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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   3481 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024

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?

I'm on Meyer's In Defense of Freedom. It's an effective statement of right-libertarian ideas, and surprisingly critical of Kirkian conservatism. Meyer's defense of freedom and reason is in large part against "New Conservatism's" defining of freedom as the freedom to do one's duty. It's surprising considering that the system related to his name is "fusionism." I'll have to dust off my Kirk sometime.

I'm reading the final book in the Hyperion Cantos series.

As a recovering voracious reader with lots of free time, I've found I'm pretty picky. Almost no sci-fi in the past 10 years has captured me at all, so I'm combing back through the few classics I've missed out on.

Overall I'd give Hyperion a 8/10 which to me is a "Definitely read if you like the genre". However I have to vent about its shortcomings:

  • The author clearly loves historical literature and so has pushed it into many core parts of the story. It doesn't fit in a sci-fi setting as neatly as he imagined it.
  • The world building between ~1990 (when he wrote it) and 2732 (When it's set) is unbelievably sparse. There's maybe one or two wars and authors mentioned for those 700 years, no major advances in religion, etc.
  • The plot armor of the cast after the first book is obvious and impenetrable. I'm not looking for Game of Thrones here, but there has to be a middle ground between that and "I can tell after a single page introduction this guy is going to live the whole series and definitely switch to the be a good guy.
  • Speaking of good guys, the morality spectrum is pretty black and white here. The big bad is the big bad, and the good guys have very few rough edges. Plenty of Deus Ex Machina you can call a mile a way.

All that being said there's plenty of cool concepts and imagery. Each book in the series is pretty different which you normally don't get in a series. May dig into the Battletech books next.

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