Re:No New Ideas Under The (Multiple) Suns-Sig Line
on
Altered Carbon
·
· Score: 1
Last me for the next 1x10^28 meters.
It's damn perfect. Mixes old school "Last gas 100 miles" signs with edgy cosmology; superb cognitive dissonance. I'm sure plenty of others will grok the tshirt, in the right crowd.
Re:No New Ideas Under The (Multiple) Suns
on
Altered Carbon
·
· Score: 1
well as Jack Chalker's "Four Lords of the Diamond" quadlogy
God, that was a bad series. Here's how I picture the pitch going over:
Chalker: I've got this great idea for a novel.
Publisher: That's wonderful Jack, but we're more in the morket for series fiction.
Chalker: No prob! I'll just change the scenery around and have the exact same plot occur over and over to the same character with different settings. I'm sure I can do that four times in a row before the reader catches on and gets disgusted.
Publisher: Sounds peachy. Here's an advance.
BTW, your tagline is hysterical. Wonder how many got it..
Death before dis' Honor.
on
War of Honor
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Ugh, another Honor Harrington novel. I'll admit I've read them all up to this newest one. The wife adores them (and Bujold's Vor series) so I picked hers up one at a time when I was between more satisfying books (by Vinge, Baxter, Sheffield, Bear, etc.) and gave them a try.
Unfortunately, they started off 'okay' with On Basilisk Station and got steadily worse. In contrast to some who have posted here, I found the characters wooden, the science iffy, the plots childish, and the premise (Hornblower in space) stretched beyond credibility.
Weber's characterizations are quite shallow; HH herself is the only one with any depth to her at all and a walk through the ocean of her soul would scarcely get your feet wet. Aside from some adolescent angst wondering if she's doing the right thing by risking the lives of her crew (they did sign the waiver, didn't they?) in saving the galaxy, there's little here to suggest a real person instead of a plot automaton, bravely forging ahead because she's convinced she's doing the "right" thing. When the inevitable occurs and lives are lost in the cause, it's stiff upper lip and heroes all.
The science in the story is pretty much cut to fit the framework of naval broadsides. The warship's drive field projects zones of near-invulnerability on the top and bottom aspects, with soft areas in the "wedge" on the port and starboard. It's a nice way to be able to ignore that pesky third dimension that infest space battles over surface naval ones. I have to wonder if Weber doesn't think his readers are able to grasp the extra dimension, since they don't figure in his pyrotechnics (or for that matter in his characters). Many of the battles are based on actual historical ones at sea, and some mild interest can be generated by puzzling out which ones are represented in the novels.
Plot seems to come to most of these novels almost as a way to frame the space battles, and frankly, the battles are much better. As Weber moves further from the grisly fireworks and closer to political infighting, the series loses steam. Honor variously works her way through the naval ranks with her "brilliant" strategy and tactics, always seemingly in the right place at the right time, and ends up with an entire navy at her disposal before all is said and done. Even then, you can guess where she'll be found during any major hostilities: on the bridge of a warship, risking her supposedly-irreplaceable aft-quarters with the rest of the swabs. Fiesty, yes. Honorable, perhaps. Believable, no. In one novel, beset at all sides in a political ploy and outgunned and outmanouvered by her opponent, she settles his hash by challenging him to personal combat in a duel of swords! Riiiiight...
Still, I suppose I'll read this latest installment, since I'll have to buy it for the wife anyway. It's remotely possible that Weber will begin to tinge HH with some degree of humanity. It'd be nice to see her -fail- once in a while, especially considering how much of war comes down to pure dumb luck.
But then again, this isn't war. It's pulp fiction..
Slashdot Mirror
Last me for the next 1x10^28 meters. It's damn perfect. Mixes old school "Last gas 100 miles" signs with edgy cosmology; superb cognitive dissonance. I'm sure plenty of others will grok the tshirt, in the right crowd.
God, that was a bad series. Here's how I picture the pitch going over:
Chalker: I've got this great idea for a novel.
Publisher: That's wonderful Jack, but we're more in the morket for series fiction.
Chalker: No prob! I'll just change the scenery around and have the exact same plot occur over and over to the same character with different settings. I'm sure I can do that four times in a row before the reader catches on and gets disgusted.
Publisher: Sounds peachy. Here's an advance.
BTW, your tagline is hysterical. Wonder how many got it..
Unfortunately, they started off 'okay' with On Basilisk Station and got steadily worse. In contrast to some who have posted here, I found the characters wooden, the science iffy, the plots childish, and the premise (Hornblower in space) stretched beyond credibility.
Weber's characterizations are quite shallow; HH herself is the only one with any depth to her at all and a walk through the ocean of her soul would scarcely get your feet wet. Aside from some adolescent angst wondering if she's doing the right thing by risking the lives of her crew (they did sign the waiver, didn't they?) in saving the galaxy, there's little here to suggest a real person instead of a plot automaton, bravely forging ahead because she's convinced she's doing the "right" thing. When the inevitable occurs and lives are lost in the cause, it's stiff upper lip and heroes all.
The science in the story is pretty much cut to fit the framework of naval broadsides. The warship's drive field projects zones of near-invulnerability on the top and bottom aspects, with soft areas in the "wedge" on the port and starboard. It's a nice way to be able to ignore that pesky third dimension that infest space battles over surface naval ones. I have to wonder if Weber doesn't think his readers are able to grasp the extra dimension, since they don't figure in his pyrotechnics (or for that matter in his characters). Many of the battles are based on actual historical ones at sea, and some mild interest can be generated by puzzling out which ones are represented in the novels.
Plot seems to come to most of these novels almost as a way to frame the space battles, and frankly, the battles are much better. As Weber moves further from the grisly fireworks and closer to political infighting, the series loses steam. Honor variously works her way through the naval ranks with her "brilliant" strategy and tactics, always seemingly in the right place at the right time, and ends up with an entire navy at her disposal before all is said and done. Even then, you can guess where she'll be found during any major hostilities: on the bridge of a warship, risking her supposedly-irreplaceable aft-quarters with the rest of the swabs. Fiesty, yes. Honorable, perhaps. Believable, no. In one novel, beset at all sides in a political ploy and outgunned and outmanouvered by her opponent, she settles his hash by challenging him to personal combat in a duel of swords! Riiiiight...
Still, I suppose I'll read this latest installment, since I'll have to buy it for the wife anyway. It's remotely possible that Weber will begin to tinge HH with some degree of humanity. It'd be nice to see her -fail- once in a while, especially considering how much of war comes down to pure dumb luck.
But then again, this isn't war. It's pulp fiction..