The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
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Jim
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May 25, 2019 09:31AM
Editions also matter if you read the same book in multiple formats. I've read a lot of paper books & also listened to them. For various reasons, I'll give quite different reviews & it's nice to have both.
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Anna wrote: "As I can't find a "Stupid Questions You Blush to Ask but Really Wan't to Know the Answer to" topic, I'm going to put mine here.1) Is there a way to make the comment list for a discussion automati..."
No such thing as a stupid question: I have had masses of books added. Usually because of the edition not being on already. After all, how can you discuss the introduction, if the edition has a different one or no introduction at all? I also really like getting my covers correct, especially for book challenges, which I do a lot of.
I have added a few on my own. I find it a bit torturous though. There is a goodreads librarians group that will help you or add them for you (really clear instructions on how to do that) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...
I agree that GR takes a while to navigate, it sometimes feels old and clunky but I just got used to it over time. Since the 'upgrade' I find the Home and Profile pages useless, so I normally go straight to my 'notifications' and work down the list.
Jim wrote: "Fine place to ask & NOT stupid. There are all sorts of little links around. They're often hidden & hard to decipher.1) Yes, click on the "date" to the right side of the top of the comment column...."
Thanks Jim. I'm giving this a try, but I'm so used to the default way, it seems odd.
Thanks everyone, feeling a bit more confident with the site now. Using Discussions as a kicking off point makes soooo much more sense than the home page.I've decided just to add books as I read them rather than try for a back catalogue so the missing edition thing shouldn't be much of an issue. A pity I didn't find this site years ago - when time travel is invented I'll go back and tell myself about it. Unless of course it's true that crossing your own time line will be fatal, in that case I'll need a young volunteer.
I know what you mean about wanting a Way Back machine to catalog books. While I added some here in 2007, I didn't really start using this site for reviews until late in 2008. I've consistently tracked every book since 2009 & constantly added earlier books, but I still don't have a lot on my shelves here that are on my shelves at home.There are ways to add books to your library fairly quickly, if you want to look into it. One way is to search on the ISBN or ASIN rather than the title & author. That will bring up the right edition, if it exists. As Anna pointed out, they don't always & it can be a lot of work adding them.
Typing in the long numbers is a PITA, but you can scan them from physical books or copy them from ebooks & put them in the 'Search books' link one at a time.
There is also an import/export function where you can import a bunch at a time. I've never used it for new imports, though. I think all you do is is create a spreadsheet with the ISBNs in one column, save as a .csv (comma delimited format) & it sucks them in. You'll find it under "My Books" on the left side under "Tools" at the bottom of your bookshelves.
Good luck!
Yes! The scan ISBN function on the app is the most useful thing about it.I also discovered GR late in my reading career. It has been an incredibly precious resource for saving and cataloging books as my memory inevitably grows worse.
Reviewing has been so much fun and so useful as well, it has sparked my enthusiasm for going back at reading the old sci-fi of my teenage years.
Oh dear, I started to ask myself 'what do the stars mean' (the Goodreads ones, not the ones in the firmament). I searched google for 'the meaning of Goodreads star ratings' I found a rabbit hole and couldn't find my way out. I saw numerous references to the official Goodreads explanations, I know they're probably right in front of me somewhere but I haven't been able to find them. Can someone point me to them?
I have my own rating system using the stars, since I have no idea where to find the goodreads system. I am probably not alone doing it my own way. Generally, if I give a book five stars, it means that it is a fantastic book. A one star book is a book I really detest.I have gotten lost in goodreads before, and it wasn't fun.
If you hover your mouse pointer over the stars, they'll pop up a little text box. 1 star - didn't like it
2 star - it was ok
3 star - liked it
4 star - really liked it
5 star - it was amazing
Jim wrote: "If you hover your mouse pointer over the stars, they'll pop up a little text box. Thanks v much.
So now I see why people invent their own interpretations, they are a bit um, underwhelming, I was expecting something a bit more rigorous though I can't really say what. I'd probably give their star ratings 2 stars.
Mod
It works well for me. The goal is to spread out ratings across the whole spectrum from "mildly like" to "love". It doesn't give much room at the bottom to distinguish "don't like" from "hate", but there isn't really much need for that.
You can, of course, leave the stars blank. When comparing your "similarity" to some other reader, the site will consider that as a very low rating, though in other cases it seems to ignore 0 stars.
They work well for me. I don't expect or know how something as simple as stars could be made much better. They're a handy way to sort reviews. Reviews are the really important part.
