I'm about an hour in, and it's good so far. It's set in a new stub, which means we have some returning post-Jackpot characters from The Peripheral but all new stub characters.
And in case you were wondering, the President Clinton stuff is light set-dressing so far. A couple of nice touches without wallowing in it.
Oh, I absolutely found it comforting in a way - a reminder that really we don't matter so much, and that the terrible things humanity has done will eventually decay and be lost while the universe continues.
“ There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
+1
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
So I finished Oathbreaker, and fuck was it good. I am glad to be done with those books for right now, it took me about a month to get through them. I just started Gideon the 9th and after like 3 hours it was like "Your 15% done!". SO FAST.
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
Hey, Gibson. Real cool to make a book cover that looks like a connection error, knowing that some folks are going to be starting and stopping your audiobook on their phones multiple times per day.
Dick.
Jedoc on
+7
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Hey, Gibson. Real cool to make a book cover that looks like a connection error, knowing that some folks are going to be starting and stopping your audiobook on their phones multiple times per day.
Imagine a book cover that's got just this little image of a single tiny hair somewhere off to the side
Easy there, Satan.
+5
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
Finished up Agency. I've read new books from William Gibson and Neal Stephenson in the past year, and it's pretty wild how they've diverged since their early period.
Fall was definitely a late Neal Stephenson book. In that it had some very memorable phrases and interesting ideas waving and drowning in the middle of an over-stuffed, overindulgent narrative. Not only does Stephenson need an editor, he needs an editor who doesn't like him very much.
Agency is as tight a narrative as Gibson has ever written. It's still packed with extremely Gibsonian ideas about technology and society, but it's also just a really good thriller that gets the job done in half as many pages as Fall. Going back and reading Zodiac and Neuromancer, I'm not sure I'd have put money on which of those two authors would end up writing which book 35 years(!?) later. But the truth is that William Gibson has made himself into a person who is as cool and smart as Neal Stephenson's characters think they are.
It's so frustrating. Fall takes place in a world where you either hire companies to filter and curate your social media feeds to keep you within shouting distance of the real world, or you succumb to algorithm-driven content that tailors itself to your dopamine response until you're taking in a stream of what sounds like pure nonsense to anyone outside your algorithm group. Large swathes of rural America are controlled by extremist libertarian militias whose worldview is entirely divorced from reality based on algorithms maximizing outrage to maximize engagement. Like, not just bad ideas, but a stream of words and images that don't seem to add up to any actual coherent narrative. That's smart and scary and feels very possible right now. And it exists for fifty pages of a 900 page book before being completely ignored in favor of incomprehensible digital creation myths.
Is it legal to start a Kickstarter that just pays an author to rip off another author's underutilized but brilliant idea?
I wonder if extracting like 10% of the paragraphs from REAMDE, Seveneves and Fall and sticking them together in a random order would manage to make something interesting, if a little disjointed.
... no actually nothing in SevenEves is worth saving.
Finished up Agency. I've read new books from William Gibson and Neal Stephenson in the past year, and it's pretty wild how they've diverged since their early period.
Fall was definitely a late Neal Stephenson book. In that it had some very memorable phrases and interesting ideas waving and drowning in the middle of an over-stuffed, overindulgent narrative. Not only does Stephenson need an editor, he needs an editor who doesn't like him very much.
Agency is as tight a narrative as Gibson has ever written. It's still packed with extremely Gibsonian ideas about technology and society, but it's also just a really good thriller that gets the job done in half as many pages as Fall. Going back and reading Zodiac and Neuromancer, I'm not sure I'd have put money on which of those two authors would end up writing which book 35 years(!?) later. But the truth is that William Gibson has made himself into a person who is as cool and smart as Neal Stephenson's characters think they are.
It's so frustrating. Fall takes place in a world where you either hire companies to filter and curate your social media feeds to keep you within shouting distance of the real world, or you succumb to algorithm-driven content that tailors itself to your dopamine response until you're taking in a stream of what sounds like pure nonsense to anyone outside your algorithm group. Large swathes of rural America are controlled by extremist libertarian militias whose worldview is entirely divorced from reality based on algorithms maximizing outrage to maximize engagement. Like, not just bad ideas, but a stream of words and images that don't seem to add up to any actual coherent narrative. That's smart and scary and feels very possible right now. And it exists for fifty pages of a 900 page book before being completely ignored in favor of incomprehensible digital creation myths.
Is it legal to start a Kickstarter that just pays an author to rip off another author's underutilized but brilliant idea?
I missed Gibson's reading when he came to Seattle a month or so ago and I'm really mad about it because he's getting up there in years and it might have been the last chance I'll have
Speaking of Agency, I've been waiting on it for like 18 months now and of course it finally comes out when I'm far from my usual book haunts. But I tracked it down locally today and am excited to tear in.
I am like 80% sure Bruce Pascoe is sitting two rows from me on this flight to Melbourne. I have my copy of dark emu with me
Do I
- behave like a giant nerd and ask him to sign the book
- leave the poor man alone he's dealt with enough these last few years
- try for the first one but then find out it's not actually him and embarrass the hell out of both of us
Yeah, nothing can go wrong, he's used to it at this point!
