/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

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>Fantasy
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>Sci-Fi
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why does that stupid dinosaur meme user keep posting about his dislikes? literally no one else cares.

each generation of genre fiction serves a different emphasis.

That doesn't imply that all emphases are equally good.

So? What a trite observation. Water doesn't taste as good as food but people still drink it.

Looking for a req. Ive read most stephenson, just got done with revelation space series, fan of ai singularity ala metamorphasis of prime intellect or robopacalypse. Prefer harder sf but it doesnt have to be.

Looking for anything along those lines that was written semi recently preferably.

I'm pointing out your trite observation. "Each generation of genre fiction serves a different emphasis" is not a counterargument to the claim that some generations are better than others.

A roof of cloud stretching to every horizon held the air motionless beneath it, as though the earth and sky, pressing towards one another, had squeezed away its breath. Below the cruddled underside of the unbroken cloud-roof, the air, through some peculiar trick of light, which had something of an underwater feeling about it, reflected enough of itself from the gaunt back of Gormenghast to make the herons restive as they stood and shivered on a long-abandoned pavement half in and half out of the clouds.

The stone stairway which led up to this pavement was lost beneath a hundred seasons of obliterating ivy, creepers and strangling weeds. No one alive had ever struck their heels into the great cushions of black moss that pranked the pavement or wandered along its turreted verge, where the herons were and the jackdaws fought, and the sun’s rays, and the rain, the frost, the snow and the winds took their despoiling turns.

There had once been a great casement facing upon this terrace. It was gone. Neither broken glass nor iron nor rotten wood was anywhere to be seen. Beneath the moss and ground creepers it may be that there were other and deeper layers, rotten with antiquity; but where the long window had stood the hollow darkness of a hall remained. It opened its unprotected mouth midway along the pavement’s inner verge. On either side of this cavernous opening, widely separated, were the raw holes in the stonework that were once the supporting windows. The hall itself was solemn with herons. It was there they bred and tended their young. Preponderately a heronry, yet there were recesses and niches in which by sacredness of custom the egrets and bitterns congregated.

This hall, where once the lovers of a bygone time paced and paused and turned one about another in forgotten measures to the sound of forgotten music, this hall was carpeted with lime-white sticks. Sometimes the setting sun as it neared the horizon slanted its rays into the hall, and as they skimmed the rough nests the white network of the branches flared on the floor like leprous corals, and here and there (if it were spring) a pale blue-green egg shone like a precious stone, or a nest of young, craning their long necks towards the window, their thin bodies covered with powder-down, seemed stage-lit in the beams of the westering sun.

The late sunbeams shifted across the ragged floor and picked out the long, lustrous feathers that hung from the throat of a heron that stood by a rotten mantelpiece; and then a whiteness once more as the forehead of an adjacent bird flamed in the shadows … and then, as the light traversed the hall, an alcove was suddenly dancing with the varied bars and blotches and the reddish-yellow of the bitterns.

As dusk fell, the greenish light intensified in the masonry. Far away, over the roofs, over the outer wall of Gormenghast, over the marshes, the wasteland, the river and the foothills with their woods and spinneys, and over the distant hazes of indeterminate terrain, the claw-shaped head of Gormenghast Mountain shone like a jade carving. In the green air the herons awoke from their trances and from within the hall there came the peculiar chattering and clanking sound of the young as they saw the darkness deepening and knew that it would soon be time for their parents to go hunting.

Crowded as they had been in their heronry with its domed roof, once golden and green with a painting, but now a dark, disintegrating surface where flakes of paint hung like the wings of moths – yet each bird appeared as a solitary figure as it stepped from the hall to the terrace: each heron, each bittern, a recluse, pacing solemnly forwards on its thin, stiltlike legs.

Of a sudden in the dusk, knocking as it were a certain hollow note to which their sweet ribs echoed, they were in air – a group of herons, their necks arched back, their ample and rounded wings rising and falling in leisurely flight: and then another and another: and then a night-heron with a ghastly and hair-raising croak, more terrible than the unearthly booming note of a pair of bitterns, who soaring and spiralling upwards and through the clouds to great heights above Gormenghast, boomed like bulls as they ascended.

