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Kesper North posted:"The abolishment of the Basic Living Stipend and the Economic Bill of Rights saw the revival of the Havenite industrial infrastructure as the Dolists were required to work for their survival. Axel Lacroix stated that his parents had regained their self-respect. (HH11)" It may surprise you but they eventually turn into literally Soviet France during the Terrors where they decide the only way to break the evil hold of WELFARE!!! on the nation is to nuke the government and institute the Terrors and established Commisars and also everyone calls each other Comrade.
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Jan 1, 2020 02:32
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FuzzySlippers posted:I don't recall them that well, but I presume all the humans are on some kind of dole in Bank's Culture novels right? It is amusing how vilified the dole is when it seems like the inevitable end point for far future super advanced technology is a bunch of slow awkward fleshy people with nothing much to do. I know it is a minor point in a lot of scifi (Peter Watts comes to mind), but is there a book where the main subject is the existential ennui of living in a machine run paradise and people have to find some purpose when they are cartoonishly incapable of doing anything useful? The Culture is post scarcity in most ways. There aren't really such things as jobs, biological people mostly do whatever they want while powerful AIs make sure their needs and desires are catered to. Its basically the Federation in Star Trek plus another thousand years of social and technological development. What you're asking for is the plot of like half the Culture books Zore fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jan 1, 2020 |
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Jan 1, 2020 02:34
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FuzzySlippers posted:I don't recall them that well, but I presume all the humans are on some kind of dole in Bank's Culture novels right? It is amusing how vilified the dole is when it seems like the inevitable end point for far future super advanced technology is a bunch of slow awkward fleshy people with nothing much to do. I know it is a minor point in a lot of scifi (Peter Watts comes to mind), but is there a book where the main subject is the existential ennui of living in a machine run paradise and people have to find some purpose when they are cartoonishly incapable of doing anything useful? The bit in bold is a significant theme of a lot of the Culture novels. Human members of the Culture live in such an extraordinarily wealthy post-scarcity society that 'dole' doesn't even slightly describe it.
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Jan 1, 2020 02:36
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Last night after my partner, baby and houseguests went to bed I read Sisters of the vast black by Linda Rather. Future Catholic nuns travel around a post civil war frontier in an organic space ship. If you don't know half of Australia is on fire and this book was a really fun way to take a mental break. Happy NY book nerds.
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Jan 1, 2020 02:37
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General Battuta posted:All of this has happened before. Calvino is just insanely good
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Jan 1, 2020 05:22
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StrixNebulosa posted:IIRC this is the entire point of the opening of Player of Games And all the human-focused parts of Excession, for that matter. sebmojo posted:Calvino is just insanely good Not emptyquotin' Kchama posted:It may surprise you but they eventually turn into literally Soviet France during the Terrors where they decide the only way to break the evil hold of WELFARE!!! on the nation is to nuke the government and institute the Terrors and established Commisars and also everyone calls each other Comrade. Sadly it doesn't. There was a time, and I am not proud to admit this, but there was a time when Baen ebooks were about all the SF you could find in ebook format, and... well, folks got real bored in those days, so...
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Jan 1, 2020 10:40
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Kesper North posted:Sadly it doesn't. There was a time, and I am not proud to admit this, but there was a time when Baen ebooks were about all the SF you could find in ebook format, and... well, folks got real bored in those days, so... Also, Baen gives a ton of the Honor books away for free and once upon a time I was both super bored and super broke.
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Jan 1, 2020 16:17
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New Craig Schaefer book out!  WOOPWOOP
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Jan 1, 2020 16:37
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Khizan posted:Also, Baen gives a ton of the Honor books away for free and once upon a time I was both super bored and super broke. God, I remember being amazed and thrilled when I bought a Been book and it had a CD Rom of "over $700 worth" of books. He'll of a good marketing strategy since I think I bought 12-13 books from them that summer after reading a few first in the series.
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Jan 1, 2020 17:01
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Lmbo someone finally decided to play the “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” meme completely straight, and in Clarkesworld no less
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Jan 1, 2020 21:29
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General Battuta posted:Lmbo someone finally decided to play the “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” meme completely straight, and in Clarkesworld no less 
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Jan 1, 2020 21:36
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:New Craig Schaefer book out! The kind of good news that comes only three or four times a year! I'm excited about his upcoming "Greek myth and mass surveillance" book, too.
