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Khizan posted:This is something I've always wondered about Gibson. How does it feel to basically be in your own shadow for the rest of your life? I mean, Neuromancer was his first novel and no matter what he writes, the end verdict on it is almost certainly going to be "It's okay, but it's no Neuromancer." Joseph Heller had a great quote about this. He was once asked in an interview why he hasn't written anything else as good as catch 22, his first novel. His response was, "well, neither has anyone else"
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May 13, 2017 12:45
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cultureulterior posted:Giant pink worms. But I agree, Gerrold is great, except for his ability to actually keep writing the series. He did finish a draft of the next book last year. It's still a long way from a release date, but he is working on it.
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May 13, 2017 16:43
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mllaneza posted:He did finish a draft of the next book last year. It's still a long way from a release date, but he is working on it. People can bitch about Rothfuss or G.R.R.Martin all they want, but they are both small-time. The last War on the Chtorr book was released 24 years ago, and I am still waiting for a sequel.  And apparently Gerrod is still writing it. 
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May 13, 2017 17:00
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StrixNebulosa posted:What, we're living in a technological dystopua with a sharp divide between the rich and everyone else, and the mega-corps rule everything? Say it ain't so! Where hackers use black ice stolen from shadowy US Government agencies to extort hospitals, reality TV (remember Sense/Net and Cops In Trouble?) is everywhere, and the sky is the color of a TV tuned to a dead channel whether it's blue or grey (though which it "really" is depends on how old you are).
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May 13, 2017 19:50
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Kesper North posted:Where hackers use black ice stolen from shadowy US Government agencies to extort hospitals, reality TV (remember Sense/Net and Cops In Trouble?) is everywhere, and the sky is the color of a TV tuned to a dead channel whether it's blue or grey (though which it "really" is depends on how old you are). The devs for the latest round of Deus Ex games said in interview s that this was an actual problem they faced with the game's marketing. Younger folks don't recognize "cyberpunk" as a distinct sci-fi genre, all the elements are just present reality.
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May 13, 2017 19:54
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I read Neuromancer back in the early 90s when it was pretty fresh off the boat, but I honestly just cannot grok (seemingly most) folks' epic  over Gibson's writing. Basically he writes Boondock Saints-level stuff, except with really in-depth description of carbon fiber and formica.Stephenson also gets huge swathes of followers - I assume because he tends to go off on tangents like Douglas Adams or David Foster Wallace, which a certain number of folks just cannot consume enough of. But why do people not seem to give a poo poo about Bruce Sterling? I loved A Good Old-Fashioned Future (I think this is the one which contained Taklamakan which is amazing and epic and got a few notable awards), I loved GLobalhead, I loved how he finally tied together Leggy Starlitz' life story in a satisfying way, and I love his novels such as Holy Fire, Heavy Weather. I even love his one-off short stories in randomly-created alternate universes, like the one about the guys who accidentally create an intelligent material, or the pseudo-immortal scientist living in the dregs of the post-conservative-uprising USA.. Part of it is that I feel Sterling is, at core, very skilled at pulp/short fiction without it needing to necessarily be connected to an over-arching world - until maybe later when he starts liking a character or setting a whole bunch. I mean Gibson writes what is, at its core imho, film noir action movies. Stephenson writes engrossing and in-depth explorations of the genre and/or subject, but Sterling's writing is actually beautiful, very often - which is something I cannot really think of in terms of the other two.. I mean I have a few sentences from seminal fiction works which rattle around in my head however, I can't think of one from Stephenson without going back to reading Snow Crash back in like 1991, or "we're the muthafuckin Rastafarian navy mon!" which was Neuromancer's likely best line, and which honestly should be in a Guy Ritchie film. But Bruce Sterling's stories actually affect me at my core. The final paragraph or so of Holy Fire made me tear up while thinking heavily about posthumanism, Taklamakan is so strange and beautiful it feels like the epitome of the cyberpunk "climbing up out of hell" thing - and the story precluding it is just as fascinating and intersesting and affecting imho, even though it's about hardcore bicyclist hipsters before that was a thing. Leggy Starlitz is amazing. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 19:59 on May 13, 2017 |
