Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Antioch]

Anyhow, on topic: Everything written by Vernor Vinge. Every one of his novels that I've read has been fresh and interesting, which is rather uncommon for speculative fiction in this day and age.

agreed, I really liked "A Deepness in the Sky"

Dune by Frank Herbert (but not any of his son's)

I'd steer well clear of Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson's Dune books if I were you, they're bloody awful.

The prequal to Dune series are readable, but the sequals to the main story are just plain horrible.

[fqllve]

Anyhow, on topic: Everything written by Vernor Vinge. Every one of his novels that I've read has been fresh and interesting, which is rather uncommon for speculative fiction in this day and age.

agreed, I really liked "A Deepness in the Sky"

Vinge is pretty great. I would recommend him to anyone who like interesting books that are highly engrossing. He's an excellent example how good sf is based on intriguing ideas, and his writing is above average for scifi, it's very transparent.

I particularly found Marooned in Realtime to be the most enjoyable transhumanist book I've read.

[Tack]

The Dresden files.
By Jim Butcher.

Best contemporary fantasy series I've ever read.

[Sirus]

Reading the second Gaunt's Ghosts omnibus.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Why did Bragg have to die? D:

[i2amroy]

From book 11 of WoT, another author takes over and SUDDENLY PLOT ADVANCES. It becomes much more brisk and less painful. Quite nice, so those who left of in the middle, I suggest reading the wiki for exposition then jumping into b11.

I still find it funny that the very first thing the new author did upon getting the manuscript that had been left behind was to split the final book into three whole books.


Speaking of transhumanism I've recently worked my way through the first two books of the Cassandra Kresnov series, a more sci-fi aimed series. The main character is a synthetic human who ends up defecting from the pro-biotechnology side that created her (but treats her as a tool) to the anti-biotechnology side that outlaws creation of humans (but looks at her as a human). It's been very good so far.

[Osmosis Jones]

From book 11 of WoT, another author takes over and SUDDENLY PLOT ADVANCES. It becomes much more brisk and less painful. Quite nice, so those who left of in the middle, I suggest reading the wiki for exposition then jumping into b11.

I still find it funny that the very first thing the new author did upon getting the manuscript that had been left behind was to split the final book into three whole books.

To be fair, he wrote a books worth of content first. Then he realised he still had a metric fuckton to go, and split it. I kind of wish he hadn't though... before he died, Robert Jordan was saying things like "I'll only write one more book, even if Tor has to invent a new binding system"

In other words, this;



How awesome would that have been?!

[Sirus]

Not very. Storage would be a pain, the bindings wouldn't last long, and why would you want to read standing up?

[Skyrunner]

Doesn't matter any way to me, 'cause I read using an ebook. :3

Which reminds me of the annoying fact that publishers publish publications for ebooks later than the bound versions...

[FearfulJesuit]

I just bought a copy of Alastalon Salissa, which is like the Finnish answer to Ulysses or A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Hopefully I'll be able to read it the end of this year.

Any Finns here to elaborate on it?

[RedKing]

Agreed with others that the later Pratchett stuff is better. My first real introduction to him was Good Omens, which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman and is a hell of a good read on its own.

I've mostly read the one-off Discworld stuff (Lords and Ladies, Thief of Time, Small Gods, The Last Continent) rather than the main story arc sets. I particularly loved Small Gods.


Last thing I've read was John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades. Good military sci-fi. Gets a bit widgy on some of the metaphysics regarding consciousness and sentience (one of the key races in the story is an uplifted, spacefaring civilization that lacks individual consciousness, which stretches suspension of belief a bit). Started in on The Last Colony but lost interest too quick and returned it to the library.

[Vattic]

Not long finished Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons. I really like how this one was structured and alongside The Wasp Factory leads me to believe I'll like his other stuff. It was given to me by someone who said it contained the most gruesome thing they had ever read. I must have read some pretty terrible things compared to him.

Just started Albert Camus' The Fall. It's got a really odd charm about it from what I've read. The narrator seems a bit of a siren lulling the silent protagonist, and me, with his softly spoken words.

[Flying Dice]

From book 11 of WoT, another author takes over and SUDDENLY PLOT ADVANCES. It becomes much more brisk and less painful. Quite nice, so those who left of in the middle, I suggest reading the wiki for exposition then jumping into b11.

I still find it funny that the very first thing the new author did upon getting the manuscript that had been left behind was to split the final book into three whole books.

To be fair, he wrote a books worth of content first. Then he realised he still had a metric fuckton to go, and split it. I kind of wish he hadn't though... before he died, Robert Jordan was saying things like "I'll only write one more book, even if Tor has to invent a new binding system"

In other words, this;

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

How awesome would that have been?!

He also made what may or may not have been a joke about bundling it with its own library cart. Funnily enough, I wasn't much of a fan of Sanderson's writing style until I read the WoT volumes he (well, not wrote...) stitched together from Jordan's notes. Now that I have, I'm enjoying him a bit more, enoug that I'm going to pick up the rest of the Mistborn books when I get a chance.

On the topic of the non-Dune Dune books, I'd agree that the prequels are more readable than the sequels, in that I managed to finish them without slamming my face into a wall. Though still far below the quality of Frank Herbert's work.

[Osmosis Jones]

Yeah, I got into Sanderson through WoT as well, although it was more never having read any Sanderson than disliking his style.

Also, I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who enjoyed the Dune books set after Herbert's original six; it's like they systematically removed all the elements that made Dune good, leaving just a weird verse with screwy gender politics.

If anyone wants a good bit of one-off Sci-Fi, try Armor by John Steakly. It tells the bleak tale of a power-armored soldier in flashback, while simultaneously detailing plots and intrigue on a distant colony in the story's present. Contains huge amounts of crazy badass. Especially at the climax.

[Scoops Novel]

You know what i think Terry Pratchett was doing with snuff? Fleshing out the world. I liked unseen academical's, where he was doing the same to a lesser extent. It may just be me, but i smell something... bigger. Also, i loved Artemis fowl, and thanks for letting me know about a new book. The first few were excellent, but the last ones haven't been as good. I'll also look into the Dresden files. Modern fantasy is an idea that needs to be plumbed deeper by a long way, but is very hard to do right.

Anyone read the Illiad? I hope to read that soon/sooner then eventually, as i do find Greek mythology fascinating. Also, what does it mean?

[Scelly9]

Alright, minor necro here.

Anyway, I've been trying to find this book for a while,I remember listening to it a few years ago, probably while driving somewhere. All I remember about it is that the main characters escaped a prison on a hot air balloon, and where caught up in a storm. They dumped some stuff overboard, and managed to stay in the air long enough to crash on an island. They found tunnels throughout the island, and they had two matches, one shattered when they tried to light a fire, the other worked. They ended up creating nitroglyceroine for some reason and where attacked by pirates.

It's a bit of a stretch any of you know it, at least by those meager details, but I listened to it about four years ago, so no complaining.