Why do the Russians keep hacking my measly little Instagram account? The first time it took the Facebook tech people (Facebook owns Instagram) a couple of weeks to regain my access. The Ruskis didn't do anything with it; They just locked me out.The next two times I got email notices that my account name, email, and password had been changed: i.e. "Your new email is phiero@mail.ru. If you didn't change your email address, you can secure your account here."
Why do they do this? I don't have anything to do with the 2020 elections.
They need legitimate accounts to spread their propaganda. Facebook is cracking down on bots and new accounts qui share political posts.
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Maybe there should be some way for me to set my personal profile and reviews to be visible only to those who declare that they are adults.
Anyhow, also note that this group is currently open to all ages even though I'm not aware of any non-adult members.
I can't find a setting for 'adults only' in my profile. Never thought about it before, but I wouldn't worry about it. It's his parents' responsibility if he's that young. I had a bunch of high school students friend me once as part of their English class. Beyond a few polite PMs trying to figure out why, we didn't have any interaction. I'm not sure if any of them are still active or not.GR's ToS is 13 or older & anyone of that age pretty much knows what's going on. If they get more than they bargained for, it's their problem. I always let my kids read anything they wanted. I never understood why reading about sex was worse than violence, so I just made sure to discuss what they read.
Some conversations were awkward, such as discussing Anita Blake's sexual proclivities with my 14 year old daughter. I quickly found out that she didn't read those sections & actually missed some important info. Kids pick up what they're ready for.
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There isn't one, as far as I know. It might be valuable to have, though. There is an option to hide your reviews from anyone who isn't already your 'friend', but that's not what I want.
Discussing with a child any book that has adult themes is not something I want to be doing on- or off-line.
I just found out that the Foxfire project is still thriving. I might go see their museum, and/or buy their soap online. They're between Knoxville and Atlanta, definitely still relatively isolated. I loved the one book that I had access to when I was younger and more interested in the kind of make-do thrift that my grandma taught me....
The Foxfire project! That's a blast from the past. I'd love to visit their museum. I have the first half dozen books & read them years ago. Very uneven writing, of course, but they're a super idea. It's amazing how fast many of these old skills are lost & it's great they're saving them.When I was a kid, most years we'd 'buy' a local hog from a neighbor & help butcher it. ('Buy' usually meant a trade for labor, lamb, &/or beef which we raised.) Only a few families in the area had the facilities for doing up a hog all the way as opposed to just roasting it. For instance, I think there were only 2 sausage machines that were passed around. One year, we were set to butcher at one house, but their 'pig tree' broke in a storm so we had to do it elsewhere. The main talents were the butcher & cook with their ways of cutting the meat & especially the old recipes, though. As a side job, I fixed up a shed for one old couple in the 80s & got paid in sausage, scrapple, & tomato relish. It was a great deal.
When we moved here to KY, I found out no one sells scrapple. I hadn't realized it was local, PA Dutch. It's pretty much hog-butchering leftovers cooked with corn meal & made into a loaf that's fried up in slices for breakfast. I asked Mom to get me some recipes & found they were lost. All the ladies that used to make it were dead & they guarded their secret too closely. Sigh. It's so easy to take people & stuff like that for granted.
My sister lives in Foxfire Country. It's beautiful there. Atlanta is reaching out and one day the suburbs will swallow it up.
I've been sick for 2 weeks. Finally feeling better today, but I'm still foggy & it's just been one of those days. While waiting for the delivery of the fencing materials, I decided to cut some low hanging tree limbs. My reliable little chainsaw kept dying. Don't know why.Went to pick them up with my farm truck & the battery was dead. Put the charger on it.
The fencing delivery was a mess - bad driver. Wound up with 30 - 16' boards banded together dumped diagonally across the drive. Just the way he said it wouldn't happen when I asked if he was going to put a stake on the body to guide them. Ugh.
Not a huge deal. I grabbed Josh & we picked them up by the bands. I got the truck started, dumped the brush, & put the boards on my trailer with the tractor. I almost took out the side of the shop with the 6' mower, though. Sigh. Luckily, I stopped & he pointed it out. Glad I hadn't wanted to move a few inches further.
I told Josh to just put the chain in the bucket & went to put it away. Halfway there, I realized I had to push the brush into the pile. Did that. Lost my favorite chain, a 25' - 5/16" grade 70 chain in the brush pile. Josh & I tore it apart for 30 minutes. Never found it. So it cost me $75 to buy a replacement that should be here next week. Sigh.
