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I can't say that I liked Tanaka, and I don't think the authors meant for anyone to like her, but I thought she was an interesting sort of avatar of Laconia, the system Duarte built. You can pretend that she's a very well made cog in a very efficient machine, but that's not the truth. You can pretend Laconia is a disciplined but fair society united by a common purpose and a great leader, but it's not.
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Dec 11, 2021 18:18
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Jakabite posted:Enjoyed how they ended it. Didn’t need a big crazy twist that made no sense - I just wanted it wrapped up in a way that followed, and to see where the characters ended up. Only disappointment is that Drummer was apparently just deleted from existence. I feel like the book suffered from missing a bunch of cool and interesting characters in general, on account of them dying previously. And who we got to replace them just weren't as interesting. Still though, book did what it had to do, it was very much a The Expanse book, even if it wasn't the best The Expanse book. I could've done with an epilogue where we learn a summary of how some characters live out the rest of their lives, but maybe that would've been too sappy. I did appreciate Amos making an independent moral decision for the first (?) time. Overall series was good, TV show is good, would recommend. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 10:04
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I interpreted the whole tit for tat thing to be that the gods had been playing it with us the entire time. We push it too far, they poke us and see if we can learn. Which we mostly did right up until we decided that we were the ones in charge of the game. I don't think anything gave us the impression that life couldn't have just gone on the way it did if we had maintained the correct level of ship passage and stopped shooting the big guns. The whole deal was that Laconia pressing to solve the old God problem was supposedly about protecting humanity, but it was always just about protecting the ability to use the big gun.
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Dec 14, 2021 00:45
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Laconia wasn't able or willing to accept that they were not the ones who set the terms of the relationship. So they had to start some poo poo.
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Dec 14, 2021 01:31
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Orange Devil posted:I did appreciate Amos making an independent moral decision for the first (?) time. Agreed. And it made sense that it was about who it was.
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Dec 14, 2021 02:35
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I'm about 3/4ths of the way through Leviathan Falls and did Duarte seriously pull a Dr. Manhattan and put himself back together in such a way that he is now a god that will save humanity?
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Dec 14, 2021 03:57
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Travic posted:I'm about 3/4ths of the way through Leviathan Falls and did Duarte seriously pull a Dr. Manhattan and put himself back together in such a way that he is now a god that will save humanity? e: eh, that's a little spoilery.
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Dec 14, 2021 04:00
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Just read a little further into the book. Oh gently caress.
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Dec 14, 2021 05:36
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Defiance Industries posted:Laconia wasn't able or willing to accept that they were not the ones who set the terms of the relationship. So they had to start some poo poo. Eh, I liked the implication that maybe it wasn't the fascist human who was the villain in the end, but instead we were basically seeing a repeat of Eros and the PM doing what the PM (and the civilization that created it) does. Or maybe not and the fascist human was actually still the primary problem.
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Dec 14, 2021 11:26
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I just wanna know how all of humanity developed a 5G interstellar neural network. Maybe the anti vaxxers are right?
