Bilirubin posted:

Gould was one of the luminary workers in evolutionary biology, and worked very hard to popularize the subject through his monthly articles in Natural History magazine. His technical work was both on constraining adaptationist explanations for things, understanding how shifts in the timing of developmental events can lead to morphological change that is subject to natural selection (and therefore evolvable), and evolutionary contingency. He's also well known for his "two magisteria" argument for ending fights between science and religion, as mentioned by someone upthread. I jumped into this discussion because of the mention of evolutionary contingency, which Gould elaborates in greatest detail in his fantastic book Wonderful Life but also in numerous individual essays that I can't easily name off the top of my head because he shat out piles of them and bound collections. If you are super interested his enormous fat book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory presents all of his ideas in one place in a semi integrated whole (his view of the then state of the evolutionary synthesis) but it was written as he was dying and it didn't get nearly the editorial work it needed so I really only recommend that to graduate students. Collections of his essays like Ever Since Darwin and Bully for Brontosaurus are all fun, if potentially a bit dated.

pseudanonymous posted:

I liked the concepts and the plot itself but I struggled a lot with the execution. Honestly, I wanted it re-written by Peter F Hamilton.

Peter F. Hamilton posted:

Thérèse was tall for thirteen, skinny, with breasts that had been pushed into maturity by a course of tailored growth hormones. Long raven hair, brown eyes, and a pretty, juvenile face with just the right amount of cuteness; everybody’s girl next door. She was wearing black leather shorts to show off her tight little arse, and her breasts were almost falling out of a scarlet halter top. Her pose was indolent, chewing at her gum, one hand on her hip.

Peter F. Hamilton posted:

"This girl has run up a medical bill that a hypochondriac millionaire would envy."
"She's ill?"
"Neurotic, more like. There ain't much of the original Charlotte Fielder left, the biochemistry she's carrying around! Her piss'd rake in a fortune on the street." She ran her index finger down the wafer's screen. "Get this, vaginal enlargement! What's she been bonking, King Kong? Follicle tint hormones. Submaxillary gland cachou emission adaptation. What the flick is that?"
"It's a biochemical treatment to alter her saliva composition," Rachel said. "Makes her breath smell sweet the whole time, even the morning after. Especially the morning after."
"Jesus wept. Bigger tits, yes, I can understand that; but this lot…"

Wikipedia posted:

Common themes in his books are sexually precocious teenagers, politics, religion, and armed conflict.

Wikipedia posted:

This was his least well received book critically, perhaps because it was Hamilton's first attempt at an in-depth character study or perhaps because much of the book was taken up with descriptions of sex which did not allow many of the characters (the women in particular) to be developed.^{[citation needed]}

Peter F. Hamilton posted:

When she was seventeen she had a month-long affaire with Aulie, who was forty-four, which made it doomed from the start, which made it so romantic. She enjoyed her time with Aulie unashamedly, as much for the mild censure and gossip it generated among her friends and family as the new styles of euphoria she experienced under his knowledgeable tuition. Now he was someone who really knew how to exploit free fall.

Teenage Edenist sexuality was one of the most talked about and envied legends among their Adamist counterparts. Edenists didn’t need to worry about disease, not with their immunology systems; and affinity ensured that there were no problems of jealousy, or even possessive domination. Honest lust was nothing to be ashamed of, it was a natural aspect of teenage hormones on the boil, and there was also ample room for genuine one-to-one attraction. So given that even trainee captains only had five hours of practical engineering and technology lessons each day, and by their mid-teens Edenists needed at most six hours’ sleep per night, the rest of the time was spent pursuing orgasmic release in a manner which would have impressed even the Romans.

Peter F. Hamilton posted:

In return for acquiescence Rubra taught him how to use the affinity bond with the habitat. How to access the sensitive cells to see what was going on, how he could call on vast amounts of processing power, the tremendous amount of stored data that was available.

One of the first things Rubra did was to guide him through a list of possible replacement girls, eager to bury the lingering traces of yearning for Anastasia Rigel. Dariat felt like a voyeuristic ghost, watching the prospective candidates through the sensitive cells; seeing them at home, talking to their friends. Some of them he watched having sex with their boyfriends, two with other girls, which was exciting. Rubra didn’t seem to object to these prolonged observations. At least it meant he didn’t have to pay for bluesense fleks any more.

