Great Ordeal Feedback

[.H.]

3 minutes ago, rsbakker said:

This is something I've mulled a long time. There's just something... I dunno... wrong, it feels to me, about writing out one's thematic intentions in a book, let alone an entire series. The worry has to be that doing so would instantly transform the series into a big fat allegory, when what I'm primarily aiming to accomplish is to narrate a problem bigger than I could possibly 'theorize.' Writing a 'philosophy behind' could have the effect of closing down the very interpretative space I'm trying to pry open.

Fair enough.  In reality, you are probably right, but you know, I am always eager to get my grubby little paws on more.  Ever more.

[Madness]

5 minutes ago, rsbakker said:

The two best places to get a lay gist of my particular theories on meaning and the 'semantic apocalypse,' would probably be two different SF stories of mine:

Crash Space: https://www.academia.edu/19469409/Crash_Space

The Dime Spared: https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/the-dime-spared/

I feel like those stories might have siblings that the world needs to see ;).

[Happy Ent]

29 minutes ago, rsbakker said:

This is something I've mulled a long time. There's just something... I dunno... wrong, it feels to me, about writing out one's thematic intentions in a book, let alone an entire series.

I agree. This is for us, the readers to detect.

(Yes, at some time I will write a piece about the algorithmic perspective on these books in my capacity of computer science professor. On Shortest paths, efficient Bayesian inference, and all the AI/singularity/posthumanism crap that is in the books. Maybe even explain the math behind Emilidis’s glamour and how Shae’s Mathesis pin works. 

Working title: “Jerking Sranc groins to solve the AI control problem” or something.

Somebody else needs to write about the Tolkien inversions, somebody else about Kierkegaard, Nihilism, and the Thousand Thousand Halls, etc.)

 

[Madness]

I'm right here whenever (days, months, years) you want to compile a scholarly anthology of Earwa Assays, HE.

[sologdin]

24 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Working title: “Jerking Sranc groins to solve the AI control problem” or something.

Somebody else needs to write about the Tolkien inversions, somebody else about Kierkegaard, Nihilism, and the Thousand Thousand Halls, etc.)

 

ha.  i can do the agamben/foucault/marxism stuff. 

working title: 'seminal denigration: logo-tekhnical sovereignty & the onto-zoerotico-theological apocalypse,' or so.

[lokisnow]

1 hour ago, sologdin said:

ha.  i can do the agamben/foucault/marxism stuff. 

working title: 'seminal denigration: logo-tekhnical sovereignty & the onto-zoerotico-theological apocalypse,' or so.

Maybe, but I think this title suffers from an emasculating Lack of hyphens or other similar notation. Maybe if you included a B==D-- going into the colon?

seminal denigration B==D--:

&c &c

[Ghjhero]

4 hours ago, rsbakker said:

Thanks for the kind words, Ghjhero. First off, read what no one else is reading. A new 'angle' is often the best short cut. The best times to brainstorm is when you are wasted or tired, both of which have the effect of dampening down your brain's ability to filter associative information for relevance. Also, keep reworking whatever idea you initially come up with. Your brain is, among other things, a device for generating novel solutions to novel problems via the testing of mutations ('experiment'). Any thought you come up with may not be original, but *you are,* thanks to the plasticity of brain function. Every time you recycle ideas they accrue mutations. So if you come up with something that feels promising, don't rush to the presses, just keep recycling it. Sooner or later, it *has* to become distinctive, simply because you are. I always have a horde of promising ideas, and I'm dipping back into this silo or that to rework them, some I lose track of and they drift into oblivion, others rise up.

I generally let them decide. 

As soon as I read that, an image popped into my head of me drinking alone in my dorm crazily writing down ideas haha. I'll have to see what happens! If I ever make it to the bookshelves I'll be sure to write you into my acknowledgements.

[Callan S.]

4 hours ago, rsbakker said:

This is something I've mulled a long time. There's just something... I dunno... wrong, it feels to me, about writing out one's thematic intentions in a book, let alone an entire series. The worry has to be that doing so would instantly transform the series into a big fat allegory, when what I'm primarily aiming to accomplish is to narrate a problem bigger than I could possibly 'theorize.' Writing a 'philosophy behind' could have the effect of closing down the very interpretative space I'm trying to pry open.

It's interesting that anyone else could write about the books thematic intentions and have absolutely none of these problems occur at all. Forming a curious 1 in 8 billion exclusion.

[unJon]

53 minutes ago, Callan S. said:

It's interesting that anyone else could write about the books thematic intentions and have absolutely none of these problems occur at all. Forming a curious 1 in 8 billion exclusion.

I dunno. You have to take Death of the Author to its extreme in order to think this is all that curious. 

[sologdin]

author has responsibility to avoid encouraging the intentional fallacy, maybe.  reasonable.

[rsbakker]

Quote

"It's interesting that anyone else could write about the books thematic intentions and have absolutely none of these problems occur at all. Forming a curious 1 in 8 billion exclusion."

