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Messages - What Came Before

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16
General Earwa / Prince of Nothing Graphic Novel Project
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:20:57 pm »
Quote from: Madness
Prince of Nothing Graphic Novel Grok!Studio

How come I've never heard about this before?

17
General Misc. / Tribal Wives
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:20:17 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
I didn't intend to watch this - was flicking around the channels as you do.

I'd like to prime you about the male/female roles. But I think it's probably more neutral to watch the doco.

The thing that strikes me is how a couple of the men are interviewed and how they might be from some tribal village in the back of beyond, but they already have the relativist moral bargaining down pat "Oh, maybe this lady comes and thinks our culture is ugly, but if we go to her culture, we'd think that's ugly too"

The thing that really hits me as bullshit is actually the 'our' in 'our culture'.

I mean sure, in western society you get discrepancies - from the minute, like men don't wear skirts, to larger ones. These end up making a male culture and a female culture. But if you think as the two cultures as circles, I'd like to think they largely overlap each other. More to the point, men are prepared to face, to atleast some degree, the female culture. Making it not as particular a female culture, in the process.

Here, exactly how much of the female culture are these men willing to face themselves? To go get the damn water from the dirty pond. To stir the porridge while, say, females for a change tell them how they are doin' it wrong. Etc, etc.

You have no fucking shared culture! You have two, one preditory/parasitic to the other. You have no 'our' culture!

And if 'our' was supposed to refer strictly to the male culture, well you aint got shit really without your women. It's not (just) that you're ugly, it's that you're pathetic without them (dead, even). Atleast acknowledge how pathetic you are (if you're going to continue), as you enact all that paternalistic bullshit. But I guess it'd take the balls out of the paternalism, to own up to being pathetic. You can't handle what your women face, nor can you actually handle life without your women.

Just pissed off and needed to formulate a responce. They are totally going to walk down to the watering hole and use their wireless laptops and read this... ...

18
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:19:41 pm »
Quote from: Bastard of Godsgrace
Quote from: Francis Buck
I'm currently reading The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham (first thing of his that I've read). It's pretty damn good. Different in a lot of ways, and the characters are fairly original as far as fantasy goes. I love Cithrin and Master Kit. I'll almost certainly read the sequel once I'm done.


I found it interesting how Kit sometimes speaks about dangers of certainty. Is sure does seem those passages are influenced by Scott's work.

19
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:19:35 pm »
Quote from: Francis Buck
Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author. I really need to go buy Blood Meridian and re-read it. It's so dense, but there's so much to get out of it.

I'm currently reading The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham (first thing of his that I've read). It's pretty damn good. Different in a lot of ways, and the characters are fairly original as far as fantasy goes. I love Cithrin and Master Kit. I'll almost certainly read the sequel once I'm done.

20
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:19:30 pm »
Quote from: jmcdonagh
Agreed blood meridian is the best book I ve read! I would suggest such books as moby dick, light I'n august, Homeric epics and other Greek tragedies .

21
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:19:24 pm »
Quote from: Soterion
Quote from: Sideris
Quote from: Church
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, as this has clearly provided RSB with a huge amount of material (and it's also about one of the craziest books I've ever read)

Seconded. I can't tell you how overjoyed I was the first time I read TJE and WLW and seeing the mounds of Blood Meridian nods. Hell, Cleric is just a slightly more insane version of The Judge. The Captain had an excellent Glanton vibe. It was marvelous.

Blood Meridian is actually my favorite novel.  Nothing else, in my opinion, is to powerful, comprehensive, and utterly devastating and inspiring all at the same time.

I often describe The Judging Eye to my friends as "Blood Meridian meets Fellowship of the Ring."

22
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:19:18 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
Quote from: Twooars
Curethan, it's been a while since I read Hyperion, could you please explain how the themes are similar? When you said deliberately evolved racial morality, are you referring to the Ousters? [Actually, I don't remember much from Fall of Hyperion. My favourite bits are The Scholar's Tale and The Priest's Tale from Hyperion. I find that Simmons doesn't seem to do the sequels all that well - I found Ilium really interesting but Olympos was meh...]

