books?

[RealNC]

Do you hate humanity? Do you think it can't die off soon enough? Then the "Remembrance of Earth's Past" series by Liu Cixin is for you.

In a series of three books ("The Three-Body Problem," "The Dark Forest," "Death's End,") the complacency of humanity becomes so intolerable that I started rooting for the aliens. I couldn't wait for humanity to get wiped out. During every crisis humanity faces, it does get its act together. But soon after complacency kicks in and it transforms into a Twitter crowd.

For example, a single individual comes up with a plan to save the planet from extinction. This involves sending "a signal" (no spoilers) to another star system. Many years later (speed of light and stuff,) Earth sees that star system blow up. This literally saves humanity from total extinction. The dude is hailed as a hero and the savior of humanity. Fast forward a century, and the dude is still around, but he had to dedicate his whole life to ensuring humanity's continued existence. He's basically living his whole life in a single room staring at a wall, doing "something" (no spoilers) that prevents our total annihilation. A living hell. What does humanity do? They want to crucify him for crimes against life itself. Because, you know, there might have been alien beings living on that star system that blew up back then.

By the end of the series, you can't wait for humanity to be extinguished. You want to shout "you fucking dumbasses, you had it coming" at the pages, because the aliens are intelligent, smart, and have perspective. They're not a bunch of Twitter Karens like the humans.

I'm now reading the last book in the series. I'm halfway though. I don't know how it ends. If we get wiped out (because we're fucking dumbasses) then:

5/5

If not:

0/5

PS:
Forgot to mention that this is "hard science fiction." Alongside politics and humanity's dumbassery, there's also space exploration and weird space anomalies and unexplained (at first) phenomena. If you're into that (I know I am,) it's got those too.

[AArdvark]

This sounds like books I could get into. I will check them out.

[RealNC]

One small aspect of the story reminded me of "The Invention of Lying." It turns out the very concept of deception might be a purely human quality. Unfortunately, this aspect is kinda pushed aside in the story. I guess the aliens are too smart and quickly develop a theory of human deception that makes them immune to it.

[odyssia76]

this is "hard science fiction." Alongside politics and humanity's dumbassery, there's also space exploration and weird space anomalies and unexplained (at first) phenomena. If you're into that (I know I am,) it's got those too.

Are you a fan of Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson?

[RealNC]

Are you a fan of Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson?

Never heard of them. I just browse goodreads.com and see what looks interesting when I'm looking for something new to read.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Then have I got a video for you!

[RealNC]

This... what? What?

[AArdvark]

You never heard of Snow Crash?

[odyssia76]

Never heard of them. I just browse goodreads.com and see what looks interesting when I'm looking for something new to read.

If you like hard science fiction, then they are must-read authors.

Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash, Diamond Age, Seveneves - all stunning classics. And the rest are awesome too.

Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars, The MInistry For The Future

Jack Campbell Lost Fleet series (first book - Daunfless). Best hard-core militray/naval Sci fi.

You're welcome. I envy you for the amazing books you have yet to read.

[RealNC]

Thanks! I've been going through the works of Peter F. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter for a while now. The more the merrier.

[AArdvark]

Ooo! Mindstar Brigade with Greg Mandel

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Yeah, but none of those guys shamelessly ripped off their adoring fans for a cool half a mill.

[RealNC]

Yeah, but none of those guys shamelessly ripped off their adoring fans for a cool half a mill.

I've seen some weird kickstarters, and this one is pretty weird. "What were they thinking" type of weird. Kinda like the power glove. But, when reading about it, apparently there were refunds? I mean, the dude apparently wrote some books that had a crapton of sales. Unless he spent all that on hookers and crack, he doesn't seem in need to rip people off.

[odyssia76]

Yeah, but none of those guys shamelessly ripped off their adoring fans for a cool half a mill.

I don't think that's true at all. Kickstarter projects fail all the time. Everyone knows the risks when they pledge. And there's no evidence he did anything wrong or profited in any way. He's got more than enough money without needing this penny-ante stuff. Having said that, he could be guilty of overconfidence and lack of business and game dev experience. My guess is that some of his rabid fans hyped him in the idea, made it seem fun, played down the risks, etc. And the game isn't necessarily 100% dead. He seems to have done what he could to make things right.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Yeah, but none of those guys shamelessly ripped off their adoring fans for a cool half a mill.

I don't think that's true at all. Kickstarter projects fail all the time. Everyone knows the risks when they pledge. And there's no evidence he did anything wrong or profited in any way. He's got more than enough money without needing this penny-ante stuff. Having said that, he could be guilty of overconfidence and lack of business and game dev experience. My guess is that some of his rabid fans hyped him in the idea, made it seem fun, played down the risks, etc. And the game isn't necessarily 100% dead. He seems to have done what he could to make things right.

I mean, there is this.

