I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff celebrating Pride month around the place lately.
For example tonight I saw a campaign on social media about the discrimination that trans people can experience.
I’m a 40 year old Aussie bloke who grew up in a pretty conservative and homophobic environment. I definitely said a lot of homophobic things myself growing up. Many people around me did, it was normalised. I say that as a point of shame, not as an excuse.
After I watched the trans discrimination stuff tonight I had strong feeling of frustration. I had to focus for a while to understand what I was feeling before I finally realised - it hit me like an epiphany, which is a rare event in my Homer Simpson-like brain.
As an Aussie might say, who gives a rat’s ass what sexuality or gender someone else is? I mean, unless you want to date them or sleep with them. But otherwise I don’t care. Why would anyone care?
I know there are many ‘explanations’ for people’s hateful behaviour but when you really …
I was looking into prose styles for a video I made recently, and found some interesting stuff. I pulled two paragraphs each from Tolkien, Sanderson, Rothfuss, Jemisin, and Erikson, and analyzed them for a few things. The paragraphs I pulled were descriptive – no dialogue, no action scenes – since I figured those would best represent the author’s voice unmixed with characters’ voices.
I looked at three key areas: 1) average sentence length, 2) adj/adv usage, and 3) Germanic vs Latinate word usage. (To be clear, I wasn’t being exhaustive or even super academic. Just testing to see if I want to dig further. In the future I’ll look at sentence structure and punctuation usage, among other things.)
Here’s a visual rundown of how the numbers shook out:
Here’s what I learned:
That’s all I want to say. I have read the first book of Broken Earth just now and it was really refreshing to be able to finish a book in just a few days. I love stormlight books but sometimes they can be a drag for no reason.
So I keep coming across this trope, and I hate it.
It’s bad, and dumb, and I don’t like it.
In essence, the trope goes like this: our hero has been placed in a dilemma, where they either have a very small chance to save everyone, or a very high chance to save a lot more people. And mathematically, picking the higher chance is way better.
But then our hero says, with all that heroic coolness, something like “Math was never my best subject when I was in school” and picks the objectively worse choice, because clearly logic and math are not legitimate and only emotional responses are “truly human” or whatnot.
And it’s really annoying.
It may be non-obvious in this age of computers, but logic is the most human thing in the world, because while emotions are shared with most animals, higher thought almost uniquely belongs to Homo Sapiens.
It sometimes feels like everything written in the entire body of fiction just accepts that emotional …
Bookshop.org sources your purchases from your local bookstores, it’s a great service that helps support local businesses that are otherwise struggling with online competition and e-books. For today and tomorrow they’re offering free shipping to compete with Amazon Prime Day. There’s a book you can contemplating, it’s a good time to snatch one up
A semi autobiographical account, we follow Henry, a man in his mid 30s who needs a job and joins the Postal Office only to absolutely hate it. Yet despite this, he is only one of a handful of 200 employees that last 11 years. We follow his monotonous routine of filing letters, being micro managed and taking the mail to unhappy and crazy neighbors. His personal life is also a mess with random hook ups, breaks ups and deaths.
What makes this book so good isn’t the prose; it’s blatant and straight forward. It’s not the plot as their isn’t really one. It’s just how raw it is. Henry is both sympathetic and pathetic. I relate so much to him when he complains about bureaucracy and having to fake being interested in your job to your employer. He also seems hopeless for not planning a way out. But that’s sort of the thing about this book, there are people who put up with the grind and die. It’s horrifying and funny and brutally hoenst.
Edit: wow …
I finished reading “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” which overall I thought was an interesting book, until I got to the end. I had no fucking clue what the ending was trying to tell me had happened and what it meant for the previous parts of the story that happened. I had to go to Google to figure out what the hell had happened and that alone made me rethink if I can even say I enjoyed the book if after all that I couldn’t even figure out exactly how it ended on my own.
I’m not sure if I was just having a bad day and my brain decided not to work, if the ending was in fact confusing, or I’m just getting dumber with age. I believe the book was made into a film or movie so I am curious as to how they did it.
Has anyone else read this book or are there books out there where you had to look up the ending to make sure you understood it right?
and I’m livid. I can’t even express in words how much I hated that baby’s-first-philosophy BS. Why does everyone love this book so much? Can somebody please explain to me what I was supposed to get out of this experience? Am I just too stupid to “get it?” It’s so… basic. So surface level. What’s there to get?
