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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,074
- 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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(Quote) An Andre Norton novel I have not only not read, but never even heard of... which surprised me somewhat
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(Quote) How very cool!
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3 pts: The Islanders / Dream Archipelago / The Evidence 2 pts: Dangerous Visions / Again Dangerous Visions 1 pt: Dune (+ Dune Messiah, sounds like) (Dune last not because I don't like it but because I listened to it during our first lockdown and it…
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(Quote) That sounds really interesting
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@Apocryphal @clash_bowley which then raises the question, do these things still have a (presumably subliminal) effect even if you're not consciously aware of them? Is a piece of writing more persuasive, or more interesting, if rhetorical or structur…
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I thought a lot about possible reasons for the change of daughter's cause of death, and the only thing I could think of was that it heightened the conflict of choice and also gave a motive for the father leaving. Specifically, if she died in a climb…
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(Quote) Naturally it's not only the star team but also the Americans :)
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(Quote) When I was putting together my thoughts about structure (#8) I began trying to tag all the sections as past/ present/ future, plus a quick sense of how far ahead each bit was, as narrated by the daughter's school year or similar. But that ra…
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OK I'm about to post discussion starters. Hopefully there's something for everyone. The last two are more markedly geeky than the first few (but hey, why not in a New Year). Please do feel free to pick and choose among them, or as usual start separa…
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Love it :)
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A great discussion topic! I like @Michael_S_Miller 's point about the pros and cons of limited choice. To that I'd add character arc. A novel thrives on having one or more characters forced to adapt and change in some way - more intricate novels …
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> @Apocryphal said: > I think I need to form a parallel book club with @Ray_Otus and @Michael_S_Miller ’s wife and maybe @BarnerCobblewood to read number 9. I'd be up for it (but you probably knew that already)
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First I'm totally in favour of another slow read - even with a book series I just didn't like, the experience of the slow read with this most excellent group of people is very rewarding. I suppose #9 features a whale as a major character? I …
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Just looked it up... "Let that be your last battlefield" - cringeworthy I agree, even through a (British) young person's eyes, though I did wonder if Americans found it more subtle than I did. But it surely counts as "blatant racism a…
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Re Stsr Trek, wasn't there an original series episode where the people they met on some planet were all half white and half black, but it made a crucial difference which colour was on the left or right? Confused the Enterprise crew no end. I don't …
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If there's general enthusiasm I'll post some discussion thoughts on Sunday... or would people like a bit longer given the holiday season? (Or tier 2/3/4 restrictions, depending on geography)
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> @dr_mitch said: > I think NK Jamison is arguing for a more on the nose take, but on the other hand, even the Broken Earth is racial terror and enslavement via analogy. Indeed - skin colour or personal appearance in Broken Earth gives clu…
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Following on from my earlier comments about prejudice of various kinds in SFF, it occurred to me that a very common theme of earlier writers was class-based prejudice. Isaac Asimov, Andre Norton and a host of others often have characters, major or m…
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I guess in a novel I'm not all that fond of blatant anything - I prefer writing to be allusive rather than obvious (unless it's transparently space-opera type writing which is clearly not intended to be a serious reflection of any real world). So bl…
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For my part, I wasn't part of the club in those far-off days so a prior reading is not an issue. Looking at that list, I'm pretty sure I joined in the early 40s... I remember Tanith Lee's book but not The Man in the High Castle! And Sleep Donation s…
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@Apocryphal 's comment made me wonder whether the natural place to set a game is not in the "now" of the book, with just Piranesi and The Other for most of it, but in the earlier times when there were more like 10 or so people around. Why …
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> @BurnAfterRunning said: >... It's not a game I'd like to run, or play - "Another bloody statue?" I suppose in a game you'd have to impart more particular meanings or triggers to the statues - sort of "this one points in th…
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Mr Tumnus belongs primarily in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, but also to a much smaller extent in The Horse and His Boy and in The Last Battle. A major connection with The Magician's Nephew is the name Dr. Valentine Andrew Ketterley, who is …
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This is probably the right place to mention one of my early theories about the context - which in part had to be abandoned and yet still has something going for it (I think). For the first few chapters I was convinced that Susanna Clarke was describ…
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Something to add here which I meant to write earlier but forgot... were the statues intended to be archetypes (in the Jungian or any other sense)? I don't think so, but I often wondered. Alternatively, the closing pages suggest that the statues were…
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Is Memento the film where events are presented as scenes in a kind of random order, and part of the plot is to work out the true order? And there's something about making notes on the protagonist's own body to help his memory? Anyway, yes it worked…
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I liked him a lot (for a time I wondered if He was in fact a She, and that this was going to be a big revelation later on in the book). But yes, it was refreshing to meet a protagonist who isn't determined to be cunning and scheming all the time.
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I liked the recurrent theme of personal devotion, largely to the bones of the dead but also to certain of the statues, the bird-life, and ultimately towards the world as a whole and its animating principle. It was a very neat way to explore a spirit…
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Yes, I picked up the CS Lewis allusions very fast, starting IIRC with Mr Tumnus but becoming a major theme through the book with various character names pointing at Narnia. Which made me wonder a lot, since there does not seem to be any obvious them…
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Curious - would you want to include the more explicitly dangerous environmental hazards, such as the occasional very large floods? Although in some sense predictable, the narrative makes it clear that you had to be pretty obsessive about recording d…