Ever since I finished Baru 2 I've been CHOMPING AT THE BIT for something even remotely like it. Does anyone have any recommendations for similar stories?
Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become. Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
I have read an unspecified number of the Revelation Space Books and can remember no details
Are they the ones with zombies in spaaaaace?
No, I think the ones you're talking about are the Expanse books. Those have less interesting ideas than Reynolds but are more readable, and each series probably evens out in terms of quality to OK, I guess.
The first 3 Revelation Space books are must-reads in my book. The follow up novellas, stories, and novels are strictly optional but often quite good. Reynolds is just a solid smart space opera guy who uses the safe underpinnings of the genre (subgenere?) to come up with some pretty wild and very cool ideas.
The first 3 Revelation Space books are must-reads in my book. The follow up novellas, stories, and novels are strictly optional but often quite good. Reynolds is just a solid smart space opera guy who uses the safe underpinnings of the genre (subgenere?) to come up with some pretty wild and very cool ideas.
Revelation Space and Chasm city are pretty fucking great though. And he's written some absolutely top bar short stories in the revelationverse; Spirey And The Queen, Diamond Dogs, Our Man In Europa and Galactic North.
The first 3 Revelation Space books are must-reads in my book. The follow up novellas, stories, and novels are strictly optional but often quite good. Reynolds is just a solid smart space opera guy who uses the safe underpinnings of the genre (subgenere?) to come up with some pretty wild and very cool ideas.
Revelation Space and Chasm city are pretty fucking great though. And he's written some absolutely top bar short stories in the revelationverse; Spirey And The Queen, Diamond Dogs, Our Man In Europa and Galactic North.
Yeah, I don't want it to sound like I'm selling him short. I think he's one of our best working Sci Fi writers today.
reading The Left Hand of Darkness, my first time reading any Le Guin, and I absolutely love it, though Orgoreyn does feel like a pretty transparent parody of the USSR.
I actually enjoy Reynold's one-offs better than the grand space opera. Not that that series wasn't fantastic. It was!
My favorite is Pushing Ice. Great story unrelated to the Revelation Space stuff. Follows a generation of spacefaring people. Super cool.
+2
Options
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
reading The Left Hand of Darkness, my first time reading any Le Guin, and I absolutely love it, though Orgoreyn does feel like a pretty transparent parody of the USSR.
I don't know, I feel like that book was far less about mapping Earth politics to a foreign planet, and much more an introspection on what a lack of concrete gender would do to a society. Either way, it is a fantastic story.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
reading The Left Hand of Darkness, my first time reading any Le Guin, and I absolutely love it, though Orgoreyn does feel like a pretty transparent parody of the USSR.
I don't know, I feel like that book was far less about mapping Earth politics to a foreign planet, and much more an introspection on what a lack of concrete gender would do to a society. Either way, it is a fantastic story.
Overall I agree, I think she does a great job at conjuring plausible alien societies that are different from ours, but as soon as the action shifted into Orgoreyn and they started talking about bureaus, inspectors, commensalities, communal identity, secret police, and secret prisons I was like "Oh, this is Soviet Russia".
I guess I am reading Redemption Ark because even though Roberts hasn't exactly wowed me this is apparently the last one in the Revelation Space series that ties up most/all of the dangling plot threads, most of which I couldn't remember until I had a look at the wiki.
I read All My Heroes Are Junkies over the holiday, a nicely bleak and effective comic from Brubaker and Phillips, and continued my slow roll through Moon Dogs, a collection of Michael Swanwick short story collection. The one about a terrifying and alien ribbon of black stuff that kills things and turns into a horror story of a home under siege and then turns into something else entirely was grimly amusing.
I have to admit, people talk the big talk about the Revelation Space trilogy, but I've found some of Reynold's off-main work to be much, much better. Century Rain, which blends sci-fi weirdness with a sort of 1920's noir Parisienne feel is great, and The Prefect, a transhumanist murder mystery/thriller has the sort of human interest and tight focus I think gets lost in the bigger scale of the Revelation Space setup.
