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[Book]: Rhymes With

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  • OremLKOremLK Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    Echo wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    Kinda hard to describe for me. I don’t generally imagine the sound so much as... the tone? The feel maybe? If that makes sense?

    I’m one of the weirdos without an internal monologue too which probably has something to do with it.

    Brains are weird.

    High five, fellow no-monologue person!

    In my case I also have a hard time keeping up with dialogue if it's all coming from the same source, ie a bunch of people from the same speaker. I haven't tried audiobooks, but I imagine having a single narrator doing multiple characters wouldn't improve that.

    Character differentiation is one of the key acting skills for audiobook narrators. The best narrators can do a bunch of different characters and make each sound different from the others. Not to like a Looney Tunes degree, but different accents, intonation patterns, pitch, pacing, etc.

    There's also been a growing trend to do multicast recordings in books which have multiple point of view characters. I.E. one narrator per point of view character, and they trade off chapters. Of course this can have mixed results sometimes, because, not being a full radio play, you still have one narrator at a time doing each character's voice, and sometimes that doesn't mesh all that well with the other narrators' takes on the same characters.

    But anyway, as long as the audiobook narrator knows their craft, it shouldn't be that hard to tell characters apart in dialogue.

    OremLK on
    My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
  • Fuzzy Cumulonimbus CloudFuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud Registered User regular
    The opposite is narrators deciding to do their very best pan-Asian accents or believing that if they had tried hard enough they woulda made it to the big screen. Drives me up a wall. Would rather have slightly different narrations than a one person play.

  • OremLKOremLK Registered User regular
    The opposite is narrators deciding to do their very best pan-Asian accents or believing that if they had tried hard enough they woulda made it to the big screen. Drives me up a wall. Would rather have slightly different narrations than a one person play.

    That's fair. A bad accent can be jarring. Try to cut the narrator a little slack, though. Audiobook narration is one of those things that's actually really hard to do, but seems invisible when it's done well, while being grating when done badly. It's not always easy to find discernible voices for dozens of different characters, which I think is why you see narrators reaching for bad accents.

    My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    I'd be amazed by any author managing to make clearly distinguishable voices for every character in something like Gideon.

    Even Stormlight Archive has a little trouble with this and that series has two talented narrators.

    Quid on
  • OremLKOremLK Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    Yeah, when the cast gets that large it's basically impossible.

    Speaking of audiobooks, just finished listening to a really nice multicast recording of Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows / Crooked Kingdom duology. It was great. Probably the most sheer enjoyment I've derived from a book since I first discovered Lois McMaster Bujold's work about a decade ago.

    It's a heist story set in an secondary world fantasy version of early-industrial Amsterdam, styled here as "Ketterdam". It's technically a YA book, although I don't think it would be out of place as an adult fantasy if you just aged the characters up a little (they're all late-teens, as is typical in YA). It's dark without being cynical, it has criminals who do just enough nasty stuff to be believable as kinda-shitty people, but walking the tightrope of holding onto reader sympathies. It's intense and suspenseful without being so plot-focused that you lose the character and setting. The setting isn't too far out of the norm for secondary world fantasy, but has enough differences to feel fresh, and enough detail to feel plausible. The dialogue is crisp, the characters are distinctive, and all have interesting arcs.

    It's definitely really pulpy. If you go in with a DnD/comics/anime kind of perspective you're on the right track. (It's going to be adapted as a Netflix series, apparently, so that should give you some idea of what tone to expect.) The best example of this is how, despite being a bunch of teenagers, the protagonists are all the best thief, best spy, best sharpshooter, etc. I mean, it's a heist story, so you kind of expect that, but even then it's pretty exaggerated here. The six protagonists also all have tidy, convenient romantic pairings. But hey, at least there aren't any damned love triangles. Anyway, you have to be in for the ride and be willing to set aside certain things, but if you can get there--and Bardugo is competent enough to make it work--it's a lot of fun.

    Recommended for enjoyable pulpy fun with a bit more depth and better characters than you'd typically expect from a story like this.

    OremLK on
    My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
  • PailryderPailryder Registered User regular
    OremLK wrote: »
    Yeah, when the cast gets that large it's basically impossible.

