From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
#SFFBookClub February pick.
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I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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el dang commented on The Kingdom of Copper by S. A. Chakraborty
Nahri’s life changed forever the moment she accidentally summoned Dara, a formidable, mysterious djinn, during …
CW for this book: a big piece of what it's about is stuck conflicts and deeply ingrained oppression, and the ways in which mutual fear / the fears of the people currently on top keep them stuck with horrifying consequences. Reading it right now I keep thinking about Palestine, which I think is partly intentional but there are also strong echoes of many other things. I'm about 2/3 of the way through and I think it's excellent, just also a very grim read.
To some extent this applies to City Of Brass too, but this volume paints a lot more of the history of the trilogy's world and goes a lot harder on the political themes.
el dang wants to read Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming …
Adding this to the #SFFBookClub poll; go to weirder.earth/@eldang/111807462468721007 to vote
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Adding this to the #SFFBookClub poll; go to weirder.earth/@eldang/111807462468721007 to vote
el dang started reading The Kingdom of Copper by S. A. Chakraborty
The Kingdom of Copper by S. A. Chakraborty, S. A Chakraborty
Nahri’s life changed forever the moment she accidentally summoned Dara, a formidable, mysterious djinn, during one of her schemes. Whisked …
@mouse@bookwyrm.social Yay! I'm a few chapters in to this right now, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I'm doing.
el dang
boosted
Phil in SF quoted A City On Mars by Zach Weinersmith
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate …
If a nation wants to convey to the world that they are the strongest and best, they can, of course just announce it at the United Nations. But it won't be convincing. Talk is cheap. Space programs are not. Very few nations can successfully fire a guy around the world at 7.8 kilometers per second, then land him and send him on a goodwill tour. Human spacefaring has little utility for the price, especially compared to things like military or commercial satellites, but what it does do is dramatically demonstrate wealth, organization, and technical competence. Throw in the fact that early space rockets were often literally the same as military rockets, and you have an excellent show of raw power that demands to be taken seriously. You of course never hear a politician say, "we choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it'll provide short-term geopolitical advantage," but something like that is a pretty solid explanation.
@Tak@reading.taks.garden yeah. I don’t have kids and it’s still going to haunt me for a while.
el dang commented on How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
Chapter 3: I see now that characters from one story do show up in others, so the book overall will get to have character arcs not just a zoomed-out plot one. Makes me even more curious how much the stories have been reworked between individual publication and collecting into book form.
el dang commented on How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
Content warning Chapter 2 spoiler; CW for plague
At first, I thought the plague business was a bit too much of a neat topical tie-in. But then I noticed in the front matter that many of the chapters are adapted from previously published short stories, and the original version of ch2 was published in 2013. So at least the outline of the plague predates COVID by years.
I'm curious whether the line about disagreement whether the virus was airborne was added in the editing for the book, because if not then that detail is astonishingly prescient.
Either way, I find myself wanting to know what happens to Skip and Dorrie after the events of this chapter. I can't tell yet if the book will pick them up again later or if each chapter's going to be a totally isolated vignette within the overall setting.
el dang commented on How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
Just sharing Enne's set of CWs for this book from weirder.earth/@picklish/111701657327009106 because hashtags still seem to only partially work between Mastodon and Bookwyrm:
"I wanted to pass on content warnings for: suicide, pandemic, climate change, death, euthanasia, animal experimentation, body horror, despair" #SFFBookClub
el dang commented on Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. …
I just noticed that I've added a translation to bookwyrm even though I'm reading it in English. More importantly, in today's reading group we realised that there are at times quite large differences between the 1818 and 1831 texts, and decided we're going to stick to the 1831 one, which conveniently is what Standard Ebooks used.
I like how with the 1831 introduction this is a story within a story within a story: Frankenstein's story within Robert Walton's tale of how he found Victor Frankenstein, within Shelley's own frame story about being stuck in the Alps with Lord Byron in the notorious Year Without A Summer.
el dang started reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
From the one chapter I've read so far I can tell this is going to be a lot heavier than the last couple of things I've read. Promising start, though. #SFFBookClub
el dang reviewed System Collapse by Martha Wells
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in …
💗 Murderbot 💗
5 stars
I continue to love the Murderbot series. By this point, the action parts have lost impact because there's too much precedent for how they're going to turn out, so I think it's wise of Wells to play that part down a bit in this book, in favour of a story more about persuasion and trust building. And the ongoing saga of Murderbot learning about both its limits and capabilities continues to be one of the most relatable arcs in SF/F.
el dang
boosted
Jules, reading quoted Network Effect by Martha Wells
Murderbot returns in its highly-anticipated, first, full-length standalone novel.
You know that feeling when you’re …
Impulse control; I should try to write a code patch for that.