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Hallucinogenic Toreador posted:My take was that the king of Mars had always been a copy of Jean who had been imprisoned in Oubliette sometime after their experiences diverged. Having just finished it, yep. He said something to the effect that Jean used to be really good at cracking any limitations on software so he was able to make copies of himself, and Jean Le Roi was one of those who was caught pre-Collapse. Pre-Collapse they thought a good way to deal with criminals was to ship them off to Mars as gogols, where they'd work. They had an inability to leave Mars hard-coded into them. Eventually the inmates took over Mars, and Le Roi over time killed the other inmates until he was the final one left. He's Isidore's father, too, I think.
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Nov 19, 2012 17:06
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I don't think the King (Le Roi) and the artist had any nearer root Jean than when on Earth. The Paul character Jean was acting as was Jean Prime, I think. The King talks about envying Jean when he was on Mars, in particular Raymonde... Although I'm not particularly certain of this. The King was running around before that, certainly - as we see in the story earlier in the novel.
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Nov 19, 2012 17:40
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Having finished the Fractal Prince, I am a little confused on a few things: What was the Spike? Like a Singularity? How did that work, and what kicked it off? What is the jewel? So the thief is a mixture of some kind of story archetype and the guy reading a book picked it up? If I'm reading this right, the Aun are general ideas that have been kicked around in human heads for centuries, but it wasn't until Chen removed them from his head and set them adrift in the aether that they were given real agency. So the thief is a human-story AI amalgam. Is that right? Also, the closest thing I have to science knowledge is stat classes from my economics degree; i.e., I don't have any such knowledge. This may be asking too much, but could anyone elaborate on the core doctrinal differences between the Zoku and the Sobornost?
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Nov 20, 2012 18:45
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Might have been using a similar body. It's pretty heavily implied by two things (aside from Jean telling the detective he isn't his dad): (1) Le Roi tells Jean he was jealous of Jean's relationship with... Ah... What's her name. The Gentleman tzaddik. And states he ended up getting her too. (2) Jean saying when he meets with the Gentleman's friend, as she confronts him about how badly he treated the Gentleman, something to the effect of 'No. I'd remember a child.'
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Dec 9, 2012 07:40
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Oh precious katana posted:I have read both of these, really enjoyed them. I have to admit, I haven't read that much SF, but I the way I approached it was I let it all wash over me and hope it sorts itself out in the end. Regarding the requirement for a body in Altered Carbon: (Alterec Carbon and A Land Fit For Heroes spoilers) the far far future, where Kovacs and some other Envoys appear to be ethereal gods.
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Jan 8, 2013 15:27
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My understanding of the Aun is that they are general archetypes which Chen coded into the net as a child. Jean is a guy who was possessed by the Trickster in the same way the djinn possess people.
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Mar 9, 2013 05:58
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He's a guy who was possessed by an Aun, although he was a computer criminal before that, too.
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May 10, 2013 00:35
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The Aun implying they'd been around beforehand was because they are archetypes which are pervasive throughout humankind, but before they perished when any given human did. They pretty much straight out state that.
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May 10, 2013 11:47
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Snuffman posted:Finished "The Quantum Thief". I don't really agree with the comparison. Gene Wolfe is much more impermeable and buries things a lot deeper (to good effect, often). Rajaniemi lays it out there, you just have to be patient.
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Aug 17, 2013 05:17
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Mieli is probably the part of the books I like the least because her motivation is stupid. Yeah, I'm sure your lover who willingly went to a singularity is going to be super pleased with you getting her consciousness out. I don't feel she adds a lot other than some stuff about the Oort cloud culture. I also hope you read Light before Nova Swing. I thought it was a much better book. I didn't care for the latter's tone.
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Oct 10, 2013 09:26
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Andrew Smash is correct. There might be some clues in the Engineer-of-Souls bit about what they do with them, but I can't remember. The Sobornost might be write in Fedorovism, and I can agree that the extinguishment of any sapience in this apparently bleak mechanistic universe is a great tragedy, but that says nothing to recommend what they see as the means of fighting death. And the Aun (I seem to repost this like once every couple of months): were probably made by Matjek Chen as a precocious child. He encoded them into whatever the internet equivalent was as permanent fixtures to preserve his imaginary friends.
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Dec 7, 2013 15:56
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Just started rereading these. TQT flies by really fast. It's not long, sure, but the action is also quite fast paced and the prose is goddamned gorgeous. Now that I'm familiar with the nomenclature it's mostly easier but it only reveals the stranger stuff more prominently. The things I have picked up and wondered about so far: * Early memories talk of a young boy going to something just outside solar panel farms - a soldier approaches him. Am I forgetting something about that? * The Jean we have remembers his pre-Trickster days... And his name pre-Trickster. He calls to the little boy who was a projection with what I assume is his first name. One time when he is talking to Mieli he says his better sense determines that he do X, but the Trickster in him tells him to do Y. Suggests there is a significant percentage of both still going on. I am not really surprised, I do recall the prisoner being possessed by the Trickster while reading a book in prison. I'm just happy to see there's a bit of the original guy. I'm hoping it's the dude who used to go drinking with the Founders, pre-Trickster. * I am curious why the zoku elder found 'justice' so disgusting. I understand the idea of progression might be antithetical to the notion of everyone having just deserts... But disgusting? Especially given another elder still wondered about levelling up? Strange. I am really looking forward to finding out more about the zoku. The most human setting we have seen so far is the Oubliette and they are still kind of alien and strange. I cannot imagine the zoku will be any different. Also, space battles. The one in TFP loving ruled.
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Jan 25, 2014 19:06
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Soon we will know everyone left in Sol is an alien monster. The Fedorovists, gogol pirates, the conquered oubliette, the dragons released by the Sobornost, the Gun Club zoku, the Oubliette zoku, the Evangelion zoku, the Akira zoku. Know horror.
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Jan 26, 2014 21:00
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I remember a friend of mine with a maths PhD set up a company with his friend who had a comp science degree designed to pick up market signals and follow the algorithm he had designed. It just traded with the money they gave it on whatever was designed. So, this could be meaningless... As a postscript to that I told the maths friend the market exhibited a random walk pattern, and that all public information was probably incorporated to the market price. He didn't believe me since I only had a B Ec. 2 years later he refuses to talk about it. Basically what I'm saying is Rajaniemi doing that could be meaningless, and better wait until it has market assets.
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Mar 21, 2014 18:27
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You are correct. I was speaking loosely, in that I do not think the deviations from that model are sufficient to be reliably taken advantage of by such an unsophisticated investor and I found it kind of funny.
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Mar 24, 2014 04:14
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EdBlackadder posted:My take was that Jean was never the Aun but the All-Defector was and hijacked Jean in the Dillema Prison. There was a line just after the prison break that suggests something had slipped aboard (I think the ship says it has a stowaway). I hadn't considered that. That would be pretty cool, but it seemed that All-Defector was a product of the Archon prisons, and Jean wouldn't have had a chance to pick him up until he went there, and he was certainly fulfilling the role of a trickster god prior to his imprisonment.
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May 28, 2014 11:52
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Cardiac posted:It is out in Sweden, at least through my regular scifi-store. I would also be interested in this summary because even though I reread The Fractal Prince recently I found the ending really confusing.
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Jul 5, 2014 11:12
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inklesspen posted:
I took this to be a reference to the relationship between Sydan and Mieli. Sydan was never as dedicated to Mieli as the other way around, otherwise she wouldn't have sought out the singularity.
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Jul 6, 2014 14:29
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Velius posted:Mieli was apparently in proximity to one of the Sobornost singularities being created, I imagine almost anything could happen there. It seems to me that she herself might well be a created entity with motivations set by the Pellegrini. Or, the Pellegrini might have just hacked her memories to create Sydan. Or a host of possibilities. Or it could just be that Sydan wasn't that into her, as you say. I dunno, that just seems like needless complexity to me. I suppose it would address my principal problem with Mieli - that her motivation is chasing a lover who ultimately spurned her, which is kind of pathetic. We'll see in 10 days or so, I guess.
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Jul 7, 2014 08:55
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builds character posted:like if you were a little kid that loved pirates and ninjas and were also an evil(?) super genius you might code a ninja and a pirate imaginary best friend (everyone loves ninjas and pirates) to hang out with you. Forever. Which you then left in a box in the attic when you went away to school. oh god, don't look at my metaphor it's hideous. Well, it's a good thing Matjek was smart enough to keep his affections to true archetypes. Can you imagine if he grew up in the '90s and he encoded Street Sharks to run around in the aether forever?
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Jul 8, 2014 12:27
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I spoil the poo poo out of most books I read and it doesn't bother me but this is one I want to surprise me so I am going to have to exercise every iota of willpower I have to not read those.
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Jul 9, 2014 11:52
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What Cardiac did is fine. Read the thread before mousing over spoilers that crop up around the time of a book's release, when people know there are a bunch of ARCs out there.
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Jul 11, 2014 11:34
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Benson Cunningham posted:I don't know what god drat time zone you live in kindle, but it is 1:00am. Give me my loving book. I am in Australia and have to wait two days, so gently caress you and be patient you ungrateful poo poo.
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Jul 15, 2014 06:34
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I'm about a third of the way through. I did not expect a shout out to loving Everquest, of all things, in here. In addition to the Laundry and Watchmen...
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Jul 18, 2014 04:15
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I just finished the book. Wow, that was great. The ending seemed in some ways a little abrupt, but I have enjoyed this series so much I don't really mind. Seeing more of the Zoku was interesting. I wonder what Rajaniemi will do next. And to echo what others have said, this book needs more editing. Lots of examples of omitted words, hyphens where they shouldn't be, a couple of misspellings. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Jul 20, 2014 |
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Jul 20, 2014 17:00
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Lyon posted:Was the Jean who got released from the Prison at the end Prime Jean or just one of many? Not that it really matters I guess. I'm kind of confused as to why he sent himself to prison so he could possibly use the Kaminari Jewel to free himself from the prison he sent himself to. The purpose behind sending himself to the Prison wasn't to use the jewel to free himself, it was to gently caress with reality in some fashion, and he needed to develop the attributes the jewel wanted. I didn't quite understand and thought the Jean partial's goals were a little nebulous, but a more astute reader might be able to offer some suggestions. We don't really know anything about the Jean that gets released at the end; is he arsehole Jean who initially went in or a more tempered Jean like the one we spend most of the series with? Who knows.
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Jul 21, 2014 08:04
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Ani posted:Is this what happens? I thought it was either (i) Jean made the All-Defector use so much computing power that it was unable to keep Jean restrained or (ii) Jean dug into his memory and found some action he could take that the All-Defector couldn't model because it didn't have full knowledge of Jean. I'm still confused though. I agree with Ceebees' interpretation. Computational power could never be an issue given the hardware environment they were running on. I also had the impression All-Defector would have had full knowledge of Jean by copying his gogol.
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Jul 22, 2014 03:49
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Ceebees posted:Since the next line after 'sleep' is 'wake to see the Andromeda Galaxy fill the sky', i just assumed that they wanted to take their guberniya matrioshkas (or possibly upgrade to a full dyson sphere to make really sure it lasts) and hibernate out the three-and-three-quarter billion years until the expected galactic collision. So, to my mind it's more of the vehicle in which they intended to slumber than the nature of the nap itself? That seemed like a velleity to me, since a lot of them spend a great deal of their existence in Deep Time which moves much faster compared to normal consciousness (or maybe those are just the slave gogols idk).
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Jul 25, 2014 04:13
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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.
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Aug 3, 2014 10:21
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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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. He's like a reddit golem.
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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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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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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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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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Ceebees posted: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. I'm a little leery of having my consciousness digitised. I am concerned as to whether my own continuity of consciousness will continue (c.f. some copy). Going Quiet might mean the end for this subjective existence, even though overall the Oubliette doesn't seem like the worst place.
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Sep 3, 2014 09:48
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Peztopiary posted:I dunno that I'd want bits of my consciousness pared away. The Zoku are clearly better than the Sobornost though. It's alright, early Sobornost were ethical. They'd just run A Clockwork Orange poo poo on children for a year then upload them. At least the kids would be ready.
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Sep 6, 2014 16:59
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