Likes: science fiction, genre, comics, also classics and "literature".
Also
https://mathstodon.xyz/@aqsalose (=main) and
https://scholar.social/@aqsalose
Sad day indeed:
File770: http://file770.com/?p=40158
Reading A Wizard of #Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan were highly influential esxperiences when I was a teenager. "Who knew that fantasy could be like *this*"
David Mitchell on Wizard of Earthsea: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/23/david-mitchell-wizard-of-earthsea-tolkien-george-rr-martin
Finished reading the Leviathan Wakes (the first book in the Expanse series).
It was fairly good and well done space opera / science fiction thriller. Probably looks gorgeous on TV with modern SFX.
But then I looked up the series in the Wikipedia and when I saw that the author(s) intend the series to be in total 9 books + extra short fiction, I realized "nope, I'm not going to read 8 sequels just to find out what happens next in the Plot".
I'm a little bit ambivalent about PKD's works myself ... in general I like them, but maybe I *want* to like them more than I really do.
PKD often has very intriguing themes (consciousness, memories, mind ... + all the other weird stuff ) but plots / narratives tend to be a mess. Often too inconclusive and dreamlike to my taste?
I think my favorite PKD work is either Galactic Pot-Healer or maybe A Scanner Darkly.
@Darkly I was going to say that I remember reading Ubik but didn't remember anything about the plot...
...and then I took a look at the book's Wikipedia summary and realized I have *not* read it.
So, that's everything I have to say about Ubik. False memories about reading books you really didn't are quite PKDian thing I think!? :D
Have you read anything else by PKD?
@BookLover I agree it's an important book, but OTOH I'm not sure if reading the whole novel 1984 is necessary at this day and age; by now it's so well-known that one can easily learn about the most important and cogent concepts by only reading things that have been written about 1984 or reference it...
And anyway, I think Huxley's Brave New World is more topical today. (How things that first may *seem* like an utopia can turn out dystopic when implemented.)
@BookLover I'm afraid I don't. It's been over a decade since I read them, so my recollection of that kind of details is hazy at best. :-/
(also I'm not sure if there's mastodon etiquette about responding to replies 15 hrs late, but I guess I'll reply anyway...)
Athos was all dark and mysterious and cool and charismatic when I read the first novel in the series as a teen, but by the third follow-up book (The Vicomte of Bragelonne), Aramis had become a far more interesting character (involved in all sorts of secret plots and subterfuge).
So given it's R. L. Stevenson's birthday, maybe a chat about Stevenson's works?
My favorite that is not Treasure Island nor Jekyll and Hyde is the short story cycle The Suicide Club [1], especially the first part in cycle.
It's a part of a series where RLS attempts to tell exciting, great, timeless stories not unlike Arabian nights, but in 19th century Europe; I've always wanted to read the rest, too.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Suicide_Club_(short_story_collection)
