#s.m. stirling

[captainsvscaptains]

Round 1 Part 7 Poll 5

Propaganda

James Flint's gay. He waged war on all of civilization in the name of his gay lover and expanded to racial equality and he almost fucking won. They (civilization) took everything from him. And then they call HIM the MONSTER? The moment he signs that pardon, the moment he ASKS for one, he proclaims to the world they were right. This ends when he grants them HIS forgiveness, not the other way around.

Marian's the black lesbian captain of the USCGC Eagle, we don't get much of her backstory other than that her shitty husband took her kids, but in the first book she gets a nice pre-celtic girlfriend she rescued from the evil proto-celts, and by the second book she's in charge of the world's biggest and most powerful navy as the "commodore of the Republic of Nantucket Coast Guard". Really cool character, I think

[arthurdrakoni]

The Peshawar Lancers has some of the best world building I’ve seen in any alternate history novel. This is my review.

There are plenty of books I want to listen to, but they just aren't available in audio form. It frustrating, but it is what it is. Sometimes, however, my patience is rewarded in a big way. Case in point, The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling.

The Peshawar Lancers by SM Stirling is set in a world where Earth was struck by a series of asteroids in 1878. It wasn’t enough to wipe-out humanity, but it did screw up the climate. For example, it lead to five years of non-stop winter. As such, the various Europeans empires evacuated to their colonies in the southern hemisphere. For the British Empire this meant South Africa, Australia, and especially India. By 2020, the climate has stabilized, but the world is forever changed. The world is stuck in the Victorian era, but with some slight steampunk elements. More importantly, the British Empire, now called the Angrezi Raj, is home to an Anglo-Indian hybrid culture. The story follows a wide verity of characters, including the titular Peshawar Lancers, the Raj’s first line of defense on the frontier.

Interesting that Peshawar is where the Lancers are based. In ancient times, it was part of the Bactrian Kingdoms, a place of great culture exchange between Greeks and Indians. In fact, many of these Greek Indians eventually converted to Hinduism and Buddhism, eventually lead to a very unique culture and art style. I’m very tempted to thing that this was deliberate on Stirling’s part.

There are airships, Babbage Engines, and a couple steam-powered cars, but not really anything too fantastical in terms of technology. This is explains somewhat in-universe. Humanity had to focus on rebuilding after The Fall, so that stunted technological progress. Moreover, India doesn’t have access to a lot of mineral fuels, and there isn’t much need when wood is so plentiful. It is mentioned that steamships only recently surpassed wooden sailing ships in terms of capabilities.

Like I said, I utterly adore the world building that went into this novel. There’s even an index at the end containing certain details that didn’t make it into the novel proper. I loved the Anglo-Indian hybrid cultures of the Raj, France-outre-Mer in North Africa (which actually retained its French culture), andd the balls to walls insanity of how Russia is now an empire of Satanic cannibals.

The writing is also quite good. It reminds me very much of Victorian adventure novels by people such as H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling. I went on a kick of those in many younger days, so I was all onboard for that aspect.

Stirling has stated that he very much would like to write a sequel, but the sales weren’t good enough for his publisher to greenlight one. Oh well, I guess we can always hope that one day a sequel will come. Also, the man himself was nice enough to personally leave a comment on my blog saying that he appreciates my review.

The audiobook version is, of course, the whole reason we're having this review. It is narrated by Shaun Grindell, who perfectly captures the story. I'm very happy that this amazing work of alternate history is available in audiobook form at long last.

Have you read The Peshawar Lancers? If so, what did you think?

Link to the full review on my blog is here: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2018/09/book-review-peshawar-lancers-by-sm.html?m=1

[threeravenspublishing]

Are you Ready for new Car Warriors fiction?

Are you Ready for new Car Warriors fiction?

Because this Friday, April 19th, 2024, Go Hard or Go Home, a Car Warriors Autoduel Chronicles Anthology goes live! The big events may get most of the limelight, but that’s not where all the action happens.This collection of fast-paced, action-packed stories highlights the road warriors who struggle to survive, without the glory of the duel. Caravan guards, gun bunnies, insurance adjusters,…

[tuulikki]

S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse (a.k.a. Changed World series) did this better than anything I’ve ever seen. There was an apocalypse and the immediate result within even a generation or two ended up with pretty distinct dialects, especially if some or other of the founders of the groups had distinct accents that became associated with prestige.

