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NeilNjae
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Another thing that came to me while answering question 6. The book is about hidden knowledge. The House was accessed? created? to get to the hidden knowledge of the ancients. Sorensen was forced there to explore it, but in doing so his own self-know…
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(Quote) I'll echo the quality of the prose had a lot to do with the appeal of the book. Piranesi's adoration of the House shone through very clearly. I think the diary structure allowed Clarke to include not only the events that occurred, but also P…
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Piranesi was innocent, naive, and without malice. That made them easy to have sympathy for, so I cared about them and that they did well. I liked that Piranesi never lied to us, the reader: the revelations about his past were as shocking to him as t…
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I mentioned in Q3 that the book could well be informed by Clarke's enforced solitude due to CFS, and the allusions to a Victorian style of Piranesi's life. @RichardAbbott 's point about devotion is a good one. Could we consider Piranesi as being li…
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A few things came to mind regarding the symbolism. One is the Jungian archetypes as @RichardAbbott pointed out. Piranesi spends a lot of time contemplating what the statues represent and chooses different statues to witness his different actions. …
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For a start, the world isn't that interesting in itself: it's a collection of symbols that Piranesi relates to. Even so, most of the time we spend inside Piranesi's head as he thinks about his lot. There's very little about the world as a challenge:…
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(Quote) It's a good example of the narrator being so unreliable that not even they realise they're unreliable! I agree, it was a good way of feeding in the exposition over time. Clarke is a good enough author to engage us readers from the beginning…
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Good to see you, Jesse! Glad you could make it.
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I've only just started this (distracted by other books) and.... Family Circle! The Biscuit-Box Man. That must confuse so many colonials. I mentioned it to my wife and she immediately said, "Oh, I've not had a jammy dodger for ages."
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(Quote) Oops! Mistakes happen. At least it's not as bad as when Queen Victoria asked Lewis Carroll for his next book... (Which apparently didn't happen.)
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(Quote) Broken Earth is a story about oppression; Pao is a story where oppression happens. Broken Earth centres and gives voice to the oppressed; Pao uses them as set-dressing.
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This is where I dropped out. The draft of women is definitely rape, on a mass scale. How many of those women had a choice over what happened to them? They didn't have a choice about whether to be drafted, or who fucked them, or whether their bodies …
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"Worlds of Android" was released by FFG, to supplement mainly their Netrunner card game (and others in that universe). It also ties in to the "Shadow of the Beanstalk" game-specific book. "Worlds of Android" is meant t…
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(Quote) I think that's a given from the book.
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(Quote) In terms of aligning the book to Kirkengaard, I can see the aesthetic stage. Is the ethic stage is more clearly seen before the book, in the founding of the Grand Prix itself? It's a way of forming connections between people/species. As for…
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The central absurdity starts even earlier, when the roadrunner appears to everyone. She describes how she's affecting everyone emotionally, using infrasound and neotenous appearance. But like all these things, it's a metaphor for us. We should reco…
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Good to see you back, @Ray_Otus !
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I've not heard of The Broken Sword, but it sounds interesting. Piranesi is on my to-read pile, so I'll be reading it anyway. A discussion here could be good. So, my vote's for Piranesi, but I'd be happy with either.
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(Quote) I was skimming it. I didn't dig into it as deeply as I would if I were taking the game to the table. It was a fault of not reading closely.
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(Quote) Thanks for the corrections, and apologies for not being on top of all the details. I will admit, I was confused why the Take the Lead seemed to apply to songwriting. My reading of the cards was they mainly applied to the situation outside th…
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Sad to say, Vance is back to his usual tricks. This time, the rape is on an industrial scale. I'm out.
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(Quote) I pretty fundamentally disagree with this. I think you're familiar with the arguments on both sides, so I won't repeat them here. (Quote) But. looking at High Strung, there are very few decisions to be made in a performance. By my reading, …
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(Quote) Interesting. Can you make objective criteria for aesthetic judgements? As for aesthetics in board games, one that springs to mind is Kingdomino. You have to arrange dominoes, making large contiguous areas. You get bonus points for "ple…
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(Quote) I've played it a lot, and really like it. The Legacy games are even better, and well worth picking up. Relating it back to RPGs, many RPGs assume party-based play, where the PCs cooperate to achieve joint goals. What violence there is (phys…
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(Quote) Except... we have better tools for dealing with fights, rather than singing or racing. First, there's the investigation of the opponent to find their weakness, and then sorting out how to exploit that. In the fight itself, we follow the acti…
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(Quote) I'm running a Mouse Guard game at the moment, so... The game emphasises that all the PCs are in one team, cooperating with each other to do good. It also makes you think about obstacles that aren't just about violence and fighting (such as n…
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I'm glad people picked up on this. This comment on the meaning of life is why I thought the book worthy of a read by us (a silly Adams pastiche may have been amusing, but not satisfying). As people have said, it's an entirely secular world, but that…
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Nudging the discussion back to the original question, what role do the arts have in the context of fascism and authoritarianism? Is the celebration of joy and creativity and diversity important? Are they important as a wide social movement, or as an…
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(Quote) I can't disagree. I found the Douglas Adams caricature tiring, but I think she toned it down as the book progressed (or perhaps I got used to it). As for the absurd characters, she made a ploy for a sensible one with Oort in his persona as …
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I've put some questions up in the Space Opera category. I'm keen to hear your thoughts!