The Gaming Den

I tried reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Apart from the guy becoming a hold guard, which was hilarious, the writing style is very stuttered and dull. I couldn't finish it. I'm not even sure if the story or setting was interesting because my attention was reset every time a sentence ended.

It's just as well - the setting is extraordinarily depressing, being pretty much what you'd expect out of a real-life Fimbulwinter.

I've been reading the books you get from the current Humble Bundle - I strongly suggest you all check the offer out, there's some really great stuff there, including a Jack Vance treasury and a collection of short stories by Harlan Ellison.

The most recent one was the novella The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang. Wormholes in ancient Arabia, yeah!

Ted Chiang's stuff is all really good, and a lot of it is online for free. For example, his short Exhalation, which took numerous awards including the Hugo, or his The Life Cycle of Software Objects. You can find a lot of his work collected in Sories of Your Life and Others

I liked literally everything I've read by him - he just writes really, really excellent stories.

To quote Elf M. Sternberg:

You want to have bad dreams? Read Lewis's The Great Divorce and Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God" back to back and realize that both Lewis and Chiang are telling the exact same story.

Really.

Well, not quite exact... but they're drawing on the same set of beliefs. From diametrically-opposed perspectives.

A Fire Upon The Deep.

Basic conceit is that the further out people go from the galactic core, the better various types of sci-fi tech like FTL and strong AI work. Humans go poking at a data archive up in the singularity zone and unleash a superintelligence that promptly borgifies the entire interstellar nation-state that sent the expedition. Things go downhill from there.

My one complaint is that for a malevolent superintelligence, the Blight sucks at subtle. The story is interspersed with FTL Usenet chatter, and there's a three-message sequence that goes like so:

Trade Group A: We have seen evidence that the superintelligence that ate the humans has been expanding and advise caution.

Trade Group A literally a week later:We have decided to go into the network backbone business despite the <translation failure>. Have this gigantic data packet containing proposed new standards.

Other Civilization: BLOW UP EVERYTHING IN THE SAME STAR SYSTEM AS ANYTHING THAT OPENED THAT PACKET! DO IT NOW!

I've broken down and gotten the Kindle app from amazon and began reading my way through Ursula Vernon's e-books.

Nine Goblins, The Seventh Bride, Toad Words, and now Bryony and Roses.

And it's been good, involving magic veterinarians (involves just as much indignity and weird problems as ordinary vets!) and evil sorcerors and hedgehogs and gardeners.

Some of you might not recognize the name--same author/artist as Digger.

I just got to the timeskip in Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, and things are getting really interesting. Definitely interested in seeing how the characters in the first two thirds shaped the outlooks of their successors.

Just finished the Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, which was quite good. A decent example of an intelligent novel that derives a lot of its depth from the fact that it leaves many of its central questions unresolved. Going online afterward, I was frustrated to learn that a lot people (e.g., this dude: http://www.nyrsf.com/2013/01/the-politi ... iussi.html) have spent a lot of time trying to turn Picnic into a kind of simplistic allegory about Soviet relations with the West. The translation I read was the 2012 one, not the 1977 one, which is apparently the superior of the two. Even still, a lot of the dialog and some of the narration felt off in the way that translated stuff often is. Still definitely worth reading.

After the Victorian Vampire OSSR, I went and picked up Anno Dracula. In which Dracula survived the events of Stoker's book, and then went back to England, used his vampiric advantages to work his way up into marrying Queen Victoria.

So now vampires are so common that there's not enough "warms" willing to give up blood, so there's still people starving.

Kim Newman is fun, although he manages to get his pet vampire Genevieve in everything from Warhammer Fantasy to his Anno Dracula series.

Ancient History wrote:Kim Newman is fun, although he manages to get his pet vampire Genevieve in everything from Warhammer Fantasy to his Anno Dracula series.

I had an odd feeling about her.

Funny coincidence, I just finished that exact book. No conscious influence from the OSSR though -I've been thinking for a while that it looks like my kind of book, and I bought it on impulse on Tuesday. Now I've got to start looking for the sequels.

Anno Dracula:

That book went by fast. I'm not quite sure I buy the ending, but I guess long-term, taking Britain by force of arms wasn't tenable. Other countries would have had something to say about it, and been able to overwhelm Team Vampire.

I liked how it led up to the nightmarish appearance of Dracula by having a lot of the elders be weird--the Chinese assassin vampire and the one who went all snakey.

Favorite character: Konstaki, the Captain of the Carpathian Guard. Not a bad fellow, but very much a product of his time.

Did you catch the Blacula reference?

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Did you catch the Blacula reference?

A mention of an African vampire, yeah. Didn't know it was Blacula

http://www.matt-wallace.com/funny-books ... lity-post/

I knew Pratchett had turned down a Hugo, but I hadn't quite thought of stuff like this before.

Huh.

Maxus wrote:http://www.matt-wallace.com/funny-books ... lity-post/

I knew Pratchett had turned down a Hugo, but I hadn't quite thought of stuff like this before.

Huh.

that guy wrote:And in the back of my mind I knew I’m not the one who wins them awards. Kai Ashante Wilson will win awards. KJ Parker wins awards. Nnedi Okorafor wins awards.

...KJ Parker is Tom Holt. He's hilarious, funnier than Pratchett even.

Warhammer 40K Beast Arises series I Am Slaughter. It is set in M32 and the theme of the series is "Why letting the Orks unify is bad".