Also I'm a big fan of his Revenger duology on teenage Austen-esque space pirates; it's just a delight.
Oh: Baru 2 people, finally finished it earlier in the week, liked it a lot, though I can see why others might feel let down. But still very good...
ETA: @Dronus86 I'd point you at K.J. Parker's The Folding Knife , as well as their Engineer trilogy, and maybe Daniel Abraham's The Dragon's Path and Max Gladstone's brilliant Three Parts Dead, depending on which bit of the Baru-verse hit you especially well.
I have read an unspecified number of the Revelation Space Books and can remember no details
Are they the ones with zombies in spaaaaace?
No, I think the ones you're talking about are the Expanse books. Those have less interesting ideas than Reynolds but are more readable, and each series probably evens out in terms of quality to OK, I guess.
The Expanse has space zombies I guess. It's only really in the first book and it's not really the point of the whole thing anyway.
The Expanse is really good imo but it's not like Big Idea style sci-fi. It's an interesting lowish technology sci-fi series with good writing and a willingness to really let the shit hit the fan.
I guess I am reading Redemption Ark because even though Roberts hasn't exactly wowed me this is apparently the last one in the Revelation Space series that ties up most/all of the dangling plot threads, most of which I couldn't remember until I had a look at the wiki.
I read All My Heroes Are Junkies over the holiday, a nicely bleak and effective comic from Brubaker and Phillips, and continued my slow roll through Moon Dogs, a collection of Michael Swanwick short story collection. The one about a terrifying and alien ribbon of black stuff that kills things and turns into a horror story of a home under siege and then turns into something else entirely was grimly amusing.
I have to admit, people talk the big talk about the Revelation Space trilogy, but I've found some of Reynold's off-main work to be much, much better. Century Rain, which blends sci-fi weirdness with a sort of 1920's noir Parisienne feel is great, and The Prefect, a transhumanist murder mystery/thriller has the sort of human interest and tight focus I think gets lost in the bigger scale of the Revelation Space setup.
Also I'm a big fan of his Revenger duology on teenage Austen-esque space pirates; it's just a delight.
Oh: Baru 2 people, finally finished it earlier in the week, liked it a lot, though I can see why others might feel let down. But still very good...
ETA: @Dronus86 I'd point you at K.J. Parker's The Folding Knife , as well as their Engineer trilogy, and maybe Daniel Abraham's The Dragon's Path and Max Gladstone's brilliant Three Parts Dead, depending on which bit of the Baru-verse hit you especially well.
Thanks, I'll look into those.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become. Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
The first 3 Revelation Space books are must-reads in my book. The follow up novellas, stories, and novels are strictly optional but often quite good. Reynolds is just a solid smart space opera guy who uses the safe underpinnings of the genre (subgenere?) to come up with some pretty wild and very cool ideas.
Revelation Space and Chasm city are pretty fucking great though. And he's written some absolutely top bar short stories in the revelationverse; Spirey And The Queen, Diamond Dogs, Our Man In Europa and Galactic North.
Was about to post this. I think he's a great writer, and he has a whole bunch of top-notch short stories.
The problem with the Revelation Space trilogy is that it's rather dry and most of the Ultranaut characters are portrayed as sociopathic Vulcans that'll just murder the fuck out of you if it's logical for them to do so.
For something different I can recommend Revenger that feels more like scifi with a dash of swashbuckling steampunk mixed in. Pushing Ice is probably my favorite full-length novel, and Slow Bullets is a 200-page novella that's peeled down to the essentials that I also really enjoyed.
