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In Cordwainer Smith’s “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” there’s a bit where the protagonist and his girlfriend find a magical prediction machine which tells her “protagonist will love you for the rest of your life” and then tells him “you will love girlfriend for about the next twenty minutes”. Cue confusion immediately followed by girlfriend death. In Gary Jennings’ Raptor this gag is repeated pretty much verbatim, but with a magical prediction Jew instead of a computer. Are both these guys ripping off someone earlier, or was Smith the first to come up with the joke?
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Jul 25, 2019 14:34
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skasion posted:In Cordwainer Smith’s “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” there’s a bit where the protagonist and his girlfriend find a magical prediction machine which tells her “protagonist will love you for the rest of your life” and then tells him “you will love girlfriend for about the next twenty minutes”. Cue confusion immediately followed by girlfriend death. In Gary Jennings’ Raptor this gag is repeated pretty much verbatim, but with a magical prediction Jew instead of a computer. Are both these guys ripping off someone earlier, or was Smith the first to come up with the joke? It shows up in lots of folk tales from different cultures around the world.
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Jul 25, 2019 15:08
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xcheopis posted:It shows up in lots of folk tales from different cultures around the world. Got an ATU number?
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Jul 25, 2019 15:12
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skasion posted:Got an ATU number? No, I just read a lot folk/fairy tales.
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Jul 25, 2019 15:20
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https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1154400545362329600
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Jul 25, 2019 15:38
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I picked up Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and I'm a little past halfway. This book is weird. I am enjoying the typical "conversations" that I was hoping for, but man, it's kinda loopy in some parts. Is Dostoyevsky's "thing" to have mysterious weird circumstances that eventually culminate into over-exaggerated arguments? I've read Crime and Punishment and that had some of the same types of strange characters/situations. Almost like everyone seems a bit mental but everyone around them seems perfectly fine with it and then every so often one of them steps off the cliff briefly. I also finished On the Road and promptly binned it rather than put it in one of the small libraries. Good lord was that terrible writing and absolutely boring. I think Bukowski kinda set the bar too high on beatnik.
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Jul 26, 2019 17:00
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I'm wondering what options I have to restore the quality of some old audiobook mp3s that were ripped from tapes. They're no longer on sale anywhere and don't show any signs of being so, but I'd like it if there was anything that could be done to remove mild hissing and quality issues and slight variations in tone from cassette to cassette. Is this something we have the technology for yet?
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Jul 28, 2019 19:59
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm wondering what options I have to restore the quality of some old audiobook mp3s that were ripped from tapes. They're no longer on sale anywhere and don't show any signs of being so, but I'd like it if there was anything that could be done to remove mild hissing and quality issues and slight variations in tone from cassette to cassette. Is this something we have the technology for yet? So, you'd have to set up a batch for it which is a bit more than I've done but audacity does (or did, some years ago) have an option to sample a section of audio and remove that sample from the rest of the recording. I did this to about 20 mp3s of songs from a live show that had terrible tape hiss, just sampled a bit of the recording that was nothing but hiss and told it to remove that from the rest of the MP3. The results were way, way better than I could have expected. Again, that was a long time ago -- probably a decade now -- but the option was there and I figured it out myself easily enough so just poke around in audacity and it should be fairly obvious.
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Jul 29, 2019 06:08
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I used to use the service TuneIn for audio books around 3 years ago. I was definitely subscribed to it for at least a year. Today I decided to re-up my subscription, which was $10 for a month. I downloaded the app and couldn't find audiobooks anywhere on it at all! Googled the issue and whoops they pulled all the audiobooks off the service in January of 2018. Now I feel like a sucker and they've got my money. Unless you can't see, just stick to READING your books with the eyes God gave you is I guess the lesson.
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Jul 29, 2019 07:29
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What's the deal with James Patterson? He does like one book a week, he's done them in every genre, he has a manga, what's going on? Is he any good?