The pavement stretched away in greenish darkness. The windows gaped, but nothing moved that was not feathered. And nothing had moved there, save the winds, the hailstones, the clouds, the rain-water and the birds for a hundred years.

Under the high green clawhead of Gormenghast Mountain the wide stretches of marshland had suddenly become stretches of tension, of watchfulness.

Each in its own hereditary tract of water the birds stood motionless, with glistening eyes and heads drawn back for the fatal stroke of the dagger-like beak. Suddenly and all in a breath, a beak was plunged and withdrawn from the dark water, and at its lethal point there struggled a fish. In another moment the heron was mounted aloft in august and solemn flight.

From time to time during the long night these birds returned, sometimes with frogs or water-mice in their beaks or newts or lily buds.

But now the terrace was empty. On the marshlands every heron was in its place, immobile, ready to plunge its knife. In the hall the nestlings were, for the moment, strangely still.

The dead quality of the air between the clouds and the earth was strangely portentous. The green, penumbral light played over all things. It had crept into the open mouth of the hall where the silence was.

It was then that a child appeared. Whether a boy or a girl or an elf there was not time to tell. But the delicate proportions were a child’s and the vitality was a child’s alone. For one short moment it had stood on a turret at the far end of the terrace and then it was gone, leaving only the impression of something overcharged with life – of something slight as a hazel switch. It had hopped (for the movement was more a hop than a leap or a step) from the turret into the darkness beyond and was gone almost as soon as it had appeared, but at the same moment that the phantom child appeared, a zephyr had broken through the wall of moribund air and run like a gay and tameless thing over the gaunt, harsh spine of Gormenghast’s body. It played with sere flags, dodged through arches, spiralled with impish whistles up hollow towers and chimneys, until, diving down a saw-toothed fissure in a pentagonal roof, it found itself surrounded by stern portraits – a hundred sepia faces cracked with spiders’ webs; found itself being drawn towards a grid in the stone floor and, giving way to itself, to the law of gravity and to the blue thrill of a down-draught, it sang its way past seven storeys and was, all at once, in a hall of dove-grey light and was clasping Titus in a noose of air.

Did you enjoy that exciting chapter of Gormenghast?

Count to a Trillion and its sequels.

I'm reading this, my sister wants to read my copy so she'll get it soon, and I'm pushing my wife to read it after that.

It's been fun so far.

>mfw 80's japanese cover homages Leiji Matsumoto looking like vaporwave art

>There are better readers than dinosaur speglord
>Lesser readers' opinions don't matter contra their betters
>Therefore dinosaur sperglord isn't allowed to enjoy his preferred books.

Idiot.

What are your guys' thoughts on Ringworld?

Wow. This is real? We definitely talked about Banks being anime in English lit form in the last couple threads.

I like how they romanize his name as I-an "M" Bankusu.

Player of Games was fine, but not really my favorite Culture novel if you know what I mean. I liked the idea of the premise, but maybe I didn't care much for the character.

Count to a Trillion is more ridiculous (in the way you're looking for) but you should read The Golden Age first since it's a little more tightly written. If you can't stand TGA, there's no point bothering with Count to a Trillion.

Wich one is your favorite of the 10, user?
>Would it be use of weapons?

I wonder if banks was a weeaboo, probably no journalist ever asked him about mangos and annie mays.
>NOW, somebody ask her widow so we could know.

Not him but I really like Matter and The Hydrogen Sonata

I'm reading Use of Weapons right now. So far so good.

...

Some guy in a standalone thread was asking about Seveneves, by Neal S.


If you enjoy hard sci fi and tedious details then you'll enjoy everything from Acts I to II, really is quite a riveting story once shit loses it's cool, literally and metaphorically

I've always found the Culture itself kind of icky and weird. I get the logic behind it but yeah.

