‘You have to be realistic about these things’
Okay, so I’m a high-school student in the Netherlands. I got back into reading just a couple of months ago and I read a lot of fantasy in English (currently reading mistborn). A few days ago, I was interested in seeing if there are any fantasy classics from the Netherlands. So I looked up online, to see if there is some kind of “Dutch Tolkien”. I couldn’t find a lot, so I went and asked my Dutch Literature teacher if there is a fantasy genre in Dutch literature and if she knows of a “Dutch Tolkien”. She told me bluntly that I shouldn’t read fantasy and that she doesn’t consider it to be “real literature”. She basically thinks that Tolkien’s books aren’t “real literature”.
That teacher is one of the biggest gatekeepers I know. She keeps rambling about how sad it is that kids don’t read much anymore and then she literally claims that certain genres shouldn’t be read. She’s also one of …
So, I was recently re-reading Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. It’s mostly violent, nihilistic, cyberpunk stuff, which was what I was there for, but it also has like one sex scene a few pages long that reads like smut.
I found myself skipping through it because I wasn’t particularly interested in being titillated, so the section just felt sort of awkward.
Are these sorts of reactions to smut inserts common? You also see this sort of stuff in TV shows frequently.
The title of this post says what it needs to say but, in honour of the rules, I will tell you exactly why I came to post this. Be forewarned, only 49% of this post is sarcasm and, while I have no intention to offend, I also have no intention not to offend.
Here it goes:
I opened up Goodreads for no particular reason. Just quietly scrolling and harming no one. I am on leave today and I can do whatever I like, and all I want to do is a little nothing. Tomorrow is public holiday here, so I’ve given myself a really long weekend. I figured I’d keep things peaceful. I expect that was too much to ask.
I came across a book trending in the Thriller section - The Moonlight Child by Karen McQuestion. It’s got a 4.22 rating and that’s quite high, in my estimation, especially for something that probably isn’t literary fiction or destined to be a classic. (But who knows? I haven’t read it, and I could be wildly mistaken.)
Rating aside, I was intrigued by the synopsis, so I read the reviews. …
Some might disagree (and that’s fine), but I think The Expanse series is so well written…especially the diverse range of characters and character development.
I’m currently about a little bit less than half-way through Book 3 Abaddon’s Gate and I just finished reading my 10th chapter in just today alone — You know you’re enjoying a book after you’ve read 10 chapters in one day without really realizing it; you think, “I must have read 3…maybe 4 chapters at the most”…then you realize it’s actually 10!
If you like the “setting” of Firefly and the political intrigue and social “dynamics” of Game of Thrones, I’m almost positive you’ll love The Expanse!
When I first heard that Levar Burton was starting a new reading podcast years ago, I thought “aw, that’s nice.” I assumed that it would be another program for children. Recently though, I’ve discovered that it’s a trove of wonderfully read, carefully selected SF short fiction.
He reads selections from classic authors that you may not have read before and introduces a lot of voices I’ve never encountered. Plus, he talks a bit about each story afterward and it’s delightful just to hear what he thinks. He has so much curiosity and passion.
I often struggle to discover good short fiction and I struggle to pick it up over long-form fiction, so this podcast really fills a hole for me. I’ve listened to much of the SF back-catalog now, and here’s a list of episodes I recommend:
I have seen this question pop-up frequently on reddit, so I made a list. This list was spurred by a discussion with a friend that found it hard to pick out well-written science fiction. There should be 100 titles here. You may disagree with me both on literature and science fiction–genre is fluid anyway. All of this is my opinion. If something isn’t here that you think should be here, then I probably haven’t read it yet.
Titles are loosely categorized, and ordered chronologically within each category. Books I enjoyed more than most are bolded.
1516, Thomas More, Utopia
1627, Francis Bacon, New Atlantis
1666, Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World
1872, Samuel Butler, Erewhon
1924, Yevgeny Zamiatin, We
1932, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
1949, George Orwell, 1984
1974, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
1985, Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
1988, Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games
1889, Mark Twain, A …
If you’ve hung out around printSF for a while I’m sure you’ve seen a ton of people recommending Hyperion, Blindsight, Dune, and other books. But what’s your favorite book that want more people to read but which you haven’t seen anybody else recommend here?
Just finished the 3rd book in the series and I absolutely loved it. Never read anything like it before and I felt IMMENSELY uncomfortable the entire time.
I’ve seen some people suggesting the books have Colonialism and rape themes and wanted to hear some of your opinions on it.
I felt like Butler genuinely saw the Oankali as truly a superior race, doing what they biologically had to do to survive: merge with another.
Of course it is a very complex story where she doesn’t paint either race as good or bad but I did not get the Colonial theme.
From an interview with Butler it sounded like her focus for the story was a criticism on dangerous human hierarchal behaviours.
If you check out this interview: (https://inmotionmagazine.com/ac04/obutler.html) where she states:
[Speaking about the space/arms race]
“I got my idea for the Xenogenesis books (Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago) from Ronald Reagan because he was advocating this kind of thing. I thought there must be …