Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Binary Logic posted:

I expected or hoped for a Robert Heinlein All You Zombies twist in which a stack is duped and put into the body of opposite gender sleeve so a meth could effectively have sex with him/herself.

That's how Dimi the Twin masturbates.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Binary Logic
Dec 28, 2000

Fun Shoe

Elephanthead posted:

You have stairs because the future is all based on SA forums.
Head In The Clouds uses pusher bots for quick trash disposal.

Death = Probation
Real Death = Perma ban

Thanks it's all starting to make sense now.

Caganer
Feb 15, 2018

Binary Logic posted:

Head In The Clouds uses pusher bots for quick trash disposal.

Death = Probation
Real Death = Perma ban

Thanks it's all starting to make sense now.

yeah on rewatch just realized he shoots his dad through the stack which is pretty badass

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM
There's also a major lack of elective prosthetics. A CERTAIN CHARACTER'S cybernetic arm is a bfd, why wouldn't everyone have 2 of those?

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

AlternateAccount posted:

There's also a major lack of elective prosthetics. A CERTAIN CHARACTER'S cybernetic arm is a bfd, why wouldn't everyone have 2 of those?

...because they're expensive as hell? Kovacs explicitly springs for the best model he can on Lauren's account.

It really just undermines the kind of tech Altered Carbon is supposed to have though, because in the books they can just make damaged nerves regrow themselves. Not to mention saying Ortega can't fight because she needs a big super-strong arm to hold her own and not be just a generic female lead in distress.

Prosthetics exist, but like synthetic sleeves they're something you really shouldn't want; they're cheap, costly to maintain, and there are generally better biotech solutions like neurochem.

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM
Fair enough on the expense, but you'd think you'd see SOME of it, and the demand for it would probably lead to commoditization pretty quickly. If I were hundreds of years old with unlimited resources, I think I'd probably explore it quite a bit more than we see.

Maybe I need to read the books.

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug

AlternateAccount posted:

Fair enough on the expense, but you'd think you'd see SOME of it, and the demand for it would probably lead to commoditization pretty quickly. If I were hundreds of years old with unlimited resources, I think I'd probably explore it quite a bit more than we see.

Maybe I need to read the books.

In the books, the biotechnology is just so much better that if you’re shelling out that kind of money, it makes sense to go with the reflexes that make the world go all slow-mo, or can climb walls like a gecko, over some dumb robot leg.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Ugly In The Morning posted:

In the books, the biotechnology is just so much better that if you’re shelling out that kind of money, it makes sense to go with the reflexes that make the world go all slow-mo, or can climb walls like a gecko, over some dumb robot leg.

I think that it's also established that resleeving is cheaper to medical treatment. The married fighters even complain about it when Kovacs breaks that one guy's leg in the fight. As well, the doctors working on Ortega are completely willing to sacrifice her body until Kovacs buys her a cyberarm.

Caganer
Feb 15, 2018
i can't believe anyone wouldn't want to keep around a body like ortegas at all costs :love:

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM
I dunno. It seems like the state of technology and economics in the universe are manipulated heavily to fit the narrative rather than making some actual intuitive sense.

Toxic Fart Syndrome
Jul 2, 2006

*hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.




...the meter only goes to 3.6...

Pork Pro
So no word yet on a renewal or if the leads are even coming back?

Really got into this show by episode 10, enjoyed the cast of characters. Finished this on Sunday and was far more upset by the death of Poe on this show than when they killed Coral on TWD last night...

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

Young Freud posted:

I think that it's also established that resleeving is cheaper to medical treatment. The married fighters even complain about it when Kovacs breaks that one guy's leg in the fight. As well, the doctors working on Ortega are completely willing to sacrifice her body until Kovacs buys her a cyberarm.

No it isn't, that's all the series' bullshit. Altered Carbon's conventional medical technology in the book makes Star Trek's look like field triage. In the 1800's. Cybernetics exist, but they tend to be crude and merely-functional things because biotechnology just outperforms cybernetics on almost every level due to having biology solved down a fundamental mechanical level. There is no "well now we sit and hope it works because the human body is a mysterious thing" with a treatment or surgery, medical science is solved down to the point of being merly organic maintenance.

