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Neurosis posted:The Golden Age series by John C Wright has some commonalities with the series. It's an extremely imaginative depiction of a far future solar system human society. Like the le Flambeur books it is very, very idea dense. The difference being Wright is a nutjob and the plot resolution is incredibly stupid.
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Aug 3, 2014 19:31
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pseudorandom name posted:The difference being Wright is a nutjob and the plot resolution is incredibly stupid. Yeah, of the Orson Scott Card order. The series has some neato ideas and imagery, but it's basically far-future Ayn Rand. Read it, but don't go looking up info about Wright after, because if you do you might come across his blog, and then...
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Aug 3, 2014 19:36
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uber_stoat posted:Yeah, of the Orson Scott Card order. The series has some neato ideas and imagery, but it's basically far-future Ayn Rand. Read it, but don't go looking up info about Wright after, because if you do you might come across his blog, and then... ... you'll learn he's abandoned Randian Objectivism for hardcore right-wing Christianity.
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Aug 3, 2014 20:10
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Yeah, Count to a Trillion was sort of cool, packed with neat ideas, and ended in something of a let down... I happened to find the sequel at the library (The Hermetic Millennia), and the ideas are still cool but the plot is soooo slow, and then I found out it was book 2 of 5 (planned), and then I found his blog and  . He's like a reddit golem.
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Aug 4, 2014 02:59
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Prolonged Priapism posted:Yeah, Count to a Trillion was sort of cool, packed with neat ideas, and ended in something of a let down... I happened to find the sequel at the library (The Hermetic Millennia), and the ideas are still cool but the plot is soooo slow, and then I found out it was book 2 of 5 (planned), and then I found his blog and The Hermetic Millenia and The Judge of Ages are really good. I liked them more than Count to a Trillion. His Night Land short stories are also really, really good, if you've read The Night Land. The recent City Beyond Time anthology he put out was pretty enjoyable, too. Minimal nuttiness in that and the Night Land shorts. I think calling The Golden Age Randism is a pretty gross exaggeration. There's a bit of that silliness at the beginning of The Phoenix Exultant but it's a minor part of the book. The second part of the War of the Dreaming was far worse in that regard. Orphans of Chaos was also pretty unreadable. The author is pretty weird but it doesn't ruin all his books. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Aug 4, 2014 |
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Aug 4, 2014 04:12
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I just finished the third book and loved it, but I do have a few questions for those who understood better than I did: 1. Is Jean the Flower Prince or not? It is said he is one of them, but if the Flower Prince is an Aun that Matjek created, how did it end up in the prison? 2. In the Epilogue it seems like Josephine recognizes that the spike was someone using the Kaminari Jewel (presumably the Kaminari Zoku back in the day). What did they change? 3. Mieli created a world where what she sings comes true and the Zoku city was saved. How will that stop the Sobornost from just attacking again? Shouldn't she have created everlasting peace somehow?
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Aug 6, 2014 17:50
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Evil Trout posted:I just finished the third book and loved it, but I do have a few questions for those who understood better than I did: I'll do my best to answer these but I may be wrong. 1.The Aun are just a collection of confused semi-ais that live in the wildcode. Jean basically embodies a character trope and so they see themselves in him rather that jean literally being a magical concept of Thief made flesh 2. No idea, though I read this as the creation of the jewel rather than the use of it. 3. She did more than that, she took the zoku to a new universe. Or galaxy, or plane of being or any number of things. The zoku doesn't exist in the same place as the Sobernost anymore.
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Aug 6, 2014 18:30
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:3. She did more than that, she took the zoku to a new universe. Or galaxy, or plane of being or any number of things. The zoku doesn't exist in the same place as the Sobernost anymore. Which is mega lovely on reflection as all the other people in the system who presumably were not lining up to get gogol-fied by the sobornost are left alone with them and no zoku to oppose them anymore. But hey, the series had to end somehow.
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Aug 7, 2014 02:04
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andrew smash posted:Which is mega lovely on reflection as all the other people in the system who presumably were not lining up to get gogol-fied by the sobornost are left alone with them and no zoku to oppose them anymore. But hey, the series had to end somehow. Yeah its true, but I never got the impression that the Zoku care at all about people outside of their little society either. If everyone who ever touched a Zoku jewel got nabbed, that's probably a good percentage of the total non-Sobernost population of the solar system.
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Aug 7, 2014 02:20
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Yeah its true, but I never got the impression that the Zoku care at all about people outside of their little society either. If everyone who ever touched a Zoku jewel got nabbed, that's probably a good percentage of the total non-Sobernost population of the solar system. I wasn't particularly surprised by that turn of events but it seemed a bit out of character that mieli was totally okay with it.
