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NeilNjae
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How is this different from other forms of bilingualism? Or the differences between spoken language and sign language? The use of emoticons to express thoughts and feelings is contemporary, but people have long been doing things like calligraphy and …
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I tried reading a couple of others, with varying degrees of success. I felt that most of them followed the same structure as Story of Your Life: he had an interesting maths/physics idea and wrote a bit of narrative to explore it. I found that after …
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Microscope is the other game that would fit this idea well. For those who don't know, it's a game of creating a history. You start by defining the first and last eras of a history, then either create other eras between them or drill down into partic…
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(Quote) I hadn't made that connection, so thanks for raising it. There's a strong theme of free will in the story, and whether it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
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I also liked the alien-ness of the visitors. The physics concepts were already familiar to me, so there was nothing new there. I spent some time thinking about how that approach would work in terms of biology of the heptapod's brains. But essentiall…
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It was an interesting idea. I don't think it holds much water, but it was interesting to explore. I liked that it wasn't always clear when the different episodes occurred, but there was a strong central sequence to the story. I think a short story w…
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There wasn't so much a "plot" as a "situation" in the story, and that's fine given the length of the story. It's Sapir-Whorf again, but an interesting take on it. It brings up interesting questions of free will. Banks ends up mov…
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3 pts: The Islanders / Dream Archipelago / The Evidence 2 pts: Dune (+ Dune Messiah, sounds like) 1 pt: Dangerous Visions / Again Dangerous Visions
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Are pulp adventure novels the literary equivalent to dungeons? Simple structure, limited locations, few choices at each juncture?
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Another slow read sounds good. Reads I'm keen on: * Dune, perhaps Dune Messiah as well (probably not enough room for Children) * Codex 1962: never heard of it, but it sounds interesting. * The Dream Archipelago et al. I've read some of these at va…
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Is it that different prejudices are "fashionable", or is it that they're becoming noticed by the privileged people who write SF? It could be that Asimov didn't think about racism because he never came across people who were the victims of …
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My main difficulty of including prejudice in games is my lack of experience with it. I've not been on the receiving end of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. so I'm wary of my ability to include those issues in a game. The one time I was in a game of …
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So, to prompt some discussion. Should unveiled, blatant racism be present in our games? Are these topics we should include in the games at our tables? Should they be in games we offer for public play, such as at cons? Should real-world racism be pre…
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I'm not sure I would say, as it could pre-empt the discussions. I'll happy say why when discussion starts, we've all read it, and formed our own opinions.
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(Quote) I've read Story of Your Life, and a couple of the others. I'd suggest you read Story… before diving into too many of the other stories in the collection. But it'll be fun to hear what other people think of the collection as a whole, if anyo…
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I joined after this book was first read, so I've no stake in whether it's read again. It sounds interesting, though.
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(Quote) I'm not too sure that many of those people were around at the same time. But there are certainly plenty of people around Arne-Sayles when he was opening the way to the House. There's something there about the risk of sacrificing your persona…
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(Quote) I think it helps that the narrator wasn't unreliable in that way: Piranesi may have been naive and ignorant, but he never told us readers anything other than the truth as he understood it.
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(Quote) That's the book referenced at the start of Piranesi. I've not read The Magician's Nephew, so I can't comment on the closeness.
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There's a lot to be said for Burning Wheel. But thinking about it, are changes in Beliefs enough to model the changes in Piranesi's self-identity from Sorensen to Piranesi to ... whoever he becomes (and is that important to the core of the book)? B…
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(Quote) Yes! Of course! I can see it now you mention it.
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Another thing that came to me while answering question 6. The book is about hidden knowledge. The House was accessed? created? to get to the hidden knowledge of the ancients. Sorensen was forced there to explore it, but in doing so his own self-know…
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(Quote) I'll echo the quality of the prose had a lot to do with the appeal of the book. Piranesi's adoration of the House shone through very clearly. I think the diary structure allowed Clarke to include not only the events that occurred, but also P…
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Piranesi was innocent, naive, and without malice. That made them easy to have sympathy for, so I cared about them and that they did well. I liked that Piranesi never lied to us, the reader: the revelations about his past were as shocking to him as t…
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I mentioned in Q3 that the book could well be informed by Clarke's enforced solitude due to CFS, and the allusions to a Victorian style of Piranesi's life. @RichardAbbott 's point about devotion is a good one. Could we consider Piranesi as being li…
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A few things came to mind regarding the symbolism. One is the Jungian archetypes as @RichardAbbott pointed out. Piranesi spends a lot of time contemplating what the statues represent and chooses different statues to witness his different actions. …
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For a start, the world isn't that interesting in itself: it's a collection of symbols that Piranesi relates to. Even so, most of the time we spend inside Piranesi's head as he thinks about his lot. There's very little about the world as a challenge:…
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(Quote) It's a good example of the narrator being so unreliable that not even they realise they're unreliable! I agree, it was a good way of feeding in the exposition over time. Clarke is a good enough author to engage us readers from the beginning…
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Good to see you, Jesse! Glad you could make it.
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I've only just started this (distracted by other books) and.... Family Circle! The Biscuit-Box Man. That must confuse so many colonials. I mentioned it to my wife and she immediately said, "Oh, I've not had a jammy dodger for ages."