So what are your favorite books?
and whats your favorite passage from one of them?
Mine are the discworld novels as well as the BasLag novels of China Mieville (perdedo street station, The scar, And Iron council)
I particularly love the variaty of things in Mieville's novels. There is so much there and most of it isn't explained. someithng is reffered to with no explination, you hear about this or that and in there world it's taken that they know what is being talked about. It just helps make the world feel real. We don't under stand about the Tesh war, or the mallarial kingdom, and there are so many differnt races that are mentioned in passing.
There is a passage form Iron council I like particularly.
In New Crobuzon being gay (Or a invert as they call them) is illegal. It's called Gross Depravity and can result in a prison sentence or even remaking in the punishment factories (which justices will malform a person, adding animal or human body parts to them or even steam powered machines)
Iron council is unique because one of the main chars is gay and inlove with anouther of the main chars. and the story follows there relationship and how Judeh uses the younger Cutter's feelings for him.
but the passage in the book that strikes me happens towards the end. There is a cival war in new crobuzon between the Parliament and Collective. The collective controls 3 neighborhoods in the city one of them is Howl's Barrow. It's the artists quarter and they are the least equiped to withstand the siege. They had the passion and the fighting spirit, but they had little in the way of magics, and industry that could be pressed into the fight. One of there most famous unit they feilded was called "The Pretty Brigade" Made up of the dolly boys, manwhores and inverts who had lived in the barrow. My favorite passage involves Curdin, A remade, telling of the final battle for Howl's Barrow.
Quote"It was something," Curdin said, "They lasted two days longer then they should have done. The militia came down over Barrow Bridge, and there was all the barricadistes, and out of nowhere come the Pretty Brigade. And they was magnificent." He shouted this suddenly and blinked. In the quiet after the word they heard bombs, at thebattle front.
"A liability? They were lions. They came in formation, firing, in there dresses," He laughed with a moment's genuine pleasure. "They kept up the attack, they lobbed there grenades. Run forward skirts flapping, all lipstick and blackpowder, sending militia to hell. Hadn't eaten anything but stale bread and rat meat for days, and they fought like gladiators in Shankell. It took the motorguns to cut them down"
I have three current favorite series of books.
Ender's Game / Ender's Shadow series' by Orson Scott Card
Of course, that's pretty much a staple for anyone who does anything within the sci-fi genre.
Appretice Adept by Piers Anthony
This was an incredible series which spanned 7 books. Piers Anthony is best known for the Xanth series, but this one took me by surprise as it mixes elements of both sci-fi and fantasy, and does it well. It's the story about a man, who is a popular horse racer, on an industrial world who finds a way into a magical world, in which he learns that he is actually a powerful mage, called an Adept. The series begins with the book "Split Infinity".
Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony
Yet another outstanding series which explores the lives of people who become physical incarnations of mythical and religious icons, such as Death, Fate, Time, Nature, War, and even Satan. It was an incredible series of books and also has a very unique view on catholicism. It begins with the book "On A Pale Horse".
Favorite book?
Les Meserables has been good so far. The discworld novels have also been very good. The Secret History by Donna Tartt was also excellent, and is in my all-time favorites.
I probably could not choose an absolute favorite.
Winesburg, Ohio is pretty much an awesome book IMO. Couldn't pick a favorite passage, or even a favorite story, but it's one of the most emotionally affecting books I've read.
His Dark Materials from Philp Pullman
The Wheel of Time from Robert Jordan (rip).
I don't really have any favorite quotes though.
You know I have to say Thomas Pynchon.
Any author who claims that Kilroy was actually a bandpass filter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Killroy.png) or that the V-2 rockets were guided by an Allied enlistedman's libido has got to be awesome.
David Weber's Honor Harrington series(which has become more of a universe than just a series lately, with 2 different sub-series set in it and the occasional anthology with stories form other authors) - It's Sci-Fi meets Horatio Hornblower, and apart from needed technology to make interstellar war possible(I.e. gravitic drives and hyperspace) he plays nice with Newton. Ships actually have to work with inertia(though the gravity-based drive they use allows acceleration at hundreds of Gs without turning the crew to paste... as long as the compensator holds), combat is relativistic, and the fanciest power source is fusion reactors, though fission reactors start to show back up after certain events in the third book. The main character in the mainline series(Honor herself) starts off as a newly-assigned captain to a light cruiser that's been essentially crippled by an admiral's pet tech project, and she has to somehow make it work. After the first success, the other ships in the wargames they were testing it in, it turns into a dismal failure as it was easily countered, so she and her ship gets "exiled" to a duty station considered a dumping ground, and it goes from there.
One of my favorite quotes(and not gonna tell the book, so it doesn't spoil as much :P):
Quote"Oops"
- Shannon Foraker, after covertly sending a sequence of instructions which causes 24 of StateSec's 8-megatonne warships to self-destruct with all hands (about 150,000 crew).
