What Is Being Read

[Vendetta]

Revelation Space is definitely among the good ones, but it does contain so much that I want to steal adapt for my own purposes

You can definitely tell the bits that Bioware stole for Mass Effect. (More in the first one than the subsequent ones though).

[Imperial Overlord]

Polished off The Talon of Horus by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. More 40K, what can I say, I'm on a 40K kick. The central character is a badass renegade Thousands Sons Sorcerer by the name of Sekhandar Khayon who becomes one of the founders and later commanders of the Black Legion. Thematically the book is about reforging the bonds of brotherhood and finding a shared purpose. ABD does his usual good job with Traitor Marines and does a good job of portraying Abaddon as a badass leader of men, perhaps firing the first shot in the battle against the monstrous ghost of "Failbaddon".

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Funny you should mention badass renegades- most recent purchase is a classic that I should have picked up years ago anyway; Smedley Butler's War is a Racket. "I could have given tips to Al Capone. He only operated in three counties- I operated on three continents." Not sure the cheap version I got is the full version, but the core sense of it is there.

It makes me think a lot about the fictional wars we read about and sometimes try to write, and the excuses authors come up with for them, and how when you look at recent history it seems that the real world doesn't have that great a track record of weighing the costs and objectives of it all anyway. 40K is oddly one of the most sensible universes out there when it comes to this actually; it really is full of horrible scary things that you have to defend yourself against. Other universes, a bit less so.

Maj.Gen Butler's core thesis, that profit is possible in war, that it is the taxpayers and fighting men themselves who supply it to the industrialists and merchants, is so completely self evident it is a tribute to the ignorance and gullibility of the human race that he had to spell it out. His proposed solutions, I am less confident of- they have after all singularly failed to happen.

One of them may have inspired Heinlein; see how this fits into the concept of a government of veterans-

Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and the dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76- year old head of a munitions factory or the flat footed head of an international banking firm or the cross eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant- all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war- voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms- to sleep in a trench and be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.

I can think of real, human civilisations- Rome during its expansionist phase, for a start- who would eagerly vote yes to such a plebiscite, though. As far as the argument that there's much more to government than that, that the outside is not the only area of concern; well, yes nowadays, but there is a historical (and economic) case that the bulk of the business of the state, and certainly of it's budget, before and well into the industrial revolution, long after the birth of many political concepts including left and right, was precisely that; external affairs.


There's a line from Timothy Gawne's quartet- I am almost tempted to call them "bolopunk" except they're really not that anarchic- "It is a tradition that anyone arguing for a war has to participate, which is why I am here floating in deep space. It is only fair. It is also a tradition that anyone arguing against the war has to participate as well, as punishment for not doing a good enough job of talking us out if it."

How many authors really do a good enough job of world building that you can understand why their conflicts take place, why people actually believe in their countries and their systems, why it's worth taking the risk of taking up arms? This is something that these huge sprawling universes, multivolume sagas are good for, that the flood of words can actually be made to serve.

[Simon_Jester]

Although I've also seen David Drake sketch out a de facto casus belli that seems convincing in a couple of paragraphs, so you never know. Then again, he has a genius for taking historical events and recasting them as science fiction stories, so he can use the defense of truth to justify having his protagonists fight over this or that.

[Lord Pounder]

I joined a book club a few months ago. After some really dodgy chick lit it's finally my turn to choose a book. I chose The Difference Engine by Bruce Stirling and William Gibson. I've not read it myself in over 10 years, it's turning out better than I remember so far.

[Lord Pounder]

I joined a book club a few months ago. After some really dodgy chick lit it's finally my turn to choose a book. I chose The Difference Engine by Bruce Stirling and William Gibson. I've not read it myself in over 10 years, it's turning out better than I remember so far.

[Elheru Aran]

Although I've also seen David Drake sketch out a de facto casus belli that seems convincing in a couple of paragraphs, so you never know. Then again, he has a genius for taking historical events and recasting them as science fiction stories, so he can use the defense of truth to justify having his protagonists fight over this or that.

Isn't he the one who did those Belisarus books? I rather enjoyed the volume I read of those, been looking for more but haven't been able to track them down yet...

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

After some really dodgy chick lit, yes, I can see a big temptation to mischief there. Demotic, isn't it? Even the worst, most vacuous published crap in the world exists because somebody thought it was a good idea to write it, and someone else was willing to pay them so they could read it...and everyone has different opinions on what constitutes said crap, anyway. "De gustibus non disputandum", there's no accounting for taste, is I reckon not so much a statement of fact as a statement of tact.

Although I have to admit, the first title that came to mind in the context of revenge for chick- lit was The Soviet General Staff Study of the Battle of Kursk, but that's just me. On a semi-tangent, it can be an oddly liberating feeling finding some work or author or genre you didn't think you were going to like but actually do; another part of the horizon surveyed, another element of the human condition heard from. I take it that hasn't happened much yet?

