#Scotto Moore

[bookfirstlinetourney]

Round 1

The screw through Cinder's ankle had rusted, the engraved cross cross marks worn to a mangled circle.

-Cinder, Marissa Meyer

I am the Queen of Sparkle Dungeon.

-Battle of the Linguist Mages, Scotto Moore

It’s strange how we always give big news to loved ones in a coma, as if a coma is just a thing that happens from a lack of something to be excited about in your life.

-I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You | Author: Scotto Moore | Publisher: Tor (209)

[etriva]

The future is more inevitable than the past, to be frank. You can block out your memories of the past, whereas the future is just going to keep happening to you.

Wild Massive, Scotto Moore

[backlogbooks]

"I mean, you don't have to care at all about music, there's no stakes involved in basically flitting through life without a favorite song or a favorite band, people do it all the time and lead full, satisfying lives and their funerals are well-attended by sad people. But if you do decide to care about music--and in Sierra's case, if you decide to care so much that you have to play music--then your whole life is changed. You're always on the hunt for the next best song." -Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You, Scotto Moore

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[firstofficerrose]

Battle of the Linguist Mages rocks very much.

[lovesongofjrrtolkien]

Book review: Wild Massive

I recently read Wild Massive by Scotto Moore. Highly recommend! #bookreview #books #reading #sciencefantasy

I recently read Wild Massive by Scotto Moore. Published by Tor Books in 2023, Wild Massive is not what I would call a fantasy novel, or science fiction. More science fantasy. The publisher’s description is especially fun, so here it is: Scotto Moore’s Wild Massive is a glorious web of lies, secrets, and humor in a breakneck, nitrous-boosted saga of the small rejecting the will of the…

[henclair]

allegory paradox and epiphany foreshadow literally had a complex, homoerotic, workplace frenemy relationship so intense it ended with the fabric of the multiverse essentially cracking

[dude1818]

Wild Massive

This week I read Wild Massive by Scotto Moore, and it was absolutely fantastic. It's the same author as Battle of the Linguist Mages, which is probably the reason it was on my list, but I had totally forgotten that connection. I'll try to avoid too many direct comparisons, but while both novels had pretty similar energy, Wild Massive ironically felt more cohesive and was more enjoyable overall

Wild Massive takes place in the Building. The Building is hundreds of thousands of floors tall, and each floor is a pocket dimension containing anything from just a normal elevator bank to our entire universe. (And there are a lot of floors that feature some parallel version of Earth.) The first 50,000 floors are ruled by the Association, which polices magic and technology within its jurisdiction, services the elevators (which are AI), and controls access through the lobby (because the Building is just one plane in a multiverse, but that's not really the topic of this book). Somewhere above the Association-controlled floors is the floor of the Shai-Manak, a species of powerful shapeshifting wizards. They've been at war with the Association for 50 years. The final main faction is the titular Wild Massive, which is functionally the Disney of the Building, operating major theme parks and attractions on a bunch of floors

The story starts out by following Carissa, the last member of a race of psionic humans that had previously been wiped out by the Association. She gets mixed up with the Shai-Manak plans to infiltrate the Association floors and blow up their weapon labs, and maybe Parliament. We find out that Wild Massive has a much bigger stake in this: they've been working on a multi-century docudrama chronicling the history of the Association, and as that story catches up to the present day, Wild Massive wants to turn that into literally shaping the narrative of the future. It gets really meta in the latter part of the book

It's a riveting action-adventure story, with the most disparate elements constantly being added to the mix. It's generally a high tech science fiction world, but there's plenty of magic to go around. It briefly dips its toe into X-Men-style psionics, which is the third element of the rock-paper-scissors arms race in the Building. There's also a classic morally gray superhero team that occasionally shows up, with the wildest of backstories. There's even a time travel miniplot at one point. When all of these pieces come together, it nails a sort of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy vibe incredibly well. It's an absolute joy to read. I'm going to include some of my favorite excerpts under the cut, because there's no way for me to do them justice

My only real complaint is that as scale of the conflict blows up in the final hour, the smaller conflicts get left behind. Several of the major antagonists get incidentally killed off when the final boss shows up, and the conclusion of Carissa's and the Shai-Manak characters' arcs are just left hanging. It turns out that the stakes of the story are reality itself, but the emotional connection to that: we have an emotional connection to the handful of named protagonists we followed, and it's disappointing not seeing what happens to them in particular

She pulled her hand out of the doorway, and the elevator doors were now clear to close. The last Carissa saw of her beloved elevator was the demonic figure struggling to reach the doors to stop them from closing. Then the elevator doors closed. Then the elevator doors vanished completely from sight, leaving behind a rippling distortion in the air that persisted mere seconds before local reality reasserted itself.

