Return of the Book Thread

[Viin]

Haven't read anything by Howey I didn't like, including his other post-apocalyptic omnibus: Sand

[NowhereMan]

I, Zombie, that's the first person zombie short stories (kind of) right? I liked the general conceit but it's something I feel would have worked well as just a short story rather than a collection/novel.

[Cyrrex]

I have read most of Howie's stuff, and I have liked it all for the most part. 

[RhyssaFireheart]

I've seen Sand when I was looking for new books but hadn't picked it up yet.  I'll have to check it out for sure now though.

A friend posted on here FB page that she had just started Wool and was enjoying it so far, which made me happy for her.

[murdoc]

Finally made some time to finish 'The Martian' which i thoroughly enjoyed, but it definitely felt rushed at the end. I guess there's only so much you can make a journey interesting but there was such a build up to the final stage of his experience (trying to be vague, but honestly - if you can't figure out how it ends... yeesh) and then it was suddenly done.

I need a new book and 'Sand' looks like it'll slot in nicely.

[Bunk]

Current Humble Book bundle is all of the Bloom County strips in digital format. Mentioned it to the guy who sits beside me (and has the same role) - he stared - I realized he had no idea what Bloom County was. I felt old.

[NowhereMan]

For a change of pace I've been reading some non-fiction historical stuff. Tom Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword is all about the development of monotheistic religions in late Antiquity. His thesis being (to an extent) this was when we saw the move from monotheistic faiths integrated into local cultures and competing with, absorbing and being part of a very rich and still quite syncretic system of beliefs (with only the names changing or rituals from one religion being adopted by followers of another) into the modern concept of religion we have today with defined orthodoxies. Thus we can trace modern Judaism, Christianity and Islam back to the 5th, 6th and 9th centuries respectively (and extremely approximately, he doesn't tie anything to that level of precision).

Of course the major part is the emergence of Islam and basically raises all the questions there are regarding its founding myth that Mohammed produced the Quran as a finished product, the word of God, and Islam was immediately set. Instead he sees Islam as a religion not really coming to be until the 9th Century, where followed a period of claiming authority in the name of the Prophet and tying everything back whether there was proof or not. He doesn't present this as some Machiavellian fraud but part politics, part sincere faith and part wishful thinking on the part of the many people involved in it.

It's an interesting book but presented one of the problems with reading things like this on Kindle. I had left the last half or so to read on a day I had a hospital visit only to discover that the last 40% was actually footnotes and I had actually just saved the last 7 pages to read. Also checking footnotes is an ass on my old school Kindle. Do newer models handle them better?

[Quinton]

Current Humble Book bundle is all of the Bloom County strips in digital format. Mentioned it to the guy who sits beside me (and has the same role) - he stared - I realized he had no idea what Bloom County was. I felt old.

Gah, now I feel old too!  But thanks for the heads up.  DRM-free digital versions of classic comics -- take my money!

[Viin]

Thanks to the reminder a page or so back, I read The Shell Collector, a Hugh Howey book. Enjoyed it quite a bit, even though the end wasn't exactly a surprise. His writing could make even Twilight a good read.

Also read the 3-book Omega Force omnibus, which I highly recommend if you like space opera. Reminds me a lot of Guardian of the Galaxies (I've only seen the movie, don't hit me): ex-SPECOPS guy ends up on a space ship and he creates a ragtag gang of random aliens to run around saving the galaxy. The first 1/4 of the first book is rough writing, but it smooths out after that for some nice popcorn fast moving space action.

If you haven't read the Red Rising series, I recommend it - especially now that the 3rd book is coming out in Jan 2016.

Edit: Just noticed that you can now loan a Kindle book to someone via Amazon.com. Hmmm.

[Khaldun]

Holland is a surprisingly good combination of accessible writer and knowledgeable scholar. My friends who are classics scholars who are very, very demanding and a bit pedantic nevertheless like his books quite a bit, and they're really very readable.

[NowhereMan]

I've just started on Rubicon now so I'll see how consistent he is  . His style does get a little confusing at times, he starts writing passages from the viewpoint of the peoples he's writing about (i.e. lots of talking about the rise of God's final prophet and the divine favour assisting the armies of Islam) which is cool for flavour but I guess a little jarring when you're used to and expecting a drier academic reading.

[Khaldun]

He does more of that in the Islam book. Also with Roman history there's often a bit more grounds for that kind of dramatic prose in terms of what we know about individuals and how they were thinking.

[Shannow]

Finished 'Ready Player One'.

That was a popcorn movie in a book. The whole '80s thing was

[Khaldun]

The thing that annoyed me about that whole schtick is that it's seen as cute/funny/great, when in fact it seemed horrifying and dystopic to me--narcissistic billionaire makes the world relive his youth over and over and over again. It was like "I have no hoverboard and so I must scream" or something.

