Jlawrence’s Comments (group member since Mar 08, 2010)

Jlawrence’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

Also, if you hadn't seen it yet, photo of Kim Stanley Robinson and Joe Haldeman in the interview room:

Funny you should ask (just went up today). :)

Veronica and I interviewed Kim Stanley Robinson at the Nebula Awards last week (the day before he won Best Novel for 2312), and he answered your questions about the research he does for his books, whether he would take a one-way ticket to a Mars colony, a suprise reveal about the source of one of his characters, and much more.

http://swordandlaser.com/home/2013/5/21/sl-podcast-129-interview-with-kim-stanley-robinson

Micah wrote: "This belongs in the author promo section."

Moved. Ted, please check out our FAQ for new members - talks about author promotion posts, too.

Rick wrote: "I overstepped when I made the fear of change comment, but this isn't a convincing argument to me. It's reading too much into a whimsical name and goes along the lines of name-as-destiny logic when the issue should be "does the S&L Goodreads community benefit or lose by doing this? If so, does this impose unwanted burdens on T & V or the mods?" Everything aside from that isn't really relevant. If there's upside in the form of a benefit to the community and there's not unwanted work for T&V or you mods, do it. If those aren't true, don't. "

Er, that's exactly what I was saying in the next paragraph of my response ("The question is..." and all that). Substitute 'non-official' or 'group-chosen' or whatever for 'renegade' throughout my comment: it's not about the name, it's about the focus of this group's attention, as supported organizationally by the forums (which ties into Janet's comment) - that's what T & V are considering.

Tae wrote: "Discussing those books is great, but the thread had started to take a direction where it was becoming less of a discussion and more of an argument (in the negative connotation)..."

Richardya's initial post is blunt but it's clear from his participation in the rest of the thread that it was not just a troll for posts. I think things here have stayed pretty civil even when views have been strongly expressed.

And it was pretty refreshing for me to see this discussion as I'd mostly only seen positive reactions to it before. For myself, I first read it some years back when it was an early S&L pick, and was totally engrossed by the taut storytelling and harsh situations Ender was made to navigate. I was also ok with the prodigy-being-guided-and-manipulated-to-perform-a-certain-function. And I was genuinely moved by (view spoiler)[the effect of Ender learning he had been manipulated into committing genocide (hide spoiler)]. So I enjoyed it and it was not through any lens of nostalgia since that was my first exposure. I do detest Card's political stances, but I nonetheless feel Ender's Game deserves its reputation as a SF classic.

But some specific objections to aspects of the book here, as well as the counter-arguments to those objections, have made me think of the book in ways I hadn't before. That's what a good discussion usually does.

Rick wrote: "Jlawrence - of course it's p to them. Im agnostic as I've said in this thread before.

I was mostly responding to "For what it's worth, I think those of you being negative about adding a section have no good arguments..." and all that followed. Just listening to those few mins of the podcast (I provided the exact time where it's discussed) would help clarify T & V's ambivalence towards focusing on renegade reads.

Your difficulty in finding the PoG thread is, ironically, the main argument for such a section and serves as a rather good counterpoint to the "oh just put it in the What Else... section."

No, the argument for "just put in the What Else section" is not that renegade reads there will get the same amount of exposure as they would in their own section. They would definitely get a boost in their own section. The argument for "just put them in the What Else section" is that renegade reads should not get organizational support, but be spontaneous things that live or die on their own (like real renagades.)

The question is whether the group, organizationally, should be officially recognizing and helping to draw attention to renegade reads -- because once officially recognized and structurally called out, are they really renegade then? They're more or less condoned secondary picks then. Even if not literally 'officially endorsed' that what's the structural calling-out of them would do. And it's that question of divided focus that makes it a bit trickier than just adding the section without thinking about it. That's what T & V touch on in the podcast.

So I understand your frustration in wanting more discussion about that particular renegade read. But it would definitely be getting some extra discussion if it had its own section, which is why there is this thread. It a chicken-egg-y type thing.

Edit: OK, Rick, I see the Player of Games thread now. Well, it can get moved to a Renegade Reads section later if one gets created. The thing about discussions, though, is they can go on long after the chosen month that the book is slotted for - that's happend with many books on this forum.

Listen to the podcast and you'd at least know what some of T & V's concerns are. It's not simply a dislike of change (the podcast and forum has changed/been modified many times!), but the decision's up to them.

William, LOL!! That is awesome.