    Speaking of audiobooks, just finished listening to a really nice multicast recording of Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows / Crooked Kingdom duology. It was great. Probably the most sheer enjoyment I've derived from a book since I first discovered Lois McMaster Bujold's work about a decade ago.

    It's a heist story set in an secondary world fantasy version of early-industrial Amsterdam, styled here as "Ketterdam". It's technically a YA book, although I don't think it would be out of place as an adult fantasy if you just aged the characters up a little (they're all late-teens, as is typical in YA). It's dark without being cynical, it has criminals who do just enough nasty stuff to be believable as kinda-shitty people, but walking the tightrope of holding onto reader sympathies. It's intense and suspenseful without being so plot-focused that you lose the character and setting. The setting isn't too far out of the norm for secondary world fantasy, but has enough differences to feel fresh, and enough detail to feel plausible. The dialogue is crisp, the characters are distinctive, and all have interesting arcs.

    It's definitely really pulpy. If you go in with a DnD/comics/anime kind of perspective you're on the right track. (It's going to be adapted as a Netflix series, apparently, so that should give you some idea of what tone to expect.) The best example of this is how, despite being a bunch of teenagers, the protagonists are all the best thief, best spy, best sharpshooter, etc. I mean, it's a heist story, so you kind of expect that, but even then it's pretty exaggerated here. The six protagonists also all have tidy, convenient romantic pairings. But hey, at least there aren't any damned love triangles. Anyway, you have to be in for the ride and be willing to set aside certain things, but if you can get there--and Bardugo is competent enough to make it work--it's a lot of fun.

    Recommended for enjoyable pulpy fun with a bit more depth and better characters than you'd typically expect from a story like this.

    i was getting a drink at a gas station a year or so ago and the clerk was listening to six of crows on audio book. i was mesmerized and went home and immediately bought it. I enjoyed both of them, even though it falls heavily in that YA series. One of my issues was imaging the leader of the gang being old enough to pull everything off yet young enough to have existed in the timeframe of the book. It was probably the only really impractical thing i felt. It was like a JRPG in that the heroes were all teens for some reason.

  • credeikicredeiki Registered User regular
    Just a harrow writing structure difference. May end up having meaning I don't know but I'm not putting anything past this series anymore...
    i can't remember the last time I read something in second person, harrow is already a giant trip just in the first few chapters

    I’m only 50 pages in or so but I think second person narration is a good way to make sure that the book (so far) is confined to the perceptions of the central character while emphasizing perhaps some distance in the character’s relationship to herself and also allowing there to still be narrative commentary on her emotional state. I like it a lot, and I think first would feel too intimate but third wouldn’t quite let the author play with distorted reality as well.

    Steam, LoL: credeiki
  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    Gideon spoilers on my reread before Harrow
    Wait, is the girl in the Locked Tomb the Emperor's Cavalier? At first I assumed it was just a girl that he had loved before ascending, but reading it again, and knowing how Lyctors happen, I'm realizing that he loved his Cavalier, and had her stored like that, maybe because if she wasn't locked away there would be some way for him to bring her back by giving up his powers...

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • EchoEcho ski-bap ba-dapModerator mod
    I decided to re-read Traitor/Monster before I start on Baru the Tyrant. Random note:
    It sure feels like Baru decides to attack the Masquerade from within reallyfast, there's not really much setup. She meets Itinerant at age 7, goes to Masquerade school, her native island is devastated by plague, then it's off to her new position as Imperial Accountant. That bit felt really short on a re-read.

  • BogartBogart Streetwise Hercules Registered User, Moderator mod
  • EchoEcho ski-bap ba-dapModerator mod
    The first book I remember buying with my own money was The Demon Lord by Peter Morwood. Still one of my favorite fantasy series.

  • BogartBogart Streetwise Hercules Registered User, Moderator mod
    It was part of a scheme at school. There'd be a table laid out with new and shiny books on it and all the kids in school could browse it at their leisure and select one. You'd get a bookmark and that would get a stamp for every 5p you paid, and when you'd paid for the book you got it. I got The Hobbit and this that way.

    I'm certain a whole generation of kids got into fantasy and gaming via these books.

  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    I was trying to remember and totally skipped over book fairs at school. Those weren't really my own money but my parents always encouraged me to get books at them. Between frequent library trips and a grandmother who loved used book stores I really have no idea what was the first.

