who's the crisova guy?

>>25269856
>crisova
It's Cirsova
Idiot, dyslexic, intentional mispelling for disrespect, "I was only pretending" cope, and so many other choices. I wonder what the truth is. It keeps being misspelled after all.

Ah, I guess that would be (You) then.

>>25269874
No, it isn't. Read the thread. I'm just annoyed by the mispelling of the magazine name because it makes it more difficult for others to know what's been talked about, especially when searching for it in the archive.

Bujold

>>25267389
>It's in applying a primitive hermeneutic that demands axiomatic closure where the text operates generatively, as a formal system whose inconsistencies are the object-level investigative surface.
This is pretty funny. I dont employ hermeneutics, that would be intuitive thinking to me. But I understand why one might think that with my reference to show dont tell I guess. You're not really saying anything here tho.
>The answer is the entire history of legal positivism from Hobbes through Austin to Hart
I dont care about any of these people. Hobbes especially is obsolete in political philosophy. He was barely a philosopher anyway.
>which you have apparently never encountered: a sovereign authority need not ground its laws in moral fact, only in effective recognition.
Another reason this doesnt matter is that the last lasting global political and social system prior to this story was Democracy. And even though the series never makes clear an actual political structure (because the Hive system fundamentally makes no sense) When its reading out the Universal Hive Law and having its little political gathering, its very clearly apeing some sort of democracy whether parliamentary or congressional.

None of this actually matters, because the real problem with the writing is that there's no grounding to anything.

>"Hive law does not recognize a natural right to self-defense"

Which Hive? How is the jurisdiction of a Hive determined? By how much Land a Hive owns? How by how much of a population of a given hive rests in whatever retarded city? Wouldnt citizenship matter at that point? What stops a hive with large populations from just flooding high value cities with immigrants?

These are not questions I bring up. These are questions the book implictly brings uo whether its aware of it or not, by making a statement on war, laws, political power etc.

I just don't understand this. I dont understand how something this obvious can be looked over if Political Power and War was always intended to be talked about. I must be missing something but I've read 3 books now and none of my questions have been answered.

>The rule that only a registered military bash may use lethal force is the equilibrium selected by a Condorcet mechanism among founding Hive charters precisely because it eliminates the tragedy of private judgment that Thomas More identified in Utopia's treatment of mercenaries: if anyone may claim self-defense, jurisdictional collapse follows,
Is this AI? I don't believe it because I dont think AI is even capable of processing information properly enough to produce it, but the weird way this sidesteps my criticism to dump a bunch of irrelevant, but relevant sounding information is typical of AI.

Wasnt the entire screenshot I posted supposed to be a point about how most hives dont actually have military laws or a military registry? So saying they're bound by a rule that the entire point of the in universe discussion is to create some military rule to exempt them from murder. Makes no sense does it?

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An Illusion of Thieves, by Cate Glass

In the independent city of Cantagna, Cataline has been the courtesan of the city's ruler "il Padrone" for 9 years when her idiot little brother causes trouble that she has to fix, and in doing so, gets herself banished. She and her brother are sorcerers in a world where magic of any kind is punishable by death. Her brother can walk through walls, but she can only mess with memories.

After banishment, she and her brother are forced to make a living in the city's slums, where they originally came from. It takes a while to find a job she can do, but eventually she does: copying papers by hand. From there, she and her brother barely make ends meet, though they do find a few other hidden magic wielders around them. Eventually, il Padrone's actual wife blackmails Cataline into helping her out of a sticky spot, and things escalate from there.

I liked reading about the protagonists just barely scraping by, and having to deal with mundane things like getting enough money to eat after her fall from grace alongside the city's ruler. Having such a contrast early on was striking. The cons/jobs later on in the book were fun too, and there was no romance, thank God.

I am a little worried about the implications of her memory powers. I really don't like characters that get lost in a sea of insanity after something traumatic happens or their memories get altered, and there's signs that this could be headed in that direction. (Notable example, Katniss at the end of the hunger games series.)

All in all, a fun book, if slow in the first half.

4/5

>>25267389
>The Mitsubishi director's complaint about the trial is not a plot hole
I never said it was. I said it lacks the prerequisite foundation required of world building to make its worlds rules make sense.
>if anyone may claim self-defense, jurisdictional collapse follows, because the Hives are territorial only in the opt-in sense, not in geography.
Also you keep saying things but not substantiating them. How does a claim to self defense result in jurisdictional collapse? Where does jurisdiction to even enforce a set of rules come from in a world without borders, where geography doesnt matter. And finally. NONE OF THIS WOULD MATTER IN WAR. Why the fuck would an invading country, borders or not (assuming its just based on population majority in a given area) care about that places rules? Just kill everybody who stops you. Which I understand is what Dominic wanted to do, but then what is this argument about? Either the self defense problem is a criminal problem, or its a problem of war, in which self defense needs no law. A Warring army attacks you, and you attack them back if you wish not to be killed.
>it is the predictable result of applying a deontological rule classifier to an edge case
You don't know what deontology is. Stop using it unnecessary. Just say "strict rule without exceptions".
>The Saneer-Weeksbooth tracker system functions as a recursively enumerable oracle for legal category membership, which makes the system decidable at the cost of creating exactly the kind of hard case that Dworkin's right-answer thesis could not resolve without a Herculean judge, and the Hives have no Herculean judge. You are looking at a society that replaced jurisprudence with algorithmic classification and you are asking why it produces injustice.
What does any of this dump of information have to do with the fact that they could use the tracker to identify people who are members of Hives and do away with the Artificial seeming Uniform problem that honestly feels like a shitty filler arc at this point but Im sure will be forced to matter later.
>The Prisoner's Dilemma thing is even simpler. You say it's "not real" because you've read some rationalist blog about iterated games and reputation effects, but you missed that the novel constructs a world where the iterated PD collapses to the one-shot PD because reputation cannot be updated: all actions are tracked, permanently fixed, public.
No, the Prisoners Dilemma isnt real because its a bad study thats set up in a way that it confirms its own bias. It doesnt actually reflect real human behaviour. Its like a fake hypothetical where the conclusion is necessarily true because the hypothetical was framed in a way where the desired answer is gotten. But real human behaviour typically doesnt match prisoner dilemma, and real life situations typically dont because the real world is an infinitely complex web of alread preexisting foundations for engagement.