As I recall,
(click to show/hide)

As I say, I only read the first two.  There was a bit too much agnostic hand wringing and badly done space opera to keep me interested, but I think thats just a question of personal taste YMMV.

23
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:19:11 pm »
Quote from: Sideris
Quote from: Church
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, as this has clearly provided RSB with a huge amount of material (and it's also about one of the craziest books I've ever read)

Seconded. I can't tell you how overjoyed I was the first time I read TJE and WLW and seeing the mounds of Blood Meridian nods. Hell, Cleric is just a slightly more insane version of The Judge. The Captain had an excellent Glanton vibe. It was marvelous.

I'd also second Blindsight. Any of Watts' work is great (and free on his website).

24
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:19:04 pm »
Quote from: Madness
(click to show/hide)

25
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:18:57 pm »
Quote from: Twooars
Thanks for the big list, Madness, exactly what I was hoping to get from this thread :), some of the names come up all the time on TPB and it's good to know what books to start with. And Church, I did hear about Blood Meridian but forgot about it, thanks!
Ajokli, Blindsight sounds interesting, I should give it a go... so many books to read!!

Curethan, it's been a while since I read Hyperion, could you please explain how the themes are similar? When you said deliberately evolved racial morality, are you referring to the Ousters? [Actually, I don't remember much from Fall of Hyperion. My favourite bits are The Scholar's Tale and The Priest's Tale from Hyperion. I find that Simmons doesn't seem to do the sequels all that well - I found Ilium really interesting but Olympos was meh...]

Also, anyone know how to SPOILER tag and hide text under a button as on Westeros?

26
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:18:50 pm »
Quote from: Church
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, as this has clearly provided RSB with a huge amount of material (and it's also about one of the craziest books I've ever read)

27
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:18:34 pm »
Quote from: Madness
The cognitive science would seem axiomatic.

Self-Insight - David Dunning
A Mind of Its Own - Cordelia Fine
Kluge - Gary Marcus
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
The Naked Brain - Richard Restak
Incognito - David Eagleman
The Tell-Tale Brain - V.S. Ramachandran
The Brain That Changes Itself - Norman Doidge
The Mind & the Brain - Jeffrey Schwartz

The latter three are more inspiring then the former. However, for some more hope from neuroscience check out anything by Bach-y-Rita, Michael Merzenich, Edward Taub - this is the same Taub from the Silverspring Monkeys, however, haters should look into his ongoing research rehabilitating victims of stroke and serious brain injuries.

Also, I'd recommend anyone reading TSA to simply read Bakker's other titles. Skin-Spies terrified me all the more after reading of the Neuropaths secretly permeating society's hierarchies and Neil is, by some arguments, the philosophic inverse of Kellhus and the Dunyain. Disciple is a cipher for Memory and thus the Nonmen and, probably, Meppa. Where Disciple remembers everything, people, places, and things, all experienced as horrendous amalgamations of all their momentary iterations, the Nonmen remember only their acts terrible enough to remind them of those they've lost.

I would also recommend anyone wishing to experience and explore fiction and human narrative more deeply to read The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell and The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations by Georges Polti.

28
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:18:26 pm »
Quote from: Ajokli
I second Hyperion.

Blindsight by Peter Watts is a gem of a SF book.  Best Hard-sci-fi writer around

29
Literature / Re: Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:17:58 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
I'd recommend Dan Simmons' first Hyperion duology. 
I didn't rate it super highly as a work of fiction in isolation, but I am often reminded of his major theme (a deliberatly evolved racial morality) when considering Bakker's ideas.

30
Literature / Reading list?
« on: June 04, 2013, 07:17:48 pm »
Quote from: Twooars
Considering the sheer number of themes and ideas that TSA explores, I think a reading list is in order? I keep hearing references to other other authors on TPB that are relevant to ideas in the series, but I think it might be worth listing all of them in one place, for new readers as well as re-readers like me? :)

I would obviously list Tolkien and the Dune series as required reading material, but I am sure others can add more, especially the philosophical works that influenced RSB (obviously Nietzsche, by his own admission) or books that explore similar themes?

And other speculative fiction works that are similar?

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