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Jul 30, 2019 20:26
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Gripweed posted:What's the deal with James Patterson? He does like one book a week, he's done them in every genre, he has a manga, what's going on? Is he any good? you know how thomas kincaid churned out thousands of paintings by having apprentices paint the entire thing, then adding a detail or two to it so that he could call it an original work? james patterson does that with books. most of his books are 'co-authored' with total unknowns who write virtually the entire thing. he's a terrible writer, but he makes truckloads of money this way. there are a few articles about it
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Jul 30, 2019 20:34
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chernobyl kinsman posted:you know how thomas kincaid churned out thousands of paintings by having apprentices paint the entire thing, then adding a detail or two to it so that he could call it an original work? james patterson does that with books. most of his books are 'co-authored' with total unknowns who write virtually the entire thing. he's a terrible writer, but he makes truckloads of money this way. there are a few articles about it It's hardly a new scam, of course. Many prolific pulp authors had stables of ghostwriters whose work they'd slightly edit and slap their name on before selling. And it's not limited to books either -- see Bob Kane and his army of "assistants" in the early years of Batman, for instance. Patterson is a bit more honest in that he actually gives his "co-"authors cover credit instead of just putting everything out under his name. And if you're wondering if he was any good back when he was writing on his own: No. No, he was not.
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Jul 31, 2019 00:07
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I can't hate the guy. It took some serious business acumen to develop this eco-system where the readers buy all the poo poo with his name on the cover just because they trust it'll have a certain quality to it that they'll enjoy. It's like the Warhammer shared universe, but he's the Warhammer. And yeah, he's honest about doing it with co-authors when he does (he wrote 24 Alex Cross books on his own, cause he had to get popular before he became an ever-expanding avalanche of co-written thrillers, y'know?), puts their names on the covers and, from what I've read, pays them well. I've watched the Masterclass with the guy and ended up liking him. He was amiable and gave sensible, straightforward advice for writing the kind of stuff he writes. Two of the co-authors also made an appearance in the course and they both seemed quite happy with the arrangement. Still don't feel like reading any of his books, though.
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Jul 31, 2019 00:48
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Does that model also apply to prolific romance novel authors? Has Danielle Steel really written like 200 books?
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Jul 31, 2019 01:39
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So she alleges. Being that prolific is not unprecedented and romance novels are easier to crank out than other genres. It seems she's been doing two-three a year for the past fifty(!) years, which seems doable.
Megazver fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Jul 31, 2019 |
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Jul 31, 2019 01:45
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Don't forget VC Andrews, who wrote eight books in her lifetime but more than eighty after she died.
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Jul 31, 2019 03:15
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Megazver posted:I can't hate the guy. i can't hate this scam artist, he's just so good at it!
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Jul 31, 2019 05:52
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I mean Elron Hubbard supposedly wrote like 100.000 words a month, and was a respected pulp writer due to his output. I'm guessing it's just templates with name and location changes.
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Jul 31, 2019 07:44
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A human heart posted:i can't hate this scam artist, he's just so good at it! Why is he a scam artist? You should maybe look up the definition. He writes (or co-writes - he still outlines them) books. The books exist. The target audience enjoys them. He's transparent about how he's more of a producer-editor for some of his series.
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Jul 31, 2019 10:12
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Everyone who earns more than 50k a year is a scam artist
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Jul 31, 2019 12:08
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https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1157082112618573825
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Aug 2, 2019 01:15
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This mfer said Madness of Crows
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Aug 2, 2019 01:24
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Gripweed posted:This mfer said Madness of Crows goddammit well it's too late that's the title of the book now
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Aug 2, 2019 01:28
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Honestly The Madness of Crows sounds like it would be a pretty sick book
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Aug 2, 2019 04:35
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I once heard of someone who thought the book was about German mental illnesses because the title was ... and the Madness of Krauts.