+1
Options
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Is Altered Carbon good as a book? I watched the netflix series, and I really love the Eclipse Phase material, and I've been looking to try and read some more transhumanist scf-fi stuff again. I have read The Quantum Thief and sequels, which I also really enjoyed.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Descendant XSkyrim is my god now.Outpost 31Registered Userregular
I'm going on vacation in a week and a half and won't have anything to do but drink watered-down cocktails and read. So to prepare I picked up a couple of books at my local bookshop - Area X by Jeff VanderMeer and A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. I picked up the latter because it looked interesting.
I'm aware of Area X and wanted to read it as I enjoyed the movie. Does anyone have anything to say about V.E. Schwab's writing style though? Is this book the beginning of an epic trilogy, or did I waste $20?
Garry: I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time I'd rather not spend the rest of the winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!
0
Options
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I'm going on vacation in a week and a half and won't have anything to do but drink watered-down cocktails and read. So to prepare I picked up a couple of books at my local bookshop - Area X by Jeff VanderMeer and A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. I picked up the latter because it looked interesting.
I'm aware of Area X and wanted to read it as I enjoyed the movie. Does anyone have anything to say about V.E. Schwab's writing style though? Is this book the beginning of an epic trilogy, or did I waste $20?
Area X looks like its an anthology of the Southern Reach trilogy. I enjoyed the first two books, haven't gotten around to reading the third yet.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Is Altered Carbon good as a book? I watched the netflix series, and I really love the Eclipse Phase material, and I've been looking to try and read some more transhumanist scf-fi stuff again. I have read The Quantum Thief and sequels, which I also really enjoyed.
The Netflix adaption has some distinctions from the book, but they’re similar enough in style and tone that I’d say if you enjoyed one format, you’ll likely enjoy the other.
Is Altered Carbon good as a book? I watched the netflix series, and I really love the Eclipse Phase material, and I've been looking to try and read some more transhumanist scf-fi stuff again. I have read The Quantum Thief and sequels, which I also really enjoyed.
I'd put in in the category of fun trash. The show changes alot from the book but the low level skinemax tone it has? Yeah that's totally accurate.
Is Altered Carbon good as a book? I watched the netflix series, and I really love the Eclipse Phase material, and I've been looking to try and read some more transhumanist scf-fi stuff again. I have read The Quantum Thief and sequels, which I also really enjoyed.
I'd put in in the category of fun trash. The show changes alot from the book but the low level skinemax tone it has? Yeah that's totally accurate.
Yeah, that's just Richard K. Morgan's style.
I think Black Man is probably his best and even that has some kinda-random hot steamy sex scenes and a bit of the old ultra violence.
I read the first part of his fantasy trilogy too. It was ok, kinda interesting, kinda raunchy but had a few neat ideas.
In general I'm never sure if he's just trashy or if he's just unwilling to be prudish in any way about sex and I'm the problem. Maybe a bit of both.
+1
Options
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Does anyone have any recommends for other, interesting Transhumanist themed sci-fi? I guess Altered Carbon didn't come across as super porny to me, although looking back I did find the profusion of nudity a bit annoying/overbearing.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Is Altered Carbon good as a book? I watched the netflix series, and I really love the Eclipse Phase material, and I've been looking to try and read some more transhumanist scf-fi stuff again. I have read The Quantum Thief and sequels, which I also really enjoyed.
I'd put in in the category of fun trash. The show changes alot from the book but the low level skinemax tone it has? Yeah that's totally accurate.
Yeah, that's just Richard K. Morgan's style.
I think Black Man is probably his best and even that has some kinda-random hot steamy sex scenes and a bit of the old ultra violence.
I read the first part of his fantasy trilogy too. It was ok, kinda interesting, kinda raunchy but had a few neat ideas.
In general I'm never sure if he's just trashy or if he's just unwilling to be prudish in any way about sex and I'm the problem. Maybe a bit of both.
I get the impression from Morgan's discussion on the point - and he talks about it on Twitter quite a bit, including a review discussing a sex scene from Thin Air - that publishing basically had that as a contractual obligation and that was the price to play. Thin Air treats it notably different, as do the Ringil books, and I think the Kovacs books' discussions on Quellism have more to say on Morgan and feminism than his sex scenes.
