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Apocryphal
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> @RichardAbbott said: > it is as though CP's main interest in writing shifts multiple times through a single novel. He did more or less say the book was about gradual change right at the very beginning. And he does like to take ‘concepts…
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Christopher Priest didn’t say that. One of his characters did. And that character might be misinformed, biased, or have an incomplete picture, just like real people.
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> "The only real record that existed of music was the original score, the black pen marks on the staves, but they were cryptic, had no sound, were written in code – they had no meaning without the human spirit that could break the code, inte…
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I’m 50 pages in, now. It’s very descriptive and definitely has a sense of place. Loads of little details make it vivid. Doesn’t seem like a book you can skim without getting lost - I find I have to force myself to read with purpose to get the most f…
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@clash_bowley Right… so the question remains as to whether this is one of those books or not. It’s definitely literary in intent. I don’t recall if the internal logic was sound. I do recall that it had a lot of words. :) and was somewhat rambly. …
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As I mentioned elsewhere, I’ve been reading Binti by mistake. However, I’ll catch up on Stranger. Might need two weeks. I think Stanger is more a book for @RichardAbbott , @BarnerCobblewood , @WildCard , and me, than it is for @NeilNjae ( who has…
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Oops. I’ve been reading Binti. However, I’ve read Stranger before. I’ll try to catch up… refresh my memory.
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I’d actually be fine with playing low level functionaries trying to steer a state. I prefer low levels to big heroes. But I don’t see how playing this kind of game on Dune would be more satisfying than in Gormemghast, for example. But when I thin…
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I honestly don’t think I’d try to game Dune. The politics are interesting, and especially the politics of scarcity, but I’m not good at running politics.
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Here are a few more books I picked up this year. The four on the left came from Little Free Libraries. The Farley Mowat book, No Man's River, is a sort of companion to his famous (and infamous, because it's the book the earned the author a reputati…
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It was Hellstrom's Hive - book #67 for us. You can find the list of the first 71 books pinned in the Nominations & Suggestions thread. I recently found a copy of another Herbert book in a little free library, called Direct Descent. I'll share a…
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I mostly know Anthony from the Xanth series, which I enjoyed as a young teen. Not sure I still would. I’d happily read The Adjacent with you as a side project if you like. Not sure the others would be interested at this point.
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I did read Ringworld once, but other that that am not wise to Niven. Was The Mote in Gods Eye a Niven and Pournell collab? Anne McCaffrey’s Deagonriders are famous, and we’re pretty big back in the early 80s, but I never read them. Same with Kath…
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I recently had the pleasure of reading Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon - a collection of essays on genre fiction. This books includes essays on Sherlock Holmes (in which he argues that ALL fiction is fan fiction), Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the …
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That’s a very interesting theory, @RichardAbbott
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When Jacj pointed out that Sandro was supposed to look after the cat, and then later called him ‘Sandro’ instead of ‘Alessandro’ or ‘Sir’ I took it as an acknowledgement that this was the real Jacj. I also see that Sandro‘a life is full of ghosts…
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> @clash_bowley said: > Perhaps, but the Islands seem a strange sort of hell. That’s definitely one of the messages I’m getting. Luckily we only have 3 weeks left after this. :-)
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I'm good with December, unless someone else happens to prefer it (because that's when they have free time).
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I’m mostly interested in the esoteric stuff - the mysteries and how they relate to gods. I mentioned in another Q how I developed a setting in which the syllables of the name of god had power, and that did form the basis of a good RQ3 campaign. Here…
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That was my take, and seems to lead to the possibility of more mystery in book 2 of this series. An interesting thought I had about ‘Open Sesame’ is that this is actually a magic spell. Ancient spells were said to have originated with the gods (o…
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“Open Sesame!” Is both an imperative and a password.
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In terms of the verb, I was thinking more generally, like “Be!” or “Exist!” or “Do!” In this sense, I can see such as word as being related to a password, in that it lets you pass into something else. For example, you’re in a room with a dog.…
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With a bit of imagination and leeway, could this not be made more compelling? Sure, she's a word, and that's only a fragment of language. But what if we accept the notion that what might take humans a whole library to express, God can express in a …
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I listened to the audio, so the lack of chapters was quite lost on me. It's not always easy to tell when you enter a new chapter in an audio book. The reader only reads the exact text. So if there's a chapter break, but no chapter title, you don't r…
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I don't feel especially qualified to comment, but am following with interest. Any thoughts on a relationship to the Kaballah? I seem to remember something about the syllables in the name of god, and how they might bring power.
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Yes, I’m watching it. I never read the novels, so I’m unspoilt in that regard. I have listened to the BBC radio dramatizations, and the series doesn't seem faithful to that - more like inspired by. This is probably a good thing - now I can read the …
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I’m still trying to parse the whole school thing. On the one hand, the school seems to be all about performing inexplicable tasks toward a mysterious goal. This strikes me very much as a parable for Christian faith. To become a child of god, you nee…
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With respect to the children in Narnia, I always had the impression they had to be invited to go to Narnia by a higher force. A stranger couldn’t just walk in. Gods purpose is in everything. I’m wondering about the children in A Series of Unfortu…
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I don’t think it’s about children and parents, but these children who are ‘words’ are clearly inherently words. That mysterious fellow at the beginning (whose name I forget) was searching for and recognizing these ‘words’ in society. Much like the s…
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I think the main thing was the deference to authority. There's much more of an irreverence here among people of that age - more of a rebellious streak. I can't see anyone putting up with all the gibberish that way Sasha did.