I've been mildly interested in checking him out ever since I saw City of Saints And Madmen sitting on the shelf at a local bookstore. Still haven't gotten around to it, though.
So what are you reading now? Part 2
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City is the one to start with. It has a number of short pieces, some straightforward short stories about different aspects of life in Ambergris, some historical material of dubious reliability about Ambergris. I was hooked from the first story. It falls within the tradition of stories about places as much as people, like New Crobuzon, Viriconium, Gormenghast, Quinsigamond, etc. Anyone who recognizes any of those names should consider checking it out.
I've decided that in my next story, I will somehow work in the term "stygian petametre".
indeed.Then people'd be complaining that authors are using uncommon units of measurement, and we'd be back to the parsec.
oh boy, what did I do this time?
Well, you can't account for everything. It seemed in Enterprise they were just flying into space with sensors and a prayer.
Energy is another thing that ST kinda ignores in the sense that the Warp Core seems to be a never ending power source as long as it doesn't get over taxed for long periods of time (high warp).
I hear light-year tossed around more than parsec within my astronomy club and fellow amateur astronomers. Parsec normally comes up in technical papers presented within the group and then you normally find light-year right beside it.
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I am reading A Singular Destiny and I am really like KRADs adventures with the stories. I hope more of these are forthcoming.
Except they weren't very far from Earth, cosmically speaking, so the distances to the stars they were visiting were already well-known. We already have accurate parallax measurements for stars out to at least a couple of hundred parsecs. NX-01 probably didn't go anywhere (other than fictional stars) whose distance isn't already well-known today thanks to parallax measurements.
In fact, the Trek concept is becoming kind of antiquated. Eventually, we'll have space-based telescopes powerful enough to let us make detailed maps of planets in other star systems. So the idea of a starship going anywhere that's totally unknown until it gets there isn't really something that will stand the test of time.
Maybe so, but I still don't understand why that would mean there's anything wrong or bad about the word "parsec." It's a perfectly valid, legitimate word. Its use in the context of the book was absolutely correct and appropriate. There's no reason why it wouldn't be used. And there's nothing unpleasant about the word. It's a perfectly nice word.
^Sounds like a Klingon stomach complaint.
Oh, I like the word "stygian."I've decided that in my next story, I will somehow work in the term "stygian petametre".indeed.
There was one month where that was the "secret word" I used at work.
Hmm. I've just decided that January's secret word will be "bromide."
I just finished reading McDermott's Cult of Osiris and it was great to see Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase again. McDermott used to post on here before he became an international bestseller, perhaps he'll return one day.
Now on to Tess Gerritsen's Keeping the Dead. Can't read any Star Trek books right now. They're all packed up awaiting shipment to the USA.
Now on to Tess Gerritsen's Keeping the Dead. Can't read any Star Trek books right now. They're all packed up awaiting shipment to the USA.
I still say it was badly overused in the novel. Voyager managed to discuss being stuck across the galaxy many times while only using the measurement “light-years” once or twice during the conversation. “Parsec” was used almost every single sentence at one point in Chain of Attack. It’s wrong to have the same word used again and again like that. A bunch of generic “very far away”/ “out of range” terms could have been used instead, particularly since they never found out how many parsecs from the Federation they were (they were definitely in another galaxy, and at one point it was mentioned at one point they may have been in another universe altogether). If they knew exactly how far from the Federation they were, and said “150,000 parsecs!” every few seconds it might have worked. They had no idea where they were.
I've searched the book's contents on Google Book Search, and I think you're exaggerating. The uses of the word were reasonable in context and technically accurate. Just because you're personally unfamiliar with the usage doesn't make it wrong.
One of the early Voyager books had the figure of 70 million light years...clearly someone had not done their homework.
I'm reading a book in which neither parsecs nor light years are likely to be mentioned: Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente. It's about a strange city you can only visit by having sex with someone who's been there, and after the first time a tattoo of a partial map of the city will appear on your skin. To go back, you have to find someone else with a similar tattoo. It's much more dreamlike and surreal than other books I've read that could be categorized as New Weird (Mieville, VanderMeer, Ford, etc). Kind of vaguely reminds me of Lucy Taylor's The Safety of Unknown Cities.
I'd recommend the Labyrinth of Echo series starting with The Stranger by Max Frei
As for me, I've started on a Sharpe binge, broken up into clumps of three - after Rifles it'll be Eagle again and then Gold, then interrupt with something else for a break - maybe Andy McDermott's Hunt For Atlantis, which I picked up today...
(Flicking through it in the shop, it came over as sort of... Matthew Reilly without the overuse of exclamation marks. Which is automatically better than Reilly, then. If Andy's reading this, and thinks "here, that's a bit rough you bastard," bear in mind it was enough to persuade me to buy it!)
I've read all five McDermott's books and I love them. Indiana Jones meets Lara Croft meets Jack Bauer all rolled into one. The books read like Hollywood movies and I'd love to see them on screen. Some of Eddie Chase's one liners are groaners and the rest are lol funny.
Reading 'Troublemaker and Other Saints' by Christina Chiu
Recently read the Star Wars novel, 'Tales of the Bounty Hunters,' which I found enjoyable with the exception of the last story; and I also read the Doctor Who book, 'I am a Dalek'...[which was a quick and enjoyable read].
Recently read the Star Wars novel, 'Tales of the Bounty Hunters,' which I found enjoyable with the exception of the last story; and I also read the Doctor Who book, 'I am a Dalek'...[which was a quick and enjoyable read].
Mudd in your Eye is by Jerry Oltion.
I'm reading The Many-Colored Land by Julian May, on my re-read of May's epic Pliocene Exile/Intervention/Galactic Milieu series. I spent the last 4 or 5 weeks with:
Intervention
Jack the Bodiless
Diamond Mask
Magnificat
And yes, I deliberately started with the last four books before reading the first four. But because there's a big time-travel event at the end of the last book tying it into the beginning of the first book, I thought it would be fun to read it this way. It is!
I took a brief detour and read Squeeze: Song by Song between Diamond Mask and Magnificat.
Once I finish the remaining four volumes, I'm thinking of re-reading the three Babylon 5 trilogies (Psi Corps, Centauri Prime and Techno-Mage) before going back to Trek.
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I had been reading Under the Dome by Stephen King. Im about a 3rd of the way through it. But after already watching Star Trek '09 twice now on dvd, i really need some trek reading. I'm gonna start re-reading the Vanguard series from the beginning.
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