Tag: amReading

Dark Forest spoilers (3/4 through)

Fascinating as the Year 200 setting has been up to this point, the naivete & overconfidence has been maddening.

You *know* the enemy has vastly superior technology & knows way more about physics than you do. You don’t send your entire fleet to intercept one ship that you’ve decided is harmless based on the fact that *your tech* couldn’t be destructive enough based on *your* knowledge of physics.

#books #DarkForest #amReading

On Wandering.shop

Awakened hibernators seem to be more…paranoid? Cautious? Perceptive?

I guess the idea is that those who grew up in this era figure humanity has already faced the Great Ravine, we can face *anything*, while those who lived earlier don’t have that overconfidence.

Or maybe the Imprinted tech is out there, the polarity fixed, and in wider use than anyone thought.

But it’s still been frustrating pages & pages of “when will the big dummies figure it out?”

On Wandering.shop

Three-Body Problem, final chapters

I’m seriously impressed by the concept of the sophon. It’s one of the most overpowered pieces of impossible tech and yet it’s a simple extrapolation from string theory – and making use of known quantum effects gives it a lot of other abilities that handily explain the mysterious happenings early in the book.

#ThreeBodyProblem #SFFBookClub #amReading

On BookToot.Club

After listening to the audio version, I re-read Final Crisis…

After listening to the audio version, I re-read Final Crisis, Rogues Revenge & Superman Beyond, plus read some of the tie-ins for the first time.

– Superman Beyond is essential.
– Submit (Black Lightning/Tattooed Man) adds a lot by showing the personal impact of the event, plus fills in plot.
– Resist (Checkmate) broadens the scope but can be skipped. (I do like using the captive villain AIs as a way to get around the ALE’s control of communication channels)

#AmReading #comics #FinalCrisis

On BookToot.Club

Rogues Revenge was in the works before Final Crisis, and it shows. It still works as Rogues: Rebirth, but now I think the FC connections hurt more than they help.

Revelations is a much tighter story that weaves in and out of issues 2 & 3 (if not seamlessly), picking up the Crime Bible & Vandal Savage and showing the early stages of Darkseid’s takeover. I didn’t read it originally, but I’m glad I finally got around to it.

#comics #FinalCrisis #AmReading

On BookToot.Club

I didn’t re-read Requiem. I still haven’t picked up Rage of the Red Lanterns. (I’d forgotten the Alpha Lanterns were involved in Final Crisis.)

I also didn’t re-read Legion of Three Worlds, which IIRC has nothing to do with Final Crisis except Superman passes through it between Superman: Beyond and his return to Final Crisis when Braniac 5 shows him the Miracle Machine. (3 versions of the LSH, none of which were the one that I actually followed).

I do want to re-read Multiversity now, though.

On BookToot.Club
Expanded on Speed Force

Three-Body Problem ch 22

I don’t quite buy the game as a recruiting tool.

They’re supposedly all about replacing human society with the aliens’ (one way or another), but the game doesn’t tell you much about that society except that it’s persistent, can hibernate for eons, and coming for us.

It conveys key facts about their environment and biology, but doesn’t present a culture to emulate. Unless it’s in the chapters Wang misses?

#SFFBookClub #ThreeBodyProblem #AmReading #books

On BookToot.Club

Or is the vagueness itself part of the appeal? Anyone dissatisfied with the world as it is can project their own ideals onto the aliens?

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I love the idea of using NPCs to simulate a computer in-game. It reminds me …

I love the idea of using NPCs to simulate a computer in-game. It reminds me of the working CPU models made in Minecraft with redstone, except more creative because NPCs aren’t designed for circuitry.

I also like the way the author mixes up the narrative structure, with documents, a personal statement, and of course the game interspersed with the regular narration.

#sffbookclub #books #amreading

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Finished listening to the Graphic Audio adaptation of FInal Crisis. It actually flows better than …

Finished listening to the Graphic Audio adaptation of FInal Crisis. It actually flows better than the comic, especially toward the end, when the comic starts fragmenting the narrative (which is great metatext, but there’s a lot of “what just happened?”). Scenes are fleshed out, and the multi-flashback structure of the last chapter is made linear instead.

#amreading #comics

On BookToot.Club

A lot of that is probably the novelization it was based on (it credits the story only to Greg Cox, with no mention of Grant Morrison or any of the artists, which seems a shame), but I don’t think it would work well as a book.

The voice acting, music and sound make up for a lot of the lost visual punch and visual structure of the story, and it needs more than just the words.

