SO, last year I read Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price . Base premise is an alternate earth where male births happen less than 1/10th as often as female births, and thus men are very much disenfranchised.
I like the story, I like the setting, but for the past year, a couple things have been nagging at me.
One, I want to know the mechanism for this culling.
There are textual hints that it originates with the men, specifically that some men ten to sire more male children than others, but this could very well be on the level of folk lore. Further more, I'd want to know if this was genetic (and if it is, how it is maintained. Imbalances on that scale tend to even themselves out in most populations quite quickly, and her humans aren't different enough behaviorally or socially to counter the selective pressure toward a 50/50 mix. In fact, their society seems to be set up to encourage it, putting a strong value on males who sire male children. With the extremely large brood numbers within a single family and the tendency to sell off male children, even small increases in the number of male children in a family would spread throughout a region in a hand full of generations.) It can't be a recessive X linked trait or there would be people out there with normal splits of male and female progeny, or even a co dominant x-linked (like ss anemia if it was on the X. Only female double carriers and male carriers would die of it. Wait, you'd never get female double carriers since male carriers are never born. Or it would only be with errors in the production of germ cells. Assume an Xx female and an xy male, Xy don't make it to term. so 1/3 of the total offspring carry the X gene with a tendency to half as many boy children as girls. In the next generation, the girls who have the xx gene set would tend to have more offspring than their sisters with the Xx set, if for no other reason than that they'll have fewer misscarrages, by about a quarter. Very quickly, the doubled effects of 1/4th again as many children, twice as many boys, and2.3s of even a carrier's children not being carriers, would make the X gene uncommon) and we would see those families grow very quickly. Oops more later. I'll get to my arguement for sperm banks shortly.
free beer
So we all know what Free, as in Beer means, but what are the alternatives that require us to specify that something is free like beer is free? Are there a standard accepted set, or did the free as in beer creators slack on the job?
My sister crushes the hopes and dreams of innocent notes with her capo.
She forces them to become sharks, but what if their aspirations are to be porpoi? I mean imagine a poor young note who has always dreamt of swimming and frolicking with the other porpoi, and then she comes and sticks a capo on it and turns it into a vicious shark.
Posted using <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/chat/">LJ Talk</a>...
also, in completely related matters, my GRE scores from when I went to OSU are still good
Posted using <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/chat/">LJ Talk</a>...
Well, this IM post thing might get me to post more often. Probably not though. Not much happening in my neck of the woods. Hopefully I'll have an announcement soonish though. Depends on issues of timing (poor on my end.) Ooh this is way funner than posting through the regular window, though I have to be careful not to hit enter. Oh, yeah I'm considering learning Blitz Basic. Probably should stick with something more useful, but having all of the graphics stuff right there on the surface and having tutorials that tell me how to do the sorts of things I'm actually interested in is kind of neat.
Running my game is just under the critical annoyance threshold. We run on Fridays.
Last Friday, I told my players that I'd be emailing them either that night or the next morning with some information that I needed to have so I could prepare for the next adventure. Three of my six players had a 3 day weekend (they are out of school for MLK day.) Two are old friends who have always been pretty bad at the whole e-mail thing, but seriously, I told them it was going to be there. One is my little brother.
From the information I needed, there were two things to vote on and then either a single preference to state or a list of five items out of a possible 15 to send me.
So far, I have received:
3 of the voting responses, one of which I only received after repeatedly asking my sister to do her part. Which she then only partially did.
1 list of items. From my brother. Who did it on Saturday, in about 5 minutes.
My sister was sitting here this evening doing nothing. Well, watching commercials and eating cheerios, but nothing important. I asked her if she had five minutes and she came over, and when she saw it was about the game, she decided that she would do it later. Then she asked me to do extra work so she could do it on her own time.
Right, hell no. I've already done extra work to keep it from impacting game time.
I am fucking ready to quit.
Apparently the Pentagon is unwilling to let truth speak for itself.
(nb. I am getting worn out. 6 years ago, the outrage at this would have been much higher. Or maybe it is just that ground level has been shoved way up so the peaks seem to be not so high anymore.)
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/13/pentagon_official_bo.html
This son of a bitch, a government official working for the executive branch (albeit in what is most likely a bureaucratic post, not an elected one) is suggesting that American businesses boycott law firms that dare to represent people we are keeping prisoner without the benefit of a trial or evidence. He is openly calling for people to punish these firms for providing a service that our whole body of law, not to mention basic decency, requires they be capable of receiving.
These people have not been proven guilty of anything. The government has gone out of its way to make sure that they haven't had a chance to prove their guilt or innocence.
But.
That.
Doesn't.
Matter.
The law doesn't say that you shall have representation so long as we think you are innocent.
It doesn't even say that you shall have representation so long as you are innocent.
IT SAYS YOU SHALL HAVE REPRESENTATION.
Breathing while of Arabic descent is not a sufficient crime to take away the right of legal representation.
blort
This weariness, this overload, it recalls to me the words of a friend of mine, from early November 2004. We don't always see eye to eye, but in this case I agree with the sentiment here completely. I think I quoted them her before, but her words bear repeating. If for no other reason to remind myself.
"i won't let you take away my right to choose. i won't let you send my loved ones into wars we cannot win, and places we shouldn't be. i won't let you bring out the worst in humanity. i won't let you preach your hate to me. i won't let you push your religion on me. i won't let you shove your xenophobia down my throat. i won't let you forgot we're global citizens. i won't let you ruin the planet for my children. i won't let you pass your hateful laws. i won't let you rule this place under the guise of 'coming together.' i won't give you my compliance. i won't give you my support.
you can have my hatred, you can have my anger, you can have my fists and feet. you will not get my approval. you will never get my agreement. you will never get any of these things.
of course, not like this ever mattered to you."
As I recall, in 2004, they were already doing all of the above and more, and they haven't slowed down since.
Good night and good luck.
Well, working on a resume to send off to twisted pixel games. They are a new game design company opening up in my home town. Their website needs some more information, like who they are. Also it needs not to be flash. If you want to build a brand on the internet, making it hard for people to talk about you is not the best way to start. Well, after I get hired or not, however things go, I'll mention it to their webmaster. *shrugs* Why are art type people so enamored with interfaces that break the key functionality of the internet?
In related news, I envy those of you with a clear goal in life. I wish I had your focus.
Year's end 2006 Reading list
1 Running from the Deity Alan Dean Foster.
2 The Dark Knight Returns Frank Miller et al.
3 Crystal Gorge David and Leigh Eddings
4 Woken Furies Morgan
5 At All Costs David Weber That is how it is done.
6 A Feast of Crows George R.R.Martin
7 Burning Water Mercedes Lackey Diana Tregard. Not bad at all.
8 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2 Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
9 1602 Neil Gaiman Et al. Wonderful and then some
10 Shadows of Amber John Gregory Betancourt He isn’t Zelazny. They lack the pulp anti-hero feel of the first Amber books. But so did the second set of five of Zelazny’s Amber books.
11 Identity Crisis Brad Meltzer et al. Wow.
12 Nightmares and Fairy Tales: Beautiful Beasts Serena Valentina and FSc.
13 Creatures of the Night Mercedes Lackey Diana Tregard book. Not bad.
14 Anansi Boys Neil Gaiman And I doubted that it was as good as his other stuff at the midpoint. Oh me of little faith.
15 Kingdom Come Alex Ross and Mark Waid. Good, maybe as good as Identity Crisis, though maybe not.
16 The Books of Magic Gaiman et al. Even had it not been good, the scene with Destiny would have been worth the price of admission.
17 Eleven on Top Janet Evanovich One could wish for a little more character growth, but it was no worse than the other 11 Evanovich books I’ve read. (Yeah, I know. I have to turn in my heteromale license now, don’t I?)
18 Acorna Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball Meh. I read it because the cover art on a much later book in the series caught my eye. Good enough, but not spectacular. *edit* Not good enough for me to actually get the later books)
19 Alanya to Alanya L. Timmel Duchamp Not as heavy handed as some feminist fiction. I find the future described a little extra unlikely, sort of a “to make my point I must make things be like this” future.
20 Five Nations Bill Slavicsek et al. Game book. Useful for an Eberron campaign. I happen to like the setting.
21 Teenagers From Mars Rick Spears, Rob G. A little forgettable.
22 Leave it to Chance Book One James Robinson et al. Not bad. I want more of it before I make a decision.
23 The Shattered Land Keith Baker More Eberron. No one has done a novel length pulp/noir book for the setting yet. :(
24 The Road to Death Matt Forbeck Even more Eberron
25 Pretender C.J.Cherryh She delivers the goods once again in her solid skilled manner.
26 Superman World Peace Alex Ross
27 The Risen Empire Scott Westerfeld Okay. Not the best new SF I’ve read this year. Not the worst either.
28 Wolf Star R.M. Meluch The ending of this one didn’t annoy me as much as the first book’s “And then none of it really happened because of the wormhole.” Made the whole book more palatable. Also, killed off a least favorite character.
