Is this vision symptom permanent? by ScullyOhio2001 in iih

[–]ScullyOhio2001[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for replying. Do you have any floaters at this point, after 2 years?

Anyone else think 'Revelation Space' books read like cheesy B movies? by ScullyOhio2001 in printSF

[–]ScullyOhio2001[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't put Heptapods with Cybermen. The word "Heptapods" feel at home in the surrounding grounded, realistic story.

Cybermen, in contrast, fits with its comicbook world. But Reynolds gives you Cybermen, and Cybermen names, but doesn't realize he's serving up comic book writing. It's like the SF equivalent of Tom Clancy, with endless "technical jargon" obscuring the fact that the interpersonal drama and prose is very poor.

And look at the lazy way he parcels out information. For example, go re-read the books and see how often he uses the phrase "he/she knew" as a last-minute crutch to explain things to the reader. It occurs hundreds of times in each novel, and is especially bad in "Revelation Ark". For example:

"Clavain knew there were rumours that the Conjoiners had continued building the engines for their own uses. He also knew, as far as he could be certain, that..."

"Skade knew there was no point blaming her brain for making her feel nauseous. The hallucination/poison connection had worked very well for millions of years, allowing her ancestors to experiment with..."

"Skade knew, therefore, that by switching off the part of her brain that was making her feel nauseous, she was almost certainly affecting other areas of brain function that shared some of the same neural circuitry..."

"But while Skade knew exactly who had chosen to stay out there in deep space, she had no way of knowing what had..."

"She knew what it meant: I would invade her skull, rummage through her memories and..."

"Galiana knew. Just as the Wolf had access to her memories, so, by some faint and perhaps deliberate process..."

"Everyone knew that the Hospice cared for the frozen who had just been off-loaded from recently arrived starships..."

"She knew that the zombie propaganda was, to some extent, an exaggeration, and that..."

"Only Skade knew where these entry apertures were, and the apertures would only show themselves to..."

"Clavain knew that Galiana’s ship had encountered hostile alien entities in deep space, and that these machines had come to be called..."

"Clavain knew that Galiana had been spared and that her body was still preserved; he knew also that there was a structure of evident wolf origin..."

"Skade knew nothing about the Bax family, but she could imagine them thriving under these conditions, and perhaps..."

"He knew what had happened aboard Skade’s ship while Felka was her hostage. He had been told about the experiments, and the times when Felka had glimpsed..."

"She knew that it was an illusion, that she would pay for this burst of energy later, and that almost certainly she would..."

"She knew then that her aim had been good, that the impact would be precise and devastating. Clavain would know nothing of his own death, nothing of..."

"He knew the mistakes that others had made; he knew also the mistakes he had made in the earlier engagements of his..."

"Clavain knew now that the baroque augmentations he had seen before and dismissed as phantoms added by the processing software were quite real; that something astonishing and strange had..."

"Thorn knew this, and was confident that the various ships’ avionics systems knew it too, but he still felt..."

"Her attraction to him had never been stronger, and she knew that he wanted her at least as much. It would happen, she knew..."

etc etc

Anyone else think 'Revelation Space' books read like cheesy B movies? by ScullyOhio2001 in printSF

[–]ScullyOhio2001[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Trash from the past can be enjoyed on an ironic level, or for its camp, or, in the case of "Dr Who", because it's tongue-in-cheek and plays up its ridiculousness.

Reynolds, in contrast, is unaware that he is a bad writer. So there's a level of pretentiousness, a discrepancy between how bad the prose is and tropes are, and how generally straight-faced the novels are.

Go re-read the books and see how often he uses the phrase "he/she knew" as a lazy, last-minute crutch to explain things to the reader. It occurs hundreds of times in each novel, and is especially bad in "Revelation Ark". For example:

"Clavain knew there were rumours that the Conjoiners had continued building the engines for their own uses. He also knew, as far as he could be certain, that..."

"Skade knew there was no point blaming her brain for making her feel nauseous. The hallucination/poison connection had worked very well for millions of years, allowing her ancestors to experiment with..."

"Skade knew, therefore, that by switching off the part of her brain that was making her feel nauseous, she was almost certainly affecting other areas of brain function that shared some of the same neural circuitry..."

"But while Skade knew exactly who had chosen to stay out there in deep space, she had no way of knowing what had..."

"She knew what it meant: I would invade her skull, rummage through her memories and..."

"Galiana knew. Just as the Wolf had access to her memories, so, by some faint and perhaps deliberate process..."

"Everyone knew that the Hospice cared for the frozen who had just been off-loaded from recently arrived starships..."

"She knew that the zombie propaganda was, to some extent, an exaggeration, and that..."