Rob, haha, yes!! Story-wise I was very thankful for that! Just the technical ramifications bothered me a bit.

I really like how that quote stresses how to evaluate *good* science fiction, instead of trying to nail down an exact One True Definition of Science Fiction.

The only Pohl I've read is The Space Merchants (co-written with C.M. Kornbluth) which is a good if somewhat predictable send-up of advertising/1950s-US-capitalism projected into the future.

Long ago tried the compter game adaptation of Gateway, which seemed kind of cool, but its alien artifact puzzles were too difficult for my ADD brain. :/

Saw it yesterday. I thought it was good and fun, but not as good and fun as the first Abrams Star Trek. I thought Cumberbatch did a great job, though (view spoiler)[obviously a much different Khan in temperament, and I felt like more should have been done with him - specifically, I felt that Admiral Marcus as '2nd villain' took away too much time from Khan, so that this Khan didn't get to build as much of a him-vs-the-heroes tension and menance as was done in WoK. Plus, I was really excited about Peter Weller as the Admiral, but felt his performance was disappointing. That being said, the conspiracy element was interesting, especially in its commentary-on-terrorism-and-counter-terrorism aspect, but I wish they'd found someway to get Marcus out of the way earlier, so Cumberbatch would have had more time to be awesome and/or scary (Kirk having to work with Khan for part of the time was pretty fun, though). Kirk's resurrection was a little annoying -wouldn't the Federation want to take samples from all the genetic-superpersons to synthesize more Resurrection Juice now?? (hide spoiler)]

For the third film, I'm really hoping they push in some totally new direction that the rebooted history allows them, while building the character relationships (the most enduring part of TOS for me, other than the tribbles) out more.

For the third film, I also want McCoy to have another line as good as the first's "Space is disease and danger, wrapped in darkness and silence!" because Karl Urban is so damn good at being Bones!

William, you called him a name, specifically "Nancy" with the adjective "negative" applied to it - not too hard to understand, I hope.

The point is: discussion on these forums is precisely to allow many different opinions to be expressed - about the topics at hand, not about the participants of the discussion. Calling someone negative adds 0 content to the discussion, but *does* open up the potential for misunderstandings/flame-war-flamethrowers-guttering-to-life, etc.

Now please carry on non-turniphead-filled discussion of the issues at hand.

Mr. Noah, that'd be interesting! But I think renegade reads by definition should come from the community at large.

Hey everyone:

1) As Nick points out, please don't make this personal. Non name-calling conversations are the Sword & Laser Way.

2) Tom and Veronica talked about this thread in the most recent podcast (Bare your Sword section - 43:40). They go over both their pro and con feelings about the idea - so it's not a simple "let's do it" or "totally rejected" from them, they're going to need to consider it. Take a listen if you haven't so you can know where it currently stands.

Ed, it will be audio (Veronica, correct me if I'm wrong).

Traveller, usually the interview questions are non-spoilery, but on the other hand maybe the interview could have a "spoiler alert" section in the podcast (that's up to Veronica and Tom). There's actually some spoilery questions I'd like to ask, too.

So I say go ahead and ask spoilery ones, just use spoiler tags in your post here.

When we read Shadow & Claw, there was debate on our forums about categorizing it as science fiction or fantasy. Some argued the fantasy elements were just a disguise over what they saw as clearly a science fiction story, while others claimed the fantasy elements were integral and pointed to how books in the series received the Locus Award for Best Fantasy novel and the World Fantasy Award. You have your own term "science fantasy" to categorize it. Can you talk about what "science fantasy" is as contrasted to science fiction and fantasy, and your favorite works that are examples of it?

Jorge Luis Borges is often cited as an influence on Book of the New Sun, with the Baldanders and Father Inire's fish being creatures from Borge's Book of Imaginary Beings, and some have suggested that the librarian Ultan in the series is modeled on Borges. What draws you to Borges, and which stories of his had the greatest influence on you and why?

What drew you to making Severian an unreliable narrator? Was this part of his character from the start of your work on the New Sun, or something that you introduced when re-writing?

As part of a busy day at the Nebula Awards, Veronica will interview Gene Wolfe, this coming Friday, May 17.

Wolfe's books include Shadow and Claw from the Book of the New Sun series which was a previous S&L pick.

What questions would you like to ask Wolfe?

Veronica will interview Joe Haldeman on Friday May 17 at the Nebula Awards.

Haldeman's books include The Forever War, which was a previous S&L pick.

What would you like to ask Haldeman?