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May 13, 2017 19:55
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The devs for the latest round of Deus Ex games said in interview s that this was an actual problem they faced with the game's marketing. Younger folks don't recognize "cyberpunk" as a distinct sci-fi genre, all the elements are just present reality. I mean I only streamed season one, but loving USA Channel has a Cyberpunk show called Mr. Robot, its pure cyberpunk yet weirdly distilled for wide audiences and its depressing how seamlessly the Cyberpunk stuff blends into a modern day setting. StrixNebulosa posted:What, we're living in a technological dystopua with a sharp divide between the rich and everyone else, and the mega-corps rule everything? Say it ain't so! You don't have to tell me living in Seattle, Amazon loving feels like it is or should be one of those crazy megacorps for Shadowrun with its drones and poo poo, I keep waiting to hear they are building a loving Pyramid Arcology somewhere. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 20:01 on May 13, 2017 |
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May 13, 2017 19:58
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Jack2142 posted:I mean I only streamed season one, but loving USA Channel has a Cyberpunk show called Mr. Robot, its pure cyberpunk yet weirdly distilled for wide audiences and its depressing how seamlessly the Cyberpunk stuff blends into a modern day setting.
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May 13, 2017 20:04
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coyo7e posted:Is it in short story or novel form? Because there's totally a great place to talk about TV shows otf That quote was pretty obviously replying to the cyberpunk/modern day comment, and he made a coherent point, especially at the tail end of a discussion about Gibson and the modern understanding of cyberpunk as a genre. So don't be a dick, dude.
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May 13, 2017 20:42
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Sterling doesn't get as much attention because he barely writes fiction anymore, and when he does it's something weird and edge-case-specific. I love Sterling and think he's brilliant and visionary, but fiction just isn't his career anymore, not really, whereas Gibson is increasingly prominent.
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May 13, 2017 21:00
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Props to whoever mentioned Ian Tregillis's Milkweed books like a week ago, they are indeed really good.
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May 13, 2017 21:31
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The only Sterling book I've tried to read was The Zenith Angle and I bounced of it like three times. It just utterly failed to interest me.
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May 13, 2017 21:40
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I did like the thing he co wrote with Gibson, that's the only Sterling I've read though.
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May 13, 2017 23:01
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Sterling's Schismatrix is dope, at least that's how I remember it having read it last time in 90s... Regarding cyberpunk, Mirroshades anthology edited by Sterling definitely is worth checking out if you're interested in genre defining works. Also I won't miss an opportunity to plug John Brunner when I can: Shockwave Rider from 70s probably is one of the definitive proto-cyberpunk novels out there.
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May 13, 2017 23:54
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Kesper North posted:Sterling doesn't get as much attention because he barely writes fiction anymore, and when he does it's something weird and edge-case-specific. I love Sterling and think he's brilliant and visionary, but fiction just isn't his career anymore, not really, whereas Gibson is increasingly prominent.
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May 14, 2017 00:46
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Jack2142 posted:I mean I only streamed season one, but loving USA Channel has a Cyberpunk show called Mr. Robot, its pure cyberpunk yet weirdly distilled for wide audiences and its depressing how seamlessly the Cyberpunk stuff blends into a modern day setting. Or hell, Person of Interest. The government might be spying on us? Yeah sure okay tell me another one. Basically cyberpunk is the most relevant setting and it's depressing - but also fun, because most cyberpunk stories tend to have the little guy succeeding despite the odds? Maybe I'm reading the wrong stuff, but the genre feels that way. I've been enjoying some of the early Shadowrun novels - bad writing, but fun - and it's nice to read books where the enemy is out and out the rich megacorp.