CLAIM: It's unrealistic for characters in the Fallout series to have accents that differ from the basic American fare (Cait, Moriarty, Quinlan, etc.)

FALSE. If anything, there should be MORE accents and dialects across the characters. Do you know why there's a new accent in the UK every 15 miles? Because until the 1930s, communication between communities was very limited, which limited the patterns of speech in every town until it turned into something distinct. You know what else limits travel? The end of the world. If you're stuck in the same settlement for most of your life because it's too dangerous to leave, you're gonna develop a regional dialect, primarily from the languages and accents of the cultures already in your community. Surprise, surprise, the US is chock full of little cultural communities that would absolutely band together during times of strife and become little linguistic islands, be they Irish or Hmong or Greek or Yinzers.

[wandringaesthetic]

Want to write some kind of ode to solid 7 outta 10 scifi novel series that run for like 20 books.

[lafinmp3]

Hi,

i discovered your gorgues Art at instagram once and i'm soo Happy that you shipping Sarah Connor/T-800 "Uncle Bob" from Terminator 2, since they are a quite rare pairing but an so right and wholesome one:) Thank you so much for your passion about them as well to draw constantly pictures with them!!

I also saw that you posted an piece of an actual Comic with them in your IG Story once and I'm extremley interested in that Project and Comic. How much do u have already done of the Comic and did exits an larger Script for this? My absolute dream would be an Comic whpo centered at an What if the T-800 Survived?! and Skynet was gone for good? So that we have some Cool and Sweet Terminator Family Fluff with them:)

Believe it or not, but it was actually a Cartoon Series in Development that did exactly this Scenario with John, Sarah, and the T-800 as Main Characters who would be this funny Family together. The Show was in early development as it got canceled.

I would love to see more of your Terminator Art and hope that i could inspire you to do more:)

Best Regards

Lukas

Oh gosh I meant to reply to this a while ago- my apologies! But thank you so much, no one ever said anything like this to me before jfnfkdkd /Pos. I'm planning to draw more of this pair, they're so underrated yet have plenty of potentials ❤️❤️ Know or not, Sarah actually got into a relationship with dieter von rossbach (aka the man skynet based off the T-800) In the S.M Stirling novel trilogy, which I recommend reading :-)

Thank you for the kind words, Lukas! Glad there's plenty of people that ships them

(Old doodle/sketch of them)

[zahri-melitor]

Did a quick Tynion sample read of his horror, as I was trying to judge it:-

The Woods #1-4: I really wish this was something slightly different to what it is. I'll probably work through the rest of it, but what the premise indicated to me was that it was a sort of horror version of Eric Flint or S.M. Stirling universal transfer of a small section of territory, and it is, but also it feels underpolished and underdelivered. It's unfortunate that this is a premise that exactly hits one of my interests and I've read it a bunch of times, so I was hoping to see him do a bit more with the opening. As said, will probably continue and I hope it develops more complexity.

Something is Killing the Children #1-5: goodness gracious the difference 5 more years of experience makes. The characters are easier to pick up and enjoy, the looming threat is a lot more creepy and foreboding, the politics among the children feels more child-like in terms of the shape of their cruelty. I would probably skip straight forward to here if I were giving recommendations for a new reader.

The Nice House on the Lake #1-2: you can TELL this is his COVID piece in terms of what it says about alienation from the rest of humanity and the fear of being locked away together at the end of the world. It's my favourite opening of the three.

Also after only dipping into the premises of three of his indie pieces, bits of the 'hi I am mining this material from my own real life experiences' stuff already started becoming quite obvious, as correlations lined up.

[generallemarc]

I was driven off that board when the owner lost his shit against said Californian mod for daring to discipline a long-time member for saying that white rape victims were, and I quote, "parasites" because black rape victims had it worse(because we live in a society). Awhile later said owner declared "anyone who supports Israel is supporting white supremacy" several years before saying such things was a requirement among the far-left. That forced basically all the openly-such Jews out, for rather obvious reasons. Everyone I know who ever used that forum has left it. There's exactly one timeline there that I still follow(Look To The West, which I fully believe would get the author harassed off the site if it weren't one of the longest tl's it has), and that might finally be dead even despite it being published via their indie printing label.