Neurosis posted:

Thanks. I'll check out a couple of the essays - although I'm not sure about him being a 'luminary'; looking into it a bit it seems Gould had a garbage reputation among other academics in the field (I know academics get into turf wars all the time so some criticism being out there isn't surprising, but a few articles I scanned through seemed to suggest the negative opinion of Gould went far beyond ordinary academic cattiness). Nonetheless, his writing chops have been lauded frequently enough that something on an uncontroversial topic might be a pleasant read.

Edit: To be clear I think I must've had the controversy about Gould tickling in the back of my mind from reading about him years ago; I wouldn't normally go to such effort to undermine a recommendation made to me!

Tim Burns Effect posted:

Back when "New Atheism" was in its heyday in like 2008 i distinctly remember Gould being considered one of the bad guys because Richard Dawkins criticized him in The God Delusion and elsewhere and it just kind of filtered on down from there. He also had the audacity to say that evolutionary psychology is bunk and race science is bad

Tim Burns Effect posted:

Back when "New Atheism" was in its heyday in like 2008 i distinctly remember Gould being considered one of the bad guys because Richard Dawkins criticized him in The God Delusion and elsewhere and it just kind of filtered on down from there. He also had the audacity to say that evolutionary psychology is bunk and race science is bad

Neurosis posted:

Thanks. I'll check out a couple of the essays - although I'm not sure about him being a 'luminary'; looking into it a bit it seems Gould had a garbage reputation among other academics in the field (I know academics get into turf wars all the time so some criticism being out there isn't surprising, but a few articles I scanned through seemed to suggest the negative opinion of Gould went far beyond ordinary academic cattiness). Nonetheless, his writing chops have been lauded frequently enough that something on an uncontroversial topic might be a pleasant read.

Edit: To be clear I think I must've had the controversy about Gould tickling in the back of my mind from reading about him years ago; I wouldn't normally go to such effort to undermine a recommendation made to me!

Tim Burns Effect posted:

Back when "New Atheism" was in its heyday in like 2008 i distinctly remember Gould being considered one of the bad guys because Richard Dawkins criticized him in The God Delusion and elsewhere and it just kind of filtered on down from there. He also had the audacity to say that evolutionary psychology is bunk and race science is bad

C.M. Kruger posted:

Admittedly I've only read Elantris and a few of the Mistborn books so I can't comment on Stormlight, but Sanderson's writing is about as evocative as a bowl of unsalted oatmeal. And I suspect that might be part of why his stuff is popular, for the average reader who just wants "a fun story" and doesn't really care about writing, there's no need to put any effort into it because he just describes everything, and it's so consistently bland there's no worry of ending up with a actively bad book.

Milkfred E. Moore posted:

The right angles specifically have to intersect with each other and take up a certain percentage of the vampire's visual field. Hence why it was human civilization that did them in and not just right angles existing somewhere.

my bony fealty posted:

See this just makes it worse for me. You start rules-lawyering your made up evolutionary problems, you get further and further from what's supposed to be a plausible explanation for something mystical. As mentioned the vampires are already a nonsensical, non-fit idea for a predator. Now we have to ask: how perfect do the angles have to be? Will the vampire seize up at 49.9995% of visual field taken, or only at 50%? If the crucifix is tilted 9° relative to the ecliptic under a new moon does it still work?

my bony fealty posted:

One gets the feeling many Sanderson fans would really rather just watch an Avengers movie again or play another round of Fortnite but want to be able to talk out loud about that great book they're reading

my bony fealty posted:

See this just makes it worse for me. You start rules-lawyering your made up evolutionary problems, you get further and further from what's supposed to be a plausible explanation for something mystical. As mentioned the vampires are already a nonsensical, non-fit idea for a predator. Now we have to ask: how perfect do the angles have to be? Will the vampire seize up at 49.9995% of visual field taken, or only at 50%? If the crucifix is tilted 9° relative to the ecliptic under a new moon does it still work?

These are not interesting questions, but if you want to treat your fiction like pretend real science you can't get away from them.

Ultimately the answer to all of them is: whatever the story demands.

my bony fealty posted:

See this just makes it worse for me. You start rules-lawyering your made up evolutionary problems, you get further and further from what's supposed to be a plausible explanation for something mystical. As mentioned the vampires are already a nonsensical, non-fit idea for a predator. Now we have to ask: how perfect do the angles have to be? Will the vampire seize up at 49.9995% of visual field taken, or only at 50%? If the crucifix is tilted 9° relative to the ecliptic under a new moon does it still work?

These are not interesting questions, but if you want to treat your fiction like pretend real science you can't get away from them.

