Slashdot Mirror
The Chronoliths
Witness to it all is our narrator, Scott Warden. There's nothing special about this guy. He's no clever scientist, no tough soldier. He's just a computer programmer who happens to be close to the location of the first arrival. After that he's pulled into the Chronolith investigation by a series of seeming coincidences. But where the manipulation of time is involved, coincidence becomes a slippery concept--something his co-investigators are well aware of.
I consider this quiet, unassuming novel to be on the cutting edge of science fiction for this reason: it creates a literary metaphor for our current view (and fears) of the near future. Just as giant, mutant bugs stood for our fear of the bomb in the '50s, the Chronoliths represent our fear of what's just around the corner today. But today we can no longer easily predict what the future holds. Science changes things too quickly--so quickly that we can only say with confidence that we cannot say what the future will be like.
Science fiction writers have devised a variety of means to cope with this threat to their livelihood. Vernor Vinge pulls off a plausible (and excellent) space opera in A Fire Upon the Deep by having the universe limit how far science can progress depending on its location in the galaxy. Other writers retreat to the very near future. The rise in popularity of alternate history stories could be another byproduct of this dilemma.
But in The Chronoliths Wilson doesn't resort to any tricks. The novel is all about the unknowableness of the future, as represented by the Chronoliths themselves: impenetrable, unstoppable, and, most importantly, of our own making.
*Perhaps one reason Wilson isn't as well known as he should be is that his novels are not as strong as his short fiction. The Chronoliths, interestingly, is his first novel written in first-person, the point of view he chose for many of his best short stories including "The Perseids" and "The Inner Inner City."
You can purchase The Chronoliths from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Prop3Z to Bahx, Fucky, l0rd, and teh rest of the CLIT
-- You are such a fucking fag
I post but I'm too fucked up to do it first
"Under the iron bridge, we fist" - The Smiths, Still Ill
g to the oatse
c to the izzex
fo shizzle my nizzle a Chronolith sounds like the name of a Magic: The Gathering card.
First p0st. Hot gritz... Etc...
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered trolling community when recently Slashdot confirmed that, after several changes were made to production Slashcode, wide posts account for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all Slashdot posts. Coming on the heels of the latest verions of IE which make page-widening more difficult, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. the wide posts that we love are collapsing into the narrow posts that we are used to, as further exemplified by the lack of Slashbots complaining about difficulty reading Slashdot's articles.
You don't need to be a Klerck to predict PWP's future. The hand writing is on the wall: PWP faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for PWP because PWP is dying. Things are looking very bad for PWP. As many of us are already aware, PWP continues to be defeated by users with thresholds of 1 or higher. Mod points flow like a river of blood. Klerck's PWP-bot posts are the most endangered of them all, having been filtered early on because of their uniformity.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
PWP leader Klerck states that there are 7 wide posts in the average Slashdot article. How many non-wide crapflood posts are there? Let's see. The number of crapflood versus wide posts on Slahdot is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7*5 = 35 non-wide crapflood posts in every Slashdot article. Tacosnotting posts on Slashdot are about half of the volume of crapflood posts. Therefore there are about 17 tacosnotting posts per article. A recent article put Goatse.cx trolls at about 80 percent of total troll posts. Therefore there are a hell of a lot of homosexual trolls. This is consistent with the number of Goatse.cx Slashdot posts.
But Slashdot is only part of the picture. Due to the troubles at Slashdot, negative revenue and so on, the site will soon go out of business and many users will flock to alternative weblogs, where PWP is almost completely unknown. Trollaxor.com, the popular troll hangout, is also dying, its corpse sodomized in yet another Greek bath house.
All major surveys show that PWP has steadily declined in the scope of all troll posts. PWP is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If PWP is to survive at all it will be among Blog faggot using outdated versions of Slashcode. PWP continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, PWP is dead.
- poopbot: information likes to be narrow
The link from the main page was broken
suck it
-- You are such a fucking fag
"t's dated twenty years in the future..."
Okay, i'm with you so far...
"and each lauds another victory by a leader who does not currently exist."
So, teenagers are winning the wars fought in the future? I knew the dexterity I had built up with a gamepad would come in handy some day... My giant robot remote controlled robot can beat yours anyday!
dmarien
I Agree With This p0st!
