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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,360
- 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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Out of curiosity (I don't mind a spoiler as I'm very unlikely to read the book) did Essun end up as a stone eater herself, like (I assume) Alabaster did?
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(Quote) I think it cannot fail to be very different...
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I had this thought while reading _Tehanu_, but had forgotten it until reading the Q&A with UlG that @dr_mitch posted. One of the striking differences with _Tehanu_ as compared to the previous three books is, I think, the way cosmic stuff abou…
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Thanks for that, I enjoyed it a lot (and it spurred me to remember something I had forgotten about while we were discussing Tehanu)
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(Quote) When we were reading Player of Games we talked a bit about the possible effect of language on mental state, with particular reference to whether Gurgeh was speaking Marain or not, and what impact that might have had on his ability to compreh…
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I got my Kindle copy for £2.99 (UK)
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(Quote) Totally agree with this. If I'm tired or zoned out for some reason, my read of choice is often an author like EE (Doc) Smith. I would never defend his writing as deep, or accomplished, or anything like that... but as a light, improbable, pac…
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Tales from EarthSea is the collection of stories, and The Other Wind is the conclusion of the whole. As I have mentioned once or twice, I reckon The Other Wind is totally awesome, not just as a piece of writing but as a way to subvert and overthrow …
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(Quote) Man, you sure know how to sell a book...
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(Quote) That's an interesting (and provocative :) ) meta-question... I wonder if there has been a rise in non-bleak super-optimistic fiction over the last 6 months? Or to people on balance like dystopia and bleakness more when they're surrounded by …
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@NeilNjae fair enough! I guess it's tribute to UlG that her books can give rise to differing interpretations. The political romantic in me wants to believe that Odonian society fundamentally works, and originally did work, and only slips away from …
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Hmmm, let me clarify what I meant. Not that the society was in a Utopian state at the beginning of the story (I'm going to limit myself to Tehanu and The Dispossessed for the time being, as I don't feel I know ACH well enough to comment). Rather, th…
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(Quote) My feeling is that it's a kind of shadow side to Ged's ability to turn up where and when needed. Both men display a kind of synchronicity, but exercised in opposite directions on the help-harm axis. We re explicitly told that Ged's ability h…
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We once grew figs very successfully in the Southampton area, but they struggle to fruit up here in Cumbria. Plenty of leaves though... Maybe I should find a south-facing spot and embark on peaches here :)
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> @Apocryphal said: > We grow peaches in Canada, if that helps. :-) Fair enough! Happy to be corrected here... I couldn't imagine them growing in Northern Europe without greenhouses and the like.
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Also on Scope (extending this to include Setting) I found the descriptions of Gont delightful, except that I kept stumbling over peach trees growing there! I couldn't square up peach trees with the rest of what I felt was quite a northerly climate. …
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Probably also worth mentioning the role of Spark, who presumably represents the male norm of much of the world of EarthSea.
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Open questions, definitely! It is very hard to imagine this as the end of the EarthSea series - and I write this, fully aware that the cover that @Apocryphal posted recently called this "The Last Book of EarthSea", and that my own copy is …
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Maybe this is the right place to comment on poetry as well. The EarthSea Creation Hymn is pivotal in this book, partly explicitly as Tehanu starts to learn it, and partly implicit when we learn that Kalessin is just another name for Segoy. The maki…
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I agree with @NeilNjae - true names seem quite removed from this book. We only actually encounter one taught word in the true language - tolk for stone - and that's a word which we already met several books ago (the very first one in the series, I t…
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I have the sense too that the book is deliberately exploring issues that UlG left unexplored in the earlier books, and particularly the role of women in various situations. Not only Tenar and Tehanu, but also the various witches we meet. So although…
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Commenting so I see replies
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It's probably worth also saying to new members that in order to get notifications of new discussions, they (and all of us) need to check their notification preferences: Go got your profile, Select Notification Preferences, Scroll to Category Notific…
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(Quote) "Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen (about 95 percent) and methane (about 5 percent), with small amounts of other carbon-rich compounds. High in Titan’s atmosphere, methane and nitrogen molecules are split apart by the Sun's ultravio…
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Aha! @Apocryphal check out https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/15422/titans-kraken-mare/ (Image) "The Cassini spacecraft looks toward Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and spies the huge Kraken Mare in the moon's north... This view looks towa…
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(Quote) Geothermal maybe? Depending how much heat there is in the interior (probably generated by gravitational flexing from Saturn). Probable "titanothermal" would be a better word - I should probably register the trade name now and make …
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Some other thoughts: 1. the surface gravity is not that much less than our moon (1.35 ms-2 as opposed to 1.6) 2. the surface atmosphere pressure is about 1.5 times that of Earth at sea level 3. the air pressure and density compared to the surface g…
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I haven't been reading it but am commenting so I can follow anyone else's thoughts
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Great! Thanks all.
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> @NeilNjae said: > I'm happy to read a book that's been adapted. What book are you thinking of? Does it have a film that everyone would know? The short story is Ted Chiang's _Story of Your Life_ (to be found in the collection _Stories of …