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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,354
- 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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There's also the revenge component of the apes' behaviour - they ended up particularly good at medicine precisely because that was where they were (and have been) most experimented on. But yes, any division where someone says "they're not like…
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I'm with @NeilNjae on that - the story isn't really about Ulysse at all, despite appearances
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I kind of liked the space flight bits :) especially that space flight took so long. It split the book into several disjoint parts where the stories (and the parallels between the stories) were the only things bridging the gap. So I guess I never fo…
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I mentioned in one of the other starters that we started watching the 2001 remake and abandoned it before too long as it just didn't grab our interest. I'm sure I have seen the 1968 one but like @NeilNjae it was a long time ago and I should re-watch…
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Yes! I remember _Recursion _ well ( along with the rather good film _Source Code_ which so far as I recall had no code in it at all, but was a lot of fun. I don't think I'd call _Planet of the Apes_ recursive as it only has two layers, though adm…
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Definitely satire, and this surprised me - I'd expected a kind of adventure story seeing as that's what the films have become, and enjoyed this treatment a whole lot more! We watched the 2001 remake of the film and gave up after about 1/2 hour cos i…
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Yes, I had forgotten about them, and loved the twist that they turned out to be apes themselves. An excellent device, and highlights the whole human/ape inversion that we follow in a bit more detail in the interior story. And very neatly written at …
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Discussion area for Dracula set up
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(Quote) That looks an interesting site though very extensive :)
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(Quote) I'm currently listening to her Thornhedge, a retelling from a different and engaging angle of Sleeping Beauty.
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I wonder (and it's an unanswerable question, of course) how much of the anti-Pict racism was the province of writers like Bede rather than the general population at large? Bede, as we know, had a strong agenda to his writing, and was naturally going…
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(Quote) Hm, not so sure! Dal Riada seems to have been basically the west coast and islands, plus a bit of what is now Northern Ireland, and was at its greatest extent around 600AD. After that it declined and was successively defeated by sundry other…
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I don't think I've ever read it so sure, let's go for it!
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One of our collective motives for picking this was the absolutely glowing review I came across on Goodreads. Looking back, it's hard to see this review as describing the same book!
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Like a lot of racism, I think it has its roots in a lack of knowledge of and fear concerning "the other". Plus a feeling that the culture and motives were so different as to be incomprehensible and fearful. This would be in contrast with a…
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(Quote) Totally agree about the lack of vision. Given Ruan's youth you'd expect it to come from Harkfast at this stage, but he seems to play things so close to his chest that not much leaks out to us as readers. As an Arthurian retelling you might c…
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Discussion still ongoing about Harkfast but this is a quick reminder that August is Planet of the Apes selected by @Apocryphal . Also, @NeilNjae do you have a title chosen for September yet?
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It's an interesting "translational" problem that I encounter in writing as well. Apologies if necessary for the following musings if they are of little relevance to the Harkfast discussion! As (some of you) know, my current WIP is set aro…
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I'd've liked more, to be honest - since I was reading an actual dead-tree book it was abundantly obvious that I was reaching the end, and so I knew that the tale wasn't going to get anywhere conclusive. But it still felt disappointing that so little…
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It was very bleak, and I tend to like books that are rather more upbeat and optimistic. (Even if set in a fundamentally pessimistic part of history, as this is). There's something about a character's (or author's) ability to find goodness and happin…
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Hmmm, good question. Not really, I guess. I did feel sympathy for Ruan's plight at first, forced to flee from his home and family, and I liked the way he was drawn into the druidic world. But not long after that it seemed that he wasn't actually goi…
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There was a lot, I felt, and on all sides so there certainly didn't feel like there were good guys and bad guys - everyone was pretty brutal to each other. probably the ones that I found most unpleasant were when the story was set up to make you thi…
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Yes, this is fairly standard - the picts are either short and nasty or short and clever, but they're always short...
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I'm totally convinced that he intended to write at least one more in the series - the story kind of goes nowhere at the end if there's no intention to follow it on. So then the question becomes, why didn't he? This was published in 1976 and he lived…
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I liked it at first, but after a while it got to feel a bit like hard work. Some of the vocabulary was familiar to me through various routes, other bits were new. Again, at first I looked things up but after a while I just assumed meaning from conte…
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Cover blurb and about-the-author now posted as a category for @Apocryphal 's choice for August, Planet of the Apes
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Part of Temeraire's outsider-ness is indeed his name. All the others have funky Latin names because their riders knew that this was the convention, but Laurence used his own naval conventions to give a decent ship name, which then immediately expose…
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(Quote) While I was writing that I suddenly had a little wave of nostalgia for those plasticard ships :) and poring over Jane's Fighting Ships and other similar sources in Godalming and Guildford libraries. I had a quick search online for the rules …
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It was a fun morph of the "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea." quotation :)
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To repeat a thing I said on the Discord channel, "Back in the day, a bunch of us had some WW1 flying rules played with Airfix models (1:72 scale) on long bamboo poles so you were doing the manoeuvring and all for real, lateral and vertical, to …