Jlawrence’s
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(group member since Mar 08, 2010)
Jlawrence’s
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from the The Sword and Laser group.
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That is awesome. I didn't believe it at first either, but Rothfuss has a (hilarious) blog post confirming his participation.Brian, he's titled his NaNoWriMo book "The Kingkiller Chronicles: Book III ", so hopefully some Kingkiller work will get done. ;)
I'm interested in 1Q84, but on the other hand I'm not super-excited about another 900-page book after Reamde (oh, my poor destroyed 2011 reading goals!). Sean's suggestion is intriguing, and I also like the idea of reading one of Tad Williams' fantasy books, since that idea's been circulating since his interview, as terpkristin said.
Howdy! Yes, I use kitty corner too, but apparently I'm tumping things over more often. ;)
I second Boots' suggestion. A scale of one (or zero) to ten would be best, but even half stars with the current 1-5 system would be a big improvement. As is, I often find myself vacillating between different ratings (for instance, Ready, Player One would have been 3 1/2 stars if I could, but I went ahead with 4), and I often have much stronger feelings for one book than another I've given the same rating to (the 1-10 would solve that). I do reserve 5 stars for only my absolute favorites, though.
Kris! Yes, "tump" would have been awesome - it's also a southern or at least Texan word. I'm from Texas, currently living in California, and don't have much of a southern accent, but one of the things that marks my origin is when I use the word "tump", get blank stares, and then have to explain it.
Gene Wolfe - he's done fantasy ( The Wizard Knight), science-fiction (The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Home Fires), and a sci-fi/fantasy blend in The Book of the New Sun 1-4, the first part of which was an earlier official Sword & Laser read.Jack Vance, whose sci-fi/fantasy blend in The Dying Earth was a big influence on Book of the New Sun. He continued to write both science fiction and fantasy throughout his career.
Ursula K. Le Guin has also done fantasy A Wizard of Earthsea and science fiction The Left Hand of Darkness - not sure if she's ever attempted to blend the two.
Yes, the female characters are pretty strong and not cartoon-y. Yuxia is pretty excellent. On the male side, I am fond of Sokolov so far (about 50% in).
Eh, the restriction on transferring gold didn't bother me. In fact, it may make sense to disallow the magical transfer of gold to whoever you wanted wherever they are, given that the currency has real world value AND that finding wealth in *particular* virtual locations (mining) is such a big part of the T'Rain economy that supports the real-world success of the game. Ie, keeping gold transfers on a medieval scale of ease (not-easy) might make sense in such a virtual world.What got to me much more as I've read on is the cascade of improbabilities in the various action scenes that followed. For me, those definitely shifted the story into an very implausible, if still fun, ride.
I'm going to do it for the first time this year. I'll see if I can come out NaNO with a semi-coherent chunk of something, and then edit it and maybe bring it to one of the Dragon*Con writing workshops next year.
Tom, you're right - GRRM wrote at least two science fiction books, Dying of the Light and Windhaven, before SoIaF, so he *should* have an entry in the Encyclopedia of SF. Let's just assume it's in the missing 25%. ;)
Sean is right about the film Summer Wars - it's a total blast. I saw it recently and it dovetails nicely with Ready Player One and Reamde. Matthew, yes, I definitely think Otherland qualifies (from what I read of the first book in the series).
Crick made me double-take a couple of times, too.For some reason (unlike original words in other Stephenson books *stares at Anathem*), the meaning of bothavior clicked for me quickly. Maybe because I really liked the idea. It would be very cool to see actual MMORPGs implement official, automatic, low-level-but-still-productive behavior by your characters when you're offline (do any?).
Yeah, I agree with Andrew about the non-easy-repeatability of the CC exploit (at least for Peter) and the trade being done face-to-face to minimize electronic traceability of the transaction.The Outlook thing did seem off, but if it was the only tool that someone had bothered to integrate with T'Rain, it becomes a bit more reasonable that a large number of people would be using it (though, agreed it seems more likely that someone would have bothered to integrate a web-based client instead).
As for the initial post, like others I'm not seeing the plot-hole, at least not from what I've read so far.
Jenny wrote: "Funny how the most dystopian element is the hopelessness. To me this isn't a direct result of overpopulation but the hypermedia overstimulation. So shallow! But wouldn't that be true with 3 or 8 ..."Well, Brunner/Mulligan/the plot circles back to the overpopulation-driving-everyone-crazy thing SO often that it seemed to me the main point Brunner was trying to drive home (overpopulation + natural human stupidity will = a horrible future). He very strongly ties the violence and various forms of social breakdown, the hopelessness/resentment of those who weren't allowed to have children, etc. to it.
But agreed, the media overstimulation stuff retains a separate bite since it doesn't rely on any of the overpopulation/pack-animal stuff. I just felt like that media element was more of 'here's another example of the shallowness and stupidity of this society/species that's doomed itself' than the driving factor. Though I was amused at all the returns to the "wow, what an imagination I've got!" guy (view spoiler).
OK, so when I finished, I was torn. On one hand, I was really impressed by Brunner's writing and the broad panorama he managed to paint of his dystopia. On the other, I felt like it didn't have quite the moral/emotional wallop that he intended. Partially because of Brunner's main prophecy/thesis being off in the way Sean described much earlier in this thread. I still believe accurate prediction is not the most important aspect of science fiction, it's what the author does with the speculations driving the book that matter. But in Zanzibar's case *so* much of its power depends on you buying in to its central proposition. Take The Windup Girl, a dystopia whose assumptions (as the author admits) are pretty shaky (totally ignores alternate power source technologies that could've been used in the environment described by the book) -- that makes its world-building far shakier than Stand on Zanzibar's, but I was nonetheless much more engaged in The Windup Girl, I think because I cared about its characters (despite all their flaws and the bleak world in general). In Stand on Zanzibar, Brunner's overriding misanthropy (which is spelled out to us again and again through Mulligan) makes the characters mostly different case studies of the disease of human stupidity, cruelty and/or self-deception (but with more breadth than depth of study).
