The Sword and Laser discussion

i think it's a tough one; part of the charm of the show is free-flowing aspects, like well informed friends talking in the pub. while i think the should be careful to avoid spoilers for books in progress, or new books, that can only really go for big reveals and if things are going to be discussed we're going to get some snippets.

of course, i've got such a bad memory that i usually forget things i've heard anyway...

I don't remember spoilers! In the Rothfuss interview?

isn't knowing there are sci-fi elements at all kind of a spoiler then? ideally you would think it was just a fantasy book and then be wowed.

Best not to know it's a work of fiction at all.

i didn't even know it was a book! i thought we were just going to discuss an abstract shared delusion.

Joel wrote: "i didn't even know it was a book! i thought we were just going to discuss an abstract shared delusion."

Talking about his name is a spoiler too, since knowing he wrote it would let one infer some things about the book!

Well, to be fair to the last podcast, Sword & Claw has been talked about and also mentioned the blending of the sci-fi/fantasy elements in the very FIRST podcast that introduced the choice of the book last month.
There are quite a few more layered things in both books that will still surprise you, astronauts and rocketships aside. Just wait until the Thundercats arrive. When that Robear Burble jumps out from behind that tree and Sev neatly decapitates it with his sword? Epic.

Justin, I actually apologized for this in the thread for the Sword & Claw kick-off podcast, because I hate spoilers too. :)

It was tricky, because we wanted to talk about the blending of science fiction and fantasy in the books as the reason for it being a good pick for the club. The idea was to give a few fun early chapter examples of this to grab people's attention. But I do understand this could be frustrating to people who wanted to figure out or notice those things on their own.

Colin, your additions to the New Sun universe are awesome - maybe those can be in the motion picture version.

I also found it hard to read or participate in the forum for this book, because so many of the threads had spoiler alerts! But that also kind of left me out of a lot of good discussions until I finished the book. I wish there was a way to put something like *up to chapter xx* in a thread, but that might be too hard to administer.

I'm not sure they are spoilers, they are things you might not understand/notice if you were reading it in an isolated setting. At least, that's the opinion from someone who has only read the first half.

Tina wrote: "I also found it hard to read or participate in the forum for this book, because so many of the threads had spoiler alerts! But that also kind of left me out of a lot of good discussions until I finished the book. I wish there was a way to put something like *up to chapter xx* in a thread, but that might be too hard to administer."

We've been doing that for a little while now, putting "(spoilers, book, ch. xx - xx)" in a thread title to warn what the first thread post has spoilers of, and encouraging people to add warnings to their own posts if they comment about things further along from the first post (which is pretty common, since a lot of things get looped back to later in the books). But I realize this does you little good if you finished before we started doing that...

I agree with Jenny. I didn't find them to be spoilers as much as alternate ways of looking at things. And it definitely didn't ruin any of the reading so far for me.

Tina, I don't know if you have gone to the Shadow & Claw section lately, but there has been a move to try to put some spoiler identification in the thread titles...of course, if you've finished, it might be too late. Though some of the threads end up being a little more spoiler-y, I've found it really helps. Now I just need to get back to the book... ;)

Yeah, I guessed I missed that was being done now. I had quit looking at the posts for awhile and just decided to finish the book first :)