👽🚀 pew pew let's have a sci-fi thread pew pew 👽🚀

[The_Excession]

I’ve been trying to find out what this film was called for years, saw it when I was young and never heard about it again. Dead pleasing to put a name to it.

[kenako]

I think I was the other side of that awareness divide - read the Night’s Dawn stuff when I was getting home late/early (6.30 am) from shift work and it was a nice easy (also surreal due to weird body clock messages and nature of book) way to wind down before sleeping, but then I read some of his other stuff after a bit of a gap, and it was pretty awful. Misspent Youth basically differentiates it’s female characters as ‘the one with the killer rack’, ‘the one with the hot ass’, ‘the one with the great legs’, so gross. And yeah, totally agree about his, uh, typing technique.

that said, when he’s not doing that, the books were good fun (if long), enjoyed the commonwealth saga.

Seconding votes for anything Alastair Reynolds - Inhibitors saga obvs, but I like Century Rain as a standalone to lend people as an example of the feel of modern british sci fi. Reread Player of Games by Banks recently, thoroughly enjoyed that (although that too was a bit laddy at times)

[kenako]

Yeah, I’ve been getting through some of them - only the first two so far, but part of the delay was because I ordered a second hand paperback, and when it arrived it was an airport softback/hardback thing, so it’s bloody enormous and I can’t fit it in my bag at the moment. It’s called Memories of Ice or something, so I thought I’d save it for the winter.

[FKA_Adam_Jeffson]

I honestly haven’t read a page of any of his other books. With books even more than album my unintentional approach seems to be read one or two defining works by an author before moving her on to something else. Like Vonnegut is possibly my favourite ever author, but I’ve not yet felt any urge to explore his works beyond the 3 I already have finished. Similarly, I’ve never read anything else by Alice Walker, despite The Color Purple being astounding.

Yeah the username was a funny one - decided to go with it when the new forums were introduced, as I was reading the book at the time. Thought at least someone would pick up on it as I also had the cover from Purple Rain as my picture until I started going Zapp Brannigan in the past year. Approximately 0 people got it, or if anyone did they didn’t find it especially witty (which tbf it wasn’t)

[NickDS]

If anyone’s interested in streampunk/alt history/Victoriana etc here’s a few series I’ve enjoyed:

Burton and Swinburne series
Fictional adventures of the non-fictional explorer and poet sidekick. References real world people, events and myths with a bit of time travel messing things up which explains why it’s not like our past. This gets explored more as the series goes on with parallel universes and time travel becoming a big part of it.

Gideon Smith series
No explanations for the alt history this time just what starts off as a straight up adventure story about a young lad from a small town obsessed with penny dreadful stories about the Hero of the Empire which than starts to subvert a lot of the Victorian tropes as he gets sucked into this adventure. Interesting world building that goes further than airships and clockwork men (but there’s those too) also explores America in a steampunk world for something a bit different than the usual settings.

Newbury and Hobbes series
Mystery/adventure stories about two agents of the crown (a corrupt and aged Queen Victoria kept alive by machines) at turn of the 20th century. Fairly light but entertaining reads that get better after the first book.

The Ghost series
Set in the same universe as Newbury and Hobbes but this time in 1930s New York with a batman/spirit vigilante analog. Again, just fun adventure stories.

The Mechanical (Alchemy Wars trilogy)
Something a bit different, this time set early 20th century in a world where the Calvinist Dutch have used alchemy and created a slave race of mechanical servants and conquered Europe and the catholic French government and Pope are in exile in New France (i.e. Québec). Unbeknownst to most of the Dutch the Mechanicals have consciousness and are compelled to follow any orders only because they feel great pain if they don’t. The story follows one of the mechanicals who obtains free will and ends up escaping to North America as well as the resistance from the perspective of the French spymaster plus lots of stuff about free will vs theological pre-determination.

The Glass Books Trilogy
More Victoriana with only minor fantasy trappings (the glass books) that follows three characters getting embroiled in the machinations of a shadowy cabal. It’s pretty densely written and you often see the scenes from different perspectives or have each characters bits cross over with the others (like a blood stain one character sees is then explained in another character chapter later). Can be a bit slow but I enjoyed them.

Always interested in any similar recommendations too.

[mrmrongov]

well, I suppose it is a reasonably obscure reference (being a penguin classic counts for nothing these days it seems)! Still feel as though I should have got it though, so maybe you can count it as a near miss…

[colonel_getafe]

Joined my local library and they have this eBook service, thought I might be able to get some good sci-fi on there. So disappointing. The sci-fi section is all YA fantasy, movie adaptations and GoT rip-offs. What’s Peter F. Hamilton like?

[ghosthalo]

great post this

[Twinkletoes]

What’s Peter F. Hamilton like?

Quite a bit of discussion on him upthread - based on the one I’ve read, I would not recommend him, but other have more positive views on some of his series.

[LastAstronaut]

I initially recommended his Nights Dawn trilogy but it was a good few years since I read it and as @Twinkletoes said, there’s a discussion up thread about the way he writes about his female characters which I did not remember so maybe don’t start with that one!

