Ryan

Ryan

  • Commented on Happy Halloween!
    So in the meantime I'm working on a side-quest, a novel set in the Laundryverse under the New Management, but with none of the regular characters and, indeed, no sign that the Laundry even exists: it's all about what the...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Delirium Brief
    It’s been a few years since I’ve read TFM so you could be right. Weren’t they called the brotherhood of the black pharaoh? Maybe their summoning ritual helped that way. Or maybe nyarlathotep just came through on their own power...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Delirium Brief
    The sleeper in the pyramid is not Nyarlathotep, it's something else. Nyarlathotep is the black pharaoh (this name pops up several times in Lovecraftian works) and is what Iris and her sex cult were trying to summon in The Fuller...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    These ideas all seem predicated on the Mandate being a man. Yes he has a physical body and he's almost certainly not the full manifestation of Nyarlathotep; but at the very least he's automatically an incredibly powerful ritual sorcerer. One...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    I did mention a real modern sniper rifle. I have read of someone during 'Nam taking out someone at 1300 yards. For that matter... doesn't he ever catch a cold, or the flu? I doubt anything as mundane as a...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    possibly on the order of Cybermen. [Nerd Alert] The Cybermen certainly aren't anyone's idea of a good party guest but their requirement to grow in numbers by cyber-conversion sounds fitting for the laundryverse; hive mind assimilation as a CNG survival...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    I'm not sure that's a given. CNG is primarily driven by the rapid rise in human population growth, leading to an extremely high density of minds "over observing" reality. Unfortunately at the same time with the solar neighbourhood being in...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    The Mandate’s natural glamour seems to be so powerful that just being in his presence is enough to force one to bend the knee. Cthulhu knows what a protracted meeting with him would be like when he’s really trying. I...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    So the Mandate is Trump now (in terms of rambling, incoherent orders). Not sure if that's better or worse than the original impression of a dark and sinister Outer God! :P I did wonder if this was a full manifestation...
  • Commented on Taxonomy of story, or, why murder?
    Well, they can lose their connections, time, perhaps friends and family. For many people that might not be that difficult, but I think many people would think twice before time-jumping into the future. Granted, IIRC the Commonwealth had some life-prolonging...
  • Commented on Taxonomy of story, or, why murder?
    I find the Commonwealth books enjoyable, but there's plenty about them that leave you scratching your head. Some of the bizarre things people do in it could be cool things to explore as aspects of different cultures, but they're often...
  • Commented on Cthulhu Counterfactual
    The really scary things about Lovecraft are evolution, knowledge and time. I'd go a step further and say the really scary thing is that knowledge is dangerous. The ancient aliens and eldritch horrors of lovecraft aren't just scary because they're...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    The Mandate isn’t just a dude with a super power (though it looked that way at first). He is a dude possessed by Nyarlathoteb with the strength of that possession seemingly having grown between appearances....
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    The Corporation Wars are a good mention because they feel like books from ten years ago (in the sense that it’s getting rarer to read singularity-type fiction, especially without some dystopic overtones). I wasn’t too into the story but it...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    The thing is, I'm not fully sure the above is that accurate, or explains everything in a satisfactory way. I think you're at least a decade too late. In the early 2010s the only popular singularity fiction I can think...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    (Preview button suggest this should work) I don’t know about posting emojis from a desktop but you can just do it straight from your phone keyboard. 😁 👌🏻 🐱...
  • Commented on New Book Week!
    We're not just talking about "here's some maps" because they already did things like that by putting through probes to identify local features of interest. It's whether or not taking reconnaissance to its logical conclusion would make the show better...
  • Commented on New Book Week!
    Would it have been entertaining for every episode to start with a montage of months long, increasingly invasive covert reconnaissance? Or for the SG-1 team to receive in a highly detailed briefing about the worlds they were about to be...
  • Commented on New Book Week!
    Arghhh, loved the book but was shocked when it ended! I thought I had a decent amount of pages left. At least it's only a year wait. I loved that we got to see more of the inner workings of...
  • Commented on Dark State: how to get signed copies!
    I just found a copy in my local Waterstones so many places are already selling it in the UK....
  • Commented on Dude, you broke the future!
    The process guarantees continuity of experience For a lot of people (me included) this would be a requirement. But I think there's a good reason to accept the non-continuous kind; just like funerals it's for the living and not the...
  • Commented on What can possibly go wrong?
    Often computer tests are done in a set room with access to the internet restricted, but in other types of tests the questions themselves nullify the internet as a cheating tool. A well designed test question wouldn't be "What is...
  • Commented on What can possibly go wrong?
    I'm 6 years out of uni and while many of my exams were pen, paper and nothing else a lot of them were computer based or open book. I appreciate that there is some need to test whether or not...
  • Commented on What can possibly go wrong?
    Automated lawbots already exist. If CGI porn using other people’s images grows to be a problem a counter might be bots with visual recognition software that crawl through the web looking for hits, DMCA’ing any they find. That might help...
  • Commented on Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe
    Thinking a bit on a tangent, if cars are programmed to always avoid pedestrians (slow down, stop, give them lots of room, etc) then will pedestrians take over the streets again once they trust that cars won't run them down?...
  • Commented on We get reviews (contd.)
    Looking forward to diving back into the world, particularly the Commonwealth. Having re-read Empire Games recently I can’t help but have caught a bit of the Stross bug/curse where on-paper dangerous societies seem attractive compared to the real world. Would...
  • Commented on From Here To The Holodeck
    Regarding movement I'm quite surprised at the amount of VR games that are first person shooters/adventure games. Perhaps it's just because the FPS is such a mainstay of AAA games but flight sims (like elite dangerous) or even genres like...
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    That's assuming they can make portals, which may turn out to be significantly more of an engineering challenge than culturing some self replicating interdimensional-teleporting-organelles. A medium term policy would be to transfer the most polluting industries off world. For example;...
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    Not realllly. It’s more like if the US had one Supreme Court judge who was appointed by an elected committee once the last one dies (to compare to Iran...but there’s a whole more complexity there like two entirely separate militaries)....
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    Charlie, I said 'world-walkers'. The Commonwealth + the world-walkers can put a nuke on every US city and major base quite easily - with trucks, bombers not needed. However, the Commonwealth military would be well aware of the fact that...
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