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Expanded on Speed Force

Now that I’ve gotten through another cycle of the VR game story, it’s become more …

Now that I’ve gotten through another cycle of the VR game story, it’s become more intriguing. Presumably we’re going to work through a bunch of cosmological models as it goes on.

I’m also really curious as to how the trick with the cosmic background radiation is supposed to have been managed.

And of course, is the countdown really leading to something, or is it, as Shi suggests, just a way to mess with Wang’s head?

#amreading #sffbookclub #books #scifi

On BookToot.Club

One of the weird things about the Final Crisis audio book is that it incorporates …

One of the weird things about the Final Crisis audio book is that it incorporates *some* of the tie-ins, but excludes the one that sets up Mandrakk. Scenes showing what’s happening to Batman in the Evil Factory are included, and all of the Black Lightning/Tattooed Man story from Submit…but nothing from Superman Beyond. It (or the novelization it’s based on) actually replaces the Monitor who recruits Superman with Braniac 5, sending him off to L3W but not including it!

#comics #amreading

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Expanded on Speed Force

In Final Crisis, the Anti-Life Equation is able to compel the surrender of free will. …

In Final Crisis, the Anti-Life Equation is able to compel the surrender of free will. Those who have submitted spout slogans about how it justifies anything, how it’s so much easier than the struggles of life and love.

It’s insidious, because in some ways it *is* easier to offload tough decisions to a schedule, a policy, a leader, etc. The brain likes taking shortcuts around cognitive load. But people want to be *able* to make choices when they want to.

#amreading #comics #psychology

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Expanded on Speed Force

Another interesting thing about Final Crisis is how much damage Darkseid does just by existing. …

Another interesting thing about Final Crisis is how much damage Darkseid does just by existing. He doesn’t do any traditional super villain things in the entire story. No battles, no plotting. He just sits on his throne, yaking advantage of a battle he already won, imposing his will on an entire planet. He spends most of the story sitting on an underground bunker, but his presence presses down on the whole world.

#amreading #comics

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Expanded on Speed Force

Three-Body Problem ch5-7

Three-Body Problem ch5-7:

The mystery, the questions about the nature of fundamental laws of physics (i.e. are they actually fundamental?), and the countdown have all been fascinating.

I’m up to the introduction of the VR game that lends its name to the title, and for the first time I feel like the story is getting bogged down.

I know it’s symbolic. I figure it’s a way to get ideas across to the players without discussing them openly. But it’s still dragging.

#sffbookclub #amreading #books

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I find it bizarre that a book that criticized excesses of capitalism would have been …

Three-Body problem ch1-2, Silent Spring:

I find it bizarre that a book that criticized excesses of capitalism would have been characterized as counter-revolutionary, capitalist propaganda.

But of course both capitalism and communism are quite capable of environmental destruction. Rapacious state, corporation, or individual, it’s a universal human failing, like the image of an iceberg in the ocean that Wenjie imagines, independent of ideology.

#sffbookclub #environment #amreading #books

On BookToot.Club

To clarify: I don’t disbelieve it. I would not at all be surprised if it had actually been portrayed this way, particularly knowing China’s environmental record.

I’m just saying it’s a weird contradiction. One more thing I have to wrap my mind around to read a story set during the cultural revolution.

On BookToot.Club

Finished re-reading Sparrow Hill Road, by Seanan McGuire. Imagine all the hitchiking ghost stories you’ve …

Finished re-reading Sparrow Hill Road, by Seanan McGuire. Imagine all the hitchiking ghost stories you’ve heard are true, and they travel the ghosts of long-dead highways.

It’s told episodically as a collection of stories about the same ghost, what she does, how she died, and her quest to stop her killer.

It made me think about the difference between a horror story and a ghost story. I don’t like horror much, but I do usually enjoy ghost stories quite a bit.

#amreading #books

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I realized why Sparrow Hill Road is taking longer than I expected to read, even …

I realized why Sparrow Hill Road is taking longer than I expected to read, even though it feels like it’s going quickly: because it’s structured as a series of related, but complete ghost stories, I hit a breaking point part way through my lunch hour instead of continuing to read as much as I can until I need to get back to work. I’m probably reading 2/3 as much each session as I would otherwise.

#books #amreading

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I finished the June Rebellion chapters of #LesMiserables early afternoon on June 6, the same …

I finished the June Rebellion chapters of #LesMiserables early afternoon on June 6, the same time that the barricade fell in the book. That was kind of weird.

Lots of commentary and philosophy on revolution & urban/civil warfare, presented as supporting for the story, but I realize now it’s the other way around.