29 Lieutenant Hornblower C.S. Forester *shrugs* I enjoyed them while I was reading the Hornblower books. Can’t say much more for them.
30 Hornblower and the Hotspur C.S. Forester
31 Hammered Elizabeth Bear Very good, need to hunt down more of her stuff.
32 The Life of Riley Alexander C. Irvine Pretty good. Missed some of the references. Should have been in the SF section of the library.
33 Hornblower and the Atropos C.S. Forester
34 Melusine Sarah Monette I like it when characters redeem their shitty attitudes. Yay Dr. Sarah!
35 Night Train to Rigel Timothy Zahn Not hard SF. Good story nonetheless.
36 In the Garden of Iden Kage Baker. Read this one because I want to read the series because book 7 or 8 looks intriguing. The first book was okay, not spectacular but okay.
37 Watchmen Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Better than V for Vendetta.
38 V for Vendetta Alan Moore and David Lloyd Pretty good. Not convincing, but Morre is an anarchist so I suspect that I’d find his political fiction universally unconvincing.
39 The Tales of the Last War Mark Sehestedt ed. One or two noir short stories in the Ebberon setting. My new favorite character from the setting makes his debut here.
40 The Dark Wing Walter H. Hunt Decent Series. Gets better with time.
41 The Dark Path Walter H. Hunt
42 The Dark Ascent Walter H. Hunt
43 The Cassandra Complex Brian Stableford Finished more of it than of Brian’s other books. I’ll have to try them again.
44 The Peace War Vernor Vinge The combat stuff was unconvincing. Which since the showcase scene was a mass combat scene, hurt the book a lot. (The good guys should have all been carrying 10 cm “bubbles” with them to disable the bad guys bigger bubble machines.
45 The Dark Crusade Walter H. Hunt
46 The Quickening Ly de Angeles Er, I think I read this just before starting the book that I should have put down at the words “venom cock” Looked it up. It was like a well written Mercedes Lackey Urban Fantasy. (Shaddup, I like ML’s urban fantasies)
47 The Silver Lake Fiona Patton Looking forward to the next book.
48 Thieves of Blood Tim Waggoner. The return of Dirian in Ebberon. I want to game again. *edit* gaming. ON the wrong side of the GM’s screen alas.
49 Player’s Handbook 2 David Noonan. I like a lot of the material in the book. My next WotC purchase will be something with less “crunchyness” and more “setting” though. That said, the Knight class is awesome. (Not more powerful than the other fighter classes, but I like the role it plays on the battlefield.)
50 Zero Point Richard Baker Yeah, gaming fiction. If all gaming fiction had to be at least this good, people who don’t scoff at fantasy or science fiction wouldn’t scoff at gaming fiction. I sort of hope there is a sequel to this one though. A lot was left unresolved.
51. Music to My Sorrow Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill. Yet another Eric Banyon book. And this time it actually includes Eric Banyon. I think they’ve decreased his power again. Although it might just be that he has grown to the point where he refuses to use it. I was thrilled that he was the main character again though. I know that he has grown past all of his stupidity (and when they needed characters to fall into a trap where stupidity kept them in it, he was notably absent) and that makes it hard to come up with real conflicts for him, but I was a little disappointed that the previous book (or the one before it) focused almost entirely on Hosea Songmaker, mage in training. Good book, the bad guys mostly survive. Eric ends the book with unearned guilt. He’s not entirely over the stupids.
52 Serenity Those Left Behind. Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad I wish that I had read this before watching the movie. It fills in the gap between the last episode of the show and the movie and explains why the missing folks are missing.
53 Engaging the Enemy Elizabeth Moon Hum... well, I think the major flaw that this series has as military sci-fi is that after the first they are too short. I’d really rather have had a longer book later that told a more significant part of the story. Kylara Vatta seems a lot more real than the Captains of most Naval SF, and I always worry that in the interest of progressing the plot that will eventually change and she’ll become Honor Harrington (Or Esmay Suzia, though as I blurrily recall, Esmay was less insanely overcompetent than Harrington. And yes, I know that military training can create insanely overcompetent people. Harrington may still be above and beyond the call. Very few fleet command track folks are also Special Forces material.)
54 Green Lantern Rebirth Geoff Johns, Ethan Van Sciver, Prentis Rollins I hadn’t been following the Green Lantern very much, but is was neat seeing five of them all together. Including the Redemption of Hal Jordon.
55 Starship: Mutiny Mike Resnick Last year I read what I thought was a brilliant piece of standalone myth making called Return of Santiago. Same author as this. Same physical setting. Different tone. Sadly I found out that Return of Santiago is part of an extended future history, which makes it seem a little less like an inspired bit of solitary myth weaving. Still like Return of Santiago, but now I have to hunt down the books from Santiago till Return. This one was very different in tone sadly. Had I not found out about the connection, I would have been quite happy with the book.
56 Futureshocks Lou Anders ed. I don’t think I could do a mixed author anthology. It would be too hard to pick participants and to work out the proper order of stories. This had some good stories in it.
57 Falling Free Louis Bujold Well, I do wish that either there was a sequel to this one or that it had ended about three years later. Pretty good though.
58 The Forever War Joe Haldeman Pretty good, the degree of deceptiveness that was used to maintain the titular war is particularly disturbing since the blackhats are doing the same shit right now. I keep seeing it contrasted with Heinlein’s glorification of war in Starship Troopers. You know what? Bullshit. Starship Troopers didn’t glorify war. It admitted that wars are sometimes necessary even though the people who actually bring them about are frequently venial. It did glorify the individual who gave his freedom to protect his nation/species/whatever. It seems that Haldeman did much the same thing, though in his case things turned out less well in some ways for Mandella. It does seem to set a pattern for “group minds as the necessary nest stage of humanity” theme that pops up in the other book by him that I’ve read.
59 Forever Peace Joe Haldeman Not a sequel to Forever War. Same themes as the above, handled with a lot more grace and skill. 28 years of practice will do that to your writing. Still ends with the group mind thing.
60 The Lies of Locke Lamora. Scott Lynch This is Scott’s freshman novel with a second and third under contract. Honestly, I opened this book with dread. You see, Scott is a friend of mine in that “we’ve never met in meat space and occasionally exchange LJ posts” sort of way (since this won’t be posted until the end of September I want to note that I write this on June 30 06) and while I’ve read many good things about his book and I’ve enjoyed the excerpts of it that I had read before I bought it, I really wanted to not dislike it and a book is a very iffy sort of thing. Even with authors that I have come to like I can come across a book that starts out promising and ends up unreadable. And this time I had some personal investment in not disliking the book.
Turns out my worries were wholly misplaced. Up to tonight, only 5,6,9,14, and 48 from my list are competing with this one for best book of the year. It was fun, engaging, it had the little expository cultural/historic notes that I so love when done right, you like the protagonist mostly but don’t like him without reservations. This and the next two books are going on my shelves in hardback. Good job Scott.
61 A Cold Day in Paradise Steve Hamilton PI/Murder Mystery. *Shrugs* Writing was tight enough, but the genre isn’t really my thing. Read it as part of a summer reading program at my library. On the other hand, I did end up wondering “what next” about the main character, so he probably deserves his Edgar. Usually in detective stories I really couldn’t care less.
62 Nexus Volume One Mike Baron Steve Rude Feels like a 1950s pulp story. Written before the fall of the Soviet Union. Of course the authors didn’t foresee the immanent collapse of soviet communism. (Even the few people with the vision to see that it wouldn’t last another hundred years didn’t expect it to fall that fast.)
63 The Moor’s Last Sigh Salman Rushdie This one started weak, and mostly the characterizations were pretty awful and the plot nonexistant through most of the book. It did get better on a page to page basis and had he condensed the first 2/3 of the book into a dozen pages, the last third would have made a splendid novella.
64. Mort Terry Pratchett I am not absolutely certain that I haven’t read this one and the next one in the past sometime. I am hoping very much that there is another book with Mort and such at the center.
65. Sourcery Terry Pratchett Again I’m not sure that I haven’t read this one before. As much as I like his work, Mr. Pratchett has a few themes and set pieces he visits over and over again. My confusion stems partly from the similarity of the initial infodump to that in Equal Rites.
