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Apocryphal
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I think I answered most of this in Q2a. It was a 'might makes right' world, so naturally skill in battle would relate to the moral right. I wouldn't expect this to have much bearing on what it is to be a man now, except I think quite a few people s…
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I suppose that things like killing and adultery are made more OK if they are driven by some 'noble passion' like 'true love', or if they are done 'against' BAD men. But perhaps the stories were intended to stir some degree of debate/discussion among…
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I think they were intended for several things. Primarily as entertainments, and primarily as entertainments for rich people in their halls. Which means that secondarily, they are also role-model tales which attempt to establish some sort of ideals o…
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All done.
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And what about libraries?
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I’m willing to give the book a go. Looks like Amazon has a hardcover for about $39, and an audio for a credit ($about $15). Kindle is $17, which seems high . Toronto Public Library has 19 copies hardcover plus audio and eReader versions, so it’s ava…
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Horror implies a revulsion to me. It's something different from fear/scare. Of course, I can develop fear for the things that horrify me. But not all fear is attached to horror. I might be afraid of being scammed on the internet, or being mugged. Bu…
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One quite effective tension building game (I assume, as I've never played it myself, just read it) is Dread, which doesn't use dice for resolution, but a Jenga tower. So every time an action is taken that can add to the tension, a Jenga block is pul…
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@RichardAbbott Yes, quite possibly.
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There is a horror version of Unknown Armies called Nemesis that uses the madness meter. Jocelyn Robitaille ran a session of this at the Grand Roludothon that was supposed to be something like Fantasy Vietnam. I think the best horror mechanic I play…
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I guess I was hoping you all would recognize the symbols that I didn't!
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There were definitely characters, just not particularly deep ones. Only the man really had any depth because we were somewhat privy to his thoughts. Pepper was more an archetype, and so was the sister. Some say she represented a grounding force and …
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I read somewhere that the broken section in the middle (the part that describes 'She' - some kind of love interest, or an object of desire) is broken because this is the part of the book that was open when the house collapsed on it. Meaning it was t…
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I tend to think of Cosmic Horror as invoking a sense of dread at the scale of the universe. I have a feeling this was easier to understand in a faith-based age, before our knowledge expanded so much. The Babylonian concept of melammu, or 'frightenin…
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I’ll put up questions toward the weekend.
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How is everyone doing on House on the Borderland?
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Dogs are team players. So are ants, come to think of it. Maybe he picked animals that could organize.
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He's most famous for City (1944-1952) and Waystation (1963). Another book, Ring Around the Sun (1953) is included in Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best books. Some of his other titles sound intriguing. Destiny Doll sounds like it might have so…
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(Quote) Seems like a funny thing to say in the Trump/Musk age, no? (Quote) D____ C___!
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That's an Alan Quartermain story?
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All true. I think I'm inured, at least in old books, to 'US Citizens are the only people in the future' because, well that's always how it's been when you consume US culture, and that's still mostly how it is now. Being annoyed by it would mean livi…
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The UK countryside might get urbanized, but the pop density of Canada is only 4 people per square km, so it everyone moved to the countryside you’d still have to walk half a km to your neighbour. Anyway, didn’t people also disperse into space?
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I think it's decent fodder for a 'story game', which is to say, the kind of game where everyone players a character for a 3-hour session and describes events or speaks in dialogue to one another. Imagine, if you can, the film The Man From Earth star…
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It's the ultimate 'the meek shall inherit the earth' tale, right? Just when we thought the dogs were meek, along came the ants.
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I mean, until one has loped, don't judge a loper, I guess.
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Yeah, I agree with Clash and Richard. I actually loved the idea of the cobblies, but think this aspect of the book could have been handled more coherently. On the other hand, I found the treatment we got strangely compelling - as if the bit about th…
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I liked the dogs, too. Less servile than the robots, but strangely more loyal. I was reminded of a book I read last year called The Lives of the Monster Dogs, about a group of dogs uplifted by a mad scientist who, after his death, use their inherita…
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@clash_bowley 's thought about never meeting to exchange genes is pretty funny (I lolled), but I don't think the American xenophobic example is a very good one to use when considering the whole world. That said, apparently populations are declining …
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It's pretty questionable, but still fun to explore. Here in Ontario, we had a mass move away from Toronto and into the surrounding towns (not so much the countryside, but some did that, too). Many who did flee to the countryside during the pandemic …
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I really liked it. It's kind of what I want SF to be about. Granted, I didn't enjoy each tale equally - sometimes I like the connecting material more than the tales. But overall, I enjoyed it's grand sweep and it's different take on future history. …