Pounded in the Butt by Members of a Forum Who Are Discussing a Space Ship's Gender

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > Pounded in the Butt by Members of a Forum Who Are Discussing a Space Ship's Gender

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Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Kirk posted:

alright so where are we sitting with good sci-fi and fantasy

owns
the culture series
black company series
red mars trilogy
dune
the forever war
foundation series (except Foundation & Earth)
the old conan books
eisenhorn
hyperion cantos
ursula le guin
canticle for leibowitz
rendevous with rama
sprawl trilogy
lord of light
the first five amber books
a fire upon the deep

collections of words by & for scrubs
cyclonopedia
dune prequels
wheel of time
95% of heinlein
rama sequels
the sixth and later amber books
terry goodkind

pls quote and expand this list, tia

# ¿ Nov 9, 2011 01:54

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# ¿ Apr 16, 2024 23:52

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

NINbuntu 64 posted:

im pretty sure it should say "fifth and later" because im pretty sure ive heard fans talking about how poo poo five was

The first five are a linked story arc, and some people didn't like how it ended. I think it turned out just fine, and that it's one of the best fantasy narratives I've read.

The sixth and later novels are sequels starring the son of the original protagonist. They were written after Zelazny started interacting with his fans on BBSes and the like, and they read like terrible fanfiction of the original series. They are also full of dumb "hacker magic" plot devices. I couldn't get past the first two.

The more recent Amber novels "authorized by the Zelazny estate" are so terrible they make the Dune prequels look good.

</sperg>

# ¿ Nov 10, 2011 00:04

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Kirk posted:

choke on cum, maggot

Mindbridge is actually a much better book than The Forever War but it's got like a hundredth of the readership, if that.

quote:

Arnold Bates spends half his life sleeping or taking drugs. Most of the drugs are to help him get to sleep. He is a millionaire several times over, but spends little: rent and food and drugs. He has no hobbies.

When he is awake he is more awake than most people. He must be; he is Senior Controller of the LMT chamber at Colorado Springs. Its 120-centimeter crystal is the largest that AED has, and the busiest.

Bates is a short, wiry man with a shock of white hair framing Amerind features. His skin is pale for an Amerind. He looks fifty but is thirty-two years old. He has been a Controller for ten years, twice the time it normally takes to wear a person down. He has the kind of nerveless self-control that would make an ideal Tamer, but he carries too many bad genes for the job.

His stomach is made of plastic and his liver is a machine. He has an IQ of 189 and gunslinger reflexes.

His main job is to prevent another Los Alamos disaster. Two human bodies trying to occupy the same place at the same time turned a mountain into a deep valley and spread heavy fallout from Albuquerque to Mexico City.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2011 01:04

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Amethyst posted:

The Cyberiad

SEVEN.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2011 02:30

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Amethyst posted:

haha. If I ever have kids I'm going to read that to them.

Based on experience, the Steelypips chapter is better for reading out loud.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2011 03:13

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

golgo13sf posted:

No Kindle version

It really needs to be read in print, I think. A significant part of what makes it unique is that large chunks of the narrative are told in the form of transcripts, science papers, and other "found documents" that include charts and the like. I doubt that these elements would make the jump to ebook very well.

There was a cheap Gollancz edition printed which isn't terribly hard to find. There's an ebook edition from the publisher but I can't really recommend it without checking to see if it's really intact.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2011 04:58

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Wilhelm_Scream.wav posted:

my buddy has a whole bunch of these and whenever i see them i'm like "why don't you read a real book"

A rare quality post from the Book Barn.

quote:

Here is the thing about genre fiction.

Genre fiction can be used as a crutch for writers who are not comfortable with making original characters or storylines. Fanfiction is sufficient evidence for this. It is very difficult to force somebody out of their comfort zone if they just spend the entire course refining their various Anne Rice-inspired vampire stories. Maybe they will improve greatly by courses end, but they still will only have mastered the art of writing Anne Rice-inspired vampire stories, and still be clueless about doing things like creating realistic, recognizable characters in real-world settings since so much of what they have done is based on other works.

Works you write for your academic career in the English department will be judged and graded based on the standards of literature, not the standards of a specific genre. If you want to succeed in that context, you ought to know both what the general standards are, and what you specifically are good at doing.

Creative writing classes shouldn't encourage genre fiction for the same reason that the majority of the threads in this forum *are* about genre fiction.

You wouldn't submit your Gundam models as a final project in your sculpture class, would you? loving nerds, Jesus.

If you can't go for one goddamn semester without writing about wizards or aliens or whatever then there is something deeply wrong with you.

And you actually feel *entitled* to being allowed to write genre fiction in these kinds of classes? Like this dude is infringing your academic freedom by forcing you to adhere to this guideline?

