/m/ Novels and Short Stories

>>13792913
It's good. Surprisingly action packed compared to his other books.

>>13792913
the first three foundation books are great

the latter two aren't

>>13793087
I loved the first two. Haven't gotten around to the third one yet. I have heard that everything after it is bit drab.

>>13793093

I wasn't even that fond of the second one. I thought the Mule was a really boring villain. Everything went his way with little to no effort on his part and then when the protagonists finally manage to out-fox him he just kind of shrugs his shoulders and walks off like it's no big thing despite his own admission that they've definitely majorly fucked his plans. He comes off as a kind of bland and dull villain that the plot wraps itself around way too hard. I've dithered on reading the third book for ages because the second was pretty off-putting.

Heard a lot of mixed opinions on Armor. Is it really just a shameless rip off of Heinlein?

>>13793268

If you're asking about the technical aspects of it, there's not really anything to rip off since Heinlein never went into technical detail in Starship Trooper

Armor is just what happens when someone reads Starship Trooper and says "Man, fuck all this moralistic discussion, I just want to see power armor fucking shit up!"

Thematically the wars are different too. Starship Trooper is The Pacific War IN SPACE, while Armor is The Vietnam War IN SPACE

>>13793268
It's Starship troopers with the officer school, and boot camp ripped out, and the and the conservative politics replaced with anti-Vietnam war politics. And the last half of the book is about some space thief guy. It is good, but I can see how it rubs some people the wrong way.

>>13793342
>>13793375
So basically Halo without the pseudo philosophy?

>>13793093
the third one is more Foundation
4 and 5 are only about Captain Flash Bazbo Space Explorer and his sexytime adventures in pursuit of Yet Another Foundation (guest-starring keikakus and some other stuff) because apparently Asimov heard people say he couldn't write about fucking

>>13793458
That sounds disappointing coming from someone like Asimov.

>>13793480
yeah, it's not _terrible_ but it's clear there was a long time between writing them and the first three

my biggest gripe was that it's the same story the whole time instead of the various stories about the same setting like the previous ones

also the ending has some issues because it finishes with "OR DID THEY (to be continued)" and then he died.

disappointing is an appropriate word

>>13793419
Pretty much. And more
>MILITARY BRASS IS STUPID AND INCOMPETENT AND CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT, AND FUCK THINGS UP FOR THE GUYS ON THE GROUND.

>>13793635
Huh. Was kind of looking forward to reading it, but I think I'll pass.

>>13793499
The ending has some issues? I disagree. The ending has MANY issues.

>>13793649
Like I said earlier, it was very Vietnam in it's anti war message. The government and military leaders were always treated as complete incompetents. A good example is in the book some characters are talking.
>It looks like the nature of this Scientist's research is to find out why the Ant War is going so badly.
>You mean they've wasted all that money, time and resources, to research something that every single solider knows the answer too? The Ant War is going badly since Command is a bunch of dumbasses.

>>13792913
Someone has yukikaze and armor?

>>13792913
So, I did the right thing by picking Foundation Trilogy before reading any prequel and sequel written years later by Asimov or should have followed Asimov's own chronological list that combines Robot , Foundation and Empire series into single universe?

Also, what are essential Heinlain and Clarke one should read as a /m/an?

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I really enjoyed this so much. I like original first contact stories. What other books in the Humanx Commonwealth should I read?

Also, why does nobody ever read or talk about the Ghost in the Shell lite novels? People ought to read them, they are cheap and show events between the two anime series. The Innocence lite novel is shit though, total shit. Even worse than Man Machine Interface

>>13795956
>Clarke
Check out the Rama series.

>Heinlein
A lot of the Heinlein juveniles are nice space adventures, but nothing profound. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress deals a lot with politics, but has some nice laser pistol action and a notHAL. The dialect and culture might be a little polarizing though.

>>13795956
Don't listen to >>13796543. The first Rama book is ok, the rest is shit written by Gentry Lee with Clarke's stamp of approval. Same with Cradle, shit. If you want Clarke, I'd suggest Childhood's End, Nightfall, The City and the Stars, and a collection of his short stories.

