Return of the Book Thread

[Khaldun]

They're a lot of fun. The more recent ones maybe slightly less so, but she does try to move Miles' story ahead a bit.

[Rendakor]

Finally got started on Seveneves since a big storm knocked our power out last night; I'm only about 20% in so far but I'm enjoying it.

[BobtheSomething]

MacLeod is someone I probably should like a lot more than I do. Kind of makes me feel like Alistair Reynolds--there's just nothing for me to really latch on to, I just feel kind of glum and bored when I read either of them.

I felt the same way reading Revelation Space.  However, I found that his short stories are usually pretty good, especially stories that don't take place in the Revelation Space universe.


Lately, I've enjoyed a lot of Peter F. Hamilton's space opera.  Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained were a lot of fun to read, with tons of ideas and a wide range of characters, some of whom were interesting.  But if you want your sci fi hard, he's probably not the right guy.

If you want some really ridiculous space opera, check out R.M. Meluch's Myriad, the first book in the Tour of the Merrimack series.  In the first few pages it sets up the premise that once ftl was discovered, suddenly a hidden cabal of Romans (doctors, lawyers, other people who use Latin professionally) secedes and founds a Space Roman Empire, instant enemies with Space America.  But don't worry, as the story unfolds, they both can agree on one thing: the Space UN is useless, especially when they need to team up and fight space bugs.  Oh, and the sexual tension between not-Kirk and totally-not-Spock was palpable.  The ending of the Myriad could be considered a brilliant trolling of certain readers.  I'm still not sure whether the author wrote the book with a straight face or if she was entirely in on the joke. 
Anyone else read it?

[Ironwood]

I can't take Hamilton seriously anymore.  I've read probably everything he's written, but it gets to a point you realise that he doesn't actually know any women.  He's like a genteel version of Miller.  Whores, all the way down.

It's a bit embarrassing.

[dd0029]

If you want some really ridiculous space opera, check out R.M. Meluch's Myriad, the first book in the Tour of the Merrimack series.  In the first few pages it sets up the premise that once ftl was discovered, suddenly a hidden cabal of Romans (doctors, lawyers, other people who use Latin professionally) secedes and founds a Space Roman Empire, instant enemies with Space America.  But don't worry, as the story unfolds, they both can agree on one thing: the Space UN is useless, especially when they need to team up and fight space bugs.  Oh, and the sexual tension between not-Kirk and totally-not-Spock was palpable.  The ending of the Myriad could be considered a brilliant trolling of certain readers.  I'm still not sure whether the author wrote the book with a straight face or if she was entirely in on the joke. 
Anyone else read it?

Oh yes, it's in my terribly guilty read pile. It's one of those books I kept telling myself, man is this terrible, what happens next? Whatever happens, DO NOT READ the rest of the series. It loses mostt of the charm of the first book and tries to take things in a serious business try hard direction..

[Khaldun]

The sex stuff in Hamilton is unbelievably cringe-inducing. But also jesus fuck does he need an editor. He makes George RR Martin look terse and Hemingwayesque.

[Morat20]

The sex stuff in Hamilton is unbelievably cringe-inducing. But also jesus fuck does he need an editor. He makes George RR Martin look terse and Hemingwayesque.

I think the difference between being a "really popular author" and being a "really good popular author" often boils down to "Which of you two will still listen to your editor after having hit the NYT's best-seller list?" (Or, alternatively, which of you two is gonna be the idiot that makes your wife or brother your editor?)

Editors are the unsung hero's of literature. They go into the den of authors and manage to not only say "You know that story you've poured your heart and soul in? yeah, let's cut a third of it and rearrange another third, and frankly this whole bit here? Pointless. Also, your spelling sucks and using a semicolon like that is technically felony in three states, and a heresy in four religions" and can get a surprising number of them to actually do it. Generally for the better.

[BobtheSomething]

I can't take Hamilton seriously anymore.  I've read probably everything he's written, but it gets to a point you realise that he doesn't actually know any women.  He's like a genteel version of Miller.  Whores, all the way down.

It's a bit embarrassing.

Most sci fi authors are like that/  I just tend to skip sex scenes usually.

But his women do seem to come across as...well, I just assumed it was a cultural thing.

[Ironwood]

I don't agree and I certainly don't think it's a cultural thing.  He's like reading Donaldson where the women like, want and demand the rape.

