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Kchama posted:Statholme is my favorite Classic dungeon. Deadmines baby
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Jul 28, 2023 02:15
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Awkward Davies posted:Deadmines baby Scarlet Monastery. I'm just hear because you guys have a style. And because it's a great place to power level since it's really easy to amass an entire wing and burn it down quickly.
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Jul 28, 2023 02:30
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sebmojo posted:I unironically liked wailing caverns WC will always have a special place in my heart because it was my first ever MMO instance and just absolutely rocked my world in terms of what multiplayer gaming could be.
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Jul 28, 2023 03:05
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Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:WC will always have a special place in my heart because it was my first ever MMO instance and just absolutely rocked my world in terms of what multiplayer gaming could be. I think the first dungeons on both sides were like that. Especially if you were reading the quest lines that led there. Deadmines had a build up and I remember having to get friends together and spending a day in it because we didn't know a damned thing about party comp and agrro management. Coming back on an alt even a year later was just pulling massive hordes and burnjng them down, which was a different kind of fun. But there's no recapturing that first time and being blasted by a cannon or having a murloc chef just gently caress your day up.
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Jul 28, 2023 03:08
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Is Ministry of the Future good? I love KSR and have read a good portion of his books. Something about the cover saying it was a favorite of Obama’s is turning me off. Also climate fiction may hit too close to home at the moment.
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Jul 28, 2023 03:39
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Awkward Davies posted:Is Ministry of the Future good? I love KSR and have read a good portion of his books. Something about the cover saying it was a favorite of Obama’s is turning me off. Also climate fiction may hit too close to home at the moment. It's a decent idiot liberal "fixing global warming" wish fulfillment fantasy that glosses over the fact that the same characters run the Ministry of the Future for like 30 years straight. The description of the 35°C wet bulb heat wave at the beginning is harrowing, and there's a scene at the end when the leader of the Ministry of the Future and her chief of security are chatting while feeding ducks in the park that cracked me up.
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Jul 28, 2023 05:12
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It's a extremely optimistic book that ends up being depressing because we're in the real world and people don't agree to "just fix everything" and there are no UN black ops death commandos. Also some silly stuff about the blockchain actually being useful.
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Jul 28, 2023 09:33
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I may have an antidote. It's not fantasy or sci-fi, but if you want some pure existential climate change dread mainlined into your bloodstream, I recommend The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen. Not saying that you necessarily need more of that dread in your life right now as we're currently in the hottest month ever recorded in human history, but still 
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Jul 28, 2023 10:16
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pseudorandom name posted:It's a decent idiot liberal "fixing global warming" wish fulfillment fantasy that glosses over the fact that the same characters run the Ministry of the Future for like 30 years straight. I read the first chapter with the heatwave right before bed last night. Pretty horrifying. C.M. Kruger posted:It's a extremely optimistic book that ends up being depressing because we're in the real world and people don't agree to "just fix everything" and there are no UN black ops death commandos. An issue I have with his books is that he overestimates people’s ability to all band together to do huge things. Maybe I’m too cynical but I don’t think things work that way.
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Jul 28, 2023 13:30
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A climate change book may hit too close to home at the moment, but it is likely to hit even closer to home in any future moments so now is the best time to read it
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Jul 28, 2023 13:39
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Ministry for the Future is probably overly optimistic, but I don't think it comes from a liberal faith in our governing institutions. Instead it always feels like it comes from a humanistic sense that we can do better than this, we can make a better world, even if our governing institutions stand in the way of that right now. There's some interview KSR did where he pitches his work as the inverse of dystopian SF: what can the world look like if we actually tackled the malaise that feels like it's choking us? For me, that's a major selling point, even if he has to cut some implausible corners to get there.
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Jul 28, 2023 13:54
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I’m extremely okay with authors writing wish-fulfillment, especially outside of the genre I usually find it in (romance). Just makes me feel warm and fuzzy to see people imagining better things and then sharing the dream. 
