>not the best recent sci-fi author
Some of Card's stuff is great. Was a huge fan of Enders Shadow.
Alastair Reynolds and Iain M. Banks both blow that gaybashing retard out of the water.
Peter F. Hamilton was promising but he seems to have given up on actually writing good science fiction. He just relies on the established fanbase buying any turd he puts out. Case in point; The Great North Road.
>>7390486
sorry reynolds is garbage
reynolds is literal reddit tier STEMjerking, without even good STEM, god awful stories, and horrid pacing/prose. literally the worst of every world.
Where to start with Iain M. Banks? My local library has a shitton of his stuff. I don't know where to begin.
I enjoyed Ender's game and I thought Speaker for the Dead took things in a good direction.
Is it worth going any further with the series?
>>7390547
I just started with Banks. I'm one-third of the way through Consider Phlebas.
Overall, I'm finding it a fairly enjoyable and straightforward read. There was a chapter where he introduces several characters one after the other in a bizarrely rote method and a couple of other seemingly superfluous touches, but there are also a couple of ideas that promise to be interestingly explored further down the line.
>>7390536
what did you just say about me?
>>7390568
I'd personally say start with Player of Games. I hear a lot of people bitching about Consider Phlebas for valid reasons that he does a fair bit to clean up in later books.
>>7390486
Is hamilton's nights dawn trilogy good?
>>7390547
Use of Weapons or his short story collection.
>>7390718
It's worth a read.
It's really only the ending that feels kinda lame and there's like 1.2 million words before that that're really good.
>>7390414
Loved his books, but the guy himself is a /pol/-tier lunatic.
>>7390726
It has a couple of pacing issues at several points. For example, theres a point where a character gets stranded for no discernable reason for a plot or development arc point of view, and you are subjected to what feels like a dead chapter. Said chapter consists of the horrors of escaping a cannibal tribe. The reader is subjected reading mostly about the horrible things they do to each other in graphic detail, something that Banks actually shines at, but horribleness with no purpose is something that I have no taste for. The chapter left me distastedly bored.
Regarding Consider Phlebas ...
I'd like to hear more about why people dislike it. I suspect much of the negative reaction coalesces out of parts of the following:
- Banks rolls around in violence and brutality, his characters have a bad time of it.
- The furry-fic tier love interest.
- The "where are they now?" summary ending that feels out of phase with the rest and gives the impression Banks washed his hands of Scifi forevermore.
For myself, this book read like a meta-journey of some hapless nineteen seventies episodic scifi television series writer being pulled into the present world, slapped around with modern conventions including relaxed standards of censorship, while stylishly straitjacketed in hard scifi realism. Shake, bake, cut 'em loose, and here we have Consider Phlebas.
Does that sound critical? The book worked for me, I really enjoyed it in spite of having some aspects of a mash up. This was my introduction to Banks, and I'm still reading his works.
>>7390414
Overrated hack.
He's a genius, but his work is terrible. His insufferable worldview and lazy regard for character make most of his non-Ender novels bland and upsetting, and most of his Ender novels borderline offensive. This makes him an especially frustrating writer, because I can recognize a genius, but I have no faith in his ability - or interest - to deliver something worthy of it. He seems content with being a lazy, macho blowhard and has only gotten worse with age.
Ender's Game, Speaker For The Dead, and Ender's Shadow all have their moments. The Alvin Maker series is pretentious garbage.
While I still have love for Ender's Game, it still ranks pretty low on my list of top contemporary coming-of-age novels even.
Better contemporary SF:
Iain M. Banks
John Scalzi
Neal Stephenson
Ted Chiang
Ken MacLeod
Kim Stanley fucking Robinson
William Gibson
Connie Willis
China Mieville
how many of Awful Spot Tard's books have a protagonist who was beaten up by his brother?
is there something you want to tell us, Tard?
>>7391253
>No Gene Wolfe
>Triggered
>>7390414
Being the best sci-fi author is like winning a gold medal at the Special Olympics. Literature should illustrate Truth. It is no place for autistic scientific speculation.
>>7391253
did Ted Chiang write novels? Ive only read his short stories
>>7390486
>gaybashing
You can take your emotionally based worthless judgement and throw it in the closet you live in.
>>7391596
I say, what the devil did you just audaciously proclaim about my well-being, you trollop? I shall inform you that I have graduated top of my class at the Gentleman’s Academy of Sophisticated Persons, and have been involved in numerous endeavors with the Ruffians down the street from my abode; might I also add that I’ve accumulated over 300 pieces of antique furniture? I am educated in fine dining and high class catering and I’m the top Victorian era furniture appraiser in the entire high society. You are naught to me but a simple, uncouth brute. I shall embarrass the dickens out of you with class the likes of which has never been witnessed before on this humble planet, I solemnly promise. You assume you can disrespect my image on the internet? Think again, savage. As we speak I am contacting my diligent secretary to arrange a brunch together at the finest coffee shop in town, so you had better prepare a fetching enough outfit to compete with my immaculate attire, barbarian. The brunch that sends you packing back to the countryside. You are inevitably defeated, heathen. I can be booked at any appointment, any hour, and I can educate you in over seven hundred cultures, and that’s just with the literary selection in my guest lobby. Not only am I extensively fluent in in several languages, I have access to the entire Giorgio Armani fall collection and I will flaunt it’s finely tailored mastery to outshine your drab, common appearance off the face of humanity, you slob. If only you had foreseen the kind of comeuppance your inflammatory “insignificant” comment was bound to earn you, perhaps you would have tempered your words. But you insisted, and now I will teach you manners and grace and you will learn dignity and poise, yet. Consider yourself in etiquette school, peasant.
>>7391508
>Literature SHOULD
wat?
don't mind me, just the king of sci fi coming though
>>7390589
Xenocide is trash.
Is cyberpunk dead?