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Dec 14, 2021 14:50
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Finished the book. So… The book was technically competent, and I agree with others in as much as I found that the first 1/2 of the book was slow. I found this weird because it was almost like the authors were still engaged in the world building process for almost half of the last book in the series, which is kind of odd. I really left with the feeling that this should have been multiple books, and I was honestly puzzled that the so much of what to me would be essential to telling the story happened ‘off screen.’ Now the more spoilery bits, and I will try not to get too into the weeds… So Holden’s trauma was communicated in sort of a flat half-assed way—I agree. It may have not have felt like that had the reader actually experienced the trauma of what Holden endured on Laconia (this and his rescue should have been it’s own book). Like a lot of things that happened after the second or third book, while I love this series and I found it as a whole the most believable ‘near future’ science fiction take on what human societies might look like, as someone who has studied History, Political Science, and Political Theory/Philosophy for most of my professional career, there were a lot of things that just seemed like bullshit. For example, as I alluded to in an earlier post, the whole fear of taking away sole access to someone’s memory or stream of consciousness is overblown, and I object to the notion that a sense of individual self would be impossible under such conditions. BUT… this is the authors’ universe, and since we are essentially dealing with Deus Ex Machina alien magic, I can suspend disbelief. The things that were harder for me to suspend disbelief about in the series were in earlier books—for example pseudo-fascists arising on Earth following the bombardment of the planet by the ‘free navy’ would have been far more realistic than the Martian Navy just absconding to Laconia and setting up an ‘Empire.’ It turns out that the authors’ take goes against everything we know about nationalism and how it operates, but I digress. While the second part of Leviathan Falls was more quickly paced, I did not find it super compelling for a lot of reasons… and it was very easy to tell exactly where the plot was going to go pretty early on. I was completely disappointed with Holden’s character arch across the series, as his final act of shutting down the gate goes completely against who he seemed to be for most of the series; which, I will give the authors props in as much as that final dialogue between Miller and Holden seems to acknowledge. What isn’t acknowledged though is that Holden making his unilateral decision to shut down the gates is, in essence, no different at all than Duerte’s unilateral decision to turn humanity into a hive consciousness. Holden, at the end, just becomes the mirror image of Duerte—in essence just acting exactly as Duerte did, just making the ‘opposite’ choice. The supreme irony being that, in choosing to make this unilateral decision Holden condemns millions of people to their deaths, more people than than the Laconians probably ever killed in their attempt to ‘protect’ humanity. These deaths weren’t quick deaths either. Holden essentially condemned millions of people to a slow death from starvation, where people mostly likely got to watch their children and loved ones suffer before they died. I am not sure how the character I came to know as Holden could have let that happened, when it was pretty clear that, even if he did not want to give humans the choice of what to do with the gates, he certainly could have held off the alien Other long enough to let non-self sufficient colony worlds evacuate before he shut the gates down. I have other thoughts, but I will save them. I guess my final take away is: This probably should have been two books, and the authors should not have relegated so much of the important events necessary for character development to the off screen between books... That said, Leviathan Falls was not the worst end to a series I ever read, and the book was competent; however, it was not really compelling or satisfying. I am not sure two books rather than one could have fixed that. tl;dr I did not hate the book; however I did not really like it either. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 17:23
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ZombieLenin posted:I am not sure how the character I came to know as Holden could have let that happened, when it was pretty clear that, even if he did not want to give humans the choice of what to do with the gates, he certainly could have held off the alien Other long enough to let non-self sufficient colony worlds evacuate before he shut the gates down. Don't agree with this, that would've taken months, he was close to being completely taken over by the protomolecule in which case he would no longer have been able to choose to destroy the gates. I got the impression he had enough left in him to let the ships in the slow zone get out before not much more.
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Dec 15, 2021 17:32
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Thom12255 posted:Don't agree with this, that would've taken months, he was close to being completely taken over by the protomolecule in which case he would no longer have been able to choose to destroy the gates. I got the impression he had enough left in him to let the ships in the slow zone get out before not much more. You could be right. I guess I interpreted both Holden and Miller’s conversation and Duerte’s condition just before the end to mean a couple of things: Holden was not going to die; and now that he had assumed Duerte’s place in the “machine,” Holden’s transformation would continue along the same lines as Duerte’s. In other words, Holden was being turned into the ring stations controlling/foundational personality. As far as Holden being at the brink of losing control, I read that as being tied to the ships leaving the ring space, which denied Holden the power of the minds of the people on the ships in ring space; and while he had the option that Duerte did to reach out and tap the minds of everyone through the rings, this is a step he did want to take because it was going to be irrevocable. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 18:25
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It wasn't really Duerte at the end though, it was an alien simulacrum built around Duerte's personality, literally just like Julie Mao from the first book. The text of this book in fact even compares him to Julie. The Ring Station "wants" to maintain the network. Much like the protomolecule, it is a stupendously advanced AI capable of finding new ways to achieve its purpose. Maybe Duerte was still close to being a human when he stepped into the thing, but what Holden and Co. met at the end was not really Duerte. Holden was going to die to the protomolecule within hours if not minutes. After that, he would be remade into a system that would be committed to maintaining the gates. This was why Holden rushed at the end. He was basically counting his last few breaths. Everyone trying to find a way for human civilization to continue while using the Rings is missing the point of the novel. There is no future for humanity using the Proto Tech. Full stop.
