Books

[OBollocks]

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ - The Things, Peter Watts. The Thing from the POV of The Thing, with added audio version.

[OBollocks]

Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts. Quite impressed with his work on WWII, and needing to familiarise myself a little more with Napoleon as I am woefully ignorant of the Continental side of things. Seems a rather thorough work so far.

Revisiting quite a lot of WWI scholarship, starting with the eminently readable The First World War, by John Keegan.

[SpiceTheCat]

into Everywhere, Paul McAuley, the sequel to Something Coming Through. Gripping space yarn stuff which also manages to be somewhat grim and imply that humanity's decline had already begun. Plus the !Cha are actually arses, not that there was much doubt.

[Kolbex]

Finished the first Parker book (The Hunter by Richard Stark aka Donald Westlake), the book they based three movies that I know of off of, including 1997's Payback and the much more recent (and unseen by me) movie with Jason Statham.

Been on my list for a while, but was inspired to read them by the IDW comic books. Parker is, um, probably best described as a sociopath, but the books are short, quick reads, punchy and well-plotted. The comics were, anyway; as I said I just finished the first one, but I dove immediately into the second right after. The Sharpe of crime.

[OBollocks]

Zones of Control, by various authors. An amazing volume collecting work from an incredible list of wargaming luminaries. And it's a lovely edition too.

[halfvoid]

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ - The Things, Peter Watts. The Thing from the POV of The Thing, with added audio version.

Mr. Watts is perhaps my favourite modern Sci-Fi writer. Love all the Rifters books and his take on the 1st contact dilemma in Blindsight.

He's sometimes a little heavy on techno-jargon (like Gibson), but I feel like a lot of the science in his futurist worlds makes sense.

[SpiceTheCat]

Zones of Control, by various authors. An amazing volume collecting work from an incredible list of wargaming luminaries. And it's a lovely edition too.

Excellent. Although looking at buying the DRM'd to hell, you need some Abode crap to to read this, ebook edition caused me to make offensive gestures in MIT's direction. Dead-tree version on its way.

[SpiceTheCat]

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ - The Things, Peter Watts. The Thing from the POV of The Thing, with added audio version.

Mr. Watts is perhaps my favourite modern Sci-Fi writer. Love all the Rifters books and his take on the 1st contact dilemma in Blindsight.

He's sometimes a little heavy on techno-jargon (like Gibson), but I feel like a lot of the science in his futurist worlds makes sense.

I have a hugely varied response to his books. Blindsight is astounding, absolutely a modern SF classic, with its incredibly cold view of the (im)possibilty of meaningful contact with the truly alien, and the doutbful value of human intelligence. I don't think he quite managed to capture the lightning twice in Echopraxia. Quite like the Rift series, utterly hate The Things. I think there's a limit on how much of the underlying "humanity is going to utterly fuck things up because individually and collectively we're a bunch of fucking morons at best and actively malign at worst" theme I can tolerate at one go. (Yes, I have read his speech about how he's not misanthropic really )

[Kolbex]

Peter Watts is my favorite philosopher. I actually can't get enough of his bleakness. I think he and R. Scott Bakker should do a book together; it would be "fun". Neuropath was Watts-like, although (don't tell Scott I said this) not as well written.

Echopraxia did feel pretty Gibon-like in tone, but it sure did make me ruminate a long while. The major theme of those two books is spelled out pretty bluntly in his earlier short story Ambassador, which I was almost lazy enough to not link.

Watts has really changed, or perhaps just sharpened, my way of thinking about certain things (heh) in the world. I find him extraordinarily refreshing among the oodles of artists who seem content to churn out endless rehashes of "coming of age tales" and the mysterious power of love, and oh god I could go on but I don't want to throw up.

[OBollocks]

Watts gives you sharp edges where another writer gives you cotton wool. I can't think of another writer who presents the universe in quite so inimical a fashion. Even Gibson isn't so merciless.