From what I recall of The Difference Engine it didn't feel like that close a collaboration, that the background was mostly Sterling and the action was mostly Gibson, and that the situation felt weirdly contrived and overwrought, that it didn't make all that much sense in terms of it's own internal logic, or what we now know that should be- it was very full of retroanachronism. They changed history to set up the situation they wanted, but the natural curve onwards from that setup doesn't go in the direction they seem to have wanted to write. Oh, yes, it is very good, but forced like a stained glass tree.

The Belisarius series are listed as coauthored, Eric Flint and David Drake; we seem to have hit a theme here. Drake may have done most of the setup and historical knowledge and Flint most of the heavy lifting, though. Haven't read them, myself- a bit too genre jamming, but perhaps I will eventually. (Even that has to be simpler and more straightforward than the real thing.)

Speaking of simple and straightforward, it really isn't- I may have mentioned this earlier, but the only really interesting thing recently was rereading The Secret State; preparing for the worst 1945-2010, Peter Hennessy, deterrence, civil defence, security intelligence and such in Britain through the cold war and after. Worth it for how unsimple everything actually is, and actually surprisingly funny in a very black comedy kind of way.

One senior civil servant seconded from the treasury to JIGSAW for instance, declaring, paraphrased because I can't remember exactly, "There were advantages to being on a nuclear working party. An error in my permanent post, a poor policy recommendation, could resound for years. Even a critical mistake in the nuclear arena would only leave four minutes' worth at most of agonizing about getting it wrong."

Krushchev's comment at a disarmament conference shortly before Cuba, to a joke by a british civil servant that the difference between a pessimist and an optimist in the war office was that a pessimist believed it would only take six large, multimegaton, warheads to cause the collapse of the British state; an optimist reckoned it might take at least nine. Krushchev's response that "You underrate your country's resilience. The Soviet people have a great respect for the British people- we have put you down for twenty-five."


David Drake does do a fairly good job of cribbing from history, knowing that it does not repeat itself but it does occasionally rhyme, and that what reality has come up with is both stranger and rather less well known than fiction; but there are a lot of other writers out there that try to do the same but don't have his genius for it.

[Simon_Jester]

The Belisarius series are listed as coauthored, Eric Flint and David Drake; we seem to have hit a theme here. Drake may have done most of the setup and historical knowledge and Flint most of the heavy lifting, though. Haven't read them, myself- a bit too genre jamming, but perhaps I will eventually. (Even that has to be simpler and more straightforward than the real thing.)

That's pretty much how it went- Drake did the plot, Flint did the bulk of the writing.

It's worth it as light reading. Horrific opposition, strategic ingenuity from Belisarius, the good guys get to win fairly consistently. Honestly, it suffers a little from the relative dearth of smart Malwa leadership on the villains' team.

[Imperial Overlord]

It's worth it as light reading. Horrific opposition, strategic ingenuity from Belisarius, the good guys get to win fairly consistently. Honestly, it suffers a little from the relative dearth of smart Malwa leadership on the villains' team.

It does. Despite the bad guys being nasty and powerful, they lack the kind of menace to make them truly fearsome.

Polished off Legacies of Betrayal, a mediocre Horus Heresy anthology.

[Enigma]

I've finished off "Year's Best Sci-Fi 15" and I was quite disappointed with it. Most of the short stories falls under the category of general fiction, not science fiction. What a waste.

Now I'm reading the first omnibus (out of three. Must find the other two) of Elizabeth Moon's Serrano Legacy. The pace is slow but enough to keep me interested.

[Thanas]

The Belisarius series are listed as coauthored, Eric Flint and David Drake; we seem to have hit a theme here. Drake may have done most of the setup and historical knowledge and Flint most of the heavy lifting, though. Haven't read them, myself- a bit too genre jamming, but perhaps I will eventually. (Even that has to be simpler and more straightforward than the real thing.)

That's pretty much how it went- Drake did the plot, Flint did the bulk of the writing.

So the worst of both worlds?

[Elheru Aran]

The Belisarius series are listed as coauthored, Eric Flint and David Drake; we seem to have hit a theme here. Drake may have done most of the setup and historical knowledge and Flint most of the heavy lifting, though. Haven't read them, myself- a bit too genre jamming, but perhaps I will eventually. (Even that has to be simpler and more straightforward than the real thing.)

That's pretty much how it went- Drake did the plot, Flint did the bulk of the writing.

So the worst of both worlds?

I only read one, but it's popcorn reading. Turn your brain off, consider it 'fiction inspired by history', and carry on. I liked it. Annoyed me to the dickens that it was like the third or fourth book of the series though...

[Thanas]

I did that with Flint's other work. It lead to me developing a drinking problem.

