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Old 01-09-2018, 01:20 PM   #31
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It's no sense reading a series when the first book is not good.
Fans of Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap Cycle would argue otherwise.
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Old 01-09-2018, 01:21 PM   #32
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Do you read many 21st century F/SF books? I've heard of all but one of them, and have read I think six. At least three contain Hugo winners, and one has been adapted into a major TV series.
Not enough, apparently.
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Old 01-10-2018, 05:50 PM   #33
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Not enough, apparently.
Or perhaps too much.

SF/F is one of those genres that has it's roots in pulp. There has been a running battle between the pulp/popular side and literary side ever since I started reading it back in the 70's. The SF class that I took in high school was heavy on Bradbury, Vonnegut, Le Guin and Dick and light on Heinlein and Asimov. Doc Smith wasn't even mentioned in passing. As a general rule of thumb, I've noticed that one can tell when SF/F is on the upswing or downswing by the types of authors who are being talking about. If it's the literary types, then SF/F tends to be on the down swing. If it's the pulp/popular side then it tends to be on the up swing. Right now, SF/F seems to be in a bit of a down swing.
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Old 01-10-2018, 10:50 PM   #34
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Or perhaps too much.

SF/F is one of those genres that has it's roots in pulp. There has been a running battle between the pulp/popular side and literary side ever since I started reading it back in the 70's. The SF class that I took in high school was heavy on Bradbury, Vonnegut, Le Guin and Dick and light on Heinlein and Asimov. Doc Smith wasn't even mentioned in passing.
Yeah, I definitely have a preference for the pulpier origins of science fiction than the modern day stuff. Well, the John Campbell school anyway. Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Poul Anderson, etc. Though I'd have a hard time getting through Doc Smith myself. Or L. Ron Hubbard. I like pulp, but I have my limits.

I'm not bad mouthing modern sci-fi. I just don't read enough of it.

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As a general rule of thumb, I've noticed that one can tell when SF/F is on the upswing or downswing by the types of authors who are being talking about. If it's the literary types, then SF/F tends to be on the down swing. If it's the pulp/popular side then it tends to be on the up swing. Right now, SF/F seems to be in a bit of a down swing.
Interesting. I hadn't really thought of it that way.
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Old 01-11-2018, 12:32 AM   #35
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Fans of Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap Cycle would argue otherwise.
Maybe I'll have to reconsider this. I bought the whole series at one point because they were on sale and I had a couple recommendations for it, and I hated the first novel so much it was a did not finish. Can I still skip the rest of it and have the rest of the series make sense?
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Old 01-11-2018, 02:11 AM   #36
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Of the 8 series that are less than 10 years old:
Three Body Problem
Lightless
The Fifth Season (Broken Earth)
Terms of Enlistment
Ancillary Justice (Radchaai)
First Light (The Red)
The Cold Between (Central Corps)
Leviathan Wakes (Expanse)
Only The Fifth Season and maybe Three Body Problem strike me as being literary SF, although certain groups of SF fans hate the Radchaai series as being SJW crap and therefore I guess literary fiction because the protagonist is a former AI, now in a human body, who doesn't understand gender because the society's language has no gender pronouns, and sometimes that gets tiresome. I haven't read Lightless which might be military SF/space opera base on the description, but the last five have strong elements of military SF and/or space opera, IMHO. Scalzi's Old Man's War is a little over a decade old, although much of the series was published less than 10 years old, and it's also what I would classify as military SF and/or space opera.
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Old 01-11-2018, 04:17 PM   #37
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Maybe I'll have to reconsider this. I bought the whole series at one point because they were on sale and I had a couple recommendations for it, and I hated the first novel so much it was a did not finish. Can I still skip the rest of it and have the rest of the series make sense?
Some people actually recommend skipping the first book. I don't, but some do.
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Old 01-11-2018, 04:55 PM   #38
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Some people actually recommend skipping the first book. I don't, but some do.
I don't recommend it either.

I don't remember hating the first book. I just remember it being really short. So short, I didn't really have much of an opinion on it. As a whole though, I consider the series to be Donaldson's finest work (and I've read all of his work), as well as one of my all-time favorites.
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Old 01-11-2018, 05:31 PM   #39
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I don't recommend it either.

I don't remember hating the first book. I just remember it being really short. So short, I didn't really have much of an opinion on it. As a whole though, I consider the series to be Donaldson's finest work (and I've read all of his work), as well as one of my all-time favorites.
The first book is really just a novella. It's just that it is brutal and dark. I had the same issue with the first book in Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant. In that case, I never did finish the series. Maybe I should?
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Old 01-11-2018, 05:55 PM   #40
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The first book is really just a novella. It's just that it is brutal and dark.
Well, yes it is. But then the series never does get happy and frivolous beyond that intro. It's full of dark, violent characters and some of them act horrifically. Skipping the first book won't allow a potential reader to avoid all the brutal darkness.
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Old 01-11-2018, 06:00 PM   #41
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The first book is really just a novella. It's just that it is brutal and dark. I had the same issue with the first book in Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant. In that case, I never did finish the series. Maybe I should?
Anthony's Tyrant series continues to be quite explicit, but does get better (less pounding the reader over the head with points they've already worked out). It actually gets reasonably clever in some parts, but it never achieves the power of Donaldson's work.

There is a purpose to the first book in Donaldson's Gap series, it sets up the relationships of the various appallingly flawed characters in a way that drives the rest of the story (I tend to think of this series as a single book, and the first book as just the prelude). I agree with DiapDealer, that The Gap series is probably Donaldson's best work.
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Old 01-11-2018, 06:09 PM   #42
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I've read Banks, Corey and Leckie. While Banks is the winner, starting with "Consider Phlebas", which hooked me again after "Wasp Factory", they are all my darlings.
Will have to put the others on my TBR list I guess.

I hate military SF, so warn me please.
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Old 01-11-2018, 06:19 PM   #43
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Anthony's Tyrant series continues to be quite explicit, but does get better (less pounding the reader over the head with points they've already worked out). It actually gets reasonably clever in some parts, but it never achieves the power of Donaldson's work.
I don't mind explicit. It was, I guess the bleak repetition. The pounding over the head.

I don't expect Piers Anthony to match Donaldson.
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Old 01-12-2018, 03:16 PM   #44
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I hate military SF, so warn me please.
There's military SF that can be best described as gun porn, and there's military SF that's has a protagonist who is in the military, but the story can be about just about anything, politics, romance, mistaken identity, murder mystery, etc.

For example, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series is nominally about a deformed cousin of a planet's emperor, who secretly commands a mercenary force for Imperial Security, and it certainly revolves around the military, but there's so much more to the story.
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Old 01-12-2018, 06:58 PM   #45
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Forgot to mention that I can vouch for Nagata's "The Red" series. Near-future (and yes, military) thriller. I really enjoyed her stand-alone The Last Good Man, too.
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