It starts with most of the Imperial Fists deployed to deal with a non-intelligent insect hive species that has inexplicably managed to extensively colonize several planets, including one six warp-weeks from Sol. This isn't a serious security issue, but it's alarmingly close to the core worlds and the Imperial Fists want to justify their continued existence during the next budget fight as they seem increasingly anachronistic in a progressively more peaceful galaxy. Meanwhile there's political intrigue on Terra as the Senate's power becomes progressively more concentrated in the hands of the High Twelve and the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum is starting to wonder whether he should kill some of them.

Then the Imperial Fists begin hearing incomprehensible bursts of noise audible across the planet and even in the orbiting starships, and gravity goes apeshit and random spikes start tearing the ships and planet apart. Because Slaughter/Beast is an Ork warboss the size of a building, thinks space hulks are for pussies, and has enough Meks to build himself what the Imperium calls an "Attack Moon". And thus begins the story of why the Space Marines will never again have to worry about being out of a job.

God damn, Ted Chiang is a great read! Thanks to everyone for mentioning him. If I had to try to describe his writing, I'd say he seems to be like the literary version of Black Mirror - he takes an everyday world and gives it a twist with technology (or something), and sees what the result is.

(as an aside, I had read Ever Since Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould right before Ted Chiang, and one of Chiang's stories dovetails very very nicely with the history written about by Gould).

Also a big thanks for the Guy Gavriel Kay recommendation. I didn't particularly like his Fionavar Tapestry series (a little cliched and broad-brush-stroked), but his other books were awesome (The Lions of Al-Rassan, The Last Light of the Sun, Under Heaven). Need to find the rest of his books...

What can I give back to the community? Hmmm, The Expanse series is getting a lot of publicity these days (read them all and liked them a lot), and also I'd recommend other books by the author(s). I especially liked The Long Price Omnibus by Daniel Abraham.

I tried reading Under Heaven last year. I was not as big a fan as I was hoping I might be, based on the praise GGK seems to get. The characterization and plotting both felt kind of tepid to me, for whatever reason.

China Miéville's new collection, Three Moments of an Explosion, is often quite good. "Polynia" is one of the better Big Dumb Object stories I can remember coming across. And "The 9th Technique" is an appealing reflection on Guantanamo.

I tried reading Wind-Up Girl but got bored with it. I am currently reading Rules for Radicals and Flash Boys. I also am reading the occasionally flash fiction.

Blicero wrote:I tried reading Under Heaven last year. I was not as big a fan as I was hoping I might be, based on the praise GGK seems to get. The characterization and plotting both felt kind of tepid to me, for whatever reason.

China Miéville's new collection, Three Moments of an Explosion, is often quite good. "Polynia" is one of the better Big Dumb Object stories I can remember coming across. And "The 9th Technique" is an appealing reflection on Guantanamo.

Even though I enjoyed his writing, I can see how GGK isn't for everyone. Whilest reading his books, I had a nagging voice in my head saying, "For some reason you like this book, but you probably shouldn't." Especially his Fionavar Tapestry. It's like...ok, take the Hero's Journey, but paint it with broad brush strokes and skip over large chunks of the (interesting parts of the) journey.

I need to give Mieville another read I guess...I tried to read RailSea, but put it down early, couldn't get into it.

It feels weird, I'm in one or two "reading groups" online, and everyone always sings the praises of Ready Player One and anything Sanderson or Rothfuss. I'm quiet alot in those groups...

But I'll definitely put Chiang in top tier now. "God had already wasted a miracle on Janice, and now He was doing it again."

phlapjackage wrote:Ready Player One

You need to Denizen nerdrage at those people. The 1985 version of "Dead Man's Party" does not open with trumpets, and Atari's Adventure was not the first video game t contain an Easter egg. And characters who obsess over details in a treasure hunt should have noticed those two mistakes in Halliday's video will and testament whiich starts the book. That they don't is even more damning than the continued deluge of factual errors about 80s pop / nerd culture and chronology the book coontains.

phlapjackage wrote: anything Sanderson or Rothfuss.

I'll gladly admit to being a Sanderson fan after someone got me on to Way of Kings last year, but I also know why that is: Sanderson's whole cosmere series is all connected in all these little ways (and increasingly in big ways) with lots of foreshadowing and clues that make sense on a re-read, and I tend to be a big re-reader becaue I don't often get a chance to go the library.

On the other hand, I can intellectually concede he takes the narrative safe route -all the damn time- and you can have a good guess at how things will turn out (heroes win, villains lose, divers alarums), if not how exactly they'll play out.

Josh_Kablack wrote:

phlapjackage wrote:Ready Player One

You need to Denizen nerdrage at those people. The 1985 version of "Dead Man's Party" does not open with trumpets, and Atari's Adventure was not the first video game t contain an Easter egg. And characters who obsess over details in a treasure hunt should have noticed those two mistakes in Halliday's video will and testament whiich starts the book. That they don't is even more damning than the continued deluge of factual errors about 80s pop / nerd culture and chronology the book coontains.

My nerdcred is too weak to get up in arms over that stuff. I could be just as happy to presume the author is correct for his fictional universe as it differs slightly than ours on those points. It works out for folks who don't know any better, such as myself.

I get more annoyed at stuff like the trolls in the first hobbit movie turning to stone in sunlight, but nobody bats an eye when they don't in the third hobbit movie. I know there are different troll types but Bilbo sure fuckin doesn't.