|
Selachian posted:IIRC, the narrator of Flatland is a Flatland native, but he knows that "Spaceland" exists and makes references to stuff from our world, so I wouldn't say it fits the requirements. Been a long while since I read it. I knew there was some kinda connection, but yeah, only now I remember the supposed author was A. Square lol PeterWeller posted:Surely you mean Robert E. Howard when you refer to Conan, right? Or is there an ERB series set in a world named Conan? I’m getting all sorts of poo poo mixed up looks like. Yeah, I meant Howards and Burroughs respectively
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2023 00:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 06:04 |
|
|
Tolkien seems to have coined the term "Secondary World" and included worlds that tenuously link to our in it like Middle Earth, but what was the first to drop the link is a really interesting question. I'd never heard of Phantasmion but past that Peake's Gormenghast (first novel 1946) and Franz Lieber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (first story published 1939) seem like candidates. In both cases I don't think it's quite so explicit as, I don't know, Song of Ice and Fire that there's no connection to our world but nevertheless there isn't really one.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2023 00:46
|
|
|
The Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories do develop connections to our Earth. Not going to spoil where but there's at least one point where an Earth person visits them, and then there's all of Adept's Gambit where they've found their way to Ancient Mesopotamia.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2023 00:51
|
|
|
Larry Parrish posted:i finished KJ Parker's the two of swords trilogy and man. he's so good at this particular kind of book. i prefer 16 Ways etc more, but man this trilogy is it's own kind of special. Absolutely nobody in this entire story has the slightest bit of agency, it's an endless series of being outmanoeuvred and overcome by events. But it's great despite that. And it even has a happy ending, sort of. Haha yeah that was a fun series. Well, fun in the usual Parker way of everyone is miserable and terrible things are happening but maybe the characters will make it out in one piece. I just looked into whether he's got anything new coming up and he does. A book called Pulling the Wings Off Angels came out in November, another book came out in January, and he's got a new collection of his short fiction coming out in March. The man is a machine!
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 07:27
|
|
|
Dunno who else is reading these but the newest book in Behold humanity is out on Kindle unlimited. Title is Screams of the Past.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 09:10
|
|
|
Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Dunno who else is reading these but the newest book in Behold humanity is out on Kindle unlimited. Title is Screams of the Past. I've been reading the serial instead. It pwns though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 13:18
|
|
|
I appreciated that one of the most recent chapters finally had a quote from ancient earth history that wasn't twisted into a parody by the passage of time and lost data. Of course that's the one thing that would survive intact into the far future.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 13:22
|
|
|
It seems like Origin Complex only exists in ebook format. Is there a way to verify that or see if there’s a release date for a physical copy? There’s nothing on the Steel Frame publisher’s site
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 14:12
|
|
|
Ccs posted:Haha yeah that was a fun series. Well, fun in the usual Parker way of everyone is miserable and terrible things are happening but maybe the characters will make it out in one piece. Oh ho -- a new KJ Parker short fiction collection. I hope there will be some new stuff about the Studium and the doors in it. I want to read more about that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 14:56
|
|
|
Same here. That was my favorite part of Academic Exercises. I think he's written a few of that type of story since.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 17:23
|
|
|
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0054LJGWS/ Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003RRXXMA/ Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs #1) by Richard K Morgan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBFMZ2/ The Martian by Andy Weir - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EMXBDMA/ World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JMKQX0/ Fire and Blood (Song of Ice and Fire) by George RR Martin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C6TBTV3/ Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XG6MG3Y/ The Stand by Stephen King - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001C4NXKM/ Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SEGUDE/ Eragon (Inheritance Cycle #1) by Christopher Paolini - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBJCK8/
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 18:25
|
|
|
I wanted to like Two of Swords, but I guess I can only handle Parker's smug as gently caress protagonists in measured amounts.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 18:39
|
|
|
PeterWeller posted:I'd note that like Tolkien's Middle Earth, Howard's Hyborian Age is presented as deep history of our own world--"before the Oceans drank Atlantis." Conan's life take place long after the destruction of Atlantis (and Lemuria), despite what the movie intro says. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 18:40
|
|
|
Xenix posted:I wanted to like Two of Swords, but I guess I can only handle Parker's smug as gently caress protagonists in measured amounts. Yeah, thats another thing about Parker. The books have gotten more concise since his early work but the characters have gotten smugger.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2023 21:41
|
|
|
Evil Fluffy posted:Conan's life take place long after the destruction of Atlantis (and Lemuria), despite what the movie intro says. Ahh, it's been an age since I read "The Hyborian Age."