-- You are such a fucking fag
Actually,¦I¦think¦he¦means¦the¦big¦statues¦are¦bei ng¦sent¦from¦further¦in¦the¦future,¦say¦2080,¦by¦p eople¦who¦are¦sending¦them¦into¦THEIR¦past,¦2021,¦ to¦commemorate¦leaders¦from¦2080¦(Confusing¦enough ?).
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
It has an interesting style and brings up questions about the nature of destiny and time, but I found it a bit unsatisfying. There were a number of fairly standard plot devices, although given a bit of a twist by the idea that the characters knew that they were somehow destined to come together.
All in all I would rate it about 6/10.
I just farted --Fuckforce(a.k.a. myself).
"someone should make a hot air balloon that is shaped like a giant vagina". --Bill Clinton
What exactly is this book about? I find this book review lacking in the detail and length of normal book reviews. I would have expected a better review of the book, perhaps chapter by chapter highlights.
From the review, it sounds like big statues to future events randomly appear. But I don't know what that means to the characters. How do people react to this? Do people try to prevent the wars before they start? Does it matter who the victor is? Does anyone ever figure out why these statues are appearing? Assuming they are being sent by humanity from the future, what is the motivation of those that send the statues? Are they warnings?
I am having a hard time understanding the genre of the book and its plot from the review. If anyone else has read it, post your experiences.
On an unrelated note, anyone else notice the karma system has changed? Apparently, my karma is now "excellent." Man, I want a point system back!
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
"unknowableness" is a.k.a. uncertainty.
dmarien
> He's just a computer programmer
Whaddya mean, JUST a computer programmer. Didn't you know that the geeks will inherit the earth?
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Google. Are You Feeling Lucky Today?
FZICG BZNAFGH!
Here's a troll for you, JUST FOR YOU HOW SPECIAL!!!!!
**Disclaimer** I really know nothing about carbon dating, just babbling here...
Now unless the "Born On" date was stamped to the bottom how exactly does one Future Date something? Does it actually gain more carbon that it would have now, so that by the time we see it the carbon is right?
MessEdUp
#/var/www/v
BELLEVUE, WA-- You may gloat now if you wish, but your deathmatch victory was cheaply won, and you will not fair so well in a rematch. If the playing field had been level, you most surely would have lost.
I'm ready for that rematch.
You see, I was disadvantaged from the start, with my 38 ping to your 30 ping. It is quite obvious to me that had those pings been reversed, you would have tasted the sweet load from my shotgun far more often than you did. Those 8 precious milliseconds were all you needed to evade my blasts.
And were it not for my inferior hardware, I would have squeezed those extra frames into victory. I would have had to be more than human to battle you with my mere 85 frames per second. It is truly sad that you would cheer, knowing that I was handicapped from the beginning.
Had I not been playing with a dirty mouseball on a worn-out mousepad, my twitch-like responses would have been more than enough to rail you mid-air. But alas, that and my coffee-soaked keyboard may have affected my play.
It seems barely worth mentioning that I had not even played that map before. It would be beneath me to say that I had barely gotten in my four hours practice time beforehand.
There were times during the match that I wished I didn't have two copies of Photoshop running in the background, and that I wasn't downloading MP3s from that private archive. And if my roommate hadn't been leeching ISOs off of my hard drive through the local network at the same time, I'm sure the outcome of our battle would have been much different.
But I think the turning point may have occurred either when that ICQ message popped me out of the gaming window, or when I spilled my can of 5-Alive. Had I been drinking cola like I should have, I'm sure we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
And there was that moment when I accidentally knocked out my monitor cable from my machine. Those few seconds certainly cost me a frag. But that pales in comparison to the instant I hit my Windows key just when I had you in my crosshairs.
I know it was my own fault answering that telephone call from my girlfriend mid-match. I had to get up anyways to let my dog outside for a pee. But none of that would have mattered had my chair wheel not gotten caught in that rut in the carpet.
So you see, it is apparent to me that your win was not entirely based on your skill. It is quite clear that you were lucky.
But I must take at least some blame. I really shouldn't have rebinded all my keys when I noticed I was using my CTF config, and I'm sure I didn't help my own cause by readjusting my mouse sensitivity while you were gathering weapons.
So I think it is only fair to both of us that we replay that match on my server. Good luck.
please mod this fucktard down.
I highly recommend this book. The link to it at Amazon is here
Science fiction writers have devised a variety of means to cope with this threat to their livelihood.
