Tony’s Comments (group member since Dec 19, 2018)

Tony’s comments from the Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy group.

I finished the graphic novel Frank Miller's Ronin. Sometimes brilliant but too inconsistent. Not his best work. Continuing with The Fleet, about 2/3 complete and I have mostly enjoyed it so far.

I have started reading Frank Miller's graphic novel Frank Miller's Ronin. This collects the 6-issue mini-series from 1983.

I have started reading The Fleet, an anthology of military sci-fi stories. Margaret Weis, Robert Sheckley, Gary Gygax, Poul Anderson, Anne McCaffrey and David Drake are among the authors who wrote stories for this collection.

Sérgio wrote: "Just beginning to getting into Classic Sci-Fi- Im open to suggestions."

It's going to depend a lot on your taste. Verne is more hit or miss for me - sometimes I find his style a bit dry but he does put in an effort to try and make his science correct (for the knowledge of his time). My favourites of his are 20,000 Leagues and Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

I find Wells to be more consistent - he is a better writer of adventures, but he doesn't worry overly about scientific accuracy.

Burroughs (ER, not William) is another good choice - the John Carter, Carson of Venus, and Pellucidar books. Conan Doyle's Lost World. A lot of the Doc Savage books have sci-fi elements.

There are a lot to choose from.

I finished The Stars, Like Dust and it's easy to see why Dr A considered this the worst novel that he wrote - or, at least, the one he liked the least. It's full of 1950's gender stereotypes and some fairly strange plot decisions.

As far as being the start of the Galactic Empire trilogy, it doesn't fare any better there either - it's really hard to see any real link between this and what was to come.

I finished A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I can't really describe this book as sci-fi - there is time travel (or perhaps alternate history), but really it's just a framing device for Twain to unleash his somewhat savage satirical talents. Well worth reading.

I am continuing with my journey through the Foundation Universe - currently reading The Stars, Like Dust, the first of the Galactic Empire trilogy - not that they were originally written as a trilogy.

The thing about both Robot Dreams and Robot Visions is that while they are both collections of Asimov's short stories, neither focuses solely on robot stories, the way that I, Robot and The Rest of the Robots do. Both contain a significant proportion of non-robot stories - which is fine if you are looking to just read Asimov, but a little irritating for anyone looking to read the Robot series.

Luffy wrote: "How did you rate Robots and Empire?"

I gave it 3 stars (out of 5). It could have been at least a third shorter I thought.

I have finished Robots and Empire which brings to an end Asimov's Robot series. While it does help bridge the Robot series with the Galactic Empire series, this is not the best of the Robot books, and is well below Asimov at his best. There are flashes of the master, but too few, and too widely separated in what is an overly long book.

Before I begin the Galactic Empire books, I am changing tack a bit and have started A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

I expect these are not limited time special prices, as all these books are out of copyright, but Amazon has a couple of compilations of classics at $0.99 - The Ultimate Sci-fi Collection (https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/...) and 50 Masterpieces of Gothic Fiction (https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/...)

Those links are to the Amazon AU site, but I'm sure the ASIN will be the same for other Amazon sites.

I expect a lot of these would be available for free on other sites, such as Gutenberg, but I'm happy to pay $0.99 for the convenience of getting them in one click, rather than having to find the links and download individually.

Noor wrote: "Wow! That's a huge amount of fluctuation within one day!"

Hehe, the currency never fluctuates that much in one day :) There are obviously other factors, but I don't know what they are.

There are several factors that determine which markets Amazon put books on sale - I expect the primary one is that the US and the UK are the biggest markets for books and for whatever reason, Amazon doesn't bother to extend the sale to smaller marketplaces.

Another reason could be the publishing rights being held by different companies in different countries - there may be times when the company that holds local publishing rights doesn't give Amazon the authority to put a book on sale locally. That is, however, just speculation on my part.

I'm usually that way with anthologies as well - it's very rare that I read one cover to cover.

For a while after the GFC the Aussie dollar was worth around $1.10 - $1.20 US, so buying things from America was much easier. But for the last few years it has gone back to it's more traditional level of between $0.60 and $0.70 US so everything costs about 50% more than the listed price. I'm not sure how Amazon AU works it out because I have seen books on sale at $0,99 US at anything between $1.20 and $1.70 AU on the same day.

Yeah, Australia and Canada regularly miss out on Amazon sales - the markets just aren't big enough I guess. I did download the books that were free from the author's website and, to be fair, some of them were the equivalent of $0.99 US in local currency (about $1.35).

Starting the final book in the Robot series, Robots and Empire. The covers of the mass market editions published by Panther (for all 4 of the Robot novels) are nice but really have no relevance to the stories. All of them feature giant robots, none of which appear in any of the novels.

I have finished The Robots of Dawn. Only one book in the Robot series to go and then on to Asimov's Galatic Empire novels.

An interesting selection. Unfortunately this looks to be a US only sale for the books on Amazon, as I only saw one book that was $0.99 on Amazon AU. I didn't check all of them, but I did check around 90%. However, the one that was $0.99 - Half a Soul - would fit the Bingo slot for Fantasy of Manners if anyone is still looking for a book to fill that slot.

I took a break half-way through The Robots of Dawn to read the short story Princesses Don't Do Summer School. Strictly speaking, it's not really fantasy - a guy is teaching his niece and her friends to play D&D and this is their first session, but there are a lot of descriptions of within the game. It was fun.

Andrea wrote: "At least as you get towards the end of the Covenant series the characters become less offensive :) I seem to recall them kind of taking turns being annoying and depressing but if you made it that far you'll have to finish!"

I noticed in the 7th book that they were more pleasant and that Donaldson seemed to no longer need to search his Thesaurus for every second sentence. However, he does seem to have discovered word bloat, and the books have just blown out in size. But I certainly will finish :)

I have read (or re-read) 7 of the 10 Thomas Covenant books and I'm on the 3rd novel (there are a couple of short story collections that precede the novels) in Asimov's Robot series.