The "bazooka" part is accurate, but not the "hiding" part. If the spacecraft are torchships, their thrust power is several terawatts. This means the exhaust is so intense that it could be detected from Alpha Centauri. By a passive sensor.
SNAAAAAAAAAAP
― shirley summistake (s1ocki), Friday, 19 November 2010 19:48 (thirteen years ago) link
Ha I have just this moment read a Reynolds short story where stealth by way of directional radiation plays a part.
― xtc ep, etc (xp) (ledge), Saturday, 20 November 2010 00:12 (thirteen years ago) link
lol @ dom tryna use fancy pants left wing cult-crit theories to rag on nerds. 'cuz the sopranos is totes pc, right?
― ed chilliband (max arrrrrgh), Saturday, 20 November 2010 01:50 (thirteen years ago) link
Dan Simmons is indeed bananas. I like him.
― A brownish area with points (chap), Saturday, 20 November 2010 01:57 (thirteen years ago) link
The first and second Hyperion books are the best things of his I've read by some distance.
― A brownish area with points (chap), Saturday, 20 November 2010 01:59 (thirteen years ago) link
been reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons...shit is bananas
― glengarry glenn danzig (latebloomer)
They're a blast, just stop after The Fall of Hyperion. I've successfully convinced myself the two Endymion books don't exist but it took a decade.
I really liked The Terror and much of the Ilium/Olympos pair (though some of the racial/ethnic stuff is a huge mess I had to SMH at). I've had Drood for a while but haven't gone back to it after it failed to grab me. As Omar said, incredibly inconsistant writer but chockfull of ideas.
― EZ Snappin, Saturday, 20 November 2010 02:04 (thirteen years ago) link
the Ilium/Olympos pair (though some of the racial/ethnic stuff is a huge mess I had to SMH at)
Yeah, there's some right weird stuff about Israel iirc. Still, lots of dazzling things going on in those books. I loved the Proust-loving robot probe thing.
― A brownish area with points (chap), Saturday, 20 November 2010 13:00 (thirteen years ago) link
John Crowley's "Great Work of Time" blew my head up this week
― Raage Saga (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 20 November 2010 13:03 (thirteen years ago) link
Just been to Tate Britain, saw a piece by Gerard Byrne with Dutch amateur actors re-enacting a 1963 Playboy interview with the great and the good of scifi - Clarke, Bradbury, Heinlen, Pohl, Sturgeon, etc, about the state of the world in 1984 and beyond. Very optimistic, albeit lightheartedly, sometimes even satirically, about automation and leisure, longevity, medicine and recreational narcotics, and especially the space race - space travel cheaper than air travel; the moon by the 70s and Mars and Venus by the 80s. Aside from video calls and conferencing, nothing about the information revolution. Makes you wonder what unforeseen transformations await us in the next 50 years.
― xtc ep, etc (xp) (ledge), Sunday, 21 November 2010 16:57 (thirteen years ago) link
lasers
― shirley summistake (s1ocki), Sunday, 21 November 2010 17:04 (thirteen years ago) link
cool i can't hardly wait!
― xtc ep, etc (xp) (ledge), Sunday, 21 November 2010 17:06 (thirteen years ago) link
they are coming very soon iirc!
― shirley summistake (s1ocki), Sunday, 21 November 2010 17:06 (thirteen years ago) link
Makes you wonder what unforeseen transformations await us in the next 50 years
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jOTDyAXEFv8/SwrkgAOVMRI/AAAAAAAAABo/4B4mXqVaRzE/s1600/waterworld-spotlight.jpg
― a ticker tape of "must not fuck up" (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 21 November 2010 17:39 (thirteen years ago) link
Oh, that is a lovely, lovely story. So good!
― buildings with goats on the roof (James Morrison), Sunday, 21 November 2010 22:45 (thirteen years ago) link
Anyone read "The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi? Read some froth about it being the SF debut of the year. Amazon reviews look intriguing but make it sound kind of daunting.
― moiré eel (a passing spacecadet), Friday, 26 November 2010 13:31 (thirteen years ago) link
That sounds right up my street.
― A brownish area with points (chap), Friday, 26 November 2010 14:01 (thirteen years ago) link
whenever I hear the word quantum, i reach for my revolver
― e.g. delegates at a set age (ledge), Friday, 26 November 2010 14:01 (thirteen years ago) link
...and end unwittingly causing a typhoon in South East Asia.
