Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 5:48 AM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: On 30-Mar-12 7:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: Really? De gustibus and so on, because I don't feel that way. And on the topic of Priest, I thought _The Affirmation_ was awe-inspiringly good, but haven't been able to finish anything else of his. His most recent one The Islanders is excellent. Though his most weird book is the one called Inverted World . ashok
Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
Thejaswi Udupa [30/03/12 09:45 +0530]: Here's hundred rupees that says Priest hates the Baen school of SF. Have we lived and fought in vain, and so on. Most Baen books are ordinary hackneyed pulp fiction cliches, but SET IN SPACE!![more exclamation marks] Eh dude, that's way too much of a generalization of baen. Poul Anderson CJ Cherryh L Sprague deCamp John Ringo Niven and Pournelle add those to the usual lois mcmaster bujold, keith laumer (who was genuinely readable) srs
[silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
After this very epic Christopher Priest rant that udupa pointed me to elsewhere .. http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk/journal/1077/hull-0-scunthorpe-3/ Charlie Stross' twitter feed has a cute puppy display pic and there are tshirts too. https://twitter.com/#!/cstross/status/185353259169488897 Sad / funny thing is I don't quite disagree with Priest - at least because he appears to share my taste for old style SF .. Poul Anderson, Frederick Pohl, various of the older Baen authors etc, and the few bits of Stross I've skimmed through aren't as much to my taste as they probably should be. -- Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.li...@gmail.com)
Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
On 30-Mar-12 7:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: After this very epic Christopher Priest rant that udupa pointed me to elsewhere .. http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk/journal/1077/hull-0-scunthorpe-3/ I found this amusing, more for the reaction on twitter and the SF blogosphere than the rant itself, which, of course, he is perfectly entitled to. But as one person commented on twitter, I can see the smoke from the burning bridges from 5000 miles away. Charlie Stross' twitter feed has a cute puppy display pic and there are tshirts too. https://twitter.com/#!/cstross/status/185353259169488897 As I was saying in conversation with another listmember, Stross' reaction to this whole thing is excellent. I love the t-shirt idea. To quote him on this topic, I'm determined not to throw stones. Because in 20 years, I'll probably be in his shoes wrt. someone else. Sad / funny thing is I don't quite disagree with Priest - at least because he appears to share my taste for old style SF .. Poul Anderson, Frederick Pohl, various of the older Baen authors etc, and the few bits of Stross I've skimmed through aren't as much to my taste as they probably should be. Really? De gustibus and so on, because I don't feel that way. And on the topic of Priest, I thought _The Affirmation_ was awe-inspiringly good, but haven't been able to finish anything else of his. Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
Thank you. I like Priest's rant a lot. I agree with him about Mieville Stross; the others I'm mostly not familiar with. But the citations he gives as evidence of bad writing are convincing to me, and his literary values seem legitimate to me, and much like my own. In particular, I've never been able to finish a book by Stross; they do exude intelligence, but Priest's characterization of them as hyper-Internet puppies is perfect. Puppies are cute but often exhausting, totally self-absorbed, and all too often a colossal pain in the ass. I want to like Stross's books because he himself seems like a nice guy and he is clearly very, very smart. But his books always end up reminding me of the tripping on LSD sequence of grade B 1970's movies, and Lord knows how excruciating they are. I've read one book by Greg Bear (Blood Music). It was so pedestrian as to be embarrassing. I've heard some good things about some of this other books, but having read Blood Music all the way through, I doubt that I'll ever read another Greg Bear book, no matter how many good things I hear about it. Life is short. I much enjoyed Mieville's Perdido Street Station, although I thought the ending was extremely lame. I've had copies of his other books on my shelves for years -- given to me by his American editor in those faraway days when said editor was courting me (that is, talking with me about publishing my books). However, after having read Perdido, I've never felt much driven to read his other books. SF curmudgeons of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your hipness! jrs On Mar 29, 2012, at 10:07 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: After this very epic Christopher Priest rant that udupa pointed me to elsewhere .. http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk/journal/1077/hull-0-scunthorpe-3/ Charlie Stross' twitter feed has a cute puppy display pic and there are tshirts too. https://twitter.com/#!/cstross/status/185353259169488897 Sad / funny thing is I don't quite disagree with Priest - at least because he appears to share my taste for old style SF .. Poul Anderson, Frederick Pohl, various of the older Baen authors etc, and the few bits of Stross I've skimmed through aren't as much to my taste as they probably should be. -- Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.li...@gmail.com)
Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 7:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian sur...@hserus.netwrote: After this very epic Christopher Priest rant that udupa pointed me to elsewhere .. http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk/journal/1077/hull-0-scunthorpe-3/ Charlie Stross' twitter feed has a cute puppy display pic and there are tshirts too. https://twitter.com/#!/cstross/status/185353259169488897 The whole thing promises to be fun. Here is Priest, an excellent author and reigning grandfather of British SF, firing slimeballs at three younger authors who I think are the best in the business today - Mieville, Adam Roberts, and Charlie Stross. (Greg Bear does not belong.) I planned to order enough popcorn and sit back and watch the action unfold, but Stross is being more of a kitten than a puppy, refusing to play along. (But yes, Stross's reaction was excellent, probably the best thing he could have done. In my personal brownie points register, I have moved some from Priest's account to Stross's) Sad / funny thing is I don't quite disagree with Priest - at least because he appears to share my taste for old style SF .. Poul Anderson, Frederick Pohl, various of the older Baen authors etc, and the few bits of Stross I've skimmed through aren't as much to my taste as they probably should be. Here's hundred rupees that says Priest hates the Baen school of SF. Have we lived and fought in vain, and so on. Most Baen books are ordinary hackneyed pulp fiction cliches, but SET IN SPACE!![more exclamation marks] Stross is a genius. He is one of the few SF authors whose understanding of how computer science works is closer to how it actually works, and that results in the right kind of geekery in his books. I can see how a book like Accelerando can piss people off with its singleminded goal of mindfuckery - but to me that book was one of the finest examples of 'literature of ideas'. It was like an Olaf Stapledon book, but in a language that was much less tedious, and hence a pleasure to read. While he is more famous for this kind of SF, that's not all there is to him. The Eschaton books, Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, were excellent hard sci-fi/ space opera. Little Brother read like a Heinlein juvenile updated for the Internet age. I'm fine with rants, and anything that breaks the circlejerk that the world of SF writers tends to be. But Priest's rant seemed to be for all the wrong reasons and just painted him as an old sourpuss. -- Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.li...@gmail.com)
Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 8:18 AM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: And on the topic of Priest, I thought _The Affirmation_ was awe-inspiringly good. +1 to that. His best book, easily. Among the books I have read, the only one I found sub-par was The Extremes. It was like an old grandmother writing a book on ultraviolence that kids can read.
Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
On 30-Mar-12 9:45 AM, Thejaswi Udupa wrote: Stross is a genius. He is one of the few SF authors whose understanding of how computer science works is closer to how it actually works, and that results in the right kind of geekery in his books. I can see how a book like Accelerando can piss people off with its singleminded goal of mindfuckery - but to me that book was one of the finest examples of 'literature of ideas'. It was like an Olaf Stapledon book, but in a language that was much less tedious, and hence a pleasure to read. While he is more famous for this kind of SF, that's not all there is to him. The Eschaton books, Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, were excellent hard sci-fi/ space opera. Little Brother read like a Heinlein juvenile updated for the Internet age. +1, and a nit: Little Brother is by Stross' on-and-off collaborator and silklist member, Cory Doctorow. Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
Gah. Sleepyheaded morning, sorry. I meant to say Saturn's Children. From: Udhay Shankar N Sent: 30-03-2012 10:12 To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt On 30-Mar-12 9:45 AM, Thejaswi Udupa wrote: Stross is a genius. He is one of the few SF authors whose understanding of how computer science works is closer to how it actually works, and that results in the right kind of geekery in his books. I can see how a book like Accelerando can piss people off with its singleminded goal of mindfuckery - but to me that book was one of the finest examples of 'literature of ideas'. It was like an Olaf Stapledon book, but in a language that was much less tedious, and hence a pleasure to read. While he is more famous for this kind of SF, that's not all there is to him. The Eschaton books, Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, were excellent hard sci-fi/ space opera. Little Brother read like a Heinlein juvenile updated for the Internet age. +1, and a nit: Little Brother is by Stross' on-and-off collaborator and silklist member, Cory Doctorow. Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
