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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15609 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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won out against greats in the genre like Charles Stross

Wait, what? I'm a big fan of Stross, but if you're trying to avoid woke, he actively does not want your business (and has said as much). His writing credentials include intentionally writing a book with no straight characters because he thought it would be funny to piss off anti-LGBT people.

Looking at the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Novel (when Ancillary Justice won)... I enjoyed Neptune's Brood and Parasite but neither were exactly Hugo-bait. And the best series award was added (probably in response to the Wheel of Time nomination?) soon after since awarding a series "best novel" seems weird.

good winners/runners up in recent years are Project Hail Mary

You're one of the people who thought Project Hail Mary was a good book? Nevermind, we'll never agree on literature.

You didn't like Hail Mary? But why man?! The spider people were so cool....

That was sorta the problem with it: there wasn't anything to it past cool things happening. I found it a frustrating read because I thought the premise and worldbuilding were interesting, but plot and characters were awful. The alien is just his immediate perfect ally fully aligned with his goals. Everything the main character tries more or less just works modulo some minor mishaps. Which is an easier sell in the realistic Martian but a harder sell when the author is also writing their own laws of physics that the main character has minimal difficulty with. The Goodreads reviews (filter to 1- or 2-stars) cover plenty of what I disliked about the book in more detail.

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