>>25267389
>The Prisoner's Dilemma thing is even simpler. You say it's "not real" because you've read some rationalist blog about iterated games and reputation effects, but you missed that the novel constructs a world where the iterated PD collapses to the one-shot PD because reputation cannot be updated: all actions are tracked, permanently fixed, public.
No, the Prisoners Dilemma isnt real because its a bad study thats set up in a way that it confirms its own bias. It doesnt actually reflect real human behaviour. Its like a fake hypothetical where the conclusion is necessarily true because the hypothetical was framed in a way where the desired answer is gotten. But real human behaviour typically doesnt match prisoner dilemma, and real life situations typically dont because the real world is an infinitely complex web of alread preexisting foundations for engagement.

I did further research, and because of how many different permutations of PD experiments there are, and how many different factors change things (perfectly supports that the standard prisoner dilemma actually concludes nothing, and even overall they generally conclude nothing overall that reflects on real human behaviour).

Even in one shot experiments (no future shadow, cringe as fuck term). Cooperation is high. Defection dominated in low stakes and situations where both sides fucking eachother over, actually benefits both.

>Your objection that the PD doesn't apply to real human societies is correct but entirely irrelevant, the novel is explicitly modeling a society that has abolished the conditions that make the iterated PD cooperative, to test the limits of exactly your assumption. You walked into the trap.

If the conditions that replace standard, more real conditions dont make sense. Then its not a meaningful conclusion. I dont care what you or game theory retards think about "usefulness" in your retarded made up vaccum hypotheticals. None of it means anything if it cant reflect real human behaviour in a possibly real circumstance.

None of that "convenient perfect knowledge" or "conveniently imperfect knowledge" bullshit.

>but you missed that the novel constructs a world where the iterated PD collapses to the one-shot PD because reputation cannot be updated: all actions are tracked, permanently fixed, public. The shadow of the future is zero. You cannot build a reputation if your full history is already legible and immutable.

Also in a straight up sense what is this supposed to mean? What the fuck are you talking about? How does publically tracked actions = fixed perception/reputation.

Also this is also clearly not entirelu true else Madame wouldnt have been able to do her bullshit behind the scenes without exposure before everything actually got exposed.

>>25270021
Damn this sounds so derivative like other YA novels. So many books so little time and people choose to create comfort bs. If you're not going to make something unique you should not write and we should bring back book burning. Probably should get rid of around 80% of them

>>25270073
>so little time
Fake

>>25270073
Got any recs then?

>>25270021
Doesn't seem like something I'd like to read despite the relevant two 4 star ratings it has now. I appreciate you writing about it though.

>>25270129
What's the other 4 star rating?

>>25270132
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2858547132

>>25270127
Any particular genre or era written?

>>25270073
>unique
This is one of the many terribly abused words that have lost almost all their meaning.

>>25270022
>>25270026
>>25270021
COPE CONFIRMED!

>>25269856
Most commentary in these generals is from newfags. This thread is a mess already.

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>>25270135
I'm not making an account just for this. Can you post a screenshot?
>>25270136
I like most of the popular stuff, but I've been looking for a larger fantasy series for a while. Something unique, preferably in a large world, and perhaps with minor choices/details coming back to haunt the main characters later. I'm really not too picky, I just think that would be cool.
Things I'd like to avoid: brat/insufferable protagonists, and spoiled children of the main characters.
I also don't want something so obscure that there'd be no one to talk to about it.

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>>25270145
Sorry, what?

>>25270156
The books of Babel series by Bancroft

>>25270156
Oh, he has his reviews privated to people without accounts. I didn't realize. Nah, there's no need.

>>25270162
Thanks, that looks like something I'll enjoy. Just put it on hold.

>>25270156
nta
>I also don't want something so obscure that there'd be no one to talk to about it.
That's literally almost everything. Only a few series ever get talked about in any kind of semi-regulaelr fashion.

>>25270168
I'd be okay with most of the recs from this century. It's obscure stuff from the 80s or older that I'm more nervous about, if they're not classics anyway.

>>25270171
I've read over 500 sff novels published this century and I'd say I wouldn't be okay with almost anything recommended to me. Many of the popular series as well, so I don't know if I'd be any help.

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I need something Spacey, that real sci-fi goodness; spaceships, space stations, space battles. doesn't matter if it's High or Low Sci-fi or if there are aliens or not, I've spent too long on Arrakis and Foundation's more political science than space. please help me here and recommend some of that good shit

>>25270188
Uhhhhhmmmm... The Mote In God's Eye

>>25270185
I meant I'd be okay with them obscurity-wise. Obviously I'm not gonna like all the books that have come out since 2000.

