ilya187

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• Commented on Deaths and Deadlines
  it aims to do for "Peter Pan" what "Equoid" did for unicorns. Are you going to tackle Little Mermaid next?...
• Commented on Someone please cancel 2019 already?
  Never heard this joke before. https://inosmi.ru/inotweet/20190118/244410607.html Брекзить — прощаться, но не уходить...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Delirium Brief
  classic urban fantasy trope whereby the things that go bump in the night—vampires, zombies, elves—always seem to know their place, and that place is well away from the rolling global 24 hours cycle. Can you explain what exactly is the...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  That process is fairly good at turning existing ideas into more concrete results, but has almost never resulted in any real innovation. In the VERY few cases where it has Can you give an example where this process did result...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  Greg Egan?...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  Don't know how it is in Australia and New Zealand, but in US the gluten-free fad (without any quotation marks) made life worse for celiac sufferers, not better. I know several peopl with celiac disease, and they hate it. Used...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  Outside Soviet SF (e.g. Yefremov), I have never seen "post-scarcity" to mean anything other than material needs....
• Commented on Do my Homework
  The last paragraph in the the post to which you were replying....
• Commented on Do my Homework
  I agree with you about that particular book, but as far as I can tell, it is an exception for Reynolds, not the rule....
• Commented on Do my Homework
  "what would happen if a group of people experimented with things they thought would make them immortal, with imperfect evidence and a fair amount of fraud and power games? How would society deal with them?" Why would society need to...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  For some reason most SF that I've read that touches on this idea handwaves the entire society into the 18-35 age group - young adulthood, peak physical (sexual/reproductive**) fitness. I would say there is a very good reason for it...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  Alastair Reynolds makes me twitch. Can you elaborate on that?...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  surveillance state that does everything right. "Blue Remembered Earth" by Alastair Reynolds...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  It's almost as though the Palestinian goal is long-term occupancy of the area while the Zionists are more like the millenialist Christians: bring on the end of the world for *I* am guaranteed a place at g*d's table. Palestinians (well,...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  Plus, of course, that it's far better to be a social justice warrior than oppose them... what are you against: Society? Justice? Fighting for those things? The usual response from the opponents of SJW is that "Social Justice Warriors" have...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  2) Legalization of sex work. Are you American? Sex work is both legal and fairly mundane in most of the First World....
• Commented on Do my Homework
  It's like something written by Benford or Brin, but without the conflict (who cares what the humans are doing) or the happy ending. I call it Inferiority-Punk. "The Gods Laughed" by Paul Anderson...
• Commented on Taxonomy of story, or, why murder?
  Scott -- I really do not understand what you wrote. Can you elaborate?...
• Commented on Taxonomy of story, or, why murder?
  Unfortunately, the killer died after the murder and was also restored from backup — a backup from before the murder, so they can't remember why they did it Charlie, you mis-remember a little. The killer did not die -- he...
• Commented on Dread of Heinleinism
  Actually, most of your points about logistics are addressed in that particular novel. So is your point about camouflage/terrain -- at one point Boy (and Tank) totally walk into trap, and are saved by pure luck....
• Commented on Dread of Heinleinism
  Yes I did mean remotely controlled robots. Such as this: https://www.army-technology.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/09/1l-image-65.jpg and this: http://techsob.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Reaper.jpg MilSF very rarely has anything like either one. And I guess I have a very low SOD threshold for that. One (arguably) MilSF book which did...
• Commented on Dread of Heinleinism
  "Starship Troopers is the Trope Codifier for MilSF" It is. It is also Codifier for the trope (or rather, absence of a trope), which stops me cold from almost all MilSF. My rule of thumb is: If a putatively futuristic...
• Commented on Dread of Heinleinism
  No, you remember correctly. And line marriage members being of different color, no less!...
• Commented on Dread of Heinleinism
  Was it voluntary (replacing a normal eye with something better), or just a replacement for a lost eye?...
• Commented on Dread of Heinleinism
  Somewhat off-topic: I read once that Heinlein considered all voluntary body modifications (e.g. cyborg) and genetic engineering of humans absolutely immoral, and moreover, so obviously immoral that he never bothered defending that position -- he just took it for granted....
• Commented on Canned Monkeys Don't Ship Well, the Remix Version
  in an otherwise very tightly socialy regimented society. Are you talking about the faux-Russian-Empire society? I do not recall such areas, but it has been a long time since I read "Iron Sunrise"....
• Commented on Canned Monkeys Don't Ship Well, the Remix Version
  The golden age of science fiction was also about the same time as peak tobacco but I can't remember any of the space heroes taking a break for a cheeky rollup. "Breaking Strain" by Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1949....
• Commented on Canned Monkeys Don't Ship Well, the Remix Version
  Object which you can detect 2 light years out are not the problem. Dust motes are....
• Commented on Canned Monkeys Don't Ship Well, the Remix Version
  Why bother? Just Because. I am quite serious. I am very leery of any solution to Fermi's Paradox which involves "Nobody would do THIS!" -- whatever "this" is. Human history repeatedly demonstrates that if something is possible at all, somebody,...
• Commented on Canned Monkeys Don't Ship Well, the Remix Version
  This solves the Fermi Paradox, because if interstellar travel is impossible then there is no paradox since no one can physically travel between stars. Not really. It still does not explain why we have not been eaten by self-replicating nano-probes....