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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3458 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 3, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I've only just recently been introduced to the concept of "media literacy"

I'm very sorry, but rest assured that top minds are working on a cure for Media Literacy.

I only read PoG and not Phleb, and while it didn't feel like a slog I was deeply unsatisfied with it. The setup was interesting, but the only payoff was... Being lectured by annoying robot communists?

If you enjoyed the other one better I'll give it a try.

Phlebas is acknowledged as one of his weakest Culture work, I believe. Player of Games as one of the better ones. I didn't find any of the books too preachy though. And they aren't really 'communists' in any real sense. It's more of a thoroughly post-scarcity oligarchy with a number of unsolved questions..

Iain was a bolshie, true, but at least the books are good reading, and the preaching / lib-mindedness is at worst present, but not central.

Personally I don't mind long-winded books that are universally acknowledged to 'need an editor' if the writing is fun enough.

I really liked "The Algebraist". Not a culture book at all, and even though it's mildly political, you can hardly accuse the message of being communist. Any human except maybe the most reactionary/hierarchical types would concur, I believe.

Fearsum Endjinn is pretty decent. I liked 'Against a Dark Background' though it's a bit rougher.

He was a good to very good writer... 20 years of writing after work, followed by twenty more years being comfortably well off while writing for a quarter of a year, at most.

Well, pancreatic cancer is no joke. He was dead within three months of diagnosis.

I'll warn you, in terms of pacing Phlebas is all over the place compared to PoG. That said, I think Phlebas is just more entertaining - distinct setpieces, interesting characters, consequential action, clever strategems. It reads more like sci-fi-noir, the main character jumping from bad to worse and still scraping through, seething the whole time at the hedonistic and inhuman Culture as if someone had transplanted an early 21st century man into the setting.

That said, I think Phlebas is just more entertaining

That's wild to me, because imo the only thing less entertaining than Consider Phlebas is the classified section of a newspaper. It's by a large margin the most painfully boring fiction book I've ever read. Meanwhile Player of Games actually was really quite entertaining.

To each their own, I'll probably reread the whole Culture series once I've finished it and I might scare up a different opinion on a second read-through.

That sounds great, thanks for the rec. I've never been bothered by bad pacing or meandering plots as long as there's gems of payoff in there.

It's always bothered me more when an author carefully orchestrates a setup to a disappointing resolution. Like "hey there were some interesting ideas you cut short exploring so you could rush me to some shit I could care less about"

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