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clash_bowley
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- clash_bowley
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Comments
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Like many of my campaigns it would center on sapient slavery, so no different than what I do.
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Looks like now to me.
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The only true hard SF is one minute into the future. Knowing many hackers as I do, the only thing different was the speed with which they did things. The end result is the same. They were also taking over systems that barely had any security at all,…
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I don't see it as either enjoyable or off-putting. It was a fact of existence, and needed to be dealt with. I do believe that all violence is coercion, and that use of coercion negates the impropriety of coercion being used against one, using coerci…
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I did not link the Murderbot's behavior with autism, although I think you are right. I certainly noticed the asexual/aromantic aspects - they were very up front. Yes they affected the story, but not for the worse. Most of the humans depicted in the…
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Absolutely agree with that reading! Slavery is slavery. If a thinking being is coerced into service, it is slavery, whether or not the being knows it. There is no moral or ethical difference between enslaving humans or non-humans for me. I loved tha…
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I totally enjoyed the novellas! Very good stories with interesting characters in interesting situations. I will definitely be reading more! The development of the main character is fascinating for me.
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(Quote) Well, then! High time we did so!
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I'm thinking Jack Vance's Emphyrio
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Should have jumped to him losing his kingship and gone forward from there, bringing in flashbacks as needed.
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I don't play well with genres - or lit crit - so I shall stay in the shallow end of the pool with the other kids... ;)
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I think Barner is exactly right on one thing - this book desperately needed an editor, one with a sharp scalpel and the good of the story at heart. There are the bones of something very cool here, but after Watership Down, they let Adams have his wa…
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I think if you cut out the middle and jump directly to the end the book would have been better for it. Like the guy that stitched the three 'Hobbit' movies together into two movies and vastly improved it all. Remembering of course that Jackson was f…
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(Quote) Welcome in Joel! I've enjoyed your participation in the Discord server - and I too am no lit guru! :D
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(Quote) I lost any enthusiasm I had to begin with - which was ebbing anyway - when I hit that 5 year leap after the battle. From then on it was a grind.
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You may be right, Richard. Many things of that time which I used to enjoy seem shallow and strident to me now.
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I loved Watership Down, and read and enjoyed that, Shardik, The Plague Dogs, and Maia long ago. I remembered liking Shardik, but apparently my tastes have changed now that I am old and useless, and I doubt I could sustain any enthusiasm.
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The Tuginda was the only character I empathized with at all, and she was dealt with early. Everyone else was a user or bring used.
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Again, my experiences mirror those of Richard. Reading the book got very fatiguing, and I was plowing my way through it many times. I did not enjoy his writing style, and thought his plotting was meh.
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Richard nails it. Adams' religion is for idiots or con men. It is a bunch of people interpreting the GM's dice rolls.
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I thought the setting was alright, just not very organic? It felt to me as if places were constructed to the needs of plot.
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(Quote) A game
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(Quote) The rascal!
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(Quote) Agreed. This isn't in the same thought system as the mythic maiden/mother/crone.
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Sigh... I was being technically correct, which is, as everyone knows, the best KIND of correct!
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My StarCluster series of SF games have various types of AI including human or alien brains/nervous systems in non-meat bodies, and there is always a price to be paid for it, typically paying off indenture. So you could game this book directly from t…
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I assumed it was a novel made from stitched together short stories, and was fine with that. If done well it can be very effective. It was also rather nice to end Helva's story at a logical place instead of the usual cliffhanger leading to book 2 of …
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As is typical, the author's own cultural assumptions are very visible because they are different from those currently accepted, so yes it showed, A modern author would have totally different blind spots that would be far less visible to us. Not that…
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Classic SF racism discussion couched in different terms. Far less heavy handed than aliens who are human looking except they are pitch black on one half of their bodies and snow white on the other and it it vitally important whether you are white on…
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Huh? Helva was a virgin in a titanium sphere, so 'maiden'. Case closed.