too involved with the characters to care. Such is Bujold's genius. The only real issue with the series is that reading it through has a rather uneven tone, jumping from "Miles and Ivan have fun on vacation" directly to "clones, identity, and psychological coping mechanisms while under torture".
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2021 05:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 16, 2024 21:35 |
|
|
Ror posted:I just finished Piranesi and loved it. [...] Maybe try some Chris Priest, particularly The Inverted World and The Affirmation.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2021 05:10
|
|