[ SECRET POST #5114 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5114 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #732.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[tabaqui]

*shrug*

And here's me, looking at published stuff and trying to find stuff that makes me even remotely interested. My old favorites are awesome, but I can't seem to get interested in the summaries and even reviews posted with 99% of the new fiction/sci-fi/fantasy out there. It all sounds pretty repetitive and samey.

[(Anonymous)]

(Cozy Werewolf Anon)

Same-ish. I'm not even sure what I'm looking for anymore though. I'm willing to try anything at least once. But then you start reading blurbs and I start wondering if trad publishing has any idea of what might be 'fresh' at all.

Or at least something that's not grimdark and is fun for the sake of FUN. I've got the link for Vainqueur the Dragon on Royal Road saved b/c it might be free, but at least a protag dragon who decides maybe he should monster hunt for pay sounds entertaining! I just... need to get up the energy to read it. That and try like the first 500 pages of the Wandering Inn (also on Royal Road for free.) But there is a lot of isekai on RR and that's not 100% what I want. I know that much.

[tabaqui]

Maybe it's the blurbs, I dunno. But they all just sound...awful. And they all sound exactly like the stuff I was looking at 20 years ago.

'Plucky!Person!! escapes mean family and goes on the road where they meet Mysterious!Person!! with secrets and many skillz!! And they have a DARK DESTINY and SEKRITS that may TEAR THEM APART!!!'

Yuck.

The Expanse is the newest 'thing' I am reading, and it is amazing and excellent and I adore it. I will have to look for other things that are like that, and hope for the best.

The last time I drove and was in a real bookstore (a Barnes and Noble), the sci-fi/fantasy section was literally a bookshelf about ten feet long and six feet high and that was ALL. And mostly old old old stuff, like Azimov and Niven and things I read (or didn't like) decades ago.

[(Anonymous)]

(CWA)

Blurbs are so tough. The first Expanse book sounds kind of thriller and cop story-ish and that as far as I can remember hasn't been done much in trad scifi since Asimov's Robot Series (Caves of Steel, etc.)

Like, since it started out as an MMO thing, maybe look into LitRPG stuff? I dunno, some of it does rely on stats being an "actual universe" thing and some of it doesn't. But LitRPG is mostly an indie thing, not a trad pubbed thing. I have not had luck finding indie scifi. It doesn't have the equivalent of the SPFBO contest.

I wish Asimov and Niven and the like would end up in a nice classics section to make room for newer SFF authors. But then we'd probably end up with an entire shelf of Butcher or McGuire. Sigh. Can't win.

[tabaqui]

I am not sure what you mean by LitRPG - is that kind of 'choose your own story' stuff? (Which, for the record, I loathe.) And what does 'stats being an 'actual universe' ' mean?

I am not up on this hip lingo.

The whole Expanse series is a bit thriller/cop story, except without much in the way of actual cops, heh.

I wish they would, too; there is good stuff there, but it shouldn't be 95% of the damn shelf.

[(Anonymous)]

(CWA)

LitRPG is err... stories that use Role Playing Game style worlds as the setting of the story. And some of them make RPG stats actually IN story important. Like they mention them in the story somehow. But at the same time I've seen books like Sean Frazier's The Call of Chaos use DnD as a comparison book, b/c it is very much a DnD style adventure, without using actual statistics in the story.

There are probably some in the scifi genre. Most I've run across are fantasy. It's really popular on Royal Road, I know that much. Amazon does have a category set aside for it. Most indie scifi I've come across outside of Buroker is tedious space exploration/one man army/lost fleet types. Buroker's Star Kingdom series is at least Star Wars meets the Big Bang Theory (in very obvious ways) so it's sort of fun. (I haven't read the rest of hers. For someone who has a huge backlist, she's not too bad.)

They call portal fantasy isekai these days. The "hip lingo" confuses me too.

I think book store buyers don't know anything good that's new or don't think it will sell b/c small store problems. I honestly don't know how Asimov still sells. Color me confused. He can be so DRY. I've read all of Foundation and I can't remember a THING about it. I put it away and said "never again."

[tabaqui]

Wow. I think reading a story with DnD type stats as *part of the story* would just be really...dumb. I can't imagine.

I used to play a ton of DnD as a teen/twenty-something, as well as Champions and Gamma World. They were cool to play, but I can't imagine books. I think I read a couple DnD style/inspired books ages ago that my littler brother liked, but I wan't impressed.

Isekai. Huh. :D

I hate that small bookstores have to cater to the absolute lowest common denominator and/or the most most most popular thing, because they so desperately need sales. Meh.

I read maybe two Asimov books in my time, did not enjoy them at all. I did in the last year read the first Murderbot book, and liked it, but haven't had the funds to buy any more.

[(Anonymous)]

(CWA)

I have NO idea. Like, it doesn't sound like something I'd think would feel smooth in the story. But I guess some readers really like it. I have yet to actually read one. They keep being taken down and thus deleted from my wish list on Amazon. I'll have to find one on RR.

Samesies. Sometimes you can tell it's just for the local HS crowd who needs to read Tolkien for class.

Asimov's "murderbot" books style are completely different than everything else he wrote. I liked them the best. That and Nemesis, even if Nemesis is rather dry in places. The story was neat. Lack of funds is why I'm not up to date on what's the latest and greatest in scifi, I guess Harrow the Ninth? I haven't read it. The Grishna Universe was recced everywhere for Fantasy and my sis gave me like book 5 or 6 and I went "Uh... well, I see the germ of a good universe here." I guess Scalzi's been putting out new scifi.

I think I'm going to sit here and work on my scifi WIPS slowly and poke at my more episodic Mandalorian fanfic. I do plan on reading more indie stuff this year. I'm just not sanguine about it.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

I generally can't stand Asimov either but I would bet Foundation is on approximately 95% of all "So You Want To Get Into Science Fiction" rec lists ever written

[(Anonymous)]

(CWA)

You'd be correct. There are huge arguments in the SFF community over putting books like Herbert and Foundation series into these "introductory to SFF" lists. B/C they aren't geared towards today's reader and are more likely to put someone off of SFF instead of drawing them into it.

I also heard Foundation got a TV series green lit. But err, that was a few years ago and I've heard nothing since. I was like "that, well, maybe if they edit half of it out."

[(Anonymous)]

Dune doesn't bother me so much - at least if it's clearly messaged in a, like, "only read this if you already know you like sweeping secondary-world epics already" sort of way. There's clearly a massive readership for that kind of thing, and Dune is a classic in the subgenre for mostly good reasons, so, fair enough.

Asimov is much stranger to me bc practically nobody even writes that kind of SF anymore, and Asimov wasn't really a very good writer. Totally baffling. Asimov is representative of an era in science fiction that is totally past. He is a writer of almost entirely historical interest.

But I guess nerd credibility is a thing that still matters to people, so. At least Foundation is fairly short.

[goodbyebird]

*nudges Murderbot in your general direction* oh boy, is that the Wayfarer series nestled in there? And what's this Steerswomen all about? Maybe a series is too much right now, and I should try a single book like The Deep or The Future Of Another Timeline... Gideon The Ninth, you say?

[tabaqui]

Heeee!
I have read the first Murderbot book and enjoyed it a lot, but haven't had the funds to get the rest.

I'll take a look at the others, thanks!