But he has some really good ideas at the kernel.  His Prime Aliens were the most fun I've had since The Moties.

[Rendakor]

MacLeod is someone I probably should like a lot more than I do. Kind of makes me feel like Alistair Reynolds--there's just nothing for me to really latch on to, I just feel kind of glum and bored when I read either of them.

I felt the same way reading Revelation Space.

Same here. I managed to slog through the first one and just had no desire to pick up book 2.

[BobtheSomething]

I don't agree and I certainly don't think it's a cultural thing.  He's like reading Donaldson where the women like, want and demand the rape.

But he has some really good ideas at the kernel.  His Prime Aliens were the most fun I've had since The Moties.

I don't recall any rape scenes like that, but I did ditch the Night's Dawn Trilogy pretty early.  I guess I'm not sure quite what you are getting at.  To me, all his characters seem hyper sexualized, and his women come across like he's writing them to fill a specific Tumblr niche.  They don't seem very real to me, but then no one who lives for centuries with refreshable bodies and Google chips in her brain is ever going to be totally relatable.  The sex scenes I did read, though, felt gratuitous and awkward.  Not as bad as Asimov's Foundation's Edge sex scene, but noticibly worse than early Turtledove's sex scenes.  Still pointless, though.

The prime aliens are my favorite antagonistic aliens.  The blight from A Fire Upon the Deep was up there for a while, too, but it was overshadowed by the group-mind dog things.  Are there any new books or series that feature such alien and formidable foes?  Most seem to Have thoughts as 'inhuman' as Klingons or Goa'Uld.

Has anyone here read David Weber's Out of the Dark?  It is almost exactly a combination of Turtledove's World War series and Alan Dean Foster's Damned books...until about 3/4 of the way through.  Then it shits the bed so hard it might qualify as brilliant.  

PS:  You mean Stephen R Donaldson, right?  Does that mean his new books are even more loathe some than Thomas Covenant?  Anti heroes are one thing, but child rapist anti heroes.....

[Chimpy]

The non-Thomas Covenant stuff of Donaldson's I have read does not have the creepy rape stuff in it, iirc.

[BobtheSomething]

If you want some really ridiculous space opera, check out R.M. Meluch's Myriad, the first book in the Tour of the Merrimack series.  In the first few pages it sets up the premise that once ftl was discovered, suddenly a hidden cabal of Romans (doctors, lawyers, other people who use Latin professionally) secedes and founds a Space Roman Empire, instant enemies with Space America.  But don't worry, as the story unfolds, they both can agree on one thing: the Space UN is useless, especially when they need to team up and fight space bugs.  Oh, and the sexual tension between not-Kirk and totally-not-Spock was palpable.  The ending of the Myriad could be considered a brilliant trolling of certain readers.  I'm still not sure whether the author wrote the book with a straight face or if she was entirely in on the joke. 
Anyone else read it?

Oh yes, it's in my terribly guilty read pile. It's one of those books I kept telling myself, man is this terrible, what happens next? Whatever happens, DO NOT READ the rest of the series. It loses mostt of the charm of the first book and tries to take things in a serious business try hard direction..

I read up until the end of the bug threat, where Spock's Just As Planned takes out the pope emperor or whatever.  Did not detect serious business.  The quality isn't as high as the first book, but I still had a campy good read.  If not for the rest of the books, though, I would have been 100% sure she was in on he joke.  My dad seemed to take the series at face value and enjoy them, so now I don't know what to think.

[BobtheSomething]

The non-Thomas Covenant stuff of Donaldson's I have read does not have the creepy rape stuff in it, iirc.

Is it any good?

[Khaldun]

David Weber's appeal escapes me. I read Hornblower the first time around and thought it was ok; Rule 63 and pew-pew laserfire does not improve it much.

[NowhereMan]

The prime aliens are my favorite antagonistic aliens.  The blight from A Fire Upon the Deep was up there for a while, too, but it was overshadowed by the group-mind dog things.  Are there any new books or series that feature such alien and formidable foes?  Most seem to Have thoughts as 'inhuman' as Klingons or Goa'Uld.

There's Scott Bakkers Prince of Nothing series, he does some interesting things with portraying inhuman thought patterns. He even has a few different sets, from the alien creatures that are the Big Bad of the setting to the pseudo elves who are immortal and all nearly totally insane from having lived so long to the first trilogy's protagonist that comes from a quasi-religious sect who rid themselves of emotion and seek total control over their thoughts and bodies.