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May 14, 2017 01:22
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Lunsku posted:Sterling's Schismatrix is dope, at least that's how I remember it having read it last time in 90s... Brunner is awesome and The Shockwave Rider gets serious credit for not only arguably being the first cyberpunk novel (even if Neuromancer is what really kicked things into gear), but for inventing and naming internet worms before the internet existed.
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May 14, 2017 02:03
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Jack2142 posted:You don't have to tell me living in Seattle, Amazon loving feels like it is or should be one of those crazy megacorps for Shadowrun with its drones and poo poo, I keep waiting to hear they are building a loving Pyramid Arcology somewhere. They're building a biosphere, and the new HQ will house a permanent homeless shelter, so you could say they're prototyping one right now.
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May 14, 2017 02:46
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I just bought a copy of Neuromancer, thanks for making me spend money goons
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May 14, 2017 03:13
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Mel Mudkiper posted:It is like if a soldier in today's military said "today, we are gonna go over guns. Guns are weapons that use gunpowder to fire a small metal bit called a bullet. This gun can fire many of these bullets very quickly, like a machine. You might call it, a machine gun." I just wanted to say that this is actually pretty accurate to how military instructors speak. Mel Mudkiper posted:
Also accurate to how military people describe locations.
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May 14, 2017 18:17
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It's almost as though people who work in a hyper-structured hyper-testosterone hyper-competitive environement, might need to have the basics repeated to them more than once before they actually get it into their heads
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May 14, 2017 21:35
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Actually you break things down to simple, easy step by step processes to facilitate learning and memorization. I think that's not unique to the military.
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May 14, 2017 22:47
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coyo7e posted:It's almost as though people who work in a hyper-structured hyper-testosterone hyper-competitive environement, might need to have the basics repeated to them more than once before they actually get it into their heads Cool burn on EMTs and nurses and firefighters and literally everyone else who works in an environment where your forebrain is likely to shut off. It's important to understand that they train this way because they're testosterone soaked meatheads 
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May 14, 2017 23:34
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coyo7e posted:It's almost as though people who work in a hyper-structured hyper-testosterone hyper-competitive environement, might need to have the basics repeated to them more than once before they actually get it into their heads Nerd's mindless contempt for jocks will never stop being the dumbest thing about us.
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May 14, 2017 23:50
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Every time an athlete speaks out against racism and a gamer shouts about cultural genocide, one must think that perhaps the jocks were the good guys all alongInternet Wizard posted:I just wanted to say that this is actually pretty accurate to how military instructors speak. Yeah, it wasn't the dictation I was caught off guard by as much as it was the absurdity of explaining the existence of a machine gun to a soldier in the 21st century Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 00:20 on May 15, 2017 |
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May 15, 2017 00:16
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Patrick Spens posted:Nerd's mindless contempt for jocks will never stop being the dumbest thing about us. But you see the jocks made fun of me because of my twig arms and the fact I was so much smarter than they were. It was not because I was intellectually condescending regardless of how incorrect I often was and because I was so creepy none of the girls in my class were comfortable alone with me. No, they were just straight up meathead bullies obsessed with their hand-egg.
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May 15, 2017 00:23
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Every time an athlete speaks out against racism and a gamer shouts about cultural genocide, one must think that perhaps the jocks were the good guys all along To be fair in the Forever War the people recruited were conscripted out of like grad school and this is boot camp (in space), its not like they were already career soldiers who were selected to go fight aliens.
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May 15, 2017 01:09
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Yeah, it wasn't the dictation I was caught off guard by as much as it was the absurdity of explaining the existence of a machine gun to a soldier in the 21st century I'm not even kidding when I say that exact thing happens at boot camp and MCT.
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May 15, 2017 02:56
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Finished New York 2140 and ehhhhhhhhh. It really runs out of steam in the second half, and it also becomes quite clear (especially after listening to Robinson on a recent Coode Street podcast) that he basically just wanted to write a book about capitalism and global finance and his publisher forced him to set it in the flooded future New York for the sci-fi angle. Not one of his better books.
