#500
by Citizen Cirrhosis - 7/23/2003 1:55:21 AM
Drop Bear/Ray:
I read Neverwhere on a whim when my brother suggested it; I took it with me to Vermont for a ski trip. While my friends and I were snowed in our hotel, they got drunk. Me? I read Neverwhere and had a blast. One of the best reads I had had in a while, and THOSE are few and far between.
My brother still hasn't finished American Gods, so I haven't been able to read it yet.
Other superb reads I've had in the past few years have been Peter F. Hamilton's excellent Night Dawn's Trilogy: those Sci-Fi novels blew my mind. I would wake up in the middle of the night to read each book, staying awake for hours. Highly recommended.
Also, I like classics. I can't think of any fantasy at the moment, so will update in the morning.
If you like classic Grandmaster sci-fi, read The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. The main character, Gully Foyle, is a hero, but also an anti-hero. Bester was known for his dark humor, and his sarcasm cuts right to the bone. He was never really heavy on details and sci-fi hi-tech specifics, but, like the classic authors, knew how to make novels into something fun. It's a short read, at around 250 pages.
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"Yes, Ray usually advocates a strong defense. [BARF!]"
Hehe, not really. Tactics should always be tailored to the situation at hand. I like to wage war at my own terms and at my own timing whenever possible.
     
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Welcome to the Fellowship, Cirrhosis!
Neverwhere. Who's the author?
Ah, now I really spoilt for choice at all the recommendations given to me.
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| Tactics should always be tailored to the situation at hand. I like to wage war at my own terms and at my own timing whenever possible. |
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But of course. Guess I just like to be at war most of the time... or at least maneuvering my fleet for war. I don't care much for GalCiv: The Sim Empires.
Brings up an important point though - all y'all "sim"ers get higher scores than me. Worth noting for any overlord who wants to max out their points.
    
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Just out of curiousity Ray, ni dong bu dong pinyin? wo zhidao yi dian.
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"I don't care much for GalCiv: The Sim Empire."
Neither do I, but I care about score. Wouldn't it be great if SD designed their scoring system to suit my preferred style of playing - which is speed based? 
Yeah, that's unrealistic so I play it as they want it to be played. Either that or you choose not to participate in the Metaverse competition.
wo dan ran dong pinyin. It's compulsory here in our schools, kinda like a crutch sometimes for kids to learn mandarin. Really amazing how Chinese kids can be better in English than their own mother tongue.
How did you learn it?
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Hmmm... in short, born in Pennsylvania, yet Mandarin was the first language I learned because my family moved to Taiwan. Moved to Virginia, learned English, and forgot Chinese. Now I'm struggling to relearn it. I'm taking the pinyin route because I'm interested in working in mainland China.
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Wo bu ming bai
That's all the chinese I know.
On another note, the drengin have turned me into the world's biggest "cheese eating surrender monkey" 
Guess I'll lower the difficulty next time and get even. 
It's fun even if I don't win all the time, anyway. 
  
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No worries, Miles. You learn alot through losing.
Just don't make a habit of it
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You got it Ray.
Well, better get some sleep now, it's late here in California, USA. Oh, I just remembered a few survival phrases from my "learn" chinese CD...
Wan an.
or maybe "Zao chen hao" where you are. 
Until next time...
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Wan an to you, Miles. (That's good night in Chinese for the rest of you)
Interesting that folks are talking about working in China/ learning Chinese. Are we all looking to tap into the vast potential market in China?
That's the advantage of being a Singaporean, as most of us are at least bilingual in English and Chinese.
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I'm sure most are searching for that tap, Ray.  My background is in polisci though. The Taiwan Strait situation is my bag. I like to think I'll be keeping the tap flowing for others.
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Right you are Ray: a personal summary of how each book touched me. And actually I may attach my rating scale which involves rating 10 criteria, on a scale of 1-10, for a score out of 100. I know that that will get your interest, and then we can compare our personal scores etc in 2004 or maybe 2005.
   
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Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation.
Deep Space is my dwelling place,
The stars my destination.
...that was a really good book. Bester is great. The Demolished Man was good too, up until the Freudian babble ending.
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| #510 by Veteran Ray the Wanderer - 7/23/2003 3:03:35 AM No worries, Miles. You learn alot through losing.Just don't make a habit of it |
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I can attest to the learning through losing, Miles! By the way, what difficulty did you lose on? I bumped the difficulty up too high too quickly and got the snot beat out of me, so I dropped back. I found that actually nonproductive.
I'm having a great time playing this game. There's nothing like the thrill of Dreadnaughts on Auto Attack! 
  