And one that sums up Honor's character:
Quote"My duty is not affected by what others may or may not do to discharge their own." - Honor Harrington, 'On Basilisk Station'
David Weber's Oath of Swords series is also pretty good, about a fantasy world and a reluctant paladin who is recruited -almost- against his will. Only 3 books in this one(compared to the above's 10+), and hasn't had any new stories in a while :/
A good quote for this one that explains what I mean by almost:
Quote"Do you worship your father, Bahzell?" The hradani gawked at him for a moment, then snorted derisively at the very thought, and Tomanâk smiled again. "Of course you don't, but you do follow him. You share his beliefs and values and act accordingly. Well, I ask no more of you than that."
"Aye, with you telling me what to be thinking and doing!"
"No, with your own heart and mind telling you what to think and do. Puppets are useless, Bahzell, and if I simply commanded and you simply obeyed, then a puppet would be all you were. I am the god and patron of warriors, Bahzell Bahnakson. Loyalty, yes, as you would give any captain—that much I ask of you. But not unthinking worship. Not the surrender of your will to mine. Subservience is what the Dark Gods crave, for warriors who never question will do terrible things and claim they were 'only following orders.' If I stripped your will from you, you would become no more than a slave.
Weber also wrote a short series which has recently been collected into one omnibus called Empire from the Ashes, where the main character discovers humans didn't exactly originate form earth(and not in any Scientology way), but were the mutinous crew of a ship from an older galactic empire, and he gets drafted into becoming the new captain of the ancient ship to end the mutiny. Needless to say from the title, that's not all that happens.
Mercedes Lackey's Elves on the Road and Bedlam Bard groups of novels are also among my favorites. They're mostly set in modern day, with Sidhe and modern magic still around, just not usable by most or known about by the masses, and the Sidhe like it that way. The first group I mentioned tends to focus on a bunch of the elves who participate in a racing organization(with vehicles made from non-ferrous alloys for obvious reasons) and a couple human mages as well who associate with them. The second is about a bard who is awakened by his magic by another group of elves, and has to come to terms wiht his musical/magical power and past, and find his future. They're set in the same universe though. and characters have popped up in both, like Tannim, one of the racer mages and FX, a kitsune in the oriental trickster fox spirit sense.
A couple choice quotes:
Quote"Forget the Force. Trust in the gauge spread." -- Dottie, 'Born to Run'
"Could you manage subtlety, do you suppose?"
"No." -- Tannim and Chinthliss, 'Chrome Circle'
I also second both the Piers Anthony series mentioned earlier, very good reads. He also wrote another series I liked, the Virtual Mode series, which involves using a "chip" to make a parallel universe that cuts across a series of universes like a plane through other planes, anchored by 5 different endpoint holders, who are the only ones who can travel along it, and each one is searching for something. Each book loses one endpoint and gains a new one, sending the story in different directions. I think it had 5 books as I recall, I only own the first one so far.
I also have to give mention to the Lensman series by EE Doc Smith. Classic pulp from the 40s and 50s, but he was one of the early writers that helped lay the stage, and it makes a great read. Sometimes I wish we really did have Lensmen now, and anyone who reads the second half of the first book(Triplanetary) and has been watching American politics at all would understand why.
The Sworddancer books by Jennifer Roberson are also great. It's a 7 book series about a barbarian-ish sworddancer from the southern desert who is hired by a northern swordsinger to find her bother who had been sold into slavery. Of course, it doesn't end there, and Sandtiger and Delilah end up traveling the entire continent and even over the sea, facing their pasts and finding their future. There is a bit of magic, but no wizards and fireballs as such, mostly just magic in certain weapons. Mostly. It's also mostly told from Sandtiger's perspective, but both make great characters.
Harry Potter roxx0rz my boxx0rz!
There, somebody said it, now we can move on.
:3
The Harry Potter series is great, but I love the Silverwing series by Kenneth Oppel, and the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Lovely books. Amy Tan's writing really influenced my own in some respects, but really, in order to gain inspiration I normally just need a jump-off point, after which I end up going nuts. Having an overactive imagination does have its benefits.
I want to read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
~Keaton the Black Jackal
EDIT: Dear lord, I forgot to add Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. WTF is wrong with me? D: It was another inspirational source for one of my more sociopathic characters.
Quote from: Keaton the Black Jackal on March 05, 2008, 01:23:20 PM
I want to read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
She's a book burner! Burn her! Burn her!
Quote from: llearch n'n'daCorna on March 05, 2008, 02:52:37 PM
Quote from: Keaton the Black Jackal on March 05, 2008, 01:23:20 PM
I want to read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
She's a book burner! Burn her! Burn her!
Wait, isn't it usually the other way around?
At least, in
that novel... :P
Well... she's lighter than a duck, right?