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Jan 1, 2020 21:37
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I finished Murderbot 4 and came to a realization about the series. It sits in the same genre of "competence porn" as The Martian and older sci fi that features a protagonist constantly solving tricky problems with the application of pure skill and ingenuity. The only difference is that instead of a charismatic white male engineer, the main character is an ambiguously gendered nervous wreck who hates socializing and just wants to binge Netflix 24/7.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:36
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Don't forget he gets to blow up poo poo on the reg too.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:37
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FuzzySlippers posted:I don't recall them that well, but I presume all the humans are on some kind of dole in Bank's Culture novels right? It is amusing how vilified the dole is when it seems like the inevitable end point for far future super advanced technology is a bunch of slow awkward fleshy people with nothing much to do. I know it is a minor point in a lot of scifi (Peter Watts comes to mind), but is there a book where the main subject is the existential ennui of living in a machine run paradise and people have to find some purpose when they are cartoonishly incapable of doing anything useful? the culture's society is post scarcity, not really so much a welfare state. so the only limiting factors are stuff like land space and energy. and the ai for anything more complicated than an environment suit is sentient and a citizen in their own right so that kind of handles the idea of ownership of spacecraft and stuff
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Jan 1, 2020 23:26
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wizzardstaff posted:I finished Murderbot 4 and came to a realization about the series. It sits in the same genre of "competence porn" as The Martian and older sci fi that features a protagonist constantly solving tricky problems with the application of pure skill and ingenuity. The only difference is that instead of a charismatic white male engineer, the main character is an ambiguously gendered nervous wreck who hates socializing and just wants to binge Netflix 24/7. i have slowly realized that nearly every genre fiction I have ever read is one of these, with the exception of the outright power fantasies where someone whips out an previously unmentioned secret power or whatever.
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Jan 1, 2020 23:28
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Larry Parrish posted:i have slowly realized that nearly every genre fiction I have ever read is one of these, with the exception of the outright power fantasies where someone whips out an previously unmentioned secret power or whatever. I don't think most of Le Guin's work is like that. I've just read her The Word for World is Forest and it is very much not competence porn. Maybe incompetence porn.
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Jan 1, 2020 23:30
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Larry Parrish posted:i have slowly realized that nearly every genre fiction I have ever read is one of these, with the exception of the outright power fantasies where someone whips out an previously unmentioned secret power or whatever. Cherryh always starts her series with helpless men being thrust into situations they don't understand and being forced to suffer before they can integrate and become competent. Foreigner eventually turns into competence porn, but first Bren has to get poisoned, nearly die a dozen times, and deal with the world's least elegant toilet.
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Jan 1, 2020 23:34
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wizzardstaff posted:I finished Murderbot 4 and came to a realization about the series. It sits in the same genre of "competence porn" as The Martian and older sci fi that features a protagonist constantly solving tricky problems with the application of pure skill and ingenuity. The only difference is that instead of a charismatic white male engineer, the main character is an ambiguously gendered nervous wreck who hates socializing and just wants to binge Netflix 24/7. there's no wonder why goons love recommending this series
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Jan 1, 2020 23:47
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I read the first one yesterday and it was fine but forgettable. Not sure what the fuss is.
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Jan 1, 2020 23:52
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't think most of Le Guin's work is like that. I've just read her The Word for World is Forest and it is very much not competence porn. Maybe incompetence porn. There's also the entire lineage of Tolkein/Hero's Journey clones where the hero spends half the story running away from the dark lord's minions.
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Jan 2, 2020 00:16
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StrixNebulosa posted:Cherryh always starts her series with helpless men being thrust into situations they don't understand and being forced to suffer before they can integrate and become competent. Foreigner eventually turns into competence porn, but first Bren has to get poisoned, nearly die a dozen times, and deal with the world's least elegant toilet. Her books are next on my giant catch up list but if they weren't that last bit'd certainly do the trick just to see what on earth you could possibly be talking about.
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Jan 2, 2020 11:13
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90s Cringe Rock posted:
Just finished this one up as well. It's a fun little book, I thought.
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Jan 2, 2020 17:53
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freebooter posted:I read the first one yesterday and it was fine but forgettable. Not sure what the fuss is. I haven't forgotten how much I paid, jesus christ. I feel like goons must get kickbacks for those reviews.
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Jan 2, 2020 21:30
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I read the attack helicopter story and I guess if you have to write a story inspired by a transphobic meme, at least it's reasonably good and also full of horrifying sf poo poo? Right I'll just go get the dril isis tweet ready to post.
