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ArisKatsaris comments on June 2014 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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Fiction Books Thread
I finished my first draft of S.I.'s first book, "Re-", a couple of days ago. An attempt at a post-singularity self-insert RatFic, I'm taking a couple of days' break before I start in on the second part.
I'm looking for any and all feedback I can get - I'm going to be focusing mainly on extending the story until I finish it, but don't mind improving what's already in place.
I've started Book Two. So far, it's just a few hundred words to get my typing fingers back in the groove, mostly me being pointlessly verbose about fire in a way that's nearly totally unrelated to the plot... but hey, I'm having fun writing again, so a couple of days break every now and then seems an important key to ensure I /want/ to keep writing the thing. :)
WRITE MORE DAMMIT AAAAAAA I've just got to the not-an-AI offering tea. Please note when you finish :-)
I like it. The grabber was reasonably good, the sequence from the first book to the second amazing, and it touches on the potential for horror inherent to transhumanism without becoming a horror story. It's hard to get to that Roadside Picnic vibe, and you did a very good job.
That said, it seems a little rough. Compared to Myou've Got To Be Kidding Me, there's very little difference in character tone : even Convoy and Mrs. House and Joe seem to share similar linguistic habits to Bunny. ((Caveat: certain twists like a simulated environment might require such a thing.)) This is especially noticeable in the info-dumps -- perhaps why you're moving to a more detached reflective point of view in later info-dumps.
You've also got a very large number of balls in the air just by the end of In-Convenient. Some of them are pretty clearly Hemingway's Iceberg references, which discuss small details to give the impression of a larger world (or to reference other works: I assume the poor person transmuted into livestock organs is a reference to the current end of Myou've), so it's fine if they're dropped, hidden away, or otherwise left behind. I'd be careful to avoid doing so too heavily, though. If too many events occur without being linked to the central thematic arc, the work ends up feeling like a sequence of events rather than a story. That can work ok in some circumstances (see Alan Dean Foster's Quozl), but it's often disappointing and may be counterproductive if the work's intended for a general audience.
There are some more specific lexical or typographical matters -- would you prefer they be given by Google Doc comment, or is there another way that you find easier?
I can't possibly disagree.
I knew before I started writing that this is a writing skill I need improving. That's part of why I originally included a disclaimer paragraph about the fallibility of memory, and decided to stay with first-person perspective - if I ever need it, I have a built-in excuse in that the narrator is adding their own biases about the other characters' phrasing. (Yes, it's a cop-out. But it's at least one with a lampshade hung on it.)
I have certain themes and events that I'd like to hit, and some setting details to cover that haven't made it into the story proper yet; I'm /hoping/ that I can bring enough of the threads together by the end to be satisfying. (And unlike some of my previous writing attempts, I am planning on bringing this to a close.)
For simple things like that, GDocs' system of highlighting text to comment makes it much easier to find and fix them than sending them by some other route. (I do know that I'm highlighting italics with /slashes/ instead of inline code symbols, and that I've been writing out numerals and years rather than using digits; those are semi-deliberate choices.) If you do want a private discussion, you can always email me at my username at gmail dot com.
Well, I started reading and kept going right to the end. Nice one!
Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Firm SF that focuses on the adventures of a mathematician monk. Science in the world of Anathem is still science, but it has a quasi-mystical culture built around it. It's a long, slow-building book but eventually has plenty of action and rationality alike. The ending is the highlight.
Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter. This is fantasy for adults: complex flawed characters, a world rich in detail, multitude of characters who live and do things for their own sake rather than to advance a plot point or help the hero. Utter disregard for conventions and cliches of the genre. A hero who is an anti-Mary Sue. Endless inventiveness of the author.
To my taste, this novel is what books like The Kingkiller Chronicles promise, but then utterly fail to deliver. But if you're a fan of Rothfuss, try Swanwick anyway, and you might get a fuller and richer taste of what you like.
I've also read a science fiction novel by the same author, Stations of the Tide, which won a Nebula in 1991. It's also very good. In it, a nameless bureaucrat of the interplanetary government is pursuing a self-declared magician (who's suspected of smuggling restricted technology) across the surface of a planet where half the surface is about to get flooded for many years, and a great migration of the populace is imminent. One of the themes is unfriendly AI - the Earth with its entire population had suffered a horrible fate in the world of this novel, which is discussed and explored in one of the episodes, although it's not a major plot device.
So based on your description, I read The Iron Dragon's Daughter and liked it a lot and agree with the rest of your description (that gargoyle scene!). But this part I don't really get: what part of it gave you a sense of many characters being agenty and pursuing plots unrelated to the heroine? It didn't give me much of a sense of that.
I've spent the last few months following the recommendations from these and (for the most part) loving them, so thought I'd contribute back:
The Girl With All The Gifts, one of the few things I've read las month NOT recommended here, is a fresh, heartwrenching, intelligent and often rational take on the zombie apocalypse genre (not one I am normally fond of, either!)
Thief's Magic reads almost like a Lawrence Watt-Evans book; it is unfortunately the first in a trilogy and makes no pretence otherwise, so you get more of an introduction than a complete story, but nevertheless a fantasy well worth starting.
Just read The Girl With All The Gifts and really enjoyed it, thanks for the recommendation. It makes an interesting comparison with Saya no Uta (visual novel), which puts the opposite emotional slant on somewhat similar actions.
Quibble: authors are Rajaniemi (Hannu is his forename, not his surname) and Heller (not Hellman).
I'll never be able to consistently spell 'Rajaniemi' without recourse to spaced repetition, so 'Hannu' it is.
Reading Brandon Sanderson's Steelheart. The linked blurb is a bit lame, and there are plot holes, but it is written as solidly as Sanderson's other recent works, like Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive. I am yet to see Sanderson's signature trick of misdirection, where the clues dispersed throughout the book add up to something completely different from what a naive reader (me) would expect.
I liked Steelheart much, much more than Mistborn and what I've read of the Stormlight Archive. I cringed less, at least. The misdirection comes pretty close towards the end.
Actually, Steelheart reminds me of Worm a bit.
Okay, what the frell is this getting DVed for? UV unless I get an explanation for why this is a particularly boneheaded comparison to make.
It's OK, someone goes through my comments, both recent and old, roughly once a day and downvotes 20-30 of them at a time, regardless of the content. This has been going on for a month or so now. I'm sure I am not the only target.
Yeah, I have one of these too. Someone is slowly working back through my comments systematically downvoting them. Given the rate, I think they're actually doing it by hand, and must have a browser window they've kept open for months just for this task. It's like they're trolling themselves for me, without me having to actually lift a finger. Some LW karma is cheap for such entertainment.
Actually, I've noticed that most of the karma drop is eventually recovered, probably because people tend to upvote comments they feel are downvoted unjustly.
I've lost 600 points since they started. (How much is that in Bitcoins at present exchange rates?) But, as I said, it's worth it in knowing some obsessive idiot is keeping a browser window open for months just to do this.
For dealing with Kingkiller Chronicle withdrawal (extremely highly recommended, possibly my favorite book series right now), I and others have found that the Demon Cycle and Gentlemen Bastard series are good substitutes. They're both also incomplete, though.
I disliked The Lies of Locke Lamora; I felt the lead's morality was implausibly inconsistent, and the book seemed to rely heavily on thievery being cool. I found The Straight Razor Cure a much more satisfying example of that kind of fantasy, with a mystery that fit together well and a very enjoyable twist for the ending.