SummaryJudgment on
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
Is Altered Carbon good as a book? I watched the netflix series, and I really love the Eclipse Phase material, and I've been looking to try and read some more transhumanist scf-fi stuff again. I have read The Quantum Thief and sequels, which I also really enjoyed.
I'd put in in the category of fun trash. The show changes alot from the book but the low level skinemax tone it has? Yeah that's totally accurate.
Yeah, that's just Richard K. Morgan's style.
I think Black Man is probably his best and even that has some kinda-random hot steamy sex scenes and a bit of the old ultra violence.
I read the first part of his fantasy trilogy too. It was ok, kinda interesting, kinda raunchy but had a few neat ideas.
In general I'm never sure if he's just trashy or if he's just unwilling to be prudish in any way about sex and I'm the problem. Maybe a bit of both.
I get the impression from Morgan's discussion on the point - and he talks about it on Twitter quite a bit, including a review discussing a sex scene from Thin Air - that publishing basically had that as a contractual obligation and that was the price to play. Thin Air treats it notably different, as do the Ringil books, and I think the Kovacs books' discussions on Quellism have more to say on Morgan and feminism than his sex scenes.
I'm going on vacation in a week and a half and won't have anything to do but drink watered-down cocktails and read. So to prepare I picked up a couple of books at my local bookshop - Area X by Jeff VanderMeer and A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. I picked up the latter because it looked interesting.
I'm aware of Area X and wanted to read it as I enjoyed the movie. Does anyone have anything to say about V.E. Schwab's writing style though? Is this book the beginning of an epic trilogy, or did I waste $20?
A Darker Shade of magic is really good. I think there are 3 of them? You're going to want to get all 3.
I'm going on vacation in a week and a half and won't have anything to do but drink watered-down cocktails and read. So to prepare I picked up a couple of books at my local bookshop - Area X by Jeff VanderMeer and A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. I picked up the latter because it looked interesting.
I'm aware of Area X and wanted to read it as I enjoyed the movie. Does anyone have anything to say about V.E. Schwab's writing style though? Is this book the beginning of an epic trilogy, or did I waste $20?
A Darker Shade of magic is really good. I think there are 3 of them? You're going to want to get all 3.
Fantastic. I just had a look at Goodreads and it has a good review score, and all the individual ratings that aren't four or five stars are mainly along the lines of "my expectations were too high and now I have a sad."
I've painted myself into a corner though; I generally read on my iPhone using the Books app but bought a paper version of A Darker Shade. Now I'll need to buy paper versions of the other two books lest the universe end in fire and screaming.
Garry: I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time I'd rather not spend the rest of the winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!
Ever since I finished Baru 2 I've been CHOMPING AT THE BIT for something even remotely like it. Does anyone have any recommendations for similar stories?
The Books of Sorrow is a short story the author of Baru wrote for Destiny. It's probably the reason any of us know about him.
0
Options
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Ever since I finished Baru 2 I've been CHOMPING AT THE BIT for something even remotely like it. Does anyone have any recommendations for similar stories?
The Books of Sorrow is a short story the author of Baru wrote for Destiny. It's probably the reason any of us know about him.
It's also an interesting read, and does way more to explain anything than Destiny itself did, so could easily be read standalone.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Ever since I finished Baru 2 I've been CHOMPING AT THE BIT for something even remotely like it. Does anyone have any recommendations for similar stories?
The Books of Sorrow is a short story the author of Baru wrote for Destiny. It's probably the reason any of us know about him.
It's also an interesting read, and does way more to explain anything than Destiny itself did, so could easily be read standalone.
It's more that these kind of things are literally how Destiny explains itself. First because they fucked up, now because the fans actually like it.