66. Wyrd Sisters Terry Pratchett This one I’m sure I haven’t read before. Nice story, looking forward to the next witches book in the set.
67. Guards! Guards! Terry Pratchett I’d already read Pyramids (It was one of the first two books by Pratchett I’d ever read.) I’ve been assured that of the Guards books, this is the least good. That bodes well for the rest of the set.
68 Eric Terry Pratchett Meh. Not bad, but not as good as most of the ones before it. The ending felt particularly tacked on.
69. Moving Pictures Terry Pratchett This is another one where I hope that the main characters show up somewhere else, though I wouldn’t be set on them being the main characters of the next book. If Victor had some skill other than applied slacking and wizardry, that would be great. Otherwise we just have another smarter and braver Rincewind. I also would like to see Detritus’s developments carried over to the next book he is in. If so, he’ll have gone from backdrop to full fledged character.
70. Life As We Do Not Know It Peter Ward. This was probably a really neat book. The problem was a distinct scarcity of details. He kept asking questions and implying that he’d give a potential answer and then not doing it. This was definitely written for the lay reader, but instead of Science News, it read like a science news writer writing for the Friday Science page of your news paper. I’d have preferred a slightly more technical book. Maybe I’m just spoiled by having read Dawkins. On the other hand, I read a review by a science writer who said that the section on biochemistry (the one I thought needed more detail) was “a hard slog.”
71. Way of the Wolf E.E. Knight I picked this book up from the library three times before I read it, and eventually did so at the (not aimed at me) suggestion of Jenn and Scott. Okay. Disclosure time. The book is about post apocalyptic alien/mutant vampire hunters. (That actually explains why I returned it unread the first two times. Turns out that after you get past the bit about the alien vampires and their mutant rapists, it is a pretty good book. I’m looking forward to grabbing the rest of the series.
72. The Ghost Brigades John Scalzi I am thrilled that my library grabbed this one. It gives a broader view of the universe he introduced in Old Man’s War, one not from the exclusive viewpoint of a recruit. The return of Jane Sagan gave me the warm and fuzzies. Ooh and there is a drop trooper scene without the traditional rifle barrel imagery!
73. In Fury Born David Webber I was in the middle of this book when I read the entirety of The Ghost Brigades. That is what inspired my relief at Scalzi’s presentation of the launch of drop troopers that wasn’t taken verbatim from Heinlein. This all of the classic Webber bits, including some scenes from the Honor Harrington books that still had the serial numbers on them. Fairly good. If I didn’t have a mild distaste for unexplained (or even most explained) psionics in science fiction, I’d have liked it better, even though this book was a lot more subtle about the psionics than say Trigger and Telzny or any of Anne McCaffrey’s books. The thing I like best about Webber’s books is his distinct awareness of the honor of the service, the humanity of those who serve and the responsibility of the people in charge to the soldiers they use.
74. A Miracle of Rare Design Mike Resnick An okay book. Didn’t hold a candle to Return of Santiago or even Starship: Mutiny. Ooh, I found out that there was an original book Santiago by Mr. Resnick. I’m a little disappointed by that. There was something about the Return book, the fact that it seemed spun from whole cloth that made it even neater, and to find out that the myth that it was based around was a previous book detracts from that a little.
75. The Wizard Lord Lawrence Watt-Evans Fun, a dysfunctional group of “Chosen Heroes” off to kill the Dark Lord (who was the good wizard until he went nuts.) The premise of the book would have (probably has) worked well in a genre parody, but Watt-Evans plays it straight. The council of wizards that appoints the wizard lord is very much short sighted bureaucrat, for all that they are the only wizards left in the lands (the council’s fault in fact.) It felt a little like Rich Cook would have written it if he wasn’t busy being funny and techy with his wizards. The above is faint praise, but I really did like the book. I wanted it to be about 20 pages longer. I swear, so many authors end their books about 20 pages before they should. You don’t have to conclude the characters lives, but get to the point where they have started to live them again after their quests. Stopping at the welcome home party isn’t enough.
76. Nature Friendly Garden Marlene A. Condon A few good points, nothing new, as a pure personal note I disliked the author’s tone a little, but then this book isn’t targeted at people with training in ecology. I did notice that she was willing to disregard studies when they opposed what she wanted to say. She made a point of mentioning the flaws in a study that determined that bird feeders didn’t do much good for local birds (it was done outside of the urban and suburban environments where it is most applied) but talked about the evils pet dogs and cats without referring to the studies that have shown that they have minimal impact on local populations in most cases. (That one is an emotional issue and the dogs and cats are evil people base their arguments on a few preliminary studies.) There was also her insistence that essentially everything had a place in nature except dogs and cats... it didn’t fit in well with what she said earlier. On the other hand, she mostly avoided the fluff bunny mysticism that many amateur naturists spew, even though there were times I thought she was headed that way.
77. Dragon Champion E.E. Knight I look forward to the next in the series.
78. Light Brigade Peter J. Tomasi et al. Decent one shot comic book. Has Immortal Nazi Zombies led by a fallen angel. What else could you want?
79. What We Believe But Cannot Prove John Brockman ed. This one was a series of short (mostly less than two full pages) essays by notables in various technical and or academic fields. Particularly liked Dawkins’ entry. His was a very short essay, and it gave as a given things that most people hedge about then went on to say that he believed but couldn’t prove that those things held across the universe.
80. Jack of Shadows Rodger Zelazny I am not 100% sure that this belongs on my list as I might have read it in the past. I know I’ve read the graphic short story, and Jack is very similar to several of his other characters, and the fact that I don’t remember the events of the novel don’t really mean much. I really would like a 5 years later story for this one though.
81. Choice of the Cat E.E. Knight
82. Operation Thunderbolt E.E. Knight
83. Valentine’s Rising E.E. Knight
84. His Majesty’s Dragon Naomi Novik Horatio Hornblower with dragons and character growth.
85. The Younger Gods David and Leigh Eddings. Poor use of viewpoint made the repeated scenes feel like they were writing the book for imbeciles. Also, last year when I read The Myriad and I griped about the freaking “and then they went back in time and none of it happened” ending. Yeah it sucks in fantasy too.
86. Tainted Trail Wen Spencer I didn’t read the first book in the series. This one was okay, though the bioscience the aliens use was at best unlikely. Also it is a werewolves and dopplegangers from space book. That’s about as bad as vampires from space.
87. Path of Fate Diana Pharaoh Francis Telepathic Companion Animal story where the human repudiates the companion strongly. A complete reversal of the classic Lackey story where the chosen ones all leap at the chance to escape their dreary lives. I liked the fact that the main character had achieved, through a lot of hard work, a life that she liked/enjoyed, and was resistant to the idea of giving it up, so much so that there had to be a great crisis before she was willing to.
88. A Brother’s Price Wen Spencer I think it is an alternate earth story. I kept hoping it was a colony story, since there are a lot of anachronisms. It is a fairly well realized female dominant society with decent justifications for the situations. (The gender disparity suggests a viral or at least biogenic problem which yells “colony world” but while the tech is anachronistic, there is nothing so far out of whack that it had to be left over tech (and even if a colony was able to maintain the science of the early 1900s, the few males to many females problem would bear more solutions than were presented in this book. She gave a strong rationale for sister-wives all with a single (or maybe two) husbands, for a strong insistence on the virginity of these husbands, but then she never explained why if they were willing to sell their sons to other clans for husbands or large sums of cash, why they weren’t willing to use the turkey baster method with the same sons to increase cash flow and increase genetic diversity (and lower the chances of ‘husband raids’) Also, for a society where males are often trained in the sensual arts and group marriages were the norm, the sex was all very vanilla. That said, this book has fed me a wonderful couple of scenes for my Prior family stories, and it has made me hope that there is a sequel in the works so much so that I found and friended the author’s livejournal.
89. Oh my Goddess TPB Vol 1-36 (Issues 1-216) Kosuke Fujishima I’d read the first 15 tpb volumes before. I’ve commented on Oh My Goddess before. I don’t know that it is the first of the Harem Manga, but I think it is, and either way, it does things righter than the others I’ve seen (even Love Hina, which I love a lot.)
90. The Killing of Worlds Scott Westerfeld I liked this better than the previous one, though I admit that I’d have liked a little more resolution at the end. (I get the feeling that this is the final book in this set and it would have been nice to have a 15 years later bit (since it will be 10 years before the two main characters can even see each other again.))
