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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,082
- 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) I think he does :smile: "His temple is painted fresh every year, there's a hundred-weight of gold on the altar, the lamps burn attar of roses" Like many other new or reformed religions, the God-Kings set up their place near enough …
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(Quote) I guess one can see her Taoist inclinations coming out - what she typically opposes is not religious sentiment but religious organisational structure. Acts of personal or communal faith are typically celebrated, so long as they do not turn i…
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(Quote) There's a really interesting contrast here between Thar and Kossil. For sure, both are responsible for her education and training, but Thar is constantly, in her own way, trying to get Arha to see a bigger picture, and to be aware of undercu…
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(Quote) You would probably make a contemporary version in which the child was brought up in a very repressive and constraining sub-culture - a religious cult, for example, or a family situation where parental authority was absolute. There are plenty…
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As an extreme novice at this, and very much open to correction, I wonder if this exposes a difference between gaming and reading? Surely when gaming there is a sense that each time you play, the result might come out quite differently? You might hav…
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They never individuate but always act as a group - if you like, there seems not to be such a thing as "An Old One", only the group together. They remind me a bit of the chthonic gods you get in many ancient systems of thought - a very arch…
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Yes, the tombs were very vivid, and show LeGuin's ability to mix elements from many different cultures. The larger-than-life temple paraphernalia echoes many ancient near eastern temples, the stones remind one of neolithic work, the labyrinth is mor…
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Splendid work @Michael_S_Miller !
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(Quote) Well put! His reaction to that is, I think, the short laugh he gives near the end of chapter 5, "that of a man who thinks, 'what a fool I've made of myself'"
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Arha's life was extremely circumscribed and predictable, defined by the regular cycles of worship and religious discipline. I don't think Ged's life was ever predictable! So it's easy to see how his constant change and (almost) chaos would appeal to…
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One of the great sub-plots of this book is the way - at least to Arha's perception - her religion has been marginalised by the much more overtly political movement of the God-Kings. To me, there's a sense in which her faith is authentic both persona…
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I am inclined to agree with @Apocryphal but with the proviso that in her later Earthsea books, Ursula LeGuin set up a complex set of constraints to do with celibacy and gender division. I don't think she had firmed all that upn in her mind when she …
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@Michael_S_Miller apologies for the folder permissions, old habits :) I think they were individually accessible eg by http://datascenesdev.com/images/lotr/Feb_17_1.jpg. Or I could have used an S3 bucket. But as it is I have uploaded all to the Drive…
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@Michael_S_Miller here are the file names of the various images, all to be found at root http://datascenesdev.com/images/lotr/ (Image) The greyscale ones are all saved at 300 dpi. I left the colour ones at their original camera dpi, which was mos…
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@Michael_S_Miller I have tracked down all the images concerned and am steadily uploading them to this location http://datascenesdev.com/images/lotr/ So far the full size colour ones only which are at the above root plus Feb_17_1.jpg, Feb_17_2.jpg, F…
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@clash_bowley there's a whole concept album there...
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I absolutely loved The Trigan Empire and often regret the foolish impulse that meant I got rid of it during one house move.
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> @clash_bowley said: > I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it! I'm about to lose control and I think I like it! Steady on now 😁
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I'll sort them out early in the week
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@Michael_S_Miller would you like any help from me re photos or are you happy doing it yourself?
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I don't think I've ever read The Telling, which is an odd omission for me
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Sounds interesting! If the power gets out of hand in vol 1, I wonder what happens by vol 3 😁
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For me it would be Dune 3 The Book of the New Sun 2 Moby Dick 1
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> @rossum said: > This discussion makes me think of the concept of "grok" from Stranger in a Strange Land, where to grok is to drink, which is to understand in fullness. So something can't be understood without observing it, which…
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> @NeilNjae said: > Related to "mental maps" and unrelated to the book, I read an article a while ago about the maps used by polynesian navigators. ...you're the one on the canoe in the middle of a large expanse of ocean: the only f…
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> @dr_mitch said: > ... The wending, while not scientifically plausible, was just subtle enough to work within a science fiction framework (much better than for example the teleportation in The Stars, My Destination, which I had trouble with …
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> @clash_bowley said: > Experience. :wink: I guess it's the old story - the ones who learned fear and ran away survived... the ones who didn't got eaten by sabre tigers or whatever...
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> @Keith said: > > Guess it makes sense I enjoyed Forever War so much! That was the one where they'd show up to fight and find out the situation had changed so much that they never would have been sent had anyone known, yeah? I think…
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...And those two comments neatly summarise the entire debate...
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Actually Ursula LeGuin used it a lot in her sf books - for example Rocannon's World explores its impact both on those expecting the lag and those not. She had instantaneous comms (via ansible, never explained in the way Carolyn Gilman does) and slow…