Just look at stereotypical fantasy fan (this is you) shimmering with chicken grease and thumbing through a copy of a Warhammer 40k novel instead of listening to lecture. You just know that fucker has a 50,000+ word "novel" they wrote for NaNoWriMo on the thumb drive of their Alienware computer, and you loving know that it has cyborg elves talking for pages about how hyperspace works, followed by a sex scene written by somebody who has "throbbing"'s online thesaurus entry as their homepage. Don't you think that I would do *anything* in my power, drat near *anything*, to avoid having to read enormous excerpts of that work, hastily rewritten to conform to word count standards?

# ¿ Nov 10, 2011 05:00

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

golgo13sf posted:

gently caress physical media

Your loss, kid.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2011 06:08

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

LooseChanj posted:

explain to me what in the holy blue gently caress was going with that dude and his insect g/f in perdido street station

You mean the woman and her ape boyfriend?

# ¿ Nov 15, 2011 09:14

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

FMguru posted:

but after all that quality reading, will you still have time left over for the sanderson?

# ¿ Nov 18, 2011 04:56

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Cheap Trick posted:

did I choose poorly

If you like extruded fantasy product, then you have a winner.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2011 05:10

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

My mother asked me yesterday if there's a box set with all the Star Trek movies. I worry sometimes.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2011 19:13

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Ken MacLeod's version of the Singularity (from The Cassini Division et al) is a lot of fun because it focuses on the people who weren't the "upload myself into a computer" guys.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2011 18:50

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

pseudorandom name posted:

Have you read his latest?

No, I've been on a nonfiction kick lately. Why?

# ¿ Nov 22, 2011 19:39

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

pseudorandom name posted:

He has a different take on computer uploads this time around.

Ugh. The big spoiler-moment near the end of The Cassini Division was fantastic and if he's changed his mind on that sort of poo poo I'm going to be very disappointed.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2011 23:56

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Also, if anybody hasn't read Heavy Weather you really ought to, because it's looking really, really accurate at this point.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2011 23:58

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

NINbuntu 64 posted:

most of her stuff seems really female oriented.

Only in a pandering, "Twilight"-esque sense.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2011 08:01

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

axolotl farmer posted:

check out google today, it's a Stanislaw Lem tribute and has a little game with nice art

It's a thanksgiving thing on this end, instead of what I'm supposed to be seeing.

Which is a shame, because I adore The Cyberiad, and the Google thing is obviously based on illustrations from it.

[edit] Hah, the "2 + 2 = 7" thing is straight out of one of the first stories.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2011 10:45

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Turns out you can get to the Lem thing on Google with this URL.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2011 15:47

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Kirk posted:

for some reason whenever i start seeing words about ship combat, be it victorian era or modern day, my eyes roll back into my head and i pass out

The ship battles at the end of Startide Rising are pretty awesome and very atypical. Only ones I've ever really found fun.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2011 20:50

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

raruler posted:

Speaking of the Uplift stuff, is the second trilogy worth reading? It didn't really look that interesting when I looked.

It is boring as gently caress and has nothing to do with anything cool in the original series.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2011 00:15

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

duTrieux posted:

the aliens in farscape are so much better than the usual cgi bullshit. poo poo's bananas.

Practical effects are so much better than CGI.

Well, they can be so much better than CGI. The fact that the marketplace in Hellboy 2 is 95% practical effects still blows my mind.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2011 03:43

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Bad rear end Boutique posted:

just finished Ringworld and uhhhhhh...it wasn't really all that good

Ringworld is one of those books that's important to the history of SF, but not actually that good a book when examined on its own. There's a lot of these, obviously.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2011 00:04

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

This is why William Gibson doesn't write SF anymore. He explains this through a character in Pattern Recognition.

quote:

"Of course," he says, "we have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile."

# ¿ Dec 18, 2011 00:21

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

TOOT BOOT posted:

It's kinda dumb to stop writing SF for that reason though. It's entertainment, not a crystal ball. Neuromancer is still a great book even if was almost totally wrong about what the future would look like.

The thing is, Neuromancer is a great book, independent of it being SF. That's why it holds up okay.

If you're capable of writing great books without having to cover them in a layer of SF to cover up any serious flaws with Big Cool Science poo poo, then why not just do so? It's less likely that in twenty years, people are going to go nitpick how you got the future wrong.

My next read is going to be Banks' Transition, which I know is going to be good, because Banks can write good books without the superscience that drives the Culture novels.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2011 03:33

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

unleash the unicorn posted:

I [...] have no place in this thread

# ¿ Dec 18, 2011 09:49

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

atomicthumbs posted:

what does steampunk jesus need with an air rifle

# ¿ Dec 18, 2011 12:52

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Woz My Neg rear end posted:

and james cameron putting huge amounts of work into coming up with a complete integrated alien ecosystem based on fundamentally different biology and then going "oh yeah and give them sweet rear end racks cause that's awesome"

Didn't Cameron say somewhere that he specifically wanted the blue cat people to evoke certain emotional responses in people? And that they went through various incarnations where they figured out which designs were the most appealing to test audiences?

