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Apocryphal
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Oh, yeah - there was a degree of that back in the day here too.
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I’m not sure we’ve seen deregulation. If anything I think I see more regulation now that ever. But the widening gap, for sure. I do think the globalization of Cyberpunk (that is, the global span of the stories and the prevalence of mainly East Asian…
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I don’t think making dumb videos about copying some dance move in your pool or dumping cold water over your head is very cyber pink at all. Also, Although ’Cyberpunk’ as it’s perceived more gut be about the blend of tech and rock, I think that just …
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I don’t think the transformative power of computers became really apparent to me until sometime in the nineties, but even from my childhood, computers were a part of my life. My brother and I took ‘computer classes’ from a teen and we learned a bit …
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I do agree that ‘style’ is important in terms of the setting and characters, but here I think Sterling is getting at the prose style. Some of the stories - maybe four or five, clearly fit the bill. Unfortunately style is only cool when you can pull …
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I mainly answered this in the previous question, my answers here are (a) yes, exactly, and (b) surprisingly not that much. That’s ok - I’m sure the authors knew what they were doing. I’d kind of like a revised definition of the genre now, though, an…
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Was ‘Cyberpunk’ envisioned? Like that way Malcolm McLaren envisioned ‘punk rock’ and milder a style out of what had really just been a local underground scene? Or was it just a fashionable way of doing certain things, for a short time? In terms o…
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Overall I though it was a mixed bag (which is almost always the case with a collection or anthology - except those compiled by John Joseph Adams). My favourite was easily the first story, the one by William Gibson, which mightily impressed me in …
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@RichardAbbott seeking clarification on the above.
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I DNFed that big story in the middle - too jargony at the beginning and by the time I got to the middle I had no clue what was happening - seemed pointless to finish it - and the the author ‘kindly’ included at second version of it right after, so s…
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I just finished a few moments ago.
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Just to be clear, the book we're reading is His Majesty's Dragon, first in the Temeraire series? Sometimes the NA/UK titles are different.
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I was going to say “ah, the reach of the book club at work” but I guess we still only have short arms! In my experience his books look bigger than they are due to lots of art, white space, and large font. They aren’t small, but not as huge as the…
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It was based on the Novik series? I had assumed the game predated the books (mainly because I hadn’t heard of them and assumed they were new-ish).
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@clash wrote a game like this. In Harm’s Way: Dragons, I think it was called.
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I’m still working my way through the derives works.The Poe story didn’t interest me much. And I couldn’t really parse the poetry - was hoping maybe you could explain it to me,structurally. It has rhyming sections, but there are really inconsistent ,…
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I'd say that's very true for things like sights, sounds, even food, if your goal is to reveal those things to the audience. But I think thoughts and personalities probably render better in written format. Written travelogues also don't have to rely …
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Experienced GMs will mainly go with the flow, feeling comfortable enough to improvise. Less experienced ones might might do otherwise if they lack that comfort. As for guiding stuck PCs, you can have an NPC (non-player character) give the group an i…
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Yes - interesting take!
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I've mentioned many times that I quite like them - especially travelogues that take us back in time, as well as go to a new place. I find there's a lot that I can get out of them. A travel writer, for example, is never shy to relay the mythical qual…
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I felt that Severin did a pretty good job of revealing Jason's voyage through his account of his own voyage. At least, when I read the account of Jason's voyage at the end, I don't think there were any surprises - that Severin had covered it all, an…
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The Ulysses Voyage was the one I read, and although I liked The Jason Voyage, I preferred The Ulysses Voyage. Because it used the same boat, it was a lot less about how the boat was constructed and less about what it was like to sail her. Instead, w…
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(Quote) Yes, mine too - not only was the return journey covered, but the various improbable routes up the Danube or around the world ocean were mentioned. Did the kindle edition omit this part of the text, I wonder?
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(Quote) I generally agree that the best use of journeys is not as 'obstacles'. It's to some reason why I never really cared for the journey mechanic in The One Ring - it just devolved a journey down to a series of rolls, which is a bit boring (thoug…
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Is there any substance to the Brendan story, apart from ‘rumour has it a bunch of monks did this’? With Jason, we have actual specific stops and events that occurred at those stops, because we have a written story. But did Brendan ever leave an itin…
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I don’t remember his own theory on this - I thought he just gave other peoples theories. He often seems to see ‘certainty’ based on flimsy evidence (like taking the bull and snakey line motif as evidence of a real Jason voyage), but then I think he’…
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Ha, yes, good observation.
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I compared this Annotated version to the 2 other versions I have, just to see the differences (and because I was curious if the Hunchback was in them): The Husein Haddawy version, which is the result of research to establish to the earliest stories…
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Yes, sure. It’s a good story. Burton’s prose really is purple, and I guess that’s a method of exoticising and/or antiquating the setting. I prefer Seale’s prose, but I do like Burton’s footnotes on the Arabic. I did have to look up Gobbo, though, w…
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Probably doesn't warrant it's own thread, but I read the remaining Diyab Notes stories and my reaction is much the same - too cursory to really enjoy (especially the last), but they have the bones of otherwise good adventurous stories, I think. Now…