DaveKap
about 3 years ago
Well I never got a refund so I guess Neal Stephenson is literally a scammer now? Weird a successful author would scam some random person out of 25 bucks.

So I guess he didn't do everything to make things right because this guy never got a refund. Right?

How do you figure that Clang is not 100% dead?

[AArdvark]

It's a rare treat to find that someone has written about your hometown. I found the following in a sci-fi book that I randomly started reading.

exerpt from

Conrad's Time Machine
by Leo A. Frankowski


Towards sunset, looking up old friends seemed like a good idea, and my bike made a
right turn into Rochester, a strange little town.
The locals claim that the engineer who laid out the street plan was drunk for eight
weeks before he drew the first line, but I knew better. It takes large groups of people
working earnestly together to do something that stupid.
The arithmetic average of the number of streets coming into an intersection is
probably somewhere around four, but the modal number is three, with the next most
likely number being five and after that seven. The whole town is like a quilt made by
crazy old ladies out of random polygons. There's even one frightening crossroads called
'Twelve Points." No shit.
Right downtown, doubtless by accident, there are these two streets that cross at
almost right angles, although one of them changes its name in the process. This oddity so
astounded the locals that they built this big office structure there and called it "The Four
Corners Building."




https://rochesterdowntown.com/neighborh ... r-corners/


https://rocwiki.org/Twelve_Corners

[AArdvark]

When I was a kid one of my must-see television shows was The Six-Million Dollar Man. It was so cool to go into school the next day and hear the other kids talk about last night's show. I didn't talk much in those days but I listened really well. (These same kids all wanted to get jean jackets and write 'Lords' across the back. An idea stolen from the Lords of Flatbush, naturally.) I remember reading the before and after credits of $6M Man and seeing that the show was based on the book 'Cyborg' by somebody-somebody. I wanted to read that book and see if was as cool as the show. It turned into one of my (unknown) bucket list items. I looked up the word Cyborg in the Book of Knowledge encyclopedia set that we had and saw that it was derived from a Russian word. The dumb fourth grade me just assumed the author was a Russian and that it wouldn't be printed in English because of the Cold War and everything so I'd never get to read it. Oh well.

I forgot all about it for nearly fifty years. Then the Internet happened. I was browsing through my thousands of E-texts yesterday and just happened to stumble across that very book. The fourth grade me was very happy. It turns out to be a whole series of books, probably based on the wild popularity of the show at the time. I remember Walter Cronkite telling a news story about kids swallowing pennies in order to gain iron strength after watching the show and kids hurting themselves trying to lift heavy things.

They used to have $6MDM trading cards for ten cents a pack at the local store. I stole five or six packs of cards before my mom caught me and made me go into the store and give the grocer a dollar (of my money!) and apologize for stealing. They're probably worth a fortune now. I never had the Steve Austin action figure in the red jumpsuit, BUT the sitter I went to did. Or at least her son did, and I got to play with it while I was there. I took it home for the weekend one time and discovered that if I kicked our wooden storm door on the back porch just right it would make that di-di-di-di-di-di sound effect. Or a sound that was pretty close, to my fourth grade ears. Oh the bad guys we defeated that day! Oh the many Bigfoots we beat up!...Oh the storm door windows we broke! (after kicking the door one too many times.) I had to give the action figure back after that.
It was all my mom's fault, she never gave me any G.I. Joes or any other action figures. All I got were educational toys; they didn't take, obviously.

So I'm halfway through the first book (1972 by Martin Caidin) and discovering that Steve Austin was kind of a dick. Fourth grade me doesn't care! I'm reading the books! There's a lot of 1972 hard science that I have to skip over or go brain numb but it's worth it to complete a very small item of my unknown bucket list.


THE
BETTER STRONGER FASTER
AARDVARK

[AArdvark]

The Saint novels by Leslie Charteris.
I bought a 5 pack of used paperbacks in a bookstore while I was in Canada. I had listened to all the radio shows starring Vincent Price and was keen to read straight from the source.
Well, The Saint, Simon Templar, is a cross between James Bond and The Avengers, the 1960s tv show, only set in the 1920s thru the Fifties.





007 much?

The radio show and the television show Americanized him of course, can't have Vincent Price do a Limey accent after all.
Amd they took away all his sidekicks.

[AArdvark]

Update: The guy is too stacked. He has no flaws and can out-think and out-fight anyone. It's like playing a video game on God mode. Too much Dues Ex Machina by the author. He solves the Saint's problems with one sentence or less and moves on like intelligent readers won't notice. Plus rhe guy gives away most of the money he steals and never never kilks anyone even in gunfights and stuff

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I started to read a lot of fiction where the protagonist is basically too perfect and invincible and it really put me off fiction for a while, choosing instead to read non-fiction at night. I need my FLAWS man, bro's gotta have himself some flaws.