>>25270188
Lensman (1948-1954)

>>25270188
The Martian
Project Hail Mary

>>25270188
The Expanse, though if that's still too political, then Red Rising.

>Reddit Rising
This general is the worst one on the website.

>>25269856
I am a Bakker fag, I am a Sanderson fag, and I am even a Donaldson fag. I am out, loud and proud!

Nah, you're just a faggot dude

>>25270016
>This is pretty funny. I dont employ hermeneutics, that would be intuitive thinking to me.
You don't get to escape a term by calling your thinking intuitive. Hermeneutics is the theory of interpretation, it doesn't require you to have read Gadamer, it's the thing you are doing when you make claims about what a text means and whether its rules are consistent. Your intuition is a hermeneutic method whether you like it or not, just an unexamined one.
>Hobbes especially is obsolete in political philosophy. He was barely a philosopher anyway.
You say this and then two posts later you ask how jurisdiction works in a world without territorial sovereignty. That question is literally the one Hobbes answered in Leviathan when he theorized the social contract as a transfer of individual right to a sovereign in exchange for protection, the entire contractualist tradition that the Hive system riffs on begins with the guy you just dismissed as barely a philosopher. You can't demand that a political novel explain its political premises while also refusing to read the people who invented the vocabulary the premises are written in. Your question about flooding cities with immigrants is answered by the fact that jurisdiction is personal not territorial, which means moving bodies into a city doesn't shift political control at all because those bodies vote and are subject to law via their own Hive, not the geography they stand on, which is the entire point. The Universal Hive Law handles inter-Hive disputes and the unaffiliated. If you read the book this would be obvious.

>>25270018
>Wasnt the entire screenshot I posted supposed to be a point about how most hives dont actually have military laws or a military registry? So saying they're bound by a rule that the entire point of the in universe discussion is to create some military rule to exempt them from murder. Makes no sense does it?
Yes, the absence of a military category is the problem the characters are trying to solve, which is why they're creating a provisional military designation: because the existing legal framework has no box for a non-military bash that committed violence, and without a box the act defaults to murder. You're pointing at the crisis the scene is about and calling it a plot hole. It's like reading a scene where characters are building a raft because the bridge collapsed and asking why the author wrote a world with no bridge. The absence is the premise of the action.

>>25270022
>How does a claim to self defense result in jurisdictional collapse? Where does jurisdiction to even enforce a set of rules come from in a world without borders, where geography doesnt matter.
Jurisdiction comes from individual Hive registration. If you are Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi law applies to you no matter where you stand. If you are a Utopian, Utopian law applies. If you are unaffiliated, the Universal Hive Law applies as default. If any bash could claim self-defense to justify killing, then whenever a Mitsubishi kills a Humanist, the Mitsubishi Hive would declare it self-defense and the Humanist Hive would call it murder and there is no territorial court with jurisdiction over both because the perpetrator and victim are in different legal systems, and the Universal Hive Law has to adjudicate without a shared fact-finding mechanism, which is precisely the jurisdictional collapse. The book shows this exact scenario erupting in the war between the Mitsubishi and the Humanists. You keep asking questions the text answers directly.
>Why the fuck would an invading country, borders or not care about that places rules? Just kill everybody who stops you.
That is what happens. That is the war. Dominic wants to do exactly that. The debate you're reading is about whether to create a legal framework that might prevent it or just accept the slaughter and call it what it is. The fact that you can't track this distinction is not the book's problem.
>You don't know what deontology is. Stop using it unnecessary. Just say "strict rule without exceptions".
I used deontology precisely: a deontological rule classifier is one that evaluates acts by their conformity to a rule rather than by their consequences. The Hive system does exactly that when it classifies a killing by whether the killer was a registered military bash, ignoring whether the killing was morally justified, which is deontology. You telling me to say "strict rule without exceptions" is the same concept in dumber words, which seems to be what you wanted.
>What does any of this dump of information have to do with the fact that they could use the tracker to identify people who are members of Hives and do away with the Artificial seeming Uniform problem
The tracker does identify people, which is how the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash controls everything. The problem is that identification doesn't solve the uniform problem, because it creates it: perfect legibility means everyone knows exactly who attacked whom, but the legal question of whether that attack was justified still has to be adjudicated, and the Hives deliberately removed standing courts with authority over multiple Hives after the Church War. So you have a system that can tell you everything that happened but has no mechanism to decide whether what happened was lawful, which is the tension. The tracker solves epistemology, not jurisprudence, and the book is about the gap between those two things.

>>25270026
>I did further research, and because of how many different permutations of PD experiments there are, and how many different factors change things (perfectly supports that the standard prisoner dilemma actually concludes nothing, and even overall they generally conclude nothing overall that reflects on real human behaviour).
You're still arguing about whether the PD describes real human behavior when the novel is not claiming it does. Jehovah uses the PD as a parable about what happens when a society organizes itself around the assumption that cooperation is impossible without enforcement. The Hive system is built on that premise. The tracker system makes every action permanently public and unchangeable, which creates a condition where your past is always present, meaning no amount of future cooperation can erase a past defection. That's not about human nature but about the specific institutional arrangement the novel depicts. You keep insisting the PD is a bad psychological model as if that's a rebuttal to a book that is showing you what happens when people treat a bad model as if it's true and build a civilization on it.
>Also in a straight up sense what is this supposed to mean? What the fuck are you talking about? How does publically tracked actions = fixed perception/reputation.
Because if everything you have ever done is permanently visible to everyone, and that record cannot be erased or contextualized, then your reputation is your complete action history rendered as a single static object. There is no private self that might be better than your worst act, no future action that can outweigh a past one, because the system treats the timeline as a flat plane where all moments are equally present. That's not how human beings actually perceive each other, but it is how an algorithmic classification system perceives you, and the Hive tracker system is an algorithmic classification system. Madame operates in the gaps where the system is not total, and her exposure in book four is the system correcting its own incompleteness, which you would know if you had read that far. You haven't. You are three books in, still asking questions that the text answered in book one, and presenting your confusion as critical insight. It's not.

