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NeilNjae
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I don't think so. Industrialisation happened, and that changed things. But it was more an excuse for the plot than anything else.
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I think the physical and engineering parts were plausible extrapolations from the author's time. No problems there. Now, the social setting was a very different matter. He described a world where white male technocrats had all the power, and were co…
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I felt much the same. The first half was mostly good, even if it suffered from long irrelevant diversions. I lost interest in the second half and especially the last quarter. I didn't get any sense of menace or fear from it. It was all about her…
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I'm away this weekend, I'll join in soon.
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I've finished it, so post questions whenever!
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A quick look online shows various anti-war Japanese before and during WW2. I think I knew that the war wasn't universally popular before it started (but many fell into supporting the war once it did). But, the general point is one about the limited…
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Does that mean we should propose worse books in future?
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Veering away from the book, I've come to understand that most bureaucratic impediments aren't there to support the best of us, but rather to impede the incompetent and malicious. Bureaucratic checks often stop mistakes, and do more to constrain the …
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There's two ways of running investigations in RPGs. One is the traditional way, where GM prepares a mystery and a set of clues for it, then reveals the clues as the players do things until the players are also able to understand (recreate?) the exp…
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I agree that the descriptions of the deaths don't overly dwell on the gory details. There's enough there that you can imagine the scene, but not so much as to revolt the reader (or at least, me). But yes, when is killing morally justified? What kil…
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(Quote) So, John Smith's not a villain for torturing people to death? Takahashi Kansei isn't a hero for saving McGrady's life? How should McGrady be different in order to be a "hero", or is the hardboiled genre one that does not allow her…
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I was struck by the tension between the "rugged individual" self-image of Americans with the ideals of patriotism. How can a sovereign individual be loyal to a country? How can a patriot put themselves above their fellow citizens?
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(Quote) Really? I read it that he only decided to go back to Sachi once he'd run out of other things to do and was at a bit of loose end. OK, there's a bit more to it than that. I think that episode is saying something about alienation and people b…
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The erasure point is interesting and important. Actual history was, in many case, more interesting and diverse than we're currently led to believe. Which means authors have to balance representing something in line with current popular understanding…
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(Quote) I tend not to enjoy investigative games, so my response is coloured by that. But even general advice about running investigation games is to avoid red herrings and false leads, because the players have so much less awareness of everything, a…
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A couple of articles about internment of Japanese on Hawaii during WW2: * Hawaii internment, a website of resources for schools (a good primer) * A Time article on internment, indicating that only a small fraction of Japanese people were interred o…
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@Apocryphal reminded me of another question to raise here. McGrady generally comes across as the standard hardboiled detective: tough, physically able, shrugs off the mental trauma of killing, comfortable with people's baser instincts. In contrast t…
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(Quote) As an aside, I initially thought Molly would be a mythical figure, only appearing in notes and phone calls, and it would be a recurring theme that McGrady would be a constant long-distance relationship. That idea was quickly discarded. But …
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(Quote) Let me expand and clarify the question. I know what it means, even if I didn't express it! People in history commonly held views that are now considered sexist, racist, and so on. In this case, it's the idea that women should not exist as a…
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@clash_bowley , it's a shame you won't be joining this discussion. I hope you read the book sometime: I think you'll enjoy it. I've posted the questions, but no rush if people want to wait until the weekend.
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(Quote) I think it most often comes up when playing in cultures with different standards of politeness. Modern euro-anglophone culture is much more casual about things like given names / family names than we were just a few decades ago, or (the clas…
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How are people doing with this book? I was thinking of posting some questions in the next few days, that being the end of February. Is that OK with people?
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(Quote) I'm not sure what you're saying here. Is the novel a bit dull in these places? Yes, I think so too, but I don't think that's the point you ( @BarnerCobblewood ) are trying to make. Are you saying the Huron didn't have young men fixated on b…
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(Quote) Is that true of this book? I thought The Orenda was a sincere attempt to give an honest insight into the humanity and culture the people living at the time, all of whom are different from the mostly-WEIRD readers. It may or not be successful…
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I've also read Desolation. It was good, but not as good as Memory, I thought. The main strength of Memory, I thought, was it it was set in the pressure cooker of high politics in Teixcalaan and everything related to that. Desolation was about an ext…
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(Quote) ...and fish don't believe in water. It's so pervasive, it's as if it doesn't exist. I came across this Twitter thread (written by a Jew) about how much YA dystopian fiction has profound assumptions of white protestant society, even when it'…
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(Quote) In that case, why not have a viewpoint character in the Iroquois? We readers don't get to see how the Iroquois are affected by the Europeans, apart from them winning the war with the Wendat. As for the accuracy, I don't have a problem with …
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@Apocryphal , good point. I think I meant that the book doesn't read like standard "adventure" genre fiction. I stand corrected that my range of comparisons was too limited. @BarnerCobblewood , thanks very much for the link to Boyden's ar…
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I should have said, the pertinent part about guns affecting warfare on the Great Plains starts with the paragraph containing "The popular image of the Great Plains Native America is unarmored": https://acoup.blog/2021/01/08/collections-tha…
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(Quote) There's also the "astrology explanation" in that the prophecies are vague enough to apply to many situations, and only the successful ones are remembered.