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Ben Nerevarine posted:It's a tax haven, op. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Scientologist who fully and in good faith (sorry) believes in all of the weirder aspects of it, although I'm sure you could find plenty of proponents for the benefits of auditing. You should read more about how it operates. It's a cult.
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Jun 6, 2019 21:22
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C.M. Kruger posted:Yeah, IIRC Weber got a degree in history and then took over his family's advertising company for several decades until he started writing SF, I want to say what happened was after getting hired to do some advertising for a space combat board game and then getting into wargaming he decided that he liked writing more than game design, but I'm not 100% on that. I used to work with one of Weber’s college roommates and he mentioned Weber forcing him to read lovely sci-fi Weber had written, so I think it was one of those “keep writing until you start selling” things.
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Jun 6, 2019 21:32
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Ben Nerevarine posted:It's a tax haven, op. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Scientologist who fully and in good faith (sorry) believes in all of the weirder aspects of it, although I'm sure you could find plenty of proponents for the benefits of auditing. They've got blood on their hands too. For all my whimsical pisstaking, they're really not a pleasant organisation or something to take lightly.
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Jun 6, 2019 21:48
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They're a measly bunch
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Jun 6, 2019 21:53
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Watch this Leah Remini conversation on Joe Rogan for instance. It's pretty hosed up. And watch Going Clear when you have an opportunity.
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Jun 6, 2019 21:54
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For years and years Scientology would sue anyone who talked about their process and materials--like all the stuff about the Thetans and the real process behind auditing was not widely known because even if they lost they'd bankrupt whoever put it out there. The internet largely ended that, as people could disseminate widely and anonymously. They're still incredibly litigious against anyone they think they can take down. They're why I won't read any of the Writers of the Future series.
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Jun 6, 2019 22:02
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ulmont posted:I used to work with one of Weber’s college roommates and he mentioned Weber forcing him to read lovely sci-fi Weber had written, so I think it was one of those “keep writing until you start selling” things. I only know he was just a historian because he said as much to some idiots who were swooning about how he had to be SPECIAL OPS because of how ACCURATE HIS SCIFI WAS TO THE MILITARY WORLD. So at least he's honest about just being some blowhard.
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Jun 6, 2019 22:17
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MockingQuantum posted:Ahh for some reason that didn't come up until I specifically searched for it. Possibly because it's still a preorder? In any case, I'll grab that when it's released, thanks! Note that this is only volume one. There's a second under contract.
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Jun 6, 2019 22:23
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:All good points. Was honestly expecting more "newt gingrich, former republican speaker of the house is also milfiction writer...wtf" chat. there's a much better parallel universe where he became a zookeeper
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Jun 6, 2019 23:35
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Kchama posted:I only know he was just a historian because he said as much to some idiots who were swooning about how he had to be SPECIAL OPS because of how ACCURATE HIS SCIFI WAS TO THE MILITARY WORLD. So at least he's honest about just being some blowhard. if weber's sci-fi were accurate, the Tough Heroic Bosun character would spend all of his time tryin to prevent ratings from buying real expensive poorly-financed hovercars PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Jun 7, 2019 |
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Jun 7, 2019 02:03
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Totally blanked on Haldeman, because his milscifi Forever War series went up it's own rear end hard. So hard, I had successfully blocked out that it even existed (same with Scalzi's Old Mans War series). Thank You (or rather curse you) SciFi and Fantasy thread for those "recovered memories".....May those responsible remember every inane Weber Honorverse detail for eternity. I've never actually finished The Forever War because I kinda find the whole "Grandpa's vision of the hellish future where the UN NWO forces everybody to be gay and mixed race!" offputting. PupsOfWar posted:if weber's sci-fi were accurate, the Tough Heroic Bosun character would spend all of his time tryin to prevent ratings from buying real expensive poorly-financed hovercars at that moment 350 18% APR Mustangs with aftermarket sunroofs fired from a dealership located outside the base gate breached the Bosun's point defenses and slammed into the bank accounts of the ship's enlisted, ravening bomb-pumped lasers burning away their credit ratings. C.M. Kruger fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Jun 7, 2019 |
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Jun 7, 2019 02:19
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My first experience with Scientology was South Park mocking it. C.M. Kruger posted:I've never actually finished The Forever War because I kinda find the whole "Grandpa's vision of the hellish future where the UN NWO forces everybody to be gay and mixed race!" offputting. Not gay so I can't judge how offensive it is personally, but the impression I got from Forever War was less trying to horrify you about the future, but point out how absurd homophobia / race mixing fears are by flipping the table 180 degrees so being straight and one race is weird and offputing. Is it probably clumsy, yeah however unless the author stated otherwise I don't think his intention was to make homosexuality look wrong.