For Heinlein I'd say Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Starship Troopers. And you could read Time Enough For Love if you want a few interesting scifi short stories about life on frontier that also all turn out to deal with incest.

>>13795947
Anyone?

>>13798685
Stranger in a strange land left a bad taste in my mouth.

1st half was really good thriller despite pages after pages of exposition by the author's self insert and then it became an entirely different story around the time Mike became a circus magician.
After that it was all about sex , fetishes and fantasies until the end where it returns to philosophical tracts.

I have read that Heinlein's work pretty much like that post-stranger in a strange land.
What are the difference between the abridged and un-abridged editions of Stanger?

>>13798685
>the rest is shit
But nun rape.

>>13798685

Rendevous with Rama is my favorite Clarke book and one of my favorite sci-fi stories, though I've not read a lot of his his stuff or any of the sequels. I just love the fact that it manages to be such a tense thriller about scientific mystery without ever invoking an explicit villain or any major character drama. It's just a team of competent folks doing their job and managing well despite being completely out of their depth as you find out the mysteries of this new place they're in.

>>13799812

Stranger left a bad taste for me too. It starts out well, but once Mike comes in to his own it comes off like a hippy scribe on how people could solve all the world's problems if we were just better mentally and socially - only all the solutions are completely nonsense pseudo-scientific rubbish that offer no real world analogues or depth. The ending with everyone eating Mike's remains after he dies in a very Jesus moment is so obviously engineered to evoke disgust and make people question their own reactions that it's kind of annoying too. The book sets it up properly, but like most everything else about the book it comes off as shallow and pointless because there's nothing more to really take from it beyond that surface level "oh, maybe I should think about why I reacted with disgust to this" idea.

>>13799864
>the rest is shit
>But nun rape.

Wait what? I need context here.

>>13799913
One book was about a ragtag group of misfits who were stuck in a terraforming operation on Mars and got abducted by Rama-related Aliens into a Rama-related enviroment.

There was a young, attractive and nubile nun among them and the WASP protagonist, her and a Dago ended up in the same artificial tropical island enviroment. For SCIENCE, the WASP figures. The Dago rapes the nun repeatedly and over months while the WASP was feeling sorry for himself until the WASP kills the Dago for that pussy, but ends up raising the dead nun`s dago baby. The alien gods were very pleased and helped him by granting him a pair of artificial tits.

It was all very ridiculous.

>>13799972
>There was a young, attractive and nubile nun among them and the WASP protagonist, her and a Dago ended up in the same artificial tropical island enviroment. For SCIENCE, the WASP figures. The Dago rapes the nun repeatedly and over months while the WASP was feeling sorry for himself until the WASP kills the Dago for that pussy, but ends up raising the dead nun`s dago baby. The alien gods were very pleased and helped him by granting him a pair of artificial tits.

I never knew that Gantz mangaka ghost written a sequel to Arthur Clarke's novel.

>>13799902
God, FUCK the Rama sequels. They ruined the series.

>>13802226
I think that's a massive understatement. The first book was a nice contained story. It didn't explain the mystery behind Rama and it didn't need to. The sequels' explanation weren't just shit, the path to those explanation was knee dip in shit.

People should read more Frederic Brown. Now this is a hidden gem.

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>>13802974
I found the Starwolf series fun.
They're old pulp stuff. Tsuburaya did a tv series loosely based on them that got adapted in the states as Fugitive Alien.

>>13795956
Fountains of Paradise by Clarke is all about building a space elevator. Pretty nice.

>>13803866
They tried to kill him with a forklift!

>>13804024
yup
pretty sure there's no forklift killing attempts in the book, but it's been a while.
Some of the important stuff gets through pretty much intact even to the Sandy Frank dub, like the relationship between him and Captain Joe, the gf from the alien planet who was the brother of the guy he killed.

What about /m/ literature?

Aside from Starship Troopers, none of the works in this thread are really mecha.

>>13802906
Agreed.

>>13804209
MAYBE UNBROKEN ARROW WILL GET TRANSLATED THIS YEAR.