Yes, it's real, it's the 1988 japanese cover.
stirlingcentrescottishstudies.wordpress.com/tag/iain-banks/

I disagree with this. Banks may have been less naive than Lucas, but the Culture is still pandering, puerile popular scifi.

Banks had no answer as to how the Culture would deal with an empire with the same level of technology, but retained their gredy impulse. And for good reason, utopias are extremely fragile.

Is it a fun series? It's funny and playful, so yeah. Is it serious literature? Don't kid yourself.

>icky and weird

Yeah, I should have recommended Golden Age first. It holds together much better and sticks closer to the themes you mentioned.

I kind of agree with your post about the series, but got to point to this little piece of trivia:

>Banks had no answer as to how the Culture would deal with an empire with the same level of technology, but retained their gredy impulse.

Well, the Idirans had the Homomda in their side, both of them were in the same tier of technology as the culture, the Idirans slightly below Culture, but the Homomda were regarded as even more advanced technologically than the Culture itself. So that answers it, how would they deal with a situation like that?: The Idiran-Culture war, the Idirans were winning at the start of it, but Culture won in the long term because they had more resources, and the Idirans weren't that smart even with the Homomda help. Eventually the Homomda had enough of the Idiran's idiocy and left them on their own, but the Homomda were aiming seriously for the annihilation of the Culture.

Wait, where's the punchline?

Does he not know Star Wars is for adults?

Maybe he don't, since I know some adults that are also into dragon ball Z and regard it as a valid form of adult pastime. SO your mileage may vary...

Yifferiffic

Thanks. I was getting a really heavy SJW vibe along with a lot of empty pop culture references (e.g. Neil deGrasse Tyson as DuBois; HRC as JBF; Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos as Sean Probst). The majority of the characters are strong womyn who have been mildly disdained by the patriarchy but who have soldiered through and now must save the world.

I'm not sure how Veeky Forums feels about SJW in general but I have become so bored with it and the PC concept in general that I just don't want to look past it anymore. The idea that even a sizable minority of the world would pull together to send a bunch of wondergirls to a orbital swarm on the off chance they'll avoid tumblring long enough to repopulate the planet is asinine, in my view. I mean, my first suspicion would be, why would I help global elitists or their kids survive at all--better we all die than that. So I have had a hard time suspending disbelief right off the bat.

As for the disaster bits, well, I've seen plenty of disaster movies so I don't think there's that much for me to gain there.

>the female audiobook narrator uses hurrdurr voices for every male character

>suspending disbelief
Seveneves in 2 words.

>>I'm not sure how Veeky Forums feels about SJW in general
Pretty split between ideologues of both sides and benevolent trolls, just like Veeky Forums.

As for Seveneves, it feels like it's SJW but that's a facade.

The stronk womyn are only in charge because the strong men keep sacrificing themselves for the good of the group. Hillary tumblrs most of the survivors off into her own group, most of them die, and they're eating each other by the time they reunite. The Charles Stross analogue is... I won't spoil that one, but it's hilarious. Anyway it's fantastic dark comedy and it's portrayed as a miracle that these strong female characters save anything at all.

I am grateful for your articulate rebuttal. However, according to the wiki, which sources Consider Phlebas, the Homomda were only maneuvering to prevent the Culture from threatening their own interests, not total annihilation prima facie. The Homimda appear to have been a bureaucratic commercial empire, not one that acted on aggression and base instinct. As soon as amiable terms were established, long term peace and trade agreements followed.

Something like the Affront or Idiran with post scarcity technology, but with the realization that they could still dominate by neutralizing the productive capabilities of other civilizations, would have posed a serious threat. And one I would like to see.

>I was getting a really heavy SJW vibe
>I have become so bored with it and the PC concept in general
>on the off chance they'll avoid tumblring
What does any of this meme?

