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

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

Veronica will be interviewing Kim Stanley Robinson on Friday, May 17.

Let us know what questions you'd like her to ask!

Outside of the official S&L pick, I'm finishing up Borges' Labyrinths and starting The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. How about you?

*Moved to Author Promo section*. Please do read the FAQ, as Nick suggests.

When I and several co-workers (most of us ex-English majors) all joined Goodreads at the same time however many years back, we had a huge race to add as many of our read books as we could remember and/or find on our bookshelves.

After that mad, competitive, book-adding orgy, I've settled down to adding other past-reads when I'm reminded by it by another Goodreads friend or discussion (or stumbling upon it in again in the physical world).

I rated all the reads, but reviews I've usually only done for ones that I've read since joining GR.

Moved to the Dragonflight forum, since now it's the dragon-y month of April.

Borderlands gets my vote too.

Re-reading the wonderful and mind-bending Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. And to brush up on ancient apocalypse material for my eternally-WIP novel, Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith by Norman Cohn.

Tassie Dave wrote: "Jlawrence wrote: "Daryl, that is an great, all-time classic, but has been read before - in fact it was the first S&L book..."

It was the 4th S&L book. It was the 1st after the podcast started.

The first book was The Golden Compass.

Oops, I had forgotten that! Even though I was part of the S&L meet-up to watch the pretty but disappointing movie adaptation of Golden Compass. Off to Bolvangar with me!

Daryl wrote: "Although perhaps many have read this (still in my To-read!) but still worth discussing - William Gibson's Neuromancer."

Daryl, that is an great, all-time classic, but has been read by S&L before - in fact it was the first S&L book! Travel back in time to S&L Episode 1.

Planescape: Torment is one of the best games/stories I've ever played, and I was another of those who jumped in as a backer on day 1 for Numenera. So I was surprised/delighted when Rothfuss was pulled in through a stretch goal (I'm looking forward to the third Kingkiller, but I'm OK with waiting for it, unlike my impatience with regards to Westeros).

Tom wrote: "Derek wrote: "I'd go with The Handmaid's Tale. It is number 22 on the S&L list, you can never go wrong with dystopian sci-fi and it has recently been released on Audible. Whispersync ready and everything. Oh dear..."

I could *swear* we read this but maybe I'm confusing it with the book club I was in with Josh Lawrence before Sword and Laser was a thing. "

Ah, yes! It was that pre-S&L book club, Tom. I remember we all planned to watch the movie, too, and compare it with the book, but were too lazy. As a S&L pick I think it'd provoke some good discussion.

Of ones mentioned so far, I'm also in favor of A Fire Upon the Deep (been lobbying for it forever), The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Stars My Destination.

I'd be interested in this.

Rob wrote: "I don't put much faith in a company who locks their movies away in some fictional "vault" in an attempt to create incentive to purchase it now."

Yes, but a high quality release of the original trilogy has already been in a Lucas vault forever....even through a vault-release lens, the inflated incentive via delayed release has been already been built. ;)

For the Tolkien/Lucas analogy to be complete, it would need to be the case that all books can only be viewed through 'book-viewer' machines - some of these machines are in public spaces where you buy a ticket, some are smaller machines you use to view books at home. The original version of the Hobbit is released when the book-viewing machines at home are vastly inferior to the public book-viewing machines - print is much smaller, pages are sometimes blurry, etc. The release of the original Hobbit is a huge pop-culture and financial-success phenomenon, changing the book-making industry.

When Tolkien releases his revised Hobbit decades later, the book-viewing machines at home use a new format of book that come close to matching the quality of the public book-viewing machines. You can only read the original Hobbit through the now-painful experience of the old, private book-viewing machines. When the British Library asks for a copy of his award-winning original version, to be preserved for historical purposes, Tolkien refuses, sending them his revised instead. Tolkien earlier spoke against the "colorization" of older books, and the importance of preserving books in their original form as historical and cultural artifacts, but now publicly wishes for the utter destruction of his own original version, hoping it will be erased from history.

I've ranted about this before on the boards, so I'll just repeat myself a bit here. ;) Creators always have a right to revise and rework their creations. But it's Lucas determination to completely erase his original that's so frustrating, especially given its immense pop-culture and industry-changing impact - it deserves historical preservation. I would be happy to just roll my eyes at endless Special Edition tweaking and leave it at that, IF the original was also available in a high quality format.

Even if all the SE changes were excellent (in the way that I feel the Gollum changes in the Hobbit are excellent), I would still believe that the original films deserve quality preservation.

One can only hope that with the hand-off of the Star Wars franchise to Disney, that we might see a high quality preservation of the original films released (source material for a restoration exist despite Lucas' claim that the original film sources were hopelessly altered during the making of the SE). Surely people at Disney have done the math on all the longing-for-the-truly-original-trilogy fans (like myself) who have been waiting for, and would buy, such a release.

BTW, the The Annotated Hobbit details many other interesting revisions Tolkien made to the Hobbit to align it more with LOTR (and sometimes just to correct goofs) - though the Gollum scene is definitely the most significant.

I'll second Persona 3 - refreshing take on RPG grinding via the 'relationship links' you set up by interacting with NPCs/PCs outside of combat, which in turn fuels the choices of multiple 'persona' creatures you can summon in combat. Plus, it's modern-day setting (with gothic supernatural elements invading) which make it a break from the general Tolkein-isms/Dragon Warrior-isms of fantasy JRPGs.

The one thing I didn't like is a general console vs. PC issue - save points. Sometimes they are VERY far apart in the tower (dungeon) you have to run, which can cause great frustration. Which is why I will next be playng the disc via a PC emulator (save ANYwhere!).

Own Persona 4, but want to finish Persona 3 first.

I was excited about Ni No Kuni, but really didn't like the demo - I still may try it, though.

I am sad that this chapter of S&L video is closing, but it will doubtless lead to even an even more fantabulous second chapter, whether by kickstarter or some other route.

For the final video ep of this season, Lem should DEVOUR THE SET (or at least every book on set).

Really liked the interview with Sullivan, especially his comments about traditional publishing vs. self-publishing, and how it can result, except for the very top tier, in a difference between success in terms of recognizability (traditional) vs. success in terms of making of living (self-published).

*moved thread to the Downbelow Station sub-forum* since now it's March. :)

Along with starting Downbelow Station and finishing some February reads, I've picked up Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, about the clandestine student group that operated against the Third Reich in Nazi Germany, and am plundering colorful tidbits from the charming and breezy medieval/occult compendium The Book of Weird for my novel-in-progress.

Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link's short stories which have the best blending of myth/fairy-tales with modern day settings I've read outside of Gaiman's Sandman comics, and Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture.

And there was much rejoicing!