Finally started reading Guns, Germs and Steel which is a book that has been on my list forever. Ironically, the recent (though not the first) backlash against it is what prompted me to pick it up.

Some of the criticisms of it might be valid; possibly geography is over-emphasized as a causal factor in the unequal outcomes of various societies, possibly there are other factors that don't get enough attention. But there's a particular brand of moral criticism that goes something like this quote from this article (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/03/guns-germs-and-steel-reconsidered):

"This is a punchline about race and history that many white people want desperately to hear," she writes. "Those dying black kids at the end of the special -- we know, because We Are Not Racist, that they don’t deserve what they are getting. They are not inferior. In fact, there but for the grace of god…. And it poisonously whispers: mope about colonialism, slavery, capitalism, racism, and predatory neo-imperialism all you want, but these were/are nobody’s fault. This is a wicked cop-out."

One has only to read a few chapters of the book to know that it does not in any way attempt to gloss over the reality of violent conquest and its role in establishing Western dominance. There's no shortage of rat bastard white conquerors in these pages (though there are cameos of other, not-white conquerors behaving in similar ways). Nor does the book in any way attempt to deny the existence of colonialism or of ideologies designed to justify and reinforce material inequalities. What it does do is attempt to explain why Western societies were in a position to violently conquer other peoples, and the explanations have to do with the titular viruses and geography and a bunch of other factors that do in fact boil down to luck. That doesn't mean it was "nobody's fault." It was the fault of many people, in the sense that the people who did violent things still did those things. How you want to judge them for that is up to you, but most people, myself included, do regard violent conquest as a not-good thing that we should try to have less of in the future.

I'm left wondering...for people who say that this is a work of apologia for inequality, how exactly could the book have handled its subject matter in a way that would have satisfied them? By including a "this is bad behavior and we should condemn these people" footnote on every page that describes one society conquering another?

The basic objection here seems to be to the very fact that this is a science book and not a moral instruction manual about how to be anti-racist. Which I guess is not surprising. The power of explanation inherently tends to kind of take the piss out of morality and deflate its mystical-feeling notions of good and evil and moral duty, which is why science and morality (whether it be religious or secular) have butted heads throughout most of history.

[bedlamsbard]

The one New Year's habit I've had pretty consistently for the past decade+ is going through my yearly reading spreadsheet just to see how much I actually read -- I've got spreadsheets from 2012 onwards on this computer, though I think I started in 2010. I also start the new spreadsheet for the year on January 1. I do it in Excel, with sheets for Books, Shorts and Novellas, Comics, and Audiobooks. At one point I had a DNF sheet, but I don't tend to DNF books so I got rid of it last year or the year before. (This is simply because I just don't read books I'm not likely to finish -- I don't really read new-to-me authors and I do a lot of rereading.) I color code throughout the year at the end of every month; the color coding is based on vibes, and 2023's colors tended to be pretty faded/muted. I read more nonfiction for fun this year than I have in many years because I did so much WWII and Cold War research for Home, which was somewhat of a relief to me because I'd been worried that I'd lost my ability to read nonfiction for fun in graduate school. (For those that don't know, I'm a history PhD student, which means all I do is read nonfiction, not for fun even if I enjoy my subject.) I don't count any reading I do for school on my spreadsheet.

Total numbers this year:

Books: 103

Short stories and novellas: 15

Comics: 6 (5 trades, 1 single)

Audiobooks: 55

These are pretty low numbers for me; I had a couple months this year where I only read 3-4 books, which is for me a very, very bad sign. It is noticeably better than 2022, where I read under a hundred books, the lowest numbers since I started tracking (and 2022 was a really bad year for me). My best year on record is 2019, where I read 200 books. I think this was the highest year for audiobooks, though -- I listen to audiobooks in the kitchen. (And I do a lot of repeats, because I have very specific qualifications for what I'll listen to on audiobook, and there were a number of occasions this year where I listened to the same audiobook on repeat three or four times in a row, listened to something else, went back to that one. Anyway, the Code Name Verity audiobook is great if you want to cry in your kitchen.)