I finished Fire Logic which felt very underbaked and more like an incomplete first draft due to the author's approach to skipping over some big chunks of time and not others with no obvious selection criteria
There were hints that the setting could be interesting but it shyed away from digging into it. Which would have been fine if the story had been strong enough, but again it felt skeletal.
Similarly the characters felt thin, predictable and lifeless. It was sort of nice to see some no big deal gay romances but one of them felt almost like somebody just added "and then they fucked" on the manuscript and it made it to print
Hmm. I'll not bother with the others
So I then started on The library on Mount Char which I'm only a couple of chapters into but started off quite strong
Aw too bad. I liked where the Elemental Logic series went (the rest are better than the first) and maybe she'll write the fourth one before she dies
Ever since I finished Baru 2 I've been CHOMPING AT THE BIT for something even remotely like it. Does anyone have any recommendations for similar stories?
The Books of Sorrow is a short story the author of Baru wrote for Destiny. It's probably the reason any of us know about him.
I totally forget how I got on to Traitor but it def wasn't Destiny
Ever since I finished Baru 2 I've been CHOMPING AT THE BIT for something even remotely like it. Does anyone have any recommendations for similar stories?
Try
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
The Fifth Season by NK Jemesin
Is Altered Carbon good as a book? I watched the netflix series, and I really love the Eclipse Phase material, and I've been looking to try and read some more transhumanist scf-fi stuff again. I have read The Quantum Thief and sequels, which I also really enjoyed.
I'd put in in the category of fun trash. The show changes alot from the book but the low level skinemax tone it has? Yeah that's totally accurate.
Yeah, that's just Richard K. Morgan's style.
I think Black Man is probably his best and even that has some kinda-random hot steamy sex scenes and a bit of the old ultra violence.
I read the first part of his fantasy trilogy too. It was ok, kinda interesting, kinda raunchy but had a few neat ideas.
In general I'm never sure if he's just trashy or if he's just unwilling to be prudish in any way about sex and I'm the problem. Maybe a bit of both.
I get the impression from Morgan's discussion on the point - and he talks about it on Twitter quite a bit, including a review discussing a sex scene from Thin Air - that publishing basically had that as a contractual obligation and that was the price to play. Thin Air treats it notably different, as do the Ringil books, and I think the Kovacs books' discussions on Quellism have more to say on Morgan and feminism than his sex scenes.
He actually wrote a pretty intelligent blog post about the criticism of his sex scenes: Gratuities at your Discretion.
I think I basically agree with him. At the very least, I've never found his sex scenes inappropriate for his characters/settings.
It's interesting that some of you find Black Man be his best. I thought it was good, but I also think it's by far his most problematic work. It dances all around with some cringey tropes: size queens, "once you go black you never go back", and all sorts of other stuff that flirts with the red pill/incel conceptualizations of testosterone, masculinity, and what straight women find desirable. In a lot of ways, it's actually a more intelligent Fight Club: the story of a manly man anti-protagonist out of place in a feminized corporate world. It tries to trick you into rooting for the protagonist on a personal level while working hard to also demonstrate that the kinder, gentler world that has no place for him is actually a net good for humanity, but... I'm not quite convinced that it succeeds at both.
My personal favorites of his are the second and third Kovacs books. They ditch the police procedural stuff of the first one to run with an excellent mix of future military SF, xeno-archaeology, and progressive/socialist politics. Some of the Quellist stuff is genius. Quell is like Ursula Le Guin as a revolutionary guerrilla.
I finished Fire Logic which felt very underbaked and more like an incomplete first draft due to the author's approach to skipping over some big chunks of time and not others with no obvious selection criteria
There were hints that the setting could be interesting but it shyed away from digging into it. Which would have been fine if the story had been strong enough, but again it felt skeletal.