[Cyrrex]

I started re-reading Guards! Guards! (Pratchett), with the intention of going through all his stuff again.  20 pages in, and it has me roaring.  Forgotten just how great he was.

[Abagadro]

Finished 'Ready Player One'.

That was a popcorn movie in a book. The whole '80s thing was

Fitting that Spielberg is directing the movie of it then.

On another note, I just found out John C. Wright is a total assbag of Cardian proportions (maybe that was common knowledge but I just discovered it via the current Hugo Awards kerfuffle).  Why do these sci-fi authors go so off the rails?

[Khaldun]

I think Wright is a bigger assbag actually. Plus the quality of his work has gone precipitiously downhill as he's assbagged it up, so natch that's the year that fucking gamergater idiots decide to stuff the ballot box to nominate everything he wrote this year including his shopping lists. I really liked his early stuff, so I think it's a pity that he's locked into a feedback loop where his dumbest fans are telling him to be worse and worse as a writer.

[Shannow]

Well that was a fun sidetrack of the last 15 minutes reading up on the 2015 Hugo Awards and John C. Wright.

And when I say fun I really mean depressing.

[Ingmar]

Vox Day and his shitbag followers were trying to shit up the Hugos before there ever was a Gamergate IIRC. Which is not to say that there's not a bit of a match made in Heaven going on there.

[Khaldun]

For sure--it's like Saruman and Sauron just exchanged kisses in the palantirs.

[Morat20]

Vox Day and his shitbag followers were trying to shit up the Hugos before there ever was a Gamergate IIRC. Which is not to say that there's not a bit of a match made in Heaven going on there.

As best I can tell, he's seriously hurt that GIRLS are writing science fiction. GIRLS.

It's basically like a less mature version of standing in a gaming store and quizzing every pair of boobs about obscure comic book trivia and screaming FAKE GEEK if they get one wrong.

Seriously, Ancillary Justice apparently raped his mom or something.

[Johny Cee]

Vox Day and his shitbag followers were trying to shit up the Hugos before there ever was a Gamergate IIRC. Which is not to say that there's not a bit of a match made in Heaven going on there.

It's more complicated than that.  Basically there is a large section of the genre authors and fandom that feels on the outside of the central clique, and various people including Vox Day have been agitating about the in-clique.  There is the Blue Collar type SF/F writers versus the "literary" SF types.  There is also a sub-section agitating from the Left about author gender/race representation and White Male Privilege and what not (such as the short-lived recent controversy where some authors talked about switching the bust of Lovecraft out for Octavia Butler as Lovecraft was an awful racist).

Some of it is just that the genre is finally catching up to the rest of the internet in the way that social groups, internet presence, and social grooming are affecting authors along with how incestuous the online community is.  It is pretty easy to be on the outs with the community and find yourself marginalized in the genre community online presence.  And the general online community, at least up until I stopped paying as much attention to it, was full of back-patting and fellating each other and the authors/books they liked while talking about how SFF is Serious Literature.  

Vox Day seems like a pretty typical internet troll who says some really shitty stuff, so he is the lightning rod for most critiques.  

Wright is Full Nerf Crazy.  That is, he can't not respond to people trolling him, which eventually leads to him being a giant shitbag and then everyone pointing at it and laughing.  His actual writing is fine (The Hermetic Millenia was a pretty solid hard SF book, the other two kinda meh), even if he has never lived up to the potential he showed in his first trilogy.

As for the mobilizing the internet to support your slate....   Meh.  Internet campaigning has been going on a while, but it hasn't been as blatant.  Mira Grant (Feed, bunch of others) has scored a bunch of noms due to some understated "it would be super awesome if I got nominated <wink>" and Scalzi's popularity with the Hugos can largely be put to his substantial presence online.  This is far more blatant, and some folks are pissed because it is so blatant, and it also has largely skipped the community gatekeepers.

I predict its largely going to wind down the next couple years as Day, Wright, and maybe someone else gets dropped from the Sad Puppies for being a crazy shitbag, and the more sane protestors walk away as the inner clique makes sure that some Baen/Space Opera/UF author regularly scores a nom.  Either that or the whole thing blows up when  the Paranormal Fantasy/female UF sub-genre gets equally pissed about being marginalized by the inner clique.

[Johny Cee]

Vox Day and his shitbag followers were trying to shit up the Hugos before there ever was a Gamergate IIRC. Which is not to say that there's not a bit of a match made in Heaven going on there.

As best I can tell, he's seriously hurt that GIRLS are writing science fiction. GIRLS.