>>25270156
>I've been looking for a larger fantasy series for a while.
Here's 10 long series by Book count
Discword 41
Valdemar 40+
Xanth 40+
Drizzt 39+
Malazan 30+
Riftwar ~30
Recluce 26+
Cosmere 25+
Penric and Desdemona 16+
Wheel of Time 14

>>25270248
>>25270254
>>25270257
Thank you for providing one of the greatest takedowns in /sffg/ history. The bar isn't that high, which is why you flew over it. As someone who has read the series, I completely agree.

>>25270300
DAYYUUUUM EPIC TAKEDOWN

>>25270248
Im not even done responding to your second one yet retard

>>25270336
Omae wa mou shindeiru
You couldn't get in a single hit on him and now it's too late.

>>25270340
wrong.

>>25270362
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

>>25270188
Schismatrix
Vacuum Flowers

>>25270262
>Malazan 30+
Wtf?

>>25270412
Malazan Universe

Malazan Book of the Fallen
1Gardens of the Moon(1999)bySteven Erikson
2Deadhouse Gates(2000)bySteven Erikson
3Memories of Ice(2001)bySteven Erikson
4House of Chains(2002)bySteven Erikson
5Midnight Tides(2004)bySteven Erikson
6The Bonehunters(2006)bySteven Erikson
7Reaper's Gale(2007)bySteven Erikson
8Toll the Hounds(2008)bySteven Erikson
9Dust of Dreams(2009)bySteven Erikson
10The Crippled God(2011)bySteven Erikson

Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach
1Blood Follows(2002)bySteven Erikson
2The Healthy Dead(2004)bySteven Erikson
3The Lees of Laughter's End(2007)bySteven Erikson
4Crack'd Pot Trail(2009)bySteven Erikson
5The Wurms of Blearmouth(2012) bySteven Erikson
6The Fiends of Nightmaria(2016) bySteven Erikson
7Upon a Dark of Evil

Night of Knives
1Night of Knives(2005)byIan C. Esslemont
2Return of the Crimson Guard(2008)byIan C. Esslemont
3Stonewielder(2010)byIan C. Esslemont
4Orb Sceptre Throne(2012)byIan C. Esslemont
5Blood and Bone(2012)byIan C. Esslemont
6Assail(2014)byIan C. Esslemont

The Kharkanas Trilogy
1Forge of Darkness(2012)bySteven Erikson
2Fall of Light(2016)bySteven Erikson


Path to Ascendancy
1Dancer's Lament(2016)byIan C. Esslemont
2Deadhouse Landing(2017)byIan C. Esslemont
3Kellanved's Reach(2019)byIan C. Esslemont
4Forge of the High Mage(2023)byIan C. Esslemont

Witness Trilogy
1The God Is Not Willing(2021)bySteven Erikson
2No Life Forsaken(2025)bySteven Erikson

>>25270429
Shit i thought it was only malaz and kharkanaz
I still have a shit ton of things to read before malazan but i just know it must be good

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What is the most recent book you read that is a legit contender for "best sffg book I've read"

Lord of Light - Zelazny

>>25270262
>>25270156

BOTNS + UOTNS + BOTLS + BOTSS is technically all one series and that's 12 books

>>25270534
None, because I don't think of them that way.

>>25270556
That just tells me you are incapable of doing so

>>25270571
That's true.

>>25270534
Read a wiki summary of this shit. Wtf is this shit and what am I supposed to take from it? It sounds like an anime and thats not a bad thing this time it just sounds random as fuck!

>>25270611
I dunno maybe try reading it

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>>25270611
>read a wiki summary
The point of a story is to be good, not impart a message

>>25270611
We need a definitive name for you. Screencapping is what you do, but you're defined by your bad commentary.

>>25270611
>It sounds like an anime
Most hinduism does

>>25270638
>bad commentary.
wrong again.

Hnng elric is good i almost got filtered
Took me till hour 2 of the elric audiobook but its smashing, clearly i wasnt vibing with the pulp thing but, i get it now

>>25270156
>I read this book without knowing much of it beyond the title and I'm glad I approached it that way.
The first 3/4's or so of the book is a meandering but engaging tale of decline despair and eventually discovery that I wouldn't have been as much a fan of had I read it expecting the heist novel of the blurb.

Those parts of the book that concern the events unrelated to the book's title and blurb are also in my estimation the best writing present, accomplishing the rare feat of giving us a competent fantasy protagonist and then placing them in a situation where their competence really doesn't help them escape their tough situation

>>25270021
Where's the "your reviews are shit fuck off" god when you need him

>>25270611
I'm not sure i understand what's going on here. You yourself admit to only reading a wiki summary, but then in the same breath go on to complain that you "don't get" the book. The book you just admitted to not having read.
So, my question to you is, are you stupid or just retarded?

>>25270715
Kek

>>25270718
you're retarded

Are there any good modern British fantasy writers? Post 1980s only.

I read some Pratchett and I found it too smug and self-satisfied for my taste. I want something that takes its genre seriously, instead of just using it as a punching bag.

