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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,072
- 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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Happy New Year everyone! Just in case anyone has forgotten, this is where we got to: January The Orenda, hosted by @Apocryphal (Neil has, I think, finished it, as have I now) February: @NeilNjae wanted Five Decembers but there was a move to delay…
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I'm about 1/4 the way through, realising that I know almost nothing about the history and geography of the book, so am looking forward to some Canadian input on this :) It's densely written - this is not a criticism but an observation - and so not a…
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(Quote) That's an extraordinary amount of playing and recording to sustain for so long!
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Like you, I had an unexpectedly high year for reading - 68 books, totalling 22261 pages (327pp average). A big jump up from last year - 44 books and 12893 pages (293pp average). I'm normally in the 40-50 books and 12-13k pages area. I couldn't brea…
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Seems there's only one place in Europe you can ride in a Lancaster, albeit only taxiing around the runway and sitting in the various stations rather than actually airborne... and it's in Lincolnshire... https://www.lincsaviation.co.uk/lancaster-taxy…
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> @Apocryphal said: > Speaking of Lancasters, if you guys want to come and visit me we can organize a group ride in a Lancaster: https://www.warplane.com/aircraft/flights/buy.aspx > Cool! Though I have to admit I'd rather go up in the…
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In an idle Christmas Day moment I looked up whether CP had any particular association with Lincolnshire, but seems not. In a 2012 blog article he writes of "a short but unhurried visit to the Lincolnshire Wolds – a research trip for The Adjacen…
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Shock sensation!!! Christopher Priest explains everything in the last few pages!!!!! Well, er, no, but then we weren't expecting him too, and would have been disappointed if he had, I think. And in truth, I think he gets closer to a resolved endi…
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I just had a thought this evening... the mystery of Firentsa and Flo... wait for it... Firentsa -> Firenze -> Florence -> Flo CP messing with us?
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(Quote) I really like the idea of DNA bases and it seems to me you have hit on one of CP's structural designs here - though it also reminds me of the feelings we had about The Gradual... here is another cool structural idea thrown in among many othe…
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(Quote) This echoes experiences I have heard from people offering psychotherapy via zoom (not that that is directly related to gaming :) ) - therapists seem to find that the experience is significantly more tiring than working in person, as a) you h…
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OK... a super-long section which takes us into The Archipelago, and specifically the island of Prachous. This island was mentioned very briefly in The Islanders, but not described. It was mentioned as one of Sandro's destinations in The Gradual, and…
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Again the action is hotting up, and we have several sources of confusion here. First, he takes some pictures of part of the compound - not unlike the keep part of the Castle Farm picture you inserted - of a building which looks older and considerab…
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I really enjoyed this section, partly because of all the interactions it hints at without becoming explicit. There are others in addition to your list. For example, the RAF base is at Tealby Moor, which is exactly where Tibor is in his meanderings a…
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(Quote) Yes, a fair point. I guess what I meant to say was that in narrative terms it comes out of the blue - Rietveld did not strike Jane as suicidal, or particularly depressed, and she spends a fair bit of time at the start of the chapter saying t…
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(Quote) Although the two are not all that far apart as the crow flies, by regular transport you'd have to plough through (or round) London :) Questions I had: 1) Is this the same timeline as the main Tibor Tarent one, albeit somewhat earlier, or an…
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I thought I'd chip in with part 3 - a little shorter than the first two, and continuing the saga of Tibor. He is propositioned again by implant lady (who calls herself Flo, but with the suggestion that this is not her real name). She wants him to by…
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(Quote) That's a good point, though some short story writers seem to manage to give a sense of world within a short span of words. GK Chesterton, for one, and even our friend Christopher Priest, though he seems to have wanted to describe a cluster o…
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(Quote) I like the idea of personalised astrolabes (and other things). However, in our world personalised stuff (like targeted adverts) go along with mega-corporations who have the data capacity to store all those individual preferences and choices.…
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(Quote) ... which would imply an extensive trading network to get flash new-model astrolabes to the firms which do the commoditisation... and also presupposes that the commodity firms wouldn't try to get the design work in-house and so control the w…
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(Quote) OK, my nerdiness came to the fore (I blame Binti) - I was bothered earlier by the fact that I had used the integer digits 0, 1 and 2 in a base pi system (ie where the ascending placeholders are 1, pi, pi^2, pi^3 etc instead of 1, 10, 100, 1…
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(Quote) That surprises me: I had assumed it was intentional on her part. (Quote) How disappointing :)
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(Quote) I think it's more like 20.010221... (but a non-terminating decimal) :)
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(Quote) Ah, but how many fingers do you have in base pi? :)
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(Quote) I should persevere then...
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I agree that the complete change of scenery was refreshing and inventive, especially when backed up by the change in writing style. Seeing as how part 3 goes back to Tibor and follows linearly on from part 1, I did wonder if we were going to alterna…
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(Quote) I tried reading his Artemis but struggled and gave up, despite loving The Martian - I just couldn't see where he was going with the story and the characters didn't click for me. Haven't yet tried Project Hail Mary though.
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(Quote) I agree it's a geometric ratio, and that it's mathematical. But it is not a rational number - it cannot be expressed as a ration a/b where a and b are whole numbers, and cannot be expressed by a non-infinite string of ones and zeros (or base…
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(Quote) Also kind of typical teenager - parents and older people in general know absolutely nothing when you're a young teenager, and only start to get a bit of intelligence when you've got through that and started to encounter adult problems...
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(Quote) Your comment struck a chord in me (haha) - isn't it interesting that we use the word harmony to express both a musical idea and also one of reconciliation and peace.