I hope I don't need any chain in the meantime. All I have left are 15' pieces of 1/4" & a lot of long lengths of 3/8" chain. I hate the latter. It's about 50% heavier than the 5/16" chain & probably not as strong. Very dubious origins with odd replacement links that I don't really trust. I will continue kicking myself.
I guess the first set of Ruby-throated hummingbirds is out & about. The feeder on the back porch went from barely being touched to being swarmed. I saw 6 or 8 on it at one point tonight. They look like mostly females, so I guess a lot are juveniles, but they're as big as their parents already.
Here's a neat look at the history of libraries in the US. It's a quick read with lots of pictures.https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-...
we typically get our first hummers around April 15th here in North Carolina. About the same time as Chimney Swifts.
Mod
That was nice. Thank you.
I knew about Franklin and Carnegie, but most of the rest was new to me.
I recently visited family in the deep south. I was happy to see that the library there is still providing material that can help the people there who are open to it. I may send them a donation.
Stu wrote: "we typically get our first hummers around April 15th here in North Carolina. About the same time as Chimney Swifts."I noticed the first on 21Apr this year, which is typical. A friend who lives about 10 miles south & is 500 feet lower usually gets his & Purple Martins about 2 weeks before we do. I haven't seen a Chimney Swift around here, but we get a lot of Tree swallows.
Ed wrote: "That was nice. Thank you.I knew about Franklin and Carnegie, but most of the rest was new to me...."
You're welcome. Ditto for me. We have some very nice ones around here. I belong to 3 in different counties. I don't visit often, but I download audiobooks from them often, at least several times a week. When I do visit, I'm always amazed at how modern, clean, quiet, & yet well used they are. I'm always pleased to see a fair few teenagers there, too.
We lost Amber, our 14 yo Jack Russell, last night. She had a stroke or something, so she's now buried in the garden next to Munchkin & Harley, 2 other JRTs. Sigh. It's very weird to be able to stretch my feet out under my desk, roll over in bed, sit on the couch, or walk around the house without checking to make sure I'm not going to squish her. She never had a lick of sense, but was always sweet as can be except to critters that weren't part of the family. She often went into brush piles after prey. One cold, snowy night, I had to spend over an hour cutting & chopping into a brush pile to get her out. At 10 or 12 pounds, she was small for that, but one afternoon she went in after a coon almost twice her size. She emerged a few hours later with half her lower lip chewed off, but the coon didn't. Small, but tough as a keg of nails. I'll miss her.
We lost our princess hound dog in April. She was nearly 12. Had a tumor in her belly that ruptured suddenly. It’s hard losing a member of the family. On a good note we just adopted a rescue dog. She’s part beagle part basset hound. She sweet as can be but has some issues we’ll need to work through.
Sorry to read that, Stu. Great on the new adoption. We saw some cute pups the other day that my wife immediately said no to since they might have some beagle in them. Our current JRT/beagle mix is too noisy & stubborn.
Daisy is the quietest dog I’ve ever had. Only time she barked was when she got her head stuck between the deck rails and when the painters across the street barked at her.
That's awesome, Stu. Our first JRT was quiet, too. He was the only one that ever was, though. We've had half a dozen others over the years & they all barked like crazy. Pip, our JRT/Beagle mix barks so much we have to put an anti-bark collar on him at night or we'd never get any sleep. If a critter gets in the back yard at night, he barks anyway & doesn't notice it. Very single-minded.
It's terribly hot out. The temp is in the upper 80s, the sun is scorching, & the humidity is close to 100%. I was so glad to have an air conditioned house to come into after putting up some fencing this afternoon. Just an hour or so of work, but I soaked my shirt through. The heat is definitely getting to me more as I get older. It doesn't help that my office is a server room, so I never get used to the heat. I don't know how I used to manage to work out in it & live without A/C. This is the first house where we've had it.
Jim wrote: "The heat is definitely getting to me more as I get older."It's more the cold for me, but I feel your pain. Getting older is tough.
Sadly I have a neurological disease that causes extreme fatigue with heat & humidity and dizziness when cold. It takes me 3 hours to cut my lawn that I used to do in an hour. 15 to 20 minutes of work is about my limit without at least that long to recover. I used to run marathons and ultra marathons and a mile walk is as good as it gets now. It took two years to get a diagnosis. Doctors would say you’re getting old. You don’t go from running 7 miles in 56 minutes to barely walking a mile in just 6 months. During the time it took to get a diagnosis and start treatments I lost the use of my right thumb and my left shin muscle atrophied to the point I have to wear a leg brace to avoid tripping. Anyway don’t accept getting old as an answer. Yes we slow down with age but it averages only about 1%. If you’re doing worse than that get a specialist. Don’t accept what a GP says.
