Man, "Ancillary Justice" is so damn cool. A really great balance of hard sci-fi and space opera. LOVE the main character, Breq.
Man, "Ancillary Justice" is so damn cool. A really great balance of hard sci-fi and space opera. LOVE the main character, Breq.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
You got me hyped up for this one so I bought it off Amazon. Did you finish it yet by any chance? I'm going to start it tonight.Quoting megladon8 (view post)
I'm almost done with Stanger in a Strange Land (fantastic), and next up will be 2061: Odyssey Three or Rendezvous With Rama. Anyone read these?
No, about 2/3 through it dropped and became a convoluted mess. Completely killed my reading streak.
Sorry
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Right? Great one. Crazy ending.
Been wanting to read "Rama" for a while, but haven't taken the plyunge.
Currently reading 11/22/63. Not too far in, but enjoying it so far. What do you want, it's King, he write good.
That's ok, it wasn't expensive. I am liking it so far though.
I keep getting recommendations on Amazon and Goodreads for this author Hannu Rajaniemi.
Anyone read this author?
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Anyone ever read Pushing Ice?
Davis, I assume you've seen this?
http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org
Also:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Penguin-Scie.../dp/1405920734
The Einstein Intersection, by Samuel R. Delany
When I first read Dhalgren, also by Delany, I was surprised to discover how much Gene Wolfe had cribbed for his Book of the New Sun.
Now, after finishing The Einstein Intersection, I am beginning to think that Wolfe might just be a Delaney impersonator.
Between the two books, Delany covers much of the same ground as Wolfe in the way that he examines, subverts, builds up and destroys our past and present mythologies, while simultaneously building his own. In The Einstein Intersection, Delaney juxtaposes science fiction with fantasy and the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice with Elvis and the Beatles, and Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, all set in a post-post apocalyptic setting in which a race of aliens with unstable genetic codes have usurped humanity's place on Earth. To describe the plot in any kind of cohesive detail would take a feat of mental gymnastics that I am unprepared for at this time, nor would the effort do the work justice. There is a ton of stuff crammed into this short 130 page novel.
To put it simply: it's a total mind-melter.
It's also poetic and beautiful, violent and nasty, and simultaneously mean and uplifting. There were more than a dozen times in which I put the book down just to think about a certain idea or phrase, and it is ultimately rewarding and thought-provoking. Also, like Dhalgren, I'll be thinking about this one a lot, and plan to re-read it in the near future.
My favorite story is the one where the two vehicles meet on the dark highway.
Edit: I believe the story is called "Night Meeting". It's been a while since I've read it...
Last edited by Sven; 01-27-2016 at 07:30 PM.
With the ghosts?
Yeah, that's the one I think. "Night Meeting". Gosh, I may have to take it off the bookshelf and read it again.
That's it.
Great story. Bradbury weaves so many themes into these tales.
Read my first fiction book in a long damn time, probably since From Hell in 2014 (which I re-read in 2015), and that book was...
11/22/63
Which was mostly a great story but rushed the ending just a touch - I wanted more sense of...
[]
But that could've been another book in itself.
Weirdly, my favorite stuff was the idyllic life in Jodie where Jake meets Sadie and they just hang for a while and fall in love. One of King's best romances, in spite of, or maybe because of just how much punishment Sadie and Jake endure in the process. The past just keeps pressing against them. Even though their pairing makes that twist in the climax a bit of a foregone conclusion, although it sorta works as dramatic irony, given what we know about the past.
Funny that the TV show is more forthright about the racism of the '60s, though. King's tried to capture some of that before, particularly with Detta/Odetta in The Drawing of the Three, but he sorta just glides over it in the novel. The racism functions mostly to add dimension to Oswald, whose rejection of American norms include the subjugation of black people.
If we had a race between this and King's other brick-sized political novel of recent years, Under the Dome, I'd probably go with Dome, which is simply more fun and ramshackle and insane.
Last edited by Dead & Messed Up; 03-07-2016 at 05:07 AM.
Under the Dome is so freaking good.
It's a masterpiece of setting and location. The way King depicts the small town and the way he has the characters interact with it and each other is masterful; I imagine he must have drawn a huge poster-sized map of the town and had each character depicted by a different color set of foot prints to show where and when the were at certain places, ala Family Circus.
The first 250 pages might be the best 250 pages King has ever written.
The more I think about the book, the more I like it. The opening sections are fantastic and remarkably well-paced, completely agree, and they play to King's ability to create immediate characters - not ocean-deep people, but vivid, distinct, instantly-recognizable people with firm motivations, archetypes with just enough dimension, and he builds the entire town with a sort of madcap glee, like he can't wait to knock the dominoes over.
You're right, he definitely had to pore over the geography and sort it all out, but it doesn't feel leaden or pre-ordained. And then all of a sudden someone will look across the street and see someone walking somewhere, and that's enough to turn the entire story 90 degrees.
And the [] is one of his all-time great horror sequences. It's hard to put into words just how effectively that pulled me along, the jaw-dropping tension and horror and tragedy, and the buried laughter underneath, like the laughter of a guy who can't believe he's getting away with it all.
Last edited by Dead & Messed Up; 03-18-2016 at 07:23 AM.
I think King is at his best when he writes his sprawling stories of entire communities of unique characters. I actually much prefer his long novels to his short fiction (in general, of course).
I can only think of a handful of other writers who can write such an enormous cast of characters so clearly, without any confusion for the reader at all.
George R. R. Martin ain't got shit on Stephen King.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I agree - I greatly prefer King when he's writing about a larger group of characters in an epic way.
I'm less fond of his novels when they're on a more personal level, with a few exceptions like Insomnia.
I think this this goes to show that he's better at painting with a wider brush, as opposed to detailed examinations.
I mean... I think broad canvases worked in The Stand and 'salem's Lot, but I have no love for his small-towns-gone-bad in The Tommyknockers and Needful Things.
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