Oh, wait. Wrong thread...
Favorite book? *glances at his mini library* That is actually hard for me to decide. Pretty much anything written by Terry Brook, Anne McCaffery, and Mercedes Lackey though are at least near the top.
I'm not sure I have an absolute favourite, but I've just finished reading Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks. The protagonist, Lady Sharrow, actually reminds me of Keaton's character in a way, a somewhat ruthless woman who is twisted into a fighter by misfortune.
The story is set in a far world known as Golter, a few years before the decamillenium. The Huhnz Church has decreed that the Messiah cannot be born unless Sharrow, the last of her bloodline has been sacrificed, or the Church has returned to it, the last Lazy Gun, a fabulous weapon from an earlier high-tech age. (Gabriel would probably like this too, as a central theme is the cyclic civilisation - 'Antiquities' refers, not to old junk, but prized artifacts that their civilisation has forgotten how to construct, which can sometimes be more intelligent than their owners.)
My absolute favourite part of the novel is near the end when Sharrow discovers what the Crownstar - the most precious jewel in the system, long believed lost - actually is. But sadly that would spoil a lot of things and it doesn't quite have the impact unless you've read the rest of it first. So instead, I present an abridged description of the Lazy Guns:
You looked through the sight, zoomed in until the target you had selected just filled your vision, and then you pressed the trigger. The Lazy Gun did the rest instantaneously.
But you had no idea whatsoever exactly what was going to happen next.
If you had aimed at a person, a spear might suddenly materialise and pierce them through their chest, or some snake's spit-fang might graze their neck, or a ship's anchor appear falling above them, crushing them, or two enormous switch-electrodes would briefly appear on either side of the hapless target and vapourise him or her.
If you had aimed at something slightly larger, like a house or a tank, then it might implode, explode, collapse in a pile of dust, be struck by a section of tidal wave or a lava flow, be turned inside out or just disappear entirely, with or without a bang.
The braver physicists - those who didn't try to deny the existence of Lazy Guns altogether - ventured that the weapons somehow accessed different dimensions; they monitored other continua and dipped into one to pluck out their chosen method of destruction and transfer it to this universe, where it carried out its destructive task then promptly disappeared, only its effects remaining. Or they created what they desired to create from the ground-state of quantum fluctuations that invested the fabric of space. Or that they were time machines.
Any one of these possibilities was so mind-boggling in its implication and ramifications - provided that one could understand or ever harness the technology involved - that the fact a Lazy Gun was light yet massy and weighed exactly three times as much turned upside-down as it did the right way up, was almost trivial by comparison.
Unfortunately - for the cause of scientific advancement - when a Lazy Gun felt it was being interfered with it destroyed itself; what appeared to be a matter/antimatter reaction took place, turning the parts of the gun not actually annihilated into plasma and causing a blast of the sort normally associated with a medium-yield fission device.
One - its lenses staring down a pair of electron microscopes - had created a series of nano-bang matricial holes in the World Court's Anifrast Institute of Technology before whatever bizarre event had occurred that led to the Institute and all it contained (except for the twenty-three gently-radiating holes) and a precise circle of land approximately thirteen hundred metres in diameter disappearing to be replaced by an attractive, perfectly hemispherical salt-water lake stocked with a variety of polar-oceanic plankton, fish and mammals.
That gun sounds like an amusing little toy.
It must operate by manipulation of string resonance, opening micro-wormholes between the 11 dimensions...
That's what my fortune cookie said, anyway. :B
Sounds something like an Improbability Generator...
Quote from: LionHeart on March 06, 2008, 04:30:16 AM
Sounds something like an Improbability Generator...
It's actually quite a dark book, but some of it is extremely funny.
Quote from: Tapewolf on March 05, 2008, 03:42:25 PM
I'm not sure I have an absolute favourite, but I've just finished reading Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks. The protagonist, Lady Sharrow, actually reminds me of Keaton's character in a way, a somewhat ruthless woman who is twisted into a fighter by misfortune.
Hehe, now I have to read that book. >:3
At least, before my Monty Python-esque trial for book-burning witchcraft ends and I'm burned at the stake. I should probably be burned for stealing books as well, since I nicked a copy of Fahrenheit 451 from the school pseudo-library and am currently reading it. Everybody steals from that anyway.
~Keaton the Black Jackal
I hate reading. Reading's GAY.
Yeah, Oxford isn't much better...
Reading is not gay, it simply prefers to spend time with fellow hobbies.
for anyone with a scifi craving i reccomend some heavy books by a man named larry niven
Lucifer's hammer- the end of the world happens about halfway through, or rather, the end of civilization. its incredible the level of detail given to the sequence of events that would occur if just one thing sets it all off. its set in the early 80s, so it may seem a little dated
ringworld- the halo games took the idea coined in this book, later reffered to as a 'niven ring'. it illustrates a distant future where humans coexist with aliens superior to man, but have suddenly discovered there may be something even more powerful, with the ability to move entire solar systems. the extra twist has a lot to do with human evolution, playing god, and what it means to be a puppet to luck.