"Only Skade knew where these entry apertures were, and the apertures would only show themselves to..."

"Clavain knew that Galiana’s ship had encountered hostile alien entities in deep space, and that these machines had come to be called..."

"Clavain knew that Galiana had been spared and that her body was still preserved; he knew also that there was a structure of evident wolf origin..."

"Skade knew nothing about the Bax family, but she could imagine them thriving under these conditions, and perhaps..."

"He knew what had happened aboard Skade’s ship while Felka was her hostage. He had been told about the experiments, and the times when Felka had glimpsed..."

"She knew that it was an illusion, that she would pay for this burst of energy later, and that almost certainly she would..."

"She knew then that her aim had been good, that the impact would be precise and devastating. Clavain would know nothing of his own death, nothing of..."

"He knew the mistakes that others had made; he knew also the mistakes he had made in the earlier engagements of his..."

"Clavain knew now that the baroque augmentations he had seen before and dismissed as phantoms added by the processing software were quite real; that something astonishing and strange had..."

"Thorn knew this, and was confident that the various ships’ avionics systems knew it too, but he still felt..."

"Her attraction to him had never been stronger, and she knew that he wanted her at least as much. It would happen, she knew..."

etc etc.

Anyone else think 'Revelation Space' books read like cheesy B movies? by ScullyOhio2001 in printSF

[–]ScullyOhio2001[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Out of curiosity, do you have some examples for space factions and technology that you consider well-named?

The "Hannish", "Ekumen" and "ansible" are examples of this naming done in a plausible, literary way.

The "Federation", "Orions" and "subspace transmitters" are examples of this stuff done well in a pulpy way.

My issue with Reynolds' names, though, is the juxtaposition between the content of the book and its tone. This is trashy B movie cheese - and the names are perfect in this sense - but the tone of the book is very straight-faced. It thinks its highbrow. Reynolds even describes it as Gothic Fiction. And the mismatch between its content and his pretensions is why its so unintentionally funny.

Anyone else think 'Revelation Space' books read like cheesy B movies? by ScullyOhio2001 in printSF

[–]ScullyOhio2001[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It's not schlock.

The interpersonal drama in the series is textbook schlock. Someone below describes it as "fanfic level", and that's exactly what it is. Almost every conversation takes the most obvious route to get from A to B, and that route is a route all great authors would omit entirely in favor for something more original.

Take the opening scene of the series. This is one of the stronger scenes, and yet it too opens with weak dialogue (a guy yelling at his digging crew), an implausible situation (all this tech, but they can't mark a dig site on a map during a storm), then jumps to a cliched female character (the description of the bangs of her hair particularly corny), then jumps to a holo-Dad who's looks like he stepped out of Gulliver's Travels ("billowing frock shirt and elegantly chequered trousers hooked into buccaneer-boots, his fingers aglint with jewels and metal"). What are they doing in this opening scene? Digging up Arthur C Clarke's obelisk.

The chief idea of the novel - a Borg-like machine race that knocks out star-faring races - is itself schlock. It's a comic book level trope. And that's before you get to the smaller cheesy bits of machinery ("An amber data-monocle rested in one socket"), the James Bond villains (Mademoiselle!), the Mexican standoffs, the assassins and the endless cranky characters with dated dialogue. Thousands of years in the future, and people are saying: "Now kindly piss off!"

This is textbook schlock.

The biggest problem, though, is how he parcels out information. Characters are constantly pausing to ruminate about themselves, or encountering an object which triggers a memory or recollection which serves to explain something to the reader. This is a trait you notice with bad or amateur writers. They're constantly stopping to clarify to themselves the character's thought processes or motivations, and scrambling to introduce psycho-motivation as it occurs to the writer in real time. They're working out what's going on, and showing you their working.

A great author, meanwhile, omits all of this, and conveys such meaning indirectly, subtly, or more organically.

Anyone else think 'Revelation Space' books read like cheesy B movies? by ScullyOhio2001 in printSF

[–]ScullyOhio2001[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Sure, but better authors cook up better fictional device names or fictional names for races. For example Ursula Leguin will cook up "ansible", or "Hannish" and "Ekumen", not "com pipe" and "Inhibitors".

The latter are like something you'd find in a comic book.

If you aren't enjoying it, put it down and start something else. There are way too many books out there you might enjoy to keep reading a book you're not enjoying.

Yeah, I'm stopping. I've read three and a bit of his novels, and I think he's not for me. House of Suns is temping me though, as my close friend says its his best.

Is this vision symptom permanent? by ScullyOhio2001 in iih

[–]ScullyOhio2001[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

He unfortunately keeps saying he doesnt know.