Science fiction has _never_ been about "this is what the future will be like!". Well, some of the crappy stuff is. The best science fiction is all about what-if. Good science fiction places characters in strange circumstances that may or may not bear any relation to a plausible future for humanity. The fun is in seeing how humans (or aliens for that matter) would deal with these circumstances. What-if there was an alien loose on your ship with acid for blood and lightning quick reflexes? What-if a colony of nanobots became self-aware? What-if we found the sun was inhabited with creatures who were slowing down the fusion processes at the center? The plausibility of these scenarios _actually happening_ is slim to none. But that has nothing to do with whether or not this is good science fiction. For me personally, if the story is based on hard science, then thats when I stop caring about the plausibility of the story.
Any science fiction writer who sees himself as a prophet for the future needs to find a new line of work, like say, I don't know, start a cult for instance.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Cronolith: (noun) any entry in /etc/crontab whose width exceeds 80 characters
so much trolling and crapflooding - it warms my colon
On the plus side, the characters do come to life, and the story sweeps you along pretty well, and has a couple of interesting sub-plot twists. Overall, not a bad read, but it's not something I'll stand on the rooftops and shout about, either.
Specifically, I read it on June 18, on airplanes and in airports taking a trip with my daughter.
Good book, though IMHO "The Harvest" is still my Robert Charles Wilson favorite. (Kind of like "Childhood's End" but different.)
To clear up a few basics, the Chronoliths appear, smashing cities where they do. They have writing on them, commemorating a battle victory 20 years in the future. No carbon dating needed, they read the information. If you suddenly had a big monument materialize obliterating your city, would you be prone to distrust the writing on it?
Of a more interesting nature is a hero who is a hero by working his craft, not his fists. This aspect is reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's works or "Crosstime Engineer". (Author forgotten, but I think he was Polish) In most fiction no matter what the profession of the hero, the hero-work seems to get done with fists and guns. Nice to see a change.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The tale begins in 2021 with the abrupt arrival of the first Chronolith, a 200-foot-high monument of unknown composition that memorializes a military victory.
So, the Red Sox finally win a World Series?
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
On an unrelated note, anyone else notice the karma system has changed? Apparently, my karma is now "excellent." Man, I want a point system back!
So when I hit the cap, shouldn't my karma be "most excellent"?
Nope, no sig
I read Chronoliths and my favorite part was the beginning. The ending was my least favorite part, which probably means I didn't "get it". While enjoyed the concept of the book it didn't live up to my expectations.
The entire book leads up to the arrival of the unkown conqueror Kuin. The pace increases with each new Chronolith. However when the date foretold on the first Chronolith arrives the book dries up and decides that it wasn't so interested in dealing with Kuin at all. I was disappointed.
As far as the Hugos go my favorite this year is American Gods. I thought I'd hate the book, judging from its title and the fact that I'm not American at all. I nearly didn't read it, but in the end decided I couldn't make a fair judge of the other Hugo nominees without reading it. I am very glad I did. The American in the title refers to being of all of America, not just the USA.
Neil Gaiman's Coraline just came out as well, and my copy's already in the mail.
Why, when I read the word underappreciated to I automatically translate this to mean "shite"?
http://www.sfsite.com/10b/cl114.htm
http://www.januarymagazine.com/SFF/chronoliths.htm l
http://www.mervius.com/books/chronoliths.htm
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Slashdot
News for nerds, stuff that matters
[ faq | code | awards | journals | subscribe | older stuff | rob's page | preferences | submit story | advertising | supporters | past polls | topics | about | bugs | jobs | hof ]
The Chronoliths
Space | Posted by timothy on 10:30 AM -- Friday July 12 2002
from the take-a-licking-keep-on-ticking dept.
Brooks Peck writes: "The Chronoliths, by the underappreciated* Robert Charles Wilson, is a finalist for the 2001 Hugo Award and Campbell Award. The tale begins in 2021 with the abrupt arrival of the first Chronolith, a 200-foot-high monument of unknown composition that memorializes a military victory. It's dated twenty years in the future. More Chronoliths follow, blinking into existence with explosive force--usually in the centers of cities. Each is grander than the last, and each lauds another victory by a leader who does not currently exist."
Witness to it all is our narrator, Scott Warden. There's nothing special about this guy. He's no clever scientist, no tough soldier. He's just a computer programmer who happens to be close to the location of the first arrival. After that he's pulled into the Chronolith investigation by a series of seeming coincidences. But where the manipulation of time is involved, coincidence becomes a slippery concept--something his co-investigators are well aware of.
