What are you reading right now?

[BABANGUIDE64]

It sure is a remarkable piece of fiction.

1. It didn't happen
2. They deserved it

 

[CowPox]

Ring World.

 

[Safir]

Gulag Archipelago.

This Solzhenitsyn guy is a quite the writer

Try Antiracist Baby next, you're going to love it.

1. It didn't happen
2. They deserved it

Click here for your next great read!

It sure is a remarkable piece of fiction.

It's Buck Breaking for white liberals.

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Has anyone ever read The Black Company series by Glen Cook?

Lots of ex-Frenchaboos in university loved the series. I read the first book like a year ago (in English) and didn't like the ending and the promise of fantasy slop afterward, so I stopped there.

Questionable usage of modern sounding English language,

^ this.

When mredders123 alluded to the series being (to paraphrase) "morally gray", I was intrigued. Can't say the series quite lives up to that appellation.

Read Devices and Desires + sequels by KJ Parker (if you can stand We Wuz Greeks n Sheeet), you get the same war and misery but it actually delivers on gray morality, a serial rapist is the most moral character in it. The writing gets a bit soy and rushed in the very end but the plot holds up. Some instances of modern English but usually not too grating: the worst I remember is a weird massdebatory internal monologue on how, supposedly, death is the ultimate objectification, because the words for animal meat are different than for live animals (it's just French; it's a quirk of the English language that when a pig dies, it becomes French; your non-Anglophone characters should not be sperging about it).

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Currently reading Under Two Flags by Ouida, supposedly her most popular novel during her lifetime. (I only read A Dog of Flanders, because quotes from it were popping up in my moonrunes learning app; that one was classic misery porn for girls).

 

[Pomniman]

Carl Jung's Liber Novus/Red Book. Just started it, but it's about what I expected so far.

 

[Caporegime]

Just finished a book and was about to pick this up, but however many hundreds pages of self-reflective hyped-up slop isn't appealing. Is it good or 'good'?

If there's a chapter I particularly find hard to read I just put on the audiobook version

 

[AnOminous]

I hear there's also a movie based on it? Maybe I will watch it afterwards.

It's called Charly and stars Cliff Robertson.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

 

[Otterly]

The last thing I read was a tiny little book by Mike Harding (yes that Mike Harding, he’s funny) about the Green Man carvings found in churches all over the world. Picked it up in a charity shop at the weekend.

Carl Jung's Liber Novus/Red Book. Just started it, but it's about what I expected so far.

The fully illustrated size of a table one?

Blindsight by Peter Watts

This was unpleasantly good.

I got about half way though Blindsight and it's okay, but I got bored.

Finish it, the twist is fun.

The big classic I was often recommended is the Foundation series.

I didn’t really enjoy the foundation books that much. I think Asimov is at his best in the short stories to Novella range. Try some of his short works - you can find most of them free online or for pennies in the anthologies.
I need some inspiration so will trawl back a few pages and see if anything tickles my fancy

 

[Pomniman]

The fully illustrated size of a table one?

No, the smaller text-only version without all the doodles. I figure I can just look at those separately later if I want to see them.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

Finish it, the twist is fun.

Think that was the nudge I needed. I need to give The Black Company another chance while I'm at it, I know I was too distracted the first time.

 

[Otterly]

Think that was the nudge I needed. I need to give The Black Company another chance while I'm at it, I know I was too distracted the first time.

I won’t spoiler the book but one thing that struck me about his prose was that it felt odd somehow. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I read he has aphantasia and it clicked.

 

[AnOminous]

I didn’t really enjoy the foundation books that much. I think Asimov is at his best in the short stories to Novella range. Try some of his short works - you can find most of them free online or for pennies in the anthologies.

His short stories are top-notch and there are lots of them. His nonfiction is also good, although again, there's lots and lots of them. But read something you actually want to learn about and it's almost always a good introduction to them. He had an annotated Shakespeare I always used which autistically explained every turn of phrase or cultural reference from the time. His Paradise Lost annotation was excellent, too, and because of it I could pad out my essay questions in the lit course it was in.

I also learned more from his algebra book than I did in high school.

I liked the Foundation books a lot, but I can see why people wouldn't. They prominently featured his weakest points as an author, i.e. he was terrible at character development. It was an interesting manifesto, though. It was almost like Ayn Rand for SF nerds (with all good and bad that implies). But it was also rather ponderous, not terribly emotionally engaging, and full of cardboard cutout characters.

That said, the long-arc plotting and storytelling was top notch and the worldbuilding superb. It sort of reminds me of Lord of the Rings in that regard, although Tolkien was by far the superior prose stylist.

Incidentally, the normie view (well to the extent there SF nerds ever have a normie view) is that "Nightfall" (the short story not the novel with Silverberg) is his masterpiece.

Another of my personal favorites is anything involving R. Daneel Olivaw (a robot detective) and Elijah Baley (his human partner). These were basically mystery stories but in SPAAAAAAAAAAACE with a focus on the classic "locked room mystery" premise, i.e. you have a limited number of possible perps and have to eliminate them with logic.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

His short stories are top-notch and there are lots of them. His nonfiction is also good, although again, there's lots and lots of them. But read something you actually want to learn about and it's almost always a good introduction to them. He had an annotated Shakespeare I always used which autistically explained every turn of phrase or cultural reference from the time. His Paradise Lost annotation was excellent, too, and because of it I could pad out my essay questions in the lit course it was in.

I've seen that he has a ton of nonfiction. There's some sort of Asimov's Guide to the Bible too, which intrigues me. I've heard that the guy had a long series of history books and books on literature. I enjoy his intros when I find them in older books.