I'm a very, very fast reader; I also do around 90% rereads -- lower than that this year because I went on that nonfiction spree. I do so many rereads that it's not really worth asking me what the best book I read this year is, because I've read most of them before. I usually do a couple of nearly-full author backlist rereads over the course of a year, which might take several months; this year was Barbara Hambly and S.M. Stirling. (If you've got an author you really like, it's actually quite fun to do this in chronological order, but if it's someone like Hambly, you do have to clear 4-6 months for that. Or longer if you're not as fast a reader as I am.)

anyway. 2024 spreadsheet's open now and I'm carrying over anything unfinished from 2023 onto it, so we'll see how this year shakes out.

[fiabex]

Dreamwidth Roundup

Nominations are now closed, and our closing posts are up! We have final clarification posts, and we have the post about tag set clean up!

Mods will be going through the tagset, but we also welcome your input! If you see an issue with tags already in the tagset, please comment on the tagset cleanup post, but if you think that a tag you nominated didn't make it into the tag set, please send that comment to clarification post 4!

More details about the fandoms that are parts of the clarification posts below the cut:

Nominations Clarification Post 3

Nominations Clarification Post 4

Tagset Cleanup

Nominations Clarification post 3:

Fandoms with Queries

+Anima (Manga)

Crossover Fandom

DCU (Comics)

Dimension 20 (Web Series)

Dredge (Video Game)

Dungeons and Dragons (Cartoon)

Elden Ring (Video Game)

Fairy Tail

Gary and His Demons (Cartoon)

Gundam 00

Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie

Magic Kaito

Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling

Original Work

Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)

QSMP | Quackity SMP

Red Dwarf (UK TV)

Ride Kamens (Video Game)

Shadow and Bone (TV)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types

Transformers Generation One

Westworld (TV)

Xenoblade Chronicles (Video Game)

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Video Game)

少年白马����风 | Dashing Youth (Live Action TV)

Fandoms with Rejections

A Date With Death (Visual Novel)

Crossover Fandom

Disco Elysium (Video Game)

Dungeons and Dragons (Cartoon)

Earth Girls are Easy (1988)

Exordia - Seth Dickinson

Gothic (1986)

Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon)

Persona 4

Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon

Warframe

방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS

人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù

少年白马醉春风 | Dashing Youth (Live Action TV)

Additionally, we have some updates about In-Universe tags and the umbrella tags that reference them (example: "Medium Opt-In: Any - Any Nominated In-Universe Medium")!

Nominations Clarification post 4:

Fandoms with Queries

Barely Lethal (2015)

Batman Beyond

Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly

Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells

Chicago Fire

Crossover Fandom

Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02

Doctor Strange (Movies)

Fallen London | Echo Bazaar

Fire & Blood - George R. R. Martin

Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling

In Nomine

Mapp & Lucia Series - E. F. Benson

Monster Prom (Video Games)

Murdoch Mysteries

Original Work

QSMP | Quackity SMP

Sanders Sides (Web Series)

Schmigadoon! (TV)

Stellar Firma (Podcast)

Stellaris (Video Game)

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Suzanne Collins

Thor (Movies)

What If...? (Cartoon 2021)

僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Manga)

英雄伝説 閃の軌跡 | Sen no Kiseki | The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel Series (Video Games)

龍が如く | Ryuu ga Gotoku | Yakuza (Video Games)

Fandoms with Rejections

A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin

Biggles Series - W. E. Johns

Chicago Fire

Chicago Med

Children of Time Series - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Compilation of Final Fantasy VII

Crossover Fandom

Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02

Fallen London | Echo Bazaar

Friends at the Table (Podcast)

John Wick (Movies)

Ladyhawke (1985)

Original Work

Stranger Things (TV 2016)

The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey

The Fall of the House of Usher (TV 2023)

The Long Earth Series - Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter

The Saint of Steel - T. Kingfisher

Voltron: Legendary Defender

Welcome to Night Vale

[knight-of-heart-and-art]

90s sci fi is a hellscape because you'll get okay books and then you'll get things marketed as sci fi that are obviously urban fantasy and then you'll get a book written by a man who has a weird relationship with creationism who also thinks AIDS is caused by drugs and then you'll get a book where you hate everyone involved and there is an incredible amount of casual racism and the author does not seem to understand how a vagina works and every single explicit sex scene is some form of rape

and then you'll get a genuinely enjoyable anthology that's so obviously the author having fun and going "yes, and" to his own narrative for 400 pages. and then you will look at the copyrights page and realize that it was written between 1958 and 1966.

anyway read Interstellar Patrol by David Weber Christopher Anvil if you get the chance. Do not read Drakon by S.M. Stirling.

