The Reading Corner.

[Valka]

(You just earned an infraction at CFC. )

Wouldn't be the first time. 

Oh, come now. They don't infract there for tags not being properly closed. They infract you for spelling, double posts, and lots of other silly things.

Several posts about C.J. Cherryh, one of my favoritest authors, ever

I'm so happy to find someone else who enjoys her books! I've read Cyteen and the Merovingen Nights books so many times, I honestly can't count. I've also read and re-read the Union/Alliance books, the Merchanters books... it's all basically one big universe.


As for Dune... is there a dedicated Dune thread here? If not, we need one. There's so much to say about it, it's really beyond the scope of this thread.


The last thing I finished reading was the 2-hour script for a proposed TV-movie to finish off the Borgias TV series (in lieu of the 4th season they should have had, and which Showtime vetoed). The script is the only closure the fans are going to get, since even a 2-hour movie was shot down.


Otherwise, I've got several books on the go, ranging from SF to historical fiction to Digital Photography for Dummies (I have a new camera I'm having a hard time understanding).

[Buster's Uncle]

Geo had asked why I edited his post - my reason for doing it was closing the tag.  I have reason to believe you are familiar with a certain CFC rule against asking why a mod did something...  Were this there, you would now be in violation , too, would you not?


PLEASE start a Dune thread.  I may quote some random Dune posts from here and there, if I can find them.

[Valka]

Geo had asked why I edited his post - my reason for doing it was closing the tag.  I have reason to believe you are familiar with a certain CFC rule against asking why a mod did something...  Were this there, you would now be in violation , too, would you not?


PLEASE start a Dune thread.  I may quote some random Dune posts from here and there, if I can find them.

I was intending humor. I really don't want to seriously argue CFC stuff here.


I've been rewatching Children of Dune, since there's a thread over at TrekBBS I've been posting in. It helps to refresh the memory. But before I do start one, it would be prudent to know if there are many KJA/BH nuDune fans here? I don't want to accidentally start a war...

[Buster's Uncle]

There's a no bad-mouthing other site rule here that only applies to me and sisko, and I'm sometimes in breech of it.  Should've at least stuck on smiley, 'cause I was joking, too.



I have no idea exactly who doesn't like what beyond some back and forth on movie v. miniseries (mostly the latter  for me) and I don't recall whether anyone but me has mentioned the prequels, which I think are wretched beyond all tolerance, though I see a lot of hateful talk elsewhere on the web about the authors that I find utterly inexcusable.

I think it is safe to talk about and openly like whatever you want without fear of a war.  Hopefully some good discussion and maybe fun argument, but war?  My boys don't do war on the forum - I wouldn't even have to say anything.

(Considering that they had to use water-fat offworlders to play Fremen, and the same actress to play Alia at 15 and 24, and the twins were way too old, Children was pretty brilliant.)

[Valka]

There's a no bad-mouthing other site rule here that only applies to me and sisko, and I'm sometimes in breech of it.  Should've at least stuck on smiley, 'cause I was joking, too.

Okay, thanks. I'm still feeling my way here, and need to learn what's acceptable and not.

I have no idea exactly who doesn't like what beyond some back and forth on movie v. miniseries (mostly the latter  for me) and I don't recall whether anyone but me has mentioned the prequels, which I think are wretched beyond all tolerance, though I see a lot of hateful talk elsewhere on the web about the authors that I find utterly inexcusable.

If it had the names [redacted to avoid a vanity googling] attached to it, or anyone who posts on [redacted]'s blog or a couple of Dune forums I will not name (because they are truly not civil places), it wouldn't surprise me. [redacted] is sometimes a gifted researcher when it comes to Dune, but he's also made it one of his life's goals to make KJA's professional life as miserable as possible; even his and BH's families have been targets. I don't like KJA, but he never deserved the vile things some of these people have said.

I think it is safe to talk about and openly like whatever you want without fear of a war.  Hopefully some good discussion and maybe fun argument, but war?  My boys don't do war on the forum - I wouldn't even have to say anything.

(Considering that they had to use water-fat offworlders to play Fremen, and the same actress to play Alia at 15 and 24, and the twins were way too old, Children was pretty brilliant.)

Yep - I took one look at the twins and thought they looked considerably older than 9! But the Alia-actress gets a pass - it says right in Children of Dune that she'd been using Bene Gesserit tricks to keep herself looking youthful.

[Buster's Uncle]

I think the double-age twins was a simple decision to use actors mature enough to be able to act, which is a bit much to expect of any nine year-old but Dakota Fanning at nine.  The ones they used at least had a very charming chemistry, like actual close siblings.

Their Alia was also full of charisma and win...

[Geo]

Wouldn't be the first time. 

Oh, come now. They don't infract there for tags not being properly closed. They infract you for spelling, double posts, and lots of other silly things.

I literally meant it wouldn't been the first time I got an infraction at CFC. The reason was of course for a completely different issue.
That said, I only ever had one infraction imposed on me at the site.

[Sigma]

I've actually been rereading Dune for the first time in like eight years, this time via Audiobook, which is how I do most of my reading. The narrator is great, but it's a partially voice acted audiobook and some of the choices are...questionable. Most notably the guy they have playing Gurney Halleck sounds like Jack Nicholson, and the actor voicing Paul has a british accent but Leto doesn't.