>>25270021
your """reviews""" are SHIT
FUCK OFF

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Has anyone here read this? Is it good? I heard that it was dark and edgy and as a bakkerfag that is the type of shit I live for.

what's something like the metamorphosis of prime intellect

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Books about chad steppe nomads? Preferably fantasy oriented. Historical fiction is also fine.

>>25270917
Cnaiur in Darkness that comes before.

>>25270188
Anything by C. J. Cherryh, Poul Anderson, Iain M. Banks.

Cats can’t read. Yes I’m racist.

Don't forget to report and ignore underage newfag spammers like >>25270800 who actively contribute to off-topic discussion and have been spamming off-topic for over four years.
>>21323327

Heard about a novel "The Tainted Cup" and it sounded really good but then I heard that the protagonist is a gay man so don't know if I'll bother. Anyone read it?

>>25271410
He doesn't really do much of anything gay, at least not on page. He just is and he tries to keep it hidden.

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show_book/1029811-sffg?book_id=150247395
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/23277165#p23278906

>>25271227
Is he a newfag or been around for 4 years? It cant be both nig
Also your reviews are shit, he owned your shit

>>25271410
huh? what difference would that make?

>>25271507
As a self-hating, closeted homosexual he must avoid exposure to gay things or his animalistic lust will overtake him and he'll find himself at the Blue Oyster Club in a leather harness and assless chaps

>>25271507
It's basically because I find gay to be disgusting. I know people like >>25271509 insist that homophobes like me are all repressed homosexuals, but that simply isn't true... in fact I'd say that "straight" men who aren't repulsed by descriptions of men kissing are more likely to be the repressed ones!
Also I'm tired of the "closeted fag" trope, just doesn't resonate

>>25271524
>that simply isn't true
How many times have we heard this before?

>>25271524
I think the queen doth protest too much

>>25271524
I get finding gay sex, gay romance, even gay personality traits disgusting. But a character just having a Gay personality tag or w/e, who gives a shit? If the book isn't about it, and if they aren't rubbing it in your face, then I don't get what the problem is.

Din's gayness barely features at all. He's a dry, stick-up-his-ass straight man (heh). There's one scene where a gay guy tries to see if Din himself is gay and Din is cold and standoffish, then at the conclusion of the case they meet again and Din is more receptive. I think there's like 5 total sentences about this courtship and there's not so much as a peck on the cheek, because it's not that type of book. You'll survive, I think.

The reason the closeted stuff comes up so much is that a) it happens a lot to high profile gay haters, and b) it's one possible way to explain an otherwise irrational response. Arachnophobes avoid and fear spiders, alcoholics avoid and fear bars, but they do so for very different reasons

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Oh, by the way, my sister is a camwhore who videos herself using a bunch of different sextoys. Can you believe people have an issue with this and shamed her? She also lets me know when she's camming so I can wear headphones.

Her body her choice

Seriously, what was the point of this?

>>25271585
A political statement presented in such a way intended to agitate. In other words, trolling.

>>25271585
You forgot to greentext idiot. I thought you were sharing a personal tidbit. Got me excited for a sec there.

>>25271547
>Arachnophobes avoid and fear spiders, alcoholics avoid and fear bars, but they do so for very different reasons
Interesting perspective. I'm not a homophobe but I hate the repressed homo idea, because its just way too convenient a way to dismiss homophobes, and it encourages the exact same dismissal from the other direction. Simple arguments against homophobia should be defaulted.

>hated spiders before
>thinking about a pet spider now
G-guys, does this mean?, no no i couldnt be r-right guys?

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What's similar?

- wandering through very bleak and decaying lands
- death everywhere
- redemption seems impossible
- demons and monsters everywhere

I’m reading The Black Company right now, and honestly, I’m not really enjoying it so far. I’m about 100 pages in, so maybe it picks up later, but at the moment it’s just so dry to me. Everything feels more like I’m reading a summary of events than the actual story. On top of that, so many characters show up and disappear so quickly that I’m having a hard time getting invested into any of them.

>>25271698
what the fuck...thats mentally ill

>>25271698
Yep not cool g
Just say he is a schizo fag like everyone else, on the other hand you shoul 100% doxx screencap fag he is too annoying and pretentious

>>25271712
its called OSINT. Hes done it to himself

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>>25271686
>>25271686
The Night Land
Averoigne
Bran Mak Morn
Book of the New Sun
The War Hound and the World's Pain
Nifft the Lean
Kane by Karl Edward Wagner
Throne of Bones

>>25271690
It doesn't get better

>>25271731
Thanks buddy

>>25271733
I’ll give it maybe 50 more pages at most. I was just expecting something more, since it gets recommended so often.

>>25271797
I have never ever heard of black company

>>25271797
It's a matter of taste. Black Company really scratches a certain autistic itch a lot of other books don't.
If it's not for you that's perfectly fine.

>>25271734
You're welcome!

>>25270188
Revelation Space

Time to read A Parade of Horribles.

>>25271690
Same reasons I DNF'd it honestly

>>25271585
Go read K:BS. It's fucking kooky and the additional audiobook ending is extra-nutty.
>>25271919
Is today the official release? It was fun.

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>>25271731
>no we are all legends
close but no cigar

>>25271686
The Unholy Consult.

>>25269872
It publishes nothing but slop.

>>25270188
E. E. "Doc" Smith

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Who is best girl--Azarin or Dathka?

>>25272355
>HURR BA DURR BA DURR Book 2
The older I get the more that little line turns me off ever reading your book.

