curgoth

Recent Actions

• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  The question of who and what get to be people is one whose answer is relatively easy and surprisingly difficult to enact. There is, of course, an entire subgenre of SF/F poking into the question of who gets to be...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  From what I can tell, the argument for extreme wealth eventually rests on humanity's social hierarchy wiring. We have to give a hand full of people the power to end all life on Earth because social status unlike wealth or...
• Commented on Not dead but dreaming
  At least this time, you beat reality to the plot? I'm going to ask people to see their tongues next time I go to the US, though, just to be safe....
• Commented on Burn The Programmer!
  I don't think we're looking at a Butlerian Jihad any time soon - tech is useful, after all, and easily supports existing structures of power. That said, there are also numerous examples of people catching hell for essentially "doing things...
• Commented on A game of consequences
  On the subject of letting an AI make the decisions, I'm reminded of Elizabeth Bear's Carnival. If you have an AI with actual, reasonable rules, it's going to make some surprising decisions. I have no faith that humanity would build...
• Commented on Three Unexpectedly Good Things VR Will Probably Cause
  The Virtual Panopticon; a larger than life animated avatar of your manager stands behind you at all times. Some of those times, your manager is actually in it. But it's always there, moving and judging, whether she's paying attention or...
• Commented on Three Unexpectedly Good Things VR Will Probably Cause
  Sure, that sounds like a great idea until a) corporate pushes out mandatory work environment billboards to your virtual workspace, or giant statues of the founder, and b) your coworkers start materializing without warning in the middle of your virtual...
• Commented on The Rules of Magic
  I'm fond of Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: "An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic." So, Gandalf, sure, his magic is pretty vague, but how often does he...
• Commented on Magic, ecospeak and genre distinctions
  Not exactly fiction in the form of a novel, but the old White Wolf RPG Werewolf: the Apocalypse seems to fit the genre of ecofantasy. (Short summary; werewolves fight magical parasites, spiritual and actual pollution etc. to preserve Gaia)....
• Commented on <i>Hot Earth Dreams</i>
  Also, I think that the general thrust of the discussion so far (what about this format? Have you tried this promotion angle?) nicely illustrates why OGH is leary of self-publishing as the Wave of the Future....
• Commented on <i>Hot Earth Dreams</i>
  I'm another Canadian who likes to get my ebooks from Kobo where I can. Additionally, I tired to add your book to my to read pile in Goodreads, and it's not there yet. I could manually put in the info,...
• Commented on 21st Century: a complaint
  Makes sense. Life is an RPG where the designers assumed all PCs would be straight, white, rich cismen. It's called Kyriarchy. The rest of us are just NPCs. We're there to provide antagonists for the PCs, to make their lives...
• Commented on Magic systems and my world building process
  I like Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: "An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic." So, we have no idea how Gandalf's magic works, but how often does he...
• Commented on On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF
  Also, it's hard to define "useful". Is writing a novel "useful"? Does getting paid for it transform it into useful work? Going back to a previous post by OGH, if we had a universal basic income enough to live on...
• Commented on On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF
  Well, with ever-increasing automation, the only alternative to increased leisure time would be an ever-growing segment of the population living in poverty and misery, with the only options for a decent living coming from providing luxury services to the wealthy....
• Commented on On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF
  For spec fic that looks into right-minding that inspects how crime might arise with it in place, and ways it may not be entirely horrid, I recommend the works of Elizabeth Bear. Specifically, the third book of the Jacob's Ladder...
• Commented on On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF
  Things acceptable in the future that are icky now: Right-minding (something in your brain that adjusts thought patterns to filter out psychopathy, violence, hoarding instincts, religion, according to some form of social consensus on what the right range of "normal"...
• Commented on Let's put the future behind us
  IIRC, the book "Song of the Vikings" mentions that medieval Iceland was pretty short on tress, too - big boats had to be built with imported lumber form Norway, because the trees on Iceland didn't get big enough. (As an...
• Commented on Who ordered THAT?!?
  IIRC, both Boolean algebra and quantum physics were "meaningless discoveries", right up until they weren't....
• Commented on Not a Manifesto
  Ahem. Real-world humanity used bows, swords and armor for thousands of years. Technological revolution is a new phenomenon. Sure, but not the same bows, swords and armor - there were constant attempts to come up with better arms and armor....
• Commented on Not a Manifesto
  I think the technologification of magic in fiction is an inevitable side effect of Sanderson's First Law and RPGs. A lot of gamers, I think, at some point tried to re-create the kind of wonder they got when first reading...
• Commented on Competition Time!
  When Member of Public (MOP) called regarding a rejected insurance claim due to the exemption clause "Act of God", and MOP demanded to speak to the person responsible, actually connecting the MOP to the entity whose activity resulted in CASE...
• Commented on Competition Time!
  "Passed out from blood loss" is not an acceptable reason for not filling out the Health and Safety Questionnaire in triplicate in the required ink substitute....