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Jun 7, 2019 03:06
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PupsOfWar posted:if weber's sci-fi were accurate, the Tough Heroic Bosun character would spend all of his time tryin to prevent ratings from buying real expensive poorly-financed hovercars C.M. Kruger posted:I've never actually finished The Forever War because I kinda find the whole "Grandpa's vision of the hellish future where the UN NWO forces everybody to be gay and mixed race!" offputting. Just pencil in spacesuits + clear bubble-helmets over the artwork in Terminal Lance. TERMINAL LANCE in SPACE!
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Jun 7, 2019 03:17
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Isnt the end of the Forever War humanity evolves to be gay space clones and thus can communicate with the alien gay space clones they've been fighting forever because of a misunderstanding? and its portrayed as a good thing because it brings peace? agreed that I'm not qualified to judge how offensive it is but I definitely didn't get a "homosexuality bad" message
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Jun 7, 2019 04:14
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I suppose modern woke readers would probably be a bit put off by the casual conversion therapy that comes up at the end.
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Jun 7, 2019 04:44
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Anyone else read City of Brass? It was very, very good in my opinion. How's the second book hold up?
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Jun 7, 2019 05:15
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Captain Monkey posted:Anyone else read City of Brass? It was very, very good in my opinion. How's the second book hold up? I very much enjoyed City of Brass and Copper I think was stronger. It suffers a little from middle book syndrome but one definitely cannot argue that nothing happens. The pacing is also better and feels less like theres’s a sudden left turn at the end.
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Jun 7, 2019 06:57
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C.M. Kruger posted:
Sorry for double post but this was just 
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Jun 7, 2019 07:00
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Jack2142 posted:Not gay so I can't judge how offensive it is personally, but the impression I got from Forever War was less trying to horrify you about the future, but point out how absurd homophobia / race mixing fears are by flipping the table 180 degrees so being straight and one race is weird and offputing. Is it probably clumsy, yeah however unless the author stated otherwise I don't think his intention was to make homosexuality look wrong. I meant offputting more in the sense that it felt extremely dated. Like 60s-70s overpopulation stories in general, not only do they generally have at least a somewhat racist tone but it's turned out somewhat "chicken little" unlike climate change, what with stuff like the One Child policy being too effective and the Two Child policy failing to increase population growth rates in China. It's kinda like that time I was skimming some scans of old SFF magazines on archive.org and read one story from the 50s where racism = over because somebody invented 100% effective skin lightening/darkening creams. The framing for the story was that a Soviet spy tasked with fermenting disunity in the US has his boss show up for a performance review and has to explain why he hasn't been able to cause any race riots. The boss spy thinks he's just slacking off and tries to go and show his junior how it's done, but only succeeds in getting beat up by a bunch of "white" men. It felt like a fever dream but I swear to god this was a real story. darnon posted:I suppose modern woke readers would probably be a bit put off by the casual conversion therapy that comes up at the end. I didn't get that far but yeah that sounds uh, bad.
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Jun 7, 2019 08:49
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C.M. Kruger posted:I meant offputting more in the sense that it felt extremely dated. Like 60s-70s overpopulation stories in general, not only do they generally have at least a somewhat racist tone but it's turned out somewhat "chicken little" unlike climate change, what with stuff like the One Child policy being too effective and the Two Child policy failing to increase population growth rates in China. Sounds like a Mack Reynolds story. Communism, secret agents cosplaying with skin lightening/darkening chemicals ala 'Iron Sky' 's melanin/anti-melanin, etc. Forever War ended with the main character + his Einstein's relativity theory abusing love interest loving off to live together as man and woman in a hicksville frontier colony. Followup stories to Forever War were hamfisted even if you use Baen Book milfiction standards. The Haldeman stories I recall reading always seemed to revolve around time loops/skips and parallel universes somehow.