It's basically like a less mature version of standing in a gaming store and quizzing every pair of boobs about obscure comic book trivia and screaming FAKE GEEK if they get one wrong.

Seriously, Ancillary Justice apparently raped his mom or something.

Ancillary Justice was a pretty mediocre book, outside of playing with gender in that the main character couldn't determine gender so referred to everyone as "she".  Its a great example of the kind of mediocre book with a message that traditionally gets a Hugo nom.  Throne of the Crescent Moon was a mediocre fantasy book the year before which got on largely because its a Egyptian author writing a fantasy in a pseudo-Middle Eastern fantasy world, and came out the same time there was a kerfuffle about the Western bias in SF/F. 

Both years had a Mira Grant novel, and they are downright bad.

At least they could have nominated a Caitlin Kiernen novel, who is a great writer, and also ticks off the transgender and queer boxes.  Or held their noses and stooped to nominated one of the many female Contemporary Fantasy/Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy authors.  But the Hugos don't like that sub-genre.

Basically, Vox Day is a shitbag but that doesn't mean there aren't some problems in the community and the way it marginalizes different sub-genres of SFF.  I think this is the first time Butcher has been nominated?  I mean, he doesn't deserve an award, but he didn't even get a nom over some of the forgettable shit?  He really isn't any more popcorny light fiction than most of Scalzi's output.  Or the fact that they pretended Bujold's romance novels didn't exist (despite being in a fantasy setting) but gave her noms as soon as she started churning out more forgettable Miles Vorkosigan books?

[Khaldun]

I think Ancillary Justice is pretty great--it's way more imaginative than you suggest, and is trying very seriously to tackle the hardest problem in SF--to write seriously about a non-human perspective. Paul Park's Celestis is another great example. This is hard to do, and is worth a lot of respect when someone tries it.

This is the fucking problem right now: we've always had arguments about what's good, but suddenly everybody thinks it's cool to attribute differences of opinion to ad hominems. "You could only like that because you're a woman or a gamergater etc."

I have no hesitation about saying that John C. Wright's first trilogy was stunning work. Nor that his recent work is very very sub-par and that there is no reason whatsoever to nominate it for anything. That has nothing to do with him being a full-Nerf nutcase, except that my hypothesis about the difference between the two moments in his creative life is indulging in nutcasery and getting wrapped up in the cult of people responding to him, much as I would attribute The Old Man and the Sea to Hemingway being a depressive alcoholic. That's ad hominem as an act of interpretation, but the quality of the work stands aside from the explanation. But when someone tells me, "I think this is good, and here's why", I will listen carefully and be very careful before saying, "There is no way you could possibly like that except for [your dumb politics] [your gender/race/sexuality/identity]".

[MahrinSkel]

I actually knew nothing about Sad Puppies until it popped up in a Google Alert for something else. I can tell you that until after the fact, I don't think the controversy that-should-not-be-named-unless-you-want-to-see-me-turn-into-a-pedantic-walloftext adherents had any idea about it at all, either.

Seriously, most social issues are complicated, most internet fights about them oversimplify everything down to slogans and namecalling while the actual bad actors snicker. I'm coming to the firm opinion that virtually any internet tempest in a teapot is trolls all the way down now, even if it didn't start that way. If you're in lockstep with anything, against anything, I guarantee that the people you're supporting or defending are just as much assholes as their opponents.

--Dave

[Khaldun]

Whatever. False equivalency is the opium of the tendentious.

Let's stick to books, since you more or less said "Nice thread you got here, wouldn't like something to happen to it."

[WayAbvPar]

Vox Day and his shitbag followers were trying to shit up the Hugos before there ever was a Gamergate IIRC. Which is not to say that there's not a bit of a match made in Heaven going on there.

As best I can tell, he's seriously hurt that GIRLS are writing science fiction. GIRLS.

It's basically like a less mature version of standing in a gaming store and quizzing every pair of boobs about obscure comic book trivia and screaming FAKE GEEK if they get one wrong.

Seriously, Ancillary Justice apparently raped his mom or something.

I am assuming you mean every female pair of boobs. Because otherwise that would be a full time gig.

[HaemishM]

Well that was a fun sidetrack of the last 15 minutes reading up on the 2015 Hugo Awards and John C. Wright.

And when I say fun I really mean depressing.

Anyone got any links on this kerfluffle?

[Tmon]

Search Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, you'll find plenty of stuff.  Most of the names on both sides of the issue have really been pounding the keyboards since the Hugo slate was announced.

[HaemishM]

I read one Vox Day article and decided... yep, I didn't really want to give a shit about it. Tiny Turds in Tiny Toilets Screaming Their Importance to the Flusher.