    The first I can remember buying on my own was when I worked and lived at a summer camp. On one of our trips back into what we thought was civilization I picked up Men at Arms by Pratchett at a Waldenbooks. I hadn't read any Pratchett before but I think I may have had some vague recommendations.

    I'm just going to pretend that was the first though it was almost certainly not.

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • KaputaKaputa Registered User regular
    So I finished Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy recently - the first Asimov novels I've read - and I was... somewhat underwhelmed. I loved the premise, basically Late Antiquity at the Galactic scale, complete with a Belisarius analogue trying to re-establish imperial dominance. I liked the interplay of the two Foundations, and the cycle of Seldon crisis - societal transformation was cool. But the writing itself was unremarkable, the characters were a bit one dimensional, and the climaxes of the books leaned a bit too much into the "What a twist!" formula. When I read that he loved mystery novels it clicked, since these had the same sort of flow. I dug the second half of the trilogy, with the Mule and the Second Foundation, more than the first.

    Maybe my expectations were the problem. I think I was expecting, like... speculative literature or something, rather than serialized pulp sci fi. And of course several decades of science fiction influenced by Asimov's work would make his books seem less impressive conceptually than they would have if read in the fifties. I dunno, it was kind of neat, but I'm not sure how interested I am in reading more of his work.

  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    Kaputa wrote: »
    So I finished Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy recently - the first Asimov novels I've read - and I was... somewhat underwhelmed. I loved the premise, basically Late Antiquity at the Galactic scale, complete with a Belisarius analogue trying to re-establish imperial dominance. I liked the interplay of the two Foundations, and the cycle of Seldon crisis - societal transformation was cool. But the writing itself was unremarkable, the characters were a bit one dimensional, and the climaxes of the books leaned a bit too much into the "What a twist!" formula. When I read that he loved mystery novels it clicked, since these had the same sort of flow. I dug the second half of the trilogy, with the Mule and the Second Foundation, more than the first.

    Maybe my expectations were the problem. I think I was expecting, like... speculative literature or something, rather than serialized pulp sci fi. And of course several decades of science fiction influenced by Asimov's work would make his books seem less impressive conceptually than they would have if read in the fifties. I dunno, it was kind of neat, but I'm not sure how interested I am in reading more of his work.

    The big struggle with a lot of that era’s writers is that SF of the time was intentionally reactionary against deep character works - their books were about “ideas” not internal conflict. Since many of the ideas are now dated, it makes much of the work of the era’s greats feel flat.

    Some were better than others, but they still had to get their work through editors who hated stories that developed the characters too much.

    Phillishere on
  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Kaputa wrote: »
    So I finished Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy recently - the first Asimov novels I've read - and I was... somewhat underwhelmed. I loved the premise, basically Late Antiquity at the Galactic scale, complete with a Belisarius analogue trying to re-establish imperial dominance. I liked the interplay of the two Foundations, and the cycle of Seldon crisis - societal transformation was cool. But the writing itself was unremarkable, the characters were a bit one dimensional, and the climaxes of the books leaned a bit too much into the "What a twist!" formula. When I read that he loved mystery novels it clicked, since these had the same sort of flow. I dug the second half of the trilogy, with the Mule and the Second Foundation, more than the first.

    Maybe my expectations were the problem. I think I was expecting, like... speculative literature or something, rather than serialized pulp sci fi. And of course several decades of science fiction influenced by Asimov's work would make his books seem less impressive conceptually than they would have if read in the fifties. I dunno, it was kind of neat, but I'm not sure how interested I am in reading more of his work.

    Yeah, that's about the normal reaction imo. They are a collection of cute little short stories centred around a twist and that's all. And the further they try and expand the premise the more it drags the whole thing down. And like most sci-fi short stories from the early 50s, it's not big on the character work or anything. That's just not the style.

    People recommending the classics/"classics" of sci-fi really overhype what many of them are imo.

  • JacobkoshJacobkosh Gamble a stamp. I can show you how to be a real man!Moderator mod
    Kaputa wrote: »
    So I finished Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy recently - the first Asimov novels I've read - and I was... somewhat underwhelmed. I loved the premise, basically Late Antiquity at the Galactic scale, complete with a Belisarius analogue trying to re-establish imperial dominance. I liked the interplay of the two Foundations, and the cycle of Seldon crisis - societal transformation was cool. But the writing itself was unremarkable, the characters were a bit one dimensional, and the climaxes of the books leaned a bit too much into the "What a twist!" formula. When I read that he loved mystery novels it clicked, since these had the same sort of flow. I dug the second half of the trilogy, with the Mule and the Second Foundation, more than the first.