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 01:47
|
|
|
Destroyenator posted:It seems like Origin Complex only exists in ebook format. Is there a way to verify that or see if there’s a release date for a physical copy? There’s nothing on the Steel Frame publisher’s site AFAIK the book is ebook-only with no clear indications it's ever coming to print. You could ask the author; he replies pretty readily on Twitter.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 01:56
|
|
|
Ccs posted:A book called Pulling the Wings Off Angels came out in November This was quite a lot of fun and very much in the short story bucket rather than the longer KJ Parker standard style.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 02:21
|
|
|
Fate Accomplice posted:After reading “The Wandering Earth” and being thoroughly entertained by both movies and massively disappointed by sci-fi’s Ascension, I want to read books taking place on colony/generational ships. I read Braking Day last year and really enjoyed it - it's a tiny slice of the journey of a small fleet of generation ships as they're approaching the point where they start their braking burn - fun pace and really well constructed setting. Might not be what you're looking for in that it only covers a couple month period as a Mystery Unfolds approaching braking day, but I thought that setting had been really well thought out, tons of lived-in detail and societal / political interest.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 15:49
|
|
|
Nona the Ninth (Locked Tomb #3) by Tamsyn Muir - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09G14BQMM/ The Golden Enclaves (Scholomance #3) by Naomi Novik - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MVM8R7T/ Rhythm of War (Stormlight Archive #4) by Brandon Sanderson - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0826NKZHR/ How Long 'til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FSLQXY8/ Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YK1K1YK/
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 17:20
|
|
|
pradmer posted:] I really wanted to like this. The idea of a classic Gothic Horror set in Mexico had me pumped. It could've taken place in "anytown, anycountry" for all that the story leaned on anything. The setting barely matters as the front loaded Mexican chic reads as if they did a find+replace on location names. My memory on the book as a whole is hazy as I read it years ago but it was so damned boring and, despite being in Mexico, the Hill House analogue is just generic rich white aristocrat with no redeeming features. Rather than ending up as a foundation for a new flavor of Gothic isn't really just reads as a paint by numbers Gothic story but instead of the red white and blue of England/American aristocracy it's just painted it in red white and green of Mexico, the problem is they did a shity job without priming it so you can still see the blue through the cracks. I've given up on books halfway through, but I stick with this hoping it would dome something but it's "twist" was incredibly boring if edging slightly into ... I want to say cosmic horror because it tries to evoke that, but it wasn't. It was freaking mushrooms. 2/5. So much potential.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 17:33
|
|
|
pradmer posted:How Long 'til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin - $2.99 I've said it before, but this is an outstanding set of stories. For three bucks, not getting (and reading) it would be simply foolish.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 17:59
|
|
|
Meanwhile the dystopic sci-fi future is already here. Clarkesworld had to close submissions thanks to AI-written spam choking the intake. http://neil-clarke.com/a-concerning-trend/  Wild poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 18:13
|
|
|
This is shaping up to be a kind of existential crisis for a lot of different types of media groups. I sympathize with having to deal with such a high volume of trash submissions that don't actually look suspicious at first glance but I also can't help but think it might be good for reviewers to have to be more discerning even with some cost to accessibility and throughput. I don't know what anyone's supposed to do about stories that are bootstrapped with AI and then smartly edited and fleshed out by the author. It's either good enough or it isn't, regardless of the tool used to make it. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Feb 20, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 18:26
|
|
|
Tiny Timbs posted:This is shaping up to be a kind of existential crisis for a lot of different types of media groups. I sympathize with having to deal with such a high volume of trash submissions that don't actually look suspicious at first glance but I also can't help but think it might be good for reviewers to have to be more discerning even with some cost to accessibility and throughput. anything good in the bot output is lightly repacked plagiarism. the bots have no creative capacity so anything worth reading is stolen from an original source.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 18:46
|
|
|
Even before AI writing plagiarism detectors had to work with uncertainty. Are people plagiarizing when they borrow (intentionally or not) sentence structures, plot movements, and narrative forms from other instances of successful genre fiction? If an AI can get me 50% of the way to a passable entry of fiction and my edits make it legally indistinguishable from any other effort then there’s no argument to be had. It’s done. Things will be easier for publications that only deal with more unique pieces of short fiction but even then I don't think a blanket ban on AI assistance is going to be feasible long-term. I’m getting more and more weirded out by even simpler examples of this. I’m getting full sentence completion suggestion in emails and more often that not it’s saying what I meant to say. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Feb 20, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 18:52
|
|
|
There's a lot of smug memey nonsense about ai stuff imo, which doesn't recognize how much art really is just variations on a theme. It's not producing what we consider 'good' art yet but it seems self evident that it will.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 20:08
|
|
|
Ravus Ursus posted:I really wanted to like this. The idea of a classic Gothic Horror set in Mexico had me pumped. sebmojo posted:There's a lot of smug memey nonsense about ai stuff imo, which doesn't recognize how much art really is just variations on a theme. It's not producing what we consider 'good' art yet but it seems self evident that it will. Our current consensus is gently caress. RDM fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Feb 20, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 20:10
|
|
|
Ravus Ursus posted:2/5. So much potential.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 20:31
|
|
|
