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What are you currently reading?
Is it cold in here?:
Rimjin-gang, from Asiapress. North Koreans who make brass monkeys look like eunuchs smuggle interviews, photos, and video across the border for publication.
Interesting so far: an official at a state-run company describes corruption and outright looting reminiscent of the end stages of the USSR. If the reporters are reporting things straight, then the people they're interviewing are talking with shocking frankness about their country. Like, for example, the one who was willing to tell a stranger that he hoped Kim Jong-Il would die.
Someone was interviewed who (2008) was on the security team that protected public appearances by Kim Jong-Il. He described how he prepared for a visit to a military base. It involved kidnapping soldiers and their families, moving them to a guarded location at some distance, and replacing them with ringers of better-known loyalty.
Multiple interviews in the book confirm what we've heard about malnutrition in the military.
Mister D Nomms:
I was very excited to start reading this series I knew nothing about called The Steampunk Chronicles. I just finished up my current nonfiction book (I try to alternate between fiction and nonfiction) and got started. I was immediately upset to see that the publisher is Harlequin Teen. I didn't even know there was a whole section of Harlequin just for teens and there probably shouldn't be. By the end of the fourth page, I was done and for the first time ever in my life, I was so dis-satisfied with a book that I felt compelled to give it a bad review on Amazon. I will also point out that on the dedication page, the author thanks somebody for seeing Twilight with her.
LTK:
--- Quote from: ackblom12 on 22 May 2012, 21:09 ---I would actually suggest reading Speaker for the Dead. It's a very very very different book from Ender's Game, but it's probably the best sci-fi Card has written. Just... don't bother reading Xenocide or Children of the Mind. Pretend they don't exist.
--- End quote ---
Picked this up on your recommendation, and because a friend found the hierarchy of alienness to be an interesting one. I finished the book now, and I got the impression that it was as much, or even more, about people as it is about science fiction. I don't remember many books I've read that are like that. While it's interesting to read about the implications of instantaneous communication combined with the relativistic effects of near-lightspeed travel, they're obviously subservient to the stories of the characters' themselves.
One thing I really didn't expect in Speaker for the Dead was an AI. Card never really uses that term, but it is. I recall that in Ender's Game, the term 'intelligent program' was deliberately downplayed by one of the characters, who preferred to say "it's complex". That was an attitude I could relate with, because I recently realized that artificial intelligence as described in the majority of science fiction is based on some extremely anthropocentric assumptions about what it means to be intelligent. The notion that a spontaneously arising AI would have any sort of higher agency it didn't possess before is frankly absurd. So I was somewhat disappointed to see exactly this sort of AI in Speaker for the Dead, given that Card hinted before that he didn't 'believe' in it. I did, however, like the bit where Ender realized he has no idea how to use a computer.
Finally, after reading this book I realize that I still have no idea why faster-than-light communication breaks causality. For all its hard sci-fi, the book never addresses that - though I hardly think it should. Just, y'know, wondering.
Sorflakne:
I'm under the impression that the ansible (spelling?) sends the information via quantum wormhole.
I'm about to start 1493, which is a sequel to 1491. Which is probably the best book on pre-Columbian history of the Americas I've read.
Lummer:
--- Quote from: BeoPuppy on 13 Aug 2010, 04:31 ---
--- Quote from: FIXDIX on 22 Jul 2010, 16:34 ---I'm about 300ish pages into The Passage by Justin Cronin. I can see what the hype is about and I'm enjoying a lot more than I thought I would.
--- End quote ---
Reading this aswell. Great opening, weak middle, signs of a great sprint into awesome at the end.
--- End quote ---
Necro-replyin' like it ain't no thang.
Currently reading this, and by GOD does this middle section fuckin' suck. It just drags, and draaags, and draaaags along, with a leaden stride to nowhere. It's a real chore getting through, I feel. The only reason I haven't put it down is because my girlfriend (who recomended it to me) promised that the end section more than makes up for it. Also, it gets a lot of rope because the first section was mindblowingly good.
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