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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,355
- 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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My first offer would be Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison - it's short (under 200 pages) and easily available on Amazon (UK and US), Audible and bookshop.org. It's a slightly weird blend of fairy tale, folklore, and historical fantasy. Mitchison was i…
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I have set up a Book Nominations thread so feel free to make additions...
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This was one of the (several) reasons why I got out of writing software for financial firms - in one job we spent about 18 months writing a currency conversion tool in one particular framework, and at the end of that, when the tool was on the verge …
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We have read a few books in translation in the local book club including some Far Eastern, and especially with the latter there has always been some very distinctive social context which made it clearly different. And dialogue especially seems hard …
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If we were following the regular (old?) sequence it would be October - @NeilNjae November - me December @clash_bowley I'm happy either way. Shall I set up a separate thread for nominations? Seems the best way rather than trying to reuse this one. I …
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I thought similarly - the various people, whilst working in a techie way on space ships or space stations and all, had no more real idea what they were involved with than did the carpet makers and their families. But I agree that the link wasn't so …
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I'll be interested to see what scale people talk about here - the rather hand-to-mouth existence on the carpet-producing planets, or the high-tech spaceship crews, or the political empire vs rebels drama. Is it at all possible to cover more than one…
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I guess this was an area where I ended up thinking, yeah, whatever! My take on it was that it was a simple revenge plot focusing on hair to highlight the clash between two rulers. I suppose there's a sense that carpeting an entire planet with hair c…
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Yes, this worked for me - I wondered with the tiny initial steps just where we were going, but as you say the speed of enlarging the perspective cranked up enormously.
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I have to admit that I couldn't tell and wouldn't have guessed it was in translation without having been told right at the start.
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Personally I wouldn't call it a novel, though I guess it's in part a matter of semantics. It's certainly not a fixup book, as the individual scenes are too short and fragmentary to make much sense on their own. It feels more like a kind of kaleidosc…
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I also hadn't expected the format to be what it was, and it reminded me a bit of City in the sense of having multiple linked tales. But the links here were much more direct from one story to the next - there was a sense of one word or idea being int…
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Finished a couple of days ago
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I guess City had elements of this, as all the humans sloped off in various ways leaving the dogs and the ants (and the robot) behind. I'm not sure I've some across the ideas recently in other books though.
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All: still time to add to the discussion about Air but this is also a reminder that September's read is The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach, chosen by @Apocryphal . The regular sequence after that would be October - @NeilNjae November - me Dece…
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Your comments made me wonder if this was "really" a book about the idea of singularity, with Air providing the catalytic effect? The first part of the story and the tech development across most of the world seemed broadly to follow familia…
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Maybe we should set up a thread which contains a list of books, each with some info as to why the person thinks it's a good one to read together. Then once a month we vote on whatever the list contains at the time, using the 1-2-3 method Clash sugge…
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I like the monthly cycle and wonder if dropping to bi-monthly might lead to even less participation? But your main point is well taken. But then, I enjoy the format and the range of books chosen. Even when a book selected for a particular month doe…
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(Quote) early on we get (Quote) I guess we might say 'set out your pitch' as a western alternative?
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Keen to hear what others say about this
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I would have liked more of this. It popped out a couple of times but was never developed in the narrative long enough for my taste.
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I thought this was a really strong point. I don't know enough about that region to know if the culture was accurately presented, but it was convincing to . I think it would be difficult in either Europe or America to find a group that had remained s…
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I thought it did very well considering the time it came out - sufficiently so that many of the points seem kind of obvious now! As mentioned in a different thread, although I wasn't convinced by the alluded-to theoretical underpinnings of technologi…
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I found her rather enigmatic, and never quite felt that I knew her very well - part of her was always hidden, which was an appropriate way to write her, I think. I was never quite sure how she would react to the next situation. I wasn't entirely sol…
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I wasn't persuaded by Air as a communications technology apparently based on hidden dimensions - I worked on such models back in the day, when they were collectively known as Kaluza-Klein models, and I'm not sure that the job of converting the rolle…
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I think the main message I took from it was the inevitability of change, and the sense that there was going to be an irrevocable loss of individuality. I admired the way that half the time one admired the villagers for taking on the global marketpla…
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I wasn't sure what to expect, and so I'm not sure if it accomplished what it set out to do! And indeed the end in some ways surprised me - not the flood, which was heavily signalled, but the aftermath with Air adoption. At some points it felt like i…
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How's everyone doing with Air? @kcaryths when do you think would be a good time to put up discussion starters?
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Still time to comment on Signal Lost and this is also a heads-up that August's read is Air by Geoff Ryman, chosen by @kcaryths
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(Quote) I guess if you're the Rebel Alliance you assume that anyone that the Evil Empire imprisoned is probably on your side...