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docbeard posted:I know I read a couple of novels with this premise (the usual "person from our world gets stuck in fantasyland, discovers that mundane activity is the key to wizardry in said fantasyland") but I remember almost nothing about them beyond the premise. There's a lot of them, it's a whole genre in manga. Most are pretty much trash power fantasies, but it can be fun and relaxing to read if you're in the mood for that. I think one good one that isn't power fantasy trash is Ascendance of a Bookworm where a woman is reborn into a medieval fantasy world in the body of an especially sickly child in a peasant family. Her biggest passion is books, but there's very little literacy in the world, and books are only a thing for the rich, so she has to figure out how to make her own from scratch.
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Feb 11, 2021 04:31
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I appreciate the metacommentary of Flight of the Dragons where the dude destroys fantasy by being a huge "well, actually" grognard. I feel like that could really be expanded upon.
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Feb 11, 2021 05:47
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docbeard posted:I know I read a couple of novels with this premise (the usual "person from our world gets stuck in fantasyland, discovers that mundane activity is the key to wizardry in said fantasyland") but I remember almost nothing about them beyond the premise. This also happens in Gordon R. Dickson's "The Dragon and the George" where a dude from Earth gets stuck in the body of a dragon in fantasy-England. He meets a talking wolf (who is the dragon's friend and thinks the dragon is just being weird) and when the party gets stuck for what to do next asks a nearby badger for directions. Which just ends up with an angry hissing badger and a confused wolf because what the gently caress dude, badgers don't talk, what's wrong with you?
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Feb 11, 2021 06:07
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VinylonUnderground posted:I appreciate the metacommentary of Flight of the Dragons where the dude destroys fantasy by being a huge "well, actually" grognard. The thing I remember from Flight of Dragons is that Dragon Firebreath is because they eat limestone to generate flammable gas and they have an organ in their mouths that ignites it with electricity. So this Knight dude almost gets eaten by a dragon, and he beats it by taking off his gauntlet and jamming it hard into the electrical organ so the dragon fries itself. I always kind of love it when a story find clever ways to use its own rules like that.
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Feb 11, 2021 06:22
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docbeard posted:I know I read a couple of novels with this premise (the usual "person from our world gets stuck in fantasyland, discovers that mundane activity is the key to wizardry in said fantasyland") but I remember almost nothing about them beyond the premise. Trap sprung, but I am pretty sure that happens with a non-rabbit animal. Since a rabbit is a secondary character later on. To keep vaguely on topic I'll point out two ways that the story gives the protagonist's background as an average college student a chance to shine. The traditional magic system in the series integrates a lot of technobabble, to the point where an earth engineer would have a headstart on learning it. The main character was a sanitation engineer, but that is not nearly as helpful. Fortunately they do know the answer to a dragon's riddle; Question: What is the fundamental attribute of human nature... and of all similar natures? Answer: Productive Labor The dragon is a straight up Marxist, and the protagonist has to use their college knowledge to keep them working toward the same ends. VVV You'll notice I don't remember quite what it was either. Probably a lizard. habituallyred fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Feb 13, 2021 |
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Feb 12, 2021 09:40
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Yeah, I honestly just guessed "rabbit" because I last read those books as a teenager and that was, um, a long time ago.
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Feb 12, 2021 12:31
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nine-gear crow posted:The entire premise of Ready Player One would have been really loving sweet in the hands of practically any author other than Ernest Cline.
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Feb 13, 2021 09:23
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mind the walrus posted:Said it before and I'll say it again-- there's a much better universe out there where Paul Verhoeven made the RPO movie and it's a mean-spirited masterpiece. Given how rape-obsessed Verhoeven's later career is, a weird Dutch version of RPT is possible based on the reviews I've read.
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Feb 13, 2021 19:03
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Dominoes posted:More Neal Stephenson chat: some of Fall; or Dodge in Hell's relevant sci-fi concepts are remarkably relevant - even more so than when written a few years ago. Specifically, his discussion about anonymous identities, trust online, filtering information feeds, post-Truth societies, Ameristan etc. The book has important concepts like brain uploading, how brains make a coherant world etc, but the earlier concepts I listed are good candidates for things that we'll have to address in the near future. Yeah, the post-truth thing is just getting more and more real, as is the Ameristan thing in particular. He had a couple of pretty savage lines in there about that along the lines of "why are they so worried about us taking their stuff when they have nothing of any value to us?"
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Feb 25, 2021 20:32
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