    Maybe my expectations were the problem. I think I was expecting, like... speculative literature or something, rather than serialized pulp sci fi. And of course several decades of science fiction influenced by Asimov's work would make his books seem less impressive conceptually than they would have if read in the fifties. I dunno, it was kind of neat, but I'm not sure how interested I am in reading more of his work.

    There are certainly lots of elements of Foundation that were revolutionary at the time but aren't particularly remarkable now. The fact that they're so explicitly humanist and focused on ideas and the central conceit was, itself, remarkable for pulp sci-fi. They came out in an era where most sf stories were still very much of the "robot carrying away a naked blonde" variety. But nowadays it's expected that sf will interrogate big ideas and talk about history and ethics and whatnot; it doesn't seem as daring now. In a similar vein, it's kind of wild that a pulp magazine in the 1940s got away with publishing stories that were so talky and idea-driven with essentially no violence or sex or even conventional pulp action. Almost all the fighting happens offscreen and most of his climaxes are two men talking to each other in a closed room.

    I think that there are still pleasures for the modern reader. Asimov's focus on tight, stopwatch plotting doesn't seem like it's something you're big on, which fair, but I think people who enjoy that sort of thing can still get a good amount of pleasure from the very precise way everything slides into place. A lot of old science fiction short story writing (which is the majority of sf written between the 1930s and 50s) takes the form of kind of...brain teasers in the form of fiction. The story posits a problem, logical or scientific in nature, and the hero works through the problem, and ideally the solution is kind of clever and logically consistent. That sort of thing is pretty straightforward and characterization or thematic payload were surplus to requirements, but it makes for a fun afternoon diversion if you're in the right mood and Asimov was very good at it. Foundation was his early attempt (the stories were begun when he was like 22, iirc) to meld that format with some kind of larger statement about people and the world.

    And while I'm never going to call him a great creator of characters or prose stylist, he did end up getting better at it. His two robot murder mystery novels - The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun - were written in the mid-50s, before he retired from fiction for a couple of decades, and represent more or less the height of his creative powers, and they have his best and most memorable characters and some bits of genuinely good prose.

    rRwz9.gif
  • credeikicredeiki Registered User regular
    Hm yeah I feel similarly about Asimov. Always felt like his stories were pretty tight and ok to read but the ideas were not mega interesting to the modern reader, the characters were no one, the aesthetics were never super memorable, and the fact that we still have 50s social norms in the future irritated me, especially with regard to the casual dismissal of women.
    That said, I recall loving foundation as a kid, when it was pretty much the first sci-fi I read—it’s only as an adult that I didn’t really like Asimov. So maybe you just have to read his stuff before forming expectations for sci-fi (or care about the things I cared about as a kid, like a cool plot).

    Steam, LoL: credeiki
  • KaputaKaputa Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    credeiki wrote: »
    Hm yeah I feel similarly about Asimov. Always felt like his stories were pretty tight and ok to read but the ideas were not mega interesting to the modern reader, the characters were no one, the aesthetics were never super memorable, and the fact that we still have 50s social norms in the future irritated me, especially with regard to the casual dismissal of women.
    That said, I recall loving foundation as a kid, when it was pretty much the first sci-fi I read—it’s only as an adult that I didn’t really like Asimov. So maybe you just have to read his stuff before forming expectations for sci-fi (or care about the things I cared about as a kid, like a cool plot).
    Yeah, the attitude toward women was pretty bad. I remember at one point it seemed as though no woman had been mentioned even tangentially for like 150 pages. The line that broke the trend, describing a scene on the imperial capital world, was something like:
    The men watched news on the telescreens and languidly sipped at their drinks, while women and children chattered.

    It seemed like he maybe noticed this fault in the second half of the series, bringing in Bayta and Arkady as leading female characters, though their depictions aren't without their own problems.

    Psychohistory is pretty fun, though.

