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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,136
- 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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Yes I agree - completely different from generative AI which basically (this is a simplistic view which @NeilNjae may well prefer to correct) learns language skills and facts from a vast compendium of existing knowledge. My own feeling about the stat…
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I liked it (though inevitably some specific items were annoying rather than illuminating). He uses a similar technique in Hominids so it's evidently a way he likes for imparting peripheral information to the reader.
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Didn't guess right - I was favouring the 'bodiless' one as prime suspect. I did like the plot rationale for it being that one, and thought that Sawyer did a good job of making it obvious in retrospect.
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That's a really good question. Being in the process of reading Hominids my guess is that he has Catholic sympathies, but is acutely aware of problems within said faith (as indeed, many Catholics are). But one of the refreshing things about his books…
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I thought the idea that so much stuff would be cloud-based, with local machines being essentially like prisons to the three virtual individuals, was surprisingly prescient. Most older SF writers continued to assume that computers would largely remai…
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It was refreshing to have a non-US city setting (somewhat like Hiero's Journey being a refreshing non-USA post-apocalyptic tale). It was clear that Sawyer knew the place well himself and so could toss in random details - so avoiding ,for me at least…
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Loved it! Sufficiently so that I've started reading other books by Sawyer, in particular the Hominids series (which, briefly, concerns the interaction between our world and a quantum-parallel one in which Neanderthals emerged as the dominant hominid…
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(Quote) Personally I find that only some books work for me in audio format. That's partly because I tend to listen while doing household stuff like cooking or washing up, or if I'm in the car on my own, whereas with ebook/paperback I am more focused…
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@Apocryphal - super-enjoyed this book and can't understand why I hadn't come across Robert Sawyer before. Seeing as how I devoured it way before the end of the month I downloaded another of his (Hominids) to see what some of his other work is like
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Discussion area for The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands now set up. Current state of rota play is: Apr @kcaryths The Saint of Bright Doors - ongoing discussion still welcome! May @Apocryphal The Terminal Experiment Jun @NeilNjae The Ca…
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Thanks all especially @BarnerCobblewood for this discussion!
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(Quote) Are they just genderless because they're not following the gender conventions we expect for Romance languages? Or are they deliberately intended to be genderless following Asian conventions? We had an interesting conversation along these li…
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(Quote) @BarnerCobblewood if you would like to do this I can slot you in at whatever month is best for you?
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Something I wondered about after finishing - which I think connects with what @NeilNjae is saying - was the series of Five Unforgiveables mentioned right at the start. For the first maybe 1/4 of the book it feels like Fetter is going to systematical…
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It would be a serious heap of detail for a GM to keep track of :) The identity cards alone were fearfully complex...
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I liked the little group of scientists studying the Bright Doors and would have liked more about them. I couldn't really get interested in the group putting on the play, and the kind of political posh group were (I think intentionally) quite dull. A…
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I liked the Doors concept, especially since (as I mentioned elsewhere) they were left unexplained and all-but-unused for large parts of the book. That got me speculating on their origins - were they, for example, some relic of the transformation of …
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I particularly liked the growing revelations about Mother-of-Glory and thought that that particular unfolding was one of the strongest features. By way of contrast, I never really felt that I learned much about the Perfect-and-Kind, and he remained …
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It certainly made a change from the large numbers of monolithic religion/culture that one comes across. I liked the idea of being thrown in to the mix of perspectives, though at the same time I'd be hard-pressed to describe to anyone what the exact …
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Top level - I liked it, and found the intricacy of social detail very absorbing. To have a society so stratified by multiple layers of race, language, history and other dimensions was both bewildering and fascinating. Other thoughts - it was a slow…
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Funnily enough I just downloaded a sample of this so sure, fine by me
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Discussion area for The Terminal Experiment now set up. Current state of rota play is: Apr @kcaryths The Saint of Bright Doors - coming up very soon! May @Apocryphal The Terminal Experiment Jun @NeilNjae (TBD) Jul Me (TBD) Aug @clash_bowley (TBD)…
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@Apocryphal said: (Quote) I thought the coded emoji bit was one of the most interesting side-plots of the series! I don't know enough about filming to be struck by the much-hyped single-shot camera technique, and I found some of the story-telling q…
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All: a quick reminder of the current state of play of the rota... Apr @kcaryths The Saint of Bright Doors May @Apocryphal being decided as we speak Jun @NeilNjae (TBD) Jul Me (TBD) Aug @clash_bowley @BarnerCobblewood if you have a title in mind to…
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A philosophical thriller sounds cool to me :)
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As I recall from Tekumel, although social reputation was crucial, it wasn't encoded in the rules but left to the GM to implement as they saw fit. This typically meant that in the first instance you had to get some recognition from your temple, and/o…
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(Quote) I did years ago - my impression was that the rules and the intention thereof was that The State was supposed to be utterly unmovable and so you either lived strictly by the social mores and conventions, or you made sure you weren't caught, w…
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(Quote) Yes that captures my thinking too - I couldn't see what his motive was, nor what he thought the story was really about.
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(Quote) :D
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An author may not personally have libertarian views but yet write a book exploring a libertarian society or themes (or any other society for that matter).