cspam book club II -- edification via obsolete mediums

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Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

the bitcoin of weed posted:

The Dispossessed is a good one for reading about a communist yelling at people

he's an anarchist

# ? Mar 2, 2019 03:45

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 06:56

the bitcoin of weed: Nov 1, 2014

this is ancom erasure

# ? Mar 2, 2019 03:46

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

the bitcoin of weed posted:

The Dispossessed is a good one for reading about a communist yelling at people

i like how even in the glorious anarcho-socialist utopia academics are still petty shitheads

# ? Mar 2, 2019 03:56

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

an ambiguous utopia indeed

# ? Mar 2, 2019 03:57

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

quote:

If you could make a change to anything you�ve written over the years, what would it be?

In The Dispossessed, I would mention the communal pickle barrels at street corners in the big towns, restocked by whoever in the community has made or kept more pickles than they need. I knew about the free pickles all along, but never could fit them into the book.

# ? Mar 2, 2019 03:58

snoremac: Jul 27, 2012; I LOVE SEEING DEAD BABIES ON 𝕏, THE EVERYTHING APP. IT'S WORTH IT FOR THE FOLLOWING TAB.

Gunshow Poophole posted:

im working through Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind and it's pretty good so far.

he does an interesting job of kinda toeing th eline of what I guess what I would call a "fundamental" theory of conservatism with insisting that his perspective is flexible and supplemental rather than really seeking to be a bedrock set of principles.

I like his tear down of Ayn Rand as a psychopathic moron.

The biggest observation I drew from that book was about how reactionaries over time will adopt the language of the oppressed to make their position appear more palatable. I see it all the time now.

snoremac has issued a correction as of 06:46 on Mar 2, 2019

# ? Mar 2, 2019 06:42

an actual dog: Nov 18, 2014

did someone say The New Jim Crow

# ? Mar 2, 2019 16:29

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

Finished Wizard of Earthsea. The second half wasn't as good as the first half, dealing with the constant slog of gibberish names as Ged passes through dozens of places was a little bit too much. The ending was also telegraphed a couple chapters early. Overall a pretty decent book. The School of Roke chapter really contrasts how drawn-out and silly books like Harry Potter and the Name of the Wind are.

# ? Mar 4, 2019 20:02

Chinatown: Sep 11, 2001; by Fluffdaddy; Fun Shoe

hi im Tai Lopez and i love books and lamborghinis

# ? Mar 4, 2019 20:04

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

SKULL.GIF posted:

Finished Wizard of Earthsea. The second half wasn't as good as the first half, dealing with the constant slog of gibberish names as Ged passes through dozens of places was a little bit too much. The ending was also telegraphed a couple chapters early. Overall a pretty decent book. The School of Roke chapter really contrasts how drawn-out and silly books like Harry Potter and the Name of the Wind are.

potter's a fuckin cop

# ? Mar 4, 2019 20:06

TheDon01: Mar 8, 2009

SKULL.GIF posted:

Two excerpts from the first half of World Made by Hand that I liked:

I don't know how many people in America are truly prepared for a globalism collapse, in the slim chance that it does happen. I know I'm not. It's hard to really envision how thoroughly it'll change everyday life.

Picked this book up after reading these excerpts. Stoked to dig into this book

# ? Mar 5, 2019 06:52

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

I started reading the second Earthsea book, the Tombs of Atuan, and I'm a couple chapters in and it seems to be about a demon priestess who spends her time in a pitch black dungeon? Confused by this wild tonal shift after the first book.

# ? Mar 5, 2019 18:20

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

TheDon01 posted:

Picked this book up after reading these excerpts. Stoked to dig into this book

I've been meaning to write up a recap of the books now that I'd finished them but here's an impetus as good as any I guess.

The series is a quartet, telling the story of a rural town in a post-collapse America over a year, one book for each season. The author was a big Peak Oil theorist (and suburbia/car culture critic, which is how I got into him) back in the day and wrote these books as mostly an exploration of what he thought the future would look like if globalism collapsed.

The series is about a town in northern New York trying to put itself back together after a decade plus of malaise as people failed to adjust well to the collapse. It explores (somewhat clumsily) how different communities would organize itself given the lack of an existing national government and minimal communication between villages. In the first book the protagonist visits in turn a strongman-controlled port city, a quasi-feudal farming colony, and an anarchist commune.