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Dec 15, 2021 20:50
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There's also the fact that the invaders were about to assault the slow zone again. Holden pushes them back one last time with the help of everyone in the slow zone, but once he releases them he says, "If they attack again I cannot stop them." So time was up.
Travic fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 21:56
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I agree with most of your points and had a similar reaction to the book overall. I don't think the material really justified 2 books, I think rather they had a 50 page climax to the series in mind and needed to add 400 pages of new characters and unnecessary chase sequence to make it a novel. ZombieLenin posted:
This is fair, and I'm not even sure the authors disagree with you. The voices Tanaka and others were hearing seemed to be discrete individuals, and we never got a POV take from one of the full converts. I think it's reasonable to believe at least that the characters/protagonists would be terrified and resist. Also, while I think only Holden knew this, Duarte's next step was total war against the dark gods. It wouldn't really matter whether humans would have individual existence or not if they were about to have no existence at all. quote:
I'm not sure I follow what you mean here. The (1/3rd) of the Martian Navy didn't abscond in reaction to the Free Navy bombing/takeover. Duarte incited those events as part of his exit to keep everyone else busy while his faction took over Laconia and built a fleet. If you meant instead that his following just generally didn't make sense, I buy it: the dream of terraforming Mars for a century was dead the moment 1300 new worlds opened. Watching a mass-exodus of their people, loss of their identity, and possibly even collapse of their society, it makes sense that some of the military would fall in with a visionary commander promising them a glorious new Mars with an atmosphere and unstoppable fleet.
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Dec 15, 2021 22:34
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Travic posted:There's also the fact that the invaders were about to assault the slow zone again. Holden pushes them back one last time with the help of everyone in the slow zone, but once he releases them he says, "If they attack again I cannot stop them." So time was up. Came here to post this, Holden had to make a decision and he had either what he did or what Duarte did as the only two viable options.
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Dec 15, 2021 22:53
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And where Duarte had been a PM tool for years at this point, Holden had only been for several hours; he may have been able to see "let's kill God!" for the insane suicide plan that it was in a way Duarte was no longer able to. He'd been forged too far into a PM tool. The more I think on it, I see it as the old gods "felt" us harnessing their power like an itch with no obvious source. Taking ships dutchman was the equivalent of scratching your nose in your sleep, just a thoughtless bit of relief. Taken to the next step, like firing the big gun, you get a more direct and thoughtful intervention, you start hunting around for a "why?" Like an ant in your arm hair. Everyone in the slow zone being held off by Duarte/Holden was a heroic last stand to us but to the old gods may have been just a light irritation inside a cast. Something they couldn't relieve or let go of. It was true for the PM makers and true for us. We were never going to go unscratched so long as we itched. Just my theory on the whole thing
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Dec 15, 2021 23:07
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Yeah, exactly. I think it was smart of the authors to never give the dark gods' POV or informed exposition on their motives/capabilities. PM-Duarte is emboldened that he can block their attacks and plans to take the fight to them. For all anyone knows though, he's been contending the whole time with a dark god toddler squashing ants that wander too close. Biting the toddler and swarming the pantry might be what gets the dark god homeowners to stop watching Jeopardy and hire an exterminator.