I quite enjoyed his Void trilogy, but going on my recollection of the other one I recommend it with a caveat that maybe his gender politics are not that progressive

[UncleRetrospective]

“What’s Peter F. Hamilton like?”

I really liked Pandora’s Star and it’s sequel.
There are a few dodgy bits with gender politics but it is some absolutely ripping, pulpy sci-fi and loads of fun.

[colonel_getafe]

Dunno how I missed that!

Ok I won’t rush to read The Void trilogy from the eLibrary then.

[UncleRetrospective]

The Void trilogy is a sequel to the Pandora’s Star books, so worth reading them first if you were going to start.

[kenako]

This is a decent blog post on it, the good and bad https://ascraeus.org/peter-f-hamiltons-women-problems/

[LastAstronaut]

That’s an interesting and for me, quite worrying read. In that although I remember the character names he mentioned I honestly don’t remember thinking there was anything wrong which is making me question my own mind! I read that post thinking “that’s terrible” so why did I not think this when i actually read the books?

You could say I was carried away by the story but I would have thought I would have balked at some of the female character arcs.

I have another sequel of his on my wishlist to read (Night Without Stars - Chronicle of the Fallers book 2) which I will still no doubt read but I will be much more conscious about his treatment of his female characters this time!

[kenako]

Tbf, I only really noticed in misspent youth, it can slip by you when you’re introduced to characters over the course of several hundred pages especially when there’s multiple settings and everything is kind of chaos. He’s not particularly great at characters full stop, it’s more the setting that’s enjoyable, so you kind of get used to badly written characters and the more toxic stuff maybe slips by? Idk. I often only realise this stuff in conversation or online discussions after finishing

[The_Cosh]

Just finished Ice by Anna Kavan

I just read this a few weeks ago and couldn’t really get much out of it. There are a few nice passages and the central image of the advancing ice is great but everything else was pretty dull. It’s a fine line: I prefer my sci-fi abstract and metaphorical rather than space-welding but I can’t be doing with characters running around under portentous soubriquets rather than actual names.

Talking of sci-fi which is big on mood and ideas at the expense of mechanics, I’ve been digging into the Strugatsky Brothers lately. Roadside Picnic is the real juicy stuff: what went into the film is good, what’s different is just as interesting. Hard To Be a God took a bit of mental readjustment but was ultimately quite enjoyable. It’s half gritty reboot of the 3 musketeers and half satire of the idea that history/people can ever be guided or improved. The novel is framed with two chapters set in a different, tantalisingly strange world which is a lot more in line with what I’d expected.

Currently reading Monday Starts on Saturday, which is different again. I think my ignorance of Russian folklore might be a problem with this one but there’s been enough going on to hold my attention so far.

End of the World sci-fi: you could do worse than try Fred Hoyle’s The Black Cloud. It’s an emininently British take on the impending Apocalypse. Scientists interpret partial data and drink tea; millions of people die offstage but it’s fine because having your hypothesis disproved is just as big a part of science as building bombs; Fred takes a pop at amateur astronomers and the comedy Russian swears. Great fun.

Utopian sci-fi: Kim Stanley Robinson’s belief that any problem can be solved with a scientific conference is quite endearing but everything since Years of Rice & Salt has been too dry for me.

Anne Leckie: Ancillary Justice was pretty great but the two sequels were unnecessary at best.

Short stories: With Gardner Dozois dying a few months ago, what’s going to replace the annual Mammoth Book of Best SF as the place to pick up on what’s new and good for people like me who’re never going to spend time reading monthly magazines? So much great stuff in those books. At least I’m behind and have a couple to catch up on.

[colonel_getafe]

End of the World sci-fi: you could do worse than try Fred Hoyle’s The Black Cloud. It’s an emininently British take on the impending Apocalypse. Scientists interpret partial data and drink tea; millions of people die offstage but it’s fine because having your hypothesis disproved is just as big a part of science as building bombs; Fred takes a pop at amateur astronomers and the comedy Russian swears. Great fun.

I enjoyed this. The main character is blatantly who Hoyle wishes he was (can’t remember the literary term for this) and he’s got a huge chip on his shoulder about various things but it was an interesting take on how academic scientists would react to that kind of scenario.

[ghosthalo]

@The_Cosh

There are a few nice passages and the central image of the advancing ice is great but everything else was pretty dull.

would you be entirely shocked if i told you anna kavan was apparently dosed to the nines on heroin while she wrote it?

[The_Cosh]

@ghosthalo

would you be entirely shocked if i told you anna kavan was apparently dosed to the nines on heroin while she wrote it?

The line about her tennis coach in the blurb was far and away my favourite part of the book!

@colonel_getafe

The main character is blatantly who Hoyle wishes he was (can’t remember the literary term for this) and he’s got a huge chip on his shoulder about various things

Oh yeah, the bits where he goes off on one about various petty irks from his day job are pretty funny.