Edit: Wow. I didn’t know I was hopping on a well-ridden hate train when I posted this but I’m blown away by the responses. Thank y’all so much for the awards and thank y’all for the conversation. I really did take everything that was said into account. We don’t have to agree but I very much appreciate those of y’all who provided genuine insight. I think the main issue is this. I always heard about this book from adults who presented it as a life-affirming lesson in philosophy. I’ve always seen it marketed to adults, so I decided to give it a shot and form my own opinion. I didn’t know …
This is from the first chapter and my second attempt at the book. The last time I tried reading, I didn’t understand this paragraph and it put me off reading the rest of the book for some reason. Paragraph is below:
“The colonel was in Communications, and he was kept busy day and night transmitting glutinous messages from the interior into square pads of gauze which he sealed meticulously and delivered to a covered white pail that stood on the night table beside his bed.”
Edit1: Never thought not understanding a paragraph could start a whole (tiny) movement. I still don‘t know what side i‘m on. #teamblowingnose #teamjerkingoff
Edit2: The responses on this post have been so fun to read. Someone said Heller was probably laughing to himself when he wrote this sentence. And I’m sure he’d be hella rolling if he saw the responses and divides it ensued. Also thanks for the awards 😊
So I’ve read every Hugo Winning Novel from before 1990 (Not including the Retro Hugos) and I’ve ranked them. Why? Because it’s a great way to start conversation. Some of you will agree with me, some of you will hate me and think my ideas are stupid. That is totally fine, I’ve tried to remain spoiler free while giving an idea of what each novel is about. If you get through all of these thanks for you time and don’t forget to agree of disagree with me at the bottom. :)
The list goes from Worst to best in case there is some confusion.
36: The Big Time by Fritz Lieber (1958) - Guests at a temporal guest house attempt to solve a mystery against the clock. It’s the height of pulp sci-fi set in what can generously be described as a cabaret and at worst a brothel for an epoch spanning time war. The idea of a place for soldiers of different species from across history to RnR has some merit, but it’s all a little sexist. Even if we forget that most of the …
Hi!
I always find that I am far more engaged with a novel if it’s first line is interesting. For example:
“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.”
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
“Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair.”
“See the child.”
Etc.
There are lots of these threads for fiction in general and they usually have books like “Pride and Prejudice” or “100 Years of Solitude”. So I was wondering what are some of your favourite first lines in Speculative fiction (or not)?
In my recent return to the scifi genre, I finished (and greatly enjoyed!) Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. While I found the story itself gripping, it felt lacking in areas of writing, dialogue, characterization, and nuance.
What are some of your favorite sci-fi novels that are well written and provocative? Not just books that are praised because they deal with science or futuristic concepts.
Edit: I should add - I’ve already read Dune and The Last Question is maybe my favorite short story of all time.
I know there’s the science fantasy sub-genre that blends the two together and I’m a huge fan of it (I’ve devoured stuff like Sun Eater, Dune, Red Rising, Broken Earth, Locked Tomb and Coldfire) but at the moment I’m looking for straightforward sci-fi that simply reads like fantasy, with a lot of political intrigue, intricate world-building, rich characterizations, low science, etc. Texicaana and The Expanse are two prime examples, I absolutely love both of these series so far
Looking for noir/hard-boiled sci fi. I’ve read almost all of Richard K. Morgan and William Gibson. I’ve also read The City & The City by Mieville. I’m not sure where to go from here. Any suggestions?
Edit: Thank you for all the responses! This is my first post ever on Reddit (though I’ve been lurking), I hope I did it right. 😊
Tor’s eBook of the Month Club is offering a free download of Steven Erikson’s GARDENS OF THE MOON until 11:59PM EDT on 25 June 2021.
From their description:
The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, ancient and implacable sorcerers. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen’s rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins.
For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his squad of Bridgeburners, and for Tattersail, surviving cadre mage of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the many dead. But Darujhistan, last of the Free Cities of Genabackis, yet holds out. It is to this ancient citadel that Laseen turns her predatory gaze.
However, it would appear that the Empire is not alone in this great game. Sinister, shadowbound …