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| Syd |
 Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2026 12:43 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Syd wrote: Now going through "The Regicide Report" by Charles Stross, which finally brings back Bob and Mo Howard and is currently all over the place. Apparently Queen Elizabeth II was murdered in 2014 by dimethyl mercury, which is a particularly potent neurotoxin administered by, apparently, the current Prime Minister, the incarnation of Nyarlathotep. She's currently in a glass coffin (and a vampire), a la Snow White, though it's actually Doctor Phibes who created it. The novel gets progressively more incoherent, though I hope it winds up okay, but really, the novel makes no sense.
It makes somewhat more sense at the end, but not that much, and is disappointingly the last of the Laundry Files novels. I know it's been 25 years but is this where you want to leave us? It does leave us Bob as the archivist of the Laundry (which dates back to John Dees in the reign of Elizabeth I) so Bob still has tales to tell. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 1:50 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Syd wrote: ..... She's currently in a glass coffin (and a vampire), a la Snow White, though it's actually Doctor Phibes who created it....
Dr Phibes is a character in the Stross book? Or you mean the seventies movie was where the suspended animation coffin was developed as a concept? I guess it's a sort of meta joke. I recall some chuckles that Phibes assistant was called Vulnavia, which seemed quite suggestive and was (to 15 year old me) a bit titillating. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2026 11:55 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Rereading Captain Vorpatril's Alliance which is a lot of fun. not least because the determined bachelor Ivan Vorpatril finds himself in an accidental (and chivalrous) marriage that both of them want anyway. Particularly because both of them wind up up to their necks in shit and wind up smelling somewhat like roses. The epilogue is obviously Emperor Gregor's wedding present even if they don't realize it. Lois McMaster Bujold is like Terry Pratchett in that she fixes up all her characters with the best partner imaginable for instance Ivan and Tej and really all of their families. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon May 18, 2026 9:04 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12975
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Recent read is Platform Decay by Martha Wells, in which Murderbot has to rescue some hostages from a space station which is actually a torus above a planet which was eviscerated to make the torus. And, just to complicate matters, there's another bunch of hostages Murderbot and allies have to rescue.
This reminds me a bit of Exit Strategy and System Collapse, but it has a different feel, because it's an exploit where they have to escape notice. And the people who Murderbot has to interact with require him to develop brand-new people skills.
Great world building skills, perhaps the best Martha Wells has done in people skills. Well done. |
Last edited by Syd on Fri May 22, 2026 10:28 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon May 18, 2026 9:24 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12975
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Now reading "Radiant Star" by Ann Leckie. It's okay, but i think she peaked with her first novel, and hasn't done anything award-worthy since. This one takes place on a city beneath the ice on a rogue planet, which is why they dream of the radiant star. The planet has become a decadent religious outpost which depends on donations inspired by living saints, which are actually mummified corpses who became holy by starving themselves to death. But the local sects are willing to do this because they want lots and lots of money.
The Radchaai are of course horrified by this and this culture is so awful I sympathize with them.
By they way, though I may be 180 degrees off, I think this book is a reprise of one of the Jewish revolts. Even the radiant star icon suspiciously resembles a menorah. (It also resembles the Aten of Akhnaten.) |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Tue May 19, 2026 9:54 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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But what it comes down to, is what I can do as a human being? There are all sorts of horrible things which you can do if it's expedient, but not if you want to survive as a human being.
I think the obvious solution is to evacuate the planet. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2026 9:49 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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| I'm rereading "Remarkable Creatures" which I'm sure I read before but since it's 17 years old, it's mostly new, A series of biographies and accomplishments by famous biologists such as Humboldt, Darwin, Wallace, Bates (the guy who discovered Batesian Mimicry), Charles Walcott (who mapped 3 million years of the Grand Canyon, discovered the Burgess Shale, and headed the US Geographical Survey for 20 Years), Luis and Walter Alvarez, who discovered the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs and much else, and Roy Chapman Andrews. I don't know how well the last is known these days, but he led a lot of expeditions into Mongolia in search of early man, and dug up dinosaur eggs, velociraptors (he gave them their name), mesozoic mammals, and ancient rhinoceros relatives (but never found early Man). I had a series of "All About" books when I was a kid (my mom wanted to educate me and knew I loved this) and one of them was All About Dinosaurs by Roy Chapman Andrews. I'm now into Walter and Luis Alvarez, who discovered what killed the dinosaurs. (Walter was looking for something else that happened at the same time and sent a sample to a colleague who detected the iridium anomaly), and Walter and his father Luis (a Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist) realized it was an impact. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2026 8:32 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Remarkable Creatues has an enormous flaw that dates the book, but it's not entirely the authors' fault. At the time the book was published (2009), the best evidence we had was that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens hadn't interbred, which has obviously been proven false. (It was also odd since we had already discovered the skeleton of a Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon hybrid.) I've always wondered how such an error happened, and it may reflect a lot on scientists being biased by their expectations. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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