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Dec 15, 2021 23:16
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I think the bug analogy is a good one. Humans transiting the gates too much made the dark aliens absentmindedly scratch, like you might unconsciously scratch at an itch caused by a mosquito without realizing it. But once Duarte set off the anti-matter bomb, it was like a wasp stinging the dark gods. Now they were going to actively try to find and exterminate the wasp's nest, and they were going through various insecticides and weren't going to stop until they found the right one. The dumb thing is that humanity could have kept using the gates by just working together and regulating their behavior. But that proved impossible, and as recent events have shown us that is all too realistic.
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Dec 16, 2021 00:27
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The more that I think about it, I honestly really appreciate the ending, and thought that it was totally in line with the way that Holden's sense of right and wrong has been portrayed throughout the series. The way that he addresses the unintended consequences is great, and totally on brand for him. gently caress it. I can understand why some people may not like it, but I think it made total sense within the context of character.
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Dec 16, 2021 02:08
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Avasculous posted:
We never get a POV from a full convert, but we do get a message from the captain of the Whirlwind after Duarte dies. She has no memory of the time she spent in the hive mind. "Can someone explain how the gently caress I got here?" Complete lost time. So being part of the hive mind is total annihilation of self. . Scary stuff. pthighs posted:The dumb thing is that humanity could have kept using the gates by just working together and regulating their behavior. But that proved impossible, and as recent events have shown us that is all too realistic. I don't like over-analyzing literature, but I really feel like the entire arc/point/lesson of the series is a statement on how humans just cannot work together. Ever. We are too individualistic. Travic fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 04:25
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Well the authors said last week that (paraphrased) our happy ending now (after the epilogue) is humanity has 1300 chances to get it right* but the epilogue is so short because they don't really know what that looks like *which seems they're implying more than 30 worlds survived
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Dec 16, 2021 06:02
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30 worlds were part of the group that finds Earth. There could have been 100s of other human civilizations independently developing out there.
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Dec 16, 2021 08:58
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Anonymous Zebra posted:30 worlds were part of the group that finds Earth. There could have been 100s of other human civilizations independently developing out there. I must of missed the 30 worlds part when reading, I don't remember that being mentioned?
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Dec 16, 2021 14:56
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Thom12255 posted:I must of missed the 30 worlds part when reading, I don't remember that being mentioned? It was used in all caps The Thirty Worlds. Some in this thread seemed to think that meant that's all that survived but the authors' implications are that it's just a federation that's emerged, they probably haven't gone to every backwater pre-FTL system yet by the time they decide to check on Earth. It's a bad name though, like The Big Ten nowadays. Why pin yourself down like that.
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Dec 16, 2021 15:17
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Post expanse, I think a cool short story would be records of correspondence between one or more worlds that were 5-6 light years from each other. You could follow characters on each planet over many decades, being light delayed pen pals. Tbh I can also see how the distance + communication could amplify technological progress while at the same time making physical conflict impossible.