>As for Seveneves, it feels like it's SJW but that's a facade.
>The stronk womyn are only in charge because the strong men keep sacrificing themselves for the good of the group. Hillary tumblrs most of the survivors off into her own group, most of them die, and they're eating each other by the time they reunite. The Charles Stross analogue is... I won't spoil that one, but it's hilarious. Anyway it's fantastic dark comedy and it's portrayed as a miracle that these strong female characters save anything at all.

Hmm. Maybe I'll give it another try but the orbital swarm/eugenics experiment concept is more than vaguely reminding me of Nancy Kress' Sleepless trilogy (which I liked but don't care to re-read in another form).

Found the benevolent troll, apparently.

Finished Small Gods, overall a pretty enjoyable read. Quite liked the portrayal of the philosophers, the desert setting and the lack of romance.

I particularly enjoyed the parody of Galileo's eppur si muove because it still managed to be exciting and badass in its own way. At the very ending the old man did kinda tug at my heartstrings but it might be just me cause I'm a sucker for those selfless acts of compassion.

I like female protagonists and themes of women fighting against oppressive societies and attaining freedom. That was a real issue in the past and any sort of fantasy-type setting with low tech is likely to have that. I think it's a great thing to write about.

Which is why I don't really like fantasy settings that try to avoid the issue, either by having everyone act like they aren't living in a primitive society concerned with resources and survival, or by having the female characters easily break superficial chains to succeed.

If you want to write a story about a tough female warrior she's still going to have a hell of a time fighting and I want to read about how difficult it is for her to fight and kill men. It makes it more meaningful when she succeeds, you know?

With SF though I think it's less of an issue because anyone can press a button or pull a trigger. I don't think you need strong female characters or even strong male characters, you can just have people of whatever gender doing things. There's no reason for some sort of gender-positive SF story because it's an environment that negates gender issues inherently.

Well, unless you're writing some sort of dystopian story about women being used for baby factories by evil men but that just takes you back to the same sort of themes as the fantasy stuff anyway. I'm not really going to see it as SF.

>Something like the Affront or Idiran with post scarcity technology, but with the realization that they could still dominate by neutralizing the productive capabilities of other civilizations, would have posed a serious threat. And one I would like to see.

It appears those are wiped out by previously sublimed civilizations, being this the reason the Dra'zon keep "planets of the dead" as a kind of memento mori and example for younger civilizations, and the fact that nobody wants to enrage the Dra'zon (or their still roaming avatars) for fear of being wiped out just like that for being naughty enough younglins in the galactic neighborhood.

The other option is that if an "Affront-like" civilization gets into sublimation first, nothing like the Culture could even get to rise in a huge part of the virgo supercluster.

More based on the antiswarm from Anathem. Also you keep forgetting your trip, this isn't your quest thread.

>With SF though I think it's less of an issue because anyone can press a button or pull a trigger. I don't think you need strong female characters or even strong male characters, you can just have people of whatever gender doing things. There's no reason for some sort of gender-positive SF story because it's an environment that negates gender issues inherently.
That's if muscle were the only gender difference. Before the military training fiascos feminists were claiming even that didn't matter, that women could pass special forces training if the man stopped putting them down.

Stephenson in Seveneves confronts a lot of those differences. The men are more prone to self-sacrifice and suicide, and less resistant to radiation. The women aren't as reckless - one of the most telling moments is when the astronaut woman realizes Elon Musk built a nuclear rocket. Absolutely idiotic, very likely to fail, but if it works they get an iceberg. He has only seven Evens surviving because of those gender differences.

More like trash general.

Thinking about getting into The Expanse. Worth my time?

That sort of reduces the culture to fable.

May I ask your name? Or without breaking anonymity, how might I distinguish you in future threads? N-no reason, i-it's not like I like you or anything senpai...

>SJW

bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/sad-puppies-3-the-unraveling-of-an-unreliable-field/

>That’s what’s happened to Science Fiction & Fantasy literature. 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. Battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders? Yup. A gritty military SF war story, where the humans defeat the odds and save the Earth. And so on, and so forth.