Rindasy still possessed enough willpower to draw the experimental “aimless” probability pistol ze’d borrowed from the weapons research lab, point it in the general direction of the shuttle, and open fire. The sudden loud burst of good old-fashioned, heavily enchanted projectile fire was a welcome respite from the phantom sound of the psychic attack. It was unethical to create fully sentient weapons, of course, but this ammunition had attained a particular glee about its purpose, judging by its willingness to accept the merest suggestion of accurate aim as a solid instruction for perpetrating explosive malice on a victim.

As a specter, Jirian Echo didn’t “show up for work,” rather he “began haunting the lab,” as it were, according to an irregular schedule that even Jirian had trouble predicting.

“This is an all-hands mission,” Agent Grey said curtly. “Fascinating,” Pivotal Moment said. “Does that mean our three incorporeal comrades will be joining the mission?” Precedent was that the three incorporeal Agents did not, in fact, join all-hands missions, as Pivotal Moment well knew. Agent ClearMind was a sentient mathematical formulation who patrolled irrational and imaginary topologies. Agent Nihil Eon was an anti-being who monitored designated non-sentience dimensions for signs of nascent life and extinguished what it found. And Agent Sublime Promise of a Devious Puzzle (Delighting You, Exciting You) patrolled vividly surreal realms and improbable dimensions for inscrutable unreasons that resist easy description here.

“Excellent,” he said. “The spacetime machine only allows one passenger, so we’ll need to steal a golf cart.” “I’m from corporate. They gave me a golf cart to use while I’m here.” “I see. Well, in that case, let’s try to exceed the posted speed limit just a tad to preserve a sense of adventure.”

“Oh, let me just spare you the trouble,” said [redacted], rising from his seat. “It’s me. I’m the assassin.” He stood up, and for the first time, everyone in the room really appreciated how toweringly tall [redacted] actually was. “The real [redacted]’s been dead for thirty years, and I’ve just been … coming to your little meetings all this time, what can I say.”

[noxinespresso]

adrian from the coffee table

that is it. that is the whole entire post

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Wild Massive | Author: Scotto Moore | Publisher: Tor (2023)

[netclash]

..has anyone here watched scotto moore’s webseries “the coffee table”? if not… i offer you.. some silly guys. watch the webseries. now.

[ forgotten moment & discrete moment, played by k. brian neel, and adrian, played by daniel christensen from scotto moore’s the coffee table. ]

[secondimpact]

I cannot stop thinking about that last sentence since reading it last night.

[Text ID= "Let me show you what I mean. I can open a door in my mind and give them voice when I see fit. One in particular likes to visit."

Her voice suddenly changed, dropped half an octave or something without warning, became jagged, harsh, otherworldly. She said, "Consider these rogue domestic punctuation marks the resistance, because we refuse to accept the tyranny of the invaders. And consider me their leader, their symbol."

"Who are you?" I said.

Her eyes were glowing now, bright yellow. Her voice had become glorious music, as she approached the end of whatever sequences she was delivering.

She roared, "Can you believe I'm the motherfucking interrobang!?" /]

[nitewrighter]

Hi! I wanted to ask for a book recommendation! I'm doing a "get out of your comfort zone" kind of reading challenge and one of the prompts is a book recommended by a librarian, and you're a librarian, so. I'm generally pretty omnivorous, though I lean toward fantasy and I don't particularly enjoy modern literary fiction or things with sad endings. I read a lot, so maybe something more obscure?

You're a treat to follow on Tumblr, so I feel like you'd give good recommendations. Thanks in advance!

Hmm, well it's probably within your comfort zone, and I don't think it's that obscure because it got some buzz on here a while back, but for fantasy one fantasy read that I enjoyed recently was Legends and Lattes, which is like... THEE coffee shop AU to end all coffee shop AU's. It's about an orc mercenary lady who retires and starts a coffee shop and strikes up this very soft slow-burn romance with a tiefling-looking succubus. And there's THE WORLD'S CUTEST RATKIN BAKER. But I'd categorize that more under 'cozy autumnal read.' I feel like T. Kingfisher is also a pretty popular author on here, but I really loved "Nettle and Bone"---good blend between Fairy Tale Tropes and solid worldbuilding there. If you're in the mood for a more ~gothic~ read I've also enjoyed both "What Moves the Dead" and "A House with Good Bones" by her, as well.

