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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,068
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, Administrator, Moderator
- Games I like
- Sundry, mostly board
- Books I like
- Science fiction, fantasy, some historical fiction
Comments
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On a vaguely related note, does anyone remember a near-future vaguely-dystopian TV series from the early 1970s called Doomwatch? BBC1 I think, and I don't know if it ever got shipped overseas, so maybe Neil is the only likely person of us all. The e…
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(Quote) And also the Stationer enclave who are a little bit like the Rebels (except more inclined to collaborate, and with less moral distinction between the two factions). Each group has some form of enhancement that the other lacks. But yes, I agr…
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So maybe early cyberpunk has evolved somewhat into the superhero genre?
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That was really helpful, not least because it highlighted the stories that made so little impression on me that I had forgotten them completely! To the point that I thought of a couple of them that you must have a different edition with different co…
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> @Apocryphal said: > Those seem like odd questions to ask. We all thought so too, and there was (as you'd expect) a certain amount of cynicism as to the motive for asking... should we all be checking our employment contracts? 😯 > …
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Sorry only just catching up with this - yes it's the first in the series, which does indeed have a slightly different title each side of the Atlantic
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I think it is interesting how differently the different authors in the collection perceived future politics (to the extent that they tackled such wide-scale matters in their short stories) - some had a great deal of corporate intervention, some posi…
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Yes, it feels like the endless cat videos or whatever of Tiktok, and the existence of vicious opinion silos on Twitter and the like, is kind of cyberpunk gone wrong! Although I said earlier (I mean yesterday) that I didn't find much in the collectio…
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Back in the sixth form at school, ie the second half of the 1970s when I was 16 or 17, our Applied Maths teacher taught us the basics of programming in FORTRAN - we carefully wrote out the instructions longhand on paper, then used a machine to gener…
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Hmmm, I don't think I'd agree with Sterling here. I don't remember any of the stories being ones that I enjoyed or would reread for the quality of writing style or prose. They seemed to me to focus more on ideas and settings than style. So there was…
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The stories seemed largely to deal with personal situations rather than "we're going to change society" ones. There didn't seem to be an angle suggesting that any of the protagonists were going to emerge as significant social forces. Compa…
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I was surprised by the prevalence of drug use in the stories, which seemed a more common feature than cyber stuff somehow. So I'd expected techno implants and the like, but hadn't really linked it in my mind to altered states of consciousness induce…
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Back home now and looking at these properly... Like @Apocryphal I found them mixed, and am never sure how well I get on with short stories (of course there are exceptions). I'm not sure I had a favourite as such - I thought there were interesting id…
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I finished a few days ago so any time is good - except I shall be away walking Sunday - Tuesday but will participate as I can :) (Quote) I'd be inclined to skip a story you're not getting on with and jump to the next one. I almost did that once but…
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Yes but I reckon the worker deserves his wages and all that :) It's a chunky piece of work alright
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(Quote) :)
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I also not heard of them, and assumed they were quite new, until I realised just how many there were in the series. The publication date for Temeraire is 2006, and the last one was published in 2016. Basically one a year, which is pretty rapid going
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Category added
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(Quote) I shall look forward to his thoughts...
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OK we've reached May 9th so while people are finishing chatting about The Jason Voyage it's probably a good time to start reading Mirrorshades On a related note, I have decided to go for Temeraire by Naomi Novik, first in a series of 9 ( :o ) books…
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(Quote) No, I agree it seemed quite ordinary. I wasn't that taken by the Lovecraft one either (and thought the connection was a bit tenuous). (Quote) Yes, it's an interesting one. I think you have to look at Christina Rosetti in her context as a mi…
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Mine too - I'd just forgotten about the train plus towing section to get Argo back from Colchis. My musing was mainly around the fact that in the original, the details and route of the return journey was not a matter of agreement between the differ…
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(Quote) That's a really interesting point - how does one get someone in a group of gamers to think of an outside-the-box solution? In fiction it's easy - the author has someone credible, ideally not always the viewpoint character, say "why don'…
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(Quote) Hm maybe I should tackle that at some stage - I'm thinking Brendan next though
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(Quote) Don't we all :D :o
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Another interesting area that Tim Severin (sensibly) glossed over was the return journey. His book was focused just on "lets get to Colchis and make some cool historico-archaeological discoveries along the way". But of course his account i…
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I liked the idea with the Clashing Rocks that the sudden changes in current and wind might well see like Athene giving them a boost at just the right time. But otherwise see my comments to another starter thread in which I ramble on about how at tim…
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I have broadly similar comments as @clash_bowley . The structure of the book was similar, with problems at the start finding a shipbuilder who knew enough to replicate the traditional mode of manufacture, the assembly of the crew taking care to have…
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I had mixed feelings, and still do. On the one hand, I really enjoyed the interplay between the two stories, in which Jason could indicate routes and stopping points to Tim (and conversely, when Tim ignored Jason to take a short-cut it ended up bein…
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I don't remember Freya Stark so that must indeed be Before My Time! Yes, I'd be interested in reading more such. In the Grasmere book club (which includes more non-fiction than we do, but with variable success) we read Nims Purja's Beyond Possible …