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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,363
- 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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> @NeilNjae said: > (Quote) > Perhaps we should read a le Carré / Smiley book soon, as a comparison on how to portray espionage? And perhaps a Flemming / Bond book as a contrast? That's a good idea. Another option is one of Alistair Mc…
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(Quote) More than that, I think. In the first conversation he and Syenite had about it, he said "Stonelore changes all the time... every civilisation adds to it; parts that don't matter to the people of the time are forgotten... some old tablet…
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(Quote) I was thinking of this one... Campaign for North Africa... not that I've ever played it (Axis and Allies was quite enough for me)
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> @clash_bowley said:. > (Quote) > Haha! Metal? Metal is useless! It rusts! All metals! 'Rusting' is a swear word! Clever, no? Give up your dreams of metal and use your sessapinae! Oh man, I'm trying not to be a salmon, but those littl…
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> @clash_bowley said: > BYW, Azad was such an 80s game! The book was first published 1988 so Banks was right up to the curve :)
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> @Apocryphal said: >... It might have been more interesting to have more of a Vancian or Wodehousian spin in the middle, with Gurgeh stumbling from one crisis to another. He had something of that - the episode where they try to get covert…
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Ch16: I think (but am not sure) that Antimony is different from the stone eater in the damaged obelisk. Did they communicate? Or did Antimony just rescue Alabaster and Syenite? How much time has passed? In passing, the island boats are wooden and …
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> @Apocryphal said: > This is, btw, my first Culture book. I did read The Algebraist once many years ago, but I seem to recall that's not a Culture novel. I think The Algebraist is supposed to be set before the Culture came into being. Tha…
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> @Apocryphal said: > .... Especially if we consider that The MIND might be insane. Which was sort-of the premise behind Consider Phlebas (but without the interlinking of all Minds)
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(Quote) Love it :)
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Keen to hear what others say - also how in a game context would you keep things in balance? What stops you just being able to ask a Mind how to solve the problem?
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Lots! Gurgeh himself, and the Emperor Nicosar stood out, but to the extent that they were drawn I found most of the second-tier characters also engaging and credible
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I suppose the Culture would argue the case on the basis of inequality - between the three genders for one thing (expressed very poignantly by the female player Trinev), but also between different social and cultural groups. I don't think that the Cu…
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Seems to me that one of the post-scarcity features is that both people and Minds have become accustomed to this situation, to the point where it doesn't bother either group. It's almost as though there are two Cultures, one for each. Player of Game…
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Hard for me to say as I have read it many times over, and enjoy it all the more each time. Speaking personally, I don't think the Flere-Imsaho reveal was a great surprise. What got me this time was the ever-increasing depth of the Empire, together …
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Not being an active game player at present, I found the descriptions incredibly absorbing and vivid. I'm interested to hear what real players think... As an addendum, I was totally involved in Gurgeh's emotions at the several points where he knows …
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It's certainly post-scarcity, and people can broadly do whatever takes their fancy with almost no restrictions. The conflicts are almost entirely "round the edges" ie with unintegrated groups such as the Empire of Azad here, which typicall…
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Yes from me
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On the literary fiction issue, there are lots of definitions out there, typically contrasting with "genre fiction". However, most are rather transparently favouring one "side", and so are quite negative about the other. I don'…
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(Quote) I remember something about a land-mass called Europe... didn't they have different colour passports or some such outrage? :) But more seriously, watching Eurovision would be above and beyond for the book club, as I have so far managed to ge…
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(Quote) If Alabaster's estimate of fifteen hundred miles is right, then on horseback this would take 2 or 3 months according to information I have seen online, depending on a whole bunch of factors like road surface, terrain etc. But we also know th…
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I've been pondering over the weekend what we do and don't know. As a group, our vague perceptions of ordinary-history-equivalent range from Medieval to Victorian, which is interesting simply in itself. So I wondered what we have and have not seen: …
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Ha! Curmudgeon hey! But yes, I agree with your don't shoot the messenger comment. And @NeilNjae we certainly do appreciate the effort you're putting in week by week. Oddly enough I saw a gushingly over the top homage to NK Jemisin's upcoming …
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As an aside, they seem to have been having nightly sex for a very long time. Presumably by now Syenite is either pregnant or has had at least one period? (For her sake, one could hope this to be while in the town rather than camped out along the roa…
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@clash_bowley Whilst I agree with most of your comments, to be strictly fair Chekhov would not expect the gun to be used straight away! It's ok for it to be left in the background for a while rather than snatched off the wall and fired... But thi…
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(Quote) Yes indeed there were medieval universities, but they didn't pursue single-study topics like a contemporary "school of mines" or "school of law" or whatever - they aimed to give a deep but general education into the world…
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(Quote) Maybe so, but I hadn't quite got that they had that level of sophistication. The sense I have been left with is of something like a medieval culture though with orogeny as a kind of magic element. However, we keep on having other stuff dropp…
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There seems to have been quite a jump between Syenite's last chapter and this one - long enough for loads of different people to have arrived and taken an interest. Regarding their prolonged stay at the port, I guess the economics of Fulcrum life s…
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Something I noticed in the Essun chapter is that all of a sudden we are meeting a lot of vocabulary about the Fulcrum which we have not before in her thread. (Which is a bit odd when you think that these chapters are ostensibly spoken _to_ her not _…
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Some cool description in Syenite's efforts to move the blockage... but at the same time it nagged at me. Surely in that situation she would have wanted to check with Alabaster? And surely the locals would have insisted on her doing that rather than …