Similarly the characters felt thin, predictable and lifeless. It was sort of nice to see some no big deal gay romances but one of them felt almost like somebody just added "and then they fucked" on the manuscript and it made it to print
Hmm. I'll not bother with the others
So I then started on The library on Mount Char which I'm only a couple of chapters into but started off quite strong
Aw too bad. I liked where the Elemental Logic series went (the rest are better than the first) and maybe she'll write the fourth one before she dies
Ever since I finished Baru 2 I've been CHOMPING AT THE BIT for something even remotely like it. Does anyone have any recommendations for similar stories?
Try
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
The Fifth Season by NK Jemesin
I liked The Fifth Season. Although I did found the second person POV in some parts a little frustrating to read, to be honest.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become. Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
I like Morgan and Altered Carbon. I had a fucking BLAST translating it for the Brazilian edition. Working on the jargon is delicious.
Do you mind sharing a few Portuguese cyberpunk words? Mostly because I am curious but also in case our cyberpunk near future turns out to have Brazil in the role usually played by Japan (you never know!)
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I feel like this question got lost in the discussion about how much sex Altered Carbon involves, but could anyone recommend some good Transhumanist Sci-fi? Maybe something that isn't super sex related.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Posts
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
No, I think the ones you're talking about are the Expanse books. Those have less interesting ideas than Reynolds but are more readable, and each series probably evens out in terms of quality to OK, I guess.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Revelation Space and Chasm city are pretty fucking great though. And he's written some absolutely top bar short stories in the revelationverse; Spirey And The Queen, Diamond Dogs, Our Man In Europa and Galactic North.
Yeah, I don't want it to sound like I'm selling him short. I think he's one of our best working Sci Fi writers today.
My favorite is Pushing Ice. Great story unrelated to the Revelation Space stuff. Follows a generation of spacefaring people. Super cool.
I don't know, I feel like that book was far less about mapping Earth politics to a foreign planet, and much more an introspection on what a lack of concrete gender would do to a society. Either way, it is a fantastic story.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Overall I agree, I think she does a great job at conjuring plausible alien societies that are different from ours, but as soon as the action shifted into Orgoreyn and they started talking about bureaus, inspectors, commensalities, communal identity, secret police, and secret prisons I was like "Oh, this is Soviet Russia".
I have to admit, people talk the big talk about the Revelation Space trilogy, but I've found some of Reynold's off-main work to be much, much better. Century Rain, which blends sci-fi weirdness with a sort of 1920's noir Parisienne feel is great, and The Prefect, a transhumanist murder mystery/thriller has the sort of human interest and tight focus I think gets lost in the bigger scale of the Revelation Space setup.
Also I'm a big fan of his Revenger duology on teenage Austen-esque space pirates; it's just a delight.
Oh: Baru 2 people, finally finished it earlier in the week, liked it a lot, though I can see why others might feel let down. But still very good...
ETA: @Dronus86 I'd point you at K.J. Parker's The Folding Knife , as well as their Engineer trilogy, and maybe Daniel Abraham's The Dragon's Path and Max Gladstone's brilliant Three Parts Dead, depending on which bit of the Baru-verse hit you especially well.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
The Expanse has space zombies I guess. It's only really in the first book and it's not really the point of the whole thing anyway.
The Expanse is really good imo but it's not like Big Idea style sci-fi. It's an interesting lowish technology sci-fi series with good writing and a willingness to really let the shit hit the fan.
Thanks, I'll look into those.
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
His older series The Long-Price Quartet is really really good.
Was about to post this. I think he's a great writer, and he has a whole bunch of top-notch short stories.
The problem with the Revelation Space trilogy is that it's rather dry and most of the Ultranaut characters are portrayed as sociopathic Vulcans that'll just murder the fuck out of you if it's logical for them to do so.
For something different I can recommend Revenger that feels more like scifi with a dash of swashbuckling steampunk mixed in. Pushing Ice is probably my favorite full-length novel, and Slow Bullets is a 200-page novella that's peeled down to the essentials that I also really enjoyed.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I'm aware of Area X and wanted to read it as I enjoyed the movie. Does anyone have anything to say about V.E. Schwab's writing style though? Is this book the beginning of an epic trilogy, or did I waste $20?
