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Sci-fi & Fantasy forums?

I'm a PHP dev. But I'm not sure what it is you guys want to do exactly? What do you need a dev for?
 
Gawdzilla said:
Try reading it "cold". It imparts a quite different tone to the book. :boxedin:
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Fascinating. You mean you didn't even realize it was meant to be comedy after reading lines such as these?:

"...ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea",

and: "Oolon Coluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who Is This God Person Anyway?"

right in the introduction?
 
Wowbagger said:
Fascinating. You mean you didn't even realize it was meant to be comedy after reading lines such as these?:

"...ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea",

and: "Oolon Coluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who Is This God Person Anyway?"

right in the introduction?
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The fact that this all pretty much matched my opinion of the world at that time may have had something to do with it.
 
I imagine someone reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first time, today, would find its humor rather quaint and outdated, unfortunately:

* The very idea of storing whole volumes of text on a small electronic device ain't exactly novel, anymore

* Digital watches are becoming a fairly old-fashioned idea, already

* And publishing a trilogy of books questioning the competence and/or existence of God is just what people do for fun on a weekend (at least with the crowd I hang with)
 
From the early years, I'd definitely recommend a great short novel titled "With Folded Hands" (later retitled "The Humanoids" by Jack Williamson) - written way back on 1947. Williamson was waxing prophetic about a future nanny state that would protect us at the expense of our personal freedom.

Had it been more ambiguous about it's theme, and perhaps with a more left leaning perspective, like is often perceived by some in 1984, or Farenheit 451, or Slaughterhouse Five, it might've had a greater claim for being a classic. In my estimation it was everything (Asimov's) "I Robot" has always been perceived to be but never really was: a story about a dystopian world of robots gone mad.

It is about a future world in which robots care for humanity's every want or need, providing complete care and nurturing, which is their prime directive as they see it; the better to keep their fragile charges from harm; even from risking harming themselves.

These robots all are of a single "Borg-like" intelligence, so that there can be no escape by going unnoticed anywhere on any planet any where where they are present. They can communicate instantaneously across the entire galaxy and all its star systems with the benefit of a force called Rhodomagnetism.

A group of human “rebel” vagabonds with wild talents band together in a last ditch attempt to defeat them with their own human "psycho-trans-physical” powers. One of those talents is the power of teleportation which allows them to at first hide themselves away in an entranceless (fractal) cave deep below the surface of the planet.

Doing this they are beyond the robot’s abilities to detect them with their all seeing eyes. Only one member of the group, a little orphan girl, has that particular power but she can transfer it to all the others when they sync their minds to hers to make the trans-physical leap, partly a leap of faith.
 
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I think a read a shorter version of that, where the bots were so bent on keeping humans safe they didn't even allow them to walk around on their own. I read that in the '60s, so I may have missed something. I'm very sure the title was the same, however.
 
Gawdzilla said:
The entire human race murdered in Chapter One? And later we find out it was just an bureaucratic error?
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That does have more impact to UK/European readers, I'm sure. Anyone who's seen a Terry Gilliam movie knows they love to make fun of their pervasive, all-intrusive government running utilities everywhere.

Had it been written in the US, the Earth would have been a claim sold off in a bankruptcy proceeding of a corporation or some such.
 
Beerina said:
That does have more impact to UK/European readers, I'm sure. Anyone who's seen a Terry Gilliam movie knows they love to make fun of their pervasive, all-intrusive government running utilities everywhere.

Had it been written in the US, the Earth would have been a claim sold off in a bankruptcy proceeding of a corporation or some such.
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Oh, the off-ramp idea worked (don't remember if that was the idea in the book, but it worked in the movie) for US audiences. Here in St. Louis we had hundreds of houses removed starting in '07 to widen a freeway.
 
What forum is that, exactly? Another SFF forum?

I could do all the former, but not the "modifying styles" part, as I am terrible in design and CSS. Sorry.
 
Morrigan said:
What forum is that, exactly? Another SFF forum?

I could do all the former, but not the "modifying styles" part, as I am terrible in design and CSS. Sorry.
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If you read back through this thread you'll find that after a bunch of people agreed that there aren't very many active sci-fi and fantasy forums a few people started talking about forming one (despite appearances, the thread started off being about forums, not humorous sci-fi & fantasy - that's a side topic that's formed). So it would be a new forum. but from your answer it sounds like you know of many others - care to link to them? That's what we're looking for...
 