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Jul 28, 2023 14:13
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HaitianDivorce posted:Ministry for the Future is probably overly optimistic, but I don't think it comes from a liberal faith in our governing institutions. Instead it always feels like it comes from a humanistic sense that we can do better than this, we can make a better world, even if our governing institutions stand in the way of that right now. Ministry for the Future might be this, and the Mars Trilogy eventually gets this way after Red and most of Green Mars being dystopian as gently caress, but I'm pretty sure Aurora is just quietly horror. E: NY2142 is definitely hilariously optimistic, as is 40/50/60. I haven't read Red Moon though. Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Jul 28, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 14:38
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Ravenfood posted:Ministry for the Future might be this, and the Mars Trilogy eventually gets this way after Red and most of Green Mars being dystopian as gently caress, but I'm pretty sure Aurora is just quietly horror. The prion part, yeah.
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Jul 28, 2023 14:42
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Aurora is hopelessly optimistic because about half of the colonists survived to return to Earth.
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Jul 28, 2023 14:44
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pseudorandom name posted:Aurora is hopelessly optimistic because about half of the colonists survived to return to Earth. Two ships were launched. One makes it to Tau Ceti, ~2000 people. Almost half stay behind and are ??? (probably dead). Of the people who head back, it seemed like 20 or 30 people at most make it back alive. I don't have my book with me but even on that return journey they are dying fast. E: I'm positive they get down to living in 1biome, of 24 original, and even then are sparse. I could be wrong, but I don't see how you get to half at all. E2: comedy option they all die and Ship barrels into Earth at 0.1c for vengeance for some reason. Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Jul 28, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 15:07
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pseudorandom name posted:Aurora is hopelessly optimistic because
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Jul 28, 2023 15:12
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HaitianDivorce posted:Ministry for the Future is probably overly optimistic, but I don't think it comes from a liberal faith in our governing institutions. Instead it always feels like it comes from a humanistic sense that we can do better than this, we can make a better world, even if our governing institutions stand in the way of that right now. I've not read it but this sounds in line with some of his other work. I recall some centrist/liberal pearl clutching around the time of Ministry for the Future's release because the good guys are doing eco-terrorism!
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Jul 28, 2023 15:16
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Given that the author gave me a copy for free and it's really cool, I must share!!! https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/worlds-beyond-time_9781419748691 quote:Worlds Beyond Time is the definitive visual history of the spaceships, alien landscapes, cryptozoology, and imagined industrial machinery of 1970s paperback sci-fi art and the artists who created these extraordinary images.   
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Jul 28, 2023 15:21
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StrixNebulosa posted:Given that the author gave me a copy for free and it's really cool, I must share!!! Ooooh. Want!
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Jul 28, 2023 15:34
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Relevant to the topic Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NERQRPI/ The Bull from the Sea (Theseus #2) by Mary Renault - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DCGJ6WC/
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Jul 28, 2023 15:40
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StrixNebulosa posted:Given that the author gave me a copy for free and it's really cool, I must share!!! This is rad!
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Jul 28, 2023 15:42
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Abigail Nussbaum has an interesting review of the book that dissects the excessive optimism: http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-ministry-for-future-by-kim-stanley.htmlAbigail Nussbaum posted:In the cosmology of The Ministry for the Future, there are the elites, and there are the people. In between there are governments—weak, biddable bodies constantly being tugged between the demands of these two groups; scientists and engineers, ready to solve our problems if we just give them the funding; and institutions—sclerotic, slow-moving things that have to be pushed towards their own survival. But the assumption that the book never examines is that "the people" are an undifferentiated lump who all want the same things. It's an easy assumption to make, since those things are so obviously good—clean air and water, freedom from fear and want, a better life for your children. And yet, it only takes one look at the world around us to know better. If you brought "the people" together to demand something of their leaders, the odds that they would all demand the same thing—and that it would be the right thing, as opposed to more refugee internment camps or the overturning of a legal election—seem pretty slim.
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Jul 28, 2023 15:51
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GhastlyBizness posted:I've not read it but this sounds in line with some of his other work. I recall some centrist/liberal pearl clutching around the time of Ministry for the Future's release because the good guys are doing eco-terrorism! I only made it like 20% of the way into ministry for the future and was like ok that's enough now.
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Jul 28, 2023 16:16
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RDM posted:I find pretty much every work of fiction where ecoterrorism is a thing to be unrealistic to the point of unreadable. Nobody does ecoterrorism. Nobody is ever gonna do ecoterrorism. Theodore Kaczynski might beg to differ.