[Ingmar]

Scalzi on the topic (he's one of their main targets):

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/04/07/human-shields-cabals-and-poster-boys/

[Shannow]

Scalzi is awesome and now thanks to that link I know he has a new book coming (in novella format but whatever). Double win!

If you haven't read the books from his Old Man's War universe I highly recommend it.

[HaemishM]

Fuck's sake. What a goddamn gaggles of dickbags. So it's basically Internet Warrior titmice bitching because their pet books/authors aren't getting nominated for an award whose entire nomination process is an open book of people nominating popular books, meaning the more popular the book, the more likely the book gets nominated because more people have heard of it? And thus it must be a sign that something something conspiracy? Shouldn't a conspiracy have a cabal of people who actually gather in a smoky room and plot as opposed to sending in ballots?

Why don't these fuckers just spend a bit more time writing/marketing their shit?

EDIT: Also, the minute anyone says the word "Social Justice Warrior" to SERIOUSLY insult/describe a person, my mind immediately goes back to Angry.Bob's men's rights rants and I just can't take them or their complaints seriously anymore.

[Johny Cee]

I think Ancillary Justice is pretty great--it's way more imaginative than you suggest, and is trying very seriously to tackle the hardest problem in SF--to write seriously about a non-human perspective. Paul Park's Celestis is another great example. This is hard to do, and is worth a lot of respect when someone tries it.

This is the fucking problem right now: we've always had arguments about what's good, but suddenly everybody thinks it's cool to attribute differences of opinion to ad hominems. "You could only like that because you're a woman or a gamergater etc."

Yes, the Planet of the Ice Rednecks that provided all the right provocations to the protagonist to illustrate how s/he was different was incredibly imaginative.  

It was a pretty bog-standard SF setting, the plot was kind of meh, none of the characters I found to be particularly engaging.  It felt like the primary point of interest was "what if the character can not recognize gender differences/from a culture that didn't recognize different gender" and everything around it was filled in with pretty typical SF stuff.  

When I say mediocre I mean mediocre.  I don't use the games websites rankings where the lowest ranking is 7/10.  In discussion with the Hugos, it felt like much of the push came from the fact that gender representation in hard SF had been a much discussed topic in the community the year leading up the awards and that at least some of the love for the novel (plenty coming from people who hadn't even read it yet!) was coming from a reaction to that.

It was a fine first novel.  Kinda good even.  The problem is that it got a 10/10 for "interesting SF idea", and ran the boards with 5-6s for everything else.

[Morat20]

To sum up for the people who barely give a shit:
1) You can game the Hugo nominees if you have enough people willing to shell out for it.
2) They've been trying a few years, and finally succeeded
3) The slate is, coincidentally, full of books published by the completely unknown publishing house owned by the brainchild behind one of the two slates (and the more successful of teh two).
4) At least one author has been "Fuck, you've attached my name to this shit? I'm out".

Lastly, their primary complaint is illustrated by the following quote from the creator of one of the slates (the one who ISN'T the most racist fucker I've ever heard of that wasn't from the 1800s. Seriously, Vox Day would be kicked out of the KKK for excessive racism. That's not getting into his religious views, which make Santorum look like a flaming atheist).

"A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women.
[...]
The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation…"

So in short, the butt-hurt people gaming the Hugos have apparently never read a sci-fi book. Or at least, never understood one. Ever. Stranger in a Strange Land? They must have missed it. Left Hand of Darkness? Missed it. What about 2001? Missed it. Let's go back -- White's Sector General stories? Missed it. Anything written by Asimov? Missed it. Dune? Totally missed it.

Seriously, let that complaint sink in. I'm literally drawing a blank when it comes to any award-winning -- fuck, any well known -- sci-fi book of the last four or five DECADES that wasn't about exploring things like racial prejudice or exploitation or ecology or SOME issue. For fucking Christ's sake, goddamn Star Trek had a scandalous interracial kiss. It had a fucking episode where a guy was half-white and half-black!

*sigh*. These idiots who claim to be rescuing the Hugos from some cabal of liberal degenerates (apparently run by John Scalzi of all people. Seriously, they HATE him) who have apparently hijacked sci-fi have either literally never read or never understood any prominent sci-fi book from the last 50 years.

The upshot of all this is: Vox Day's publishing house is gonna get a nice shot in the arm, totally on accident. Skin Game will win best novel, due to the other nominations just being (at best) thoroughly mediocre, and Sad and Rabid puppies are a bunch of morons who have never understood the genre they're fighting for.

Edited to add: Butcher wasn't aware his novel was part of Sad Puppies or Rabid Puppies or whatever. He's not planning on withdrawing his book though, and I can't really blame him.