Ultimately the answer to all of them is: whatever the story demands.

my bony fealty posted:

See this just makes it worse for me. You start rules-lawyering your made up evolutionary problems, you get further and further from what's supposed to be a plausible explanation for something mystical. As mentioned the vampires are already a nonsensical, non-fit idea for a predator. Now we have to ask: how perfect do the angles have to be?

my bony fealty posted:

I get the appeal more now. part of my dislike comes from a general low opinion of hard sci fi.

pseudanonymous posted:

No, we don't. Like literally nobody is that worried about the exact parameters of the crucifix glitch aside from you. If you actually were worried about them, Watts cites his sources, so you can read the journal articles and research he used as the basis for his ideas.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

It has to be good enough and big enough. The vampires are biological creatures, not computer programs. It's already stupid without pretending that hard numbers are involved.

Crimpolioni posted:

Couldn't you make the same argument for irl sizures triggered by visual stimuli? Saying well does it still work if we slow down the flashing patterns or reduce their intensity to such and such?

pseudanonymous posted:

Why do you feel the need to justify the fact you just don't like hard Sci-Fi? It's kind of funny because you're complaining about rationalizing the universe in hard Science Fiction, while you endlessly rationalize.

pseudanonymous posted:

Peter F. Hamilton posted:

The day after he went to Mars, Nigel woke up in bed with his wives Nuala and Astrid. Both of them were biologically in their mid-thirties, though chronologically more than a century old. They were what he tended to think of as the mother comfort personalities of his harem. He sought them out when he wanted an untroubled sleep; and last night he’d really needed one. It had been a bad week; dealing with the innumerable problems spinning out from the Lost23 refugees on top of the high politics of the War Cabinet. He’d thought Mars would be a distraction from the problems he had to deal with in the office. Typical mid-life-crisis response, get out from behind the desk and do something practical; but there had been far too many old memories lurking amid that desolate frozen landscape to ambush his emotions. The broken ancient spaceplane had kindled a totally unexpected pang of guilt. When they finally returned from that abandoned planet his mood had turned bleak.

He’d visited Paloma and Aurelie first, the newest members of his harem. First-lifers that hadn’t reached their twenty-first birthdays yet, the pair of them were beautiful, giggly, and utterly guileless girls. They came very firmly in the sex athlete category, with personal trainers keeping them fit and toned, an unlimited wardrobe budget, and stylists to confer the kind of elegance he enjoyed in all his women.

Every time he came out of rejuvenation, his harem was made up mostly of girls like them. It was only when he started advancing into his biological early thirties that the ratio began to swing back, and the more secure and stable types made up the majority as yet another generation of his children was born. As a single child himself, Nigel always enjoyed being surrounded by a large immediate family; that was something that no rejuvenation had ever altered. As always in his case, the human universe bent to accommodate him with the alacrity of a gravity field around a neutron star. There was never a problem in finding women who were happy with the harem arrangement; he was sent thousands of intimate requests every day. His main difficulty was sorting through them all.

Right now there were only five of the younger, sexy ones. He knew that none of them would hang around for more than a couple of years. Girls like that never did; they weren’t stupid, and eventually they’d grow weary of the household’s formality, the way everything was structured around his preferences. Unless he had children with them—unlikely now—they’d move on, just like thousands before them.

Until that happened, they were the best possible sex he could wish for. It was only after romping with Paloma and Aurelie for nearly two hours he left, almost sneaking out, to find Nuala and Astrid, who snuggled up cozily and gave him that welcome sense of comfort so essential for a deep dreamless sleep.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

What the gently caress are we talking about

chernobyl kinsman posted:

autistic jurassic park vampires who are afraid of crosses but not for God reasons

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Hard sci-fi is generally bad, though not as bad as Peter F. Hamilton.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

What the gently caress are we talking about

pseudanonymous posted:

Every time someone answers one of your objections (which usually turn out to be, you didn't read the book accurately) you move the goalposts.

my bony fealty posted:

sure, and many words have been penned in journals attempting to quantify all of that. I probably don't want to read about it in a novel either.

my bony fealty posted:

my main criticisms of "the book tries to touch too many ideas to the detriment of any one of them" and "the characterization is bad" remain tall, and you shall not shorten them

hearing from fans of the book as to why they liked it is always valuable; people read books for different reasons, and I like to know why people read books (and what books)

Sham bam bamina! posted:

I would like to remind everyone, in case any had forgot, that The Stormlight Archive protagonist Kaladin is a paladin.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

I would like to remind everyone, in case any had forgot, that The Stormlight Archive protagonist Kaladin is a paladin.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Why did you get mad when I said dragons dont have to be lizards when you are ok with paladins not being elite members of the court of charlemagne