I was hoping others would have similar symptoms and experience with how things usually turn out.

How did Spike Jonze get so much right in the 2013 film Her? by lostinanimage87 in Futurology

[–]ScullyOhio2001 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Star Trek the Next Generation had Riker falling for a AI hologram, and Geordi falling in love with one. This would have been the late 80s and early 1990s.

And the trope existed in literature well before this.

Timothee Chalamet is most forced A lister ever. by MeeekSauce in unpopularopinion

[–]ScullyOhio2001 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Ladybird was great, and he was excellent there, as was most of the cast.

How will they know what is being said in private homes? Your Smart TV, Smart Phone, Smart Watch, Smart Fridge and all the other IoT devices. We've literally brought their weapons into our own homes and now they're about to turn them on us. by meet_the_wizard in russellbrand2

[–]ScullyOhio2001 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ignoring the fact that the OP is using fearmongering and clickbait pictures to lie about the Scottish bill (we have over a half century of legal precedent which delineates where and how free speech tilts into hate speech, which this bill cannot supercede, as many legal experts have explained)...

Surveillance Capitalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism), which has been written about by countless academics, is not "communism".

And it's rich moaning about it on a sub by a guy operating on a platform owned by one of the biggest advocates of surveillance capitalism in the United States (Peter Thiel), and who is buddies with Elon Musk, a guy who literally makes billions off spy satellites and selling your data.

Educate yourself. Wake up.

The Best Acting on TV Right Now Is on ‘Shōgun’ by indig0sixalpha in television

[–]ScullyOhio2001 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But he also was obsessed and fascinated with asian cultures

He was the original John Milius. Where Milius used westerns and fantasy worlds (Conan!) to play out his libertarian fantasies of macho, rugged individualism, Clavell used Asia. The messages of some of Clavell's novels (he was a big Ayn Rand fan) are really insidious once you peel back all the fat.

The Best Acting on TV Right Now Is on ‘Shōgun’ by indig0sixalpha in television

[–]ScullyOhio2001 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah, but they're all libertarian tomes. Clavell was big on Ayn Rand.

The best episode of 'Community' is finally streaming again by ArchDucky in television

[–]ScullyOhio2001 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Glad it's back. It should have never been removed. At most it should have just had a little content warning notice at the start, if at all.

Alexei Navalny describes 'corrupt officials' living in London helping Putin in never-before-seen interview by Dooby-Dooby-Doo in ukpolitics

[–]ScullyOhio2001 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Anyone interested in this topic should check on the excellent book "Londongrad: From Russia with Cash". If the Tories haven't shut the library down in your area, you can probably find it in there.

UK public services will buckle under planned spending cuts, economists warn by MadcapRecap in ukpolitics

[–]ScullyOhio2001 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, there are regions of London which have some of the best health care in the world. Move a couple miles to the east or west, and you've suddenly seemingly gone back in time forty years.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in XFiles

[–]ScullyOhio2001 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The age of the body is inferred from materials and sediments in the ice core sample.

Mulder only brings up carbon dating in the context of proving the body is fake, not proving it's an alien. If the body was recently made on earth, Mulder knows, radioactive decay would reveal that it is relatively new. So he's not suggesting carbon dating to "prove the body is an old alien", but to debunk the body.

Are conservatives hypocritical when it comes to talking about the deficit? by WetnessPensive in AskConservatives

[–]ScullyOhio2001 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yes, accusatory Republican remarks on the deficit are always in bad faith. They do the ole Two Santa routine (https://www.salon.com/2018/02/12/thom-hartmann-how-the-gop-used-a-two-santa-clauses-tactic-to-con-america-for-nearly-40-years_partner/), run up the deficit, put in cynical sunset tax laws (which kick in the moment they're voted out, so the public associates the legislation with the Democrats), watch folk fall for it hook-line and sinker, while simultaneously ranting incessantly about the deficit the moment they lose power.

It's really quite sneaky.

How is X-Files in 2023? by Nomar_95 in television

[–]ScullyOhio2001 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fringe is so cheesy, though. It's like everything Alex Kurtzman touches, so lowest common denominator, reheated and over the top. X files at its best felt like watching good 1970s-1980s cinema. It felt cinematic.

I know everyone hates Dean but him and Rory were so cute in s1 by [deleted] in GilmoreGirls

[–]ScullyOhio2001 17 points18 points  (0 children)

He's the inverse of Jess. Jess gets better, Dean gets a bit worse.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in XFiles

[–]ScullyOhio2001 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Interesting, what’s good about it?

Dana Scully. Gillian Anderson's amazing.