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Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2013 10:21 pm
by Bakustra
phongn wrote:Any thoughts on Charlie Stross, Baks? He's not exactly high literature but (unsurprisingly) as a CS major it's kind of fun to look at his worldbuilding for light reading. His blog is usually interesting, too.
Well, let's put it this way- I got to the part in The Atrocity Archives where they exposit about how the Great Old One eats heat, and then they call it an "infovore", and I think I mouthed "Oh, please". But I really like "A Colder War". I guess I agree with Bounty.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:hey buck

yukikaze was a great animu ova
cools

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 9:53 am
by Bounty
I started with The Atrocity Archives. One thing that makes it easier to understand the books is that Stross sometimes just likes to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. He'll build up a story or setting that is somewhat plausible within the context of the novel and then take it just a bit too much overboard for shits and giggles.
Nazis use occult magic to create a base on a parallel Earth? Yeah, fine, it works in the story. Hitler's face laser-etched into the Moon? That's Stross just going 'fuck it'.

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 10:14 pm
by phongn
Bakustra wrote:Well, let's put it this way- I got to the part in The Atrocity Archives where they exposit about how the Great Old One eats heat, and then they call it an "infovore", and I think I mouthed "Oh, please". But I really like "A Colder War". I guess I agree with Bounty.
It's not a bad term, though? Entropy in information theory and thermodynamics are the same thing. It's a terrifying monster that eats information (with the nasty side effects noted above).
Bounty wrote:I just finished The Apocalypse Codex. It's good pulp. I like the background of the stories and the way he has fleshed out the Laundry. His pacing is pretty okay and it never gets boring. That said, once the story gets underway it's essentially a Lovecraft-light cliché machine with some Dilbert thrown in.
Have you seen Stross' crib sheet? I don't disagree with what you say but that more or less tells you what he's inspired by.
Bounty wrote:
Nazis use occult magic to create a base on a parallel Earth? Yeah, fine, it works in the story. Hitler's face laser-etched into the Moon? That's Stross just going 'fuck it'.
I thought that was Nazis in a parallel earth using occult magic (maths) to summon an impossible horror to win WW2.

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Mon Aug 05, 2013 7:41 am
by Bounty
Could be, it's been a long while since I read the novel.

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:07 pm
by Bakustra
phongn wrote:
Bakustra wrote:Well, let's put it this way- I got to the part in The Atrocity Archives where they exposit about how the Great Old One eats heat, and then they call it an "infovore", and I think I mouthed "Oh, please". But I really like "A Colder War". I guess I agree with Bounty.
It's not a bad term, though? Entropy in information theory and thermodynamics are the same thing. It's a terrifying monster that eats information (with the nasty side effects noted above).
It's not an inaccurate term, it just leaves me rolling my eyes. Kinda like how I read this story earlier this year which featured an otherworldly mall and mysterious goings-on and then started babbling about Yog-Sothoth and the Plains of Leng and shit. It's not bad in and of itself, it's just in-context it seems lame.

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 4:46 pm
by RyanThunder
So has anybody seen Elysium yet?

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 5:40 pm
by Bounty
I just bought Shift, the next book set in the Wool universe. I didn't know he eventually got his stuff published as actual paper books.

So far it's decent, like the first few Wool books but with different characters in a different setting. What's next is only a semi-spoiler since it's basically explained in the synopsis on the back:
The book is set partially in the 'master' Silo at some point after the end of the world, and partially in the near future where an architect-turned-politician is asked to work a nuclear storage bunker with a suspiciously high budget. Normally I don't like prequels at all, but in this case it's actually working out quite nicely. The backstory for the Silos so far is pretty believable without trying to explain everything. Another cool touch is a blank page before each section of the book; first it has three vertical stripes, later it gets filled in with a timeline of the series as the characters start figuring things out.
I'm about a quarter in and thus far it's a good read. Let's hope it doesn't deflate completely like Wool V did. Still need to finish that one...

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 1:51 pm
by RyanThunder
I'll take that as a non-answer and talk anyway.

So! The FX were not bad. I felt some of it was unnecessarily gory but at least in once instance it was used to demonstrate the medical technology the Elysians were hoarding. I liked the story, but I felt Jodie Foster's part was either intentionally wooden or that she just sucks at talking with a high British accent.

Sure, the ending seemed a bit childish, but it was satisfying.

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 1:57 pm
by RyanThunder
Oh yeah, and I'm trying to decide whether the Elysians were meant to not only personify the wealthy elite allowed to get totally out of hand, or if they were intended to personify the soulless amoral machinery of a corporation, or both.

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 5:59 pm
by adr
hmm two peeps on a space settlement mailing list I read recommended the Elysium film too, they said it was good but not great, but had some cool looks of the space habitat (though they had some tech criticisms)

I don't watch movies outside my house but mebbe i'll view on home video some day

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 6:18 pm
by Bakustra
Let's take advantage of the Halloween month to delve a little into horror. I've been reading through a decent chunk of Ramsey Campbell (several collections of shorts, several novels from the 80s through recently) and I've developed some thoughts about his work.