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Dec 16, 2021 15:23
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External Organs posted:Post expanse, I think a cool short story would be records of correspondence between one or more worlds that were 5-6 light years from each other. You could follow characters on each planet over many decades, being light delayed pen pals. A Clarke version of this where two civilizations 5 LY apart had been trading science back and forth for 100 years as they progressively work toward FTL, but not really trading that much information about their arts or culture. Except our POV culture is long overdue to receive the next letter and ... whoops now there are a bunch of ships blinking into our atmosphere from nowhere. Maybe we should have asked them about their politics at least once. [story ends with no resolution]
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Dec 16, 2021 15:44
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Anonymous Zebra posted:It wasn't really Duerte at the end though, it was an alien simulacrum built around Duerte's personality, literally just like Julie Mao from the first book. The text of this book in fact even compares him to Julie. The Ring Station "wants" to maintain the network. Much like the protomolecule, it is a stupendously advanced AI capable of finding new ways to achieve its purpose. Maybe Duerte was still close to being a human when he stepped into the thing, but what Holden and Co. met at the end was not really Duerte. I disagree. It wasn’t the protomolecule tech, at least not “full stop.” It was very specifically the ring system and the things powered by the stealing energy from the “other” universe. So for example, Holden closing down the ring network and the power station did not effect Amos or the kids who were rebuilt by the protomolecule tech. Not only did these characters not immediately die, but Amos is still apparently immortal and around a millennium later… It also did not effect most of the tech on the Lanconian navy ships, which all came from protomolecule tech. The one called out exception was the gravitational weapon used by the a Magnetars. Furthermore, as is pointed out repeatedly in the text, if the ring protocol had been followed from the outset, it would have worked. Alex even mentions this as he’s leaving the ring space at the end of the novel. The authors appear to, from my reading, be saying… “Naomi’s protocol would have worked, but because humans are greedy and do whatever they want, it would have ultimately failed…” Which is itself at odds with everything that Holden and the protagonists represented throughout the novels. For me this just added to jarring effect of Holden saying at the end, “well on balance I still think people are more good than bad, but gently caress everything I believed in leading up to this! My experience in Laconia has apparently taught me that it’s actually okay to make the decision to close this poo poo down for everyone, and in the process kill millions of people.” Also, it’s important to note that multiple times the authors insinuate that humanity will ultimately be able to develop the protomolecule tech—in full—themselves; and will probably ultimately become the thing Duerte was trying to turn them into. Though hive mind humanity isn’t actually necessary for humans to develop and use the ring tech and whatever ‘weapons’ hold back the gate entities. As Miller tells Holden, the hive mind thing is only necessary for humans to use the ring system weapons that were developed by the ring builders… because to ‘pull the trigger of the gun… you have to make a hand that fits the weapon.’ PS. While writing this while not nearly as bad as the Mazalan series, there were a gently caress ton of loose and dangling unresolved issues at the end of these books. Just as a couple of examples… The gate entities can somehow gently caress with the physical laws of this universe in systems where there are gates, but how it’s described at the end when Holden gains the perspective of the ring station… I am left wondering: what the hell where the ‘ghosts’ that appeared on some planets and on the Laconian ships when they used their graviton weapon? In retrospect it just seems like these ‘ghosts’ were a plot convince and not in line with what the authors ultimately decided to “reveal” about the ring entities. Also… Venus. You’ve got a planet completely remade by the protomolecule with Julia Mao as the controlling personality—why does it exist? What was its function? There are more things I’m curious about that never got addressed, but those are the two big ones. Paddyo posted:The more that I think about it, I honestly really appreciate the ending, and thought that it was totally in line with the way that Holden's sense of right and wrong has been portrayed throughout the series. The way that he addresses the unintended consequences is great, and totally on brand for him. gently caress it. Partly. He’s always been about doing what’s right, drat the consequences… He’s also all about radical transparency and trusting in people to do what’s right; and he’s also is, essentially, a champion of the downtrodden… The thing is, he always does what he believes is right (whether it was the right thing has always been an open question)… but at the very end Miller literally asks him, “are you sure you are doing the right thing?” and his reply is basically, “I have no clue.” That’s very un-Holden. Railing against Duerte about being the ultimate fascist dickhead by deciding for everyone that he’s doing to turn them into a hive mind, then basically being like… “well gently caress it, I’m in charge now and I am deciding for everyone instead of Duerte” feels wrong too, and finally… “oh, I’m going to do this and kill millions of people… oh well. I am probably giving some people a shot at developing in our own ‘human’ way…” felt off too, but really I have no clue. Finally, it’s totally unclear what Holden is actually going to achieve. In the final act Miller mentions that the ring station is ultimately safe, as is everyone in it, because the gate entities have done their worst to it, and short of literally setting off a new Big Bang, nothing bad can happen to the ring station or it’s occupants. So imagining as others have said, Holden is being turned into a protomolecule tool, but as long as that process isn’t complete he can shut down the network…. What exactly happens when he does that, then protomolecule totally takes over Holden? Couldn’t the new protomolecule coopted Holden personality turn the ring system back on at some point? ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 16:32
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The black sphere things were "bullets" that I think represented the center of the Goth aliens' attempts to turn off all the minds in a solar system. They were calibrated for protomolecule builders and didn't work on people at first.
