the mortal enemy of videogames

[yeso]

@TracyDMcGrath lol you’re closer than you realize

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/jos%25C3%25A9-salas-subirat-the-eccentric-first-translator-of-joyce-s-ulysses-into-spanish-1.3951644%3Fmode=amp

@Moon

honestly did Harlan ever do that was really all that bad? Just being cranky seems like small change these days. Was an admirable promoter of progressive SF writers for decades, women particularly

[TracyDMcGrath]

@yeso that’s amazing

[Moon]

@yeso

well, cranky, very litigious, and (if you believe the stories) just kind of an asshole in general

I personally dont think “Soldier Of Tomorrow” bore enough resemblance to “Terminator” for his lawsuit to have had merit. He’s also been a huge stickler about copyright over the years, and many of his contemporary authors and critics have not had the nicest things to say about his interpersonal conduct.

(this is by no means an exhaustive list of his controversies)

“I kind of lost interest in all that years ago. Ellison clearly did too, along with everyone else. (Although I gather he went on with his magical thinking if anyone asked when he was going to deliver). Many of the stories were withdrawn, because Ellison acted like a dick. Of the ones that remain, most of them are by writers who are now deceased, so the rights have expired and the estates would have to be traced. A lot of the writers have disowned their stories as juvenilia, or outdated, or simply because Ellison was acting like a dick.”

But yeah, being a cranky asshole isn’t the end of the world in the grand scheme of things.

[yeso]

just learned of the “harlan ellison groping incident” so withdrawing my earlier question. Also not going to check out the “harlan ellison groping incident” truther movement that I also just learned of

[Moon]

Speaking of litigious old cranks, this post where the author of “The Postman” complains about Kojima ripping him off in “Death Stranding” is quite something.

“We need to reconnect the world…” | by David Brin | Medium

[yeso]

kojima’s lucky carpenter is a gamer

[Moon]

@[deleted]

I don’t know, man. It’s hard for me to call it a rip off since one of the key things about “The Postman” is that the main character is not, in fact, a postman.

[Moon]

Uhh, dank alert.

I must find a way to read this immediately.

Connie Willis: “History Is the Raw Data” | Talking Writing

I grew up reading a bunch of end-of-the-world science fiction. True end of the world: The virus has wiped everybody out. Or nuclear war. A few survivors are looting among the rubble kind of thing. And the part that I thought they got totally wrong was that there was never any emotional dimension to that. It was more of a Robinson Crusoe or boys’ adventure kind of story, where everyone’s emotional life was still fine even though this terrible thing had happened.

So I wrote a short story called “The Last of the Winnebagos,” in which the entire dog population had been wiped out. I wrote this story during the parvovirus, which they thought might really kill all the dogs. Anyway, I wanted a small end of the world. One that really didn’t affect commerce, or politics, it didn’t affect history, really, except that it affected everybody in incredibly emotional ways, and then there were resonances that went out through society in all different ways. The guilt people felt and the blame that people put on others and so on, and I wanted to really deal with the emotional aspects of the end of the world. That’s one of the stories that I’m proudest of, because I think that is an issue that needs to be addressed.

You can make an argument that the Titanic served as the end of a particular era. An era that would have actually ended anyway. But the Titanic symbolized that.

[saddleblasters]

@Moon I haven’t read the story, but I really like the way she framed it in the interview you quoted. “Small end of the world.” These tiny micro-apocalypses happen all the time in real life — like, all of history is just a series of ends of the world for different groups of people.

Anyways, thanks for bringing this story to my attention! it seems really interesting.

[SuperEffective]

VALIS by Philip K. Dick has been one of my favorite books OOT. The last book I read was that Mike Tyson book, Undisputed Truth, which was entertaining. I like to read this book about mushrooms called Mycelium Running every now and then. I’m currently reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. Sometimes I read Infinite Jest, but I don’t think I’ll ever finish it. I just think it’s fun to open it at a random page and read a bit.

[TracyDMcGrath]

[xhekros]

I want to make a question to someone for something I wanted to try once I finish Ulysses and that question is if anyonw had read something about Anne Carson, because there’s a book that really piqued up my curiosity.

[Moon]

@TracyDMcGrath

This is the only book I’ve read by her and I liked it a lot but comparing it to “Confederacy Of Dunces” confuses the shit out of me.

[TracyDMcGrath]

@Moon Same on all counts haha

[antillese]

I finished Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage last night. I’ve read several Murakami books and this one sure is a Murakami book! I enjoyed Tsukuru’s arc of growth, and it’s a bit of a quiet book. It reminded me of some of the pieces in After the Quake which I only read about the first third of. There’s very little of the fantastic or magical realism in the book. That’s a bit of a ding from me because it’s one of the reasons I enjoy Murakami. Overall, I enjoyed Killing Commendatore and 1Q84 more.

I read Iain Banks’ Consider Phlebas last summer and enjoyed it greatly. I think I’m going to check out The Player of Games next.

[saddleblasters]

Ok, I am at a Barnes and Noble for the next 45 minutes while I wait for my bus to get here. The two Haruki Murakami novels that I haven’t read are Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Killing Commendatore. I’m not a massive Murakami fan or anything, but I feel like I might as well get it over with and read these last two books by him. Can someone get in here before my bus arrives and articulate an argument for why I should read one or the other first?

[saddleblasters]

Alternatively you can try to convince me to read something better than Haruki Murakami (that Barnes and Noble would have). I just have no plans for the next week and want a medium length novel to read

[yeso]

ryu > haruki in my opinion, as long as we’re talking murakamis

[yeso]

Coin Locker Babies, Almost Transparent Blue, Piercing, In The Miso Soup = all good

in the miso soup if you want a tenuous videogame connection

[saddleblasters]

@yeso I agree too! At least based on what I’ve read by him (Audition, In the Miso Soup, Almost Transparent Blue, and Popular Hits of the Showa Era). But people are always talking about Haruki Murakami, so I feel some obligation to read all his books so that I’ll have something to say at parties (whenever parties become a thing again)