Of course if you're not into super dark fantasy it's probably not for you, Bakker has a thing about biological determinism and men being fundamentally wired with a rape mentality alongside wanting to portray how horribly the medieval type world treated women. Basically he tries to push a feminist method by not pulling any punches with mistreatment of women and it's iffy at best whether he succeeds in highlighting the horror of that kind of world or is just writing the occasional gratuitous tentacle rape scene. It's possible to gloss over a bit though and his magic system is really fun. He also runs with a universe where objective morality is a thing (i.e. God has made laws of what is right or wrong and people who break those suffer eternal torment) and explores some of the consequences of that. He does most of this without being narratory about it though, you actually need to take a step back from the story to see that these ideas are there most of the time.

[Khaldun]

I like Bakker's stuff, but it eventually drags out too much for my tastes. Definitely is working at what it would mean to be alien or unfathomable, among other things.

Paul Park's Celestis is one of the most serious attempts I can think of to try to imagine an alien p.o.v.

[Morat20]

The non-Thomas Covenant stuff of Donaldson's I have read does not have the creepy rape stuff in it, iirc.

So, like you never read his Gap series, right? 'cause that starts out pretty early with the rape. Admittedly, he spreads it around. Everyone gets fucked, often literally. Generally by the people who had gotten fucked before.

I just finished Seveneves and The Martian, having had some downtime. They were both fairly solid, but had the usual Stephenson ending problem. (He's gotten BETTER, I admit. His endings now aren't as bad as, say, 15 years ago but he still has this feeling of rushed half-assedness that makes me wonder if he knew where he was going.)

[Chimpy]

Seveneves really would have benefited from being split into two books:

The first two sections being one book, then a second book being the third section (with possibly some interlude stuff that happens between added so there is less time spent explaining all that happened between the action later) expanded to have a little more "stuff" there.

As I said before, I think Stephenson knows where he is going when he starts these books but he hits a point where he realizes he is running out of pages and instead of cutting things out of the well-developed early portion he rushes everything beyond that point.

[Morat20]

For one, while I can grasp how the Diggers managed, I'll be damned if I can work out any plausible mechanics for the Pingers. I realize it was implied they had a great deal of planning and logistical support, I still can't work out the way that worked.

I mean I've got bits and pieces
I could have used a little more info about that, really.

[Ironwood]

I would say pretty much every Donaldsons story with a woman in it contains a bit of rape.  He really, really doesn't like women.

Which is a shame, since I used to love his writing.  It's like Card, frankly.  Once you grow up and realise what's actually going on, it's kinda tougher to read.

Same as Hamilton, in that sense.  You just know his head is utterly full of creepy shit.

[Chimpy]

Granted, I think I have only read the books about the whole mirror magic thing and I don't remember it that well. It didn't stand out as being as blatantly rape-focused as Thomas Covenant which felt to me like the guy said to himself "Hey, look, there's a woman... I shall have forceful intercourse with her!"

[Morat20]

Granted, I think I have only read the books about the whole mirror magic thing and I don't remember it that well. It didn't stand out as being as blatantly rape-focused as Thomas Covenant which felt to me like the guy said to himself "Hey, look, there's a woman... I shall have forceful intercourse with her!"

The only redeeming feature there was the man was not only wracked with guilt over it, but everything he ever did from that point on was fucked because of it. The First Chronicles were, basically, the story of him fucking up and then every attempt to fix it making it worse. Everything more or less traced back to his original sin, as it were.

Which is better, oh, say...John Ringo. :)

[Ironwood]

Granted, I think I have only read the books about the whole mirror magic thing and I don't remember it that well. It didn't stand out as being as blatantly rape-focused as Thomas Covenant which felt to me like the guy said to himself "Hey, look, there's a woman... I shall have forceful intercourse with her!"

Terisa was sexually attacked in that.  Depending on your views, 3 times.  Geradens brother Nile was raped by Gilbur while chained up.

Also, Terisa wandered around until the last chapter being an object of sexual affection with no agency whatsoever, as is Donaldsons characters are wont to do.  Also, reading his short stories, you probably get to every second one containing the same thing.  Reave the Just :  Rape.  King of Tarshish :  Rape.  Gap Trilogy : Rapey Rape Rape Rape of EVERYONE.  Even the damn Vampire story.  Rapey Rape Rape.

