RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 4,896
- 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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I've had people call Far from the Spaceports libertarian, which kind of took me aback when I came across the comment. I guess it's not a word I use or think of using this side of The Pond.
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I suppose I reckon that "security's rubbish today so it'll always be so" isn't very convincing! I mean, space travel is kind of rubbish today but by the time of the book they've got it cracked quite nicely. And current medical science or r…
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(Quote) I guess that raises the very thorny issue of whether intelligence and sentience and sapience are different words for the same thing, or quite different kinds of things
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(Quote) Love this analogy!
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Yes, it's an odd one, no real sense of justice other than endless legal cases (and one has to wonder, to what body of laws are they appealing and what court has jurisdiction?). If each station/base/planet/asteroid has its own laws, how can a legal p…
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(Quote) That made for an interesting read, though I think I ended up in only partial agreement with it! Penned in 1981, it was before a lot of the transformation of SF to cover internal worlds and interpersonal relationships rather than external wor…
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Hard SF - no, not in my view, as there's no real attempt ever to present a coherent view of the state of the art. For example we have seen no glimpses into why SecUnits (and presumably ComfortUnits) are a mix of organic and synthetic material - no r…
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Worth noting too that mostly through the book, and so far in this discussion thread, we have construed "violence" as meaning something physical. But murderbot hardly gets a chapter without hacking some unfortunate device or other (and only…
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With my other half working as a psychotherapist I end up spending a decent amount of time talking around the whole autistic spectrum topic, so it wasn't so much off an introduction to the area as a revisitation! The preoccupation with trashy soap o…
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Within the world as presented, murderbots and sexbots, and ART, and a whole lot of other constructed things are considered sentient, but others are not. Our "hero" is quite dismissive about the abilities of lesser machinery, and tends to j…
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I've read a couple of Martha Wells books before but never any of her SF - I think of her as a competent writer who has good ideas, but her prose style leaves me kind of cold. I can't exactly articulate why this is, but something about the style just…
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(Quote) It's ages since I read any Vance
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All: some chatter continuing about Shardik which is great, but as we've now reached the 18th it's probably a good time to remind everyone that January's read is parts 1 and 2 of the Murderbot series, namely All Systems Red and Artificial Condition. …
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If there's enthusiasm I'll work out a schedule covering a roughly 6 month period (give or take) and see what that looks like.
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> @kcaryths said: > The descriptions of Shardik's ravaged and emaciated body, as well as the scene where he is being honoured in death, certainly felt like he was taking a bit of Aslan but rewriting him for his own story where the redemption …
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@BarnerCobblewood yes I tend to agree with a lot of what you said. I was trying to puzzle through the question "what did Adams think he was trying to achieve" given that collectively we've all decided that the book failed in various ways t…
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(Quote) That's a really nice summary, and got me thinking about other story arcs. The classic (and slightly simplistic) distinction between comedy and tragedy is that comedy follows an arc like \/ - it goes down first when everything's going wrong, …
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(Quote) That echoes something Ursula LeGuin wrote in the forward to Left Hand of Darkness: (Quote) Now, whilst I agree with that as a matter of principle, it doesn't IMHO address the practical problem that we face when reading a genre book... I hav…
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I downloaded the kindle sample and have just finished whatever fraction of the book that makes it - her writing style (like Piranesi) is clear and direct, and IMHO very enjoyable. As probably most of us know it's another look at Napoleonic Britain (…
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(Quote) Sorry to hear that, hope you're on the mend now (Quote) I partly agree with this - I still struggled with the writing and flicked rapidly through it... but I did appreciate the way Adams tried to tie start and end together, most notably wit…
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Welcome Joe! You probably already know that we take it in turns to pick a book each month. So as and when you want to join in that rotation just let us know. The "current book rotation" thread should give you the next couple of months. I s…
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(Quote) Talking to my other half about Shardik, she said almost the same as you... read it years ago and enjoyed it, but on hearing my comments about the book now doubts whether she would like it a second time around.
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Finished last night and my feelings weren't really changed by the ending - it all felt too long and too slow with too much elaborate verbiage. I don't mind lengthy writing if someone's prose style can support it, but I don't think Adams's is up to t…
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(Quote) I wondered lots of times if the problems I was having with Shardik were simply that it has not dated well? Some of the attitudes and tropes seemed stuck in their era (early 70s) and haven't survived the years in between very well. (I'd certa…
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(Quote) He talks in the intro about writing it after the success of Watership Down and I guess nobody had the nerve to edit him down :)
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(Quote) Oh yes, I am intending to finish and have been reading at a faster pace the last few days :)
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Personally I wouldn't rush to read anything else he's done! Shardik is the first of his books that I've read, and has kind of put me off him - I certainly wouldn't rush to tackle 1000 pages of this (though I suppose it might tell me more about the s…
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Speaking personally, I'd say no - even though I'm still reading it I'm struggling to remember the names of any characters other than Kelderek, the Tuginda and of course Shardik (who as you say is not really a character but more a force of nature). I…
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Aha, I'd migrated slightly into this discussion starter while tackling the last one. I found it needlessly long - it was obvious for about 100 pages or so, if not more, that Kelderek was going to meet the Tuginda again (though I had not anticipated …
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Yes, totally, and this approach has a lot of mileage (my comments to your second discussion starter notwithstanding :) ). This particular trope is one that I like, particularly when you get to experience the same events or individuals in opposite wa…