I also learned more from his algebra book than I did in high school.

I liked the Foundation books a lot, but I can see why people wouldn't. They prominently featured his weakest points as an author, i.e. he was terrible at character development. It was an interesting manifesto, though. It was almost like Ayn Rand for SF nerds (with all good and bad that implies). But it was also rather ponderous, not terribly emotionally engaging, and full of cardboard cutout characters.

I think Foundation's intriguing, but I can see why it could be a "miss". That being said, I do look forward to finishing the trilogy and then moving onto his robot stuff.

That said, the long-arc plotting and storytelling was top notch and the worldbuilding superb. It sort of reminds me of Lord of the Rings in that regard, although Tolkien was by far the superior prose stylist.

It's really hard for me to look through Foundation as an adult that's been exposed to modern media. A lot of it feels like something I've seen before.

Incidentally, the normie view (well to the extent there SF nerds ever have a normie view) is that "Nightfall" (the short story not the novel with Silverberg) is his masterpiece.

If I remember correctly, Asimov does touch on Nightfall's reception multiple times.

Another of my personal favorites is anything involving R. Daneel Olivaw (a robot detective) and Elijah Baley (his human partner). These were basically mystery stories but in SPAAAAAAAAAAACE with a focus on the classic "locked room mystery" premise, i.e. you have a limited number of possible perps and have to eliminate them with logic.

Didn't Asimov do a mystery series called the Black Widows where everyone was based off his friends.

 

[AnOminous]

Didn't Asimov do a mystery series called the Black Widows where everyone was based off his friends.

Yes. Except it was actually called the "Black Widowers."

He also delivered one of my favorite insults to Harlan Ellison, where he once roasted him and told him to stand up on the shoulders of the man next to him so he could see him. (You see, Harlan Ellison was really, really short and Isaac Asimov was one of the few people he admired enough to put up with abuse from him.)

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Yes. Except it was actually called the "Black Widowers."

He also delivered one of my favorite insults to Harlan Ellison, where he once roasted him and told him to stand up on the shoulders of the man next to him so he could see him. (You see, Harlan Ellison was really, really short and Isaac Asimov was one of the few people he admired enough to put up with abuse from him.)

From what I understand, they were friends in a way. How else did Ellison get Asimov to write a foreword to Dangerous Visions.

 

[gorgoroth7134]

Finishing up "The Constitution, a Biography" and then going into "The Trial" by Kafka.

 

[Flaming Carrot]

From what I understand, they were friends in a way. How else did Ellison get Asimov to write a foreword to Dangerous Visions.

Yeah, they were definitely friends. Asimov was just joking around. If you can find a copy of Ellison's screenplay for "I,Robot" it's fantastic and much better than the I, Robot movie that did get made. The Foundation trilogy has its' flaws, but it's definitely worth reading. He wrote it on his lunch breaks during his army job during World War 2 and never expected anyone to read it after its initial publication, so it's kind of amazing that it's managed to stay in print after all these years.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Yeah, they were definitely friends. Asimov was just joking around. If you can find a copy of Ellison's screenplay for "I,Robot" it's fantastic and much better than the I, Robot movie that did get made. The Foundation trilogy has its' flaws, but it's definitely worth reading. He wrote it on his lunch breaks during his army job during World War 2 and never expected anyone to read it after its initial publication, so it's kind of amazing that it's managed to stay in print after all these years.

didn't he autistically binge-read Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and just get inspired.

and, well, it apparently got milked. I hear the first trilogy is considered one of SF's "canon" works, with the rest of the Foundation books that came afterwards as "nice supplemental stuff".

The camaraderie and connection of all those old sci-fi writers from the mid-late 20th century is neat. I remember seeing some Heinlein/Asimov/de Camp books from the 50s that were dedicated to each other and to their time in the Naval Yard during WW2.

Between Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein, I do wonder which writer has the most works that have held up to the modern day.

 

[AnOminous]

From what I understand, they were friends in a way. How else did Ellison get Asimov to write a foreword to Dangerous Visions.

Ellison was an angry uppity motherfucker, but Asimov was someone he virtually worshipped. He actually punched people out for far more innocuous comments. There's also the (apocryphal) story about him throwing someone down an elevator shaft at a con, I forget which. It isn't true, but the fact it was generally believed says something about his reputation.

Yeah, they were definitely friends. Asimov was just joking around. If you can find a copy of Ellison's screenplay for "I,Robot" it's fantastic and much better than the I, Robot movie that did get made.

Agreed. Also the ORIGINAL script for "The City on the Edge of Forever," widely regarded as the best Star Trek episode (and it is). Ellison himself hated it and said his original was better. Not many people could say some arrogant shit like that and actually be right. His original script won the Best Teleplay award from not a science fiction convention but the actual Writers Guild of America. Then he wrote an entire book about how much it sucked and how much better his original was.

The camaraderie and connection of all those old sci-fi writers from the mid-late 20th century is neat.

Ellison himself started out as an obnoxious fanboy in his teens so all the old Golden Age people who did con stuff had personal encounters with him because he'd get up in their face and sperg at them enthusiastically. So he was already a known quantity before he became the enfant terrible known to history.

 

[Nick Obre]

Ellison was an angry uppity motherfucker

Not super on topic to the thread, but here's a video I enjoyed where one retard tells another retard stories about some of Ellison's most memorable hijinks, like the time he pitched an official Disney porno flick, not knowing Roy Disney was sitting right behind him.

Ignore the bit at the very beginning, it's about an AI song they made in another episode.