You can't really get away from this.  Take it from me.  I've read it all, except the last book of the latest Covenant (because it was fucking awful).  It's Rape all the way down with him.

[lamaros]

The sex stuff in Hamilton is unbelievably cringe-inducing. But also jesus fuck does he need an editor. He makes George RR Martin look terse and Hemingwayesque.

I think the difference between being a "really popular author" and being a "really good popular author" often boils down to "Which of you two will still listen to your editor after having hit the NYT's best-seller list?" (Or, alternatively, which of you two is gonna be the idiot that makes your wife or brother your editor?)

Editors are the unsung hero's of literature. They go into the den of authors and manage to not only say "You know that story you've poured your heart and soul in? yeah, let's cut a third of it and rearrange another third, and frankly this whole bit here? Pointless. Also, your spelling sucks and using a semicolon like that is technically felony in three states, and a heresy in four religions" and can get a surprising number of them to actually do it. Generally for the better.

Editors don't really do that. You read a book and can't really tell if it has had a shit or a great editor.

Outside a few close author editor or author agent or author publisher relationships, which are very rare, its really all on the author.

Or the marketing and sales departments. They can 'help' a new author make wholesale changes (communicated via the publisher).

[lamaros]

Anyhow, I'm on holiday. Need new books. Recommendations? I bought the new Le Carre, but not expecting the world.

Read Excession just now, was underwhelmed again. Really potoficsted on and ended up as much of nothing at all. Aside from Use of Weapons he hasn't captured me.

[dd0029]

If you like fantasy and are ok with ebooks and varying platforms, you might try Graydon Saunders The March North. Note, this is not available for Kindle. He has problems with Amazon, but it is available via Google Books. It may be on some of the other indie sites, but I don't know. Even though it's a self-pub, it felt well edited. I can't say as much for the follow up, but it's a different beast. The first one is really good.

There needs to be a warning up front about the writing. It is very stylized and deliberate. I enjoyed it, but I can see it being a problem for people.

Anyway, as I was reading this it occured to me that this read like what everyone who ever recommended Banks to me always said about the Culture. I have repeatedly bounced off of several Culture books, so I can't speak to how it matches the reality of the books. But it does match how people who've recommended them to me described the setting.

I can't really sum this up, so I am going to copy the review that got me to enjoy the deal.

The March North, by Graydon Saunders. Graydon was a regular when I hung out on rasfw on Usenet, so I pretty much had to see what he was up to when I learned that he'd committed fiction.

The blurb says: "Egalitarian heroic fantasy. Presumptive female agency, battle-sheep, and bad, bad odds."

This is military fantasy, with an obvious debt to the Black Company. The world has been around for a while--there are written records from over a hundred thousand years back, although you need a very good necromancer to read them. Magic has been active just as long, it's very powerful indeed, and it's made a complete mess of the place. The natural history of the world is full of magical meddling--sentient landscapes, assorted tribes of people created by socerers for one reason or another, endless monsters, and so forth. The political history is a similar mess. Dark Lords, God-Kings, and similar standard fantasy adversaries are so common as to be unremarkable (if unpleasant to find on your doorstep).

Our protagonist and narrator is a Banner-Captain in the Commonweal, which is a spot of light in this rather excessively crapsack landscape. Some thousands of years back, a clever wizard found a way to let common people join their talents together to form a united magical front that can threaten even the darkest of Dark Lords. They went on to defeat the local wizards and found a democratic, egalitarian nation. Some of the defeated wizards decided that it is better to serve in a peaceful nation than rule over a nightmarish hellscape.

Here's how it starts:

"They're sending us a Rust, somebody who goes by Blossom, and Halt."

"Halt?" Twitch says the name again, emphasis different. Not supposed to be anything surprising in the monthly update. "What could we possibly have done to deserve Halt?"

Twitch might be appalled.

"Five years in fifty means they've got to send Halt somewhere." Which is just true, not an explanation. Not when Independents don't serve with the Line--there's five centuries of custom back of that.

"West Westcreek isn't somewhere. Even back in the day, Westcreek wasn't anywhere." Twitch was born here, says this like the laws of the universe are being changed. Twitch don't like it.

