krill54 Posted November 30, 2005 Share Posted November 30, 2005 I'm the only person in the world who liked Market Forces I really liked it too. But I was blown away by Altered Carbon - the sort of response that means I'll follow Morgan to whatever genre he wants to write. I heard him speak at WorldCon about whiskey, and hell, he was fascinating doing that as well... the man's got game. Pure sword & sorcery (cough 'high fantasy') is underappreciated. There's something nice about relaxing with well-written hack n' slash. Robert Howard, for example, manages to write about scantily clad barbarian lust bunnies, while still maintaining a certain amount of panache. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galactus Posted November 30, 2005 Share Posted November 30, 2005 Pure sword & sorcery (cough 'high fantasy') is underappreciated. There's something nice about relaxing with well-written hack n' slash. Robert Howard, for example, manages to write about scantily clad barbarian lust bunnies, while still maintaining a certain amount of panache *nod* Agreed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted November 30, 2005 Share Posted November 30, 2005 The nanomagic didn't bother me as much because it was so interesting to see what he did with it. Same with the Deus Ex. Both are concepts that had been brought up countless ways before. But having a world like that - where the Festival exists, where the Eschaton is not their god but has all these plans and machinations and is fighting this war with people in this time to keep the future the way it is, the way he gets around causality - all of these things were new and interesting extensions of concepts that I gave him a pass for it not being great science. It's not the interesting exploration of a scientific hypothesis like Bear does, but it's a lot like some of the best Fantasy books - it establishes fantastical rules and then applies them in interesting, well-thought out ways that make sense. Same went for the merchant princes world, and same reason I like it so much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luzifer's right hand Posted November 30, 2005 Share Posted November 30, 2005 Most of Bear is work I read is not harder than Charles Stross stuff. He has FTL communication and weapons in the Forge of God books and the math in the Eon series is pretty fucked up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doran Doran Posted November 30, 2005 Share Posted November 30, 2005 The nanomagic didn't bother me as much because it was so interesting to see what he did with it. Same with the Deus Ex. Oh, understand, I liked it, only it broke my SoD. I'm starting to dislike ubiquitous nanomagic seriously, unfortunately - it's rapidly becoming the sort of crutch for contemporary SF writers that psionics used to be back in the 60s and early 70s. As for Bear, I can't read the man. Never finished _Eon_ and never tried anything else after that experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted November 30, 2005 Share Posted November 30, 2005 Tis a shame - Slant is a great cyberpunkish novel, one of my favorites, and Darwin's Radio is a cool concept. (The sequel, however, blows goats). Vitals was a very interesting, creepy book. All are a lot harder than Eon and Forge of God were - though Forge of God and Anvil of the Stars are still much harder, and neither had FTL travel - the communication in both was an extenssion of the quantum entanglement concepts, and was not absolutely ruled out by GR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luzifer's right hand Posted November 30, 2005 Share Posted November 30, 2005 Tis a shame - Slant is a great cyberpunkish novel, one of my favorites, and Darwin's Radio is a cool concept. (The sequel, however, blows goats). Vitals was a very interesting, creepy book. All are a lot harder than Eon and Forge of God were - though Forge of God and Anvil of the Stars are still much harder, and neither had FTL travel - the communication in both was an extenssion of the quantum entanglement concepts, and was not absolutely ruled out by GR. Everything I read about quantum entanglement written by recognized scientists suggest that no useful information can be transmitted with it at speeds faster than light, FTL coms and weapons violate causality just like FTL travel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted November 30, 2005 Share Posted November 30, 2005 Hmm. That wasn't my understanding, but okay. That is, btw, another thing I really liked about Stross's scifi- the qubits concept. Yeah, it's not perfect science fact yet, but it's a great idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doran Doran Posted December 1, 2005 Share Posted December 1, 2005 I got the impression that qbits were simply bulk application of EPR-style preconditioned particles. Which has been convincingly shown as unusable for FTL information transmission. And if it _did_ work, you'll note big E would have to come down on it hard, since it certainly would violate causality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted December 1, 2005 Share Posted December 1, 2005 It has? Really? Interesting. I don't suppose you have reports about this - the last things I've read I thought had indicated that it is even spookier. Violating causality is fine - as long as you do it in a specific kind of way. In that universe, it's fine to do FTL communication because no one's in a position to actually act on that information to change events in any significant fashion - the whole staying within the light cone thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doran Doran Posted December 1, 2005 Share Posted December 1, 2005 It has? Really? Interesting. I don't suppose you have reports about this - the last things I've read I thought had indicated that it is even spookier. God, no. I got outta physics about the time a bunch of Indian guys claimed they could FTL messages by studying stat properties of coupled-particle decay in vapor chambers, which eventually proved to be unfactual. I only pursue the Letters casually these days, but I'm confident they didn't sneak anything that major pst me. Violating causality is fine - as long as you do it in a specific kind of way. In that universe, it's fine to do FTL communication because no one's in a position to actually act on that information to change events in any significant fashion - the whole staying within the light cone thing. Ah, but what is a "significant fashion"? Allow me FTL and I can rack up sick amounts of work-free arbitrage for immense wealth almost instantly. ObSF, on that: _The Weapons Shop of Isher_, although that arbitrage happens through "conventional" time travel rather than FTL. The Big E would have to keep much closer tabs on everything than we're led to believe it does if it wants to guard against stuff like this in an environment where any causality violation is possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted December 2, 2005 Share Posted December 2, 2005 Well, the qubits had to be transported conventionally. That kind of limits how immediate you can gain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annelise Posted December 2, 2005 Share Posted December 2, 2005 Morgan would most likely descripe things like rape and torture with much more in detail than GRRM. That's fucking enough. (Yeah, I think so, too). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doran Doran Posted December 2, 2005 Share Posted December 2, 2005 Well, the qubits had to be transported conventionally. That kind of limits how immediate you can gain. Yeah, but once you have prepositioned them, it's causality violation galore. If they were really limited by the light-cone after preposition, there would be no reason whatsoever to used them compared to just pointing a huge com laser at your destination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted December 2, 2005 Share Posted December 2, 2005 No, it can't be. Or, yeah - it is, but not in any way that E cares about. E doesn't care about violating causality - he cares about doing anything that would be problematic to bringing about his existence, and that can only happen if you go back before the E event - or communicate to those folks before the E event. It is impossible to do so with qubits because they have to be taken there conventionally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doran Doran Posted December 2, 2005 Share Posted December 2, 2005 Ah, well that's ok, then. It's been a while since I read SS and I had forgotten that Big E only cares about pre-emergence causality violation. I thought it went after all major timeline hijinx. Although with the level of nanomagic available, I could just quietly slip out of E-watched space relativistically, spend a few hundered thousand years in an AI core while travelling to the magellan clouds, for instance. Then I fire up the spin-singularity or whatever handwaving it was that powered ships, rip back pre-E and violate it's causality with impunity. We don't see enough E surveilence to stop something like that, I don't think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted December 7, 2005 Share Posted December 7, 2005 On a totally unrelated note... Finished Woken Furies. And was not nearly as impressed by it as I was Altered Carbon. What a dumb ending. This really felt formulaic; especially when you compare it to the structure of Broken Angels and Market Forces. It has the same kind of beat, the precise same twist and turn and big revelation and almost the same kind of denouement. Eh. If this is how he writes fantasy, I'll not be all that impressed. One thing's for sure - Kovacs is sure lucky that he keeps running into opposition that want to keep him alive for whatever reason after he massacres them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stego Posted November 13, 2006 Author Share Posted November 13, 2006 Dude.....talk about ressurection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted November 13, 2006 Share Posted November 13, 2006 Well, since it is a year on, any news about that fantasy book he was writing? Morgan is one of the authors whose back catalogue will see me through some of 2007 (probably alongside Neal Asher). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted November 13, 2006 Share Posted November 13, 2006 Yeah,I was all confused because I was reading the dates and I was thinking "Nov 24th..but that's in two weeks". And then I looked at the year. Using search functionality FTW! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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