>>25267391
>Your confusion about show versus tell reveals that you don't understand framed narrative as a dialectical device at all.
Or I just dont subscribe to or agree with the framing.
>Mycroft Canner is a homodiegetic narrator whose epistemic authority
I don't like that you use words like this. It feels like youre trying to convey the sense of saying something without actually saying anything. The way diegetic is used is simply the same way people use "immersive" for a videogame (particular because its an interactive medium) or even some movies or books ive heard immersion be used. Its basically another word for "fictional experience that is communicated in a way that feels real and immediate".
Its annoying. Makes things harder to parse but without any point or advantage, nothing about the substance of that word couldnt have been communicated with. Another word that could have been used is "in-universe". Maybe its just me, but I'm more impressed by somebody whos able to use a range of different words to convey a similar meaning as per appropriate (since words with similar meaning can have use in that theyre appropriate for different contexts, and those contexual associations add some additional meaning). In this case I'm not sure what sort of additional useful information "diegetic" could possibly have, which means you've failed in some respect of communication, because you either need to elaborate on and justify that use or use something else.

So in this case "homodiegetic" would mean "in-universe narrator" or "immersed narrator" or simply "narrator", because its not an uncommon norm that the narrator is part of the story. What is the usefulness of this word? I guess its technically shorter, but so is slang.

>>25267391
>When Mycroft tells you that Madame is obsessed with the 18th century, you are supposed to perform a critical reading and conclude that Mycroft is flattening a complex ideological genealogy into a psychological caricature
I use Madames own words as reference, not Mycrofts own judgements, when I criticize Mycroft I criticize the author, because it seems clear that Mycroft is a semi mouthpiece when he talks about history (and the utopians, i mean the author afterword literally affirms the utopians) because I've heard the author echo similar thoughts on a youtube video. I cant remember if Mycroft specifically echoes the "Good Emperors adopted" thing or if that was Martin or if that was both.

Same for Kraye I criticize his own expressed motivations and the context informed by characters like Danae.

Mycroft is actually surprisingly upfront about when hes being biased, or presenting things through his perspective, afterall that was what he did with the whole gender gimmick, he'd tell you a biological sex and then why he used a particular gendered pronoun.

But if you're essentially claiming that even then Mycroft lies and makes up a bunch of shit relevant to my criticism, then theres really little point engaging with this. Its like the "IM JUST KIDDING BRO!" meme, which brings us back to my core problem with how analysis of this book is engaged wirh and expressed. Its fundamentally broken. When the book can write explicitly shallow characters which a significant amount of time (and pages) is spent on, or when that character has some plot relevance that could be contrived. If one can simply claim "That was on purpose!" or "Mycroft lied" then it doesn't matter, you can never address the real thing, and without any real, nothing is grounded in anything that can matter because it can all be arbitrary.

I dont know I feel like were getting disconnected from what my actual criticism has been and youre engaging with an abstraction, so all my actual specific reasons and problems are being reduced to something that can very easily simply be affirmed or denied as perspective "But I think everything written matters! I dont think its arbitrary!" Yeah because you've forced me into this frame of reference where all my arguments and their nuances can be ignored and instead a dichotomy is pushed where I have to respond in a reduction thats essentially "Do you like the colour Blue or the colour Red? See your problem is that you dont understand that Blue matters more than Red, because the story said so". Its so convenient to simply be able to appeal to the author in literary analysis, seeing as the author necessarily has an authority I can't counter. Which is exactly the problem with appeal to authority, it tosses out logic, argument, and justification to focus on character and reputation. "X should know more because they are X".

>>25267391
>You missed that because you are reading for plot mechanics in a text that is structured like Pascal's Pensées as rewritten by a deconstructionist. You are bringing a Sandersonian expectation of transparent worldbuilding to a novel that is fundamentally about the opacity of motivated reasoning.

Hm. Maybe you can't see the appeal. Elaborate on "Opacity" of Motivated meaning. Because Opacity implies a range, or measurability of what is essentially clarity vs obscurity. And either of those words would be sufficient replacements on thag basis. But the fact that you used Opacity instead suggests you mean "Opaquenees" aka the fact of being obscured.
Especially because nothing in the book suggests enough nuance to care about a range of motivated reasoning, especially because clarity or a lack there of in regarded to motivated reasoning, is less prevalent to the meaning of the word, and rather its degree of motivated reasoning itself.

If people were clear about their motivated reasoning then it would become less effective, unless its already accepted as legitimate reasoning in which case it would simply be "reasoning". Motivated reasoning implies some sort of hidden motivation that comes before the reasoning to preference one reasoning over another for some goal, not for the sake of what reasoning is actually supposed to achieve: Truth and Understanding.

If you can elaborate in a way that doesnt come across as bullshitting with words Ill accept that youre not trolling and that theres still something worthwhile in Perhaps the Stars.

Why do people say grok instead of understand?
>because le heckin heinlein
Yes epic reference but it literally means to understand

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>>25269856
He honestly might be cooler than Conan

>>25272364
>>25272413
With that attitude towards word choice and usage, you may detest The Book of the New Sun if you read it.

>>25272445
I probably would. But conversation and reading is different. I can tolerate it if theres a point to the wordplay, if it doesn't feel like its wasting my time or feigning depth.

