Wow, you almost wrote a book about 19 mediocre books.
You might enjoy the Expanse series starting with Leviathan Wakes.
I have read about 6 of the 9 books and would have to rate the technical quality superior to the series you read. When I read the last book, (picked it up at a book exchange for free) I was looking for closure. I think I paid for 1 copy used and read 4 on the Internet Archive lending library.
They have quite a lot of future tech that gets added as it is discovered but even in the last book the author is very proud of his recycler that accepts any shipboard waste and makes it new again somehow. Here and there I catch glimpses of science advisers coaching him or some deep reading on pretty arcane little things and that is nice. Time scale has credible decade long gaps and there is not much to jump out at you except the common problem of a source of energy. Very little fiction even considers the problems with this, the vast energies needed for the main action are waved away in a way that must be believed to be accepted. :-)
They made a TV series that flunked microgravity almost completely in the couple of episodes I was able to watch.
Hah, yea, it's been bugging me for a few weeks. So many little things that yanked me out of the story.
I do need to pick up the Expanse books. I watched a season or two of the show and thought it was pretty enjoyable. I can usually gloss over things like microgravity enough that I was mostly just pleased that they got the turn and burn to slow down thing right. :D So long as it is consistent it doesn't bother me much (although that is a higher bar than many shows can reach).
The energy issue really is an interesting one. From what I understand, one basically needs a tiny exploding star to drive anything on a reasonable scale in space. I suppose once you assume controlled fusion you are close enough to done to not care, but the question of "how do you refuel, and how does the fuel get there?" seems like it could be interestingly addressed in a series of books. Sci-fi supply chain might be a little more... niche a market than most authors want to go for, however :D Still, addressing things like "If you go 3 light years away, you need to carry more than 6 light years worth of fuel if you ever hope to get back" is a serious concern.
Obligatory annoying existential reminder that if you die and are replaced with a perfect copy, you are still dead. #ShipOfTheseusSank
I haven't read great sci-fi in a really long time. An ex turned me on to the Vorkosigan Saga some years back which I enjoyed in a 7/10 way. Maybe try that.
Yea, the books kind of sort of touch on the "oh, I kind of liked that body" sort of thing, or the very real dread of there actually being a doppleganger of you out there you don't know about, but never really in a meaningful way. That was kind of disappointing, since there were many opportunities to talk about that and have it matter. Hell, even just a matter of "When are you actually considered legally dead when you can be revived any point in the future?" would have been cool. I'd have forgiven a lot of sins if some of the philosophical and legal issues had been played with more.
I will have to keep an eye out for the Vorkosigan Saga, thanks! I am rereading some Conan now, and might go through the Monster Hunter International series again soon... been a while since I read that and I think the last book is coming out soon. Then maybe the Illiad... been a while.
If you are looking for some sort of sci-fi/fantasy, you might want to check out Shadow of the Conqueror. It is fantasy, but approached like hard sci-fi in how the magical stuff works. The amount of "Oh... damn that is a really clever solution!" stuff makes it a lot of fun to read. Plus there are some interesting ethical issues and questions that get addressed and not in the usual modern "I can't even see morality from where I am standing" way, which is really refreshing. All in all a good read. (Come to think of it, it's been a year or two, I should reread it as well and write something up.)
Actually, to be fair, one interesting point the Undying Mercenaries books bring up is the possibility of getting someone's data and just sitting on it for a while, then bringing them back for interrogation or torture whenever you feel like it. The other you doesn't even know a copy has been made, tortured and spilled the beans. So far as anyone outside can tell you've been home the whole time, not on some other planet spilling state secrets.
That was kind of a clever and disturbing outcome of the technology that was interesting, if underused in the books. The bonkers amount of data security to keep such mental data out of the hands of people is never really addressed, or the possibility of an enemy say capturing a ship and now having control of all the data needed to create every human that was on board in the state they were last saved. As I write this I realize that should have been a HUGE issue, one of paramount importance when dealing with any enemy who understood and used revival technology.
Hilarious, I laughed my ass off reading this, thanks for the reviews. I'm kinda tempted to read them now!
I wonder what systems authors can use to efficiently produce books but without these sorts of continuity problems. It's been many years since I read sci-fi but I don't recall reading any books with "bugs" like those, they sound pretty blatant. Hollywood though? It happens all the time. Half the films I watch have bizarre plot holes and stupid unlikeable characters, so it must be a lot harder to write a story with robust continuity than I imagine.
I have seen ads for websites that are designed to help organize writing and notes to keep stuff like this (books, RPG campaigns) from going off the rails. I don’t know if they work if you are fundamentally indifferent to the question however...
I think you might also have hit the nail on the head with the tv point though. Writing this it did start to occur to me that it felt a bit like sloppy tv writing, and now I wonder if maybe Larson was a screen writer for a bit. Or maybe the first few books were meant to be screen plays originally but never got picked up so he tried publishing. The guy’s good reads page shows multiple series for a total of like 60 odd books, which has got to be in the realm of most tv writers in terms of output in a hurry.
You might well want to give them a shot though! Free with Amazon Unlimited (which was on special for like 4.50$ for two months at the time) means the price was right for me. :)
Wow, you almost wrote a book about 19 mediocre books.
