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

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

Hmm, I love me some Firefly, but the noir/mystery-story-set-in-space vibe of Leviathan Wakes kept me from drawing any strong comparisons between the characters. I can see see some of the comparisons people are drawing, but...

As others have said, those kind of characters in a small crew are kind of stock for sf. Firefly's combination of great writing and acting (and the mighty hand of Joss) made those characters come alive, not anything so unique in the basic character descriptions.

The main characters in Leviathan aren't super-deep, but they are shaded enough that they feel like their own characters instead of Firefly analogs: Miller is the end-of-his-tether noir detective trying to do one last right thing before bottoming out, Holden is an interesting mix of some command skill with some extraordinary dangerous naivete. Both of those positions are significantly different from any of the Firefly characters.

Jonathon wrote: "If I were to compare Holden to anyone from Firefly, it'd probably be Simon. He's an idealist who doesn't seem to think through the consequences of his actions."

Agreed.

I guess Naomi matches Zoe in helping her commander fill in the blank spots, but that's more of just the XO function. Otherwise, their actions and relations with others are different.

Amos doesn't have Jayne's hilarious love of being gruff and bad. Naomi is not a super-optimistic people-person like Kaylee.

Ian wrote: "The unique part of Firefly isn't a spaceship with a small crew! Even the characters of Firefly aren't all that special, they're just really well done. The unique part is the mashup of Westerns and space, with all the low-tech worlds Firefly normally went to. Life on the belt is gritty however it is anything *but* low-tech."

Agreed, and Leviathan Wakes is a mystery-story/space mash-up, its main characters being a typical noir detective and a strong but naive leader -- Firefly is a Western/space mash-up with a disillusioned but sometimes noble Han Solo-like main character. Feel pretty different.

Very intrigued by this too. Pledged for the console.

Micah wrote: "Jlawrence wrote: "And speaking of Star Trek viewings, who will be buying TNG Season 1 on Blu Ray when it comes out on July 24? I'm pretty sure I will - admittedly that season's eps are a mixed bag, but the restoration work looks great."

oh but those full body onesie (spelling?) suits are going to look terrific in 1080p. Also that great episode "Justice" where everybody is half clothed and Wesley almost gets killed by a god for crushing some flowers should be even more awkward on Blu-Ray."

My viewing of TNG has been very scatter-shot, so I'm looking forward to finally seeing every ep, good and bad, as it comes out on Blu Ray.

Wesley Crusher crushed flowers? Shameful!

To the addressing of the lemming issue I must say, 'yippee!':



And speaking of Star Trek viewings, who will be buying TNG Season 1 on Blu Ray when it comes out on July 24? I'm pretty sure I will - admittedly that season's eps are a mixed bag, but the restoration work looks great. I'm sure the replicator should be able to churn out some absinthe, too.

Scrivener is worth the extra money, imo. Like Michael, I've found it very useful for organizing notes on characters, locations, plot points, and copy-and-pasted excerpts from reference material -- all contained within the same project file as the main document. I could make all those same notes in Open Office, and then organize them with another third-party program, but Scrivener puts it all in one well-thought-out package. (I also got it via NaNoWriMo's discount deal last year.)

Aloha wrote: "Jlawrence wrote: finally finished that 2 years ago, which was my third attempt at reading it. I felt like I deserved a medal (thought it *was* worth the difficulty). A friend of mine has declared she will get an Escher tattoo if she ever finishes it "

Aloha wrote: "Why *was*?"

Oh it's still worth the difficulty. I was just talking in past tense because all those attempts occurred in the past. ;)

Aloha wrote: "I'm thinking of cracking that if I ever finish Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which I am loving. Hurts so goooo..."

I finally finished that 2 years ago, which was my third attempt at reading it. I felt like I deserved a medal (thought it *was* worth the difficulty). A friend of mine has declared she will get an Escher tattoo if she ever finishes it.

Anne wrote: "I'm only here because of some of the past selections by Tom. But since I've been here it has been Hyperion and Leviathin Wakes ... somewhat parallel to recent election results in various states ....."

