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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,080
- 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) Should some kind admin person set up a thread to chat about that? Two things occurred to me as possibilities: 1) The Long Earth books (Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter) - I have read the first but not the others, and am aware that some re…
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(Quote) You're right - we all felt back in book/chapter whatever that that play was very meaningful, though IIRC most of our discussion focused around what history or myth Gene Wolfe was drawing on to write it, rather than how it might prefigure lat…
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> @dr_mitch said: > I did like the two masks of the cacogens. And it seems they know Severian will become Autarch? But yes, it's something where the significance escapes me. > It just occurred to me that some of the travels and meetin…
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For me, the main project is finishing my latest book, set in the universe of Far from the Spaceports, but a couple of decades on and with a completely different focus. It's called The Liminal Zone, 'cos after all you can never have too much liminali…
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I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me, but I really hadn't expected the promised giant to be Baldanders - after all we have met or heard of so many giants that I was genuinely surprised when it turned out to be him. The whole conversation betwee…
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(Quote) Yes, that helps, also someone's comment somewhere about how the subjective timeline of the actual traveller was simply linear in terms of their perception, though not of course in terms of their calendar lookups. not unlike "World leade…
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I realised reading the last few posts on this thread that I could not remember (if it was ever explained) how the specific target effect was selected - the individual in the chair had to identify a vivid memory, but I don't recall how that translate…
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> @NeilNjae said: > @Apocryphal said: > @NeilNjae We've never done Brave New World. > But, [Brave New World is] a good and classic book, so perhaps we should read it? I've been meaning to reread it all this year - it must be s…
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A great piece of speculative analysis! Seems sadly plausible to me. I wonder if the race to be the dominant nation would favour an individual leader or a small cabal? Also, on the basis that the universe tends to dispel any apparent advantage, I …
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(Quote) Hmm yes, fair point. But quite a lot of the book circled around the reaction of bystanders to the use of the chair, and in particular the first time that Helena witnessed it being done to a heroin addict picked up from the street. So, seemin…
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> @dr_mitch said: > At no point was violence or killing an actual solution to the problem. Sometimes it seemed to be, and made things better for a while, but then things always got worse. Except that the main trigger for the Chair to do it…
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> @BarnerCobblewood said: > I found the ending unsatisfying. I thought that it was simply shoe-horned in to produce a work of the 'right-size' to bear the price-point. I think you have identified a very common problem. It can happen both …
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I'm really enjoying this book right now :smiley: I think this section integrates in a very interesting way with Typhon, the link being made by the net. Typhon tried to snare Severian with a magical/psychic net and failed... the hetman used a reg…
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Back in the sphere of writing, when I was studying poetics a few years ago I read up what various folk had to say about endings in poetry. Granted that this is a more structured form of writing than a novel, but some things carry over (and likewise …
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> @Apocryphal said: > So yeah, I think RPGs should usually be more than just entertainment. But sometimes, 'just entertainment' is all one really needs. Well put - it reminds me of a friend from years ago whose kids were into highly deta…
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(Quote) I agree - dementia was very much a side issue and it wasn't clear to me how the chair could ever have been repurposed as a therapeutic device. I chatted with a friend who has read other books by Crouch (but not yet Recursion) and he reckoned…
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I'll come back to this one: meanwhile commenting to I get to see other replies
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I thought a couple of things about the ending: 1) As mentioned in another thread, I was vaguely unsatisfied by Crouch's resolution which seemed a bit too ad hoc to me 2) An area the book (deliberately, I think) left untackled was that of independe…
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Nothing to add about gaming: commenting so I see future replies :smile: But obviously the indy world exists in most areas of life these days - games, books, music etc. You could probably include at least some parts of the open source software movem…
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I can't really speak much about gaming, but I think that fiction, especially speculative fiction, works best when it tackles a contemporary problem in some coded way, ie not head-on explicit but indirectly so it encourages readers to engage with the…
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Time travel is of course a favourite story device in film/TV series SF, and the various star trek series have done this lots of times - sometimes well and sometimes not so well. I especially liked Farscape's Different Destinations as a twist on the …
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I liked the book and finished it very quickly - so clearly it had me compelled to get on with it. Like @Apocryphal I had some reservations about some aspects - I agree that the memory trigger was odd, and I didn't like the specific way he resolved t…
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(Quote) This is just a spur of the moment thought, and I might reconsider as the chapters unroll, but I wonder if there's some mirroring of the geography he crosses and his overall moral compass (outer and inner journeys, if you like). He gets to t…
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Pace those who think otherwise, but I reckoned this was an exceptionally important encounter. Let's start with the name Typhon - I'm sure @Apocryphal will have more to say but Wiki has "Typhon was a monstrous serpentine giant and one of the dea…
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I think we are saying the same thing - JRRT and CSL had very particular views about relationships, which they wrote consistently into their books. But even among the Inklings there was diversity - Charles Williams in particular had what could best b…
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(Malacandra is not of course Narnia, but gives a clearer example of what I think is Lewis's general position)
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Being of a more sceptical nature, as well as nerdy, my inclination is to see this as more like a simple reluctance on JRRT's part to deal in the narrative with the more physical side of relationships. He shared this with CS Lewis, who (in Out of …
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This (rather belatedly) made me wonder if there was a link between Gene Wolfe and Teilhard de Chardin. And it seems that others have speculated about this too. For example "Like the theologian Teilhard de Chardin, Wolfe speculated that as c…
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> @Apocryphal said: > According to the creation myth as described in the Bundahishn, Ohrmuzd's (Ahura Mazda) sixth creation is the primeval beast Gayomart (Gayamarətan), who was neither male nor female... > Meschia and Meschiane live…
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> @NeilNjae said: > If the Conciliator is Christ (and I don't doubt you), what's the Claw? What does it correspond to in Christian mythology? > The specific passage which clinched it for me was "Then his task was to forge a peace…