And next year I'm planning on doing masks that fit my glasses. I only had my 3D Printer some months ago and I have a very long todo list including replicas of old electrical switchs.
]]>for further fun I'm waiting what you could do with a 3D printer ... what's the use of a new religion without new idols and demons ?...
]]>"But I have the whole series in paperback. This'll mess up my shelving!" First thing I thought! but if this is an achievement fot you, congratulations.
You apologized for your blooging being quiet and I have a future blog entry for you : what do you want for christmas (peace in the world and your own books forbidden!) or maybe what excellent books did you read these last months and think we should ask for christmas (again, NOT yours : we already have them ...) thanks
]]>]]>"Dammit, why couldn't this have stayed as a light escapist fantasy series? " well, was it a light escapist fantasy serie from the begining ? Science-Fiction (and fantasy at its best) is not about escapism, it speaks about reality : the one we face, the one we are scared of, the one who "might be possible but no no, please ..." science-fiction is about our fears. I do believe (and I am not the only one here) that you are a very good SF writer and I am pretty sure you know that : you don't write about the future that could be, you write about the future we fear : you write about the present. The actual problem is that ALL of the possible futures we face seam to be horrible because the present is so hard and it is your fate to face this fact better than us. You are doomed, like was John Brunner, or Aldous Huxley. It was a prophety, but you know, now The Sheep Look Up !
]]>Assuming the point is to structure a society that tries to minimize cruelty, what are our options? the first questions here seems "why minimize cruelty ?" This is a very pessimistic point of view, but the 20th century showed that maximizing cruelty can work ... and indeed the mass killing of WW2 was "for the best" of an indutrialized country. in this view, a police state can be the solution : extreme cruelty to some very few people that shows no common thing with "us" and some new moral trends sowing who is with us or who is against ... (war on terror, 1984, new closed city wher citizenship is allowed only for the rich ....) This can work, doesn't need new ideas and id already in the box... A lot of the people in charge don't think about minimizing cruelty but minimizing novelty, and THAT is a big issue ! As a species we seem to avoid novelty as much as we can and tend to continue on errors : if it didn't work the first time, try again! last century, the western main thought was that progress was good now, I'm not sure it's still the case : nostalgia, "good old days" seem to come much easier in the conversations (maybe it is because of the aging of our population) So, if we have to do anything about the present state (and I think we should) the first thing is to try and convince people that progress is a good word and social progress a better one ! As for the basic income : income is already tight with work, but work has been totally cut out from social utility : as pointed out someone in the last thread, in an ecological view, most of the people with the best incomes are complete parasites, showing no social utility at all, and those are the one we should admire ! but if someone is benevolent his (her) social utility is much higher than his (her) income and can be totally separated. so maybe ther is a hint : count benevolat in the years for pension... (please excuse my poor english)
as for Halting State and Rule 34, I didn't read them. I bought Halting state but couldn't read it : to much slang, a much to difficult vocabulary and (yes) style. Do you think it will be translated in french ? and when ?
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