The patchwork girl- a murder mystery set on the moon, and deals with the heavy subject of dismantling criminals for their organs. just as powerful and thrilling as 'normal' murder mystery greats.
a gift from earth- by far one of the creepiest scifi stories ive ever read, also deals with organ banks, but as a form of rulership. the setting is a planet far from earth, whose only contact is regular drop offs of new technology from earth. the planet itself is largely uninhabitable except one plateau the size of California. the crew that flew the ship to colonize the planet declared themselves rulers of the colonists they took there, and have taken apart any who disagree to extend their own life. in addition to science this book also features much about politics and psychology.
Quote from: Brunhidden on March 17, 2008, 09:52:57 PM
a gift from earth- by far one of the creepiest scifi stories ive ever read, also deals with organ banks, but as a form of rulership.
Yes. How I forgot this one while trying to compose a list of favourites, I do not know. It is absolutely awesome.
Here's a clip which I quoted earlier in a discussion about invisibility. One of the fascinating threads of the story is when one of the characters realises that people don't always see him.
[Lydia, Hood, Laney, Kane and Keller are holed up in an empty house planning their next move. Lydia is in the kitchen, the others are in the sitting room.]
Nobody was looking at him.
Laney was staring into the artificial fire; Hood was looking at Laney; Harry Kane was in his Thinker position. None of them were really seeing anything, at least not anything there in the room. Each wore an abstracted look.
"One problem," Harry Kane said dreamily. "How the blazes are we going to free the rest of us, when only four of us escaped?" He glanced around at his inattentive audience, then went back to contemplating his navel from the inside.
Matt felt the hair stir on his head. Harry Kane had looked right at him, but he certainly hadn't seen Matt Keller. And there was something very peculiar about his eyes.
Like a man in a wax museum, Matt bent to look into Harry Kane's eyes.
Harry jumped as if he'd been shot. "Where the blazes did you come from?" He stared as if Matt had dropped from the ceiling. Then he said, "Umm... Oh! You did it."
There wasn't a doubt of it. Matt nodded. "You all suddenly lost interest in me."
--A Gift From Earth, Larry Niven. Chapter 8 - Polly's Eyes
On another note, I'll do an overview of 'Fire Upon The Deep' sometime because that is also one of my favourites.
Anything from Lovecraft is pure gold. But I believe it goes without saying, really.
Isaac Asimov has many great ideas, but he's not much of a story teller.
What I'd recommend to anyone is Hyperion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_%28novel%29) by Dan Simmons. Sci-fi horror, with quite believable description of the future. Very well written and very good plot. The sequels are also quite good.
I love too many books to truly play favorites, but in my thinking, a book can be classified as "favorite" if you've read it so many times, you can flip to any section in the book and never need to glance at the beginning.
The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern (William Goldman) comes to mind first. Thomas Harris's novels, particularly Silence of the Lambs, are all favorites of mine. A few others include Beowulf (you tell me the author), Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk), My Sister's Keeper (Jodi Picoult), Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Othello, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare) and Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut).
My reading-currently list is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King, and Peter Pan by Sir J.M. Barrie. Not in that order, though. I book-jump when I'm reading several things.
This somewhat-abridged passage is from the start of Chapter 9 of Silence of the Lambs. Those who know the movie will recognize it. It takes place just after Clarice had gone into a storage garage looking for the answer to a riddle Dr. Hannibal Lecter gave her about the Buffalo Bill case. She found it, alright – a head in a jar. She has been rained on, depicted as a cameraman-threatening rookie on live TV, and scared half to death...and yet she still goes to talk with Lecter.
QuoteThe odors of the violent ward seemed more intense in the semidarkness. A TV set playing without sound in the corridor threw Starling's shadow on the bars of Dr. Lecter's cage.
She could not see into the dark behind the bars, but she didn't ask the orderly to turn up the lights from his station. The whole ward would light at once and she knew the Baltimore County police had had the lights full on for hours while they shouted questions at Lecter. He had refused to speak, but responded by folding for them an origami chicken that pecked when the tail was manipulated up and down. The senior officer, furious, had crushed the chicken in the lobby ashtray as he gestured for Starling to go in.
"Dr. Lecter?" ...
Starling knew Lecter was watching her from the darkness. Two minutes passed. Her legs and back ached from her struggle with the garage door, and her clothes were damp. She sat on her coat on the floor, well back from the bars, her feet tucked under her, and lifted her wet, bedraggled hair over her collar to get it off her neck.
Behind her on the TV screen, an evangelist waved his arms.
"Dr. Lecter, we both know what this is. They think you'll talk to me."
