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Apocryphal
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Q1. Not really. Q2. A quick end, generally. I’m not big on series these days.
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Since dragons don’t exist and a I don’t think a twist of history would have brought them into existence, I’ll stick with ‘fantasy’ for this one, though it is historical fantasy. The only comparison I came across was a single sentence from a reade…
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I suspect the goal was ‘fun read’, maybe with some exploring in terms of inter-character relations. The book didn’t really approach military life (and especially not tactics) the way most napoleonic fiction does, and it didn’t come anywhere near exp…
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I didn’t think the dragons were especially well-developed, to be honest. They felt like they were made up to satisfy the needs of this book (or series, as I imagine it was conceived). I didn’t get any sense of the grand sweep of human-dragon history…
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I’ll stick to Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boule for my next pick.
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I’m almost finished Temeraire.
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I’ve never seen Blake’s 7, so I’m as curious as anyone. I don’t remember it airing over here, though we were exposed to quite a few British shows, including Dr Who, hitchhiker’s, red dwarf, Benny Hill, the Two Ronnies, and more.
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Another similarity to Sword and Sorcery fiction - personal goals, rather than saving the world.
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Those seem like odd questions to ask. But I do feel drug use fits the setting, which is afterall about how tech can amplify a person at the risk of being addictive. It basically fills the role that sorcery takes in a Sword and Sorcery setting - t…
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BTW I was admiring how you got so much in the way of discussion starters from the intro!
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Oh, yeah - there was a degree of that back in the day here too.
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I’m not sure we’ve seen deregulation. If anything I think I see more regulation now that ever. But the widening gap, for sure. I do think the globalization of Cyberpunk (that is, the global span of the stories and the prevalence of mainly East Asian…
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I don’t think making dumb videos about copying some dance move in your pool or dumping cold water over your head is very cyber pink at all. Also, Although ’Cyberpunk’ as it’s perceived more gut be about the blend of tech and rock, I think that just …
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I don’t think the transformative power of computers became really apparent to me until sometime in the nineties, but even from my childhood, computers were a part of my life. My brother and I took ‘computer classes’ from a teen and we learned a bit …
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I do agree that ‘style’ is important in terms of the setting and characters, but here I think Sterling is getting at the prose style. Some of the stories - maybe four or five, clearly fit the bill. Unfortunately style is only cool when you can pull …
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I mainly answered this in the previous question, my answers here are (a) yes, exactly, and (b) surprisingly not that much. That’s ok - I’m sure the authors knew what they were doing. I’d kind of like a revised definition of the genre now, though, an…
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Was ‘Cyberpunk’ envisioned? Like that way Malcolm McLaren envisioned ‘punk rock’ and milder a style out of what had really just been a local underground scene? Or was it just a fashionable way of doing certain things, for a short time? In terms o…
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Overall I though it was a mixed bag (which is almost always the case with a collection or anthology - except those compiled by John Joseph Adams). My favourite was easily the first story, the one by William Gibson, which mightily impressed me in …
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@RichardAbbott seeking clarification on the above.
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I DNFed that big story in the middle - too jargony at the beginning and by the time I got to the middle I had no clue what was happening - seemed pointless to finish it - and the the author ‘kindly’ included at second version of it right after, so s…
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I just finished a few moments ago.
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Just to be clear, the book we're reading is His Majesty's Dragon, first in the Temeraire series? Sometimes the NA/UK titles are different.
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I was going to say “ah, the reach of the book club at work” but I guess we still only have short arms! In my experience his books look bigger than they are due to lots of art, white space, and large font. They aren’t small, but not as huge as the…
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It was based on the Novik series? I had assumed the game predated the books (mainly because I hadn’t heard of them and assumed they were new-ish).
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@clash wrote a game like this. In Harm’s Way: Dragons, I think it was called.
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I’m still working my way through the derives works.The Poe story didn’t interest me much. And I couldn’t really parse the poetry - was hoping maybe you could explain it to me,structurally. It has rhyming sections, but there are really inconsistent ,…
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I'd say that's very true for things like sights, sounds, even food, if your goal is to reveal those things to the audience. But I think thoughts and personalities probably render better in written format. Written travelogues also don't have to rely …
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Experienced GMs will mainly go with the flow, feeling comfortable enough to improvise. Less experienced ones might might do otherwise if they lack that comfort. As for guiding stuck PCs, you can have an NPC (non-player character) give the group an i…
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Yes - interesting take!
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I've mentioned many times that I quite like them - especially travelogues that take us back in time, as well as go to a new place. I find there's a lot that I can get out of them. A travel writer, for example, is never shy to relay the mythical qual…