The writing's all like that--clipped, terse, and dense. Blink and you'll miss things. Here, we have our narrator discovering that his commanders have decided to send Halt, the preeminent wizard in the country, to his sleepy backwater outpost. Someone clearly expects bad things to happen in his region, and of course they do.

I liked it. The unnamed narrator is an entertaining person to listen to, Halt turns out to be a grandmotherly type who enjoys knitting and pickled demon hearts, and there's a five-ton battle sheep. It finishes in a reasonable place, but I'm hoping for a sequel because I'd like to spend some more time with these people.

Source

TLDR, I liked it and people should give it a try.

[Bzalthek]

Since there's a good Sci-Fi bent going on, I recently discovered James S.A. Corey (pen name for a duo) who is writing The Expanse series (Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate, Cibola Burn, and Nemisis Games). 

It's set in a relatively unexplored time period where we started to colonize the solar system, but haven't gotten much farther than that yet.  The Earth and Mars are in a stalemate, and the Outer Planets Alliance is going from rabble troublemakers to an actual legitimate government and after 4 generations adapting to space there is Belter vs. Inner Planet racism vibes going all around. 

It's not exactly a thought provoking masterpiece, but it's a good read with likeable characters and even a good bit of self reflective humor when some characters tromp down the same tired paths.  I really enjoyed the entire series so far, and am looking forward to the 6th.  Fortunately, they seem to come out at a good clip.

[Quinton]

If you like fantasy and are ok with ebooks and varying platforms, you might try Graydon Saunders The March North. Note, this is not available for Kindle. He has problems with Amazon, but it is available via Google Books. It may be on some of the other indie sites, but I don't know. Even though it's a self-pub, it felt well edited. I can't say as much for the follow up, but it's a different beast. The first one is really good.

There needs to be a warning up front about the writing. It is very stylized and deliberate. I enjoyed it, but I can see it being a problem for people.

Anyway, as I was reading this it occured to me that this read like what everyone who ever recommended Banks to me always said about the Culture. I have repeatedly bounced off of several Culture books, so I can't speak to how it matches the reality of the books. But it does match how people who've recommended them to me described the setting.

I really enjoyed this.  The second book in the series was published recently and it is, in my opinion, equally awesome.  Graydon is aiming for a roughly yearly publishing rate, the third book is written, needs editing, fourth book is in progress, iirc. 

If you want to read them on Kindle, you can download the epub from google play books website (go to your library, click on the vertical ... menu that appears when you mouse over the book cover image, and select download epub.  then use Calibre or whatnot to convert to mobi and email or copy to your kindle).

Damien has a gift for writing reviews of these that I strongly agree with, so I'll leave his review of the second one (A Succession of Bad Days) here....

There are so many reasons I could give why this is not a good book: There's no plot to speak of--things happen, and then it ends. There's no conflict to speak of until the last chapter. Most of the book consists of detailed descriptions of civil engineering projects and the magical techniques used for them. The characters are ludicrously overpowered special snowflakes. The language is nigh-impenetrable, and the innocent comma is tortured beyond all reason.

But you know what? Screw all that. I loved it.

This is a story about where legendary sorcerers come from. Five young people (ages range from late teens to early thirties) with magical talent take part in a highly experimental training program. Talent is hazardous; absent training, none of them are expected to live to see fifty. Traditional training, which runs along the lines of "spend several years sweeping floors and learning control before moving on to lighting candles", has a roughly fifty percent survival rate. Their program, in contrast, starts with completely reconstructing a square mile or so of geography and scales up rapidly from there.

Most of them start out as reasonably normal people. None of them end that way. The story is about how we get from four kids and one respected military veteran to "there came a day when the Goddess of Destruction came to Morning Vale, bringing Death and Strange Mayhem along behind."

Along the way, there's civil engineering. The first third of the book (and this is not a short book) is occupied with the construction of a house. Great attention is paid to foundations, drainage, plumbing, HVAC, and other details that while vitally important to architects rarely play a significant role in fictional entertainment. There's a lot of detail about the magical techniques used: altering reality to get better bedrock, negotiating with fire elementals to build the structure, the proper use of magical gates in plumbing systems, and so forth. As David Weber is to military conflict in space, so is this book to magical engineering projects. This will not be to everyone's taste.

There's a line in the book that describes itself perfectly: "Like a fairy-tale lost in a civil engineering manual."