Silence. Down the hall, someone whistled "Over the Sea to Skye."
After five minutes, she said, "It was strange going in there. Sometime I'd like to talk to you about it."
Starling jumped when the food carrier rolled out of Lecter's cell. There was a clean, folded towel in the tray. She hadn't heard him move.
She looked at it and, with a sense of falling, took it and toweled her hair. "Thanks," she said.
Arthur C. Clarke died.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke
i am a rather avid fan of Mercedes Lackey.
stories of magic that have characters with problems we see today, but without the obvious comparisons and horribly pitiful puns.
and i wanna hug a gryphon before i die :3
Quote from: Black_angel on March 18, 2008, 04:57:19 PM
The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern (William Goldman) comes to mind first.
ya know, ive looked for that one and never found it
however i HAVE found and read 'the last unicorn' by peter s beagle, its a lot darker and far more gritty then the movie, and an excellent read
Quote from: Brunhidden on March 27, 2008, 02:58:36 PM
ya know, ive looked for that one and never found it
Really? I have a couple copies of it. Want me to see about posting one across?
I just finished Terry pratchetts Thud and Neil Giman's American gods. Both goof books
thud had a great story, and some realy funny scenes.
And American Gods was a truely interesting read I'll admit the new and old gods were interesting to see.
Currently I'm a little over 100s page into Max Brooks' World War Z,
It's an amazing read. the story of a war from start to finish told from interviews with survivours all over the world.
so far I think Sharon's story is the most compelling. Sharon is a suvivior housed in a center for Feral children. folks who were kids when the walking plague broke out. who some how had survived when no one else had, children found wandering in the ruins.
Although the battle of yonkers, and the manhattan riots were interesting for other reasons.
if you at all enjoy the works of Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett you should try the 'you've got peanut butter on my herring' thing and read 'good omens' which they did together
the cover of the book kind of says it all "the end of the world has never been funnier", its essentially the story of the Antichrist gone wrong, the four horsemen (actually bikers, but one of them retired and has a replacement) of the apocalypse, the remnants of the very old, powerful, and prestigious witch hunters, and of course an angel and demon who could almost be called 'friends' in a very strange and professional way
in a weird way it explains quite a lot about religion and can aid people in finding a deeper understanding of the universe, and lets you laugh on the way
LOL
I've read Good Omens several times now
It's a great read just like you said
I've never had to read fiction to understand religion.
I kinda avoid fiction that goes too much into being allegorical. It tends to annoy me as I have no choice but to pick it apart and/or get furious at humanity for being full of fail all the time (And I am obviously the ultimate life-form, ever forced to bear witness to the scum-beings below the ivory tower upon which I stand! >:3 ). When I read fiction, I don't want to be reminded of how much the real world sucks because humans can't help but be stupid.
If I want analysis of socio-political-religious issues, I'll read something analytical and factual. Fiction is imperfect at representing the dynamics as it presents a non-existant scenario imagined by the author.
That's why I like "Lord of the Rings". It's totally its own world, free from blatant allegory and strained symbolism. It's what I term 'pure fiction'.
llearch assures me that 18 days is not too late, so as promised, here is my overview of 'A Fire Upon The Deep' by Vernor Vinge (1992).
It's set about 32'000 years in the future, and it turns out that the galaxy is split into different layers, with different capabilities. Towards the core, intelligence itself stops working. Machinery does not work so well. In the Slow Zone, where we are, intelligence cannot exceed roughly human level, and faster-than-light technology is impossible.
Further out in the Beyond, intelligence (biological and artificial) can exceed human standards and FTL travel and communications become possible. Much of the novel revolves around usenet groups consisting of members of many different races throughout the Beyond (FTL bandwidth is very expensive so text, not video, is the main mode of communication).
Finally, in the Transcend, software alone can be of superhuman complexity, and mind-machine integration works so well that it is possible for rogue data packets to infect someone's mind. It is also possible for an entire civilisation to coalesce into a single, godlike entity referred to as a Transcendant Power. (The study of these is referred to as 'Applied Theology')
There are two main threads to Fire, the catastrophic results when a colony of human programmer-archaeologists discover a 5-billion-year-old archive and unwittingly boot up a malign Power known as The Blight, and the plight of two children fleeing the disaster, who wind up stranded on a medieval-era planet populated solely by telepathic dog-like creatures who travel in packs and are only sentient in groups of four or more.
Vernor Vinge was a tenured professor of computer science and mathematics at San Diego University until he retired to focus entirely on writing. One of his earlier (1981) works was True Names, a novella with an eerie resemblance to Second Life. There is a prequel called A Deepness in the Sky which is not bad, although not quite on par with Fire in my opinion. Apparently he is working on a sequel.