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May 15, 2017 03:04
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Lt. Lizard posted:People can bitch about Rothfuss or G.R.R.Martin all they want, but they are both small-time. The last War on the Chtorr book was released 24 years ago, and I am still waiting for a sequel. And has put out 9 novels and a ton of short fiction since then. Yeah, I want it too.
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May 15, 2017 03:59
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Wow, a lot more kneejerk defensive reactions to people being told that you need to study before you can learn things than I expected
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May 15, 2017 04:00
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coyo7e posted:Wow, a lot more kneejerk defensive reactions to people being told that you need to study before you can learn things than I expected You did it You made nerds sympathize with the jocks
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May 15, 2017 04:06
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coyo7e posted:Wow, a lot more kneejerk defensive reactions to people being told that you need to study before you can learn things than I expected Ahahahahahaha, backpedal faster.
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May 15, 2017 06:16
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General Battuta posted:Cool burn on EMTs and nurses and firefighters and literally everyone else who works in an environment where your forebrain is likely to shut off. Yah exactly; having tried to train for any kind of physically stressful situation and then had the opportunity to try to apply that training in an actual even moderately stressful situation... what you do in fact need to have a hope of success is to break things down into really stupid little steps and drill those fuckers a billion times, because when the poo poo hits the fan you're highly likely to default to only being able to do poo poo you don't have to think about doing. And if you want to train up any quantity of personnel to be able to act under stress, you need to standardize those stupid little steps to a low common level. Military forces the world over have known this since the dawn of history.
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May 15, 2017 12:06
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Lunsku posted:Sterling's Schismatrix is dope, at least that's how I remember it having read it last time in 90s... i read it for the first time last year and thought it was very, very good.
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May 15, 2017 16:08
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coyo7e posted:Wow, a lot more kneejerk defensive reactions to people being told that you need to study before you can learn things than I expected Defensive about knee jerk reactions indeed
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May 16, 2017 04:56
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Family friend recommended One Second After and sequels by William Forstchen. Said referrer has about a 50/50 success rate of recommending good stuff. Any opinions on these?
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May 16, 2017 18:22
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Phummus posted:Family friend recommended Forstchen is the dude who wrote that alt history book with newtgingrich
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May 16, 2017 18:53
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I just finished the LitRPG book "Dominion Of Blades" by Matt Dinniman. I'd have to give it a hearty recommend. Dominion of Blades is probably the best LitRPG book I have read so far. The writing can be clunky at times, and theres a lot of typos, but there's none of the weird sexism or homophobia that pervades the translated fare (quite the opposite in fact), and the plot is really cool. All of a sudden two "NPCs" become aware that they are real people in a simulation. Prior to that they had been repeating their same week over and over again, for years and years. They have little memory of their real lives, but they realize they are in the titular game, an old, shut down, full immersion MMORPG which was shut down because prolonged dives into the game tended to cause a sort of reality dysmorphia. The big perk to their lives as NPC fishermen is that they have an impossibly high fishing skill which has bled out into other skills and special abilities to make them quite formidable due to the way the game handles high skill levels and synergy bonuses. For example, the main character can summon fish, call down an ice storm, and has insanely high level skill with an urumi, a whip-sword, because of his high fly fishing skill, all of which feature into the plot. The system has blocked their ability to log out and fast travel, and pain sensitivity is jacked up to the maximum. They can see other people listed as online so they set out to the main city in the game world (which is a scale replica of Earth with the capital being in Seattle) to try to send out a global message to bring them in. Unfortunately they are somewhere in eastern Europe and have very far to travel. It ends up being a mixture of LitRPG and comedy with a big dollop of horror mixed in. Theres no damage numbers and the tons of stat blocks people tend to complain about are absent here too. This is gonna be the LitRPG I am judging others against. I think the only other series which really holds up is Continue Online.
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May 17, 2017 02:27
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I started reading Consider Phlebas. I remember people saying on here that it was the hardest Banks to get into, but after about 5 pages of my brain adjusting to the scale of the novel I haven't had any trouble following what's going on. Great book so far.
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May 17, 2017 02:42
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