The Sword and Laser discussion

So many awards! You have no excuse for not finding something awesome and new to read right now. Not that you ever do with us on the job, we hope. Also, our first impressions on reading The Snow Queen.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/31487758
http://swordandlaser.com/home/2019/11...
https://soundcloud.com/swordandlaser/...

I listened to this on the way to the doctor.

The "Starbuck" in the Ice Queen is probably named for the 1st mate of the Pequod.
Both are involved in hunting large (view spoiler)[ intelligent & probably sentient, (hide spoiler)] aquatic creatures for some kind of important oil or extract. Also both sets of aquatic creatures face extinction (at the time of writing the Ice Queen) if hunting continued.

The BSG Starbuck(s) also took his/her name from the same Moby-Dick, or, the Whale character

TRP wrote: "The "Starbuck" in the Ice Queen is probably named for the 1st mate of the Pequod.
Both are involved in hunting large [spoilers removed] aquatic creatures for some kind of important oil or extract. ..."

That was my first thought, as well.

Given the length of time between writing and publishing, it’s entirely possible Vinge had already written TSQ by the time BSG TOS debuted. (Which was late September 1978, much to 13-year-old Trike’s delight.) Given that TSQ was available in April 1980, it probably existed in its final form for at least a year. Review copies must’ve gone out months earlier.

Or maybe she doesn’t like Dirk Benedict. Which is not unreasonable.

I look forward to time wasting chores thanks to audio books. One hour travel time there and back? That is a nice chunk of a audiobook.

Once again I wish we could like messages in these discussions (Starbuck stuff above).
It was probably unintentional, but since The Starbuck is supposed to be an off-worlder & he's the Queen's lover, it kind of adds another layer to the title in my mind. ;-)
I started working on an outline for one of my novel ideas (I haven't written one yet) on Google Docs & wondered if anybody does their writing with it. It was cool to hear that Tom uses it too (not sure if he mentioned it before).

I’m sure Google doesn’t steal your ideas or anything.

Trike wrote: "I’m sure Google doesn’t steal your ideas or anything."

Google doesn't steal, silly.

They read your emails and docs to enable them to personalise your Google searches, so you can find things to buy that you never realised you needed.

Mm-hm.

For a company whose motto is “do no evil” and claims “we don’t steal”, they do an awful lot of evil and steal a whole lot of stuff.

I just about bust a gut over "Thumbelina." Okay, just riffing, here's how it could go. You've got two universes intersecting, ours plus one where matter is more dense. Matter from the other universe decomposes slowly in ours if handled correctly, explosively if not. We've arranged a trade with the other universe and are using bits of matter from there as a power source. Kind of like a fairy tale "The Gods Themselves."

Then, a group from the other universe sends a large package of matter to ours. It's gone unnoticed and will soon decompose in an uncontrolled fashion, destroying our planet. The only people who can find it are from the other universe - but they take a risk of decomposing themselves.

"Thumbelina: She came from beyond the stars to save our planet - at the risk of her own doom...(oom...ooom...)"

John (Taloni) wrote: "I just about bust a gut over "Thumbelina." Okay, just riffing, here's how it could go. You've got two universes intersecting, ours plus one where matter is more dense. Matter from the other univers..."

I thought they had already made it...

The Land of the Giants

Also, James Blish’s The Seedling Stars contains short stories where instead of terraforming planets to suit humans, we physioform humans to fit planets. One of the stories, I think titled “Surface Tension”, features people being miniaturized. Thumbelinanauts!

The name Starbuck just makes me imagine Kate Sackhoff, which is... slightly confusing.
Also I like how my post about the Game of Thrones’ creators’ awful Q and A got transmuted into an announcement about the GoT prequel series... (which was in there, but it was a buried lede!)

I’m actually a big fan of adding nitrogen ( instead of carbonation) to dark beers, in a tap system. And I do think it tends to make them more creamy in that situation. A local brewery has a porter that is vey good normally carbonated, but I find to be absolutely great when put on nitro. But I also think it is very difficult to make that translate well to a canning/ bottling of said beverage. That was why it was such a big deal when Guinness first announced there “widget”. And while supposedly a different can manufacture has made that not necessarily, I still think there is a big between taped nitro beers, and canned ones.

Thank goodness I wasn’t driving when I heard my name coming out of the speakers. I’m grinning endlessly right now.

I have listened to two novels mentioned during this episode:
Witchmark is a secondary world fantasy, where the words England, Great War or elf are not used, but you can clearly see their analogues. The main story follows a psychiatrist trying to help soldiers with battle fatigue (not unviersally accepted as the real thing), who is also a mage hiding from his own family by pretending being dead (having met said family later on I clearly see why). And it gets more complicated from there. Also there is very sweet almost-but-not-quite-romance between our doctor and a male not-elf. Reccomended.
Unfortunately I can not reccomend the second one – Resistance Reborn was a dissapointment. It "borrows" one of the plot lines from Bujold’s "Borders of Infinity" (we have to break out a prisoner who can lead the resistance), the other two are about stealing some fighters and acquiring a Very Hush Hush Top Secret First Order List of problematic persons being hunted or already captured. But the plot is not the main problem – characters are. I have not much complaits about Poe, but the rest… Finn suddenly does not care about First Order troops all around because there is good food! Ray suddenly is all shy and quiet (in those few scenes she is in). And there is First Order officer Bratt, a self-important jerk who gets a ton of internal monologue to prove it.
It’s possible that listening to an audio version made it worse, because the narrator (male, which makes sense, as this is really a Poe book) read Leia’s dialogue like an very elderly lady – i get that she is still recovering, but it was really grating; and the few lines Rey got are even worse, the woman who stood up to Kaylo, Snork and Luke was almost stuttering…
I’d say that if someone wants to know what happened before the movie reading a summary would do.

Joanna wrote: "I have listened to two novels mentioned during this episode:
Witchmark is a secondary world fantasy, where the words England, Great War or elf are not used, but you can clearly see ..."

Spoilers??

Not really, anyone reading my post would still have no idea what the whole book is about, just a few things about the setting. I might have said a bit more then the blurb, but not much.

TRP wrote: "The "Starbuck" in the Ice Queen is probably named for the 1st mate of the Pequod.
Both are involved in hunting large [spoilers removed] aquatic creatures for some kind of important oil or extract. ..."

Ahhh that solves it. Thanks!

So many awards that I think we need a SF version of the Razzies for the worst science in a SF book.