>These days, you can’t be sure.

>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, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?

>There’s a sword-swinger on the cover, but is it really about knights battling dragons? Or are the dragons suddenly the good guys, and the sword-swingers are the oppressive colonizers of Dragon Land?

It's high pulp, nothing wrong with testing the first volume.

You like pulpy SF action/adventure? Go for it.

He could become a Frazetta avatarfag.

Torgersen did more damage to his cause with that article than anything the anti-Puppies did. There is a lot of nuance in the Puppy campaigns but that article was carte blanche - I know they would have done it anyway, but this was a straight invitation - for his his enemies to misrepresent the entire movement as atavistic cretins yearning for Gernsbackian artlessness.

>There is a lot of nuance in the Puppy campaigns

looks like we got ourselves a live one

I thought books 1 through 3 were really good, 4 kinda felt like an off-ship Star Trek episode/bottle episode if that makes sense, and 5 was the best it's been so far.

Yes, I was thinking the same, when sci-fi goes up to describe what's going on at post-singular scales, it stops being sci-fi and starts being mythology. This god vs that god, and such demi-god this and that... Weirdly fractal in terms of human narrative. Maybe mythopoesis is indeed the tesseract cookie-cutter of all human-made fiction.

And yes, the culture is kind of a fable, they are the joke of many advanced civilizations around, they regard the culture as childish, hedonist & tacky. Somehow the culture is based as fuck and keeps growing and growing in such way, never "maturing", avoiding collapse because "the minds" are excellent managers besides being so ad-hoc, care-free, tactless and witty humored. That, and some teeny utopic idealist form of machiavellism. Don't know how meta that could be.

>May I ask your name?
No worries user, but I'm not that much regular here, I could be posting daily for a week, or a month then I'll post back again in a year or two, and as I grow older I find myself posting less and less here. Anyway, had been great to read you neat points and ponder a little along.

Yeah 4 was definitely a "mid-season episode where Sisko and Quark get trapped in the holodeck" book.

Get the fuck out of here you cuck

>Covers and content must match hurr durr you cuck nerdos with an agenda.

I dislike SJWs feminazis as any reasonable person would. But after reading that, er, rant, it exposes himself as suffering not only from lower than average IQ, but from andropause and/or some sort of early onset dementia too.

>Who cucks the cuckers?

Spot Thunderknot

IKR, he's not really helping no-one with that. Somebody please explain him the meaning of several concepts important to know if previously you want to buy books either offline or online, such as: Synopsis, Reviews, Sneak Peeks, etc. Not even mentioning what's a public library.

Only an idiot would claim "false advertising" from book covers.

And yes, fuck SJWs and their cucked serfs, but that guy is laughable.

40 Cucks

>That's as many as four tens.
>And that's terrible.

Thanks lads, gonna get the box set and check it out.

Yes, it's moody, beautifully written, well paced, takes you for a ride to another place. It's like reading a painting.

I am going to write a novel about Veeky Forums.
>volcano/earthquake/tsunami kills a lot of people in Japan
>government freaks out and starts throwing massive amounts of money to their space program, calls on all citizens to do their part, suddenly they're on WWII footing colonizing Earth orbit
>to cut costs they man some of the orbital staging stations with volunteers from other countries
>it's horrifically dangerous but they accept anyone, all these NEETs with nowhere to go volunteer like mad
>Jack London in space
>depressurization/radiation sickness/the bends/losing a supply shipment/mental illness/the trap going psycho
>none of them live past 30
You're gonna be stars.

I really liked the first one. Thought it was fun to read.
I didn't like the direction of the story afterwards though, got way too weird for me. Book 2 was still alright, but 3 had me skipping pages until I had to put it down.

Definitely worth a try.

Any SFF novels you guys have read that involve women taking huge god/giant/alien dick and liking it?

I've come across it in The Magicians, Snow Crash (sorta), and The Wizard Knight, looking for more

No, I did read one about a strong, independent woman joining an intergalactic telepathic matriarchal warrior race though.