The writing is usually passable, but gets very clumsy when Kunstler wants to make a political point (the anarchist junktown in the first book, the race war in the South in the third book, the fake socialists and particularly the SJW caricature in the fourth book) or when he tries to do a cool scene (the totally-not-a-feudal-lord drawing his literal Hanzo steel to kill some invading bandits), and the ending in the fourth book is embarrassingly saccharine especially after the trauma he puts his characters through.

I wouldn't say they're good books, but they're enjoyable if you're into rough-living and collapse stuff like I am. There's a lot of stuff that Kunstler gets wrong (his theory that the progress from feminism would be rolled back is questionable), and his status as an old white male really shows in some of the scenes and characters he writes up, particularly with the female characters, but one thing he does get right is how thoroughly we rely on globalized industry for essentially everything we use in our everyday lives. If that ever gets messed with the adjustment period is going to be really rough. It also got me thinking about how people would personally react to a collapse -- how many people would just essentially give up and fade away?

# ? Mar 5, 2019 18:40

Mycroft Holmes: Mar 26, 2010; by Azathoth

can anyone recommend some leftwing post-apocalypse stuff? tired of this rightwing crap.

# ? Mar 5, 2019 18:52

GalacticAcid: Apr 8, 2013; NEW YORK VALUES

sure, i recommend going outside

# ? Mar 5, 2019 18:54

Mycroft Holmes: Mar 26, 2010; by Azathoth

GalacticAcid posted:

sure, i recommend going outside

i said post-apocalypse

# ? Mar 5, 2019 19:02

GalacticAcid: Apr 8, 2013; NEW YORK VALUES

Haha. Maybe check out Dhalgren? Not sure I'd call it left wing per se but it's certainly uh...not conservative. And it's certainly post-apocalyptic.

# ? Mar 5, 2019 19:04

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

I recommend Star Trek

# ? Mar 5, 2019 19:05

im on the net me boys: Feb 19, 2017; Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhjjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhjhhhhhhjhhhhhhhhhjjjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh cannabis

I have a craving for a space opera but I usually find the genre to be a crapshoot. I'm thinking about reading the sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep or The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi.
I also just finished, and by finished I mean gave up on Fictitious Capital by Cedric Durand. Since it is a book about finance by a French economist I expected it to be a difficult read but I made it to the very last chapter before I decided I wasn't getting much more from it. It's not a bad book by any means and it described in good detail how in the finance world money seemingly seems to spring forth from nowhere with weird financial instruments backed by government guarantees but I think someone could have done it in a more concise way. I can't exactly recommend it.

# ? Mar 5, 2019 21:51

Boatswain: May 29, 2012

Can't recommend Learning Processes with a Deadly Outcome by Alexander Kluge enough to this thread. It is nominally about the human exodus into space after nuclear apocalypse, but Kluge is endlessly discursive and also very funny. Here's a sampler:

There's also spacelaw, a space-Kronstadt (or perhaps space-Spithead/Nore), space-Marxism and geoengineering and more.

# ? Mar 6, 2019 01:11

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

That reminds me, I don't know if it counts as post-apocalypse fiction, but Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy has multiple characters who are bonafide Communists and the trilogy is pretty much all about how to build a better society on Mars while fighting off poisonous capitalistic influence from Earth

Strongly recommend to any fan of hard sci-fi

RIP Arkady Bogdanov, a real mensch

# ? Mar 6, 2019 04:23

im on the net me boys: Feb 19, 2017; Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhjjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhjhhhhhhjhhhhhhhhhjjjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh cannabis

SKULL.GIF posted:

That reminds me, I don't know if it counts as post-apocalypse fiction, but Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy has multiple characters who are bonafide Communists and the trilogy is pretty much all about how to build a better society on Mars while fighting off poisonous capitalistic influence from Earth

Strongly recommend to any fan of hard sci-fi

RIP Arkady Bogdanov, a real mensch

I think this is the best sell on this series anyone has ever done

# ? Mar 6, 2019 04:24

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

Arkady was cspam as gently caress

Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson posted:

PART 2: THE VOYAGE OUT

...

The engineers, including Maya, spent many mornings in training simulations. These took place on the backup bridge in Torus B, which had the latest in image synthesizers; the simulations were so sophisticated that there was little visible difference between them and the act itself. This did not necessarily make them interesting: the standard orbital insertion approach, simulated weekly, was dubbed �The Mantra Run,� and became quite a bore to every conceivable flight crew.