I consider this quiet, unassuming novel to be on the cutting edge of science fiction for this reason: it creates a literary metaphor for our current view (and fears) of the near future. Just as giant, mutant bugs stood for our fear of the bomb in the '50s, the Chronoliths represent our fear of what's just around the corner today. But today we can no longer easily predict what the future holds. Science changes things too quickly--so quickly that we can only say with confidence that we cannot say what the future will be like.
Science fiction writers have devised a variety of means to cope with this threat to their livelihood. Vernor Vinge pulls off a plausible (and excellent) space opera in A Fire Upon the Deep by having the universe limit how far science can progress depending on its location in the galaxy. Other writers retreat to the very near future. The rise in popularity of alternate history stories could be another byproduct of this dilemma.
But in The Chronoliths Wilson doesn't resort to any tricks. The novel is all about the unknowableness of the future, as represented by the Chronoliths themselves: impenetrable, unstoppable, and, most importantly, of our own making.
*Perhaps one reason Wilson isn't as well known as he should be is that his novels are not as strong as his short fiction. The Chronoliths, interestingly, is his first novel written in first-person, the point of view he chose for many of his best short stories including "The Perseids" and "The Inner Inner City."
You can purchase The Chronoliths from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
JismTroll (588456)
[ Preferences ]
Related Links
The Chronoliths from bn.com
book review guidelines
submission page
Brooks Peck
More on Space
Also by timothy
Book Reviews
Slashdot's book review section is brimming with reader-submitted commentary on interesting books. Here's a sampling of recent reviews -- read below for how you can add yours to the list.
For programmers, check out reviews of the Zope Bible, Programming Jabber and other specialized books.
If you're just trying to manage programmers, grumpy's review of Managing Einsteins might be just what you're looking for. Meanwhile, keep the company afloat with lessons learned from The MouseDriver Chronicles and The Bombast Transcripts.
Science buff? Read Tal Cohen's reaction to Rare Earth, and Peter Wayner on Digital Biology. Don't forget the grain of salt in Voodoo Science, either. His Dark Materials is one of the many Science Fiction titles that Slashdot readers have praised or panned for your pleasure.
And somewhere between Sci-Fi and reality are books like Flesh and Machines, reporting from the intersection of yesterday's fiction and current technology.
It's easy to submit your own reviews for consideration, too. Just read the Slashdot book review guidelines, and then use the web submission form.
Update: 20020427 12:50 by timothy
Never read anything by this Robert CHARLES Wilson guy, but Robert ANTON Wilson wrote some pretty cool, messed up books. Try the Illuminati trilogy....
This sounds like a complete ripoff of the japanese anime series Evageleion (sp) and Arthur C. Clark's 2001. What a waste of a post.
Has anybody noted that there are shitloads of Robert Wilsons who specialize in Sci-Fi/Paranoia/Conspiracy -subjects?
Robert Anton Wilson being a prime example.
Check it out in Amazon sometime, when you're really bored...
That being said, I have read this book and it is quite good. Also, I found it refreshingly short: Average readers will finish it in just a few sittings. Wilson manages to tell a complete and satisfying SF story in a few hundred pages, which is occurring less and less often.
Anyway, if your curiosity is piqued, check out a more complete review here: http://www.sfsite.com/10b/cl114.htm
The strength of Robert Charles Wilson's latest book is not in the time travel per se, but rather the response of a group of fully-developed, sympathetic characters to the phenomena they are encountering.
To my delight (and unlike so much literary fiction these days), Wilson's protagonists DO SOMETHING. It may not always be the right course of action, but there is an understandable human motivation when it is the wrong course of action.
Scotty, the protagonist, is strong yet flawed, and his fascination with The Chronoliths is kept in proper perspective. Sue Chopra, the brilliant physicist, is handled gingerly by an accomplished author.
The time travel theme -- the appearance of "artifacts" from the future -- is not new but is integral to the story. And this latter point is crucial to good science fiction. The science (regardless of what you think of time travel dynamics) is consistent and interesting and becomes a de facto character in the tale.
The only area where the novel could've been strengthened was the development of Scotty's relationship with his father, and indeed, development of the father's character in general.
Nevertheless, this is an entertaining and thought-provoking book with a broad scope, engaging characters and a very interesting ending.
It is also an optimistic allegory to the hope and renewel that always follows tragedy, like the euphoria following World War II.
