Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
"Raising the Stones" was good, as expected of Tepper. Also as expected, some of the characters gave the distinct impression of being mouthpieces for the author's opinions and a lot of the views espoused were rather simplistic, almost bordering on strawmen. Most notably, RtS introduced the only god that I could not only get behind but actually want IRL.
Now to finish Azazel.
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This weekend I finished reading Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons, which tells the origin story of the Amazons in DC Comics continuity, up to the point of Diana's birth. Or a version of it, at least. (I'm still rather salty at the radical changes to WW's story immediately after her exceptional "New 52" era ended.) But the art is gorgeous throughout--even when it gets a bit weird (which it frequently does, to emphasize that the gods are Not Like Us).
I may end up stealing bits of characterization of the goddesses (and gods) from this for the Greek myth game I run for my wife, whenever we finally get back to it to wrap up the final chapter. I've established my own takes on several the gods over several years of play, but there's always room for more flavor.
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Currently trying to find the time and energy to read Darth Plagueis. It's fun but I have so much non-leasure reading to do.
Back to Titus Alone after a sidetrack through a bunch of RPG books for game night.
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I just finished the Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. Wow, this trilogy is so similar to a Song of Ice and Fire! There was even a character that resembled a certain Lannister boy...
I really enjoyed the books... except for the brutal violence. Are all of Cornwell's books this gritty?
Finised Titus Alone, which was good though not as good as the first two books. Now to track down Titus Awakes at some point.
On to Tamsyn Muir's Nona the Ninth, third book in the Locked Tomb series. Again, not a book I would have bought on the strength of the previous two, but I will certainly read it on the that strength.
messy wrote: I just finished the Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. Wow, this trilogy is so similar to a Song of Ice and Fire! There was even a character that resembled a certain Lannister boy...
I really enjoyed the books... except for the brutal violence. Are all of Cornwell's books this gritty?
I haven't read Warlord Chronicles so I can't compare but all of the books of him that I have read (mostly the Sharpe series) are pretty gritty
Nona was decent. Not as good as Harrow, better than Gideon.
On to Scourge, a Star Wars book by Jeff Grubb. So far it's decent, perhaps edging towards good.
Scourge was decent. I do have a soft spot for the post ROTJ, pre-NJO period so this was fun. It wasn't hard to guess who the real villain was, which can be considered a failure in what is at least partially a mystery, but the ride was enjoyable.
Now on to Raymone E. Feist's Prince of the Blood, one of his Midkemia books.
Bjørn Røyrvik wrote: Nona was decent. Not as good as Harrow, better than Gideon.
On to Scourge, a Star Wars book by Jeff Grubb. So far it's decent, perhaps edging towards good.
I'm currently working on Nona, but I nearly gave up during Harrow. I can't stand the second person perspective or protagonist who can't trust their senses.
Had we not had Gideon's POV from book one I would have agreed with you. As it was we had enough information to know the most important stuff so it was far more engaging, for me at least, to try figure out what was real and what wasn't.
I had actually read Prince of the Blood 20+ years ago when I borrowed a bunch of Feist's stuff from a friend. I had forgotten everything about it except one supporting character and a minor scene at the every end with said character. The book itself was decent though the climax and resolutions and wind-down were a tad brief.
On
Posted to quickly there.
On to Barbara Hambly's Dragonbane, which is apparantly the first in a series. My only previous experience with Hambly is her Star Wars stuff, which I recall precious little of. 40 pages in and I'm pleased with the book so far. Having a female lead who's middle-aged, a not terribly powerful magician, and who is by most accounts rather ugly, is an unusual protagonist.
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Bjørn Røyrvik wrote: Posted to quickly there.
On to Barbara Hambly's Dragonbane, which is apparantly the first in a series. My only previous experience with Hambly is her Star Wars stuff, which I recall precious little of. 40 pages in and I'm pleased with the book so far. Having a female lead who's middle-aged, a not terribly powerful magician, and who is by most accounts rather ugly, is an unusual protagonist.
I enjoyed Dragonbane, and should reread it one of these days.
Hambly also wrote a couple of IMO very good Star Trek:TOS novels, second only (again IMO) to John M. Ford's pair of TOS novels.
Dragonbane was pretty good, though I was slightly disappointed with the denoument of the magic power vs love conflict. I had hoped for a more 'either or' rather than 'both' situation.
I will probably seek out more of Hambly's stuff.
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I have started Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. It's my first book of his, though I have seen several movies based on his books. Here's hoping it is as good as the hype indicates.
Currently reading Trudi Canavan's Thief's Magic. It's ok so far.
Last night I started Caravan of the Damned by Chuck Dixon. It’s the second of his “Conan” novels. Decent so far.
Thief's Magic was OK all the way through: not bad, not good. If I find the sequel cheap I may pick it up.
On to Asimov's A whiff of death. I've tried a couple of his mysteries before but not been terribly impressed. Mysteries aren't really my thing unless you add magic or robots to them. However the book was free and I generally like Asimov and I'm always willing to give him another chance.