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Jul 28, 2023 16:50
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Theodore Kaczynski might beg to differ.
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Jul 28, 2023 17:04
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StrixNebulosa posted:Given that the author gave me a copy for free and it's really cool, I must share!!! Windmill slammed that. I expect it will go out of print quite quickly.
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Jul 28, 2023 17:26
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RDM posted:I find pretty much every work of fiction where ecoterrorism is a thing to be unrealistic to the point of unreadable. Nobody does ecoterrorism. Nobody is ever gonna do ecoterrorism. I'd agree with this. In our real world we don't really have ecoterrorism so much as ecovandalism. Actual terrorism tends to result in the thing you're doing terrorism for getting blown to hell. Ecoterrorism means that whales start getting assassinated by Seal Team 6.
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Jul 28, 2023 17:32
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RDM posted:His entire manifesto was how much he hated feminism because what it did to people fixed
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Jul 28, 2023 19:07
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GhastlyBizness posted:I recall some centrist/liberal pearl clutching around the time of Ministry for the Future's release because the good guys are doing eco-terrorism! https://twitter.com/headfallsoff/status/1678030577486708739
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Jul 28, 2023 20:20
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the eco revolutionary anime avatar Twitter person is definitely 100% right,, well, definitely the last sentence anyway 
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Jul 28, 2023 20:38
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buffalo all day posted:the eco revolutionary anime avatar Twitter person is definitely 100% right,, well, definitely the last sentence anyway It's not twitter anymore it's X in a fancy font 
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Jul 28, 2023 20:39
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well if yuuko from nichijou says so
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Jul 28, 2023 20:42
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RDM posted:His entire manifesto was how much he hated technology because what it did to people. It's like calling luddites ecoterrorists cause they were smashing up factories. What it did to people and the environment. And I don't think it would be too wrong to call the Luddites ecoterrorists by the modern definition, which lumps actual people-killing terrorism in with sabotage. And the Luddites, although primarily a labour-rights movement, were tied in with romanticism, which is basically what passed for environmentalism at the time. In the modern context, though, there plenty of people spiking trees, setting fire to oil rigs, and sabotaging whaling boats, all of which is legally classified as eco-terrorism.
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Jul 28, 2023 21:01
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C.M. Kruger posted:It's a extremely optimistic book that ends up being depressing because we're in the real world and people don't agree to "just fix everything" and there are no UN black ops death commandos. This is my take on it. Really made me despair that we'll prevent hundreds of millions of needless deaths because the book was nigh pollyanna-ish and a ton of people still died. Also: GhastlyBizness posted:I recall some centrist/liberal pearl clutching around the time of Ministry for the Future's release because the good guys are doing eco-terrorism! Awkward Davies posted:Is Ministry of the Future good? I love KSR and have read a good portion of his books. Something about the cover saying it was a favorite of Obama’s is turning me off. Lol. Fuckin' internet leftists, man.
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Jul 28, 2023 22:25
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StrixNebulosa posted:Given that the author gave me a copy for free and it's really cool, I must share!!! I can't afford this, so it's really a shame that I'm going to buy it anyways ...When it returns to print, that is.
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Jul 28, 2023 23:23
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Clark Nova posted:A climate change book may hit too close to home at the moment, but it is likely to hit even closer to home in any future moments so now is the best time to read it "It's not the hottest summer of your life, it's the coldest summer of the rest of your life." Nuclear Tourist fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jul 29, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 23:46
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habeasdorkus posted:
It’s not really the politics of it, I’m just not sure that an Obama endorsement indicates a sci fi book I want to read? Like it implies that it’s very important to read or something, which activates my innate knee jerk “nah” feeling. I’m looking for escapism at the moment, not something that someone might say is “relevant and timely”.
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Jul 29, 2023 02:43
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Is Carrion Comfort science fiction or fantasy? I dunno. I thought it was real loving good though. Definitely makes me want to read more Simmons.
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Jul 29, 2023 03:30
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I'm about halfway through Blindsight thanks to this thread and I just wanted to pop in and say... ...gently caress you all very much. (e: and I'm sure it only gets better/worse)
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Jul 29, 2023 03:37
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