    Kaputa on
  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    Echo wrote: »
    I decided to re-read Traitor/Monster before I start on Baru the Tyrant. Random note:
    It sure feels like Baru decides to attack the Masquerade from within reallyfast, there's not really much setup. She meets Itinerant at age 7, goes to Masquerade school, her native island is devastated by plague, then it's off to her new position as Imperial Accountant. That bit felt really short on a re-read.
    I thought that was the plan immediately following the plague and losing one of her fathers.

    She was already set to be a high ranking operative, she just shifted from furthering the Masquerade’s goals to sabotaging them.

  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    Just finished chapter three of Harrow, and I am struck with an overwhelming "wut?"

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • knitdanknitdan In ur base Killin ur guysRegistered User regular
    Yeah that doesn’t go away

    It’s great

    “I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
    -Indiana Solo, runner of blades
  • KanaKana Registered User regular
    Tbf harrow is even more confused than you

    A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    Alright, I'm gonna make a speculation, in spoilers, in case it might actually be a spoiler, but also so I can come back and look at it when I know more.
    Somehow Gideon has been ripped back out and stored in the two hander, and everyone elses memory expunged/no one knew who actually left for Canaan House except there own houses. So everyone assumes it was Ortus, because who the hell else would it be, and Harrow/Ianthe have made Harrow forget Gideon entirely. Also, I wonder if the "haunting" from when she was younger is an imperfect wipe of Gideon, and if Harrow had a crush on her the whole time...

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • SyphonBlueSyphonBlue The studying beaver That beaver sure loves studying!Registered User regular
    Just finished Harrow and I am exceedingly confused

    And yet 5 stars

    LxX6eco.jpg
    PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
  • V1mV1m Registered User regular
    Ordered a Memory Called Empire because you jerks clearly think I need even more books in my "to read:" pile

  • A Dabble Of TheloniusA Dabble Of Thelonius It has been a doozy of a dayRegistered User regular
    Cross posting from the SE book thread. Made myself a new phone lock screen wallpaper. Slight end of Gideon spoilers
    81ldo4ekuqon.jpeg

    vm8gvf5p7gqi.jpg
    Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
  • initiatefailureinitiatefailure Registered User regular
    ok... yes, I will steal this

  • BogartBogart Streetwise Hercules Registered User, Moderator mod
    These Savage Shores, by Ram V and Sumit Kumar. A fine five issue series about vampires, colonialism and love in 1766. One of the most beautifully drawn and coloured books I’ve ever read, I think.

    d3z4yxynlgd1.jpeg

    Look at the way your eye is drawn in a 2 shape rather than from left to right.

    9tblb952jrsc.jpeg

    Just an incidental panel, but look how good the ship is, how well the atmosphere of the port is bought home in a few images. And it’s all like this, every page.

  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    Just finished Harrow despite planning on sleeping a few hours ago, also probably should fix some food or something.

    The book starts out with some fun exploration of the stuff the previous book obviously sets up and builds up some tension and drama. Then it just fucking explodes with explosions that are themselves explosions all of which explode to spell out awesome things.

    I did not know how Tamsyn Muir was going to write a sequel. I'm still not sure how the hell she wrote this but I am very happy she did.
    Antoshka wrote: »
    Finished Harrow the 9th

    I'm looking forward to the next, but boy
    Gid / John / AL are going to have one hell of an interesting family tree , and there are a number of ways to read that ending.

    Speculation:
    I take it , that by implication, Harrow's approach to Lyctordom more closely mirrors John's, and therefore they may be able to maintain individual existence, both being effectively unkillable?

    They appear to be short a body currently. I think Harrow may have just Revenant-ed herself to the sword as a holding place. Really hope they manage to get back into two bodies for a happily ever after.

    Also they nearly explode the Sun, twice and that's just kind of an afterthought!


    Harrow stuff.
    I was wondering if maybe she's actually in Gideon's body.

    Just finished, and that was a hell of a ride.

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    I went to a talk by
    Bogart wrote: »
    These Savage Shores, by Ram V and Sumit Kumar. A fine five issue series about vampires, colonialism and love in 1766. One of the most beautifully drawn and coloured books I’ve ever read, I think.

    d3z4yxynlgd1.jpeg

    Look at the way your eye is drawn in a 2 shape rather than from left to right.