As always, if you haven't gotten into Yukikaze yet, you're missing out on some excellent stuff.

>>13804229
>As always, if you haven't gotten into Yukikaze yet, you're missing out on some excellent stuff.

I want to, but I've seen lots of people saying the English edition has horrible translation issues.

>>13804209
Good to know that Legend of the Galactic Heroes isn't /m/.

>>13804229
If he doesn't consider spaceships and space opera /m/, what makes you think he considers gay AI airplanes /m/?

>>13804261

It isn't though. We discuss sci-fi anime in general, because fuck it, why not? But LotGH is literally not mecha.

>>13804256
It's fine. Most I've heard can be lumped into the detail-autism category, with a slight consistency error regarding measured units and gripes pertaining to in UA that don't make sense because of the units already being converted to US measurements in the translated stuff.

The books themselves read very well and I never once felt there was a failure to get a point across like I'd get with something more amateurishly translated.

>>13804275
It is. We go by the jap definition of mecha, so LoGH is more than welcome. If there was a novelization of The Brave Little Toaster, we could talk about that here, too.

>>13804286
>If there was a novelization of The Brave Little Toaster, we could talk about that here, too.
not sure if there was an adaptation of the cartoon, but iirc it started life as a book
that why they were working on a cg/live action abomination of it a while back

>>13804286
>We go by the jap definition of mecha

Which is literally "manned robots and humanoid machines".

I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss these things, they're part of the board culture already, but they're literally not Mecha.

>>13804294
That's the western definition you dumbass. The jap definition is anything mechanical in nature. How fucking new are you to not even know that most basic of /m/ facts?

>>13804308

>The jap definition is anything mechanical in nature

The TRADITIONAL definition, as in before it became synonym almost entirely about manned humanoid machines.

Even in Japan, if you mention Mecha, they will immediately associate with Giant Robots first.

And even when it isn't being used like this, it still refers to mechanical objects of some kind, like Tanks, Fighter Jets and rifles and the works that focus on these. LoGH has absolutely no focus on the Mecha aspect, it's a space opera. Girls und Panzer is more /m/ than LoGH, technically, by your terms.

>>13804209
>Considers Starship Troopers mecha. Doesn't consider Armor mecha.

Okay then.

But seriously, aside from Battletech novelizations (Which will immediately piss people off since it's Battletech), an obscure 90s series by an author who went on to do Battletech novels (Warstrider, but no one cares) and Robotech (and you can see the problem there immediately despite the fact the novels are surprisingly good, there really are no Giant Robot Sci-fi novels). At least in the west. There are a few Japanese light novels.

Best you can hope for the aforementioned power armor novels, (Starship Troopers, Armor, the Forever War) or regular sized robots.

>>13804337
>The TRADITIONAL definition
As in the definition we go by, newfag. The series having a notable focus on the mechanical things is completely fucking irrelevant. There are there, and that's what matters.

>>13804522
There's 40K novel.

>>13804604
True, there are a bunch of stuff like that, Halo novels, and what not.

>>13804092
The other song that gets stuck in ones head is "Puma Man, he flies like a moron!"

>>13804588

Way to dismiss the rest of the post. Also

>The series having a notable focus on the mechanical things is completely fucking irrelevant.

Literally everything would be /m/ if we went by that definition, you fucktard.

>>13805479
You're the one who's blatant wrong here, and I'm the fucktard? That's amazingly hilarious. Also, I dismissed the rest of your post because it's worthless garbage.

>>13805500
>You're the one who's blatant wrong here

He's not though. Space Opera isn't any more /m/ than Magical Girl is.

>>13803866
In addition, Hamilton's Captain Future series got adapted into an anime. Until recently there was nothing but foreign dubs, so someone is trying to do something about it.
http://www.nyaa.se/?page=view&tid=229125
http://www.nyaa.se/?page=view&tid=229557
http://www.nyaa.se/?page=view&tid=229797
http://www.nyaa.se/?page=view&tid=229868

>>13805443
but Animetal didn't cover the Pumaman song

>>13805500

My point is that LotGH isn't Mecha, and it literally isn't. You won't find it listed as such anywhere, because it just isn't.