It is well worth the read. Wilson is going to be a major force in speculative fiction in years to come.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I'm curious what other book genres typical "geeks" enjoy reading. I used to read a great deal of scifi but I moved away from it during college, not having much time for extraneous books. Now I find myself attracted to pseudo-history books like Dumas' The Three Musketeers and Scott's Ivanhoe. In some ways, these books are related to scifi playing what-if games. What genres do you guys like to read besides scifi (and manuals)?
This doesn't sound anything like subtle, though. Gee, these huge (city stomping) monuments have specific dates on them, and they all commemorate military victories (yawn) by some sort of conqueror named "Kuin." Talk about your ploddingly obvious directions to go...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
You also have to pay close attention to the biological processes involved. One of the favorite "proofs" that evolution is all wrong and therefore the literal interpretation of the Christian book of Genesis *must* be accurate is the fact that some breed of oyster (or at least some type of clam) preferentially uses one isotope of carbon over another. It's enough so that you can pull an oyster from the ocean, eat most of the meat, and date the rest as thousands of years old.
I don't remember the mechanism involved, but it's something that makes sense to the scientists involved and they can account for it. But anyone who's only had the standard K-12 exposure to science would be utterly confused by the results.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I am not really a fan of sf, but I think it is because I have not been reading the right ones.
Would anyone recommend this book for me? or should I read a better sf book so I can enjoy the genre?
Anyone?
It's all good.
Brooks, buddy, come on. "Unknowableness"?
Where oh where is my super hero, Teh Grammar Patroll??? I am going to write a graphic novel called "Teh Grammar Patroll Returns", about an aging, cynical technical writer who brings hell fire vengance down on slashdot.
It will be made into a movie called, "Slashdot vs. Teh Grammar Patroll". Teh Grammar Patroll will win, of course.
These guys ran this story ages ago:
http://forum.questinq.com (-source)
My God, you are fucking unbelievable. Even after the removal of numerical karma ratings, you still post stupid links.
This isn't an "Ask Slashdot", why don't you let the lazy bastard go look up the reviews themselves.
Oh, and by the way, your website sucks, and the color scheme mad my eyes bleed. Thanks a lot, asshole!
CLIT. Are you a memb
There's an excerpt (from the grossly-overpriced ebook version) here.
Robert Charles Wilson is very good author. His more recent works have less than thrilled me though. Chronolith is a good book, but not nearly as compelling as some of his older ones ("The Harvest", "Gypsies", "A Bridge of Years"). Those are some of his best books. I would definitely recommend checking out the Harvest if you ever have the chance.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
Come now, certainly at least a few of you slashdotters out there have read Ender's game. Everyone knows that children make the most skillful and deadly military leaders. It is just one of those known facts.
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
not to disparage wilson (the divide and harvest are faves) but often (sadly :) choice of sci-fi is governed by cover-art. thankfully, the chronoliths has one of the best, stephan martiniere!
Being a computer programmer makes one a geek.
Being able to write code, read schematic diagrams, and solder religates one to the status of UBER-geek.
Of course, there are several tiers in between these thresholds, but they are not relevant to the current discussion.
ThereIsNoSporkNeo, SuedoUBERGeek
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
On an unrelated note, anyone else notice the karma system has changed? Apparently, my karma is now "excellent." Man, I want a point system back!
My Karma is NOT "Excellent" damnit! I want a number score!
Pgpckt: [panting] Grade me...look at me...evaluate and rank me! Oh, I'm good, good, good, and oh so smart! Grade me!
[CmdrTaco scribbles "Karma = 50" on a piece of paper]
[Pgpckt walks off, muttering crazily and sighing]
c-hack.com |
The Chronoliths tied with Jack Williamson's Terraforming Earth for this year's John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best science fiction novel of 2001, by the way.
My recommendations reflect my reading biases. I like sci-fi that:
Expands our concept of what is possible.
Uses non-contempory settings, or alien worlds to allow the author to explore societies and individuals without the encumbrance of researching a real culture or history. (Speculative fiction)
That said, gadget heavy sci-fi, and sci-fi that relies on mystery and thriller techniques for it's tension, annoys me.
I'll recommend:
Anything by Arthur C Clark(Unathorised fan site). Childhood's End, while several decades old, still reads like a shocking new novel.
Almost anything by Ursula LeGuin(Link skips entry page). The Dispossessed Is a classic. She is far towards the speculative fiction end of the genre.
