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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,445
- 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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> @Apocryphal said: > .... In the read of the first section I wondered about the character of Pandora, to whom we are lightly introduced twice. Now, having encountered her again in the second section where she addresses the reader, I’m findin…
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(Quote) @BarnerCobblewood oh I definitely intend sticking with it... these were just early impressions and I'd love for them to be transformed later on :)
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Funnily enough I saw this interview as well and thought about posting a link :)
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I'd have to say that, based on my very distant memory of Second Game, that Player of Games is the much more developed and intricate book!
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> @Apocryphal said: > I think these characters were like this before the season. Jemisin gives us a clue in the next chapters (hint: we're approaching page 166). > Can you let us know when we get there... a page number doesn't mean an…
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I have to admit to struggling with this, in a way that I had never expected to with Ursula Leguin. In terms of progress I am only 10% through according to my kindle, having just finished part one of Stone Telling and about to start the Serpentine Co…
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> @NeilNjae said: > (Quote) > This has come up a few times before. Is the general consensus that Jemisin is good at physical description? People, places, action, what they look like and what happens? > To clarify my personal view.…
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(Quote) That's what tipped me off :)
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Hello people, sorry for the lateness :) I had to read @Apocryphal 's contribution twice as I thought it read so much like those of @clash_bowley ! I have decided that one of Jemisin's strengths is the description of people's appearance - it's somet…
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What about the other way - do those among us who regularly GM, use music as a way to set scene or atmosphere? Or is that just too distracting? (As I write, I have a bizarre mental image of The Hall of the Mountain King on very loud...)
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An interesting question! There are, of course, plenty of tracks and albums based on books - no shortage there at all, ranging from the pretty-good to the appallingly terrible! I haven't come across any based on games, but it would surprise me if nob…
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> @clash_bowley said: > "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" > Sorry, child murder disqualifies one right off the bat. > Apologies to you @clash_bowley and all my other US friends... it took me a couple of …
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(Quote) Hugely funny, a much needed relief in the middle of a long task... thanks :)
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Talking of post-scarcity books, I have been reading (and in some cases listening to) the Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, and it finally, belatedly, occurred to me that this is another take on the post-scarcity theme. In this…
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I kind of get that Essun would want to drill into Nassun that she has to hide her real self and abilities, given the likely outcome of being discovered. Earlier bits in the books have established that your orogenes have a very wide-area effect which…
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> @WildCard said: > I was just depressed and didn’t realize how long I had been away. June works for me. I've been very much appreciating your recent comments on the books in progress, and am looking forward to your choice of book :)
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(Quote) She is (I think) at very least saying that identity consists at least in part of a socially-constructed element, as well as an individual one. With which I have no quarrels :) But I am not (yet) sure exactly what she is meaning or trying to…
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(Quote) Excellent reply :)
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> @clash_bowley said: > The moon's orbit is getting tighter and tighter, and it will one day hit the Roche Limit at about 11,000 miles and break up as the tidal stresses overcome the moon's own gravity, and it can't keep itself together. I ca…
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> @WildCard said: > I revise my wondering to: I wonder if the moon is in geosynchronous orbit on the other side of the earth, which is causing all this plate tectonics instability. > I can't see that working, I'm afraid. Geosynchronous…
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> @clash_bowley said: > (Quote) > No. Firm and decisive does not equal might makes right. It all depends on the nature of the crisis. If I was on a ship trying to avoid torpedoes coming at me, I'd want just one person making snap decis…
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I talk a bit about dissociation in my thoughts on the next couple of chapters in book 2... they might be relevant here?
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(Quote) Yes, that makes a lot of sense. If there are a lot of cultural allusions in The Fifth Season and its successors, they are going right past me. Which leaves me in a position simply trying to come to terms with it as a piece of writing, and ge…
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I guess Schaffa was bound to come back... an antagonist who is indestructible... I wonder what he's been up to all these years, and my guess is that he has founded a School for the Eradication of Orogeny from Young Children. which coincidentally we…
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(Quote) Like you, I cannot remember children being tackled in any depth in any Culture novel. It seems very much a place for adults, and independently-minded ones at that. (Quote) Funnily enough I read The Blue Adept last year as well, partly to se…
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(Quote) To me, the explicit statement that she had two children in the prologue, when actually she had three, is a pretty clear sign of deception. It reads far too much as an attempt to stop the reader guessing that the several women were the same. …
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(Quote) Yes, some great points here, thanks! When we started reading The Book of the New Sun it seemed to me that Gene Wolfe wanted to write about a far-future society which was extremely institution-focused, in contrast to Jack Vance's Dying Earth …
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(Quote) That'll be the hydroelectric train running on polymer tracks...
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> @clash_bowley said: > (Quote) > You do realize this is very possibly lies... I find it highly amusing that he somehow went straight to this place and arrived substantially before Essun without encountering and passing her, while she was…
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(Quote) I kind of feel this is another science word which is brought in as a veneer. "Satellite" in the astronomical sense can easily mean a natural one as well as an artificial one. However, a pre-telescope world (and I don't recall that …