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Aug 2, 2019 05:25
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Selachian posted:I once heard of someone who thought the book was about German mental illnesses because the title was ... and the Madness of Krauts. Well, I mean, Germany is covered in some depth
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Aug 2, 2019 15:01
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https://twitter.com/DannyDutch/status/1158123021703483392
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Aug 6, 2019 14:30
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That's pretty drat cool, though I must admit I read it as foreskin painting at first and it was very WTF.
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Aug 7, 2019 11:44
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regulargonzalez posted:So, you'd have to set up a batch for it which is a bit more than I've done but audacity does (or did, some years ago) have an option to sample a section of audio and remove that sample from the rest of the recording. I did this to about 20 mp3s of songs from a live show that had terrible tape hiss, just sampled a bit of the recording that was nothing but hiss and told it to remove that from the rest of the MP3. The results were way, way better than I could have expected. Yeah, I did that much a decade ago; I was just wondering if the power of Machine Learning had made any spectacular advances since then.
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Aug 8, 2019 19:40
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I think I mentioned this before, but I've been asked to set up a TBB discord, so here we go: https://discord.gg/jgBDB25
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Aug 15, 2019 03:50
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Is that just going to be another place for Mel to badger people into reading about terrariums?
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Aug 15, 2019 15:05
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Ben Nevis posted:Is that just going to be another place for Mel to badger people into reading about terrariums? I think Mel got mad at us he's not around so much any more =(
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Aug 15, 2019 15:16
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Ben Nevis posted:Is that just going to be another place for Mel to badger people into reading about terrariums? Mel has recommended more good books to me than any other TBB goon. Including Aquarium.
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Aug 15, 2019 15:52
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Did Mel also recommend Hillbilly Elegy? Because that’s the worst book I’ve ever been recommended by a goon
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Aug 15, 2019 16:03
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Franchescanado posted:Mel has recommended more good books to me than any other TBB goon. Including Aquarium. seems like you need to listen to me more
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Aug 15, 2019 16:06
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Did Mel also recommend Hillbilly Elegy? Because that’s the worst book I’ve ever been recommended by a goon No. In fact he aggressively made fun of people who recommended it. Justifiably so, in my opinion. CestMoi posted:seems like you need to listen to me more You get me to read cool poetry. I also read that Scottish murder mystery you recommended me that was secretly an incest screwball comedy, The Case of the Constant Suicides.
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Aug 15, 2019 16:17
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Franchescanado posted:No. In fact he aggressively made fun of people who recommended it. Justifiably so, in my opinion. Oh, good. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank a human heart for recommending Porius and to whoever recommended Salammbo. Any other books like that you people can think of? Like exotic, fantastical, packed with weirdness but not genre fantasy.
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Aug 15, 2019 16:51
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Oh, good. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank a human heart for recommending Porius and to whoever recommended Salammbo. Any other books like that you people can think of? Like exotic, fantastical, packed with weirdness but not genre fantasy. I assume you've read magical realism -- Jose Saramago, Haruki Murakami, Borges et al? E: also probably my most frequent recommendation, The Magus by John Fowles. Despite the name, it's not genre fiction. regulargonzalez fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Aug 15, 2019 |
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Aug 15, 2019 17:54
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Oh, good. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank a human heart for recommending Porius and to whoever recommended Salammbo. Any other books like that you people can think of? Like exotic, fantastical, packed with weirdness but not genre fantasy. THE DICTIONARY OF THE KHAZARS BY MILORAD PAVIC
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Aug 15, 2019 18:01
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CestMoi posted:THE DICTIONARY OF THE KHAZARS BY MILORAD PAVIC Yeah, I keep forgetting about that one. I am on a Serbian lit kick anyway so I’ll def pick it up. I’ve read all the usual recs already - Borges, Calvino, Saramago... Llosa’s War at the End of the World has no fantastical elements, but takes place in a world so strange to me it might easily be fantasy. I might actually be looking for well written historical novels, now that I consider this? e: regarding The Magus nothing is supernatural about it, as far as I can recall Take the plunge! Okay! fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Aug 15, 2019 |
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Aug 15, 2019 18:39
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