But sometimes even boredom was preferable to the alternatives. Arkady was their training specialist, and he had a perverse talent for designing problem runs so hard that they often �killed� everybody. These runs were strangely unpleasant experiences, and did not make Arkady popular among his victims. He mixed problem runs with Mantra Runs randomly, but more and more often they were problem runs; they would �approach Mars� and red lights would flash, sometimes with sirens, and they were in trouble again. Once they struck a planetesimal weighing approximately fifteen grams, leaving a large flaw in the heat shield. Sax Russell had calculated that their chances of hitting anything larger than a gram were about one in every seven thousand years of travel, but nevertheless there they were, emergency!, adrenaline pouring through them even as they pooh-poohed the very idea of it, rushing up to the hub and into EVA suits, going out to fill the pothole before they hit the Martian atmosphere and burned to a crisp; and halfway there, Arkady�s voice came over their intercoms: �Not fast enough! All of us are dead.�

But that was a simple one. Others. . . .The ship, for instance, was guided by a fly-by-wire system, meaning that the pilots fed instructions to flight computers which translated them into the actual thrusts needed to achieve the desired result. This was how it had to be, because when approaching a gravitational mass like Mars at their speed, one simply could not feel or intuit what burns would achieve the desired effects. So none of them were flyers in the sense of a pilot flying a plane. Nevertheless, Arkady frequently blew the entire massively redundant system just as they were reaching a critical moment (which failure, Russell said, had about a one-in-ten-billion chance of happening) and they had to take over and command all the rockets mechanically, watching the monitors and an orange-on-black visual image of Mars bearing down on them, and they could either go long and skip off into deep space and die a lingering death, or go short and crash into the planet and die instantly, and if the latter, they got to watch it right down to the simulated 120 kilometer per second final smash.

Or it might be a mechanical failure: main rockets, stabilizing rockets, computer hardware or software, heatshield deployment; all of them had to work perfectly during the approach. And failures of these systems were the most likely of all� in the range, Sax said (though others contested his risk-assessment methods), of one in every ten thousand approaches. So they would do it again and red lights would flash, and they would groan, and beg for a Mantra Run even as they partly welcomed the new challenge. When they managed to survive a mechanical failure, they were tremendously pleased; it could be the high point of a week. Once John Boone successfully aerobraked by hand, with a single main rocket functioning, hitting the safe millisecond of arc at the only possible speed. No one could believe it. �Blind luck,� Boone said, grinning widely as the deed was talked about at dinner.

Most of Arkady�s problem runs ended in failure, however, meaning death for all. Simulated or not, it was hard not to be sobered by these experiences, and after that, irritated with Arkady for inventing them. One time they repaired every monitor in the bridge just in time to see the screens register a hit by a small asteroid, which sheared through the hub and killed them all. Another time Arkady, as part of the navigation team, made an �error� and instructed the computers to increase the ship�s spin rather than decrease it. �Pinned to the floor by six gs!� he cried in mock horror, and they had to crawl on the floor for half an hour, pretending to rectify the error while weighing half a ton each. When they succeeded, Arkady leaped off the floor and began pushing them away from the control monitor. �What the hell are you doing?� Maya yelled.

�He�s gone crazy,� Janet said.

�He�s simulated going crazy,� Nadia corrected her. �We have to figure out�� doing an end run around Arkady �� how to deal with someone on the bridge going insane!�

Which no doubt was true. But they could see the whites of Arkady�s eyes all the way around, and there wasn�t a trace of recognition in him as he silently assaulted them. It took all five of them to restrain him, and Janet and Phyllis Boyle were hurt by his sharp elbows.

�Well?� he said at dinner afterward, grinning lopsidedly, as he was growing a fat lip. �What if it happens? We�re under pressure up here, and the approach will be worst of all. What if someone cracks?� He turned to Russell and the grin grew wider. �What are the chances of that, eh?� And he began to sing a Jamaican song, in a Slavic Caribbean accent: �Pressure drop, oh pressure drop, oh-o, pressure going to drop on you-oo-oo!�

So they kept trying, handling the problem runs as seriously as they could, even the attack by Martian natives or the decoupling of Torus H caused by �explosive bolts installed by mistake when the ship was built,� or the last-minute veering of Phobos out of its orbit. Dealing with the more implausible scenarios sometimes took on a kind of surreal black humor, and Arkady replayed some of his videotapes as after-dinner entertainment, which sometimes got people launched into the air with laughter.