I'm not saying it's not okay to talk about it here, since sci-fi anime in general tends to get discussed here and is part of this board's culture, but it isn't a Mecha show.

You're getting really worked up over semantics, for no reason. You know what that poster meant, and you're just being silly for the sake of internet discussion.

If someone asks you for a racing video game, you don't recommend them GTA just because it has racing in it.

If someone asks you for mecha novels, you don't recommend them sci-fi novels with no focus on mechanical objects.

>>13805583
I'm not getting worked up, I'm merely trying to help a newfag who apparently can't tell his head from his ass whenever he talks. It is a mecha show. You can shitpost all you want about how it isn't, but it undeniably is.

>>13805595

Get me one place where the show is listed as such that isn't related to this board and I'll concede.

>>13805629
MAHQ
Some random charts I can't be bothered to post

under this boards rules LoGH is considered m, get over it faggot

>>13805659

>MAHQ

Nope. Not a single entry in their database about the show, aside from sidelinks and forum posts. Not really anything listing the show as a mecha show.

>>13805678

No one is saying it isn't, just claiming it's retarded to recommend Space Opera when someone asks for Mecha.

>>13805595
But he is correct. It's certainly an acceptable show to discuss on /m/ but it's not a mecha show. It's a space opera through and through.

>>13805678
>under this boards rules

What rules? The ones you just made up? Literally the only rule associated with this board is that we're allowed to post pictures of mechs and mech related things.

>>13805693
He means the few times the administration has stepped in and said that 'X' can or can not be discussed on the board.

Which isn't even the conversation at hand. The conversation is that logh is not a mecha series but space opera. It has nothing to do with it's validity on the board.

>The stars my destination
>One day on Mars
>Ringo(if you can bear him) Looking Glass wars series.

Someone here might be able to help with a problem I just ran in to. I read two sci-fi short stories years back about that were both linked from a thread (possibly here even) with a common theme about the rebirth of man or the universe that I loved and have had a sudden urge to re-read. The problem is I can't recall the names, or even much in the way of detail. I found the first, The Last Question by Asimov easily enough but I cannot find the name of the second since I recall so little of it. All I can really remember is that it was a short story about some robots in a post-human time period that eventually manage to engineer the rebirth of humanity. I think one of the main characters in it was a big kind of bulldozery thing and that there was a smaller one, but honestly, I'm not even sure of that.

Also, has anyone read the The Force Awakens novelization and is it any good?

>All I can really remember is that it was a short story about some robots in a post-human time period that eventually manage to engineer the rebirth of humanity. I think one of the main characters in it was a big kind of bulldozery thing and that there was a smaller one, but honestly, I'm not even sure of that.

"For a Breath I Tarry" by Roger Zelazny? I forgot the title of it too, I had to check in the Man-Kzin Wars story that made an allusion to it.

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>>13806678

That's it exactly, thanks anon. You've made my night.

>>13806719
You're welcome. Go crush ore!

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>>13806509
>All I can really remember is that it was a short story about some robots in a post-human time period that eventually manage to engineer the rebirth of humanity. I think one of the main characters in it was a big kind of bulldozery thing and that there was a smaller one, but honestly, I'm not even sure of that.

I know anon already answered this for you, but it reminded me of Mahnmut and Orphu from the Ilium and Olympos books by Dan Simmons.

>>13807627
>Dan Simmons

I just finished Hyperion earlier tonight. Hooooly shit, what a ride.

>What I expected: a space story with a killer robot
>What I got: Just about every scifi/transhumanist concept rolled up together in an intelligent and believable way in the Space Canterbury Tales with Keats, space dolphins, noir detectives, and Space Palestinian Chirico Cuvie, among others, on a pilgrimage to meet the most fucking metal harbinger of the apocalypse ever

What a ride. In the beginning was the Word. And at the end of it all will be the Word.

>>13807803
Very weird, but very enjoyable.

>>13805580
But, now it's stuck in your head

>>13806509
Could be something by Lem.