What saves it for me is the characters. There are some returning favorites from the previous book--I'm particularly fond of Halt, eons-old immortal sorceress, dread spider god, breeder of battle sheep, ceaseless knitter, and wearer of shapeless purple hats. The students introduced here are also a joy. Edgar, our narrator, who goes from "nice kid, but a bit slow" to "scion of the spider god". Chloris, kind and dutiful, terrifying necromancer. I loved hanging out with these people, their camaraderie, and their path to reconciling themselves with what they're becoming.

It's particularly refreshing how sane everyone is. This is Hogwarts without the Slytherins. Not just in the sense that the villains aren't conveniently labeled, but in that there are no villains at all. People get along. They sometimes disagree about methods, but not about goals. Some of the students would really rather be doing something else with their life than turning into a demigod, but none want to run off and become a dark lord or skip class to play Quidditch.

As I said, I loved it. I can't wait for the next book, and I hope Saunders keeps this up for a good long time to come.

[Abagadro]

I've read all of Hamilton's stuff and I don't recall all that much rape or degradation of women in it.  Admittedly I tend to read and forget, but that aspect hasn't jumped out at me.  I recall women in peril a few times, but not wallowing in rape like Donaldson (full disclosure, I really like the Gap Series).

[Ironwood]

No, no, I'm being unclear here :

There's no rape as such.  Degradation, maybe, depending on your read of it.

But all the women are sexbots.  All of them.  They love sex and demand sex and are always sexually available and will sex to further careers and sex to please a man and sex to open the fridge door and sex when the pickle jar is just a little tricky to open.  And there's harems.  Soooo many fucking harems.  Even in his 'Road' book (which was a departure for him), there's harems and harems and harems and harems.  And there's not that much mirror image to it either.  Because the women in power that have Harems ?  Totally full of women.  Because muff needs eaten.

He has a completely schoolboy view of women and it's TIRING.

If you were to actually just look at the Mellanie Rescoria character in the Prime Universe, it'd just blow your mind.  While she blew your dick.  Because women love dicks.  Tons and tons of dicks.  All the time.  To open the fucking pickle jar.

[Rishathra]

To defend Hamilton a little bit, while I don't disagree with anything you said there, I've always appreciated that he doesn't seem to be motivated by an actual hatred of women.  It seems more that he just can't help but to include his harem fetishes in everything he writes.  He even kind of admits to it in his most recent book. One of the main characters was pretty much surrounded by his harem in every scene he was in in previous books, and constantly tried to invite every female character he encountered into it.  At one point, someone mentions to him that they haven't seen his harem in a while, and he says, "yeah, that was a young, stupid, self-indulgent phase I went through, I'm over it now."

The Great North Road was noteworthy for being the first time I know of where the whole harem thing was actually part of the plot, and not some obvious indulgence.  You're right though, Ironwood, it gets tiring.  I still look forward to new Hamilton books because the weird shit rarely matters to the main story, and he writes good stories.

[Ironwood]

Again, I think my discussion of Donaldson is getting confused with Hamilton.  I only said that Hamilton writes as if he's never actually met a real women.  I don't think it's hatred as such.  It's misplaced adoration.  Adoration you'd give to a car, rather than a person.

And yeah, I like his stuff, I just think it'd be better without that.

[Shannow]

I like Hamilton's books but if we have to have another 'aliens hiding amongst us' plot I'll pass.

[pants]

Also, Terisa wandered around until the last chapter being an object of sexual affection with no agency whatsoever, as is Donaldsons characters are wont to do.  Also, reading his short stories, you probably get to every second one containing the same thing.  Reave the Just :  Rape.  King of Tarshish :  Rape.  Gap Trilogy : Rapey Rape Rape Rape of EVERYONE.  Even the damn Vampire story.  Rapey Rape Rape.

You can't really get away from this.  Take it from me.  I've read it all, except the last book of the latest Covenant (because it was fucking awful).  It's Rape all the way down with him.

Don't forget "The Djinn Who Watches Over The Accursed" - serious amounts of raping going on in there.  Still a good story, but a lot of raping (of guys and girls).

And I agree with Ironwood on Hamilton and sex.  Its like he thinks about these cool future space opera worlds (and I do really like his worldbuilding).  And then he decides "How would people have kinky sex in the future?  I know - transplant my consciousness into 10 new bodies that are psychically linked, so I can gangbang my wife!"