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Jun 7, 2019 13:31
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Sounds like a Mack Reynolds story. Communism, secret agents cosplaying with skin lightening/darkening chemicals ala 'Iron Sky' 's melanin/anti-melanin, etc. All my sins remembered by Haldeman is good though.
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Jun 7, 2019 14:49
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I kind of like Forever Peace more for 'the government will break and dehumanize you' plot beat as it had more going on than just that with its Dan Brown thriller Christian apocalypse cult destroying the universe by letting another Big Bang accidentally happen and mind-link remote control soldier bots (and mostly footnote remote aircraft) which end up being the key for world peace via just communicatin' with one another maaan. I may be biased since I read 'All My Sins Remembered' years after Peace so it feels more like the derivative work even when Peace was already hitting a lot of the same notes as Forever War.
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Jun 7, 2019 15:27
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Megazver posted:And watch Going Clear when you have an opportunity.
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Jun 7, 2019 18:02
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anilEhilated posted:Even better: read it. Woah, woah, we do not lightly suggest the onerous task of reading something in this book thread, when they can watch video instead.
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Jun 7, 2019 18:14
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I just started Fall. So far it's a bunch of musing on various ideas that vaguely connect around death, sleep, and the nature of reality while Richard Forthrast is on his way to a medical procedure, presumably about to get cookie'd. I'm enjoying it. I know there's a whole comics and GN subforum but my preorder of Saga book 3 finally came in and you should all be reading this. Big sci/fantasy space adventure featuring star crossed lovers, their impossible child, and various characters hunting or helping them including a cat that detects lies. 
Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jun 7, 2019 |
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Jun 7, 2019 20:55
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Is it still running? It's fabulous but I remember some controversy between the writer/artist team.
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Jun 8, 2019 07:40
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I just picked up the latest collection of Saga which was published about six months ago, so it was at least still running then.
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Jun 8, 2019 07:59
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C.M. Kruger posted:Yeah, IIRC Weber got a degree in history and then took over his family's advertising company for several decades until he started writing SF, I want to say what happened was after getting hired to do some advertising for a space combat board game and then getting into wargaming he decided that he liked writing more than game design, but I'm not 100% on that. The Star Fleet Battles people got their start under the Task Force Games imprint. Weber did a game called Starfire for them. Back in the late 70s that was a simpl,e space combat boardgame where you got to design your own ships. There were a couple of supplements that added new races and tech and somehow, somewhere along the way, the One True Path became long range missile spam. Starfire now exists as a super complicated superstructure about running a multiplayer 4x game manually.There's still a tiny core of what was once a fun little game, but the corpse has cooled off to ambient background long since..
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Jun 8, 2019 08:47
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Kesper North posted:Is it still running? It's fabulous but I remember some controversy between the writer/artist team. Not unless it's the kind of controversy that revolves around going to their wedding. Saga has always been published six months on and three off to allow Fiona Staples time to decompress. The book is currently on a one-year break so that BKV and Fiona can take some more family time. It's due to resume in August.
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Jun 8, 2019 10:28
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Nevvy Z posted:I just started Fall. So far it's a bunch of musing on various ideas that vaguely connect around death, sleep, and the nature of reality while Richard Forthrast is on his way to a medical procedure, presumably about to get cookie'd. I'm enjoying it. Do I need to read Reamde before I start this?
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Jun 8, 2019 10:39
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I liked A Piece of Blue Sky as a history of Scientology.
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Jun 8, 2019 11:16
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mllaneza posted:The Star Fleet Battles people got their start under the Task Force Games imprint. Weber did a game called Starfire for them. Back in the late 70s that was a simpl,e space combat boardgame where you got to design your own ships. There were a couple of supplements that added new races and tech and somehow, somewhere along the way, the One True Path became long range missile spam. Starfire now exists as a super complicated superstructure about running a multiplayer 4x game manually.There's still a tiny core of what was once a fun little game, but the corpse has cooled off to ambient background long since.. Star Fleet Battles, my god. It strikes again. There is(was?) a absolutely insane person that posts(posted?) on the Stardock Studios studios game forums who was obsessed with SFB. Like "every video-game + spaceRPG ever created ripped SFB + him off hard" OBSESSED,. He factored into that equation because he edited or wrote a 1980's era SFB supplement book apparently. Basic logic + facts like "SpaceWar! has existed since the early 1960s" meant nothing to him. The guy mostly posted in the "Stardock vs Star Control 2 developers lawsuit" threads, and grew increasingly angrier/insane with every new post for pages.