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Dec 16, 2021 17:42
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ZombieLenin posted:I am left wondering: what the hell where the ‘ghosts’ that appeared on some planets and on the Laconian ships when they used their graviton weapon? From memory I think they decide that the bullets aren't a weapon per se, but the after affect of the goths reaching out into our universe and affecting it. Sort of like a scar left behind. ZombieLenin posted:Also… Venus. You’ve got a planet completely remade by the protomolecule with Julia Mao as the controlling personality—why does it exist? What was its function? The function of the protomolecule and Venus was simply to build and launch the ring. Are you asking about what Venus is like after that happens? I like the mystery, since Venus is so punishing we couldn't even realistically visit the surface that far in the future. As to why it takes on the consciousness of Julie Mao, that is interesting as originally the plan was to have it hijack the single cell life on early earth to do it's job, so there wouldn't be any consciousness around to hijack. I take it as just a side effect of how the protomolecule does its work. ZombieLenin posted:Railing against Duerte about being the ultimate fascist dickhead by deciding for everyone that he’s doing to turn them into a hive mind, then basically being like… “well gently caress it, I’m in charge now and I am deciding for everyone instead of Duerte” feels wrong too, and finally… “oh, I’m going to do this and kill millions of people… oh well. I am probably giving some people a shot at developing in our own ‘human’ way…” felt off too, but really I have no clue. My understanding is that there are three choices at the end: 1) Merge humanity in a hive mind to fight the goths. 2) Keep the rings open 3) Collapse the bubble in ring space, which will split up humanity and cause some to die, but most will live. 1 and 2 result in the death of all humanity - the PM builders couldn't even beat the goths, and the goths are striking back on their own at this point and can kill all human life in a system. 3 is bad but is the least bad option. It also has the benefit of being the right thing to do from the standpoint of we shouldn't be intruding on the goth's home dimension. By that logic, 3 is unquestionably the correct choice, both for humanity and for the rest of the universe, so I don't see it as controversial. Once Holden goes through with number 3, he and the ring station and everything in that bubble cease to exist - they are destroyed just like everything that moved outside the bubble in the ring space. We would have to develop the tech ourselves to create another ring gate bubble. I thought the authors did a pretty good job of explaining things while still leaving a fair amount of mystery behind.
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Dec 16, 2021 19:03
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ZombieLenin posted:Furthermore, as is pointed out repeatedly in the text, if the ring protocol had been followed from the outset, it would have worked. Alex even mentions this as he’s leaving the ring space at the end of the novel. Oh absolutely. If everyone had worked together to start with this never would have happened. But that ship had sailed. The Goths were out for blood. They were actively trying to get into ring space and toying with physical constants to try and wipe out humanity one system at a time. There was no going back to playing nice with the Goths. ZombieLenin posted:For me this just added to jarring effect of Holden saying at the end, “well on balance I still think people are more good than bad, but gently caress everything I believed in leading up to this! My experience in Laconia has apparently taught me that it’s actually okay to make the decision to close this poo poo down for everyone, and in the process kill millions of people.” Unfortunately the hive mind was needed to hold back the Goths. Holden tried on his own and couldn't, "It was like trying to lift a mattress with a toothpick." Or something like that. He needed everyone linked to have enough oomph to hold them back. ZombieLenin posted:I am left wondering: what the hell where the ‘ghosts’ that appeared on some planets and on the Laconian ships when they used their graviton weapon? Oh the spheres? Think of them like impact craters or bullet holes. They're the result of an attack on our universe from the Goths. ZombieLenin posted:Also… Venus. You’ve got a planet completely remade by the protomolecule with Julia Mao as the controlling personality—why does it exist? What was its function? Oh Venus wasn't remodeled. Julie was convinced by Miller to land Eros there instead of Earth. Eros mined Venus for materials to make the ring. Then it left. If you're curious all the matter that made up Miller, Julie, and everyone else on Eros is inside the ring. ZombieLenin posted:Railing against Duerte about being the ultimate fascist