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Jan 2, 2020 21:56
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Did the person who was reading Randall Garrett's Gandalara Cycle in the old SF&F thread ever finish it? Same question applies for the person who was reading Ken MacLeod's Corporation Wars. The posthumous Iain M. Banks The Culture: Notes and Drawings might be getting released this year. Definitely maybe. Possibly. If there was anything more than a solitary amazon uk listing for it, I'd slightly believe it. More curious to see the original Banks artwork in it than any actual commentary about the Culture universe by Ken MacLeod in it. Not really interested in finding out how much Locke and Hume empiricism and class warfare arguments MacLeod crams into it. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 07:38
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General Battuta posted:Lmbo someone finally decided to play the “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” meme completely straight, and in Clarkesworld no less "fragile, prone to failure, and easily shot down?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85MDZfZr1ag
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Jan 3, 2020 10:30
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quantumfoam posted:The posthumous Iain M. Banks The Culture: Notes and Drawings might be getting released this year. Definitely maybe. Possibly. it's unrelated but I just remembered this: https://twitter.com/JanelleCShane/status/1144207869887307776
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Jan 3, 2020 22:51
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Huh, somebody did something good with one of those neural net things.
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Jan 3, 2020 23:48
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Patrick Spens posted:Huh, somebody did something good with one of those neural net things. She's done a lot of funny lists with GPT-2. I like the one with D&D character names.
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Jan 4, 2020 00:15
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the witcher books are actually really sad
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Jan 4, 2020 00:53
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FuturePastNow posted:it's unrelated but I just remembered this: Thank you for this. I follow her blog/Twitter and bought her book but somehow missed this. Those are some god drat perfect ship names and I feel like Iain would have approved
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Jan 4, 2020 06:08
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I'm halfway through a rearead of the Dune novels after close to 20 years. The parts I remember being impressive are still holding up. The social system really made sense in the context provided. With the sole exception of the Jihad. Who are they even at war with? The Atreides got themselves the throne of a HRE like entity, that went along with a controlling stake in the CHoam trade monople. The Landsrat(sp?) as the counter force collecting the aristocracy seems intact, as well as the MAD situation and the conventions of war, as far as I can make out. So what planets are they conquering? Whose planets get cleaned of all live? There are battles with names, but no enemies. There was no mention of rebellion, or defeated Great Houses.
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Jan 4, 2020 15:11
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a kitten posted:Thank you for this. I follow her blog/Twitter and bought her book but somehow missed this. Not shown in tweet: "I’ve selected some of the best to show you."
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Jan 4, 2020 15:49
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genericnick posted:I'm halfway through a rearead of the Dune novels after close to 20 years. The parts I remember being impressive are still holding up. The social system really made sense in the context provided. With the sole exception of the Jihad. Who are they even at war with? The Atreides got themselves the throne of a HRE like entity, that went along with a controlling stake in the CHoam trade monople. The Landsrat(sp?) as the counter force collecting the aristocracy seems intact, as well as the MAD situation and the conventions of war, as far as I can make out. So what planets are they conquering? Whose planets get cleaned of all live? There are battles with names, but no enemies. There was no mention of rebellion, or defeated Great Houses. The Jihad, as suggested by the name, was fundamentally a religious war—replacing the aristocracy and its individual fiefdoms, along with the quasi-secular OC bible and minor religions, with a united religious state venerating Muad’Dib. While no description of specific rebellious Houses is given, there’s evidence that there was significant resistance from them - for example, the stone burner that destroyed the eyes of one of the Death Commando’s sons was used on a resisting world. Since stone burners were atomically powered, there was likely at least covert Great House support for that use.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:18
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Kalman posted:The Jihad, as suggested by the name, was fundamentally a religious war—replacing the aristocracy and its individual fiefdoms, along with the quasi-secular OC bible and minor religions, with a united religious state venerating Muad’Dib. On further consideration I can kind of buy this. One point that is raised in the second novel is the negotiation with the guild about the secret asylum planet after 12(?) years, so that points to the Great Houses as the opposite site. And they would still be around in a somewhat reduced state, because of the atomics they control. Then I'd chalk up the description of the wars to number inflation, which Herbert does almost to Warhammer standards. There are also the Ixians as possible opponents.
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Jan 5, 2020 20:31
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Patrick Spens posted:Huh, somebody did something good with one of those neural net things. It's a text adventure-themed chatbot that feigns being a text adventure engine that can accept any input and go along with it. Exactly how well this works varies greatly and it's pretty easy to see where the "it's not actually a game" limits are, but still, it's a fun little toy for a while. edit:   
Cicero fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Jan 6, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 13:30
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I feel attacked.
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Jan 6, 2020 16:22
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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250260256/ Sisters of the Vast Black paperback edition on sale for 7.59$ instead of like 12-13$
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Jan 6, 2020 16:36
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AIs are getting better at comedy and it's making me nervous
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Jan 6, 2020 17:29
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