I want to write a book where staying a virgin until 30 literally makes you a wizard. So most wizards are creepy waifufag shut-in NEETs with tulpas and pissbottles and such.

Also when a woman gets enough "mana" dumped into them by enough men they become witches. Naturally witches and wizards are sworn enemies.

>I want to write a book where staying a virgin until 30 literally makes you a wizard

Ha, so basically The Catholic Catechism?

>Hello, everyone–

>As you’ve probably noticed, retailers have been doing funny things with pre-orders of THE THORN OF EMBERLAIN, and the reason for that is because, despite all our hopes and the heroic patience of my publishers, we’re not going to make the expected September release date.

>I am incredibly sorry about this, and I want it to be understood that there’s nobody to blame but me. In addition to the expected obstacles, I severely complicated my life this year by moving. The process of seeking a mortgage, securing a house, and moving across half a continent (although it was necessary, and has been mostly joyful) has eaten months of my time and made it very difficult to recover lost ground on several projects. Oh– Elizabeth Bear and I are getting married, too. Another real joy, but it’s eating spare time like you wouldn’t believe.

>We are trying very hard to ensure none of this messes up my planned appearances for the rest of the year (I’ll still be at Worldcon, and in the UK in September, and at IceCon in October).

>The release date information in retailer databases is going to do goofy things for a few weeks, because that’s just the way these things work, and there really isn’t anything we can do about it. Please ignore any date you see for the time being. Have a little patience, and we’ll and we’ll have another update soon.

GRRM 3.0 confirmed

But the minute they get magic they turn themselves into little girls anyway.

Remember when authors actually wrote instead of masturbating all over their fanbase?

so you will finally have a fantasy novel with a little girl protag

but I'm already working on one of those

You're doing God's work, user.

Hi user

>Getting married again

Didn't learn his lesson the first time I see.

Neuromancer and A Fire Upon the Deep

Fucker. KNEW THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED

Probably a cucktian, can have sex unless he is married, and he is terribly horny.

Fuck televising Foundation, that would dreadful.

They could do a serious based off Hyperion.

Imagine it, a set of 7 hour or two hour long shows, for each pilgrims tale, then a season finale when they advance beyond the grass sea. They could begin and end every episode with the plot points outside of the pilgrims tale.

I think it would work very well, Hyperion was written almost episodically enough for it to be produced in a serial way without loosing too much story.

Fall of Hyperion would be trickier, as it had a much more conventional and almost confusing mixed narrative. But by this point fans would be so committed and angry with the massive cliffhanger at the end of Hyperion that I'm sure they could slog through.

I'm just freeball thinking, I smoked half a joint and I'm listening to the Civilization Beyond Earth soundtrack.

Which of your favourite /sff/ books would you like translated into TV/Film?

I like the first two foundation books.

The TV show is going to be awful though.

They're marvelous books which I love, but the entire concept would not work in a televised environment. No real recurring characters, huge exposition would be needed at the start of every new chapter.

They could televise the last of the trilogy, or maybe just the Mule and Generals tales, but the first book would be difficult.

Hyperion would be excellent, I agree. It's resistant to schlockatizing because of its arty design, and relatively easy to film; a lot of its gee-whiz points could have been filmed in the 20s.

It is an interesting question as to what books are more or less easy to film. PKD was awfully popular a few years ago. Maybe Banks? He's popular enough and CG's good enough. Seveneves has plenty of reddit value, that got The Martian a movie.

Oh, Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet would be perfect. Not as weird or complex as Honor Harrington, flat characters ready for actors to insert into, semi-episodic format. Lots of staring at screens, but a good director could make half-second space battles exciting by explaining everything with pretty colors and lines. Maybe a counter on the screen to show how much supplies they have, for the real autists. And they could grab a lot of autist bucks from it, I guarantee.

I, personally, would love to see Wright's The Golden Age rendered into absolutely trippy animation by the Chosen One formed from the genes of Richard Williams and Satoshi Kon, but that won't happen soon, and neither will an Anathem miniseries.