91. Spin Control Chris Moriarty Very neat. Sequel to Spin State, brings us back to the AI and the Ex UN soldier, this time in the AI’s personality’s birthplace of Israel. I really wish this book had been 10 pages longer. (Of course, It felt like we’d reached the middle of the book about 25 pages from the end, not an awful thing, but the pacing was a little off.) I really liked several of the characters. I think the reveal on who the bad guy was was mishandled though. I can accept a reveal without any foreshadowing in a second person limited book. If the pov characters don’t notice anything, then there isn’t a need for clues. On the other hand, if you are going to spread clues, they shouldn’t feel tacked on for the purpose of adding a single clue to power the reveal at the end.
92. The Queen of Death Matt Forbeck. More game fiction. Third in the lost mark series, this book visits Argosen in following our heroes’ attempt to keep the young bearer of the mark of death safe. It had a satisfyingly non-heroic ending, something that I like to see in an Eberron book. The concept of sacrifice and falling short of an ideal goal is too seldom present in fantasy of any type and in rpgs it is especially difficult to find. That said, I think the little girl’s stepfather was a little too quick to get over the events of the last fifth of the book.
93. Voyage of the Mourning Dawn Rich Wulf. More Eberron fiction. More shades of grey. Fun book, I’ll want to read the rest of the set before passing a final judgment on them.
94. Faith and Fire James Swallow A warhammer 40000 book about the Sisters of Battle. I’m not overly fond of the society that is pictured by the WH40k setting, and that continues to grate as I read the book, though the sisters are an interesting force. The book seemed a little to eager to toss in terms and passages from the warhammer 40k game book, something that would take me out of the story with disturbing regularity, especially at the beginning. I really do hope that Mr. Swallow writes the sequel that the ending implies.
95. The Virtu Sarah Monette Hurm. I liked it. I read too much of the author’s process to talk much about it outside of the book report form though. I was surprised to find it on my library’s new books shelf, but they did buy the first book in the series (at my request too) so it isn’t unreasonable to expect that they would have this one too. Still don’t like Felix. But then he isn’t supposed to be liked, I think. Understood, emphasized with, maybe occasionally accepted, but not actually liked. On the other hand, he may yet redeem himself. It won’t change who he is, but it will move him from disliked to not disliked. Time will tell I suppose.
96. Rainbow’s End. Vernor Vinge Much much better than Peace War. Cyberpunk with less punk. I liked it.
97. Aerie Mercedes Lackey. So yeah, Lackey is one of my guilty pleasures. I’ve been reading the “The Dragon Jousters” series as they come out. I think there has been a backlash recently against the likes of Robert Joran, George Martin, Kevin Anderson, and David Webber. (And personally, only Webber and Martin of those four could actually pull off both “long” and “good” at the same time, and you are free to argue about Webber.) This book felt like it had been edited down by 80,000 words, and not the 80,000 words that every King or Hubbard (well okay, Hubbard’s novels need to lose more than that. All of the words would have been a good starting point) novel needs to be edited down, but the 80,000 words that were dropped from Stranger. The ones that added depth to the story. (Stranger worked in the short form, but it was, I thought, a better book in the unabridged version. Especially the scene where Jubal lost an argument. People accuse Heinlein, somewhat rightly, of having one older always right Heinlein-stand in in his storys (and several other Heinlein stand ins in most of his stories. Number of the Beast had 4 in the first section and most of the Heinlein stand in characters from his other books in the last sections. I loved the tip of the hat to the Dorsai irregulars at the end. Apparently they actually helped him out a lot at one con where he kept getting lost.) Oh yeah, this is about Lackey...
...
Well, it felt for a bit that there was going to be one of those idiot love triangle plots where a and b have a stupid misunderstanding and c courts b innocently, and everything is out of whack because a and b are obviously destined to be together. Actually you can drop c out and it is still a dumb plot. *cough Bujold cough cough* But then it didn’t happen. C did have one of those blinding realizations and a and b made up and never really noticed c’s interest and that was annoying. If you start the gambit, don’t just make it go away without at least having some interaction leading to it.
Oh yeah, about my comment at the start. Yeah, this book was over edited, but it also really needed to be 2 books. The lead up should have been one book and the other bits should have been the second.
Ooh, I just thought about a way to make the fizzled romantic hijinks plot more interesting. A and b carry on, only apparently distanced because of outside responsibilities but getting along quite well when c can’t see them. C keeps following a, and falling in love, completely unnoticed by a, and only realizes that a didn’t return the feelings when a and b get married or some such At least there wouldn’t have been the magical revelation scene. I still would have been annoyed by c, but less so as she was resolved in a more logical conclusion type manner. Longest entry yet. Much of which was, sadly only peripherally about things that were peripherally about the book.
97. Blood and Iron Elizabeth Bear. I liked the first novel I read by Elizabeth Bear. It was nice solid competent near future science fiction. I loved this book. It is in the contemporary fantasy sub-genre, and in the “secret history” subset of the sub-genre. The overarching conflict is between Faerie and a cabal of mortal wizards founded abut 400 years ago. I am looking very much forward to the next couple of books, especially if she continues with the Seeker’s storyline. I won’t say more about this one. Go get a copy for yourself.
98. Serenity R.A. DeCandido. Well, look at the source material. It would have been a challenge to screw this one to the point of unreadability. As I’m unfamiliar with DeCandido’s other work, and I don’t usually read looking for flaws anyway (got to beat me over the head with them flaws iffin you want me to notice them,) I can’t really analyze it apart from the story and the characters anyway, and well, I liked the story and the characters from the get go. (If you can do a decent story I’ll forgive you much, and if you add to that either characters I like or a setting that I like, I’ll let you get away with all sorts of sins. I’m looking at you Mrs. Lackey and Mr. and Mrs. Eddings.)
99. Atrocity Archives Charles Stross Another mythos story by the man who brought us A Colder War. This one is a little lighter hearted and it has a fair amount of government agency as bureaucracy humor. I liked it a lot.
100. Neil Gaiman Fragile Things. Short Stories. Those last 6 words told you everything you need to know about this book. If you have a positive reaction to them, then you’ll like the book. If not, you won’t. There may be better writers writing in the English Language than Mr. Gaiman. There might be better story tellers. There could possibly be someone out there who speaks English who is both. I doubt it.
101. In the Company of Ogres. A. Lee Martinez Add 2 parts Robert Asprin’s Fantasy Parody to 2 parts Robert Asprin’s Military Parody. Let settle, skim off the punnish names as they float like dead fish to the top. Carefully pour a thumb of David Eddings’ favorite theme in so it settles to the bottom and serve cold. Not a bad book. Not the best of the year either. (Not that my reading list this year provides a lot of leeway for the number one spot. See 5,6,9,14, 48, 60, 67, 77, 80 (and this isn’t the best thing by him I’ve ever read), 84, 88, 95, 97, 99, and 100 for competitors.)
102 The Privilege of the Sword Ellen Kushner. I wanted a sequel when I finished it. I also wished that I had known about the other book in that setting before I had grabbed this one. It stands perfectly well by itself (possibly because the central characters, I suspect, weren’t born when the first book took place.) Very well written, though the male aristocracy didn’t complain nearly enough about the female swordswoman usurping their prerogative I think. On the other hand, the villain played to the prejudices of his set in his counter attacks.
103 Wintersmith Terry Pratchett Well, it is a Tiffany Aching book, which means it has many of my favorite characters from Diskworld in it. I’m also fond of books about characters I liked in their “growing into their powers” stages. (Like I love reading Eric Banyon now that he is in full possession of his abilities and has finally matured emotionally to something approaching his actual age.)
104. Singularity Sky Charles Stross Stross isn’t my new favorite writer, but he could have been 10 years ago. (Not that he would have specially appealed to my 17 year old self, but I’ve picked up a very lot of very good writers since then.) One complaint. When you make it obvious that you have taken pains to be right about the far future tech things, the last thing you want to do is screw up on something out of modern technology. Thermite in paraffin is not an effective delivery method. If by some magic you get a chunk of paraffin to burn with a lighter, the thermite inside of it isn’t going to ignite. What you’d end up with was a pile of warm to the touch thermite. That is assuming that you could get a block of paraffin to burn at low temperatures without a wick. Also, I started thinking “well look new common themes in the genre” and then realizing that the other places I’ve come across them are in other Charles Stross novels.