That is too bad, Stu. Thanks for the advice.
Stu wrote: "Sadly I have a neurological disease that causes extreme fatigue with heat & humidity and dizziness when cold. It takes me 3 hours to cut my lawn that I used to do in an hour. 15 to 20 minutes of wo..."That's rough stuff. Hope things improve.
John, no it won’t improve. Once a nerve is dead you can’t fix it. Fortunately I do have a treatment plan that keeps further damage to a minimum. I do an infusion once a week. I’ve been doing them now for about 4 years. I know others who have been on this treatment for 20+ years.
That sucks, Stu. I think my issue is just age & more years working indoors. I worked outside until my late 30s when I had to switch careers from remodeling to computers.
Jim wrote: "It's terribly hot out. The temp is in the upper 80s, the sun is scorching, & the humidity is close to 100%. I was so glad to have an air conditioned house to come into "Unfortunately air conditioning hasn't been invented in England yet. This weekend is supposed to be very hot here, if I'd known the north of england (historically regarded as perpetually cold and wet) was going to eventually suffer from weather like this I'd have been born in Rekjavik or some such.
Stu wrote: "John, no it won’t improve. Once a nerve is dead you can’t fix it. Fortunately I do have a treatment plan that keeps further damage to a minimum. I do an infusion once a week. I’ve been doing them n..."Sorry to read it, Stu. Hope those infusions remain helpful.
I came across some documentaries by Humphrey Jennings that he did for the Ministry of Information (United Kingdom) today. Interesting stuff. "A Defeated People" Germany After WWII (1946) is about the British occupation & administration of one part of Germany after WWII. Pretty brutal, even beneath the propaganda. Very strict rules & rations.
The Farm (1938) is a very nice tour of a good sized farm. No mention of a tractor; they use a horse drawn seeder. Quite a few cute babies & fun commentary. It's actually unintentionally hilarious in parts. The commentator talks about corn while they're actually working on barley, wheat, or rye. And then it becomes hay rather than straw. City guy, I guess.
I look forward to watching more of these.
A lot of early British farmers used to refer to barley as corn.
Stu wrote: "A lot of early British farmers used to refer to barley as corn."Really? Interesting & weird. They're completely different. I wonder if that's the same thing with the hay & straw. What's that quote about the US & UK being separated by a common language?
"Corn" also applies to the other two grains you mentioned. There is a movie, probably based on a book, called The Corn is Green, the corn being wheat in this case.What we call Corn, is called Maize in Britain.
Rosemarie wrote: ""Corn" also applies to the other two grains you mentioned...."Good to know. I guess the joke is on me with the corn. Do you know about hay & straw? Here in the US, hay is something like orchard/meadow grass, timothy, or alfalfa which are all cut at the right time for feeding to animals. That generally means it is still green when cut & has to dry for a few days before being baled or stored. Straw is the stalks of barley, wheat, or rye after the seed has been removed. Since the grain is allowed to stand until it has dried out standing & thus has almost no nutritional value, so is used for bedding.
I grew up in a small town so I did know the difference between hay and straw, but not in such detail. Before my family came to Canada when I was six, we lived in a small village in Germany. We went back for a visit when I was 11. I still remember the amazing smell of the hay while sitting on top of the hay wagon, which was pulled by a horse. (That's how long ago it was)
I really wanted to get a good night's sleep last night since we have a 10 hour drive today. Of course, the gods laughed. I had trouble falling asleep due to bug bites. I finally did only to be woken up an hour later by Pip tussling with a coon on the porch. Just as I got to the patio door, the coon hit it full speed. Pip backed off, so I opened the door a few inches. The coon turned to attack, but got shot instead. He was a tough bugger & still managed to run off to hide in a garden full of tall cone flowers & day lilies. Pip sniffed him out for me, but I had a time scooping him out of there. Of course, after all that excitement, it took me a while to get back to sleep again. It's going to be a really long drive today.
The Evolution of Science Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
A History of the English Speaking Peoples, 4 Vols (other topics)Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (other topics)
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? (other topics)
Bleak House (other topics)
A Night in the Lonesome October (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Winston Churchill (other topics)Roger Zelazny (other topics)
Felix Salten (other topics)
Sam Kean (other topics)
Chuck Tingle (other topics)
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