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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   2212 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 2, 2025

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So, what are you reading?

I'm reattempting Scruton's Fools, Frauds and Firebrands. Has been collecting dust for far too long.

I just finished the last book in the Broken Earth Trilogy by N K Jemisin and feel compelled to ramble about it. The reason why I picked it up in the first place was I have been completely divorced from the state of modern sci fi/fantasy and was still under the impression that a Hugo award is a mark of quality. Each book in the trilogy won a Hugo, which is a first, so I was looking forward to it, and I checked all three from the library before going on a trip I knew would include a lot of downtime I'd rather not spend doomscrolling. It's very mediocre, not bad just kinda whatever, and had I done any digging at all into it or the state of the Hugos I should have known. From Wikipedia:

Jemisin's novel The Fifth Season was published in 2015, the first of the Broken Earth trilogy. The novel was inspired in part from a dream Jemisin had and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri about the death of Michael Brown.[27][28] The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, making Jemisin the first African-American writer to win a Hugo award in that category.

So a black woman wrote a fantasy book about racism and quite literally black girl magic, and was rewarded handsomely for it by the Hugos (and had it optioned by Sony for 7 figures). In it, some people are gifted in orogeny, allowing them to manipulate the earth, and stop things like volcanoes and earthquakes. Someone who is skilled in this is really quite useful, but also obviously dangerous. As such, there's a class of people called Guardians who find new orogenes, and train them at Hogwarts in order to control them. If they try and run away or can't be controlled, they are killed. Normal people, by and large, hate them, and will try and kill them if discovered even if they have literally saved their communities in one way or another, and even if they are firmly under the yoke of the Guardians. They've even got their own slur. It's a bit... on the nose. Also a lot of characters are bisexual for some reason.

Again it wasn't a bad read. I'm not much of an anti-woke crusader myself; I find it mildly annoying when I realize what is going on, that's about it. But I was shocked it won a Hugo, and apparently they've been like this since like 2010?

Anyway I'm looking to read some dumb male-oriented sci fi if you guys have recommendations.

Anything by Peter F Hamilton, really.

Hell, his first trilogy basically starts off with an artificially-engineered psychic British detective hooking up with a hot, stacked redhead and then going off to have adventures employed by a British megacorp in a post-global warming apocalyptic Briton.

and apparently they've been like this since like 2010?

Yes, as mostly everything else mass-cultural, Hugos are woke now. If you want many sad details, look up "Sad Puppies". Obviously, unless you want the woke side of the story, in places other than Wokepedia. But be warned, it won't make you feel any better.

I liked The Commonwealth Saga quite a bit.

Hammer’s Slammers by David Drake

Anything sci-fi by John Ringo

The Compleate Bolo by Keith Laumer, plus any Bolo anthologies.

And while it’s not sci-fi, it is a pulp short story collection that is all set in vaguely sci-fi situations:

The Eye of Sounnu by Schuyler Hernstrom

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