105. Iron Sunrise Charles Stross This one opened with something that is central to an era in my Earth’s Empires setting that I was still trying to work out the specifics of. Girr. Other than the disappointment of reading one of my clever creations before I had even worked them all the way out in someone’s rather quite good book, this was a rather quite good book. The characters are a little deeper than in the first one, and there is less setting establishment since many of the assumptions were already established last time. Also, I like Herman a lot, and was very happy when his reveal was what I thought it was going to be. (Actually there are two reveals, the “subtle” one and the explicit one.) One thing, a little more foreshadowing on Steffi’s reveal would have been nice. It wasn’t a “WTF I should have seen that coming” situation, it was a “WTH did that come from one.” It felt like he found himself running out of people who could play a particular role and since Steffi was sitting there not doing anything, he shoved her into it.
106. Glasshouse Charles Stross Another post singularity setting, the bad guys were somewhat stupid though, and their chosen victims seemed to act out of their supposed victims mostly. (If you are going to create a prisoner breeding experiment where you are in the prison too, don’t choose mostly combat veterans who have had partial (and only partial) memory erasures without removing core skill sets. Hell, with the intended time scale, there is no reason they couldn’t have grown their own people from scratch. (It seems to me that given their resources and the tech level, they went disastrously out of their way to achieve their goals. Also, I have no idea why the prisoners expect to arrive at their destination at the end of the book. Were I the person running the project, I would not have had every instance of myself on the ship, and if things were that badly fubared, I’d definitely send some k-e weapons at the ship from their destination. Other than that (and a few other minor points) this was quite a fun novel, well, for some values of fun. It was a little too brutal to be all the way fun.
107 World War Z Max Brooks. I should have read this one months ago. Other than the base premise, the book was completely reasonable. Well, actually, I’m not sure that the various survivor populations would really have acted as sensibly as they did in the end, but gods, the Israel thing in the beginning, exactly right. Even down to the ultra-orthos’ response. A pure bio-zombie that didn’t gain nourishment from eating people wouldn’t actually last all that long though.
108. The Chains that You Refuse Elizabeth Bear. A collection of short stories by one of the authors I’ve started reading in the last year or so. Clear prose, a couple of hilarious poems (e e (Doc) Cummings made me squee) and a handful of really neat what-ifs make this a short story collection worth noting. *edit* Squee I tell you.
109. Order of the Stick: Origin of the PCs. Rich Burlew Read the title out loud. *grins* A companion volume to the comic, possibly best read after having read the rest of the comic. Very nice though. I like the look at the PCs before they are together.
110. Codex Witch Hunters Andy Hoare and Grahm McNeill. Army book for Warhammer 40k. I’m building a Witchhunters army (one of my two favorite groups. WH and the Tau.)
"On the other hand, well... The sympathy I felt for the characters as characters was kind of low. I know, we're supposed to rejoice in their bohemia! but I kept thinking, "Why is it evil to want to be paid rent for a building you've paid money for?" The concept seemed to be that wanting cash was OMG SO EVIL and art was OMG SO GOOD, but realistically I kept thinking, "Man, what a bunch of whiny freeloaders." I mean, they don't even put the garbage can back on the street once they knock the lock off the door - what jerks! And they're complaining about how they're cold while they fling fire out the window? Not bright, either."
He also talks about the sillyness of the songs. '"Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes - how do you measure a year?" You just did! You measure it with a damn watch, you fruitcakes!'
He did fail to mention that they messed even that up. A year is about 525949 minutes long.
Today we went to the Smithsonian! We looked at dinosaur bones and paintings and bought overpriced food. Now our feet hurt and we are sick of Impressionism. Tyrannosaurs are still pretty awesome though.
A men. That is pretty close to my feelings whenever I visit an art/natural history museum.
buttsex is an anagram for subtext
the above is something that made me chuckle from
The loot:
Well we do this advent thing and I think I'll start there.
Advent:
Once Upon a Time and Once Upon a Time Dark Tales, Barenaked for the Holidays, A Trans-Siberian Orchestra Concert Dvd (also has a story. I didn't pay too much attention to the video the first time, prefering to listen mostly.), and a Milk Chocolate Almond whacking orange thing. Also, a fair amount of candy.
Christmas Proper:
$225 in cash, most of which went to presents and a movie and a few dinners.
15 dollar Lowes Card from Rick and Sherry.
Firefly Boxed Set (Brie and Lloyd)
Serenity Movie (Mom)
Best of Bare Naked Ladies (Lloyd)
6 pack of Staples Optiflow (really optiflow 2) pens
second six pack of Staples Optiflow pens *
Pocket Kite
Descent: Journeys In the Dark Board Game
Long Live the King (How to host a murder sort of thing)*
Second Battle Map*
All in One Wind Up Flashlight
Sharn City of Towers*
Laser Printer
Girl Genius Book 4 and 5
Battle Angel Book 4
Towel Set (Aunt Christi)
50 pack of CDrs.
Marvel Civil War 5*
Milk Chocolate Toffee Orange
Also
Got to See Jessica and Christiane and the McClures, and it is entirely possible that Nate will be here (though this is his first Christmas with his new girlfriend, so I wasn't pushing that too hard. You get the first one for free with a SO, but then life must move on.)
* means things I used Christmas money to buy myself.
So, I'm making things to give away to persons and I just came to the awful realization that sitting in two largeish containers on my kitchen table there is something in excess of 30,000 calories worth of not quite finished chocolate and peanut butter candy. And mom is intending to either make or have my brother make another batch (I made a double.) Which means the kitchen actually contains somewhere in excess of 45,000 calories of the makings of these candies. You should come over and eat them for me.
goddamnedmuthafuckshitshitshithell
My computer just decided to screw up in a manner that I can't repair. I've got workarounds, but nothing that I can fix and walk away.
It claims not to be able to find ntldr.
I created a boot disk from the other 2k box in the house. My computer boots fine with this disk. But when I copy it to the hdds and reboot, I still get the same message. This screams "screwed up book sector" or possibly "fubared 2k installation" (which I already knew, I didn't need further confirmation damnit.)
Neither of those problems are hard to fix. The first I'd go into the recovery console and type two commands.
The second, I'd format the harddrive and reinstall (which I need to do anyway)
Why don't I?
Because my copy of the windows 2000 disk was shattered into many little pieces by someone several years ago. And of course I haven't bought a new one. I've been mostly broke.
So currently I'm booting from a floppy disk like I'm back in 1993 trying to free up 24 more kilobites of ram to play Aces of the Pacific.
I obviously need a good bitching session. And maybe a new computer.
It is 3.5!
I just realized something. The game I'm running is D&D 3.5. Undead Elven Ninja Assassins are totally legit!
107 World War Z Max Brooks. I should have read this one months ago. Other than the base premise, the book was completely reasonable. Well, actually, I’m not sure that the various survivor populations would really have acted as sensibly as they did in the end, but gods, the Israel thing in the beginning, exactly right. Even down to the ultra-orthos’ response. A pure bio-zombie that didn’t gain nourishment from eating people wouldn’t actually last all that long though.
My brother has to do a journal for his english class. Each day they get a writing prompt. Today I played along and wrote an entry for the prompt he was writing. My goal was to keep it close to 150 words. Need to tighten up the sentences a bit for that. Or double the length to make the transitions more natural, or do both. Not particularly good, but the creepy factor is edging up to what I was aiming for. Some more work and I think the creepy could probably wrap its fingers around the story's neck and giveit a good hard shake.
He haunted the night like a silent guardian. He watched her sleep and dream in her room. His vigil went unnoticed, unmarked. She never saw him in the daylight so why would she suspect that he watched through her window at night? Some day, surely she would notice him, see his devotion, see the hidden inner spaces, the parts he kept from his friends and family and she would not be repulsed, no, she would come to love him as much as he had come to love her. They were destined to be together forever. He reached out and could almost feel her satiny skin, the smooth silky of her hair, but no, the window still stood between his arboreal perch and her nocturnal demesne. They would live together in a little cottage just the two of them, and she would make him breakfast and he would keep the others from coming to their home. But wait, what if she was unfaithful, like all the others? No she wasn’t like the others, she wasn’t fickle. He reached into his pocket and ran his hand over the springy masses, all that he had of his earlier loves, cartilage and gristle and tattered skin, taken so that he could always hear what they heard down at the bottom of the old mill pond.
things in progress
Fantasy
Flipside Stories
Matt and Pallas
Isolde
Fancadarin lu Ridahm
IDEA
Birth of a World
Grendels (Not the final title, but the dream that inspired the story)
Alana's World
Territh's War
The old man and his Goddess
Science Fiction
Earth's Empires Series
Before the Prophet's War
A Perfect Day (Catapult Story)
Gem on Tam Hall
Emerald Prior
Rebuilding
Samuel Prior 1 (Utah)
Starstruck Wanderer
Samuel Prior 4 (Coreallis 3)
In the Room (Suicide and Memory Story)
Don't do Biotech Firms
Colonial Era
The Death of Samuel Prior
Xerses Devistator
Cognative Dissonance (An AI's Struggle)
Ranger
In the Early Days
United Worlds of Humanity Era
Early Days of the Terran Empire
Horde War and the Fall of Man
The Wind Blows Across the Plain
Meka
Confederated Peoples Era
Second Horde War
Galactic Era
IntroAgain
Sister Beatrice series
Other
Zepplin over future NYC
Bremen Assassin
Exile (A "criminal" who is forgiven by everyone but himself)
Eternal Love/Eternal Conflict. Might go to the Imperial Era of the Empires of Man
Oi vey. I've got a couple of sets of stories that I want to write. Today I'm going to bitch about the ones in the future history that I'm trying to work out.