Now, it's hard to do this justice without including the entire prologue. This is about a third of it. The scenario is that the humans from Straumli Realm have discovered a lost archive in the low Transcend and are excavating it. They have set up a base known as the 'High Lab' and took precautions to try and avoid triggering anything more complex than they could understand, but in vain:
...the local net at the High Lab had transcended -- almost without the humans realizing. The processes that circulated through its nodes were complex, beyond anything that could live on the computers the humans had brought. Those feeble devices were now simply front ends to the devices the recipes suggested.
Days passed. For the evil that was growing in the new machines, each hour was longer than all the time before. Now the newborn was less than an hour from its great flowering, its safe spread across interstellar spaces. The local humans could be dispensed with soon. Even now they were an inconvenience, though an amusing one. Some of them actually thought to escape. For days, they had been refitting the frigate -- behind a a mask of transparent lies. None of them guessed the honor that had fallen upon them, that they had changed the future of a thousand million star systems.
The hours came to minutes, the minutes to seconds. And now each second was as long as all the time before. The flowering was so close now, so close. The dominion of five billion years before would be regained, and this time held. Only one thing was missing. In the archive, deep in the recipes, there should have been a little bit more, something it had learned in its fall, or something left by its enemies.
Outside, the container ship and the frigate lifted from the landing field, rising on silent agravs above the plains of gray on gray, of ruins five billion years old. Almost half of the humans were aboard those craft. Their escape attempt had been humored till now: it was not quite time for the flowering, and the humans were still of some use.
Below the level of supreme consciousness, its paranoid inclinations rampaged through the humans' databases. Checking, just to be sure. The humans' oldest local network used light speed connections. Thousands of microseconds were spent (wasted) bouncing around it, sorting the trivia, finally spotting one incredible item: Inventory: quantum data container, quantity (1) : loaded to the frigate one hundred hours before! And all the newborn's attention turned upon the fleeing vessels.
An orderly flowering was out of the question now, and so there was no more need for the humans left in the Lab. The change was small for all its cosmic significance. For the humans remaining aground, a moment of horror, staring at their displays, realizing that all their fears were true (not realizing how much worse than true).
Five seconds, ten seconds, more change than ten thousand years of a human civilization. A billion trillion constructions, mold curling out from every wall, rebuilding what had been merely superhuman. This was as powerful as a proper flowering, though not quite so finely tuned.
The frigate switched to rocket drive, blasting heedless away from the wallowing freighter. Somehow, these microbes knew they were rescuing more than themselves. The warship had the best navigation computers that little minds could make. But it would be another three seconds before it could make its first ultradrive hop.
The new Power had no weapons on the ground, nothing but a comm laser.
No acknowledgment. The humans knew what communication would bring. The laser light flickered here and there across the hull, searching, probing. One more second and the frigate would attain interstellar safety.
The laser flickered on a failure sensor, a sensor that reported critical changes in one of the ultradrive spines. Its interrupts could not be ignored if the star jump were to succeed. Interrupt honored. Interrupt handler running, looking out, receiving more light from the laser far below.... a backdoor into the ship's code, installed when the newborn had subverted the humans' groundside equipment....
.... and the Power was aboard, with milliseconds to spare. Its agents -- not even human equivalent on this primitive hardware -- raced through the ship's automation, shutting down, aborting. There would be no jump. Yet the ultradrive was already committed. Cameras in the ship's bridge showed widening of eyes, the beginning of a scream. The humans knew, to the extent that horror can live in a fraction of a second.
So slow and so fast. A fraction of a second. The fire spread out from the heart of the frigate, taking both peril and possibility. What was lost might have made the newborn still more powerful... but more likely was deadly poison.
Two hundred thousand kilometers away, the clumsy container vessel made its own ultradrive jump and vanished from sight. The newborn scarcely noticed. So a few humans had escaped; the universe was welcome to them.
Suspicion. The newborn should not have been so fooled by mere humans. The newborn convulsed into self-inspection and panic. Yes, there were blindspots, carefully installed from the beginning, and not by the humans. Two had been born here. Itself ... and the poison, the reason for its fall of old. The newborn inspected itself as never before, knowing now just what to seek. Destroying, purifying, rechecking, searching for copies of the poison, and destroying again. Relief. Defeat had been so close, but now ...
The newborn looked across the stars, planning. This time things will be different.
reading Henderson the Rain King and Darkness at Noon now, both are rly good
If the topic is revived, I highly recommend The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. First novel, and doesn't really show it. Very simply an excellent book. Best 700 pages I've read in some time. Easily in my list of favorite books, up there with Lord of the Rings and The Secret History.
I reccomend for anyone with a liking of zombies or end of the world scenerios the novel 'World War Z- the oral history of the zombie war'
Ever heard of the zombie survival handbook? same author, after the sucess of the handbook he wrote this novel as a kind of story about how the book came to be, although the handbook is almost never mentioned other then twice in passing.