In other words, nothing much seems to be a stake in the possible loss of the human race (Mulligan actually says something like, "As a species we don't deserve to survive" at some point) (view spoiler)
Despite those objections, I agree a lot of the particular side-effect depicted have current-day-relevance, as shown by the various quotes in the thread above, and I am glad to have read it - it did make me think about the dysfunction of large cities in general, even without overpopulation occurring in the specific way Brunner imagined.
Jenny, on your specific questions (view spoiler).
I loved this book. It's been a little while since I read it, but I'd argue Phèdre similarity with Sansa Stark is pretty thin. Even though she's "house-born", Phèdre, unlike Sansa, spent her childhood in servitude (and viewed as an outcast because of her 'flaw'), and has to work her way into the world of aristocracy, and very quickly through shocking experience and the tutelage of Delaunay begins to learn how things actually work in that world. She also has to quickly learn how to think intelligently and independently in order to adapt and survive -- something we don't see in Sansa until very late in SoIaF (and then still fairly minimally). So I think there is a strong arc of growth to Phèdre in this novel as compared to Sansa's arc throughout *all* the SoIaF books so far.And I'd argue that for Phèdre the world *does* come crashing down for her in (view spoiler) -- and it's her rising to meet the challenges that follow that again plays into her character growth.
What really worked for me in this book was the writing and the characters, combined with some clever world-building (the Elua and companions mythos). Phèdre's voice as narrator is just fantastic - those beginning paragraphs immediately sucked me in. And I found the characters, Delaunay especially, to be some of the most well-developed I've ever read in sf or fantasy.
As for her love of Terre d'Ange, I agree - I personally didn't sympathize with her nationalistic feelings. But I could understand those feelings as part of her character. In terms of motivating the plot and her actions the fact that the stakes were tied to people she loved (view spoiler) made it work for me.
Jason wrote: "And if this whole society really is based on 16th century France, then I guess that aristocracy has another 150 years to go before it all comes crashing down around them."
It's an alternate history, though - inspired by and re-shaped, instead of based upon. The same way the religion in the novel has echoes of all kinds of historical elements mashed up with wild original elements.
The sexual elements, especially when diving into her S&M ability to turn pain into pleasure, I initially thought could only be cheesy, but somehow Carey pulled them off as well.
I also really liked the whole Skaldia episode and it how it contrasted with Terre D'Ange.
I've also read Kushiel's Chosen, but nothing else in the series yet. I didn't like it quite as much - the writing wasn't quite up to the same quality, and some early plot elements annoyed me, but it won me over in its last two thirds. I don't think it resolves any of the particular issues you had with Kushiel's Dart, though.
Tamahome wrote: "A Sword and Laser video game? Can I be Tom Merritt?"One of the minigames can be a split-screen Race to Fix a Link!
In its defense, I think it achieved a slice of decent social commentary in its second half. Early on the future dystopia seems hastily sketched - rushed through in order to get the story inside the OASIS. But during the whole indenture segment, we got more vivid glimpses of the how the outside world had decayed as people retreated to the OASIS, and specifics of the lives of corporate slaves, etc. I also liked how the end of the book pointed outward instead of cyber-inward.But I do think Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder is off target ranking it with the likes of Snow Crash and Neuromancer - the quality of the writing and world-building is nowhere near those books.
And my biggest issue was Kline leaning too hard on his references - sometimes he'd do creative things with the 80s content, but too often it felt like he was letting the references do the work for him.
Despite all that, I did have fun reading it.
Sodon wrote: I found myself wishing the story was about Halliday and his friend, and their strugglss to build the Oasis, what that meant for their relationship(s) and humanity in general. I would have loved to see how the future Earth culture played into that as well. And surely such a story would have been able to keep the references?
That would be interesting. Maybe a prequel? (with deeper characterizations?)
I agree with others that I saw it as a Willy Wonka-ish kind of thing & wanting to pass on his creation to someone like-minded, etc.Willy Wonka was a dick, too, but made up for it with twisted charm.
Also, continuing Jenny's point, (view spoiler)
Most of the games in the book's central quest are playable online (via in-browser flash or java emulation/re-creation):(NOTE: Some of these don't seem to work in Mac Chrome, but they ran fine for me in Mac Firefox & Safari & PC browsers.)
Gate One
---------------
Joust
Dungeons of Daggorath has no online version, but there's a downloadable PC/Linux port and a PSP port.
Gate Two
---------------
Zork I
Black Tiger
Extra-life side quest:
---------------
Pac-Man
Gate Three
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Tempest
Adventure on Atari 2600
(select game 2 for larger world, game 3 for larger world + randomized object locations)
Adventure manual
(Adventure was and is my favorite of these. When you hit reset, as well as relocating you to the yellow castle (helpful if you're in the belly of a dragon), any slain duck-dragons come back to life but all item locations stay the game. My brother-in-law and I made a two player game out of one of us playing through almost to the end, killing all the dragons, and then re-arranging the object locations without the ohter looking, then hitting reset and having the other person play through the "new game" that had been created. You could do dirty tricks like hide the black key deep in the black castle wall (requiring the magnet to retreive it), etc.)