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Cirrhosis: You'll love American Gods!: very edgy; sort of noir; lots of smoking. Neverwhere sounds like Perdido Street Station by China Miéville (another UK author). And no doubt Miles has already read 'The Curse of Chalion'. Ah, books- why am I playing games?
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If we're talking books, can I throw in a vote for Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos? Four book series, absolutely mind blowing in scope. Also a vote for Scott Orson Card's ender series of books.
Gold medal to Stephen Donaldson - basically ANYTHING he writes; the six Thomas Covenant books, and the five book 'Gap' series modelled loosely on Wagner's Ring cycle - magnificent SF. The guy's amazing - I attended a lecture he gave here in Aust about, oh, 15 yrs ago and have an autographed copy of White Gold Wielder.
Oh, and one last vote for Julian May's Saga of the Exiles series. There - that should do ya!
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| . Let's use what you have already done. I will suggest some more content. |
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Ray,
What would you like to see? Any suggestions are welcome (and encouraged!)
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| If we're talking books, can I throw in a vote for Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos? Four book series, absolutely mind blowing in scope. |
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The Wombat has good taste. The Hyperion books are excellent. I also like Chalker's Well World series, though the last two stand alones have been rather weak.
For Fantasy, has anyone mentioned George R. R. Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire? Excellent books, the only drawback is the series is not done yet and it's taking him awhile to kick each one out.
 
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Wild Wombat has a dark leaning in his literature I see.
And I mentioned A Song Of Ice And Fire already, but I'm not sure Ray trusts me enough to believe anything I say. With that face HawaiiFive-O, he'll believe you.
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Just bumping the thread so I don't have to keep looking for the link to the Fellowship site.
 Link
By the way, I added a "newslog". Just for fun.
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#523
by Veteran vincible - 7/23/2003 11:56:55 AM
Everyone's talking about Neil Gaiman, and no one has mentioned his Sandman series! It's probably what he's best known for. They're "graphic novels," ie comic books, which might make a lot of people think that they're probably for kids. I thought so too until my girlfriend badgered me into reading them. They're really excellent books--very dark, and very haunting. After reading them for the first time I found myself for the next couple days daydreaming about events in the story. I've read most of Gaiman's stuff and "Sandman" is definitely what I enjoyed most.
I'll add my endorsement of A Song of Ice and Fire which has been mentioned before. Be warned, it's not complete yet. Also I really liked the first two books of the Hyperion Cantos (and really disliked books 3 and 4, but if you read 1 and 2 it's a self-contained set).
Some less-known stuff:
"Winter of the World," by Michael Scott Rohan, might be my favorite fantasy series. He handles the high fantasy style extremely well. Wonderfully written descriptive passages, along with the enormous scope of it, make series book really memorable--I've never seen another fantasy author do continent-wide descriptions of events as well as Rohan did in these books. It's a trilogy, with "Anvil of Ice," "Forge in the Forest," and "Hammer of the Sun."
"Lord of Light," by Roger Zelazny, is a blend of hard science fiction with Hindu mythology. Words fail me here, go read the amazon.com reviews which are uniformly enthusiastic. I have read a *lot* of science fiction and fantasy and that book would definitely be in my top five and might perhaps be my favorite book of any type.
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#524
by Citizen Cirrhosis - 7/23/2003 12:09:52 PM
It's interesting to find that many of us have the same tastes in fiction and literature. When I was fifteen, an older cousin of mine was crazy about Sandman, just like he was crazy about every other type of comic. Reading the Sandman books were great fun: I still find myself tickled by Gaiman's Cain and Abel. Abel, the bumbling, simple, good guy, and his brother Cain, the brilliant, insane, whose sometimes psychopathic rages result in him killing his brother, albeit temporarily.
Zelazny's Lord of Light was another gem I read during my freshman year of college. I really get off on Hindu mythology and culture, and this book was a treat. Zelazny's way of storytelling really gets you involved in his writings.
In 1997, the estate of Alfred Bester released Psychoshop, which was an unfinished novel. Zelazny finished it off before his death; it's a really neat literary duet of two great authors. It's a fantasy, definitely; imagine a shop where you can get anything you want, only that you have to give up something to get it. Bester interjected a nice sci-fi touch to the book - for all the atmosphere it has, its also a great deal of fun.
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