I loved The House on the Borderland. Also read his Carnacki stories. Haven't read The Night Land because I never found a copy though I'd heard it's long, weird and borderline inscrutable.
Staying at home is the norm... What are you reading?
- Thread starter Redlin5
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I'm finishing up Ender's Game. It was....ok. To be honest my gut tells me to call it clumsy objectivist nonsense. There's a lot of small issues. He decided to use the contemporary 1985 world for the setting which I think is a bad idea when writing science fiction because it inevitably forces your audience to view it in that time and space and ruins the mystery and imagination.
He writes as though the Warsaw Pact is still a major power and of course we know it's not which makes the setting quaint rather than interesting, although it's funny that he hints that it falls apart, which isn't some Nostradamus shit. The Baltic states were already fighting to get out.
Ender is an objectivist messiah, that whole "Oh if only someone smarter than everyone else was given total power they save us all." UUUUUUGGGH. Yeah he voted for Trump btw.
The stuff with his sister and brother being genius's who become internet personalities who save the world has some merit, but again it ends up being quaint because we deal with that kind shit today and we've learned the internet ended up just being a cesspool where no one can agree on anything. Of course he couldn't know that rather that internet forums evolving, they devolved into soundbyte shit like tiktok and twitter. Could someone possibly unite large groups on the internet with enough power to create world peace? Sure idk whatever.
I was let down fighting out that Ender's an actual murderer and he downplayed the beatdown he gave the bullies in his version of events. He is a sociopath, whether the book acknowledges it or not.
That said, though it was fine. I liked a lot of the idea's, but I think once you realize that book has an agenda it gets pretty grating.
He writes as though the Warsaw Pact is still a major power and of course we know it's not which makes the setting quaint rather than interesting, although it's funny that he hints that it falls apart, which isn't some Nostradamus shit. The Baltic states were already fighting to get out.
Ender is an objectivist messiah, that whole "Oh if only someone smarter than everyone else was given total power they save us all." UUUUUUGGGH. Yeah he voted for Trump btw.
The stuff with his sister and brother being genius's who become internet personalities who save the world has some merit, but again it ends up being quaint because we deal with that kind shit today and we've learned the internet ended up just being a cesspool where no one can agree on anything. Of course he couldn't know that rather that internet forums evolving, they devolved into soundbyte shit like tiktok and twitter. Could someone possibly unite large groups on the internet with enough power to create world peace? Sure idk whatever.
I was let down fighting out that Ender's an actual murderer and he downplayed the beatdown he gave the bullies in his version of events. He is a sociopath, whether the book acknowledges it or not.
That said, though it was fine. I liked a lot of the idea's, but I think once you realize that book has an agenda it gets pretty grating.
Oh, what are your thoughts? They are on my list of things to read at some point.
I like them generally. I think they are one of the better detective fiction I've read. It escapes a lot of the Mary Sueism of characters like Sherlock Holmes by having Wolfe be fat and lazy and refusing to leave his house. This also gives the viewpoint character, Archie Goodwin, a lot more chances to shine despite not being the genius. Archie is a lot more indispensable than Watson, for sure. The mysteries are in general pretty good too. They are mysterious, but once everything is revealed it all makes sense and doesn't stretch disbelief or feel like the answer came out of nowhere the way I usually felt after reading one of John Dickson Carr's novels. They also feel pretty grounded. The police are thorough and competent and if there's any evidence to be gotten from the scene of a crime or checking alibis or the like it can be assumed they will get it.
They haven't all been perfect but on the whole I like them. Obviously, or I wouldn't have made it through more than 20 of them, pretty much back to back.
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Project Hail Mary
A high concept hard sci-fi premise that doesn't put in too many crazy things, and the premise is really good from a narrative point of view too. The writing is repetitive, though, as the story starts to run out of fuel.
A high concept hard sci-fi premise that doesn't put in too many crazy things, and the premise is really good from a narrative point of view too. The writing is repetitive, though, as the story starts to run out of fuel.
