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MikeJF posted:Afterwards, the surrounding warships mention that it was an incredibly cruel thing for the attacking warship to do to the traitor, so I'll take that as confirmation. It's definitely the result of an effector attack. The Killing Time was sweeping the warships, looking for the Attitude Adjustor. The AA first commands the 6 closest ships to disguise themselves, and then all the others as well. It realizes it made a mistake by doing this, as the effector swings towards it and targets it very, very briefly. It's immensely relieved when the effector goes away again, thinking its ruse has worked, and then practically immediately starts to doubt its actions, its mission, and itself, and commits suicide. And then a few pages after that, the KT takes stock of the situation (still in the middle of the battle), and checks if the AA is still killing itself. It's all pretty obvious really. And loving awesome. There are other similar passages in the book, where a mind has to shut off all communication (and communication = every single goddamn thing that can contain any form of information, no matter how small or indirect) to protect itself from being taken over.
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Oct 6, 2009 23:39
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I don't see how you can read that any other way than as a forced suicide. Going even further, I'm positive that when the AA is thinking about looking up the names of its co-conspirators, that's also the work of the KT, trying to find out who sent the AA on its mission. It's probably a combination of both; trying to get the names and convincing the AA of its own guilt when it can't/won't reveal them.
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Oct 7, 2009 13:46
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Surface Detail is out btw, I got it yesterday on Kindle. I'm not pleased about the price, but being able to get start reading it 5 minutes after I realized it was out was just too convenient. Edit: 15% in, and it's pretty cool. Read it! 
uXs fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Oct 9, 2010 |
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Oct 9, 2010 11:16
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It's possible. But not only for the UK, I'm in Belgium so it's probably all of Europe.
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Oct 11, 2010 10:02
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Just finished Surface Detail, didn't change my mind. It's awesome, read it. Ending spoiler: I did think the ending was a bit much. One of the central figures in the war is the protagonist of another book? Really? That's way too much of a coincidence in a galaxy as huge as this one. Edit: I'm less than pleased with the Kindle version I got though. There are a lot of errors in words and sentences that are split where they shouldn't be, some missing words and even a missing sentence. There's also a ton of places where there probably should be a paragraph break. I'd have to check a paper copy (and I will), but some of the jumps from one subplot to another are just way too abrupt to be intended like that. uXs fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Oct 17, 2010 |
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Oct 17, 2010 13:39
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17$ for the Kindle edition with the Hardcover being 15$? gently caress off, 'the publisher'.
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Oct 5, 2012 11:53
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Motherfucker.
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Apr 3, 2013 17:21
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Prolonged Priapism posted:I've wanted to take some of the ideas from the Culture novels and turn them in to cool visually spectacular CGI-fest sequences for a long time now, but I barely have any familiarity with any of the programs you'd need. I always figured I could "learn it later" and that the Culture universe would keep growing while I procrastinated. And someday, when I was Good At Stuff, I would make this cool thing I have in my head, and maybe Banks would see it too. Sweet, and indeed much better than just keeping them in your head. One thing that I notice right away is that they all look exactly the same, which doesn't feel very Culture-like to me. Also, maybe post it and future ones in here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3342275 - it's a bit more fantasy than SF, but SF nonetheless gets posted there all the time.
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Apr 21, 2013 10:37
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Peel posted:What violence achieved in WW2 was to negate the use of it by someone else. The problem violence was introduced to solve, it was a total failure in addressing. The real problem of competition inside Europe was then solved by decades of NATO and the Warsaw Pact not going to war, but waiting for one or the other to lose the economic competition while working towards international cooperation. That's now under a lot of strain in the wake of the economic crisis, but you'll note that war on continental Europe is still out of the question. For that last statement to be true, you have to ignore these: 2001 Insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia 2002 Perejil Island crisis 2004 Unrest in Kosovo 2004 Georgia, Adjara crisis 2006 Georgia, Kodori crisis 2007–present Civil war in Ingushetia 2008 Unrest in Kosovo 2008 Russia–Georgia war 2009–present Insurgency in the North Caucasus 2011–present North Kosovo crisis And that's just the 21st century.
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Jan 10, 2014 20:36
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the JJ posted:Or, if we're not being pedantic, we can hold that up to both WWII and the 'what could have been' that was WWIII. Sure. But it's still war and it's still in continental Europe. Just assuming that it won't ever happen again is foolish. Continued dialogue and cooperation between nations is needed to keep us in the relatively happy place we are in now.
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Jan 11, 2014 13:40
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Tony Montana posted:There is a thread on here, I think in D&D (abandon all hope, ye who enter here.. etc), called 'The rise of Fascism in Europe'. It's talking about the crazy neo-Nazi poo poo happening in Greece and how Russia and Putin are seemingly regressing and removing human rights and generally a whole stack of current, happening stuff that is loving scary. Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Taking peace for granted is naive. And dangerous.
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Jan 11, 2014 14:46
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Eschatos posted:Just finished Look to Windward. That was excellent, definitely my favorite Culture book so far. As usual there were a few parts I didn't understand. What was the deal with the behemothaur scholar? When he's revived after a "galactic cycle" is that supposed to mean a year passed, or a huge amount of time? I was also pretty disappointed that Banks never went into detail on how the Chelgrians killed the Sansemin. Also, was the Chelgrian terminator supposed to be modeled on Quilan's wife? A galactic cycle is a full rotation of the galactic disk. So like 250 million years? So yeah, a 'huge amount' sounds like an apt description.
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Jun 9, 2015 21:13
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