But the plausible problem runs . . . They kept on coming, morning after morning. And despite the solutions, despite the protocols for finding solutions, there was that sight, time after time� the red planet rushing at them at an unimaginable 40,000 kilometers an hour, until it filled the screen and the screen went white, and small black letters appeared on it: Collision.

...

Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson posted:

...

People began to talk about other things, discussing the various business of the day that had been so rudely interrupted, or taking the opportunity to talk about other things. After a half hour or more, one of those conversations got louder. Maya didn�t hear how it began, but suddenly Arkady said, very loudly and in English, �I don�t think we should pay any attention to plans made for us back on Earth!�

Other conversations went silent, and people turned to look at him. He had popped up and was floating under the rotating roof of the chamber, where he could survey them all and speak like some mad flying spirit.

�I think we should make new plans,� he said. �I think we should be making them now. Everything should be redesigned from the beginning, with our own thinking expressed. It should extend everywhere, even to the first shelters we build.�

�Why bother?� Maya asked, annoyed at his grandstanding. �They�re good designs.� It really was irritating; Arkady often took center stage, and people always looked at her as if she were somehow responsible for him, as if it were her job to keep him from pestering them.

�Buildings are the template of a society,� Arkady said.

�They�re rooms,� Sax Russell pointed out.

�But rooms imply the social organization inside them.� Arkady looked around, pulling people into the discussion with his gaze. �The arrangement of a building shows what the designer thinks should go on inside. We saw that at the beginning of the voyage, when Russians and Americans were segregated into Torus D and B. We were supposed to remain two entities, you see. It will be the same on Mars. Buildings express values, they have a sort of grammar, and rooms are the sentences. I don�t want people in Washington or Moscow saying how I should live my life, I�ve had enough of that.�

�What don�t you like about the design of the first shelters?� John asked, looking interested.

�They are rectangular,� Arkady said. This got a laugh, but he persevered: �Rectangular, the conventional shape! With work space separated from living quarters, as if work were not part of life. And the living quarters are taken up mostly by private rooms, with hierarchies expressed, in that leaders are assigned larger spaces.�

�Isn�t that just to facilitate their work?� Sax said.

�No. It isn�t really necessary. It�s a matter of prestige. A very conventional example of American business thinking, if I may say so.�

There was a groan, and Phyllis said, �Do we have to get political, Arkady?�

At the very mention of the word, the cloud of listeners ruptured. Mary Dunkel and a couple of others pushed out and headed for the other end of the room.

�Everything is political,� Arkady said at their backs. �Nothing more so than this voyage of ours. We are beginning a new society, how could it help but be political?�

�We�re a scientific station,� Sax said. �It doesn�t necessarily have much politics to it.�

�It certainly didn�t last time I was there,� John said, looking thoughtfully at Arkady.

�It did,� Arkady said, �but it was simpler. You were an all-American crew, there on a temporary mission, doing what your superiors told you to do. But now we are an international crew, establishing a permanent colony. It�s completely different.�

Slowly people were drifting through the air toward the conversation, to hear better what was being said. Rya Jimenez said, �I�m not interested in politics,� and Mary Dunkel agreed from the other end of the room: �That�s one of the things I�m here to get away from!�

Several Russians replied at once. �That itself is a political position!� and the like. Alex exclaimed, �You Americans would like to end politics and history, so you can stay in a world you dominate!�

A couple of Americans tried to protest, but Alex overrode them. �It�s true! The whole world has changed in the last thirty years, every country looking at its function, making enormous changes to solve problems� all but the United States. You have become the most reactionary country in the world.�

Sax said, �The countries that changed had to because they were rigid before, and almost broke. The United States already had flex in its system, and so it didn�t have to change as drastically. I say the American way is superior because it�s smoother. It�s better engineering.�

This analogy gave Alex pause, and while he was thinking about it John Boone, who had been watching Arkady with great interest, said, �Getting back to the shelters. How would you make them different?�

Arkady said, �I�m not quite sure� we need to see the sites we build on, walk around in them, talk it over. It�s a process I advocate, you see. But in general I think work space and living space should be mixed as much as is practical. Our work will be more than making wages� it will be our art, our whole life. We will give it to each other, we will not buy it. Also there should be no signs of hierarchy. I don�t even believe in the leader system we have now.� He nodded politely at Maya. �We are all equally responsible now, and our buildings should show it. A circle is best� difficult in construction terms, but it makes sense for heat conservation. A geodesic dome would be a good compromise� easy to construct, and indicating our equality. As for the inside, perhaps mostly open. Everyone should have their room, sure, but these should be small. Set in the rim, perhaps, and facing larger communal spaces�� He picked up a mouse at one terminal, began to sketch on the screen. �There. This is architectural grammar that would say �All equal.� Yes?�

�There�s lots of prefab units already there,� John said. �I�m not sure they could be adapted.�

�They could if we wanted to do it.�

�But is it really necessary? I mean, it�s clear we�re already a team of equals.�

�Is it clear?� Arkady said sharply, looking around. �If Frank and Maya tell us to do something, are we free to ignore them? If Houston or Baikonur tell us to do something, are we free to ignore them?�

�I think so,� John replied mildly.

This statement got him a sharp look from Frank. The conversation was breaking up into several arguments, as a lot of people had things to say, but Arkady cut through them all again:

�We have been sent here by our governments, and all of our governments are flawed, most of them disastrously. It�s why history is such a bloody mess. Now we are on our own, and I for one have no intention of repeating all of Earth�s mistakes just because of conventional thinking. We are the first Martian colonists! We are scientists! It is our job to think things new, to make them new!�

The arguments broke out again, louder than ever. Maya turned away and cursed Arkady under her breath, dismayed at how angry people were getting. She saw that John Boone was grinning. He pushed off the floor toward Arkady, came to a stop by piling into him, and then shook Arkady�s hand, which swung them both around in the air, in an awkward kind of dance. This gesture of support immediately set people to thinking again, Maya could see it on their surprised faces; along with John�s fame he had a reputation for being moderate and low-keyed, and if he approved of Arkady�s ideas, then it was a different matter.

�Goddammit, Ark,� John said. �First those crazy problem runs, and now this� you�re a wild man, you really are! How in the hell did you get them to let you on board this ship, anyway?�

Exactly my question, thought Maya.

�I lied,� Arkady said.

Everyone laughed. Even Frank, looking surprised. �But of course I lied!� Arkady shouted, a big upside-down grin splitting his red beard. �How else could I get here? I want to go to Mars to do what I want, and the selection committee wanted people to go and do what they were told. You know that!� He pointed down at them and shouted, �You all lied, you know you did!�

...

# ? Mar 6, 2019 04:34

im on the net me boys: Feb 19, 2017; Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhjjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhjhhhhhhjhhhhhhhhhjjjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh cannabis

I started reading The Collapsing Empire since I had an hours long bus ride this morning, and I have to say that I forgot how enjoyable it is to burn through a sci-fi book so quickly.

# ? Mar 6, 2019 19:25

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

SKULL.GIF posted:

I started reading the second Earthsea book, the Tombs of Atuan, and I'm a couple chapters in and it seems to be about a demon priestess who spends her time in a pitch black dungeon? Confused by this wild tonal shift after the first book.

Got a few chapters further and now this makes a lot more sense. Got to applaud Le Guin for that cold open, it set up the middle of the book really well, just took some faith in the reader to keep going.

# ? Mar 6, 2019 19:41

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

SKULL.GIF posted:

Got a few chapters further and now this makes a lot more sense. Got to applaud Le Guin for that cold open, it set up the middle of the book really well, just took some faith in the reader to keep going.

faith in Le Guin will always be rewarded, though I'm not familiar with those books or the series

Even her early stuff that is as close to schlockey as you can find that involved a lot of experimentation on her part was still extremely good, with the extremely real characters and societies that are her trademarks

A good peak into her early stuff is the short story that is called both "The Dowry of the Angyar" and "Semley's Necklace", was written mid-60's but you can see a lot of the themes she later used so heavily present, both in theme and characterization and technology as it relates to her sci-fi world.

