Reply To: What are you reading?
I recently flew through both Redshirts (fun, not surprising as I like Scalzi’s other stuff) and Ready Player One. I am still thinking about that one, and this thread is apparently where I am going to vent my frustration/questions. The trope of little guy vs MegaCorp was fun, and a successful love story between adoring fan and popular geek girl celebrity will of course warm my heart.
But the depiction of the OASIS kept jarring me out of the story. Was Cline intentionally using an 80’s era vision of how people would use computers in the future? It seems so silly that no one would use it (admittedly I have thought this about at least one web site that recently sold for 10^9 dollars.) I really don’t see myself logging into an MMORPG , spending 15 minutes walking my character to a “bank” just to pay a real life bill or order a book from Amazon which is what it seems like was happening. If I had to “walk” 10 minutes every time I wanted to come to the Joco Forum or pay a teleport fee, I would not be here nearly as much. (And don’t get me started that even teleporting required walking to a teleport station 🙂 I assume that someone on this forum is passionate enough about stuff like this to either refute my interpretation or sympathize with my pain.
Next up on my fiction queue is the latest Laundry Files novel by Charlie Stross, Apocalypse Codex. I expect I will enjoy it as much as I have the rest of the series [a mix of magic-as-math, secret-agents-hindered-by-bureaucracy, and Lovecraftian horrors.]
The nonfiction book I am currently reading is The Dots and Boxes Game: Sophisticated Child’s Play [Elwyn R. Berlekamp]. It’s about the surprising amount of math (to most people) behind the game. I hope to someday be a pen and paper games hustler.
My hustling skills may need some leveling up though, as somehow @Angelastic got me to read every other chapter of Tollbooth, when I apparently could have negotiated my way into her reading everything.
@stevendj – Since you seem interested in Hugo nominees, I will take this moment to plug one of my favorite fiction podcasts, Escape Pod. (it is free and CC) Each year they air all the Hugo nominees for short fiction. It was also my first exposure to the awesomeness of Creative Commons – their use of Skullcrusher Mountain as an outro to a mad scientist tale is what led me to JoCo!