Fun Stuff > ENJOY

What are you currently reading?

<< < (277/289) > >>

hmm:

--- Quote from: cybersmurf on 06 Feb 2020, 14:18 ---Anyone got a Sci-fi or Fantasy recommendation for me? Looking for something new to read. Can be a classic, as (re-) reading in English might be reason enough for me

--- End quote ---

Does any of the sci-fi already in this thread appeal to you? There are some pretty good suggestions on the previous pages.

What sci fi and fantasy have you recently read (in addition to The Expanse) that you liked?

(I suppose this slightly duplicates the "Recommendations" thread, though I see that contains a lot of tv and movies and this is a very reading-specific thread)

cybersmurf:
I recently read Altered Carbob, on which the Netflix show of the same name is based on. Weird, how you can change "just a little bit" and end up redoing so much. But hey, that's Hollywood.

Started Dune the other day. Or like re-started it for the fifth time, because never got far, for whatever reason.

As far as Sci-fi goes, I guess I have a thing for man/machine intrrwction, digital consciousness.
I don't need some thought out recommendations, just fire something at me.

Case:

--- Quote from: cybersmurf on 19 Feb 2020, 22:36 ---As far as Sci-fi goes, I guess I have a thing for man/machine intrrwction, digital consciousness.
I don't need some thought out recommendations, just fire something at me.

--- End quote ---

Whelp, the Sprawl-trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive ) by William Gibson is probably the Cyberpunk classic, along with Neal Stephenson's stuff from the 90s.

I also liked Ramez Nam's Nexus trilogy and it's a bit less dated than Gibson & Stephenson.

The weirdest and best I've read recently is Anne Leckie's Imperial Radch series - fair warning, though: It's not about Razorgurlz, and she uses two very potent 'Verfremdungseffekte'. If you go to the respective German Amazon pages, you'll find tons of Krautians bitching about it (they're idiots, though - it's glorious once your brain adapts to it.)

Read the English version, though - I cannot imagine that it'd work in a German translation.

(click to show/hide)The society of the protagonist is ... 'gender-agnostic', you could probable call it. They are (mostly) standard-plan humans, and they know that gender exists, they just don't care. Like at all. Consequently, their language lacks any possibility to specify gender (pretty much the opposite of German), and there's several scenes where the protagonist worries about getting the gender of members of other cultures right, because specifying gender is a concept they just can't get their head around.

I guess you could say that the Radch (the name of the society and their Empire) are 'linguistically non-binary' - there's no indication whatsoever that they are non-binary individually, but they couldn't express the concept in their language if they wanted to. The Radch is also the dominant human society, and ... it's not really a nice empire (though they think of themselves as highly ethical). There's several scenes where the protagonist's struggles with gendered languages leads to subtle expressions of dissent from members of colonized cultures, which I took as a subtle reminder for cisfolk to imagine how we'd feel if non-binary folk where the default and insisted on reminding us of our minority status all the time (dissent with the Radch is ... forcefully discouraged, you could probably say).

The experience is ... vexing at first - I spent the first 100 pages or so compulsively browsing back, trying to look up the gender of certain characters, until my brain just gave up and accepted the ambiguity. For example: The protagonist of three novels, Breq, is mostly female to me, though there are scenes where my brain pictures them as male.

I don't know whether my compulsion/vexation is due to the fact that my German native language doesn't allow you to not gender everything, but it took some getting used to until I shook my trained compulsion to gender characters unambigously. I found it rewarding, though.

I won't spoiler the other Verfremdungseffekt - it's more subtle, and methinks it should be right up your alley.

sitnspin:
I second both the Nexus trilogy and the Radtch series. Both are absolutely phenomenal for different reasons.

hedgie:
I do wonder if in a non-gendered society, what would happen with individuals who desired to express one would be treated like that one lady was in that TNG episode.[1]
Or would contact with other cultures create a broader social movement a la Cheery Littlebottom and other Ankh Morpork dwarfs who in Discworld have a mono-gendered society.

[1] IIRC, Jonathan Frakes was rather disappointed that they chose a woman to act in that role, feeling like that those responsible for casting didn't really "get it".

Edit:  I must admit, that I haven't read much, if any cyberpunk in years.  It kinda stopped being fun for me once it started becoming reality.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page