Or am I remembering something else and attaching it to Cameron?

# ¿ Dec 18, 2011 23:31

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

theflyingexecutive posted:

nobody would have given a poo poo about the aliens if they weren't hot

The entire movie was structured around making the audience emphasize with the aliens on an emotional, instead of treating it like an actual ethical quandary. It's lazy, shallow bullshit and it's not even treading any new ground.

Hell, Star Trek did this better back in the 60's with "Devil in the Dark", and when your SF isn't as intellectually rich as loving Star Trek then you've got a real problem.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2011 00:24

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

toby posted:

i have long said that a series of basic ethics classes should be added to the curriculum of every school system in america and required for all children, just like math and science

The content of said course would be decided by local school boards, so no, this is kind of a useless idea.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2011 01:18

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

rotor posted:

hm, let me see, what would I rather do.

consider a moral or ethical dilemma

peep some fine-rear end titties

let me think real loving hard about this one, you loving human being

I haven't been excited about seeing breasts in a non-porn movie since I was about thirteen.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2011 07:55

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

SHITPOST.BAT posted:

dont bother with the 3 witches books

Oh god you are so completely wrong.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2011 07:02

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Jeff Goldblum posted:

I've been looking for films similar to The Fly (its a great film, if you haven't seen it you really should) but the market for cross-special mutation fiction seems to be pretty slim. The best thing I could find was a film entitled Perverted Stories 32 , which had a short film about a woman who was half-spider.

If there are any proponents of brundlefiction out there, please post links, I am wont for your picks.
E: This image perfectly encapsulates the entire plot of the film.

I haven't actually seen it and people seem to either love it or despise it, but "Splice" seems like it might be what you're looking for.

Amethyst posted:

hey if I liked lord of light will I also like the amber books?

they seem a little bit more rpgish

Pen-and-paper RPGs were inspired by the original Amber novels, not the other way around.

Read the first five, through "The Courts of Chaos", and skip the rest. The quality level drops dramatically, and they get annoyingly RPG-like.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2011 08:59

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Woz My Neg rear end posted:

solaris remake?

I was going to suggest this.

When people complained about how slow it was (compared to your typical explosion-driven SF movies), Soderbergh said something like, "if you don't like the first ten minutes, get up and leave because it's not going to change".

# ¿ Jan 4, 2012 23:43

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Really old Doctor Who is great, they make sure that all of the special effects are outlined in blue or orange so you don't miss that they're special effects!

# ¿ Jan 5, 2012 20:26

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

axolotl farmer posted:

best thing about Doctorin' the Tardis is that it was basically the KLF creating a theory on how to get a number one hit in the UK with the least effort and money and then following through.

http://tomrobinson.com/wordpress/?page_id=52

Still the finest moment in the history of popular music.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2012 02:07

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Transporters in Trek exist because TOS didn't have a budget high enough to show people taking shuttles down to planets every week. Any attempt to make them internally consistent is doomed to failure because they were literally plot devices.

I've got this paperback "making of star trek" book that was published while TOS was still on the air and it is loving fascinating, since it was before everybody started taking it so goddamn seriously.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2012 08:43

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

duTrieux posted:

please post interesting and/or funny things from it, tia.

It's in a storage unit at the moment and unfortunately I don't remember all that much. (It's this one, by the way, I had forgotten that Roddenbery helped write it.)

One bit that I do remember is that many of McCoy's medical instruments were actually fancy salt shakers. Somebody bought a whole bunch of "futuristic" ones for a scene, but they realized that nobody would be able to tell that they were salt shakers, so they used them as medical props instead. I think pretty much every Trek nerd knows that one, though.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2012 22:42

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

duTrieux posted:

huh.

in your professional opinion, is it worth ~$8.50 used from amazon?

If you're the sort of person who prefers DVDs over streaming because you like watching making-of documentaries and listening to commentary tracks (like me), and you'd like to have some of that kind of material for TOS, then yes. It's been ~20 years since I read it, though.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2012 23:02

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# ¿ Apr 16, 2024 23:52

Heresiarch: Oct 6, 2005; Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

NINbuntu 64 posted:

holodecks take a bunch of power and also the power is completely incompatible with the other power systems on the ship for no reason that makes sense.

The ship runs on red electrons, the holodeck runs on blue electrons.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2012 23:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > Pounded in the Butt by Members of a Forum Who Are Discussing a Space Ship's Gender

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