In that case do you mind if I vocalize my misgivings with Second Foundation?

I really loved The Mule as a character and what he represented as a threat to Seldon's perfect system, but the whole third book I felt undermined it all. The whole cast being basically robbed of their free will wasn't inconsistent with what was being presented, but it still took the soul of the story away in my opinion.

I dunno, I just didn't like that direction it took.

I can sympathize with Asimov. He has this incredible plot where scientists can graph the future, perfect blend of myth and SF: a mathematician arrives in the palace with a prophecy of doom. That's the essence of Golden Age SF. And what are statistical sciences vulnerable to? Outliers, and they happen, and Terminus' faith in Seldon actually makes it easier for the Mule to conquer them.

Now, if you're Asimov, what do you do next? As a storybook prophecy, the thousand-year restoration of the Empire has to happen; that's a promise by the author. On the surface level of the story, we have to see if psychohistory can recover, if it all pays off. Can't just have Terminus declare a new Empire right then. Prophecy's not right, story timeframe's not right. What do they do for the next seven hundred years? Try to work out psychohistory with the Mule in their calculations? But what if there's another outlier?

And I think it's Asimov's faith in science that gave us the second Foundation. Of course Seldon would have known outliers happen, so as Asimov's self-insert he was prepared for it. And that's pretty Golden Age too, for the wise scientist to be proven even wiser. I would have done it differently but I can respect how difficult it was.

I have heard Psychohistorical Crisis is excellent, though.

I just want to see The Shrike realised in live action, and that one fight where Kassad broke the sound barrier with a kick.

The third Foundation book can't hold a candle to the other two of the trilogy. I personally hated the scenes where the Second Foundations talked through like fidgeting and raising eyebrows slightly.

Everything with the Ousters was grade A.

Weekly reminder to read sacred 'punk' trinity:
Neuromancer
The Difference Engine
Windup Girl

Christ the start of Kassads tale, where he's scrabbling around in that crashed spaceship and climbing into that dead guys suit, fuck. Most intense shit I'd read in a while, and after the spooking depressing first chapter and very detached vibe of the actual pilgrims movements that entire chapter blew me away

Combination of gee-whiz space tech and tactics and this ancient Roman kind of idea where these barbarians live outside the marches and we have no idea how strong they are or what they can do. One of the most memorable fight scenes I've read, stands head and shoulders above the rest of the book for me. Sure I remember the Merlin syndrome and the bathroom raft, but the Ouster fight scene made me want to write space battles.

Daily reminder that Neuromancer is less interesting than an 80s action b-movie because at least you can watch those ironically.

Yeah I definitely understand all that. Asmiov did a great job with the series and fleshing out scientific positivism and so forth, I just don't like what it does to the storytelling elements of the book because it robs them of agency. Nothing anyone does in the book really matters because they're all pre-programmed, and when I figured that out I wasn't really interested in them as characters.

I did hold out hope that they'd break the Second Foundation once they came into the story but that doesn't really fit the narrative so I shouldn't have expected it.

Yeah, the story petered out from the Mule on. Arkady was cute but she couldn't carry it.

>Trite
Tripe

IIRC Anne McCaffery did a series about how humanity got conquered by a alien empire, and a human woman escapes slavery with the help of her alien boyfriend but they get caught and sent to some remote space colony because the aliens are space-racist about miscegenation.

nobody listens to you because you're shit and should feel bad

Re-reading Tau Zero. God I love that book.

Just finished The End of Eternity by Asimov a really liked it.

Any other books where time travel is well implement and not used as some hacky plot device?

John C. Wright, City on the Edge of Time. Well, it is a hacky plot device, but it's well-implemented to be a hacky plot device on purpose.
>tfw time travel can never be invented, only given to inventors by crazed future versions of themselves

>library still doesnt have a copy of obelisk gate
Why don't the publishers send them copies early so they can have them ready by release date?