You might enjoy the Expanse series starting with Leviathan Wakes.
I have read about 6 of the 9 books and would have to rate the technical quality superior to the series you read. When I read the last book, (picked it up at a book exchange for free) I was looking for closure. I think I paid for 1 copy used and read 4 on the Internet Archive lending library.
They have quite a lot of future tech that gets added as it is discovered but even in the last book the author is very proud of his recycler that accepts any shipboard waste and makes it new again somehow. Here and there I catch glimpses of science advisers coaching him or some deep reading on pretty arcane little things and that is nice. Time scale has credible decade long gaps and there is not much to jump out at you except the common problem of a source of energy. Very little fiction even considers the problems with this, the vast energies needed for the main action are waved away in a way that must be believed to be accepted. :-)
They made a TV series that flunked microgravity almost completely in the couple of episodes I was able to watch.
Hah, yea, it's been bugging me for a few weeks. So many little things that yanked me out of the story.
I do need to pick up the Expanse books. I watched a season or two of the show and thought it was pretty enjoyable. I can usually gloss over things like microgravity enough that I was mostly just pleased that they got the turn and burn to slow down thing right. :D So long as it is consistent it doesn't bother me much (although that is a higher bar than many shows can reach).
The energy issue really is an interesting one. From what I understand, one basically needs a tiny exploding star to drive anything on a reasonable scale in space. I suppose once you assume controlled fusion you are close enough to done to not care, but the question of "how do you refuel, and how does the fuel get there?" seems like it could be interestingly addressed in a series of books. Sci-fi supply chain might be a little more... niche a market than most authors want to go for, however :D Still, addressing things like "If you go 3 light years away, you need to carry more than 6 light years worth of fuel if you ever hope to get back" is a serious concern.
Obligatory annoying existential reminder that if you die and are replaced with a perfect copy, you are still dead. #ShipOfTheseusSank
I haven't read great sci-fi in a really long time. An ex turned me on to the Vorkosigan Saga some years back which I enjoyed in a 7/10 way. Maybe try that.
Yea, the books kind of sort of touch on the "oh, I kind of liked that body" sort of thing, or the very real dread of there actually being a doppleganger of you out there you don't know about, but never really in a meaningful way. That was kind of disappointing, since there were many opportunities to talk about that and have it matter. Hell, even just a matter of "When are you actually considered legally dead when you can be revived any point in the future?" would have been cool. I'd have forgiven a lot of sins if some of the philosophical and legal issues had been played with more.
I will have to keep an eye out for the Vorkosigan Saga, thanks! I am rereading some Conan now, and might go through the Monster Hunter International series again soon... been a while since I read that and I think the last book is coming out soon. Then maybe the Illiad... been a while.
If you are looking for some sort of sci-fi/fantasy, you might want to check out Shadow of the Conqueror. It is fantasy, but approached like hard sci-fi in how the magical stuff works. The amount of "Oh... damn that is a really clever solution!" stuff makes it a lot of fun to read. Plus there are some interesting ethical issues and questions that get addressed and not in the usual modern "I can't even see morality from where I am standing" way, which is really refreshing. All in all a good read. (Come to think of it, it's been a year or two, I should reread it as well and write something up.)
Actually, to be fair, one interesting point the Undying Mercenaries books bring up is the possibility of getting someone's data and just sitting on it for a while, then bringing them back for interrogation or torture whenever you feel like it. The other you doesn't even know a copy has been made, tortured and spilled the beans. So far as anyone outside can tell you've been home the whole time, not on some other planet spilling state secrets.
That was kind of a clever and disturbing outcome of the technology that was interesting, if underused in the books. The bonkers amount of data security to keep such mental data out of the hands of people is never really addressed, or the possibility of an enemy say capturing a ship and now having control of all the data needed to create every human that was on board in the state they were last saved. As I write this I realize that should have been a HUGE issue, one of paramount importance when dealing with any enemy who understood and used revival technology.
Hilarious, I laughed my ass off reading this, thanks for the reviews. I'm kinda tempted to read them now!
I wonder what systems authors can use to efficiently produce books but without these sorts of continuity problems. It's been many years since I read sci-fi but I don't recall reading any books with "bugs" like those, they sound pretty blatant. Hollywood though? It happens all the time. Half the films I watch have bizarre plot holes and stupid unlikeable characters, so it must be a lot harder to write a story with robust continuity than I imagine.
I have seen ads for websites that are designed to help organize writing and notes to keep stuff like this (books, RPG campaigns) from going off the rails. I don’t know if they work if you are fundamentally indifferent to the question however...
I think you might also have hit the nail on the head with the tv point though. Writing this it did start to occur to me that it felt a bit like sloppy tv writing, and now I wonder if maybe Larson was a screen writer for a bit. Or maybe the first few books were meant to be screen plays originally but never got picked up so he tried publishing. The guy’s good reads page shows multiple series for a total of like 60 odd books, which has got to be in the realm of most tv writers in terms of output in a hurry.
You might well want to give them a shot though! Free with Amazon Unlimited (which was on special for like 4.50$ for two months at the time) means the price was right for me. :)
Glad you enjoyed the review!