So for a future history, I didn't want to start too close to now. My first story is about 200 years from now, about 50 years after the serious approach to going to space begins. (And if I live long enough to have to eat crow over that, so be it. You won't hear too many complaints from me.)
First story is actually a concepts I found interesting piece that I happened to set in the "early" part of the history. Other than some editing that I'll get to any day now, it is done. It is also at least a century earlier than the next story. After the catapult story, I don't have much I want to write about for the next couple hundred years. I've got lots of setting and not a lot of interesting, though I do have a couple of ideas that aren't too strongly bound to a particular time that I might slide in to illustrate some of the events that I mention in later stories. The next set in stoneish (my timeline shifts but relitive orders of events mostly stick) story is one of the sets.
For the science fiction I have written so far, I mostly see a particular scene and then go back for the story. The Prior Family started as exactly that. In fact, the first Prior story I ever typed even the first word of is the Fourth or possibly fifth Samuel Prior story and it started with the image of a a wounded man eating dinner in microgravity and a later chase scene with him running from thugs through the environmental systems of the station. Which leads to story three (which I've yet to write a word of) where he mistakes a government doctor for a corporate assassin, detains her, threatens her, and eventually (either lets her go or gets picked up by the good guys) and she gets drafted into the section he works for. Therin to make his life quite difficult what with her ability to scrub him from a mission for mental instability. This all grew out of a throw away line that may not even be in the current draft of the first story to be consigned to the hdd.) Of course, that lead to the very first Samuel Prior story (which opens with a dream that shows that he really is getting better from a fairly broken past) where he has to deal with members of a Theocracy down dirtside. I need to talk to more LDSers for that one. The dream sequence was hard to write because it was about mostly bad people doing mostly bad things to eachother and to innocents. Sam struggles with being something better than Bad People for most of the rest of his life.) I've got four or five more stories after the one I first started writing, mostly about his later life, his wife and kids and his eventual (and tragically early for the era) death.
There are other Prior family stories in the pipelines, and even part of the Fall of Man series will involve the Priors trying to hold the center. (The hero of the Fall of Man Cycle won't be that particular power group, though worlds with signifigant Prior presences will come out of the silent years with a much smaller chance of being corpse worlds.)
Then there's the Illustrated series. Right after the collapse of the United Worlds and the Rise of the first Empire, there is a story that I originally wanted to do as an illusttrated thing, but my drawing won't get to that point in this lifetime. The first one is set 5 years after the First Emperor of Humanity took the collapsing forces of the United Worlds Council and forged the Terran Empire. It deals with a Prior drummed out of the service for refusing to follow orders (and only not executed because of who her family is) and her life as the captain of Arabella's Needle, a fast trade/scout ship owned by her Grandmother Arabella. This story ends with the first thrust in the last Sarthaki War in a mostly abandoned system nearly 400 LY from the nearest inhabited world. (Though the worlds under Aldoni guidence number above 10,000, most of the galaxy is essentially uninhabited.)
The second story (and source of a lot of groaning about how I haven't even really started the story that is essential for this one to work) is set between 20 and 400 years later and follows one of my absolute favorite characters (who makes me wish I could draw half as well as I need to make this one work.)
And now we come to the one that I am really bitching about. This one is another one on the Fall of Man board, though it will focus (sort of) on the Fall of the Aldoni and the actions of a fairly illegal entity. It is set not too many years after the end of 2.
I've also got a short story (that one reader has told me has a completely unrealistic protagonist, but she is a Prior from the height of the family's power. It is kind of icky that that doesn't stand alone though) in the series of stories that will include the Emperor's announcement of the Fall of Man (and Alien) already mostly done. It doesn't have a happy ending.
12:30ish 11/23/2006. Guess that makes me 27. I was so supposed to be unleashing my first global pandemic genome modifying virus by now. When the arch-bishop warned me against hubris when I said I wanted to be a genetic engineer, he had no idea. (I was the strong arguement for the badly flawed "precautionary principle" that is touted by the luddite branch of the environmentally conscious.)
The kids these days with their word processor based programming utilities. Bah.
In my day we entered our programs at the command line and if we screwed up, there was no scrolling back and modifying the part the didn't work. By God we reentered the line number and retyped the code. And we liked it. Damned kids. Get off my damned lawn.
And take your GUI with you.
So in the game last night I got to playtest a new rule. I'm not sure how well it will work out, but we'll see. I'm running an Eberron campaign, which means that the players have action points. Last night, during a moderately tough fight, one of the PCs was dropped by a fairly massive critical (and this wasn't the hard fight of the night) and unfortunately, everyone had seen both of the dice rolls and they knew the extra damage this opponent had been doing, and they knew it was a critical (the base attack plus strength bonus would have killed the character, the crit shoved him below -10.) Well, I hadn't intended any party members to be all the way dead at this point, so I instated an off the cuff rule. Assuming your character has at least five action points, I am letting the players take half experience for the encounter and burn five action points to bring their character from -10 or below to -9 and stable. This only applies to death through damage (no using this to counter a disintigration spell) and there will be cases where it doesn't apply, though not too many. If they do something that leads to an unescapble death situation, like jumping into a volcano unprotected, they don't get to burn action points to survive... or they do, but then they continue taking damage and die anyway. (And I do have intelligent opponents who have nothing to do in a combat round do things like finish off fallen foes.)
Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert*
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein*
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin *
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson *
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick* (Quite different from the movie)
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury*
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett *
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling *
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny*
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven *
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien *
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson *
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein *
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock *
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
So, I just did something that I haven't done in quite a while. I finished a game. I just beat Return to castle Wolfenstein, which has been sitting on my hdd for considerably better than a year. Yeah, when I was in college, I was finishing lots of games, but since graduation (and not having a real job) I've sort of spazzed on my game playing. I've still got a copy of NWN sitting unbeaten on my hard drive, Baldur's Gate 2 with expansion (though All I have to do is finish the ToB stuff then kill Irenicus, and I'll be done), Deus Ex (also sitting near the end), Temple of Elemental Evil (in the Temple, need a better graphics card), Fallout 2 (at the beginning), Planescape Torment (At the very beginning), Arcanum (right in the middle. I need to level a little more before fighting these golem things), Thief 2 (midpoint or better), American McGee's Alice (late in the game), Warcraft 2 BNet edition (near the end), System Shock 2 (within spitting distance of the last boss), At least 5 of the old SSI gold or silver box games (Secret of the Silver Blades, the Savage Frontieer series, and the Dragonlance Games), Nethack (nowhere near completion ever), Dungeons of the Necromancer's Domain (I've yet to finish a single dungeon), Battle Tech: Crescent Hawk's Revenge, Some Sam and Max game, Several Sega, GB, NES, and SNES games, Most of the Infocom games on the HDD, Commander Keen 1,2,4, and Dreams, n, and others. On DC, I've yet to beat Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2, Shenmue, D2 (not in the same ballpark of as brilliant or even playable as D was, Time Stalkers (Haven't even put it in the machine), and for the PS, I've got Omega Boost, Final Fantasy 5 and 6, Rhapsody, Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat, Dead or Alive,Tenchu Stralth Assassins, Wing Commander 3, Parasite Eve (at the last friggin boss too), Tomb Raider 2, Syphon Filter, Legend of Legaia (probably not happening, lost the memory card and it just wasn't very fun to start with), Fear Effect (control scheme sucks ass, probably won't finish it), Alone in the Dark: Jack's Revenge, and Lunar 2 (a very good classic style console RPG. Like pulling teeth. I beat the main game, but there is an optional epilogue that I was playing when I lost that memory card. It wasn't fun enough the first time to suffer through close item management and repetative combats again) that all remain unbeaten.
more about grad school
My biggest worry is that I'll probably be faking it more than I ever did before. And I faked it a lot back in my undergrad and my grad work.