Your got blinded by shrapnel? poo poo, we'll just bio-weld a camera to your forehead so you can see while we regrow your eyes in your skull.

You want to be stronger? Hold still, we'll open your arms up and thread synthetic muscle cord in. Don't even have to knock you out for it.

A hole in a shoulder barely rates a raised eyebrow, let alone "gently caress it, just get her a new sleeve". Patch it up, slap regrowth virals in, it'll regenerate in a few days. Don't want to spend time in bed and have the money? We'll stick you in a nice virtual condo while your vacated sleeve just rests and heals in the meantime. Hell, we'll slow the ratio down and you can spend a few hours in virtual kicking back while the days pass by in the real world.

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug
Yeah, in book 2 Kovacs is super hosed up by rad poisoning and goes six kinds of apeshit on some mooks while in the hospital mobility suit they have him in.

Zil
Jun 4, 2011

Satanically Summoned Citrus


Ugly In The Morning posted:

Yeah, in book 2 Kovacs is super hosed up by rad poisoning and goes six kinds of apeshit on some mooks while in the hospital mobility suit they have him in.

Not to mention that the sleeve he was in was specifically made for high radiation areas, like humanity has found a way to slow down the ravages of nuclear weapons on the human form.

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

Zil posted:

Not to mention that the sleeve he was in was specifically made for high radiation areas, like humanity has found a way to slow down the ravages of nuclear weapons on the human form.

And the only reason they probably haven't completely cured radiation poisoning is because that's one of the legitimate reasons it's easier to just go "gently caress it, get them a new sleeve."

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM
Goddammit you guys, I don't want to read this poo poo. :mad:

Rate it against the Expanse novels? I'd say those were middling to kinda good.

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug

AlternateAccount posted:

Goddammit you guys, I don't want to read this poo poo. :mad:

Rate it against the Expanse novels? I'd say those were middling to kinda good.

Better, it doesn’t spin it’s wheels for two books due to contract extensions.

wellwhoopdedooo
Nov 23, 2007

Pound Trooper!

AlternateAccount posted:

Goddammit you guys, I don't want to read this poo poo. :mad:

Rate it against the Expanse novels? I'd say those were middling to kinda good.

Expanse is a D&D aventuture. Kovacs trilogy has something to say. It’s often stupid, and wrong, or both, but it’s literature as its ambition. Expanse has some really high-brow ideas, but it’s pulp first, and you have to give it the benefit of the doubt. Kovacs has some really entertaing plot points, but it’s a Randian vehicle first.

If I hadn’t read A Land Fit for Heroes (the best sarcastic title I’ve ever read), I’d call it pure pulp, but Morgan got a couple synapses firing. gently caress anyone who says not to enjoy it. Really wanted to recommend it to the person looking for human relationships with vast AIs, but this series is too witholding to satisfy that itch—I think it’s as close as we’ll ever come to talking to AlphaGo, though.

Expanse definitely has moments of brilliance, though. 137 times a second, it reaches out, it reaches out, it reaches out. Made my loving skin crawl.

ALFfH: Heads on stumps scenes? Sorry, if that didn’t freak you out you’re a god drat robot. Scariest poo poo I ever read

navyjack
Jul 15, 2006



Zil posted:

Not to mention that the sleeve he was in was specifically made for high radiation areas, like humanity has found a way to slow down the ravages of nuclear weapons on the human form.

Actually....his, Tanya’s, Hand’s, and whasshisname the pilot’s weren’t. They were just slugging down anti-rad meds like crazy. The spec ops team guys were in the rad-hardened Maori sleeves! :eng101: Not that it mattered other than making a patented :yikes: Morgan sex scene even more :yikes:

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






wellwhoopdedooo posted:

Kovacs has some really entertaing plot points, but it’s a Randian vehicle first.


Just to clarify for anyone not familiar with the author, Richard K Morgan is a full on communist who decided to make his point through awesome sci fi premises.

For my money his best book is Market Forces, which is "What if investment banking, but for third world wars?" and weirdly captures the professional world really well.

