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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3226 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 9, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

My backlog isn't budging much. Adding Ender's Shadow to the pile.

Just finished Theft of Fire, a hard scifi novel about a down on his luck asteroid miner being roped into a heist far above his paygrade. Good stuff, I was frankly surprised by the sheer overlap between both the setting of the story and the author's style and my own. Funnily enough, counting from the date of publication, my work precedes his.

I could critique things like writing a scifi story set a hundred years in the future where the state of the art in AI ignores how good ChatGPT was at the time of publication, but eh.

After barely recovering from the shock of finding out that China Mieville is a man, I've made it about a hundred pages into Perdido Street Station. I'd been meaning to getting around to reading his work eventually, as I've seen strongly positive sentiment. That being said, I'm not super impressed so far, he's one of those literary types who really leans into florid and slightly overwrought prose.

could critique things like writing a scifi story set a hundred years in the future where the state of the art in AI ignores how good ChatGPT was at the time of publication, but eh.

Maybe it's aimed for the rocketpunk audience?

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