dickhead by deciding for everyone that he’s doing to turn them into a hive mind, then basically being like… “well gently caress it, I’m in charge now and I am deciding for everyone instead of Duerte” feels wrong too, and finally… “oh, I’m going to do this and kill millions of people… oh well. I am probably giving some people a shot at developing in our own ‘human’ way…” felt off too, but really I have no clue. It's the trolley problem. It's designed to be a difficult choice with no good outcome. Do nothing and billions die or do something and millions die. ZombieLenin posted:In the final act Miller mentions that the ring station is ultimately safe, as is everyone in it, because the gate entities have done their worst to it, and short of literally setting off a new Big Bang, nothing bad can happen to the ring station or it’s occupants. Inside the station is safe. But the ring space and everywhere attached to it are in mortal danger. Again its either hive mind to hold the Goths back or shut the gates down permanently. ZombieLenin posted:What exactly happens when he does that, then protomolecule totally takes over Holden? Couldn’t the new protomolecule coopted Holden personality turn the ring system back on at some point? Yep. Well...probably. Holden was on his way to becoming a vomit zombie. Not another Duarte. If he turned into a puddle of goo he's not doing anything. If the station can still use him then that's why he totally destroys the entire system. He blows up the station and all the rings fall into their respective suns. Travic fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 19:39
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Travic posted:We never get a POV from a full convert, but we do get a message from the captain of the Whirlwind after Duarte dies. She has no memory of the time she spent in the hive mind. "Can someone explain how the gently caress I got here?" Complete lost time. So being part of the hive mind is total annihilation of self. . Scary stuff. Oh, you're right, I forgot about that. That does make it seem pretty bleak. Re Venus: As others have said, the express purpose of the Eros PM was to build a ring and connect it to the network. Julie was only used as a guiding intelligence to rocket Eros towards more material. I can't remember if it's the book, the show, or both, but in at least one, Avasarala sends a survey team to Venus after the Ring launches, and they report that the site is now completely inert.
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Dec 16, 2021 20:59
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Travic posted:Oh absolutely. If everyone had worked together to start with this never would have happened. But that ship had sailed. The Goths were out for blood. They were actively trying to get into ring space and toying with physical constants to try and wipe out humanity one system at a time. There was no going back to playing nice with the Goths. I guess this was unclear to me. It was perfectly clear that the ring entities were pissed and doing their best to kill humans; however, whether or not humans could calm them down by being less irritating and say, following the protocol, wasn’t really clear. From the limited information we were given, it was pretty clear to me that Holden is just assuming at the end that humans could not reset the gate entities to a neutral, non-we are going to kill you all, state. It’s also alluded to that the gate builders had the weapons to hold the gate entities back at the end of the day, AND to go to war with the gate enties and probably win if that proved necessary. The problem was that the protomolecule creators never had a chance to use those weapons because they were so fragile the gate entities managed to easily kill them all. Miller and Holden at the end point out that humans are far more robust than the ring builders, and that the gate entities have no way to know when they’ve succeeded in killing all the humans in a system like they were with the gate builders. quote:Unfortunately the hive mind was needed to hold back the Goths. Holden tried on his own and couldn't, "It was like trying to lift a mattress with a toothpick." Or something like that. He needed everyone linked to have enough oomph to hold them back. Yes, but—I would pull the quote if I hadn’t listened to the book—Miller literally tells Holden at the end that the hive mind is only necessary to use the gate makers weapons because they were weapons built by a hive mind. Therefore, Miller says the hive mind humanity is necessary because the “gun built by the hive mind needs a hive mind hand to pull the trigger.” Whatever quote:Oh Venus wasn't remodeled. Julie was convinced by Miller to land Eros there instead of Earth. Eros mined Venus for materials to make the ring. Then it left. If you're curious all the matter that made up Miller, Julie, and everyone else on Eros is inside the ring. Yes it was, I am fairly positive though it was not inert and people kept the