That aside, man I completely forgot how brilliant that first book is. I'm amazed at how seamlessly it can drift between discussing statecraft, politics, religion and ecology-- especially the ecology part, to the extent that Arrakis feels like as much of a character as the actually people in the story.

[Lord Avalon]

Intruder (Foreigner #13) by CJ Cherryh

[uss1701jb]

Read ALL the dystopia!!!

[Zoid]

I'm currently reading "The evolution of God" by Robert Wright. It's an welcome break from the islamophobic in-your-face rethoric from the 'god fathers' of the New Atheism movement (Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris) as it takes a objective and materialistic stance in dealing with faith and gods.  It's not without it's own set of biased pet theories though. But still, a really good and interesting read! 

Wright's thesis entails three basic propositions. The first is that God evolves. By this Wright means not an actual God, whom he generally treats as illusory, but rather peoples' conceptions of gods and God. The "evolution" he writes about is mostly cultural evolution, although he includes an appendix on the possible biological roots of religion.

The bulk of the book is devoted to his tracing the history of gods from hunter-gatherer societies through chiefdoms, polytheistic kingdoms, the evolution of monolatry and monotheism, and then the scriptural presentation of God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Wright is interested mainly in how gods may have felt about cultural outsiders, about "others" not part of one's own group. He emphasizes how gods have alternated between coaxing their followers to destroy designated others and urging accommodation and acceptance of people with different beliefs.

Wright proposes that whether gods were seen as belligerent toward out-groups or not often depended on the political needs of societal leaders at the time. When leaders perceived zero-sum conflict situations in relations with other groups it was useful to have one's own gods offer some encouragement to rally the troops. But if there were non-zero-sum opportunities in possible alliances, say through trade or military coalitions, then it became useful to be more ecumenical, to accept to some degree others' gods as well as one's own. For instance, one way of accommodating polytheistic gods when political coalitions were built was to make them into a clan of gods, related to each other.

His historical analysis of the cultural evolution is not as strong as it could be, not least because he leaves out a big chunk of time. While he relies on relatively modern evidence from hunter-gatherer and chiefdom societies, draws on certain contemporary events, and offers limited comments on the intervening centuries, he focuses mostly on the developmental period preceding about 700 AD. After Constantine, for instance, we hear very little of how the evolution of God may have played out in Christianity through the administration of churches and states.

Wright's second basic proposition is that there is a moral trajectory in history, expanding opportunities to realize the good. "The march of history challenges people to expand their range of sympathy and understanding, to enlarge their moral imaginations, to share the perspective of people ever farther away," he claims. He concedes that it is not inevitable that we will get closer to moral truth, but he believes that growing non-zero-sumness is forcing us to face up to it or to otherwise descend into chaos.

He allows that there has not been simple linear progress, but contends that there has been an advance through fits and starts, some forward, some backward. Yet since again he barely skims the past 1300 years, his assertion that history demonstrates moral progress remains highly questionable, unproven at best.

Wright's third basic proposition relies on the first two. He says that if there is a moral order (Proposition #2) and if conceptions of God have evolved to support it (Proposition #1), it does not necessarily mean there is a God; but, he asserts, these conditions are evidence in favor of the God hypothesis (Proposition #3).

Even if gods arose from illusions, he suggests, the evolution of the illusions "points to the existence of something you can meaningfully call divinity." He is not arguing the God hypothesis is true -- he is merely offering it up for consideration as plausible.

Wright's reasoning is dubious. From his questionable assertion that there has been moral progress it is a big leap to claim, as he does, that it reflects a purposeful historical goal. Patterns do not necessarily imply purposes. And only after he has smuggled in the idea of purposeful history is it possible for him to speak of a source of the purpose. A "purpose" by its very nature has an agent, some sentient entity capable of intent, at least in our common understanding. Where we see purposes we see agents, just as Wright does here. There are further flaws in his logic, including reliance on a false analogy between propositions about God as the source of moral order and physicists' postulation of electrons to help explain the behavior of matter.

So Wright's conclusion that the evolution of the concept of God and moral progress in history constitute evidence for the God hypothesis is unconvincing. Nevertheless, The Evolution of God is likely to sell well, and perhaps it should. Certainly the title and subject matter are fashionable, in both their evolution and God dimensions. Wright deserves credit for the ambition of this work, for its sweep and boldness. The Evolution of God will make readers think, if only to marshal their responses to the parts where they believe Wright is wrong.

[Geo]

Fredericksburg, VA, is just invaded by the Posleen in John Ringo's Gust Front! 

[gwillybj]

The Last Spaceship. Murray Leinster, 1949. A must-read for any hardcore SF fan. Politics, technology, romance. Way deeper than pulp, a serious spacefaring tale.

[Arbee]

Lately, I've been reading the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett.  It's actually pretty amusing, both a parody of and an homage to all sorts of literature, set in a world where fantasy meets science.  It's fun to read through and try to catch all of the references that are made, especially in the Night Watch novels.

I'd recommend the series to anyone, even if you're not a fan of fantasy.

Good Omens, which is a collaborative work by Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, is an interesting read, as well.

[Buster's Uncle]

Loved it.  Also Small Gods from the Diskworld series.