See, I am reasonably smart, but I'm also not the most dilligant student (something that annoyed both my teachers and some of my more effort-centered friends. One of my teachers wanted me to have it so that I couldn't just get by in college the way I did in Highschool. Hah. I did a little more work in college, though when compared with the seven hours a day, 5 days a week schedule from highschool, I probably put in fewer hours. The reason I got better grades in college than in highschool was mostly that I recieved less of the pointless busy work that the above mentioned teacher (and many others) routinely assigned for grades. I'm very good at synthesyzing things and working out stuff from first principles, but I am not as good at brute force memorization. I never bothered with all of the latin and greek roots stuff for working out the meanings of words. Instead I based it off of the words I knew in English (and since english words seldom are identical to the words that their roots come from, I am glad that I went that route. my sister is overly attached to the roots of those words. If she isn't careful, she'll become one of those people who get pissed when you use decimate as an english word instead of as the dictionary latin definition of the word. I'd bet that the latin speaking world back when latin was a useful language used their words with much less rigidity than the latinate pedants of today.)
So, it looks like I'll be going to Bloomington on the 16th to talk to the SPEA about possibly going there for grad school. I'm not 100 percent sure I am up to the whole school thing again, though I suppose it is better than the job offerings around here, and a lot more fun. I did okay in school, 3.7 for both undergrad and the year of graduate work I've already done, and as long as I get close contact with my advisor, it won't be too bad. (I really needed to go up a week earlier at Oregon. I never really did meet with my advisor there. My fault. At least I had a class that he taught.)
Ugh, anyone want to bet on how many or few of my credits will transfer as anything except generic credits? Especially since OSU was on the quarter system and IU is on the Semester. I won't miss the quarters. For all of my classes it turned out that either we did a semester's worth of work in 2/3ds of a semester or we did half a semester's worth of work in 2/3ds of a semester.
97. Aerie Mercedes Lackey. So yeah, Lackey is my guilty pleasure. I’ve been reading the “The Dragon Jousters” series as they come out. I think there has been a backlash recently against the likes of Robert Joran, George Martin, Kevin Anderson, and David Webber. (And personally, only Webber and Martin of those four could actually pull off both “long” and “good” at the same time, and you are free to argue about Webber.) This book felt like it had been edited down by 80,000 words, and not the 80,000 words that every King or Hubbard (well okay, Hubbard’s novels need to lose more than that. All of the words would have been a good starting point) novel needs to be edited down, but the 80,000 words that were dropped from Stranger. The ones that added depth to the story. (Stranger worked in the short form, but it was, I thought, a better book in the unabridged version. Especially the scene where Jubal lost an argument. People accuse Heinlein, somewhat rightly, of having one older always right Heinlein-stand in in his storys (and several other Heinlein stand ins in most of his stories. Number of the Beast 4 in the first section and most of the Heinlein stand in characters from his other books in the last sections. I loved the tip of the hat to the Dorsai irregulars at the end. Apparently they actually helped him out a lot at one con where he kept getting lost.) Oh yeah, this is about Lackey...
...
Well, it felt for a bit that there was going to be one of those idiot love triangle plots where a and b have a stupid misunderstanding and c courts b innocently, and everything is out of whack because a and b are obviously destined to be together. Actually you can drop c out and it is still a dumb plot. *cough Bujold cough cough*1 But then it didn’t happen. C did have one of those blinding realizations and a and b made up and never really noticed c’s interest and that was annoying. If you start the gambit, don’t just make it go away without at least having some interaction leading to it.
Oh yeah, about my comment at the start. Yeah, this book was over edited, but it also really needed to be 2 books. The lead up should have been one book and the other bits should have been the second.
Ooh, I just thought about a way to make the fizzled romantic hijinks plot more interesting. A and b carry on, only apparently distanced because of outside responsibilities but getting along quite well when c can’t see them. C keeps following a, and falling in love, completely unnoticed by a, and only realizes that a didn’t return the feelings when a and b get married or some such At least there wouldn’t have been the magical revelation scene. I still would have been annoyed by c, but less so as she was resolved in a more logical conclusion type manner. Longest entry yet. Much of which was, sadly only peripherally about things that were peripherally about the book.
New York City's Board of health is considering allowing people to change their official sex even without surgery. might only work this week
So, as of 10 till midnight here in Indiana, it looks like we'll have a Speaker Pelosi. If we get the House, the Senate can sit and rotate. Sure, we'll never convict, but the stuff that is only marginally in the open at the moment, well subpoena power worked wonders for the blackhats and all he did was get a blowjob.
Oh and in the "couldn't have happened to a slimyer blasckhat" category, looks like Frothy Mix isn't in office any more. Well, I guess Hatch could have gotten kicked out, but the odds of that in Utah? Yeah, not this century.
lank Label Comics' Dave Kellett needs your help. He's moving his daily strip, Sheldon, to www.sheldoncomics.com tomorrow.
He is leaving United Media to go completely independent... which means he needs help spreading the word to as many people as possible. The majority of Sheldon readers currently get the strip via “comics.com/comics/sheldon”, or via United Media’s e-mail delivery. When the strip moves, these readers won’t have any way to know where the strip went. (Dave tried putting a notice in the strip…it got edited out, and United Media won't send a "Sheldon is moving" message either.)
(If anybody from United Media is reading this... it may be too late to save the syndication business model, but it's not too late for you to go out of business with a clean conscience.)
Here's how you can help not just Dave, but also the thousands of Sheldon fans that United Media is trying to put the screws to. Right now, while you're thinking about it, take two minutes and post this infomation on your Web site, in a forum you visit, or on your personal blog:
Dave Kellett's Sheldon is moving to http://www.sheldoncomics.com .
Why are you still reading? Go Do That Right Now. When you come back you can read about the cool new site features like:
- Free access to 5+ years of Sheldon strip archives
- Larger-sized Sunday and daily comics
- Faster loading times
- Free daily delivery of Sheldon by e-mail
- Free RSS feed
- Free “Send This Strip to a Friend” feature
- “Jump to a Random Strip” feature
- No pop-up/pop-under ads
- Daily blog
- Direct links to the forum, store, and more
- … basically, everything the strip didn’t have at comics.com
So, I spent much of last week making six Imperial Guard Sentinel models out of sheet plastic. My fingers still hurt a couple of days after I have finished cutting that damned plastic. In other news, I have the sequel to a story I haven't written infesting my head. I really wish it would wait its turn. (I think it is getting impatient seeing how I haven't actually made any progress on the parent story in, well a very long time. But it is just going to have to realize that the events of the first story are essential to proper setting development and that going out of order is how you get idiocy like "A Stainless Steel Rat is Born" from authors much more skilled than I.
I'm one box of Sisters of Battle away from being able to field a 500 point Warhammer 40K army. My ToC has changed a bit.
500 Point Army
(120) Felicity Argent Sororitas Heroine (Canoness)
Canoness 45, Inferno Pistol (15), Bionics (10), Cloak of St. Aspira (20), Litanies of Faith (25), Purity Seals (5)
(190) Argent’s First Flamers
Krak Grenades (20)
7 Battle Sisters (77)
2 Battle Sister with flamer (34)
Veteran Sister Superior (71), (24), Mastercrafted Bolt Pistol (15), Power Chainsword (10), Purity Seals (5)
(190) Holy Noise
Krak Grenades (20)
7 Battle Sisters (77)
2 Battle Sister with Storm Bolter (32)
Veteran Sister Superior (71), (24), Mastercrafted Bolt Pistol (15), Power Chainsword (10), Auspex (2), Purity Seals (5)
Yes, I could field a larger force of Sisters for the same points if I stripped the vets down to minimal gear, but I am fond of quality over quantity. That trade off will plague my army building throughout the series.