EmptyVessel
Oct 30, 2012

Neddy Seagoon posted:

No it isn't, that's all the series' bullshit. Altered Carbon's conventional medical technology in the book makes Star Trek's look like field triage. In the 1800's. Cybernetics exist, but they tend to be crude and merely-functional things because biotechnology just outperforms cybernetics on almost every level due to having biology solved down a fundamental mechanical level. There is no "well now we sit and hope it works because the human body is a mysterious thing" with a treatment or surgery, medical science is solved down to the point of being merly organic maintenance.

Your got blinded by shrapnel? poo poo, we'll just bio-weld a camera to your forehead so you can see while we regrow your eyes in your skull.

You want to be stronger? Hold still, we'll open your arms up and thread synthetic muscle cord in. Don't even have to knock you out for it.

A hole in a shoulder barely rates a raised eyebrow, let alone "gently caress it, just get her a new sleeve". Patch it up, slap regrowth virals in, it'll regenerate in a few days. Don't want to spend time in bed and have the money? We'll stick you in a nice virtual condo while your vacated sleeve just rests and heals in the meantime. Hell, we'll slow the ratio down and you can spend a few hours in virtual kicking back while the days pass by in the real world.

None of this is relevant to the TV show if in it's version of the world these medical advances are less developed or prohibitively expensive, or don't exist at all. I get that you're disappointed that they didn't stick more closely to the books but what is and isn't possible in the TV version should be informed by what is shown or said in its depiction of the world. In the TV version Ortega's arm is something that it isn't in the books, saying that this is simply "wrong" repeatedly by citing the books as the only acceptable source of "truth" isn't helpful.
As it is there has been so much belabouring of "but in the books it says ____ therefore ____!" in this thread that I feel that I'm going to have to watch the show again just to remind myself what that version of this story actually says. The show is far from perfect but should perhaps be engaged with as it's own thing rather than a horribly flawed historical account. The books are fiction, nothing about their speculative future is inherently "correct" so any adaptation cannot be "wrong" no matter how far from the original they take the story.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Neddy Seagoon posted:

It's just a storage device, and wetware interface. It doesn't replace anything in the brain proper.

Its funny how many people ITT don't understand the tech at all. Neddy is right guys.

Neddy Seagoon posted:

If the brain wasn't still doing its job, you could shoot someone in the skull and nothing would happen.

Exactly

AlternateAccount posted:

- James Purefoy makes every damned thing good. Every scene he's in is just gold, and that goes for literally everything I've ever seen him in, dong notwithstanding. Dude loves to get it out, though. I hope I still have that level of confidence at 53.

I basically made all the same complaints you did earlier, agreed completely. And especially agreed that Marc Antony is great in everything, although I've seen his dong too much.

Rhyno
Mar 22, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!
Oh god they agree on something we're all doomed!

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

AlternateAccount posted:

There's also a major lack of elective prosthetics. A CERTAIN CHARACTER'S cybernetic arm is a bfd, why wouldn't everyone have 2 of those?

Neddy Seagoon posted:

...because they're expensive as hell? Kovacs explicitly springs for the best model he can on Lauren's account.

It really just undermines the kind of tech Altered Carbon is supposed to have though, because in the books they can just make damaged nerves regrow themselves. Not to mention saying Ortega can't fight because she needs a big super-strong arm to hold her own and not be just a generic female lead in distress.

Prosthetics exist, but like synthetic sleeves they're something you really shouldn't want; they're cheap, costly to maintain, and there are generally better biotech solutions like neurochem.

Yeah they're expensive but what about meths?

If Bancroft's wife can have a bioengineered body such that her vagina excretes MDMA, you'd think Bancroft himself, or Rei would be basically Ghost in the Shell style androids who could jump 600 feet and could turn their arms into machine guns if need be.

But the show never explores any ideas like this.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Rhyno posted:

Oh god they agree on something we're all doomed!

Neddy and I always agreed because he understands how it works.

Its Battuta and Tiggum who kept arguing that death never happens.