Faustus said:
From the early years, I'd definitely recommend a great short novel titled "With Folded Hands" (later retitled "The Humanoids" by Jack Williamson) - written way back on 1947. Williamson was waxing prophetic about a future nanny state that would protect us at the expense of our personal freedom.

Had it been more ambiguous about it's theme, and perhaps with a more left leaning perspective, like is often perceived by some in 1984, or Farenheit 451, or Slaughterhouse Five, it might've had a greater claim for being a classic. In my estimation it was everything (Asimov's) "I Robot" has always been perceived to be but never really was: a story about a dystopian world of robots gone mad.

It is about a future world in which robots care for humanity's every want or need, providing complete care and nurturing, which is their prime directive as they see it; the better to keep their fragile charges from harm; even from risking harming themselves.

These robots all are of a single "Borg-like" intelligence, so that there can be no escape by going unnoticed anywhere on any planet any where where they are present. They can communicate instantaneously across the entire galaxy and all its star systems with the benefit of a force called Rhodomagnetism.

A group of human “rebel” vagabonds with wild talents band together in a last ditch attempt to defeat them with their own human "psycho-trans-physical” powers. One of those talents is the power of teleportation which allows them to at first hide themselves away in an entranceless (fractal) cave deep below the surface of the planet.

Doing this they are beyond the robot’s abilities to detect them with their all seeing eyes. Only one member of the group, a little orphan girl, has that particular power but she can transfer it to all the others when they sync their minds to hers to make the trans-physical leap, partly a leap of faith.
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Not sure who would have thought of Asimov's robot/human world as dystopian.

I certainly never did and I know what dystopian means. (:D)
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned SFF Net (http://webnews.sff.net) yet*. It's been around since the early '90s. Traffic isn't very high, but around 1500 sf/fantasy authors hang out there. Most of the activity is in the "people" topics and the private area for authors (SFWAns and other professionals).

The discussion base is hosted on a private non-propagating news server, with a clunky but serviceable web interface. The clunkiness comes mostly from having to maintain compatibility with the underlying NNTP requirements. I think most of the regulars use NNTP directly. It's a non-standard port to cut down on spam, but the website has instructions for most newsreaders.

Politics discussions are pretty left-leaning, with authors like Ray Feist tending to dominate. The "people" groups (individual authors or other SFF Net members) are very wide-ranging in terms of participation and orientation.

I read there regularly, usually once or twice a day, but seldom participate in discussions outside the private author-only areas.


* I should note that I am connected with the administration of SFF Net in a here-purposely-undefined manner (I don't want my screen identities to cross, but the ritual disclaimer is required).
 
fuelair said:
Not sure who would have thought of Asimov's robot/human world as dystopian.

I certainly never did and I know what dystopian means. (:D)
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I wouldn't have thought so either, but I do believe in the popular culture, and those who haven't actually read I Robot most likely do, because of the movie by the same name. And perhaps I'm splitting hairs there, because a world in which a robot goes wild would probably not really be "dystopian"

Top Dystopian Movies
 
DarthFishy said:
I found the thread in which you discussed your world building really fascinating. I learnt more about medieval warfare in that thread than a year of watching History Channel would have taught me.
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Thanks, I found the thread really helpful and insightful too. It's my favourite subject to discuss. I pulled some really useful things out of that particular thread that have greatly enhanced my world-building.
 
AvalonXQ said:
I'm on the LMB mailing list...
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Took a long time to discover this thread -- I also frequent the LMB list. Lots of good stuff there, and I enjoy the way off-topic discussion is pretty much free to happen, too.

I discovered Bujold fairly recently. To be honest, I (like a fair number of others, I suspect), love the "Vorkosiverse" books, but struggle with other material by the author.
 
Garrison said:
Tip on Piers Anthony, if you like the Xanth series and you get a chance to read his short stories, DON'T. It's the rough equivalent of walking into your parents bedroom and not only catching them having sex but a full-blown S&M orgy.
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I remember this being rather surprising. On the other hand, I've read plenty of his non-xanth and non juvie stuff so it wasn't too scary. I'd say 'read them, but keep in mind he's writing for a different audience, in a different style'.
 
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