― A brownish area with points (chap), Friday, 26 November 2010 14:03 (thirteen years ago) link
weird, i was looking at the reviews of Quantam Thief earlier as well! anyone?
― zappi, Friday, 26 November 2010 15:27 (thirteen years ago) link
I've bought a copy, and it seems genuinely interesting but I've only read one chapter so far.
― treefell, Friday, 26 November 2010 15:29 (thirteen years ago) link
I've been reading some Adam Roberts, he's pretty good. Not at all hard. Some real oddball concepts and fairly literary.
― A brownish area with points (chap), Friday, 26 November 2010 16:15 (thirteen years ago) link
Also often very funny. He moonlights writing Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter spoofs, presumably for ££.
― A brownish area with points (chap), Friday, 26 November 2010 16:17 (thirteen years ago) link
reading the new culture, am pretty into it
― shirley summistake (s1ocki), Friday, 26 November 2010 20:39 (thirteen years ago) link
The Quantum Thief is pretty cool. It doesn't take any prisoners though. Rajaniemi is a String Theorist by trade; the weird, cutting-edge science stuff is laid on pretty thick and with no quarter given to those who might have no idea as to what on earth he might be talking about...
― Stone Monkey, Friday, 26 November 2010 21:45 (thirteen years ago) link
just finished the quantum thief - it was great. a lot left unexplained but it had enough of a 'human' (or post-human even) story underpinning the crazy stuff to keep me reading. the stuff abt the exomemory + 'gevulot' was particularly cool
― whitney from mtv's the city (tpp), Thursday, 13 January 2011 19:20 (thirteen years ago) link
i'm currently reading 'stories of your life and others' by ted chiang....wow
― whitney from mtv's the city (tpp), Thursday, 13 January 2011 19:25 (thirteen years ago) link
so are there any good SF novels of the endgame of climate change? I could google, but that's no fun.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 26 July 2012 18:43 (eleven years ago) link
the bacigalupi(?) thing, The Wind-up Girl touches on this. it's not about that, but is set in a post climate change, post GM crop disaster world. (i didn't like it tbh)
(wow, i spelt bacigalupi right!)
― koogs, Thursday, 26 July 2012 19:33 (eleven years ago) link
John Brunner "The Sheep Look Up"
― Dunn O)))))))) (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 26 July 2012 21:37 (eleven years ago) link
I can think of a bunch of books that touch on it or use it as background (Robinson's Mars Trilogy, for example), but that's the only one springing to mind that uses it as the central focus
― Dunn O)))))))) (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 26 July 2012 21:38 (eleven years ago) link
baccy-go-loopy is more about the exhaustion of resources than climate change maybe? but i did read ship-breaker first. i got the feeling that that was one of the coming areas in the genre, that and the neurological basis of consciousness
― thomp, Thursday, 26 July 2012 21:43 (eleven years ago) link
I can think of a bunch of books that touch on it or use it as background (Robinson's Mars Trilogy, for example
― Like Monk Never Happened (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 26 July 2012 21:44 (eleven years ago) link
hm forgot Bruce Sterling's "Heavy Weather" uses some serious climate change/weather disruptions as its backdrop. it's not very good though.
haven't read KSR's latest but I wouldn't be surprised
― Dunn O)))))))) (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 26 July 2012 21:44 (eleven years ago) link
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Late_the_Sweet_Birds_Sang
― thomp, Thursday, 26 July 2012 21:46 (eleven years ago) link
Early Ballard disaster novels? The Drowned World, The Burning World...I haven't read The Crystal World so I can't speak to that one.
― Neil Jung (WmC), Thursday, 26 July 2012 21:47 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/greenhouse/
― thomp, Thursday, 26 July 2012 21:48 (eleven years ago) link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausicaä_of_the_Valley_of_the_Wind_(manga)
― Roberto Spiralli, Thursday, 26 July 2012 22:30 (eleven years ago) link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pail_of_Air
― caek, Thursday, 26 July 2012 22:31 (eleven years ago) link
Kim Stanley Robinson's 2013 is very very good (and has a load of stuff about climate change if Morbs is still checking this thread).
― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Monday, 2 December 2013 02:40 (ten years ago) link
Haha, it's actually called 2312. 2013 is the year we are in.
― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Monday, 2 December 2013 02:41 (ten years ago) link
jonathan frakes telling you you're wrong for 47 seconds pic.twitter.com/zU7HqQjGdN— *gated reverb snare* (@softsynthbear) April 12, 2019
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 14 April 2019 09:11 (five years ago) link