21–30 of 73 posts
The Cookie Monster It's got the right stuff. His other stuff. A lot of it is pretty good. There's that trilogy with the layers of space. I guess I need to look at it again. But the group mind dogs. Interesting but not amazing. And then we have your usual good-bad conflict, which is boring. So anyway. But ya. Cookie Monster. That shivers my things good.
I've only read A Fire Upon The Deep, which I found super interesting in terms of setting, but the storytelling felt a bit clunky to me at the time. I was still intrigued by the author though and I read A Deepness In The Sky and was blown away. Storytelling, setting, everything just clicked. I know there is a third book in the trilogy but it seems a bit back to the roots in terms of setting and I haven't touched just…
Probably just me, but it first book was such a schizophrenic experience. Loved every single bit of space part but couldn't care less about medieval cluster dog minds part, eventually grew bored of it and it felt disturbing. Especially when author thinks some minor medieval squabbles are equally important as the galactic space part, giving it same page count. Suffered till the end, and lost any motivation to continue…
That was a major plot design point to me.
That pre-spacefaring civilizations have things that are incredibly important to them, but questionably important relative to order-of-magnitudes different power galactic civilizations.
One of the reasons I like Banks fiction as well -- in all likelihood, given evolution and technological maturity timescales, advanced civilizations will be wildly displaced in time as well as space.
I really like his books. A fun anecdote is that I had him as a college professor in the early 90's before I knew that he was a SciFi author. Among other things, he taught me how to write pre-emptive task switching in 68k assembly language. Fun times!
I've only read A Fire Upon The Deep, which I found super interesting in terms of setting, but the storytelling felt a bit clunky to me at the time. I was still intrigued by the author though and I read A Deepness In The Sky and was blown away. Storytelling, setting, everything just clicked. I know there is a third book in the trilogy but it seems a bit back to the roots in terms of setting and I haven't touched just…
Probably just me, but it first book was such a schizophrenic experience. Loved every single bit of space part but couldn't care less about medieval cluster dog minds part, eventually grew bored of it and it felt disturbing. Especially when author thinks some minor medieval squabbles are equally important as the galactic space part, giving it same page count. Suffered till the end, and lost any motivation to continue…
I didn't love A Fire Upon the Deep because, while the sci-fi parts were amazing, the medieval fantasy telepathic dog society was much less interesting, basically a political fable with some children thrown in; it seemed like a different novel altogether, and in fact the plots don't really ever intersect except when the adults finally land. It felt like two very different books cobbled together from two different authors. The dog half reminded me of Terry Pratchett for some reason, another author whose schtick involves making the story go faster and increasingly more breathless towards the end, like some Hollywood action movie, often involving a bunch of running or flying.
I liked Deepness even less, because once again you have fantasy politics, and while I understood the conceit, the storytelling just didn't work for me. Like before, the science-fiction stuff was fantastic and full of great ideas, but the other half was the exact opposite.
I've only read A Fire Upon The Deep, which I found super interesting in terms of setting, but the storytelling felt a bit clunky to me at the time. I was still intrigued by the author though and I read A Deepness In The Sky and was blown away. Storytelling, setting, everything just clicked. I know there is a third book in the trilogy but it seems a bit back to the roots in terms of setting and I haven't touched just…
Probably just me, but it first book was such a schizophrenic experience. Loved every single bit of space part but couldn't care less about medieval cluster dog minds part, eventually grew bored of it and it felt disturbing. Especially when author thinks some minor medieval squabbles are equally important as the galactic space part, giving it same page count. Suffered till the end, and lost any motivation to continue…
Since the showdown with the blight is in the medieval dogs’ turf, the effects of that minor squabble could determine the fate of the galaxy!
I've only read A Fire Upon The Deep, which I found super interesting in terms of setting, but the storytelling felt a bit clunky to me at the time. I was still intrigued by the author though and I read A Deepness In The Sky and was blown away. Storytelling, setting, everything just clicked. I know there is a third book in the trilogy but it seems a bit back to the roots in terms of setting and I haven't touched just…
> I haven't touched just out of the fear that I wouldn't love it as much as ADITS... Should I? Don't. It's nowhere near as good as either of the previous books, and the ending leaves some important plot points unresolved.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably just me, but it first book was such a schizophrenic experience. Loved every single bit of space part but couldn't care less about medieval cluster dog minds part, eventually grew bored of it and it felt disturbing. Especially when author thinks some minor medieval squabbles are equally important as the galactic space part, giving it same page count. Suffered till the end, and lost any motivation to continue…
The first Hyperion book is excellent, the second is decent, but for anybody not in the know - do yourself a favor and skip the two that follow.
That stuff has the Star Wars vibe where Ep 1-3 have much more grandiosity than the original series - luckily the weren't chronologically first.
I've only read A Fire Upon The Deep, which I found super interesting in terms of setting, but the storytelling felt a bit clunky to me at the time. I was still intrigued by the author though and I read A Deepness In The Sky and was blown away. Storytelling, setting, everything just clicked. I know there is a third book in the trilogy but it seems a bit back to the roots in terms of setting and I haven't touched just…
Probably just me, but it first book was such a schizophrenic experience. Loved every single bit of space part but couldn't care less about medieval cluster dog minds part, eventually grew bored of it and it felt disturbing. Especially when author thinks some minor medieval squabbles are equally important as the galactic space part, giving it same page count. Suffered till the end, and lost any motivation to continue…
"As above, so below".
I could have done with more space archaeology, and less human children. Apart from that I felt it was pretty great.
I want to make the Localizer thing happen, but at a more practical (macro) scale. Experimenting with Semtech chips with LoRa/ranging.