Area X looks like its an anthology of the Southern Reach trilogy. I enjoyed the first two books, haven't gotten around to reading the third yet.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The Netflix adaption has some distinctions from the book, but they’re similar enough in style and tone that I’d say if you enjoyed one format, you’ll likely enjoy the other.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
I'd put in in the category of fun trash. The show changes alot from the book but the low level skinemax tone it has? Yeah that's totally accurate.
Yeah, that's just Richard K. Morgan's style.
I think Black Man is probably his best and even that has some kinda-random hot steamy sex scenes and a bit of the old ultra violence.
I read the first part of his fantasy trilogy too. It was ok, kinda interesting, kinda raunchy but had a few neat ideas.
In general I'm never sure if he's just trashy or if he's just unwilling to be prudish in any way about sex and I'm the problem. Maybe a bit of both.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I get the impression from Morgan's discussion on the point - and he talks about it on Twitter quite a bit, including a review discussing a sex scene from Thin Air - that publishing basically had that as a contractual obligation and that was the price to play. Thin Air treats it notably different, as do the Ringil books, and I think the Kovacs books' discussions on Quellism have more to say on Morgan and feminism than his sex scenes.
So the sex scenes are contractually obligated?
A Darker Shade of magic is really good. I think there are 3 of them? You're going to want to get all 3.
Fantastic. I just had a look at Goodreads and it has a good review score, and all the individual ratings that aren't four or five stars are mainly along the lines of "my expectations were too high and now I have a sad."
I've painted myself into a corner though; I generally read on my iPhone using the Books app but bought a paper version of A Darker Shade. Now I'll need to buy paper versions of the other two books lest the universe end in fire and screaming.
I’ll go ahead and give away the one on the top that no one guessed. (I’m shocked that it’s the last one standing in a nerdy crowd like this.)
It's also an interesting read, and does way more to explain anything than Destiny itself did, so could easily be read standalone.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
It's more that these kind of things are literally how Destiny explains itself. First because they fucked up, now because the fans actually like it.
They even brought Seth Dickinson back!
Aw too bad. I liked where the Elemental Logic series went (the rest are better than the first) and maybe she'll write the fourth one before she dies
I totally forget how I got on to Traitor but it def wasn't Destiny
Try
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
The Fifth Season by NK Jemesin
But kind of have some same themes and also they are good books
He actually wrote a pretty intelligent blog post about the criticism of his sex scenes: Gratuities at your Discretion.
I think I basically agree with him. At the very least, I've never found his sex scenes inappropriate for his characters/settings.
It's interesting that some of you find Black Man be his best. I thought it was good, but I also think it's by far his most problematic work. It dances all around with some cringey tropes: size queens, "once you go black you never go back", and all sorts of other stuff that flirts with the red pill/incel conceptualizations of testosterone, masculinity, and what straight women find desirable. In a lot of ways, it's actually a more intelligent Fight Club: the story of a manly man anti-protagonist out of place in a feminized corporate world. It tries to trick you into rooting for the protagonist on a personal level while working hard to also demonstrate that the kinder, gentler world that has no place for him is actually a net good for humanity, but... I'm not quite convinced that it succeeds at both.
My personal favorites of his are the second and third Kovacs books. They ditch the police procedural stuff of the first one to run with an excellent mix of future military SF, xeno-archaeology, and progressive/socialist politics. Some of the Quellist stuff is genius. Quell is like Ursula Le Guin as a revolutionary guerrilla.
Good news about that -- it's due out in June: http://smallbeerpress.com/forthcoming/2018/06/11/air-logic/
I liked The Fifth Season. Although I did found the second person POV in some parts a little frustrating to read, to be honest.
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
Do you mind sharing a few Portuguese cyberpunk words? Mostly because I am curious but also in case our cyberpunk near future turns out to have Brazil in the role usually played by Japan (you never know!)
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain