|
A midwest american town which is a test site for a new clean energy source gets merged with 65 million years ago and now dinos are running wild throughout. An elite squad is sent in to help save them and they immediately get separated and picked off one by one because come on, of course they do. As they investigate the area, the female lead keeps running into strange helmeted humans and tech way more advanced advanced even for a story where a possible side effect of the power plant melting down is unscheduled temporal shifting. After much faffing about and a complete inability to save quite literally anyone (although with a pretty ding-dang gnarly scene of the towns subdivision getting dino mauled) our remaining heroes begin to piece together the clues. The dinosaurs aren't actually from the past, they're from the future! The plot then goes, if you thought that was dumb, just stop now. See the clean energy accidentally removed all dinos in the past, which meant all humans would cease to exist. Somehow (maybe more clean energy accidents jesus this things operational safety is appalling) the humans know that this will happen 50 years from now, so they built a dino safe zone on an abandoned earth 3 million years in the future with the intention to create dinos then send those dinos back in time. This insane plan, you will never believe this, also got hosed up. Knowing the dinosaurs were mission critical the humans on the failing main system life support ship transporting them put their children into storage pods meant for dinosaurs to save their lives so they... learn Dinosaur? Its loving weird but anyway the people in helmets from earlier are those children who speak dinosaur and mentally commune with them. Its this hosed up failure timeline that got merged with midwest town. We're not done though, so an honest to god server rack falls ontop of our surviving male protagonist just as he finds out he is the captain of the doomed ship in the future of 50 years? 3 milion years? Anyway, before he can die to unsecured office hardware, a future version of the lady protagonist saves him and then, uh, presumably sends him on a preordained death trip to the space ship? I don't know my head hurts. Fivemarks posted:Armored Core. Which one? Doesn't matter. I'm excited for the new one coming up, and seeing how once again they do the same plot.
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2022 17:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 12:08 |
|
|
Lol that's Dino Crisis isn't it
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2022 17:26
|
|
|
RBA Starblade posted:Lol that's Dino Crisis isn't it Specifically Dino Crisis 2, I believe.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2022 21:05
|
|
|
Living on Mars sucks. This is basic sci-fi. I would struggle to come up with "fun and frolicing mars adventures" that don't feature nude confederate soldiers. This story is no exception. A research base/colony/over engineered piece of poo poo on Mars has gone communication silent. A team of 3 is dispatched to investigate. Even before we start to learn anything else, this seems staggeringly stupid and these three don't really seem very elite, the base is massive and one of a kind, and theoretically is gonna need a looooooot more work than like the light mopping three people with tracksuits can provide. On arriving to the base they all get separated because of course. As they independently explore the base they find a whole lotta dead bodies, see some spooky space ghosts, and uncover a bevvy of audio logs. By communicating what they discover over the radio, they determine if they ever meet in person again, the two who meet will die. And then the dead start rising up. Scrambling through the base, the intrepid three discover the whole thing was built on an ancient martian burial ground, and sometimes, sometimes dead is better. It turns out theres some sort of virus still here and active that they're all infected with and only if they get near each other will it hatch out and trigger. They then decide to blow up the alien necropolis because...? I genuinely can't remember if I forgot why or if, much like building a Mars base to conduct secret alien autopsies and then sending three space janitors to fix it who know nothing of the conspiracy its just that stupid. Anyway they blow up the necropolis and, I, uh I think they choose to stat behind on Mars and die so they don't infect earth but seriously I cannot remember anything about the end. Defiance Industries posted:Specifically Dino Crisis 2, I believe. Yep. I was gonna do Dino Crisis 3 since its more sci-fi but nobody played that for good reason and nobody talks about it for better ones. Barudak fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Jun 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2022 01:09
|
|
|
Barudak posted:Living on Mars sucks. I think Ross' Game Dungeon did an episode on this one
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2022 02:39
|
|
|
Living on Mars sucks. This is basic sci-fi. I would struggle to come up with "fun and frolicing mars adventures" that don't feature nude confederate soldiers. This story is no exception. In the future offworld mining still requires human labor that lacks bargaining power, even though they all have to be imported at great cost. In order to make up the presumably tremendous budget shortfall building a sprawling base on mars to mine metals to send back to earth instead of mining asteroids, the company resorts to abusing the humans it paid a lot of money to ship to Mars. The laborers get real sick of this and start an uprising which while despite the aesthetic seems pretty apolitical, just kind of planning to kill as many corporate stooges in reach as possible, which frankly, good call. After lots of bloodshed and some inhuman experimentation, the government of earth sends elite troops to mars. They fare absolutely no better and mars labor force is free from the tyranny of earth and corporate interests. Surely the sequel would maybe spend 5 minutes thinking about the story's inherent class conflict even if this one didn't. Angepain posted:I think Ross' Game Dungeon did an episode on this one Did you know with infinite health from the game shark cheat not only is the game still massively tedious, you can still die? Young me does, young me does. Name Martian Gothic: Unification
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2022 09:29
|
|
|
That could be Red Faction or half a dozen other things lol
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2022 13:38
|
|
|
RBA Starblade posted:That could be Red Faction or half a dozen other things lol this was my guess too
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 03:50
|
|
|
Last one, on mars, I swear. Living on Mars sucks. This is basic sci-fi. I would struggle to come up with "fun and frolicing mars adventures" that don't feature nude confederate soldiers. This story is no exception. Well, actually none of the story takes place on Mars, proper, but Mars being so lovely that starting a revolution that lasts like 3 months before everybody gets turbo executed is an inciting factor. Anyway, the main character is riding a chunk of martian rock trundling through space to get to a new colony. Before they arrive the ship comes under attack from an alien army who aren't interested in negotiation. The main characters bosses decide this, now, is the time to have a full on meltdown and mix giving clear orders and having rambling philosophical screeds you would be embarrassed to find in your journal years later. Its a shame said bosses have the authority to actually manage said martian rock so protag has to do whatever increasingly insane things they ask. After some careful sleuthing, it turns out there is a secret third boss also having a melt. Its ok they, because the protags bosses realize they also can use the power of "inducing a meltdown into the enemies leadership" is a viable tactic. This is so successful it results in the enemy splitting into two armies now fighting with each other as their mid level manager got exploded. In this chaos, one of the protagonists bosses reveals this was part of their plot to quit their job and hitches a ride with one of the two new alien factions, leaving the protag to resume their job as a janitor in a spaceship just chockful of dead bodies. Raluek posted:this was my guess too RBA Starblade posted:That could be Red Faction or half a dozen other things lol Yep both correct.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 04:36
|
|
|
I'd recognize Marathon anywhere.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 00:28
|
|
|
Living on Mars sucks. This is basic sci-fi. I would struggle to come up with "fun and frolicing mars adventures" that don't feature nude confederate soldiers. This story is no exception, but you're supposed to be too distracted by the zeppelins to notice.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 00:32
|
|
|
grassy gnoll posted:I'd recognize Marathon anywhere. But what about Bob?
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 00:37
|
|
|
Mars doesn't have nude confederate soldiers (I mean it might) but it does have trains. Giant trains run by generation-spanning clans. The 10-year-old (Martian years so she's more like 19 or so, which really threw me til I worked it out) heiress-apparent to one of these trains ran away rather than assume her rightful place, and had her ghostly twin sister (who was not actually her sister but was apparently the patron saint of the robot angels who maintain Mars) stolen by a televangelist in an airship, and she embarks on a quest to recover her, while her grandmother (who has magical power over anything that is brown) rides off to the rescue. At some point they all fall into the company of a militant comedy sketch troupe. This is technically a sequel to another book I summarized earlier in this thread.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 00:47
|
|
|
RBA Starblade posted:But what about Bob? Kill your TV. docbeard posted:Mars doesn't have nude confederate soldiers (I mean it might) but it does have trains. Giant trains run by generation-spanning clans. The 10-year-old (Martian years so she's more like 19 or so, which really threw me til I worked it out) heiress-apparent to one of these trains ran away rather than assume her rightful place, and had her ghostly twin sister (who was not actually her sister but was apparently the patron saint of the robot angels who maintain Mars) stolen by a televangelist in an airship, and she embarks on a quest to recover her, while her grandmother (who has magical power over anything that is brown) rides off to the rescue. This is not Against a Dark Background, but I had to check my copy to be sure.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 00:51
|
|
|
docbeard posted:Mars doesn't have nude confederate soldiers (I mean it might) but it does have trains. Giant trains run by generation-spanning clans. The 10-year-old (Martian years so she's more like 19 or so, which really threw me til I worked it out) heiress-apparent to one of these trains ran away rather than assume her rightful place, and had her ghostly twin sister (who was not actually her sister but was apparently the patron saint of the robot angels who maintain Mars) stolen by a televangelist in an airship, and she embarks on a quest to recover her, while her grandmother (who has magical power over anything that is brown) rides off to the rescue. A scientist/wizard sails across the Martian desert on a surfboard, meets an angel robot which begs him to kill it. He does and founds a small village by a railroad track. Various families move in and extremely gabriele garcia marquez style magic realist adventures ensue, including visits by the Most Beautiful Girl in the world, the Greatest Snooker Player the World Has Ever Known and a full on union Company war followed by the final battle of a mars wide insurrection. In the meantime the wizard has gone off into the future with a green man, but eventually he comes back and finds a tapestry that records the history of the village
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 00:57
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:A scientist/wizard sails across the Martian desert on a surfboard, meets an angel robot which begs him to kill it. He does and founds a small village by a railroad track. Various families move in and extremely gabriele garcia marquez style magic realist adventures ensue, including visits by the Most Beautiful Girl in the world, the Greatest Snooker Player the World Has Ever Known and a full on union That's the one.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 01:02
|
|
|
Its v pastiche but it was a very entertaining book.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 01:09
|
|
|
So there's this elderly silicon valley billionaire who got most of his money by making an MMORPG that is notWorld of Warcraft. He dies, and that's awkward, because he's the closest to a protagonist we're gonna get. His executors, who are west-coast silicon valley millionaires, we'll name Nissan and Toyota, discover that the dead billionare (let's call him Chevy) did something awkward with his will, putting a bunch of language in it saying he's to have some cryofreeze process done to his remains in the hopes of immortality. At this point in the novel there is a lot of detail of the legal issues, but this is a mislead that is basically wasting the reader's time, they are irreverent. What is relevant is that an another silicon valley billionaire, Elmo, has learned about this and via fuckery gets the brain of Chevy to digitize. Elmo is going to be this novel's antagonist, but he's going to be a dumb, lovely one. Elmo also wants to live forever and is obsessed with the singularity. So now with nothing better to do we get two short stories, first establishing the character of Nissan (aside from being into war reenacting he is definitely a Sentra, if you take my meaning) and the daughter of Toyota, Lexus. Nissan is the central figure in a mildly interesting story, where somebody invests a couple million dollars creating a social media fraud event, a nuclear explosion destroying a remote Utah town. This fraud, in addition to actors, fake video footage, and cutting off the telecommunications of this remote town, has a bunch of not-so-elaborately faked bombs in major urban centers, basically faking a big event, then raking in the money via stock market fraud. This was done by Elmo. This really doesn't have any effect on the novel. The second short story is about the red/blue America in a "terminally facebooked world" where the red people basically become cavemen and have the most 'murica religion, where Jesus drops all that teaching stuff to become the american badass they all knew he was. Surprisingly for later plot events, this is the absolute last time religion is mentioned. This aside is also to establish the character of Lexus, daughter of Toyota, but Toyota is a completely anodyne rich person, and Lexus is the completely anodyne daughter of same Then a whole lotta nothing happens. Chevy's brain is digitized, axion by axion. This creates the really obvious problem, that of the transporter problem, which you can google, but TL;DR continuity of consciousness matters, so if Capt. Kirk was killing himself every time he stepped onto a transporter and a perfect copy was reassembled elsewhere, this would be bad. Despite Star Trek TNG, not exactly Proust in French, explicitly addressing this issue, this novel just asserts "continuity doesn't matter." So just forget that this brain digitizing service for the richest people on earth is creating software copies of these richers, and the people who paid for this are stone dead. It is at this juncture your humble narrator begins squinting at the text, wondering if this is going to turn into a hilarious satire of the singularity Because Lexus, now part of this immortality project solves "how to make this wad of poo poo you've digitized work as a human brain." So Chevysoftware does what comes natural and creates Heaven, the MMO. The amount of computational resources it takes to make a brain, let alone several, is vast, but there are handwaved away via "cloud computing gets it done." Heaven the MMO rapidly IDs all the dead STEMlords, who thanks to their knowledge and ability to create, basically become gods in a new pantheon, with the mere enormously wealthy living as sorta-humans. Nobody at any point thinks this is kinda hosed. There is some mention as to how depression can cause you to self terminate when you are manifesting, so perhaps all those scruffy arts grads are just not getting to Heaven, the MMO. Fortunately your memories and your sense of self don't survive digitization, so the Heaven MMO is literally all you know. Further, despite apparelty having total mastery of how to express a sentient AI, nobody is like "hey what if we put these brains in telepresence bots or similar, which exist in this book." Also nobody tries to communicate with the dead, that's "impossible", all of human civilization becomes obsessed with watching Heaven the MMO. At one point a STEMlord kills himself in a suicide machine he built himself so he can join the pantheon. The author nor does anybody in the book even blink an eye at how ghoulish and hosed this is, hand waving an excuse "oh he had terminal cancer." Well, I lie, Elmo thinks it is hosed. Elmo (once again, is this satire) is wont to say things like "the dead are doing it wrong" and think the Heaven MMO is moving in the wrong direction. He comes off as an idiot, since even this book can reference Kant once or twice to explain why this is. In a book that is eye-rollingly unimaginative as it is, he comes off as extra-stupid. This is even moreso when he insists AIs created from nothing are just as important as other AIs that were made by zapping brain tissue. Which is unfortunate, because Elmo casts himself as God in Heaven, the MMO. He uses legal bullshit again to give himself superuser status. He then murders Lexus to send her brain to heaven the MMO in 'the right sort of way." He then dies, shows up in Heaven MMO, and expels Chevy and his pantheon, to a place that Chevy makes on the fly, IE "hell", but only in the sense that it is not Heaven, the MMO, where software constructs have begun loving and eating and making GBS threads. It's never made clear why exactly Elmo does this, (take over heaven, not making GBS threads) if he has motives or is just the Zuckerfucker of Heaven, the MMO, but the [vague] impression we are given is that Elmo is shouting at the simulation trying to make it work like he thinks it should. Elmo manages to lock Chevy out of MMO heaven, but the rest of his followers can schlep back in. So Chevy, protagonist of MMO Heaven, is dead again. Toyota is described as "being destroyed by grief" but we don't get any experience of that because it might because we might ask why the gently caress *anybody* is doing what Elmo wants. He's software at this point, but the entire world (who once again are in love with Heaven the MMO) have no issues with the God of the system being a crazy dickbag. Toyota does nothing, Nissan does nothing, the real world we only see as corporate board meetings and intellectual symposium. So to summarize thus far, Heaven the MMO is a for-profit organization that digitizes the richest people in the world, and basically the rest of the world is totally passive and accepting of this, and are universally in love with the idea and have no objections of any sort. So for the second time the protagonist is gone from the novel, and the author having committed to this bafflingly lovely structure, wastes our time again, this time with Digital Adam and Eve. Elmo made the first two digital people, and has been tearing them apart and rebooting them, over and over again to try to get them to act "less human". Frankly we don't know even that much; all we really know is Elmo is "displeased" that these human things with human drives and human appearances and human thoughts are acting human. Once again, is this satire? Anyway Adam and Eve get kicked out of the garden, and we get a ground level view of Heaven the MMO, and it has religion (worshiping elmo, obv) and people living at a medieval level, they've become NPCs in an MMO. This whole section is a small novel in itself and aside from establishing "this is a fantasy MMORPG setting, it's procedural generated yet completely generic!" it has zero importance in the novel. Things that definitely go into the satire basket, though: Elmo has American angels, essentially hot blonde people, as the ten foot tall enforcers with magic of his regime. Oh, another thing, we have AIs reproducing, so now "people" are forming with no real world ancestor, which should turbofuck things incredibly, since they take up the same resources and can multiply infinitely. We also learn that Elmo has retained his identity from the real world, and is clearly in constant contact with it. Furthermore, we establish that the software brains are now so well understood that Elmo can copy brains, and *modify them*, within limits. In software terms, this is circling the square of AI, with implications out the rear end, but in the pattern of this goddamn novel, any, you know, thinking about any of this has to be locked down, because we're doing Heaven, the MMO, perfectly straightfaced. So none, zero of these are examined at all, In fact, this is why the character of Elmo exists only as "dumbass" and "rear end in a top hat": if we were to examine his abilities in depth it would ask inconvenient questions. So having locked itself away from literally interesting thinking, it must waste the readers time with misleads. So to cut a long story short, the thing that the author wants is to bring back Lexus as a magic princess, (literally, she's a super user) and have her go on a magic adventure to destroy Elmo, and bring back Chevy, rightful ruler of Heaven, the MMO, and here is where we get the failure - hundreds of pages have have been wasted establishing all this, and it is to tell a completely dull, generic fantasy adventure that the crew of a DND novel would know not to do. So guess what, Elmo is defeated, literally cast down. Chevy comes back. In the real world, the global economy has basically been taken over by MMO Heaven. People don't have kids anymore, they are waiting around to die. Robots do most of the work. The human population vanishes into the MMO. At that point (once again, is this loving satire) the software are beginning to research THE REAL WORLD. I want to scream this is so dumb. I have no idea what tone the novel wants at this point, I guess hopeful and happy, but it's so loving stupid I have no words. Humanity goes singularity, robots take care of the "real world", the end. e: Oh Nissan becomes a wizard in the generic fantasy Downfall by Neal Stephenson PS> This novel is so dumb and low effort even in the title. "Downfall" is an almost impossibly lovely and generic title, which is why we get "Dodge in Hell" tacked on. They could have changed the title, like "Heaven as a MMORPG", but just slap that subtitle on. Also note that while a "Downfall" does happen, it doesn't describe the book at all, nor does 'Dodge in Hell.' Frankly if some evil Zuckerfucker took Dodge's brain, and then made him the admin in a MMO heaven filled with richers that would have been much more interesting than what actually happens Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Jun 4, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 02:36
|
|
|
Keeping up with the Mars theme, This story takes place shortly after a failed Martian invasion of Earth. Mankind got its absolute poo poo pushed in, but the Martians retreated due to being decimated by Earth diseases. But now everyone is terrified that they'll come back, and the next time we won't be so lucky. There's only one solution: Earth must counter-invade Mars. How exactly do we do this with 1890s technology? Why, with the genius of Thomas Edison of course! In the course of about an afternoon he develops an electromagnetic repulsor field generator that allows for effectively reactionless spaceship drives, as well as a resonant disintegrator ray. All the nations of the world get together in Washington, and the cavalcade of ethnic stereotype world leaders pool their resources to construct a Martian Invasion Fleet to remove the threat of the Red Menace once and for all. Yep, like a hundred ships the size of schoolbuses with 20 crew each are being sent to conquer an entire planet. They voyage forth, a crew of military personnel and scientists and experts in various fields, all being led by Edison himself, do a quick test drive to the moon before heading underway toward Mars. Halfway through the journey they encounter an asteroid made of solid gold, and get in a firefight with some Martian prospectors who aren't even soldiers or anything but still have mass-murdering heat rays. They lose like a dozen guys, but the Earth guys win, and capture a live Martian! They kinda look like giant big-headed political cartoon caricatures of Benjamin Franklin, and they don't actually get much useful information out of interrogating him, because he speaks some weird nonsense language and is also a huge jerk who hates them. Eventually the mighty invasion fleet reaches Mars... and is immediately utterly trounced, because Edison's crappy spaceships can't maneuver worth a drat compared to Martian fighter planes and also they're outnumbered several tens of thousands to one. They retreat to hide behind Deimos while the Martians release a bunch of inky black gas that clouds up their upper atmosphere so they can't even do orbital recon. Eventually they just decide to send a craft down somewhere they're pretty sure is remote and hoping to do some ground surveying and also steal some Martian food because they really didn't prepare for this invasion at all, like holy poo poo. Our heroes manage to stumble upon a Martian barn full of food cubes, and more importantly, a girl. A Human girl, apparently born on Mars. She's immedaitely shanghai'd up to the main Fleet, where she explains in proto-indo-european that she's descended from a bunch of humans that the Martians captured on their FIRST invasion of Earth thousands of years ago (The face of the Sphinx at Giza is apparently the visage of some ancient Martian potentate). The Martians kept them as a slave caste until the most recent invasion, after which they were all disposed of to avoid an earthling counter-invasion finding any local sympathizers, with her as the last one left. It turns out the Martians were right to do it, because this one sympathizer knows how to singlehandedly destroy the entire Martian civilization literally overnight. It turns out that Mars has been geologically dead for so long, and all its landmasses so eroded down to nubs, that the whole planet is basically like the Netherlands where it takes an elaborate system of canals and dikes and dams and stuff to keep the annual ice cap thawing from flooding the entire surface of the planet. And she knows the location of the main control center for all of it. A crack team of commandos fight their way to the control center, and Thomas Edison himself intuits how to work the mechanisms to gently caress up and break every dam and lock on the Martian Canals and throws the switch. After this is like a solid chapter or two of describing the slow-motion Martian Genocide, all their cities wiped away in a grand deluge and the survivors scrabbling over each other like rats on a drowning ship on the few high points above water. It's kinda messed up. Our triumphant heroes head to the planetary capital to demand the formal unconditional surrender from the Martian Emperor, and a pledge to never invade Earth again. He grudgingly agrees, and our heroes agree to leave in peace, having already killed 95% of the Martian population. However, as they're taking off, they see the emperor get pissy and casually smack one of his concubines, and this act of spousal abuse prompts one of the spaceship gunners to disintegrate him where he stands as a final parting shot. They head home, the Martian slave lady marries the army captain who rescued her, and we all live happily ever after! Edison's Conquest of Mars, by Garrett Serviss, 1898
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2022 16:28
|
|
|
A whole real person fanfic of how your favourite daddy inventor man will destroy your imaginary enemies with his big brain smarts. Taking it from this that the Edison fanboys were just as obnoxious as today's ones for Musk are
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 01:31
|
|
|
The phrase "there's nothing new under the sun" exists for a reason
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 01:48
|
|
|
Angepain posted:A whole real person fanfic of how your favourite daddy inventor man will destroy your imaginary enemies with his big brain smarts. Taking it from this that the Edison fanboys were just as obnoxious as today's ones for Musk are Surprising Tesla isn’t in there as a Martian sympathizer or something
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2022 12:04
|
|
|
Native American woman connects with her heritage on an alien planet where natives (from america) ride flying seahorses that impregnate them with flying seahorse babies, including the men who have magic vaginas and uteruses in order to carry seahorse baby larvae
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2022 13:47
|
|
|
lekker posted:Native American woman connects with her heritage on an alien planet where natives (from america) ride flying seahorses that impregnate them with flying seahorse babies, including the men who have magic vaginas and uteruses in order to carry seahorse baby larvae Don't just screencap Star Trek Voyager episodes
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2022 15:59
|
|
|
dang if i knew star trek voyager got that spicy i would've watched it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2022 17:52
|
|
|
Man is assumed dead and left on Mars during an evacuation, has to Science his way into surviving until the next Mars mission. Along the way he kidnaps a rover, violates every fire safety code in NASA, uses radioactive material as a heat source, and gets thoroughly sick of potatoes.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2022 03:26
|
|
|
MarmaladeSkies posted:Man is assumed dead and left on Mars during an evacuation, has to Science his way into surviving until the next Mars mission. Along the way he kidnaps a rover, violates every fire safety code in NASA, uses radioactive material as a heat source, and gets thoroughly sick of potatoes. I loved reading The Martian and every time I re-read it I find another inacurracy but I don't give a poo poo because it's still fun. Also i'm still mad the movie used the ironman ending.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2022 04:14
|
|
|
Everyone dies at a place called Breakaway Station, at least one for the second time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2022 20:30
|
|
|
So I have to add something about Downfall: thanks to recent events I've become aware Elon Musk has a company, Neuralink, which has been probably breaking all sorts of cruelty to animals laws trying to put monkeybrains into computers, so the entire book is an elaborate attempt to suck up to an incredibly stupid, rich man. Furthermore, Musk is big into this "longtermism" thing, which in general is like somebody who was unaware of the humanities AND science fiction trying to imagine the blandest future. I realize now I've been reading SF books for some two decades that have been critical of longtermism without ever knowing this was a thing
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2022 01:48
|
|
|
Vincent Van Goatse posted:Everyone dies at a place called Breakaway Station, at least one for the second time. That one doesn't leave a lot to the imagination when it comes to the premise, huh?
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2022 02:22
|
|
|
A corporate ad man gets hooked on chocolate milk cut with heroin produced by a competitor, ends up getting press-ganged into working on an ad campaign designed to sell the concept of humanity as worth existing to some alien communists.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2022 11:50
|
|
|
A 90 lb weakling nerd scientist, obsessed with physical perfection, develops a serum that will endow in vivo fetuses with super strength. Dumping it on frog eggs make super-tadpoles that shoot out of their glass fishbowl like bullets. Injecting it into a cat produces a kitten with the strength of a Bengal tiger. So naturally, upon his shrewish disapproving church lady wife's announcement that she's pregnant, he roofies her and injects HER with the serum without her knowledge. Thus is produced little Hugo, who from early infancy demonstrates the powers of Golden Age Superman. Thankfully he's a very nice and considerate boy who never really abuses his freakish powers to rip school bullies in half or whatever, mostly through a carefully cultivated shame complex thanks to his parents. He mostly spends his time out in the woods building little kid forts out of megalithic stones, until some randos stumble upon it and question him about what lost civilization constructed it. Upon reaching adulthood, Hugo basically becomes Reverse Forrest Gump, wandering through the early 20th Century trying to find some use or purpose for his superhuman strength to leave his mark on the world and failing to make any positive difference of any kind. Such adventures include:
As Hugo stands atop a mountain and proclaims these plans in blasphemous terms to God Himself, he is anticlimactically struck by lightning and dies, the serum formula in his shirt pocket burned to ashes, ensuring nothing like him will again come into existence. Gladiator by Philip Wylie, 1930 (eight years before the debut of Superman)
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2022 16:04
|
|
|
A succesful advertising exec in a dystopian future where his employer is one of the most influential corporations in the world and warfare between corporations is legal (an incident where a corporation invaded and slaughtered every worker in the mailroom of a rival is mentioned), finds himself targeted by a conspiracy that kidnaps him and puts him on a transport full of what is basically slave labor to a remote factory where chicken meat is artificially grown in a big blob and then harvested. There he experiences first-hand the plight of the working class in capitalist society before eventually escaping and returning to his old job. Leaning on his now-broadened worldview, an underground socialist and environmentalist movement/terrorist organisation of which his own wife is a ranking member reveals themselves to be behind the plot, all in the service of convincing him to use the influence of his position to subvert the imminent launch of a colonisation effort to Venus and fill the crew with members of the movement so they can steer society of the colony in a better direction. The Space Merchants (1952) by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth Slashrat fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Dec 5, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2022 13:34
|
|
|
grassy gnoll posted:That one doesn't leave a lot to the imagination when it comes to the premise, huh? Still worth reading though.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 05:13
|
|
|
Vincent Van Goatse posted:Still worth reading though. I looked it up and it sounds really cool and really lovely at the same time lol I want to read it
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 06:15
|
|
|
RBA Starblade posted:I looked it up and it sounds really cool and really lovely at the same time lol If you can stand reading the expurgated version, it's available on archive.org. Unfortunately if you want a copy of the full novel you're gonna have to pay more than it's worth unless you live somewhere with a really thorough used book store. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Dec 8, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 06:26
|
|
|
Vincent Van Goatse posted:If you can stand reading the expurgated version, it's available on archive.org. Unfortunately if you want a copy of the full novel you're gonna have to pay more than it's worth unless you live somewhere with a really thorough used book store. Part 2 in the next issue
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 11:31
|
|
|
A weird future society that declared its independent from earth and uses massive amounts of cloned slaves has to, as part of a peace deal, cede colonization rights to a region of space to a peer nation. But to gently caress over that nation, they send a colony expedition of 1000 regular humans and 50,000 clones to a planet in that region, and intentionally set it up to fail and leave a decivilized population on the planet for the other nation to deal with. Along the way, the inhabitants of the planet form into two separate forms of coexistence with the native species of the planet, who turn out to be sapient. Also there are Dragons.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 05:19
|
|
|
40 000 in Gehenna, or the store brand equivalent
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 05:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 12:08 |
|
|
A woman with a laser and a black hole on a stick is helped to close doors by an emo guy on a horse. Doors are closed, which ends poorly for almost everyone involved.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 05:50
|
|