Really tho, I don't think I'd actually do anything in that situation. I'd probably just be like "Oh yeah one day I saw the guy that wrote the book I was reading on the same plane as me. Weird, right?" and that'd be that. But I'm a socially awkward dork, so.
Some lady just went up to him, she is a braver soul than I. Or has something genuinely interesting and relevant to say instead of "um I like your book"
I would be far too terrified of asking a person who may or may not be someone I know of for anything like an autograph. Or just...interacting with people I don't know in general outside of work with its "established" roles and boundaries.
Canberra and Cambridge are hotbeds of intellectual pretension and I often fly in and out of both
But I once got Roko’s Basilisk explained to me on a train to Penzance by a guy who makes robot hands (we were not traveling together).
Canberra and Cambridge are hotbeds of intellectual pretension and I often fly in and out of both
But I once got Roko’s Basilisk explained to me on a train to Penzance by a guy who makes robot hands (we were not traveling together).
Makes sense that a guy from Penzance makes replacement hands...
Hmm good good. I bought The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet because the cover reminded me of Douglas Adams so I'll read that first.
I love all of Chambers' books so far. Incredibly low stakes in a universe where humans don't matter much at all that are absolutely wholesome.
The last one was literally just slice of life on a human space station. Individual stories from different people living there and how their paths crossed.
Hmm good good. I bought The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet because the cover reminded me of Douglas Adams so I'll read that first.
I love all of Chambers' books so far. Incredibly low stakes in a universe where humans don't matter much at all that are absolutely wholesome.
The last one was literally just slice of life on a human space station. Individual stories from different people living there and how their paths crossed.
You apparently missed To Be Taught, If Fortunate. It isn't really connected at all to the other three but still interesting and in that style. A take on un-imperialist space exploration and how that might look.
Posts
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I'm about an hour in, and it's good so far. It's set in a new stub, which means we have some returning post-Jackpot characters from The Peripheral but all new stub characters.
And in case you were wondering, the President Clinton stuff is light set-dressing so far. A couple of nice touches without wallowing in it.
“ There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Dick.
I love it.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Easy there, Satan.
Fall was definitely a late Neal Stephenson book. In that it had some very memorable phrases and interesting ideas waving and drowning in the middle of an over-stuffed, overindulgent narrative. Not only does Stephenson need an editor, he needs an editor who doesn't like him very much.
Agency is as tight a narrative as Gibson has ever written. It's still packed with extremely Gibsonian ideas about technology and society, but it's also just a really good thriller that gets the job done in half as many pages as Fall. Going back and reading Zodiac and Neuromancer, I'm not sure I'd have put money on which of those two authors would end up writing which book 35 years(!?) later. But the truth is that William Gibson has made himself into a person who is as cool and smart as Neal Stephenson's characters think they are.
It's so frustrating. Fall takes place in a world where you either hire companies to filter and curate your social media feeds to keep you within shouting distance of the real world, or you succumb to algorithm-driven content that tailors itself to your dopamine response until you're taking in a stream of what sounds like pure nonsense to anyone outside your algorithm group. Large swathes of rural America are controlled by extremist libertarian militias whose worldview is entirely divorced from reality based on algorithms maximizing outrage to maximize engagement. Like, not just bad ideas, but a stream of words and images that don't seem to add up to any actual coherent narrative. That's smart and scary and feels very possible right now. And it exists for fifty pages of a 900 page book before being completely ignored in favor of incomprehensible digital creation myths.
Is it legal to start a Kickstarter that just pays an author to rip off another author's underutilized but brilliant idea?
... no actually nothing in SevenEves is worth saving.
I missed Gibson's reading when he came to Seattle a month or so ago and I'm really mad about it because he's getting up there in years and it might have been the last chance I'll have
I think it's bad, maybe, archery action or not
This is a neat article about Jules Verne
http://www.openculture.com/2020/02/jules-vernes-voyages-extraordinaires.html
I read and absorbed several of their books when I was a child
Do I
- behave like a giant nerd and ask him to sign the book
- leave the poor man alone he's dealt with enough these last few years
- try for the first one but then find out it's not actually him and embarrass the hell out of both of us
Edit: it's definitely him though. Like, 90% sure now. Maybe 93%
Edit: oh there's an author photo on here. 99.9% sure now.
Really tho, I don't think I'd actually do anything in that situation. I'd probably just be like "Oh yeah one day I saw the guy that wrote the book I was reading on the same plane as me. Weird, right?" and that'd be that. But I'm a socially awkward dork, so.
"THIS IS NOT A THREAT"
very reassuring thing to yell
This is the worst day of my life.
.
So good on you.
The most challenging book I’ve ever seen on a flight was The Da Vinci Code
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
But I once got Roko’s Basilisk explained to me on a train to Penzance by a guy who makes robot hands (we were not traveling together).
Makes sense that a guy from Penzance makes replacement hands...
I love all of Chambers' books so far. Incredibly low stakes in a universe where humans don't matter much at all that are absolutely wholesome.
The last one was literally just slice of life on a human space station. Individual stories from different people living there and how their paths crossed.
You apparently missed To Be Taught, If Fortunate. It isn't really connected at all to the other three but still interesting and in that style. A take on un-imperialist space exploration and how that might look.