Ramsey Campbell wrote that his first novel, The Doll Who Ate His Mother, derived in part from an effort to make a new monster, distinct from vampires and werewolves and so on. Not having read the novel, I can't comment on it specifically, but there is a monster all his own, if perhaps not purely original. Its slimy spoor can be traced through his works from the 70s to the modern day. The best way to describe it is as fat. Not obesity, fat. Lard, cooled grease, a soft, slimy, off-white putrescence that can only approach and mock the shapes of the everyday.

While Lovecraft's works often emphasized similar visceral sensations for his horrors, there is still a grandeur even in Cthulhu's flabby claws and gelid body. Stephen King's horrors generally manage to have some respectable manifestation outside of filth and decay. But this monster is all decay and all filth, with scarce a sign of respectability to be found.

More specifically, even without this flabby oozing beast, Campbell finds fear in softness, in the loss of solidity. Oh, yes, there's a definite use of social anxieties throughout his work, but this is generally around a core of finding that the banister is sagging when you touch it, and the stairs are melting into a slurry.

But ascendant from the core, we find a definite working-class sensibility even when the characters are in relatively privileged positions. This reaches its apex with The Overnight, a book where the flabby beasts are practically a relief compared to the horror of American-style retail work, but even in works like Ancient Images and The Grin of the Dark, with relatively well-off people in creative work, we still have a definite sense of being the underdog against the overweening forces of society.

The most interesting trend in his work is a move away from obvious explanations- earlier work tends to explain everything over the course of the novel, his 90s work left some things undefined, and more recent materials have left the pieces for the reader to put together (The Overnight) or left things entirely ambiguous (The Grin of the Dark). While this is largely due to the different demands of the narratives, it's certainly a refreshing trend in horror.

Moving on from Campbell, let us turn to John Farris's All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (1977), a near-potboiler with an excellent title that tells almost nothing about the actual contents. The basic story is simple- two young men with traumatic pasts, a mysterious woman, the 1940s, and somewhat-better-than-pop vodou, with a carefully spun-out narrative that allows you to guess the basic thread about halfway through but comes to a nastily effective ending. The story is uncomfortable on racial grounds- the villain is the illegitimate mixed-race son of a Southern planter, plotting to receive his inheritance and taking revenge against his racist, pedophiliac half-brother, and, frankly, he's far too sympathetic for the narrative to work well in 2013. Also, way too much dialect. The vodou is somewhere between "voodoo dolls" and Disney's The Princess and the Frog, and the research appears to largely be taken from books I recognized. The overall setup is somewhat similar in general terms to Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard, and so I couldn't help thinking about his much-better vodou in On Stranger Tides.

Next, we have Colson Whitehead's Zone One: A Novel, which is basically what happens when George Romero's Dead trilogy is carefully distilled and the social commentary taken to the ultimate conclusion. The book exists in a sweetly sardonic atmosphere (looting is sponsored in the reclamation of Manhattan), and then the final third turns into unrelenting horror as the remnants of modern society are destroyed one after the other in a concerted attack, and the main character decides to join the dead. It's good to see a novel willing to have the same basic, ghoulish message as Val Lewton gave to his films.

Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is a masterpiece of horror literature, one of the few works unambiguously both, and already something you can see a lot of excellent reviews of. So I won't say much in general, except to present my own interpretation of the book- namely, that this is the story of Eleanor Vance, a young woman with a number of psychological issues, who went to Hill House and was presented with a choice. There was Theo, who was already in a relationship, and very obviously exterior to Eleanor, (and a woman, but this does not matter within the novel), and there was Hill House, single, practically interior to Eleanor, and, unfortunately, abusive and manipulative. Eleanor made her choice, but whatever walked in Hill House still walked alone.

Anne Rivers Siddons The House Next Door is another version of the haunted house, and is practically a fixup novel split between three novellas with a frame story. This haunted house, like all good haunted houses, works on the insecurities of the people nearby. From a mere heart attack and scandal to a multiple murder, the house concludes its corruption by self-destructively driving the narrators to murder and arson to stop the house. Alas, we still have the "O Henry twist down the mineshaft", to quote Stephen King, and this one is an especially haunting one. On the other hand, the viewpoint character is named Colquitt, which may be a deal breaker for some people.

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Meanwhile, I've also read three different books about Walt Disney World, one mainstream, one fantasy, and one sci-fi. The sci-fi one shoots for satirizing fandom, but avoids the mark by a fair few meters. The fantasy one is a pure slobberfest to the Disney ideology. The mainstream one is probably the most honest, depicting Disney World as a place that attracts a wide variety of fucked-up people, but leaves it open as to what effect the park itself has on them. The only things left over are YA and Cory Doctorow, so I think I've basically exhausted the sum total of literature related to Disney World, which now that I think about it is a particularly sad subgenre, and unfortunately I have the desire to contribute to it. :(

Re: Reviewing Science Fiction

Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 2:18 pm
by Bounty
Bounty wrote:I'm about a quarter in and thus far it's a good read. Let's hope it doesn't deflate completely like Wool V did. Still need to finish that one...
Past me was wrong. The book deflates like a hopeful but doomed soufflé.