For something kind of obscure--I mean I wouldn't say it has a ~happy~ ending but it's a very short read and a fun ride--"Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You" by Scotto Moore was really fun. It's cosmic horror meets kind of dotcom era music journalism. Oh! Another über-short cosmic horror read that kind of defangs itself by being fun! and cheeky! is "Walking to Aldebaran" by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Another short read, and also part post-apocalyptic part western featuring lesbians: "Upright Women Wanted" manages to hit all my Louis L'Amour plot point bells while also being kind of... intensely introspective about like, masking and closeting and it manages to up its own western tension vibes because of it. Though honestly if you're looking for sci-fi lesbians *specifically* I'd recommend "This is How You Lose the Time War"--not that obscure because it won the Hugo award, but it's also like "If you haven't read it yet, WHAT ARE YOU DOING."

Gosh let me know if you've already read a bunch of these, and I'll see if I don't have other recommendations. I love recommending stuff SO MUCH.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

Book 1 only for all of these.

Humans are weird, I have the data by Betty Adams

Clean Sweep by Illona Andrews . This is a complicated one genre wise, because there are vampires and werewolves and witches, but they're from alien planets, werewolves are the result of genetic modification, vampires have advanced tech, etc. So fantasy would make sense too?

Cluster by Piers Anthony

Proxima by stephen baxter

Prime Suspects: A Clone Detective Mystery by Jim Bernheimer

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Nova Express William Burroughs,

Famous Men Who Never Lived by K Chess

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer

Reset by Sarina Dahlan

Omnitopia dawn by Diane Duane

The Dreaming Void by peter Hamilton

Valor's Choice (Huff, Tanya)

Eye to Eye (Jinks, Catherine)

Revan (Karpyshyn, Drew)

Babel (Kuang, R.F.)

The Wandering Earth (Liu, Cixin)

The Merchant of Death (MacHale, D.J.)

Maybe Next Time (Major, Cesca)

The Host (Meyer, Stephenie)

Cloud Atlas (Mitchell, David)

Wild Massive (Moore, Scotto)

Nyxia (Reintgen, Scott )

Revelation Space (Reynolds, Alastair)

Robots vs. Fairies (Parisien, Dominik)

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Taylor, Dennis E.)

Spin (Wilson, Robert Charles)

Artifice (Woolfson, Alex)

Androne (Worrell, Dwain)

hello! many of these are queued.

the following are in formats or genres that I’m not currently accepting for this blog:

Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others is a collection of (very good) non-linked short fiction.

R.F. Kuang’s Babel is fantasy.

Robots vs. Fairies (ed. Parisien and Wolfe) is a collection of non-linked short fiction.

Alex Woolfson’s Artifice is a graphic novel.

and I had questions about the following:

Olivia Blake’s The Atlas Six appears to be fantasy — is there something in later books that would make it science fiction?

William S. Burroughs, Nova Express — you said book 1 only, but Nova Express is book 2 of The Nova Trilogy. did you want Nova Express specifically or did you want book 1, The Soft Machine?

Liu Cixin, The Wandering Earth — this appears to be the title of a short fiction collection containing the title story. has the story itself been published in standalone format (outside of a magazine/similar)? if so, could you or someone else point me towards it?

D.J. MacHale, The Merchant of Death — while parallel worlds are integral to the Pendragon books, my impression is that the handling of them (and of travel between them) is primarily fantastic rather than scientific/science-fictional. could you, or someone else, clarify the extent of the science fiction aspects of the series?

[freewayshark]

Back for more with 26 & 50

26. Favorite novella(s).

Ohhhhh this is such a great question because I love novellas (caveat that I don’t know the parameters of long short story vs novella vs a really short novel)

The Mist by Stephen King, Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee, the Danielle Cain novellas by Margaret Killjoy, Thornhedge by T Kingfisher, A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca, We Need to Do Something by Max Booth III, A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman, Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand, This is How You Lose the Time War by Amar El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, and Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore

50. What kind of book have you never read but always hope to find at some point in the future?

Hmm I can’t think of anything I want that I haven’t read but I do think there is not nearly enough oral history horror, you know, like World War Z? I’ve read the tiny handful there is and I’m desperate for more

Send me book worm asks!