Tony’s Comments (group member since Dec 19, 2018)

Tony’s comments from the Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy group.

Audrey wrote: "What is "alternate form"? Like an audiobook?"

Yes, alternate form generally means audiobook or graphic novel, but you could also say a poem is an alternate form, or a screenplay. It's anything you want to interpret it as that isn't a prose novel.

B1 - Start a New Series - Roll for Initiative
B2 - Space Opera - Spacehounds of the IPC
B3 - Parallel / Portal World - Portal
B4 - Shared World - Starrise at Corrivale
B5 - Pre 1945 - The Boats of the Glen Carrig
I1 - Elfpunk - Shadowrun: Shadows Down Under
I2 - Features a Musician - Cast of the Die
I3 - Omnibus - Space Trilogy (Arthur C Clarke)
I4 - New to me Author - Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson
I5 - Children's Book - Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds
N1 - Genre Blender - Bubbles in Space 1: Tropical Punch
N2 - Continue a Series - Against All Things Ending (Thomas Covenant)
N3 - Free - At the Midway
N4 - Title Starts With a V - V for Vendetta
N5 - Alternate Form - Cosmic Odyssey (graphic novel)
G1 - Published 2023 - The Age of Heroes
G2 - Favourite Author - Unfinished Tales (Tolkien)
G3 - Anthology - Isaac Asimov's Camelot
G4 - Reread - Starman Jones
G5 - Non-human Humanoid - Star Trek 1
O1 - Translated - Space-Time Odyssey
O2 - Award Winner -
O3 - Female Protagonist - Black Widow: Forever Red
O4 - Urban Fantasy - Druidess
O5 - Finish a Series - Natural Twenty

For the one slot I still have to fill, I have about 100 pages left in The Handmaid's Tale, which I expect to finish before January, and it will fill the Award Winner slot.

Chris wrote: "Has anyone been given anything SF- or fantasy-related for Christmas?


I was given Amazon gift vouchers, as is usual, but I gave a sister-in-law a fantasy novel, my brother the Order of the Stick board game (based on the web comic), and one of my nieces a D&D-based game.

Is the Aardvark Screecher an aardvark that screeches, or it is someone who can communicate with aardvarks by screeching?

Chris wrote: "In those days I was reading The Hobbit, the Narnia stories, Alan Garner, and the Kings of Space novels by W.E.Johns (anyone else here old enough to remember those?)"

I used to read all the Biggles books I could when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, but I was unaware of any other series by Johns.

I always preferred Captain Scarlet to Thunderbirds - Fireball XL5 was another favourite of mine.

Indeed, I will probably go with a trilogy omnibus for my 1,000+ page selection, although I do have some Peter F Hamilton in my TBR pile, and they are sometimes over 1,000 pages.

Andrea wrote: "Oh, and over the years about half the used bookstores in my city closed since they couldn't pay the crazy rents and the building owners were happy to leave the stores vacant for years rather than negotiate the rent (there is something really really wrong with that system...)"

Indeed. Back in 2008, I was managing a gaming store in Sydney, and the building owner decided to renovate the entire building, so the store owner asked me to find a new venue. I actually found an excellent venue, and it was in a complex that had been vacant for 5 years. I talked to the real estate company, but they wanted 2 1/2 times the rent we were currently paying, which wasn't affordable. The estate agent said the corporation that owned the space wouldn't negotiate - Australian tax law allowed them to claim all the rent they weren't getting as a tax deduction. The venue remained vacant for another 5 years before they eventually filled the entire floor with a medical centre. It wouldn't be practical for small owners, but for large companies and multinationals (which these owners were), they can charge absolutely insane rents, which no one will pay, and get a large tax deduction on the rent they're missing out on. As you said Andrea, it's a broken system.

And the game store closed because we couldn't find a venue that was affordable (and because the owner wasn't really interested anymore).

Michelle wrote: ""egg whisk ray-gun"! lol!"

Robin is British. An "egg whisk ray-gun" is one of the weapons that the Daleks had in Doctor Who in the 1960s. I know this because, as an Aussie, we also watched 1960s Doctor Who 😁

I have finished Space-Time Odyssey. The story is interesting, as the stories usually are for this author, but English is not his native language. He's French Canadian, and writes in French. Because he gives all his ebooks away for free, he does the translation himself, and the results can throw me out of immersion in the narrative. Both of the books of his that I have read were released in English about 10 years ago, and I believe his English has improved through practice since then, but as he generally writes ongoing series, I have to get through the earlier books first.

I have started reading The Handmaid's Tale, which will fill the award-winning slot, and complete my Bingo.

Humble Bundle has an interesting looking (sounding?) collection of audio books - The Cthulhu Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/ct...?

I have started reading Space-Time Odyssey, which will fill the Translated slot in my Bingo.

I have completed 4 columns (B - I - N - G) and 3 rows (3 - 4 - 5). Only 2 slots left to fill - Award Winner, and Translated.

I have finished Tropical Punch, which was a very enjoyable cyberpunk/crime/science fiction novel. Recommended for people who like Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett as well as SF.

Sticking to the crime theme, I have started Babylon Berlin. This is the graphic novel adaptation of the novel that the TV series is based on. It's also translated from German, and could act as my Translated slot in this year's Bingo - except it's just crime, not SFF.

Andrea wrote: "You're not a secret telepath are you? I had those two in my head as possibilities :)"

Great minds ... 😁

Other suggestions - Arthurian and Alternate History

Andrea wrote: "Based on a game...at first I was like, nah, sounds kind of hard...but then my eyes glanced over at the Myst trilogy I picked out for next year, and thought, what's the chance?!? Bring me the bluuuu..."

Lol, sounds kinda hard shouldn't be that much of a negative - that's what I thought about elfpunk in this year's Bingo 😄 Just Warhammer, 40K, and D&D would have to be close to a thousand novels. There's plenty of novels based on computer games and board games as well.

My choices for 2024 would be hard sci-fi, time travel, and based on a game

Last month of 2023, and almost Christmas.

I have finished Isaac Asimov's Camelot, which was somewhat disappointing - not because of the quality of the stories, but more because the link to Camelot and Arthurian mythos was tenuous at best for a lot of them.

I have started reading Tropical Punch

Jannelies (slowly getting there) wrote: "But now: can anyone point me in the direction of more 'modern' hard SF authors? It is very hard to find what I would like to read by just reading reviews.

I'm open for recommendations!"

Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, could be considered hard SF; Peter Cawdron has written a number of first contact books in which the science is reasonable; Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy would certainly count; some of the books by Joshua James and Nathan Hystad would fall into the hard SF category. I guess it also depends on how scientifically rigorous you want your SF to be.