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Aug 7, 2014 02:54
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andrew smash posted:Which is mega lovely on reflection as all the other people in the system who presumably were not lining up to get gogol-fied by the sobornost are left alone with them and no zoku to oppose them anymore. But hey, the series had to end somehow.
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Aug 7, 2014 03:21
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Less Fat Luke posted:I didn't think there was much left non-Sobornost after Mars and Jupiter getting destroyed. I guess there's some people in the Oort cloud but I got the impression it was a small amount. also the belt
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Aug 7, 2014 03:40
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Evil Trout posted:I just finished the third book and loved it, but I do have a few questions for those who understood better than I did: Ok so some people have said a thing but I have a slightly different take on #1. I thought Jean was one of the first to do the djinni bond thing, like the woman and her bird from the second book. Except he bonded with The Flower Prince out in the Aun's desert. So he's no longer just Jean, he's a Jean/TFP hybrid. Especially in this iteration of himself, that was changed enough to be 'pure' enough for the Kaminiri Jewel. I actually think this was more or less explicitly stated, but only have it for kindle so gently caress looking that up and trying to give a reference. Something about him having been a boy in the desert before TFP did it's familiar/partial overwrite bond deal. So he is a continuation of TFP's self loop, but is also a continuation of Jean's self loop, because they merged into a new, different self loop. I may be way off base, but it seemed to make sense to me when I read it and gets rid of the conflict between the way the Aun talk to and about him as well as his memories of his childhood. Edit: fixed some phone posting typos
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Aug 7, 2014 06:13
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The post above is exactly how I read it. I thought that was one of the things that gets brought up a lot that was fairly clear (c.f. trying to disentangle the events at the end of TFP).
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Aug 7, 2014 13:45
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Maybe, there's also a line in Causal where Jean mentions his time in the prison on earth reading that trashy thief book is what first started 'growing' the Flower Prince within him. I'm not wholely convinced that Jean carries this spirit with him literally, why would that spirit follow this Jean out of the mind prison? Surely it'd be stuck with Jean-Prime? Not that, I suppose, there's anything backing up the viewpoint. I'm just assuming you can't copy an Aun. E: partially I think I'm mostly thinking about how skeptical of the Aun Jean himself is. He seems really dismissive of the idea that he is literally the flower prince throughout. His acknowledgement that the Aun see it in him is about as close as he gets to taking the idea seriously. Maybe I'm reading those segments wrong though. Nemesis Of Moles fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 14:04
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Maybe, there's also a line in Causal where Jean mentions his time in the prison on earth reading that trashy thief book is what first started 'growing' the Flower Prince within him. I'm not wholely convinced that Jean carries this spirit with him literally, why would that spirit follow this Jean out of the mind prison? Surely it'd be stuck with Jean-Prime? Not that, I suppose, there's anything backing up the viewpoint. I'm just assuming you can't copy an Aun. Here's how it made sense to me. When Jean/TFP merged in the Aun desert, they didn't remain two separate entities the way the All-Defector and Jean did when they 'merged' in the prison. The All Defector is more of a memetic virus that copied itself into part of Jean, and got released later. TFP and Jean full on merged and became, for all intents and purposes, the same entity. This happened long before Jean-Prime branched off Book-Jean, so every gogol of Jean would still be TFP as much as TFP is Jean. There's no dividing line between them. In the second book, even after the bird's master is murdered, some part of the master lives on in the bird. It's sort of like that, they've stopped being a binary Person A/Person B into something completely and fully merged. It changed things about both of them to form a new entity. The separated Jean and TFP are gone now. I saw Jean as running away from that, because the Aun are basically cultural memes that have been passed down through history that ended up having enough 'processing power' or whatever, I'm not certain of the term I want to use - anyway, they have enough of it to actually create AIs that then took over for the cultural norms/memes that originally created the Aun. I don't see them as spiritual, just reflections of shared norms and ideas that got cobbled together during the push into virtualization. They're basically tame Dragons, in a way. What I believed at the end of the book is that Jean just straight up didn't remember the TFP merge happening. Jean's memory was screwed up for the entire series, and only in book 3 did he start getting the seriously deep past memories back. And that's where he finally remembered being the boy in the desert, who merged with the Aun.
