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

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

Bought a ticket!

I like how the event information mentions: "Sorry, folks, no memorabilia, swords, or other items; BOOKS ONLY".

Veronica wrote: "Anne wrote: "Jenny wrote: "Ahem. Can you play the S&L theme on your ukulele and send it to Tom and Veronica to put on the next podcast?"

That's the best I can currently do. I only got my ukulele three weeks ag..."

WOW!! I wish I had seen this yesterday... putting it on the blog now!

I love it, Anne! Woot! :D

Reading the Dictionary of Fantastic Art - I'm pretty familiar with the surrealists, but there's many artists in this little book I've never been exposed to - having fun making a list of artists I want to check out now. Mona Lisa Overdrive is also waiting in the wings.

Veronica wrote: "And special thanks to Josh, who helped me figure out our new flash player on the blog! "

I too have yelled obscenities at a SquareSpace blog over that problem, so fortunately I had a solution at hand. :)

Sean wrote: "Dan wrote: "Veronica wrote: "I'm marking all of this down in your permanent records."

Someday I will finish the Mists of Avalon, I promise!"

Someday Veronica will finish Memoirs Found in the Bath..."

I think that day might be the day after the heat death of our universe...

I haven't skipped anything outright, but I did give up on Eye of the World and Once and Future King (I cheated on both those quizzes...shhhh).

aldenoneil wrote: "Sean wrote: "I've read The Hunger Games before as well. Except for some reason my copy was called Battle Royale and was by a Japanese guy."

Oh, snap."

I've only see the movie version of Battle Royale, but I think it will be interesting to compare how The Hunger Games sets things up.

Really enjoyed the NKJ interview, too - the chances of my reading the sequels have significantly increased.

Count von Count wants a word (or a number) with terpkristin.

Deity dalliance

I also salute aldenoneil's limmerick.

Jenny wrote: "That's exactly what I'm doing. I'm not reading any of the discussion about it until I'm done.... I hit 655 or so at lunch today so I'm getting close! See you in the discussions.... :) "

On page 627 of WMF, so I'm closing in as well. I haven't looked at the HTK discussions yet either. Hopefully the HTK won't be all discussioned-out by the time we visit there. ;)

I've been meaning to read some of her stuff. I only know her from the intense, epistolary friendship she had with fellow sci-fi writer Alice Sheldon (chronicled heavily in James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon).

Veronica wrote: "Jenny wrote: "Dear Veronica...


Woot! I got my guilting ability from my mother :)"

Guilting Skill rank + 1!

I'm trying to finish up Wise Man's Fear so I can then catch up on Hundred Thousand Kindgdoms before everyone else finishes it. :P

Also gotted!

Got brain?

I found it to be a mixed bag, but still worth reading for its exploration of 'what is consciousness, and what is its value?' theme, and the interesting psychological abnormalities of the narrator and crew.

Agree with others that the ending and some other aspects felt rushed. The vampire thing I'm torn on - I actually kind of liked the role that character played in the group dynamic, but I think it would have served Watts better if that 'subspecies' were called something else, and had the *nickname* of vampires.

My favorite part was probably early-on when Rorschach was 'speaking' to them, and the crew was trying to puzzle it out - that was just really engrossing, eerie and fun.

Despite its various flaws, it did keep me interested in plowing through, and gave me a little bit of stuff to chew on thought-wise, so three out of five lasers.

Possibly gratuitous boobies aside, after watching the second episode (haven't seen the third yet), I pinpointed my vague dissatisfaction with the series:

What makes the books work so well for me is the blend of a grittier, more-realistic feel with characters than nonetheless have that kind of larger-than-life glow of high fantasy heroes (while also being complex and human).

I think the series has got the gritty, realistic-feeling aspect down pat, and that works well for drawing viewers in and helping them believe in that world. But it kind of uses that matter-of-fact tone for *everything*, and thus both the characters and their actions lose that larger-than-life-but-still-relatable feel that made the books so gripping. I think there would be someway to maintain that blend, even with all the compression needed for the tv series format.

Think of the feel of Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptation - that has that high-fantasy, larger-than-life glow in spades (I'm talking about the tone of the thing, not the fact that Jackson had 5 bajillion more dollars to spend on it). I guess I was imagining someone midpoint between that feel and the matter-of-fact feel the GoT tv series is actually providing. There's just a certain lack of resonance.

Or maybe it simply is a matter of character development loss. Either way, I was completely engrossed by the fate of these characters in the book, whereas in the tv series, it's interesting to watch, but I feel nowhere near as engrossed.

Chris, I agree that the vampires, even as a mutant branch of humanity instead of actually-magically-undead, were over the line for 'hard science fiction'. But what else stuck you that way? A lot of the psychology / brain theory is debatable, but is also stuff that science doesn't have hard answers on yet, so Watts has some wiggle room there. What other elements stuck you as bad science?

I do have a fondness for Lynch's Dune even with all its glaring flaws. A perfect marriage, I think, would have been the cast from Lynch's Dune with the better script / longer time-frame of the TV mini-series.

Though it would have only barely resembled the source, I also would have loved to have seen what Alejandro Jodorowsky would have done with Dune, especially with Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, HR Geiger and Chris Foss doing the production design, and Salavador Dali slated to play the Emperor.

Doing a quick non-fiction break with Assassination Vacation and The Fallen: Searching for the Missing Members of The Fall before plunging into Wise Man's Fear.

Yes, I believe that's a useful distinction. I would add that the puzzles that fall into b) are essentially unsolvable "big questions" -- but that's what makes them excellent subjects to explore through fiction.

However, the line between a) and b) is also fuzzy and shifting, since some things that appear to be "explorations of unsolvable puzzles" upon a first read can resolve into jigsaw pieces of a solvable puzzle upon a re-read. Because of the richness of these books, I'm betting the line would shift again with a third read. But I would also agree some things, especially those dealing with the slippery nature of Severian's "true" self and "true" memory, would remain in category b).

I agree that there are numerous times where Siri seems to show emotion that goes beyond just faking it. On the other hand, there is that interesting moment near the end when (view spoiler)[after Sarastri's assualt on him, the other crew members just appear as strange packages of meat, making meaningless sounds at him. This could be just from the shock of the attack, but since that attack was meant to strip him of his usual tools, maybe this is how alien all humans would appear to him without his "Chinese Room" tools. Meaning, he possibly has no real connection to humans without those ultimately impersonal processes.

But a counter-example of his possiblly having emotions, but just not being able to understand/express them, there's Chelsea calling him when she was dying, and his *wanting* to say something, even though he couldn't find anything to say (hide spoiler)]

So I think Watts meant it to remain ambiguous, and to also tie into the question of 'what is the nature & value of consciousness and the self?' (I think Watts exploration of that question through this book was interesting, if uneven.)

Thanks for pointing out where the Chinese Room is discussed, I'll try to listen to that this weekend.

aldenoneil, it looks you can subscribe via the rss link:
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/media/com...