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

EmptyVessel posted:

None of this is relevant to the TV show if in it's version of the world these medical advances are less developed or prohibitively expensive, or don't exist at all. I get that you're disappointed that they didn't stick more closely to the books but what is and isn't possible in the TV version should be informed by what is shown or said in its depiction of the world. In the TV version Ortega's arm is something that it isn't in the books, saying that this is simply "wrong" repeatedly by citing the books as the only acceptable source of "truth" isn't helpful.
As it is there has been so much belabouring of "but in the books it says ____ therefore ____!" in this thread that I feel that I'm going to have to watch the show again just to remind myself what that version of this story actually says. The show is far from perfect but should perhaps be engaged with as it's own thing rather than a horribly flawed historical account. The books are fiction, nothing about their speculative future is inherently "correct" so any adaptation cannot be "wrong" no matter how far from the original they take the story.

The problem is that the series's plot is directly taken from the book. It isn't a loose adaptation where elements are adapted for an original story, you can pick out exactly where and when you are in the book by the series' progression. And when it deviates from that, we're not bemoaning that it has strayed from the holy gospel, we're remarking that the changes tend to be utter crap or boring cliches in place of something that was actually interesting.

Most of the time the reason we reference the book is to point out where a gaping plot hole didn't need to exist because of changes made

EmptyVessel
Oct 30, 2012

Neddy Seagoon posted:

The problem is that the series's plot is directly taken from the book. It isn't a loose adaptation where elements are adapted for an original story, you can pick out exactly where and when you are in the book by the series' progression. And when it deviates from that, we're not bemoaning that it has strayed from the holy gospel, we're remarking that the changes tend to be utter crap or boring cliches in place of something that was actually interesting.

Most of the time the reason we reference the book is to point out where a gaping plot hole didn't need to exist because of changes made

It's less the plot details* and more these huge screeds about "how the tech works" based only on the books that I have a problem with. Arguing that something which has not been referenced in the show must be such and such because that is how it is in the books is not useful when discussing either. Do like that you refer to changes leading to "clichés" when these books have a fair helping of the ur-clichés of cyberpunk already in them. I'd have been very surprised if the show had managed to avoid clichés when they are part of its literary DNA.

*Actually no, some of the plot details complained about too have this problem. Lizzie "not being Bancroft's type" is a good example, there was nothing I recall from the show that indicated that he had a type in the way the book does. He doesn't need to have such a specific type for the story as told in the show so bringing it up is just more "not the same therefore bad". There are also things that I'm pretty sure the show does mention which have been overlooked - like the Envoys uprising not being confined to a single planet (even if all the flashbacks are in the same piece of woodland). Though I agree that the show doesn't help itself by being muddled and unclear about far too much. I will do a rewatch at some point (and make notes if I have to) but I think you are letting the text of the book determine too much of your expectations.

*Disclaimer* Read the first book back when it was new and haven't since, never read the others, so my attachment to the material is much less than yours and my expectation likewise less.

dead gay comedy forums
Oct 21, 2011


Beefeater1980 posted:

Just to clarify for anyone not familiar with the author, Richard K Morgan is a full on communist who decided to make his point through awesome sci fi premises.

For my money his best book is Market Forces, which is "What if investment banking, but for third world wars?" and weirdly captures the professional world really well.

that seems a kinda major requirement for writing anything remotely cyberpunk (or some types of scifi) with some degree of competence tbqh

Zebulon
Aug 20, 2005

Oh god why does it burn?!

EmptyVessel posted:

*Actually no, some of the plot details complained about too have this problem. Lizzie "not being Bancroft's type" is a good example, there was nothing I recall from the show that indicated that he had a type in the way the book does.

Kovacs explicitly says it during the set up fake murder explanation regarding the grounder lawyer's other sleeve and Bancroft hatefucking it because he has a type. He's lying in that case but presumably that was one of the nuggets of truth he used to help sell the lie.

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"
Let's dial it down into something simple the series changes that blows holes in everything;
Stacks being implanted at one year old.

That means you somehow have Catholics bringing their kids in to hospitals to get the devil machine crammed into their spine, yet still protest against their existence. By their own hatred you should have them all living stackless and largely invalidating Resolution 653's existence.

Edit: Also Laurens himself explicitly states his type and reasons for infidelity in the series as well. It's how Kovacs knew it.

Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Feb 28, 2018

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK
Sep 11, 2001



Neddy Seagoon posted:

Let's dial it down into something simple the series changes that blows holes in everything;
Stacks being implanted at one year old.

That means you somehow have Catholics bringing their kids in to hospitals to get the devil machine crammed into their spine, yet still protest against their existence. By their own hatred you should have them all living stackless and largely invalidating Resolution 653's existence.

Edit: Also Laurens himself explicitly states his type and reasons for infidelity in the series as well. It's how Kovacs knew it.

Just assume you need a stack to do anything like be a citizen. Also some of those kids might change their mind later, like Ortega, and who knows if you can implement stacks at a later age.

Honestly that's one of the dumber nitpick flaws from the show.

maskenfreiheit
Dec 30, 2004
So how do these clones stay alive in the vats? Don't they need to eat? I don't get how they can be in a soup/on a feeding tube then emerge all sexy and buff

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK
Sep 11, 2001



maskenfreiheit posted:

So how do these clones stay alive in the vats? Don't they need to eat? I don't get how they can be in a soup/on a feeding tube then emerge all sexy and buff

Get nutrients from somewhere obviously. And they said that the clones get electrical stimulation to keep their muscles from becoming atrophied.

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:

Just assume you need a stack to do anything like be a citizen. Also some of those kids might change their mind later, like Ortega, and who knows if you can implement stacks at a later age.

Honestly that's one of the dumber nitpick flaws from the show.

Have you not seen anti-vaxxers?

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Neddy Seagoon posted:

Let's dial it down into something simple the series changes that blows holes in everything;
Stacks being implanted at one year old.

That means you somehow have Catholics bringing their kids in to hospitals to get the devil machine crammed into their spine, yet still protest against their existence. By their own hatred you should have them all living stackless and largely invalidating Resolution 653's existence.

Yeah I said this like 30 pages ago. It makes no sense.

Learning that in the book its done at birth explained it though. And makes one wonder why they bothered changing things.

I hate that book adaptations seem to always do this, where the person who is writing the screenplay changes things just because, like they're smarter and better than the original author. If you're so good, write your own dang sci-fi story from scratch! If you're going to adapt something, respect it enough to admit its better than you can do.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

maskenfreiheit posted:

So how do these clones stay alive in the vats? Don't they need to eat? I don't get how they can be in a soup/on a feeding tube then emerge all sexy and buff

Its basically exactly like the matrix, only they're not conscious. They're stored in a vat with feeding tubes and oxygen tubes and otherwise they just sit there. Probably gets washed out every so often from all the dead skin.

Open Source Idiom
Jan 4, 2013

Neddy Seagoon posted:

Learning that in the book its done at birth explained it though.

Tbh, I'm not sure it does. Why not just dodge being chipped and live on secret Catholic reservations with forged identity papers, or have pseudo stacks that don't store human consciousness but allow for everything else having a stack would allow for?

I think it's unlikely that these neo Catholics would have functioning stacks if they really didn't want them, no matter when they would have been installed.

I mean, yeah, the change is still bizarre and arbitrary (similar to them apparently swapping the names of the fantasy drugs around, which I think I read about here). But it's a single line of dialogue that I wouldn't have remembered had it not been brought up here. I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference to the story.

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK
Sep 11, 2001



Neddy Seagoon posted:

Have you not seen anti-vaxxers?

That's fair.

Zaphod42 posted:

Yeah I said this like 30 pages ago. It makes no sense.

Learning that in the book its done at birth explained it though. And makes one wonder why they bothered changing things.

I hate that book adaptations seem to always do this, where the person who is writing the screenplay changes things just because, like they're smarter and better than the original author. If you're so good, write your own dang sci-fi story from scratch! If you're going to adapt something, respect it enough to admit its better than you can do.

Well that's just an insanely stupid take. No adaption has ever had changes made to it for the better. :rolleyes:

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Feb 28, 2018

Rhyno
Mar 22, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:

Well that's just an insanely stupid take. No adaption has ever had changes made to it for the better.

What. Are you serious?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK
Sep 11, 2001



Rhyno posted:

What. Are you serious?

I was being sarcastic :(

  • Locked thread