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Jun 8, 2019 12:10
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Ah man. SFB, that takes me back. How many times did teenage me and a friend(s) think "Let's play out a big fleet battle, that'd be awesome" *8 hours later* "Welp. That's the first turn finished!" 
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Jun 8, 2019 14:53
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Jedit posted:Not unless it's the kind of controversy that revolves around going to their wedding. Dawww. This pleases me, thanks.
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Jun 8, 2019 15:02
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Star Fleet Battles, my god. It strikes again. OH I have seen that dude in a while! He is still just as super obsessed. Like his big thing is being mad at Star Control and Starfleet (and accusing Star Control of ripping off Starfleet, so it's okay that Stardock is trying to steal the IP from the creators by force, and also Starfleet ripped off Star Fleet Battles, therefore, the Star Control creators can't be called CREATORS since they worked on both games, and therefore, trying to strip them of their rights by declaring them 'not creators who did nothing on Star Control' is a good and cool move by Brad Wardel). He's been ranting on it on anything Star Control Origins related, especially Youtube.
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Jun 8, 2019 16:10
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Kchama posted:OH I have seen that dude in a while! He is still just as super obsessed. Like his big thing is being mad at Star Control and Starfleet (and accusing Star Control of ripping off Starfleet, so it's okay that Stardock is trying to steal the IP from the creators by force, and also Starfleet ripped off Star Fleet Battles, therefore, the Star Control creators can't be called CREATORS since they worked on both games, and therefore, trying to strip them of their rights by declaring them 'not creators who did nothing on Star Control' is a good and cool move by Brad Wardel). He's been ranting on it on anything Star Control Origins related, especially Youtube. YES, that's him. Some folks egged him on, or questioned basic in his posts, just like what happens when sane people encounter Cleveland Mark Blakemore for the first time in internet threads. Remember the mods + Brad Wardell coming down on him when his posting started to drown out the white-knightening of any Brad Wardell posts in those threads. For people not familiar with Wardell, think of Randy Ptichford, CEO of Gearbox. Same scummy business practices, same poo poo human beingness, only less "USB sticks filled with company financial records + vintage porn lost at Medieval Times"(Pitchford) and more "aggressive usage of lawsuits to tamp down workplace harassment/sexual harassment claims against him"(Wardell).
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Jun 8, 2019 16:42
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mllaneza posted:The Star Fleet Battles people got their start under the Task Force Games imprint. Weber did a game called Starfire for them. Back in the late 70s that was a simpl,e space combat boardgame where you got to design your own ships. There were a couple of supplements that added new races and tech and somehow, somewhere along the way, the One True Path became long range missile spam. Starfire now exists as a super complicated superstructure about running a multiplayer 4x game manually.There's still a tiny core of what was once a fun little game, but the corpse has cooled off to ambient background long since.. The Starfire novels- Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, and Insurrection (don't ever read Insurrection) were, incidentally, my first introduction to Weber's writing. You can really tell they're a novelization of a game.
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Jun 8, 2019 18:20
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drowningidiot posted:Do I need to read Reamde before I start this? So far no and I'm a fiar bit in. It explains the background well enough that so far you don't need to know how his niece met her S/O or all the details about the MMO from that book. For what it's worth I liked it but I just enjoy how he writes.
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Jun 8, 2019 18:29
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:For people not familiar with Wardell, think of Randy Ptichford, CEO of Gearbox. Same scummy business practices, same poo poo human beingness, only less "USB sticks filled with company financial records + vintage porn lost at Medieval Times"(Pitchford) and more "bees"(Wardell).
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Jun 8, 2019 19:58
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:YES, that's him. Relatedly, he settled with the Star Control creators earlier today. Looks like he got the Trademark, in exchange for basically dropping everything else. Not a victory for Wardell. FuturePastNow posted:The Starfire novels- Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, and Insurrection (don't ever read Insurrection) were, incidentally, my first introduction to Weber's writing. You can really tell they're a novelization of a game. I don't remember any of those books being any good.
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Jun 8, 2019 20:40
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