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Aug 7, 2014 15:33
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:2. No idea, though I read this as the creation of the jewel rather than the use of it. I don't think it was created then. The Kaminari were a Zoku who had a specific purpose that lead to them spiking Jupiter and escaping the universe. I read it as the Kaminari Jewel being the last Zoku jewel left, so when you pick it up and use it you are entangled with their Zoku even though none of them are in this universe. The Kaminari Zoku then can grant your volitions from outside the universe if it chooses to.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:26
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nucleicmaxid posted:What I believed at the end of the book is that Jean just straight up didn't remember the TFP merge happening. Jean's memory was screwed up for the entire series, and only in book 3 did he start getting the seriously deep past memories back. And that's where he finally remembered being the boy in the desert, who merged with the Aun. [/spoiler] I think he does mention 'the boy in the desert' and other stuff (like his real name) in earlier books, even if he doesn't remember the Aun specifically. It's just omitted from the narrative. He's clearly frustrated by the Flower Prince in the final book (tells the Aun that they've been riding him and making him dance for years).
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Aug 8, 2014 04:50
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I thought it was pretty strongly implied that Jean was 'infected' (?) with TFP, the Gentleman-Thief/trickster god archetype, before the Collapse. I think the exact words are about him reading a book in a stone prison, around the time Josephine springs him.. Still, that leaves me confused, since the Axoltol has the vague recollection of experiencing the Collapse and then existing for some time before The Flower Prince teaches him the method to steal a self-loop. I feel like Jean's prime may have had TFP, but that The Thief that is our protagonist was too far diluted from the Prime in the Prison to have a meaningful amount of the meme. If that makes sense  That's another thing. Thinking of the protagonist as "The Thief" as opposed to Jean really helped me experience the story. He really is The Thief and no longer his prime aspect, his journey is about him becoming separate from the man Jean.
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Aug 14, 2014 02:23
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I finished TCA yesterday. I loved the trilogy, though I can't say I fully understood everything. One question for now: I understand what the dragons are, but I don't understand how they're a physical danger when they're unleashed on Earth. Did I miss something about the physical forms they take?
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Aug 16, 2014 18:41
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n4 posted:I finished TCA yesterday. I loved the trilogy, though I can't say I fully understood everything.
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Aug 16, 2014 18:50
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coffeetable posted:Earth is covered in abandoned nanomachinery. I thought Sobornost gogols and technology were vulnerable to that nano machinery / the wildcode?
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Aug 16, 2014 19:07
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n4 posted:I thought Sobornost gogols and technology were vulnerable to that nano machinery / the wildcode? at one point in TCA jean or somebody else explicitly describes why sobortech is vulnerable to the wildcode. The dragons don't share that vulnerability.
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Aug 16, 2014 21:09
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Looking back at all the books, Mieli's really really goony. Her life goal is to force Sydan (the first and likely only woman who hosed her) to be with her again, whether she wants it or not (she doesn't). In the end she gets over Sydan by hooking up with an MMO player who is specifically groomed to please her. She also becomes autistic in combat.
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Aug 18, 2014 00:37
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Chomposaur posted:Looking back at all the books, Mieli's really really goony. Her life goal is to force Sydan (the first and likely only woman who hosed her) to be with her again, whether she wants it or not (she doesn't). In the end she gets over Sydan by hooking up with an MMO player who is specifically groomed to please her. Lol. And earlier in this thread someone was bitching that they couldn't stand the books because they thought it was Jean who acted like a complete goon (I didn't agree with that at all, I thought he was just flamboyant in a very cliched kind of way which fit with his character). I had problems with Mieli for the reasons you've stated.
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Aug 18, 2014 11:13
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Neurosis posted:I had problems with Mieli for the reasons you've stated. My too. I was glad she didn't get Sydan back, but the Zoku girl made me go "...What? Hannu? We're doing this? Really?"
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Aug 18, 2014 16:47
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Yeah I think judging Mieli for wanting Sydan back is a little unfair. Sydan leaves her alone and traumatized, with no life and no support structure, and within a day there's a pelligrini manipulating her. Of course she makes a dumb decision. Now she's almost irrevocably committed, she has the pelligrini still manipulating her from literally inside her head, and I think very shortly thereafter she's with the thief getting shot at. When exactly was she supposed to get a grip? The zoku girl is more messed up, though that's more Rajaniemi's fault than Mieli's.
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Aug 18, 2014 18:07
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Chomposaur posted:Looking back at all the books, Mieli's really really goony. Her life goal is to force Sydan (the first and likely only woman who hosed her) to be with her again, whether she wants it or not (she doesn't). In the end she gets over Sydan by hooking up with an MMO player who is specifically groomed to please her. Yeah her character went from contrived to downright cringe-worthy, I was embarrassed to read a lot of it. That and the Notch Zoku. Even typing 'Notch Zoku' makes my skin crawl. I mean the book literally ends with her and her perfectly created love nerd go off to play mine craft forever. I really enjoyed the first two books, I almost regret recommending the series to people after this.
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Aug 18, 2014 18:33
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at the end of the whole thing i honestly thought the pellegrini was the best person around. Sure she was merciless and manipulative and everything but she legitimately believed in the great common task (which is a worthy endeavour i think) and also held pretty strongly that some of her sobornost colleagues were all kinds of hosed up. The solar system probably could have done a lot worse than her coming out on top.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:52
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Yeah I feel that one one area where the novels kind of fell down. Rajaniemi seemed to think that Mieli was a lot more sympathetic than she actually was. Unfortunately the negative traits of her character far outweighed the positives and she felt like an annoying meat head that everybody had to go out of their way to accommodate. I'd much rather Mieli woke up to herself and just left the plot so we could just have a sci-fi romance between two utterly ruthless master manipulators with style.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:23
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Mieli in book one was pretty good as a foil to Jean's constant dishonesty, after that she kinda sucked.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:30
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Mid-late book spoilers: I loved the All-Defectors motivation. Get the universal skeleton key to turn the universe into a optimal player in the game of "expand to crowd out the other universes". Very consistent with it's character and not evil for the sake of evil. It has a point, if AD doesn't do it, what's stopping some alternate universe AD from doing it? AD has to find the winning move.
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Aug 22, 2014 22:23
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^^Yes. AD is a super interesting concept and I'm glad it got more space. I guess it's more of a force than a character, but it had really good characterization. I agree also with the posters who are squicked out by the Meili stuff. I guess though it's part of what Rajaneimi is trying to say about the Zoku. They aren't good, and they aren't people. They're just as horrifying as the Sobornost at a macro-level. I enjoyed reading an entire trilogy about two different philosophies (three if we count the AD) that are all equally anti-human for completely different reasons, and the very human reaction of Jean to them. If you haven't read the trilogy yet, you should.
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Aug 29, 2014 15:47
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Peztopiary posted:^^Yes. AD is a super interesting concept and I'm glad it got more space. I guess it's more of a force than a character, but it had really good characterization. I agree also with the posters who are squicked out by the Meili stuff. I guess though it's part of what Rajaneimi is trying to say about the Zoku. They aren't good, and they aren't people. They're just as horrifying as the Sobornost at a macro-level. I enjoyed reading an entire trilogy about two different philosophies (three if we count the AD) that are all equally anti-human for completely different reasons, and the very human reaction of Jean to them. the zoku are almost universally portrayed as good guys, or at worst quirky oddballs doing their own thing like building huge guns for the hell of it, except the great game zoku who has respectable aims but are a bunch of assholes.
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Aug 31, 2014 03:19
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I think the zokus' general moral indifference is pretty odious (though not in a very philosophically interesting way, they're just asses about it.)
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Aug 31, 2014 03:24
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I find it interesting that people didn't like that bit. I get that it's somewhere in the sexbot/brainwash rape region, but at the same time it fits very neatly into the blurry lines between people and software.
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Aug 31, 2014 06:07
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I would've liked to see at least one example of what it's like to be a gogol that chose to go with the Sobornost. From the glimpses we get in the book, you pretty much get turned into a computer process that just does whatever a Founder tells you because of xiao. I was kind of hoping that in times of 'peace' you get to just chill in a vir or something with your buddies because hey you're immortal copyable software now, time to relax.
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Sep 2, 2014 23:57
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bewilderment posted:I would've liked to see at least one example of what it's like to be a gogol that chose to go with the Sobornost. From the glimpses we get in the book, you pretty much get turned into a computer process that just does whatever a Founder tells you because of xiao. I was kind of hoping that in times of 'peace' you get to just chill in a vir or something with your buddies because hey you're immortal copyable software now, time to relax. i would imagine that's the official endpoint of the great common task but my guess is that if you're not doing something useful they don't bother to run you at all.
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Sep 3, 2014 01:26
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Which is pretty indistinguishable from being dead. I'd rather be a part of the zoku. They might be weird and not have their values all in line but they don't seem as actively malignant.
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Sep 3, 2014 06:46
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If you don't mind living on the same Hierarchy Walker as Harlan Ellison and Justin Timberlake, the reformed Oubliette is probably the most relatable faction. Until... you know, Strangelet Danger.
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Sep 3, 2014 08:26
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