Philip K Dick is responsible for the short stories behind some of the more interesting sci-fi movies. Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, to name a few. The short stories behind them, of course, have much more substance. I've just read Ubik which left me dizzy for a week
My motto: "A cat is no trade for integrity."
Geesh where have I seen the alienated techno geek and the smart sexy vaguely foreign brainiac chick hook up before?
Oh yeah, in a million other books.
I hope the book is better than the reviews and synopses.
...but I have to say that "The Chronoliths" would be a cool name for a heavy metal band.
(Sorry for the OT post, but I couldn't resist)
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
I'm a pretty picky reader, but I this book was recommended to me, so I decided to give it a try. I was very suprised by how much I got into it. It is a little predictable occasionally, and there are a few spots where it feels a little sparse, but overall it's a very solid book. It is both well written and entertaining, and the author does a good job of explaining the ideas he is exploring without detracting from the plot.
I got the feeling that the author strongly identified with his characters and did his best to imbue them with realistic traits and emotions, which is something sci-fi isn't really known for.
Why would two of them appear?
All you need to do after the first one is make your own, saying "Stop spamming our time period!" They're bound to see it and realize their mistake.
That'll stop them.
--Blair
That's what THEY want you to believe....
We are in fact talking about the Discordians,
and the number 23. (Are you wearing your tinfoil
conversation decryption device?)
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
what a dork....
"Chronolith: "time stone" "
...that no one has yet noted the parallel between the social unrest (and corresponding government reaction) in the book and the "war on terrorism(tm)" being prosecuted by the United States.
Clearly, the Chronoliths are a weapon of terror (a rather clever one, I might add). And while terror is not the central theme of the book, it clearly is a considerable factor in the economic, social and political upheaval that is the backdrop for the main story line.
I will let each reader decide for him/herself whether there is any conclusion to be drawn or not.
...including at some WorldCons, and I can tell you that the best works of linear art (text, film, graphic novels, plays, audio) cannot be summarized in less than their own lengths. In this case, Wilson's "The Chronoliths" works as a novel because the characters themselves are trying to figure out what may happen in the future based upon what is happening in their present, and how the feedback loop between their present and their future is far more bizarre than they ever believed possible. But I shouldn't give anything else away. As one of the characters realizes: "It's not a secret if you tell someone else". I'm betting this one takes the Hugo Award for best SF novel of 2001 (a pretty significant interplay of ideas across time, anyway, to those of us who thought 2001 would have trips to Jupiter and big smart slabs). I strongly recommend this book.
The sci-fi flik from the 60's about rocks that would move by growing very tall and following over. No, I don't think they were from the future.
The Author's strength is ability structure his books around unique social themes, and populate his books with a number of interesting ideas. The reviewer pointed out that the main character is a programmer - but his job is actually to 'evolve code', producing algorithms that he doesn't always understand. Unlike many sci-fi stories, where the earth unites around a common enemy - we have a hundred sub sects worshipping these cronoliths or trying to destroy them. That the book is full of such speculations on where our society is headed and how it responds keeps it interesting.
That said, the editor could have taken a chain saw, shredded half the book at random, and it would have been a better read. The authors mediocre style and character development don't warrant the long development sections. This yields a how-to-read it suggestion: If a section starts to bore you: just skip a few paragraphs or pages at a time. You won't miss anything.
As an aside, has anyone noticed the new assumption behind many current works of fiction? In the 90's, we had consipiracy theories. Before that, there were all the Apocolyptic novels. In the past 2 years, many of the near future sci-fi books that I've read take the fall or decline of the United States as a foregone conclusion. Cronoliths is no exception to this new pessimism.
My motto: "A cat is no trade for integrity."
...and now available in paperback, the chronoliths are made of exotic matter. They seem to be moulded, but by what process is still unclear by the end of the novel. As moulded, they show text impressed on the material with dates in English. Buy the book, read it and then post. Most of us who bought the hardcover (now a New York Times Notable Book and a Hugo Award nominee, but we didn't know that when we bought it last year) read it in one or two sittings. You will probably be able to post by tomorrow, and I'd love to see what you thought.
Just? What am I? A troll that lives under a bridge?
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Damn I felt the same way, I was sure I was going to just _HATE_ it, topic, themes, seemed too campy, too patriotic.
And lo a behold! I was wrong! It was a great book fresh incite into mythos and fun to boot. I need to get Coraline, ASAP.