gently caress away, including the Lanconians, for that very reason. quote:It's the trolley problem. It's designed to be a difficult choice with no good outcome. Do nothing and billions die or do something and millions die. Which is weird since in the first half of the book we are beaten over the head with the fact that the ‘right thing to do’ was to not sacrifice one person (Theresa) to save a 100,000. Then later Amos demands the library dives stop because what was happening to a single person as a result was wrong, even if it meant all humanity dies. Only to have the ‘right thing’ at the end be sacrificing a few million to save billions, which is not only contrary to the two preceding instances in this novel I just mentioned, but is also contrary to the protagonist point of view across multiple novels. quote:Yep. Well...probably. Holden was on his way to becoming a vomit zombie. Not another Duarte. If he turned into a puddle of goo he's not doing anything. If the station can still use him then that's why he totally destroys the entire system. He blows up the station and all the rings fall into their respective suns. Not really. Once Holden is hooked in to the station like Duerte was, Miller tells him 100% he’s on the path to being the stations controlling intelligence, and that what was happening to Holden was not death, unless someone else somehow interrupted the process—i.e. Duerte having the process stopped by getting his heart crushed. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 20:39
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Pretty weird that the tech existed to bring people back from the dead more or less completely themselves and immortal and it only ever happened three times by accident. Did none of the sociopaths on Laconia ever think about trying that out on some test subjects? To bring a repair drone in from out in the cold? Cortezar had the kids and he must have known how they got that way. if you're cold, they're cold
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Dec 19, 2021 09:42
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Amos posted:Let me go double-check the bridge then. You can gently caress things up pretty good if you try folding those back in when they’re broken. I'm really glad they dropped this line in on Chapter 48 because up until then I had no idea why the gently caress they needed a special bridge (as in command post) to control the combined Roci and Falcon. 
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Jan 1, 2022 20:48
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I'm about to start the first novel; how close does the show follow the novels? I've seen it all up until season six which I don't want to watch until it's all out.
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Jan 2, 2022 01:32
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Monolith. posted:I'm about to start the first novel; how close does the show follow the novels? I've seen it all up until season six which I don't want to watch until it's all out. I think it’s pretty close. I started reading after Tv season 4 and read then in release order (not chronological order) and thought it was a terrific way to go. S6 is book 6… so far.
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Jan 2, 2022 01:36
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Monolith. posted:I'm about to start the first novel; how close does the show follow the novels? I've seen it all up until season six which I don't want to watch until it's all out. The show ported a lot of later characters + character development back into the first book (Avasarala, for instance, doesn't show up until book 2). You may miss them, the core cast outside of Miller is pretty thinly sketched in LW.
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Jan 2, 2022 04:50
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Monolith. posted:I'm about to start the first novel; how close does the show follow the novels? I've seen it all up until season six which I don't want to watch until it's all out. Earlier on, they followed it pretty closely. Season 1 covers the first 2/3 of the first book. Season 2 covers the final 1/3 of book 1, and the first 2/3 of book 2. Season 3 covers the final 1/3 of book 2, and all of book 3. After that, they pretty much do one book per season. The show has almost always brought characters forward. Avasaralah wasn't in the first book at all, same with Bobbi Draper in book 2. They also started to combine characters. Drummer is a pretty minor character in the books, but ends up taking on storylines for multiple characters to the point that she is a main character in the show now. At a certain point they also began adapting novellas and incorporating them into the show. I've never read the novellas, but I'm pretty sure the first one they fully adapted was season 5 with Bobbi.
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Jan 2, 2022 04:54
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