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I'm rereading the anthology High Seas Cthulhu, which I received several years back because my friends know I've run multiple campaigns combining pirates and the Mythos.
Whiff of Death was rather dated and not all that good. It was an interesting look into what Asimov himself must have experienced in his stint at university with the development of new techniques crowding out old, but his portrayal of women and psychology was ..... not very good. TBH I'm not sure if the pscyhology on display was decent for a lay person's understanding of the field at the time it was written but it hasn't aged well. I'd stick with his SF stories.
Currenlty reading Eric Idle's The Road to Mars. 25 years old at the moment and it feels a little dated. Some moments of insight and genuine humor with a lot cringe at a comedian past his prime. To be fair I'm not very far into it so it may improve.
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After nearly 40 years, I’ve finally completed my set of the Time Life Enchanted World Series. I received Gods and Goddesses in the mail today, and am reading through it.
My grandfather and later parents had/have a few of those Time Life series, and I absolutely love them.
The Road to Mars was as much an exploration of the nature of comedy. A few oddities that made the setting feel off, like how Vaudeville is somehow back in fashion, and somehow comedians can make a living traveling throughout the solar system and putting on acts. The book made me smile frequently but I don't think I laughed once, which may very well be a "it's not you, it's me" problem.
Now reading The Will of the Tribe by Arthur Upfield, one of his Inspector Napoleaon Bonaparte books, an Australian sleuth. This is another one I picked up when my work was getting rid of a few things and so far I've found it hard going. Partially because I'm not a big fan of mysteries, mostly because of the descriptions of the First Nations. Mentions of the 'wild' tribes and the 'semi-tame' tribes, and how the MC can "think like a black man and reason like a white man" abound. Granted I know bugger all about First Nation cultures (I don't think having watched the Crocodile Dundee movies counts), so I don't really know how accurate the portrayal of them here is, but the language rubs my special snowflake woke sensibilities the wrong way.
'How The Mind Works' by Stephen Pinker, which has rather bamboozled me due to the excessive amount of detail he feels obliged to go into, Lemmu II - Archives of Haven, by Julian Jay Savarin, sci-fi Hammond organ player supreme, and 'Or Neerav', by Moses Cordavero, which makes me stop every couple of paragraphs to puzzle out what the man is trying to get over.
Overall, confused Limey is very much confused.
The Will of the Tribe wasn't good. Even ignoring the racist bits (which you can't, even if it was probably less derisive than many other works of the time and acknowledges that white people are eradicating native culture) the writing wasn't good. When people were yelling or emotionally charged it felt like watching those old Russian dubs of western movies with zero acting ability.
On to better things: the third of Robin Hobb's Rain Wilds Chronicles, City of Dragons.
City of Dragons was good, and the last book in the series is in my 'to read in the near future' pile (as opposed to the 'to read at some point' pile).
I'm about 2/3 of the way through Stuart Cloete's The Silver Trumpet, a collection of short stories set primarily in Boer times and lands, though some are set as late as the 30s and in central Africa. The stories are mostly OK, mostly rather bland and clumsy prose with occasional passages of actual good writing. Considering the time and place and most of the stories are set and the protagonists being Boers or Boer-adjacent, you have to expect a bit of extreme racism here and there, and damn if there isn't some unpleasant stuff mentioned very casually. On the whole the stories are all about the whites so the nasty stuff isn't shoved in your face regularly. I don't know much about the Boers so I can't comment on the accuracy of the portrayal other than to say it aligns with what little I do know.
Currently reading Murrey Leinster's Sideways in Time a collection of his short stories/novellas which includes the title story. I like what I've read of
Leinster previously though I'm most familiar with his MedShip stories.
Leinster was good, as expected. He was a contemporary of Lovecraft but most of these stories were somewhat later than the Lovecraft circle wrote - 40s and 50s. Good stuff with early ideas: time zones with altnerate worlds crashing into a glorious Torg-like mess (with significantly lower tech rating), plant-based sentient lifeforms with organic tech, telepathic deepwater possibly-krakens, etc. The stand-out story is A Logic Named Joe (1946), which predicts not only something very like the Internet but also the more likely AI apocalypse, which does not involve robots wanting to kill all humans but AIs being very good at answering questions humans put to it regardless of consequences or morality.
It's not all good. It is just a tad sexist and all women must end up with a man at some point and they have little purpose other than as objects of men's affections. There is some unpleasant racial characterization like Japanese being described as polite on the surface and sneaky and brutal underneath (probably explained by the fact that this is written in the mid 40s), and an unfotunate tendency to turn to genocide as a solution to problems of hostile species, both intelligent and unintelligent.
On to Charles Sheffield's Proteus in the Underwold, where humans have learned how to shapechange. Too early to say so far but I expect transhumanism to be a major theme.
I read one book that collected science fiction stories that included "Sideways in Time" and another book that collected science fiction stories that included "A Logic Named Joe". But I never found a source that included both and I never realized that those stories had the same author. (I have a bad memory for names.)
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