[captainsvscaptains]

Just realised I didn't submit The Eagle (real life US Coast Guard/ most important object in the book Island in the Sea Of Time by S.M. Stirling), fuck

That's her ? Cool looking lady. Well, at least she gets an honorable mention

[wandringaesthetic]

OP I want to recommend to you S.M. Stirling's Emberverse (the first book is Dies the Fire). It doesn't have zombies but it does have post apocalyptic cannibals, knights, and bicycles.

(all electricity and gunpowder suddenly stop working. Among other things, a history prof SCA nerd full bore brings back fuedalism)

why don't people in zombie apocalypse stories ever just wear suits of armor? you think any zombie is gonna get their shitty rotting jaws through this?

I'm gonna rip and tear my way through the zombie apocalypse completely unharmed because none of the undead hoards will be able to get through my plate mail

[geekpopnews]

Conheça o livro “Conan: O Sangue da Serpente” da Alta Books

A Alta Books está lançando "Conan: O Sangue da Serpente" do autor S.M. Stirling. O livro independente traz de volta o personagem lendário de Robert E. Howard, agora em uma nova aventura. Confira. #Conan #OSanguedaSerpente

A Alta Books está lançando uma nova história de um clássico que conquistou fãs no mundo todo. “Conan: O Sangue da Serpente” de S. M. Stirling traz de volta o personagem criado por Robert E. Howard. Esse é o primeiro romance de Conan em mais de uma época, sendo uma produção independente de Stirling, autor best-seller do The New York Times. Conan agora enfrenta uma aventura ainda mais emocionante.…

[reality-breaker]

Βιβλιοκριτική: Eons of the Night, του Robert E. Howard

Αυτή είναι μια συλλογή με διηγήματα και νουβέλες του Robert E. Howard τα οποία έχει επιλέξει ο S.M. Stirling. Δεν είναι ιστορίες με τους πιο δημοφιλείς ήρωες του Howard, όπως Κόναν, Καλ, και Σόλομον Κέιν. Είναι κάποιες από τις λιγότερο γνωστές ιστορίες του, οι οποίες όμως με γοήτευσαν με το βαρβαρικό μεγαλείο τους. Είχα καιρό να διαβάσω βιβλίο που να μη βλ��πω την ώρα να το ξαναπιάσω για να δω τι γίνεται παρακάτω. Και ήταν διηγήματα και νουβέλες, όχι ένα ολόκληρο μυθιστόρημα. Κι όμως – ούτε μία από αυτές τις διηγήσεις δεν έτυχε να με απογοητεύσει. Η συλλογή περιλαμβάνει τις εξής ιστορίες: House of Arabu· The Garden of Fear· The Twilight of the Grey Gods· Spear and Fang· Delenda Est· Marchers of Valhalla· Sea Curse· Out of the Deep· In the Forest of Villefère· και Wolfshead. Οι μισές από αυτές διαδραματίζονται στο μακρινό παρελθόν του κόσμου μας, το οποίο είναι, ουσιαστικά, σαν άλλος κόσμος. Ή είναι μια φανταστική εποχή, ή μια εποχή που η φαντασία του Howard την έχει αλλοιώσει έτσι που μοιάζει σαν φανταστική. Παντού υπάρχουν εφιαλτικοί δαίμονες και παράξενη μαγεία. [Συνέχισε να διαβάζεις] ➤ https://www.fantastikosorizontas.gr/kostasvoulazeris/bookrev.php?ID=eons_of_the_night

[paulsemel]

While a lot of people have tried to use time machines to stop World War II, in S.M. Stirling's science fiction time travel adventure novel "To Turn The Tide," he sends people back to stop World War III. To find out why, check out this exclusive interview. https://paulsemel.com/exclusive-interview-to-turn-the-tide-author-s-m-stirling/ 📖⏰⚔️