>>25272413
fewer letters, slightly cooler, sometimes improves the rhythm of a sentence

>>25272445
Should i read book of the new sun or sun eater?
I have both on my tbr but they seem to similar which one should i pick

>>25272449
the planet is called Urth

>>25272489
Pure hackery on the level of Westeros and Easteros

>>25272489
I don't really know what that means, but I feel like I've heard it before. Does it mean like a bowl or something?

>>25272044
Schweitzer is the most underrated author living today. The Mask of the Sorcerer might be in the top 5 greatest fantasies ever written.

>>25272480
Sun Eater is just a lower IQ modernized reddit version of BoTNS. So if you want a less complex read do that. BoTNS will be more confusing and more time consuming as you'll need to read it all at least twice to understand most of what's going on.

>>25272508
Okay when i get to that point in my tbr, i will pick botns instead of suneater

I love Gene Wolfe, and hate 99.9% of the slop pushed on this general, but the faux intellectualism with BOTNS is a blight amongst his readership.

>>25272525
>but the faux intellectualism with BOTNS is a blight amongst his readership.
It makes me aad :(

Ayy yooo
That anon that told me to read thrawn trilogy, thank you bro its fucking good atleast what i read of the first book

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So what the fuck was Horza's problem?

>>25271686
Empire of the Vampire if you don't mind the faggotry

>>25272562
okay so try this
Neil Gaiman wrote some messed up stuff and it later turned out that he was involved in some messed up stuff
Iain M Banks wrote some messed up stuffed and ...

>>25272525
You hate slop yet are against the pretentiousness of wolfe fans? Maybe we would have less slop then if people held higher intellectual standards.

>>25272646
>higher intellectual standards.
Which is the opposite of pretentiousness

>>25272635
So Banks was into shitdrowning/cannibalism?

>>25272678
Nope, it was merely bad writing. The first book was the weakest and that part never even fit the rest of the story - too much edgelord Wasp Factory cross-over imo.

>>25272364
>Or I just dont subscribe to or agree with the framing.
The text does not propose a perspective you can accept or decline, it states a fact about its narrator, and when Mycroft says outright, “I met Jehovah Mason too young. I was seventeen and vulnerable, and He destroyed me and made me into something else. I’m not objective enough to talk about Him, to you or anyone,” that declaration functions as a premise rather than an interpretive option, so rejecting it does not refute an argument but withdraws from it entirely, and my point is that your objection treats a mandatory textual given as if it were something you could opt out of.

>I’m not sure what sort of additional useful information “diegetic” could possibly have
I used “homodiegetic” because it encodes a constraint that “in‑universe narrator” does not capture: a homodiegetic narrator is a character inside the story, which means his knowledge is bounded by what a character in that world could know and his descriptions are the reports of a participant with limited information and specific biases, so when Mycroft tells you he cannot be objective, the Hive system as he describes it is his account rather than the world itself, whereas “in‑universe narrator” could still refer to an omniscient being who happens to exist inside the story, which is exactly the confusion that leads you to treat Mycroft’s descriptions as neutral exposition, and the precision of the term exists to block that mistake.

>The way diegetic is used is simply the same way people use “immersive” for a videogame
You are conflating two different categories: diegetic and non‑diegetic are properties of narrative elements, so a radio a character hears is diegetic whereas a film score only the audience hears is non‑diegetic, while immersion is a psychological state of the audience and not a property of the text at all, which means that when Mycroft describes the Hive system he is producing diegetic reports from a narrator who has just announced his own unreliability, and treating those reports as the author’s transparent map of the world is what generates the feeling of arbitrariness you report, and that is a categorical error, not a difference of interpretation.

>>25272366
>I use Madames own words as reference, not Mycrofts own judgements, when I criticize Mycroft I criticize the author, because it seems clear that Mycroft is a semi mouthpiece when he talks about history
I have already granted that Mycroft transmits author‑endorsed views on some historical claims, so your point about historical content has merit, but my argument concerns a different class of content, namely his psychological descriptions of other individuals, and when he calls Madame “obsessed with the 18th century” he substitutes a caricature for an ideology because his conceptual apparatus cannot represent what she actually believes, while the afterword’s endorsement of Utopian politics does not license the inference that Palmer endorses this psychological flattening because the two categories are distinct and your objection conflates them, and I am not using unreliability as a blanket excuse but drawing the exact line where Mycroft’s understanding fails.

>Mycroft is actually surprisingly upfront about when hes being biased
That admission supports my point rather than yours, because the ability to report a bias and the ability to detect that bias during its operation are separate capacities, and Mycroft can state his lack of objectivity without being able to see the bias while it shapes his narration, which is why his descriptions feel shallow to you, they are shallow, and the narrative provides alternative perspectives from Danaë, Carlyle, and Dominic that contradict his simplifications, so I am not claiming Mycroft is lying but showing you that his self‑reported limitation is real and that the book expects you to notice the gap.

>Its like the “IM JUST KIDDING BRO!” meme
You asked for a falsifiability criterion, and I will give you one: the unreliability defense would be falsified if either the narrative never supplied alternative perspectives on Mycroft’s claims or if it endorsed his simplifications as accurate, but neither condition holds because other characters contradict him directly and the text does not present “obsessed with the 18th century” as an adequate characterization, which means the defense is testable and not refuted by the evidence, and I am not appealing to the author’s authority but pointing to structural features of the book that you can verify yourself.

>>25272366
>I dont know I feel like were getting disconnected from what my actual criticism has been
Your core objection reduces to a single claim, that the Hive system’s rules lack grounding, and I have addressed that directly because the rules are built on one premise that I already stated in the earlier post you are responding to: the Hives are territorial only in the opt‑in sense, not in geography, so if you adopt that premise the rules cohere and if you reject it they appear arbitrary, but that appearance of arbitrariness is not an internal contradiction, it is the consequence of refusing the foundational premise the book provides, and I am not hiding behind the author but naming the premise and showing that the logic follows from it.

