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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 5,689
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, Administrator, Moderator
- Games I like
- Sundry, mostly board
- Books I like
- Science fiction, fantasy, some historical fiction
Comments
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(Quote) That sounds a really cool idea! What happens when the tower collapses? Or is that situation-dependent?
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(Quote) Are we in fact collectively too inured to horror these days for it to have much impact as a genre? In film / TV it seems to me that much of the emphasis is on making the menace / injury / whatever more and more explicit, whereas older forms …
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I've been rereading A Memory Called Empire - a cracking book which I enjoy more each time I revisit it - and came across this rather pertinent extract (Quote)
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@BarnerCobblewood 's comments made me think about to what extent there's a difference between 1) awe of encountering the numinous (often called "fear and trembling" in older accounts) and 2) horror in either Hodgson's presentation or in …
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Interested to hear what will be discussed here
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I suppose again this was a facet of the book that made me feel that Hodgson was writing from some kind of inner experience or vision, rather than to make a point or address some kind of external situation. To repeat what I said before, I ended up wi…
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It occurred to me several times while reading that Hodgson was writing this at around the time that psychoanalysis and its related therapies were starting to emerge, along with a growing understanding of the unconscious. In the book, the connection …
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Use of a frame is moderately common in 19th century books (strictly speaking Borderland isn't C19th but it feels like it shares a lot of those conventions. Other similar writing conventions are the epistolary novel in which the action is described b…
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I have to admit that I don'y have much experience of horror so don't have a lot to compare to. I did think that the "fast-forward through time" bit had a lot of similarities with The Time Machine - the latter book was published earlier (18…
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I have just added Arthurian Romances, by Chrétien de Troyes to the discussion area - on kindle at least, and maybe elsewhere, you can either get the set together or individually so I have hacked together some descriptions :)
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> @Apocryphal said: > How is everyone doing on House on the Borderland? Also finished
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Looks like at least in the UK it's also available in kindle and Audible plus physical copies. Sounds good to me.
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December's discussion area for Ammonite set up. @NeilNjae any thoughts for November?
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For December I'm thinking Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, a tale somewhat in the Ursula LeGuin tradition ie heavy on social interaction and the like. Published in 2011 and among other things shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke award. I've had a quick l…
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Still some chatter going on about City but this is a quick reminder that October's read is The House on the Borderland chosen by @Apocryphal
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(Quote) I increasingly think that the domestication of the dog was one of the crucial facets of human development - the implied need to recognise a similar-but-different social setup without annihilating it (contra what happened with other ancient h…
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(Quote) I'll set up the discussion area shortly (though it's a few months away I think)
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(Quote) That's a great point - I just did a quick look at census data and the UK average is 287 people / sq km, with a maximum in parts of London of around 12000 / sq km. Here in South Lakeland we're about 46, and the lowest I could find in England …
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(and then the mice)
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(Quote) yes... hence my point that the specific lure is kind of irrelevant and could have been any number of things, so I don't think the astronomical features of Jupiter are the main thing in focus here :)
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Curious to hear what people say!
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TBH I'd completely forgotten the content of Epilogue until you reminded me! So it obviously didn't have nearly as much personal impact as the other tales. Scanning back through it there seems to be a whole collection of different themes revisited - …
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I kind of felt that here Simak just went off on a curious tangent rather than developing the main thrust of the idea. For me this part didn't have the same appeal as most of the stories. Yes, Jenkins's moral dilemma was a nice twist, and I guess the…
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Yes, this was a curious spin on events which I hadn't anticipated. I guess for "Jupiter" you could insert any number of drug or experiential lures away from the "real world". Maybe a more recent author would have had cyberspace h…
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I have to admit I got confused by the cobblies when they first appeared, and it took me a long while to realise that they were kind of parallel universe figures. I never did really understand what Simak was trying to do with them. On the other hand …
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I liked the dogs! They were kept just enough different from people that they gave a different perspective, while at the same time being broadly speaking familiar. I think you'd need a domesticated animal with a humanlike social order to fit the way …
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Again, Asimov's Spacers (and especially Solarians) are a direct parallel. Again, from a rural perspective what we find is that the folk with the money want the opportunity to spend short periods of time away from built-up society, but don't actually…
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It's a theme that a number of authors have explored before, notably Asimov when describing the Space societies in Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire (and probably a couple of others) - I'm particularly thinking of the planet Solaria here which was…
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I felt that this was a rather different take on the whole "future of humanity" story - a rather gentle and sorrowful tale exchanging the optimistic stance one often reads for one which gradually fades into oblivion. I'm not sure that I wou…
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September discussion questions to be posted by @kcaryths in a few days on his return. Then October's read is The House on the Borderland chosen by @Apocryphal . Beyond that, November will be a selection from @NeilNjae and December by yours truly...…