Read the Anansi Boys and it really feels like Gaiman's least essential work. It's not bad but there nothing there that makes it particularly great either.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 20:36
|
|
|
Alhazred posted:Read the Anansi Boys and it really feels like Gaiman's least essential work. It's not bad but there nothing there that makes it particularly great either. That's a lot of Gaiman unfortunately. Sometimes he writes with the lightning and sometimes with the lightning bug.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 21:08
|
|
|
On the bright side, AI-generated writing will be excellent matter for examination in human-written short stories. Ted Chiang did have a piece about that sort of thing in his first collection.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 21:51
|
|
|
I think this is a really interesting article on AI text, from the perspective of academic essay writing and teaching - https://acoup.blog/2023/02/17/collections-on-chatgpt/ It goes quite interestingly into what exactly the bot is able to draw from and what it isn't, and while it's not hysterically negative it doesn't really fill me with excitement for rapidly produced Content.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 23:43
|
|
|
FPyat posted:On the bright side, AI-generated writing will be excellent matter for examination in human-written short stories. Ted Chiang did have a piece about that sort of thing in his first collection. I've thought about it in the shower some and if I were to write on it my thesis would be related to how AI grammar assistants (like in Microsoft Word) that prescribe specific forms of grammar and sentence structure could be a trojan horse for standardizing patterns of thought à la the Sapir-Worf hypothesis.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 23:50
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/clarkesworld/status/1627718720838594561 https://twitter.com/clarkesworld/status/1627721829270814746 https://twitter.com/clarkesworld/status/1627716283591426048 Wild poo poo. "Generate stuff and submit it here to cash out!"
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 00:14
|
|
|
Tiny Timbs posted:This is shaping up to be a kind of existential crisis for a lot of different types of media groups. I sympathize with having to deal with such a high volume of trash submissions that don't actually look suspicious at first glance but I also can't help but think it might be good for reviewers to have to be more discerning even with some cost to accessibility and throughput. Arguing over the ethics and artistic merit of AI will be dominating our lives for probably the next decade or more, but we might not even "reach" those types of arguments for a long time because first and foremast we have to deal with the logistics and volume problems being introduced. Per their blog and Twitter, it looks like nearly half of their submissions this month (with 8 days to go) were from AI. If you let them through then you're at minimum doubling your processing workload, and it's likely significantly higher than that given work doesn't scale linearly. It's only going to grow more aggressively as it becomes more accessible, the tools get better, and the initial wave of people making money (or at least finding success) start inspiring others to try Even if the AI was writing bangers, and even if that's something you find ethical, then how the hell are you going to find them? We're accidentally creating the Library of Babel If you accept submissions for just about anything, from stories to resumes to artist portfolios and whatever else, you're going to need a way to deal with separating signal from noise
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 01:07
|
|
|
also in reading the replies from Clarke, he speculates that the reason for the sudden and rapid increase from the same websites is partly due to them hoping that one of their submission sneaks past and they're able to market that their model was published on Clarkesworld and use it build legitimacy and to sell to more customers. Seems impossible to state if that's true or not, but it would at least make the whole "but is this art?" question a lot less relevant
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 01:13
|
|
|
Ccs posted:Yeah, thats another thing about Parker. The books have gotten more concise since his early work but the characters have gotten smugger. also trying to construct a timeline will melt your brain even though I'm convinced they all take place in the same world yes, this means there are no poo poo actual demons durdling around in the background of Savages
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 01:26
|
|
|
WarpDogs posted:also in reading the replies from Clarke, he speculates that the reason for the sudden and rapid increase from the same websites is partly due to them hoping that one of their submission sneaks past and they're able to market that their model was published on Clarkesworld and use it build legitimacy and to sell to more customers. i mean I'm sure thats the motivation for a bunch of the human written submissions too so the AI is doing better than I expected
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 01:28
|
|
|
like, in prospers demon (supported by inside man), the lady demon lays it out plainly and explicitly: the demon plan is somewhere between oodles of millennia long and forever long, there's plenty of room for civilizations to rise, fall, and be forgotten
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 01:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 06:04 |
|
|
I've heard Parker's world described like a set of legos. He constructs every world with the same blocks but none of them are actually happening in the same physical reality. He just has certain place names he likes and cultures he's developed, but can switch around which are from where and what kind of geography one has based on story needs from book to book. It's probably this system that allows him to churn out content so fast. There's themes he likes returning to and subjects he's done extensive research on and he keeps deploying them again and again in different iterations. When he was early in his career he really wanted to show his work with his research, which is why stuff like the Engineer trilogy is so extensive with its descriptions of how the machines work and the way they are metaphors. And later he was content to focus more on characters. Still, there's something I really like about the depth of the Engineer series despite its interminable length. Something about that series really feels like a full meal of all of Parker's dour take on the world. The tragedy of such smart characters having such huge blind spots about human nature. Of almost getting what they wanted and failing, or getting a false version of it and not even realizing that they'll need to lie to themselves for the rest of their lives in order to believe they have attained it. Ccs fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Feb 21, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 03:34
|
|