Tom has already finished Leviathan Wakes and gave it 5 stars. He is a highly educated and experienced reader of science fiction, but does that mean his five stars will guarantee you or I will like the book? I haven't read it, and I may hate it. Opinions differ, which makes discussion interesting.

Again, discussing in detail *what* you didn't like about a book can both be a good way to vent and can generate some good discussion - especially if put in the form of "Wasn't anyone else bothered by the way X did Y and Z was portrayed.....?" question. If it doesn't generate discussion, well, at least you vented and can move on. But it's generally better than just saying, "This sucks. Lemming."

Tom and Veronica have often *featured* posts that are critical of the main read on the podcast, when those posts are detailed, well-written, thought-provoking, etc.

And you don't have to discuss the main book to participate. There's tons of discussions in entire sub-forums here dedicated to non-main-book discussions.

Anne wrote: "Other groups use similar standards. What are the S&L standards???"

Harm done is to the group as experienced readers simply leave searching for good reads in scifi elsewhere."

Experienced readers can disagree strongly about what constitutes "good reads in scifi" -- it's a subjective matter. Arguments about such have raged among experienced readers and writers of science fiction for decades, and that's good - it's the sign of varied, healthy community, instead of a monolith clutching an absolute canon of approved works.

Anne wrote: "Even when everyone is well-intentioned, a poorly informed majority can make bad decisions that hurt everyone. Since the majority is by definition not the most highly educated group, education of the masses becomes a limiting factor in the effectiveness of a democracy."

Again, "highly educated" people can disagree about the value of a particular book. For proof of this, and fun besides, check out some nasty things highly educated, famous authors have said about the works of other highly educated, famous authors.

As for the problem being democracy, well, official picks are only sometimes put a vote - often it's simply Tom or Veronica's choice.

From the beginning of Sword & Laser has used the broadest possible definition of "science fiction" and "fantasy" for the books that are considered for official picks of the club.

Take a look at the full list of official S&L picks from the past four years. You will see there is quite a variety.

If that variety will always frustrate you, there are indeed alternative groups (many on Goodreads alone) with a narrower focus. Such as the Goodreads Hard Sci Fi group.

As I've said in other threads that have tended this way, I'm *thankful* that S&L has lead me to read many things outside of my general interest/comfort zones. My hope is that other people can experience the same, if they ride it out past particular books they don't like.

And I'm not saying you shouldn't criticize books you don't like. By all means, give detailed critiques of why you don't like a particular book -- that usually fosters interesting discussion (it's not very interesting if everyone just nods and says, 'that was awesome!!').

I'm just saying that the argument that S&L is reading the wrong *kind* of books is misplaced and ignores that the group has always sampled from a wide range of sub-genres within both science fiction and fantasy, and will continue to do so.

Oh, that's an encouraging sign! Attack the Block was good indeed! *crosses fingers as well*

Space Preacher wrote: "Anyone else bothered by the utter lack of protocol on that ship?...So much of the accident and horror would have been negated if people had just stopped to review information, and maybe talked to each other occasionally."

Space Preacher, yeah, that's exactly what I mean by the scientists acting like "piss-poor, idiot scientists" - my biggest issue with the film. But somehow I did not feel as burned (ha) by Prometheus as I did by LOST...but maybe by the end of the Prometheus sequel, if it happens, I'll be shaking my fist at Lindehof again. ;)

Leslie wrote: "Hahah I like that.

Here's an SMS conversation between Dr. Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and an 'Engineer'..."

Leslie, yes, that's hilarious too. There's some good discussion of it on this thread - Richard expands on some of his interpretation there.

Richard, I like your explanation a lot, and it makes me appreciate what they were trying to do in the film more, but I still think they undermined that attempt in various ways -- like having most of the scientists act behave very incautiously, un-methodically and just plain dumbly towards their discoveries and (view spoiler)[by having it said "their DNA is the same as ours!" instead of maybe "their DNA is compatible with ours", since the former doesn't really make sense, especially if evolution is involved, as the SMS article also points out). (hide spoiler)] But I see it as interesting if flawed, and hope they get to do a sequel to try to follow-up on the loose-ends and WHYs.