    9tblb952jrsc.jpeg

    Just an incidental panel, but look how good the ship is, how well the atmosphere of the port is bought home in a few images. And it’s all like this, every page.

    That's really gorgeous

  • ReznikReznik Registered User regular
    Book thread, I am in desperate need of some cyberpunk that isn't just re-reading Gibson's Sprawl trilogy a billion times. I tried reading Altered Carbon and came to the conclusion that Richard K. Morgan is an absolute hack. Where should I be looking? I really want the classic aesthetic of wires and clunky cybernetics but I can look past it for some good writing, so long as it's playing it straight (as an example, I've investigated Snow Crash but it's not what I'm looking for)

    If there's anything decent that's kind of a Shadowrunny blend of cyberpunk and fantasy I'll take a look at that too.

    Do... Re.... Mi... Ti... La...
    Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
    Forget it...
  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    Accelerando by Charles Stross.

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • OremLKOremLK Registered User regular
    Reznik wrote: »
    Book thread, I am in desperate need of some cyberpunk that isn't just re-reading Gibson's Sprawl trilogy a billion times. I tried reading Altered Carbon and came to the conclusion that Richard K. Morgan is an absolute hack. Where should I be looking? I really want the classic aesthetic of wires and clunky cybernetics but I can look past it for some good writing, so long as it's playing it straight (as an example, I've investigated Snow Crash but it's not what I'm looking for)

    If there's anything decent that's kind of a Shadowrunny blend of cyberpunk and fantasy I'll take a look at that too.

    I haven't read cyberpunk in awhile, but I remember being fond of Bruce Sterling's work. The one which sticks in my memory the most is Holy Fire, which explores the idea of a "gerontocracy", sort of a less violent, less hacky version of a similar type of future portrayed in Altered Carbon, wherein longevity treatments have allowed old people to gain an ever-more-unequal grasp on the levers of power, and the young are a perpetual underclass.

    My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    That is close but I'd label it more transhumanist than cyberpunk. If that's the bent you're okay with than Bank's Culture series might also be a good place to look or to stick with Stross Glasshouse.

    Stross's Halting State gets the cyber side down but isn't very punk with the protagonist being a police detective.

    Snow Crash is cyberpunk while also being a satire of it. Diamond Age plays it straighter if you don't hate Stephenson in general.

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • credeikicredeiki Registered User regular
    That is close but I'd label it more transhumanist than cyberpunk. If that's the bent you're okay with than Bank's Culture series might also be a good place to look or to stick with Stross Glasshouse.

    Stross's Halting State gets the cyber side down but isn't very punk with the protagonist being a police detective.

    Snow Crash is cyberpunk while also being a satire of it. Diamond Age plays it straighter if you don't hate Stephenson in general.

    Glasshouse most of the book takes place in a 50s simulation though, so you don't get a lot of cyberpunk aesthetic.
    Accelerando first part feels cyberpunk and the rest goes far future
    Halting State to me feels closest to cyberpunk for sure

    hmm, I don't really have any recommendations here beyond what's been said. Looking through online lists to see if anything jogs my memory but I'm just not sure there are a lot of core cyberpunk novels, or if there are I don't know them.

    Steam, LoL: credeiki
  • CorvusCorvus . VancouverRegistered User regular
    Was finally able to break my reading funk by going on vacation for two weeks to a cabin with no internet and mediocre cell signal.

    Cleared some of the backlog of unread books on my Kobo:
    • The Consuming Fire-Scalzi
    • Half a King - Abercrombie
    • City of Stone and Silence - Wexler
    • Redshirts - Scalzi

    Next up is Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay

    :so_raven:
  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • AntoshkaAntoshka Miauen Oil Change LazarusRegistered User regular
    I finished Tyrant, which was certainly memorable, and The Memory of Souls, which was.... odd. I like the mythology, but the tonal whiplash is certainly significant.

    But, now I'm all out books again.

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  • EchoEcho ski-bap ba-dapModerator mod
    edited September 2020
    Reznik wrote: »
    Book thread, I am in desperate need of some cyberpunk that isn't just re-reading Gibson's Sprawl trilogy a billion times.

    Hardwired, Walter Jon Williams.

    Marvel at the glory of this cover.

    lpy5z0e5dqsu.png

    Echo on
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