It just goes to show how dependent our interpretative capacities are on sourcing messages.

Quote

"I dunno. You have to take Death of the Author to its extreme in order to think this is all that curious."

I think it's enormously curious, not only given the way language is fetishized in the humanities in general, but in the way it reveals a crucial ecological dimension to linguistic communication. Meaning is never independent of speakers, ever, outside hothouse intellectualisms. 'Death of author' assertions amount to the claim that butterflies are best understood between wax pages.

Quote

"author has responsibility to avoid encouraging the intentional fallacy, maybe.  reasonable."

Not only are New Critics dead, the critics of the New Critics are dead (well, almost). Which makes it pretty cutting edge, as far as humanistic theory goes!

[LuckyCharms]

Only real feedback would to be on the asses of your editors. Far too many silly errors and shoddy grammar issues with the publication. I was one of the people on the ARC feedback thread for TSA who was compiling errata that Madness supposedly emailed to you for fixing. I recall that only like 5% of the issues we found in the ARC were fixed for the official release, in the US at least. The umlauts disappeared from Zeum for this book. I don't believe that Sibawul te Nurwul had any umlauts in the previous two books, now they are present in this novel. Continuity errors for the seasons in the beginning of several chapters; encountering Cnaiur sends Achamian and Mimara back in time.

As far as actual content, A+ Scott, keep doing your thing.

[maarsen]

I liked your ideas on generating ideas for the purpose of creating stories. When you consider words as a logical statement, then you can always play with mathematical transformations. Reflections, permutations, subtractions, additions and so  one can then be done to extract/generate new meanings and ideas. I am not the first to think of this. Zelazny did it to great effect, and Iain Banks seemed to be aware of the idea also. Earlier, in another thread, on AI, I think, I proclaimed that I had created a humour algorithm. I did it mainly to pull the leg, metaphorically, of another poster. Essentially, I use the same method to create humour. Apart from a few ghastly instances where the metaphorical leg comes off in my hand, it does seem to work reasonably well.

Another idea is to just listen to people talk. The most unexpected and intriguing phrases may just jump out. A few years back a friend was consoling a depressed co-worker who was having a bad day. "Hey, can I get you a coffee?' "Yeah, I guess." "How do you take it?" "Black,black like my soul."

[jurble]

1 hour ago, rsbakker said:

'Death of author' assertions amount to the claim that butterflies are best understood between wax pages.

Now this is a good quote.

[Callan S.]

I thought 'death of the author' was just plain old microphone snatching - and presumably recognized as such? People couldn't really think their own interpretation somehow adhered to a book, replacing the authors, could they? [Am I walking right into playing the straight man part of a joke right now?]. Though I think it's fair to consider a reader could draw insights from a text that the author themselves did not see - it's just usually quite difficult to do so.

[unJon]

1 hour ago, Callan S. said:

I thought 'death of the author' was just plain old microphone snatching - and presumably recognized as such? People couldn't really think their own interpretation somehow adhered to a book, replacing the authors, could they? [Am I walking right into playing the straight man part of a joke right now?]. Though I think it's fair to consider a reader could draw insights from a text that the author themselves did not see - it's just usually quite difficult to do so.

Curiouser and curiouser. 

[all swedes are racist]

5 hours ago, rsbakker said:

'Death of author' assertions amount to the claim that butterflies are best understood between wax pages.

Haha awesome

[Happy Ent]

4 hours ago, Rhllor's void lobster said:

Haha awesome

Yes. It took 7 pages for RSB to actually sound like RSB. If he had started the thread in this mode, we never would have doubted his authenticity.

 

9 hours ago, LuckyCharms said:

Only real feedback would to be on the asses of your editors.

The missing Zeümi diacritics (which, by the way, are diaereses, not umlauts) were indeed jarring. But the editing has been shoddy throughout. 

The terribly pixellated maps in my hardcover of TTT! The missing appendix on languages in my paperback TDTCB! Sorcerous duals in TJE! Multiple instances of “could care less”! Aaargh! I put more care in my shopping lists, for crying out loud!

[LuckyCharms]

22 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Yes. It took 7 pages for RSB to actually sound like RSB. If he had started the thread in this mode, we never would have doubted his authenticity.

 

The missing Zeümi diacritics (which, by the way, are diaereses, not umlauts) were indeed jarring. But the editing has been shoddy throughout. 

The terribly pixellated maps in my hardcover of TTT! The missing appendix on languages in my paperback TDTCB! Sorcerous duals in TJE! Multiple instances of “could care less”! Aaargh! I put more care in my shopping lists, for crying out loud!

Forgive me for thinking of it in the Germanic sense. And the sorcerous "dual" was in WLW between Cleric and Achamian. Gah! Outrage!

It must be a weird fixation that this text was packed to the gills with silly errata. I recall the previous problems, but nothing quite so egregious or widespread. Scott has a cadre of devotees who would pore over the manuscripts agonizing to correct every oversight. But alas, this resource can't be optimally utilized.

[Callan S.]

The silly errata get in the way of the deliberate errata