It was released as the latter but is better known now by the former because it was renamed and included as an intro story to the compilation of 3 early novels she wrote, Worlds of Exile and Illusion

# ? Mar 6, 2019 19:49

im on the net me boys: Feb 19, 2017; Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhjjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhjhhhhhhjhhhhhhhhhjjjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh cannabis

I managed to read all of The Collapsing Empire today, which I didn't anticipate doing. It's nothing special but sometimes you just want to read some space opera and not think too much about it

# ? Mar 7, 2019 07:06

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Children of Time is on sale for $2 for the kindle version right now, it's a fun book that is extremely interestingly speculative and strange and unfortunately I can't tell you why because it'd all be spoilers

# ? Mar 7, 2019 17:27

Finicums Wake: Mar 13, 2017; Can't post for 8 years!

Mycroft Holmes posted:

can anyone recommend some leftwing post-apocalypse stuff? tired of this rightwing crap.

moderan by david r bunch. it's leftwing as long as you realize it's satirizing what it depicts

article on it here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/an-ode-to-new-metal-man-david-bunchs-moderan/

# ? Mar 8, 2019 05:05

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

about halfway through Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson and it fuckin rules, thanks this thread for bringing my attention to it

# ? Mar 8, 2019 06:32

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KFJ5LH2/

Right Ho, Jeeves! is one of the finest comedies written and is free for some reason today, check it out goons

# ? Mar 14, 2019 16:58

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

Tombs of Atuan had a great ending, would recommend, good book

Partway into the final book in the trilogy now, The Farthest Shore, and I'm pretty sure I know what's being set up here by Le Guin but am expecting to be surprised

# ? Mar 14, 2019 17:41

Eat This Glob: Jan 14, 2008; God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Who will wipe this blood off us? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent?

I'm reading The Three Body Problem Cixin Liu. I've never really read anything this sci-fi ish before, but 25% of the way through the first book, it's ok. Does it improve in the rest of the book/series, or is this kinda how it's gonna go?

# ? Mar 14, 2019 20:43

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Eat This Glob posted:

I'm reading The Three Body Problem Cixin Liu. I've never really read anything this sci-fi ish before, but 25% of the way through the first book, it's ok. Does it improve in the rest of the book/series, or is this kinda how it's gonna go?

it gets a lot better after the first quarter or so, at least in my opinion. It gets a lot more sci-fi tho, especially if you read the follow ups

# ? Mar 14, 2019 20:48

emdash: Oct 19, 2003; and?

it gets dramatically different from that point, yeah

# ? Mar 14, 2019 21:00

Eat This Glob: Jan 14, 2008; God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Who will wipe this blood off us? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent?

thanks to you both

# ? Mar 14, 2019 21:06

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

the pacing in that series is off the wall, sometimes it feels like it lingers on stuff that you don't normally see in sci-fi like chapters dedicated to finding the main character a girlfriend, then you'll be 50 pages past a slow part and you're so far along in the plot that you have to double check how far you've gotten

It's very interesting, I wasn't sure if the differences in tone and focus compared to western sci-fi were an authorial thing or a cultural thing, and still am not

# ? Mar 14, 2019 21:08

succ: Nov 11, 2016; by Cyrano4747

I'm not sure if the translation is bad but the characters in the Three Body Problem series are loving AWFUL. Such bad writing.

The themes and ideas are revolutionary for sci-fi and kept me reading until the last book. I recommend it for that alone.

# ? Mar 14, 2019 21:11

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

succ posted:

I'm not sure if the translation is bad but the characters in the Three Body Problem series are loving AWFUL. Such bad writing.

The themes and ideas are revolutionary for sci-fi and kept me reading until the last book. I recommend it for that alone.

I long ago innoculated myself to this by reading through all of the robots - empire - foundation arc from Asimov

# ? Mar 14, 2019 21:16

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 06:56

Eat This Glob: Jan 14, 2008; God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Who will wipe this blood off us? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent?

Epic High Five posted:

the pacing in that series is off the wall, sometimes it feels like it lingers on stuff that you don't normally see in sci-fi like chapters dedicated to finding the main character a girlfriend, then you'll be 50 pages past a slow part and you're so far along in the plot that you have to double check how far you've gotten

It's very interesting, I wasn't sure if the differences in tone and focus compared to western sci-fi were an authorial thing or a cultural thing, and still am not

no lie on that poo poo. i rolled the dice having read a thing for work about china's response to SETI and they interviewed the author. being a giant nerd who is into more non-fiction than any sci-fi, I thought I'd give the book a try based on it having a start in the cultural revolution.

# ? Mar 14, 2019 23:37

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > cspam book club II -- edification via obsolete mediums

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