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BarnerCobblewood
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@Apocryphal I'm finished.
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Looks good. Also looking forward to hearing about the campaign.
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> @RichardAbbott said: > (Quote) > I increasingly think that the domestication of the dog was one of the crucial facets of human development - the implied need to recognise a similar-but-different social setup without annihilating it (con…
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@clash_bowley Nostalgia is a weird thing. Not much of a fan myself. OTOH as I get older I do appreciate some souvenirs, but making a cult of the past, which I think many if not all the protagonists of these stories do, is a manifestation of a negati…
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I thought it was the best of the stories. Looking at the book from this point part of me sees all of the stories as being about our protagonists' inability to face either of the transcendent and imminent aspects of reality, and how that inability to…
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So I am with everyone that the tone of these stories is quite straightforward, that we always have reliable narrators, that they are little more than coathangers for an idea that struck Simak as sellable in magazines. But as I got to the end of the …
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I think Simak's idea was that that sympathetic understanding and empathy was so mind blowing that everything else was seen as not worthwhile. Which I kind of think is a good thing. Also, if reality is an emergent shaped by mind, then Jupiter can ha…
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The explanation of the different worlds is very similar to South Asian cosmological ideas, right down to the moments of time as beads on a string. So I didn't find it hard to follow, but it has several holes. I think that now it is hard to see why t…
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Good idea, but they were too much like a blank slate that the Websters wrote on. The whole "Insects are different but dogs are similar, mammals of the world unite!," thing was poorly thought out. Like @clash_bowley says, the idea surely is…
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When I was reading it I thought it was just another example of a story about a man universalising his experience to be the only experience there is. Kind of a super rationalisation to enable the challenges of facing the complexities of the world. I …
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Pretty much what @clash_bowley said, but I do think that misanthropy is a more powerful element in US cultural thought than most people want to admit. Often disguised as "the lure of the open road.: So I think scattering could easily happen in …
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The title is really an interesting choice. The novel is named after the first story, but I think that first story is only important because of what grew from it, not because it presented a theme, motif, or enduring character. It's like titling the B…
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So I just posted the previous comment, and a preview button appeared, which wasn't there while I was typing the previous comment. Anyway I'm not complaining, just wanted to let you know.
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I was working on them in phases, so they may well have been more than an hour old. That said, there is no way for me to save a draft - there is just a post comment button. Again, on a phone.
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> @Apocryphal said: > @BarnerCobblewood I was making light of the fact I have no idea what this person is talking about. “The voice of reason, bidding us prefer the greater good, no matter who is to enjoy it, is also nothing but the force of …
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@kcaryths This paper presents an overview of what is known about language and isolation. https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00130.x I think the important thing is that there are no examples of the kind of…
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@Apocryphal not sure what you mean - please elaborate. Anyway I am quite sick of fictional characters who are dim, and remain, dim, because otherwise they might twig to what is going on. Teenagers in slasher movies who go in the house? OK! Otherwis…
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> Describes himself as an elderly guy? Rereading the blurb, did anyone else find it sounds like an AI text from a publisher who has no human staff?
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Yeah, I too thought that the blurb removed the need to read the book. That said, about half way through and enjoying it. I think maybe I read it before?
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There are a lot of ideas and events that we could use here, but they are not unique to this story - I can't think of anything that was truly innovative. Are there any ideas that aren't better realised elsewhere? And neither the story nor the charact…
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Trying to confuse the reader to create excitement and interest in the story, which is too long for what it contains. Probably based on Game of Thrones stuff.
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I agree it is written like a movie, specifically a detective story. I think this is because Bonesteel knows where the payoff is. Unlike say the Maltese Falcon, it lacks the characters who are searching for the MacGuffin (the Exiles), except the read…
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Mostly I thought the characterisation was simply hanging clothes on the frame of the plot, which was too polished to be believable. No danger anywhere.
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* Not at all * Also not at all. * I never picked up that they were "derived" from Russia. Like @Apocryphal I thought it looked like a cheap patina of "diversity" thrown on a product for an uninformed buyer. Kind of like ChatGPT's…
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I thought it was poor, because there was no historical development. Everything that happens happened before they were colonists, and as far as we know the only thing that matters happens after our protagonists leave the static situation, seemingly u…
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I thought they were both repressed people who proved incapable of freeing themselves from their selves.
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It was unbelievable - the land was too harsh, the people too institutional, and the historical and social dynamics - Oh yeah, wait, there weren't any. When the stasis is finally broken our "heroes" simply leave everyone behind to go on the…
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It seemed forced, and too slow. Reading this was like listening a really long and boring lecture without any break for any other kind of person to speak. Perfect reading for the institutional.
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My overall impression is that it had everything a good book has, except a soul. The concept is good, if a little bit too much like those old Star Trek episodes where the Enterprise visits a Nazi / Native American / Robot / whatever world. The plot…
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@RichardAbbott is interesting also because I have encountered a lot of discussion of immersion and identity in ttrpgs to be truly someone, which is a similar de / re / construction of self here, but without the generation / recognition that self by …