Here's my 3000 point List
3000 Point Army
1910 Point Sisters Army
(152) Felicity Argent Sororitas Heroine (Canoness)
Canoness 45, Mastercrafted Inferno Pistol (30), Mastercrafted Power Sword (25(10)), Bionics (10), Cloak of St. Aspira (20), Purity Seals (5), Litanies of Faith (25), Melta Bombs (5), Krak Grenades (2)
Argent’s Own (350)
Krak Grenades (20)
Celestine Veteran Superior (43) (23), Mastercrafted Bolter (15), Purity Seals (5)
Celestine With Multi Melta (28)
Celestine With Storm Bolter (18)
4 Celestines (52)
Celestine Imigifer (33)
Celestine Banner Bearer Ordo Militant Sacred Standard (63)
Rhino (93): (50), Extra Armour (5), Holy Icon (10), Hunter-killer Missile (15), Pintle-Mounted Storm Bolter (10), Smoke Launchers (3)
(300) Argent’s First Flamers
16 Battle Sisters (77)
Imigifer (31)
2 Battle Sister with flamer (34)
Veteran Sister Superior (71), (24), Mastercrafted Bolt Pistol (15), Power Chainsword (10), Purity Seals (5)
(338) Holy Noise
Krak Grenades (40)
17 Battle Sisters (77)
Imigifer (31)
2 Battle Sister with Storm Bolter (32)
Veteran Sister Superior (71), (24), Mastercrafted Bolt Pistol (15), Power Chainsword (10), Purity Seals (5)
Retributor Squad (375)
Krak Grenades (12)
4 Multi Melta Retributers (144)
Veteran Superior Retributot (70) (25), Mastercrafted Eviscerator (40), Purity Seals (5)
Retributor Imafiger (31)
Immolator(118) (65), Extra Armour (5), Holy Icon (10), Hunter-Killer Missile (15), Laud Hailer (10), Smoke Launchers (3), Holy Promethium (10)
Exorcist (185) (135), Extra Armour (5), Hunter-Killer Missile (15), Laud Hailer (10), Pintle-mounted storm bolter (10), Holy Icon (10)
Living Saint (210)
1090 Point IG Auxiliaries
First Candian Fire Support Platoon (413)
100th Command Squad (225)
Junior Officer (75): (40), Honorifica Imperialis (25), Bionics (5), Laspistol, Power Sword (5)
Lascannon Team (25)
Veteran Medic (11)
Vox Caster Guard (5)
Chimera Transport (150) (70), Multi-laser (10), Heavy Flamer (5), Extra Armour (5), Hunter-Killer Missile (10), Pintle Mounted Stubber (12), Smoke Launcher (3), Track Guards (10), Rough Terrain Modification (5), Improved Coms (20)
101st Fire Team (98)
Team (60)
Grenade Launcher (8)
Lascannon (25)
Vox Caster (5)
102nd Fire Team (90)
Team (60)
Lascannon (25)
Vox Caster (5)
Second Candian Fire Support Platoon (289)
200th Command Squad (91)
Junior Officer (50): (40), Bionics (5), Laspistol, Power Sword (5)
Lascannon Team (25)
Veteran Medic (11)
Vox Caster Guard (5)
201st Fire Team (100)
Team (60)
Meltagun (10)
Lascannon (25)
Vox Caster (5)
202nd Fire Team (90)
Team (60)
Lascannon (25)
Vox Caster (5)
Imperial Sentinel X 2 (176)
Armegeddon Pattern Sentinel (88): (55), Covered Cockpit (15), Extra Armour (5), Hunter Killer Missile (10), Smoke Launchers (3)
Vengence Leman Russ Battle Tank (220)
Leman Russ Tank (220): (140), Lascannon (15), Pair of Heavy Flamers(10), Extra Armour (5), Hunter-Killer Missile (10), Pintle Heavy Stubber (12), Rough Terrain Modification (5), Smoke Launchers (3), Track Guards (10)
Ugh, I don't even have the Inquisitor and the Assassin that I wanted. Also, you'll notice that it has 2 Sentinels and I've made six. On the other hand, those 90 point Lascannon fire teams are nice long range support for the Sisters' medium and short range excellence. For the living saint, I'm going to skip the Saint Celestine model (I'll still use her stats though) and grab a 72mm scale Inquisition model. More expensive, but very pretty. Or possibly one of the Reaper Minis models. Apparently to fill out the units I had initially wanted for the Sisters Army, I'd have to field a much larger force than I'd thought. (And to use the Land Raider that I want, I'll have to pull celestine since the only sororitas unit that can use one is the Inquisitor Lord and he is an HQ unit too. Notice the IG Chimara. Much nastier than the Sororitas version (it has six internally controlled lasguns for the guard. That means fully loaded, it gets 11 or 12 shots a round. Of course I have it loaded at 5 units not six...)
The game Friday went well. Lost another PC. 2 deaths in seven sessions isn't too bad though. Party's 3rd level, but they have some serious healing resources. 2 permanent healing wands mean that they can keep going where other groups would have to say "this adventure is not cost effective." My Ogre Golem (like a flesh golem but weaker, though hellish damage from that size large greatsword it was wielding) put the fear of the reaper in the group. CRs for traps are, by the way, not as accurate as crs for creatures (and if you run a game you know how bad that makes the trap crs.) I used an Insanity Mist trap with a dc 25 disable and a 15 foot area of effect and it was almost nothing (CR 6 by the book) to a mixed party of 2nd and 3rd level characters. Only one character who was in the area missed the first save, and he made the second. On the other hand, the "CR 2" improved Iron Guardians ended up rather tougher individually than theiy should have been. Not as bad as the second level wererat rogue that might well have taken the members of the party out. His henchmen didn't last 2 rounds of combat. He went quite a bit further. (I had someone lose 6 hp to bleeding during that fight.)
As a fortuitous side effect of the PC deaths, the current inter-party conflicts have all ended. Well, there's a potential one between Derek and Lloyd, and Derek's character is a bit tougher than Lloyd's Ranger... at least if Lloyd doesn't play smart. Especially since the warforged fighter may well side with the priest (bad call. Priest of the void. He'll turn on him eventually) but the Silver Flame Fighter who specializes in Trips and Disarms will probably back the ranger, and Lloyd, having seen the utility of the Priest's wand, has ordered himself one. The priest has been leading the party a lot, but we'll see how that lasts with the other players getting their feet under them more and more. I don't know which way the warlock will go, and the new fighter (yeah, I've got a party of six with 3 fighters and a ranger. Ask about alignments some day. I don't know what all of them are, but there are/were at least 2 chaotic neutrals. A True Neutral, A Neutral Good (I think) who wants to be all demonic, a Lawful Neutral, a Lawful Good, and one I'm not sure of (one Chaotic Neutral died already.) By the way, a warlock does not make up for the lack of a wizard. And yes, summon spider swarm is nice, but not that nice. His ranged touch attack ability should be his focus until it doesn't work. This next adventure promises to be all talky, which in a group with a warlock, 4 fighter types and a priest is not completely optimal. Yes RP chances are great, but the more RP time there is, the more likely the party is to self-destruct, and I'm not quite ready to ensure my prefered sequence of events occurs in the case of major infighting. A little more setup and I can have it strengthen the group if it ever happens. Ooh, I just realized that they are high enough level (but heading the wrong way) for an encounter I've been imagining since the start. Well, not the wrtong way, but they are going to the Eldeen Reaches and I want to use the next couple of adventures there to advance a plot that is unrelated to the encounter I really want to run. Oh well, the forests and fey need their turn too. Heh, 6-7 players. 3rd Level Characters. That means I need a potential 21000 exp in the next session to hit 4th. Sadly, we are leaving the region where poison gas traps are reasonable for a bit. (Yes, yes, 4th level in 8 adventures is a little fast, but I want to get them to 6th to 8th fast. Nice pitched battles at those levels. I'd love to see 8th level in 12-14 adventures, but that would be pushing things a bit.) We'll see what happens. Having 6 players actually makes quick leveling easier. Sure they need half again as many xp to level the party, but they are tactically much more flexible than a party of 4. That ogre getting a critical on KC's character (and comming out near maximum damage on the rolls too) was a fluke sort of. Also, more character interactions means more story hooks shoving themselves at me means more RP rewards.
Spellsword 66% Combativeness, 40% Sneakiness, 73% Intellect, 5% Spirituality |
Aggressive, but with the brains to back it up: You are a Spellsword! Score! You have a prestige class. A prestige class can only be taken after you’ve fulfilled certain requirements. This may mean that you're an exceptionally talented person, but it probably doesn't. Spellswords combine arcane might with combat know-how. They're much tougher than mages, like to wear armor, and can cast spells through their weapons. They're very, very, good at doing lots of damage to a single target very quickly, and while not quite as tough as most fighters, are still pretty hard to kill. You're both smart and aggressive, which means that you're probably pretty dangerous when pissed off. You also tend to be somewhat straightforward, which is nice, and don’t have much use for spirituality or mysticism. |
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My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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Link: The RPG Class Test written by MFlowers
*sighs* People are dumb. I need to quite going to the Fark.com comment threads if I don't want to be brutally reminded of that at random and semirandom intervals. So it has been a while since I posted here. New in my life:
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