What really gets me is the way its told, completely in first person. the 'author' is a survivor of the zombie war who was set the task of recording the data of survivors to make an accurate historical account of the war, and was told to remove the 'human element' in preference for hard facts and numbers. the 'author' then gets fed up and writes this book of all his interviews, to record that human element- as such the whole book is interviews with survivors, taken out of order so that the subject of each interview follows the chronological order of the war itself and occasionally goes back to the same person two or three times as their interview covers the portion of the war currently the focus of the book.
only rarely do you see anything that the 'author' himself said, so it mostly sounds like the monologue of each survivor as questions are asked.
the book is chilling, it sounds like it could happen next month or in three years- everything that happens you have the distinct feeling that its exactly how the world would react to what happens.
truly a must read, but a slight caution as most of the time ive read it i have about two weeks of paranoia whenever i drive at night and have a compulsion to carry a weapon in the trunk of my car.
I am a fan of John Grisham, I think I own all but four or five of his books. I am also really into the Fantasy Realms right now. I really like how R.A Salvatore writes - that and I like Drizzt. :ipod
finished Henderson the Rain King everyone please buy it it is awesome
thanks in advance
Hmm, I can't pick a favorite. Anything by Christopher Pike or R. L. Stine I guess. (Shut up, it's not scary, but it's interesting, and I used to read Goosebumps (By R. L. Stine) all the time when I was a youngin'.)
Right now I'm reading [Skulduggery Pleasant.] (http://skulduggerypleasant.com/us/book/sp.htm) (Don't let Boog read my post. guys. Quick, Bill, ban him!) And earlier, I read [The Lightning Thief and The Sea of Monsters] (http://www.rickriordan.com/children.htm) (They're in order on the page. Newer on top, the first book is on the bottom.)
Quote from: bill on April 22, 2008, 08:49:24 PM
finished Henderson the Rain King everyone please buy it it is awesome
Pfft. Bill, you can't read. Silly.
fantasy isn't a real genre all of you should be ashamed
Quote from: bill on April 22, 2008, 09:15:25 PM
fantasy isn't a real genre all of you should be ashamed
:cry I feel like such a fool.
~Keaton the Black Jackal
also if you said you read Finnigan's Wake you are lying
nobody has read Finnigan's Wake
Quote from: Keaton the Black Jackal on April 22, 2008, 09:25:37 PM:cry I feel like such a fool.
~Keaton the Black Jackal
Don't listen to him, he thinks
Nascar is cool.
Quote from: bill on April 22, 2008, 09:30:12 PM
also if you said you read Finnigan's Wake you are lying
nobody has read Finnigan's Wake
whats finnigans wake bill
i dont know what it is because ive never read it or heard of it
Quote from: bill on April 22, 2008, 09:15:25 PM
fantasy isn't a real genre all of you should be ashamed
Hmmm... Sorry, I stopped being ashamed of myself a long time ago. I figured that if no one was going to like me, then I would have to like me.
Oh ya. Nothing is wrong with fantasy. Just because I read fantasy doesn't mean I don't read other books too.
I also like to read art books and history books, but right now I'm enjoying fantasy.
Hey, Bill - anyone tell you that DMFA is fantasy?
He knows DMFA is fantasy. He doesn't read it. He only came here for friends because everyone he knows IRL (In real life) thinks he's dumb and ugly.
(He DOES read it. He is a furry in denial. Do not believe his lies.)
Quote from: Dak on April 22, 2008, 09:33:24 PM
Quote from: Keaton the Black Jackal on April 22, 2008, 09:25:37 PM:cry I feel like such a fool.
~Keaton the Black Jackal
Don't listen to him, he thinks Nascar is cool.
You're right; I feel much better now.
By the way, folks, Fahrenheit 451 is a bitchin' book. READ IT.
~Keaton the Black Jackal
Quote from: Keaton the Black Jackal on April 23, 2008, 08:09:05 AM
By the way, folks, Fahrenheit 451 is a bitchin' book. READ IT.
I found it rather depressing. Memorable, and definitely worth reading, but depressing...
Quote from: Tapewolf on April 23, 2008, 08:24:04 AM
Quote from: Keaton the Black Jackal on April 23, 2008, 08:09:05 AM
By the way, folks, Fahrenheit 451 is a bitchin' book. READ IT.
I found it rather depressing. Memorable, and definitely worth reading, but depressing...
I found Animal Farm and 1984 just as depressing - mostly because I could see so much of the world as it stands now using them as textbooks for how to deal with people...
Animal Farm is the best Orwell book
Currently reading Darkness at Noonby Arthur Koestler, and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy.
Quote from: llearch n'n'daCorna on April 23, 2008, 08:34:53 AM
Quote from: Tapewolf on April 23, 2008, 08:24:04 AM
Quote from: Keaton the Black Jackal on April 23, 2008, 08:09:05 AM
By the way, folks, Fahrenheit 451 is a bitchin' book. READ IT.