>>25272369
>Elaborate on “Opacity” of Motivated meaning. Because Opacity implies a range, or measurability of what is essentially clarity vs obscurity. And either of those words would be sufficient replacements on thag basis. But the fact that you used Opacity instead suggests you mean “Opaquenees” aka the fact of being obscured.
I am using “opacity” rather than “obscurity” because the two describe different things: opacity is a binary property, a material either transmits light or it does not, and motivated reasoning is binary in the same way because the motive that drives the reasoning is either accessible to the reasoner or it is not, and if it becomes accessible, the reasoning collapses since rationalization depends on the motive remaining unconscious, which is a structural condition, not a veil that can be lifted by gathering more data, so when Mycroft reports his bias and yet cannot perceive its operation while he narrates, producing a caricature of Madame that the reader can see through because the narrative supplies evidence Mycroft cannot access, that is structurally inaccessible motivation, and I am not decorating a banal point with jargon but identifying a specific cognitive architecture that the novel represents.

>If you can elaborate in a way that doesnt come across as bullshitting with words Ill accept that youre not trolling and that theres still something worthwhile in Perhaps the Stars.
The claim is simple: the withholding of transparent explanation is not a flaw to be excused, it is the subject the novel investigates, and I am not trolling, I am telling you what the book is about.

ChatGPT was a mistake.

Any sci fi stories deal with space being scary? Like cold, unknown, lifeless, mysterious etc. I don't want aliens or space demons or whatever.

>>25272562
I don't trust any book that has the name of the author larger than the title.

>>25272801
You might as well say photography was a mistake--every picture must be painted by hand or nothing. AI chatboxes are just tools that mix and match fragments of human thoughts and in doing so emulate human creativity. If the poeple who use them appear foolish, that foolishness has always been there, so at least we have found new and interesting ways to be idiotic.

>>25272961
Do you think your own brain isn't mixing and match fragments of human thoughts?
Do you even know what learning is fucking retard?

AI has turned me into a biological supremacist. Never really sympathized with androids in sci-fi stories honestly, if there were ever an actual robot rights movement I think it should be crushed violently. Of course machines don't deserve rights.

>>25272508
As much as Ruocchio wanks on about his infatuation with Wolfe, Sun Eater is markedly different from BotNS. It's a space opera through and through, with a wide mil-SF streak that BotNS doesn't have at all, not to mention planet-hopping escapades and no dying earth trappings Disquiet Gods Chapter 40 notwithstanding. Wolfe is not easily imitated and beyond Hadrian's subjectivity the bulk of the series more resembles Vorkosigan and the Culture than BotNS.

This general really has become the worst one the website. It's really quite a feat how shit /sffg/ usually is these days.

>>25271797
Are you at the part where they left the first city yet?
The story really picks up after they start moving north and pick up a new employer.

>>25272995
>This general really has become the worst one the website

Oh you sweet summer child. Never go to /vg/ or /sp/. The dedicated schizos there make this place look like a paradise.

>Model, Actress, Whatever by Kim Newman
>From the acclaimed critic and award-winning author of Anno Dracula comes a bitingly satirical story of superheroism, soap opera and alternative reality — for readers of Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible and George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards.
>When Chrissie Chambers (model actress whatever) discovers her soap opera character is about to be killed off, she finally stops dieting and discovers hitherto untapped supernatural abilities. Meanwhile, Chrissie’s aunt –former national heroine Lady Shade– goes missing. Afraid for Jasmine’s safety and itching to costume-up, Chrissie and her ghost-possessed best friend Loulee break into Devil’s Dyke, the asylum where Jasmine works as a therapist with the most dangerous cutthroats (supervillains) in Britain… only to find the inmates have taken over… Chrissie debuts successfully as a cloak (superheroine), but who will become the arch-nemesis of Lady Shade II?
>In Chrissie’s timeline, the Beatles didn’t split up and recorded a hallucinodelic album in 1972 – Never Mind (strictly, Never Mind the Beatles) – which literally changed the world. Set in an alternative 2020s London, this hugely entertaining, darkly humorous superhero tale is packed with Newman’s trademark wit, and comes with wickedly sharp edges.
Based bongs.

>>25273012
Especially in /agdg/

>>25272995
This is the fate of all generals and is why all generals should be banned, they attract mentally ill people with no other content in their lives who make shitting up the thread their primary goal in life, and they can do it the enitre time they're awake due to having neither jobs or social obligations.

>>25272961
The horse has every right to be upset when it sees people adopting cars left and right.
The issue with AI apologists is they think they're the carriage driver, not the one being replaced.

>>25273099
I can drive any carriage but I want the fucking carriage to drive itself most of the time and I also recognize the unavoidable fact that pretty much nobody else is competent to drive a carriage at all

>>25271690
I finished all eight books or however many and enjoyed them a lot
The prose style is pretty difficult, and not because it's deep, just because he didn't try to make it very good. But I found something about it very compelling so carried on.
It's difficult on audiobook because of the prose so I read it with my eyes
The first novel is strange because it was a compilation of short stories so the plot progression is strange but I think it gets better after the first one

>>25271690
Now I haven't read this but like all of this happens in the first 100 pages of LOTR aswell.

>>25270188
Sun Eater is fucking kino and right up your alley