I was witness to a Facebook thread where someone was saying (view spoiler)["Scott is just pandering to the creationist/intelligent design crowd! This shows the degradation of American culture!!" Really? Somehow, when intelligent design advocates are arguing their case, I don't think they're imagining albino alien warrior-scientists who decide our creation is a mistake when they're imagining the "intelligent designer". ;) One aspect I liked about the film was the suggestion "you might not really want to know who you creator is..." (hide spoiler)]

A friend pointed out this hilarious and handy Prometheus chart to me:

(view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)]

Kickstarter is dangerous! The past several months, I've done a lot of pledging for Kickstarter indie games (most of which have been funded) as well as the Singularity project.

This includes CLANG (I did the $25 to get the game, somewhere between Tom's skinflint $5 and Veronica's extravagant $150 ;) ). I'm not sure, even if they realize it just as they're imagining, that it will be something I'd play a *lot*, but I do want to see it realized, and want to play it.

Plus it could lead to a S&L virtual sword-fighting guild. Maybe someone would make a light-saber mod for it so Laser can be properly represented, too. ;)

I enjoyed it, but I agree with the many comments that the biologist, geologist, and the boyfriend all behaved like, well if not scientists, then piss-poor, idiot scientists in how they handled what they found.

I think if that had been handled better script-wise, it actually could have been kind of great, if still nowhere near a classic. I enjoyed that it didn't try to replicate the intense suspense-horror of Alien nor the intense-action of Aliens, but instead aimed for something else: a lower-key theme-based (origin of mankind) sf story. Coming out of the theater, I really felt like it had been like an interesting but flawed sf novella, as opposed to a blockbuster epic.

Agreed that it was beautiful (I will get it on blu-ray for that (and hopefully some extra scenes)) and that Fassbender's performance was excellent.

Rik wrote: "At the time I thought that was supposed to be the same alien planet but I've read elsewhere that it was supposed to be Earth. Regardless, what was it about?"

See Richard's spoiler comment above - that interpretation makes sense to me. (view spoiler)[Kind of neat, if is Earth & that interpretation's correct, since then we are given one of the "big answers" that is sought in the film right away, before we know that it's an answer. (hide spoiler)]

The sword-fighting research for Mongoliad seems to have inspired Stephenson to launch a sword-fighting video game. He's aiming for high realism (sans real severed limbs) and motion control via "a commercial, third-party, off-the-shelf controller that anyone can buy today" (maybe they're thinking of the Wii remote?), and tying the game's 2 player duels into the universe of the Mongoliad/Foreworld.

Stephenson's CLANG kickstarter project

I forgot to mention that people interested in online or by-email play of board games should check out Vassal. It's a cross-platform (Win,Mac,Linux) engine with a ton of modules for various games (and if you're ambitious you can make your own).

For instance, mentioned in this thread Arkham Horror, Pandemic, Battlestar Galactica, Puerto Rico and many, many more.

Also, Race for the Galaxy players who are having trouble finding opponents or just want practice, there's a cross-platform program simulating the game and its expansions with excellent AI (at least it always kicks my ass, but I'm also a RftG noob). The guy also added online multiplayer to the program, but I haven't tried that yet.

Martian Chronicles - some of the images from it still stay with me.

Hopefully T&V could find a willing goodreads librarian who could be in charge of removing the ones that get chosen each month.

I like that older suggestions will finally claw their way to the top or drown under new or more popular suggestions in some kind of darwinian struggle for bookclub glory.

And the Autarch can exercise dictatorial power whenever desired, of course.

Deborah wrote: "Just realize that anyone can vote on the lists and add books to the lists, not just group members."

Well, that is a bit of an issue, but hopefully non-members wouldn't be too interested in messing with the lists (though I guess S&L could attract trolls at some point).

I like! Let us hope Autarch Veronica allows it...