Who do you root for? (aSoIaF thread)

[Elok]

Imran, if you like I can go back to pissing and moaning about all the things I don't like about ASOIAF. I just figured it'd be nice to be positive about something for a change.

[Guynemer]

You're fairly close, Guy. I like how NS made his book bipartisan by making his female president resemble both Hilary and Palin. You can hate her whichever side you favor politically!

oh god DAMN IT. I hated her BEFORE she just did... that thing she just did. I'm now a bit past that, and OF ****ING COURSE

Spoiler:

she's one of the 11 Swarm survivors the Italian lady mentions. Just finished that first contact message last night, about the cannibalism. Gonna read on from there over lunch. Man, **** the former president.

For real, the worst fictional President since President Logan in 24.

[Elok]

Like I said, it gets worse . . . before it gets better. He had to get it down to seven women somehow. Finished the book on lunch break today. The ending feels somewhat abrupt, he could have told plenty more story there, but I think he figured "well, I drew the whole world, more or less, does the story really matter after that?" It's interesting reading NS right after GRRM, since they're obviously focused on such very different things as specfic writers. If fantasy worlds were houses, GRRM's would have a very intricate coat of paint and lots of pictures, rooms full of heirloom furniture and knicknacks--but the building itself has a light plywood frame. Stephenson's would be bare concrete and cinderblocks with some Ikea furniture chucked in. I prefer the latter, but I suppose there's something to be said for both.

[Jon Miller]

Like I said, it gets worse . . . before it gets better. He had to get it down to seven women somehow. Finished the book on lunch break today. The ending feels somewhat abrupt, he could have told plenty more story there, but I think he figured "well, I drew the whole world, more or less, does the story really matter after that?" It's interesting reading NS right after GRRM, since they're obviously focused on such very different things as specfic writers. If fantasy worlds were houses, GRRM's would have a very intricate coat of paint and lots of pictures, rooms full of heirloom furniture and knicknacks--but the building itself has a light plywood frame. Stephenson's would be bare concrete and cinderblocks with some Ikea furniture chucked in. I prefer the latter, but I suppose there's something to be said for both.

It is a shame that Stephenson still has problems with endings.

Diamond Age has some great great ideas, but the last 10% or so is ****.

JM

[Guynemer]

Reamde has a whizz-bang ending, but it is so completely different from his other novels is most other respects it can hardly be considered a Stephenson novel at all.

[Elok]

I recall reamde's ending involved an Osama bin Laden figure getting offed by a cougar in the course of an extended rumble between Islamists and John Birchers. The whole book was something of a prolonged daffy chase sequence, with NS constantly adding in new improbable twists and absurdities to up the ante. But it still felt extremely Stephenson to me, despite the lack of complex high-tech conceits.

Re: Seveneves, the single detail I find most incredible

Spoiler:

is that, after millennia living under extremely harsh circumstances, nobody became anything like religious. They have a sort of "psych chaplain" equivalent who talks about feelings and ****, but people living under unbelievably trying conditions for their whole lives tend to want some kind of ultimate justification for it all. This justification is of course not necessarily theistic IRL, but religion in the book is basically restricted to a few austere philosophies vended by Julian lunatics.

[Jon Miller]

I recall reamde's ending involved an Osama bin Laden figure getting offed by a cougar in the course of an extended rumble between Islamists and John Birchers. The whole book was something of a prolonged daffy chase sequence, with NS constantly adding in new improbable twists and absurdities to up the ante. But it still felt extremely Stephenson to me, despite the lack of complex high-tech conceits.

Re: Seveneves, the single detail I find most incredible

Spoiler:

is that, after millennia living under extremely harsh circumstances, nobody became anything like religious. They have a sort of "psych chaplain" equivalent who talks about feelings and ****, but people living under unbelievably trying conditions for their whole lives tend to want some kind of ultimate justification for it all. This justification is of course not necessarily theistic IRL, but religion in the book is basically restricted to a few austere philosophies vended by Julian lunatics.

Spoiler:

Stevenson's anti-theism is pretty ridiculous and is gets very obvious.

JM

[Elok]

Really? I find him significantly less hostile to religion than most SF writers. He's at least open to the idea of God, and refrains from making outright caricatures. See Randy's sympathetic religious neighbors in Crypto, Enoch Root, the philosophical showdown at the end of the Baroque Cycle, Reamde's giving some nuance even to the Islamists, etc. In Some Remarks, he mentions going to church, albeit with reservations. I view him as a sympathetic agnostic. He is hostile to traditionally naive conceptions of God, but generally notes (including in Seveneves) that most atheists' conception of God/supernatural systems is much more naive than actual theists'. I'm surprised in part because it's a break from his usual acceptance of the complexity of religious thought.

Compare ASOIAF, where almost all religious figures are hysterical dolts too blinkered even to realize that their own magic is independent of the belief system they think it serves. And as for Asimov, Heinlein or Clarke . . .

[Jon Miller]

I haven't read some of the above.

I could be wrong.

I recognize that most SF writers are anti-theist.

JM

[Elok]

Well, he's not Orson Scott Card cheerleading or anything, but he makes some effort to be fair. As devil's advocate to my own argument, "deolaters" are quite rare in Anathem as well. But then there's his repeatedly-expressed skepticism towards the notion of humans as Turing machines. I think he likes the idea of God but would prefer a much more abstracted form than most people believe in.

[Elok]

Getting back to ASOIAF, the other night I dreamed I had to share an apartment with Tywin Lannister. As you might expect, he was a control freak, very territorial. He ridiculed me for buying chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream--what kind of grown man eats rubbish like that, blah blah--and nagged me about taking up limited freezer space. The worst of it was, I got sick of the flavor after like two bowls, so I had to sneak the tub into the trash because I knew Tywin would never let me live it down if he saw me pitching it almost full.

What a dick.

[Guynemer]

Getting back to ASOIAF, the other night I dreamed I had to share an apartment with Tywin Lannister. As you might expect, he was a control freak, very territorial. He ridiculed me for buying chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream--what kind of grown man eats rubbish like that, blah blah--and nagged me about taking up limited freezer space. The worst of it was, I got sick of the flavor after like two bowls, so I had to sneak the tub into the trash because I knew Tywin would never let me live it down if he saw me pitching it almost full.

What a dick.

A couple weeks ago, I dreamed I was Theon, and Roose Bolton had tasked me with hunting down and killing a White Walker that had gotten into Winterfell.

It went about as well as you might expect.

[Jon Miller]

How do you guys have such dreams?

I can get really into books, never had a dream though.

I do admit that in the books I read, there is never anything anti-atheist (excluding the times I read a Christian self-help style book) but there is often things anti-theist. It does get annoying sometimes.

JM

[Elok]

I forgot to mention that Tywin had his own ice cream flavor, red velvet cake, which he insisted was far superior. The bastard was right there, too.

[Elok]

Also, I just checked Reamde out of the library for a re-read. Your fault, Guy.