I can't see why people would read that dreck.

[Elheru Aran]

Hah. I remember that, yeah. Fortunately, since there's no America to contend with here, nor time-travel shenanigans to play with (only artificial intelligences travelling through time), you don't have to deal with the rotting shit that the 163x series became. Everybody's more or less on the same level (apart from the Malwa being kinda Sauron/Orcs to Belisarus' Gondor/Aragorn). Plus I get the feeling that Drake didn't *just* plot the series, he had something of a hand in keeping Flint from going completely nuts...

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Off the top of my head- hell, looking around my shelves- I can name at least half a dozen writers (well, somewhere between several and many anyway) who do a clumsier and less elegant job of adapting historical events to science- fiction plot than Drake. I suspect your disapproval is ideological rather than artistic.

Flint, on the other hand, his bibliography does contain quite a few things I wouldn't touch with a bargepole, and considering how much of that work is collaboration, with a fairly widely divergent spectrum of people, and how many other things are 'edited by', he may be a better editor than he is a writer.

I actually have only a couple of them- the pair he did with K D Wentworth- they do contain rich veins of American corn, but I would call them recommendable, and the best thing about them are the aliens. Not so much the ones in close focus, but the other side. It's not often you come across such a radically divergent definition of sanity.

In fact I would say that they are genuinely very good science fiction despite their large and numerous flaws, largely because there is enough of a pause in the zap-bang-kapow to get the reader thinking about how flesh-bound and parochial human intelligence might actually be, and how another intelligent race probably will have an entirely different and incompatible way of looking at the universe. In fact, it's really a shame about the bits with people in.

[Thanas]

Off the top of my head- hell, looking around my shelves- I can name at least half a dozen writers (well, somewhere between several and many anyway) who do a clumsier and less elegant job of adapting historical events to science- fiction plot than Drake. I suspect your disapproval is ideological rather than artistic.

LolNo.
If you really want to read good ahistorical pseudo sci-fi, then read the Germanicus saga by Mitchell.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Which Mitchell? A first name would help, or a book title.

[Thanas]

Here

[Elheru Aran]

That sounds very familiar for some reason. I believe I read a short story with a fairly similar setting in some anthology. I'll have to look that up. Thanks.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

This piffle?

The Germanicus trilogy is an alternate history trilogy of books written by Kirk Mitchell, consisting of Procurator, New Barbarians and Cry Republic. It is set in an alternate world in which Rome never fell, after Pontius Pilate pardons Joshua bar-Joseph (Christ), and the Romans win a decisive victory at Teutoberg Forest and Latinize Greater Germania.

A no line, no information recommendation? A vague, obscure citation and a cheap-shot followup? Thanas, are you enjoying this holiday you seem to be taking from your own usual standards?

[Thanas]

A no line, no information recommendation? A vague, obscure citation and a cheap-shot followup? Thanas, are you enjoying this holiday you seem to be taking from your own usual standards?

I suspect your disapproval is ideological rather than artistic.

[SCRawl]

My wife and I had kind of a reverse-"Gift of the Magi" Christmas: she bought me a home raclette grill device, and I bought her "The World of Ice and Fire". I don't have much time to read, but I'm reading her book, and it's a good way to staunch the trickling wound I suffer while waiting for "Winds of Winter".

[Adam Reynolds]

You can definitely tell the bits that Bioware stole for Mass Effect. (More in the first one than the subsequent ones though).

It is interesting just how much of Mass Effect seems largely taken from other stories. Besides things like Revelation Space, they also seemed to take a great deal from Babylon 5 with the dynamic between the various powers seeming somewhat based on that series. Having played Mass Effect before watching Babylon 5 I was struck just how much they seemed similar in terms of the portrayal of humanity as an upstart power among aliens. This is besides the quarians and geth largely being a take on BSG.

This is not to say it is a bad setting, much of the same could have largely been said about Star Wars when it came out. Mass Effect gets credit for the sense that most aliens were properly alien even though they all spoke English. Another somewhat minor element I rather liked was being one of the few works of popular science fiction to lowercase species names. In Star Trek or Babylon 5, human is still spelled with lowercase but Klingon or Minbari never are, even when not referring to their nations. This is in contrast to the asari or turians.

My wife and I had kind of a reverse-"Gift of the Magi" Christmas: she bought me a home raclette grill device, and I bought her "The World of Ice and Fire". I don't have much time to read, but I'm reading her book, and it's a good way to staunch the trickling wound I suffer while waiting for "Winds of Winter".

I hate to beat a dead horse, but why can't Martin write faster? It seems nearly absurd for a professional author to take five years for a single book in an already established series. I realize that his books are among the most complex written today, with over a thousand named characters throughout the series, but it still seems far too long.

[Terralthra]

Last I knew, he was writing something else. Because it's up to him what he works on.