I found it rather depressing. Memorable, and definitely worth reading, but depressing...
I found Animal Farm and 1984 just as depressing - mostly because I could see so much of the world as it stands now using them as textbooks for how to deal with people...
I read all three of those books in high school, and I agree - they
are depressing.
On a more cheerful note: Anne McCaffrey, and Mercedes Lackey. Two very good authors in the sci-fi/fantasy realm.
Speaking of Mercedes Lackey:
The Fairy Godmother. Set in a land that runs on narrative causality (sort of), a young girl has a life very much like that of Cinderella, until it turns out that the Prince is, as the blurb says, "completely inappropriate". Then she meets a Fairy Godmother, and what happens after
that... read the book and find out.
Christopher Stasheff is amusing me at present.
Mind you, anyone looking at my reading list will have some idea of that. ;-]
Quote from: Tapewolf on April 19, 2008, 11:35:57 AM
llearch assures me that 18 days is not too late, so as promised, here is my overview of 'A Fire Upon The Deep' by Vernor Vinge (1992).
I'll put in another vote for
A Fire Upon the Deep. It was high enough on my favourites list that one of my longtime forum nicks was taken from one of the characters in the novel. It's great space opera that also offers an interesting take on post-Singularity civilization.
Quote from: yakanaj on April 22, 2008, 01:41:09 AM
I am also really into the Fantasy Realms right now. I really like how R.A Salvatore writes - that and I like Drizzt. :ipod
If you're a Forgotten Realms fan, I'd recommend Elaine Cunningham's works. Her writing has a certain flare that stands out among the rest of the game fiction. I like Troy Denning as well, though he's already much better known.
One guy who doesn't seem to be on enough people's reading lists is Robert J Sawyer. Brilliant hard SF author. He weaves clever plots around issues that delve deep into human psychology and philosophy--a bit more cerebral read than Michael Crichton. He also likes to set his books in Canada, which I think is a nice touch. I find he doesn't get much shelf space in bookstores south of the border, though, despite a long string of Hugo/Nebula/etc. awards and nominations.
Quote from: Dak on April 22, 2008, 09:14:56 PM
Hmm, I can't pick a favorite. Anything by Christopher Pike or R. L. Stine I guess. (Shut up, it's not scary, but it's interesting, and I used to read Goosebumps (By R. L. Stine) all the time when I was a youngin'.)
Right now I'm reading [Skulduggery Pleasant.] (http://skulduggerypleasant.com/us/book/sp.htm) (Don't let Boog read my post. guys. Quick, Bill, ban him!) And earlier, I read [The Lightning Thief and The Sea of Monsters] (http://www.rickriordan.com/children.htm) (They're in order on the page. Newer on top, the first book is on the bottom.)
Quote from: bill on April 22, 2008, 08:49:24 PM
finished Henderson the Rain King everyone please buy it it is awesome
Pfft. Bill, you can't read. Silly.
if you like stein try reading bruce collieve, at least i think thats how his name goes.... did a lot of kids horror/scifi books like 'my teacher is an alien' and several collections like 'bruce collieves book of monsters' which i thoroughly enjoyed.
Quote from: Keaton the Black Jackal on April 22, 2008, 09:25:37 PM
Quote from: bill on April 22, 2008, 09:15:25 PM
fantasy isn't a real genre all of you should be ashamed
:cry I feel like such a fool.
~Keaton the Black Jackal
half the time i go into bookstores i fly into a rant at how they put 'star trek' books under fantasy and 'dragonlance' under science fiction and then put LOTR under childrens.
about half the time i do that the bookstore owner joins me.
Quote from: Tapewolf on April 23, 2008, 08:24:04 AM
Quote from: Keaton the Black Jackal on April 23, 2008, 08:09:05 AM
By the way, folks, Fahrenheit 451 is a bitchin' book. READ IT.
I found it rather depressing. Memorable, and definitely worth reading, but depressing...
Heh, true. It is somewhat depressing, but... Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors because of the book. My best friend in real life hated that book, though, after he read it for school, and he won't stop making fun of me for loving it. :<
Josh, if you're reading this right now, YOU'RE A BIG POOP-HEAD.
~Keaton the Black Jackal
Purchased Deliverance by James Dickey. I keep hearing how this is one of the best books of the 20th century, awesome, etc, so I'll check it out.
Quote from: Dak on April 22, 2008, 09:14:56 PM
And earlier, I read [The Lightning Thief and The Sea of Monsters] (http://www.rickriordan.com/children.htm) (They're in order on the page. Newer on top, the first book is on the bottom.)
OOH I've read those! I wanna read the third one, but I've been real busy and forgotten to buy it...
I also like the Warriors series by Erin Hunter. Yeah, the cat books. They're way better than you'd assume, though my little brother tells me the first series is better than the newer ones.