"think of it as evolution in action"
Suddenly today, my karma changed to 'excellent'. Could this be from the future?
maybe this post will reduce my karma to 'not so excellent'. Only time will tell.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
...since the novel never shows events in 2021 or the Kuin years themselves, but only before and after (when the novel was putatively written), and the question of who will become Kuin is, I think, clarified as well as can be in a novel about ambiguous, ramifying self-modifying temporal feedback loops between their present and their future.
...writer than you are, because the result of reading the book (which you clearly have not) is not "ploddingly obvious" at all. Try reading a book before sharing your wisdom again with us in future, O Clueless One.
1995: Florida Wins World Series
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Sorry, I don't normally troll, but I've been at work for about thirty hours straight.
- Have a picture
This is a very good book, and you guys are all just a bunch of dorks.
IMHO Mysterium was somewhere on par with Chronoliths, but The Harvest (Have you read it?) was much better. Haven't seen Memory Wire or A Bridge of Years. Mysterium started with a really neat premise and followed up on it, but then seemed to me to drift along after that. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I knew was gnosticism was, I'll admit.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The Campbell awards took place on July 5th. It tied with Terraforming Earth by Williamson for the 2001 Campbell award. See Locus.
I voted for Kodos!
I browsed with Mosaic in 93 (94?) when there was only a handful of webpages up - only universities and when no one really believed we'd be doing shopping like this in 10 years ..
it's in my head
...everyones tastes will be their own. SF itself has a number of subcategories, and I'll try to pick winners in each:
(a) alternate history: the events of the past occurred differently than in our own world. Usual examples include "Hitler won" scenarios, such as Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle", Richard Harris' "Gorky Park"-influenced police procedural "Fatherland", and Civil War alternatives such as Harry Turtledove's "The Guns of the South" and Ward Moore's "Bring the Jubilee". These should not be confused with alternate historical fantasies, of which Tim Powers (a neighbour and friend of Philip K. Dick) is the Undisputed Grand Master, in such fun novels as "The Anubis Gates" and "Last Call". Those are recommended too, only they're not SF.
(b) Unrepentant Old Time Space Opera: Like Vernor Vinge's superb Hugo Winning novels "A Fire Upon The Deep" and "A Deepness In The Sky", or Greg Benford's Galactic Center novels, the first two of which are "In the Ocean Of Night" and "Across The Sea Of Suns". If you can find it, Glen Cook's "The Dragon Never Sleeps" is worth paying $75 to get from a book collector as it is, in my view, the best space opera ever written.
(c) Unclassifiably brilliant: Like Gene Wolfe's "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" or his Book of the New Sun, published as "The Shadow of the Torturer", "The Claw of the Concilliator", "The Sword of the Lictor" and "The Citadel of the Autarch" as well as the coda novel "The Urth of The New Sun", or even Ray Bradbury's poetic "The Martian Chronicles", which is amazing, regardless of what Mars turned out to be like.
That's enough for starters, anyway, and doesn't include Le Guin, Tiptree or Russ, much less Zelazny's "Lord of Light" or Delany's.... Ok, I'll stop now.
Basically it measures the amount of time since the subject stopped absorbing new C14 from the atmosphere, which in most cases means when it died. (So the post which claims attempting carbon dating on a living organism yielded a "very old" result doesn't make sense.)
So it's been proven to work (see link) but there are lots of assumptions involved and it's very easy to apply it to inappropriate situations. For the "chronoliths" example, it wouldn't work because a) they presumably were never alive (or absorbing atmospheric C14) and b) Even if they had been, there wouldn't be a magic "backwards jump" due to time travel.
More likely, M$ would buy the chronolith technology, engrave the TCP/IP specification on one, send it back in time, and patent it in the future using the `lith as an example of prior art. Poof- they own the internet.
The possibilities of governments and corporations trying to chronologically trump each other with this technology could be both frightening and humorous.
-Cybrex
"Put CP/M on the PC, not MS-DOS!"
-Chronolith that appeared in Boca Raton, FL, 1980
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
A lot better.
The name Chronolith clearly infringes on my nick. As does Monolith, lithium, and any other /.*lith.*/
I do believe that Mr. Wilson will be getting a call from my lawyer.
...Every empire falls eventually, even if successor states pick up the pieces with varying degrees of success: China, the Akkadians, the Hittites, Babylon, India, Egypt, Crete, Rome, Byzantium, the Caliphate, Spain, the Ottoman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, Austro-Hungary, the British Empire, the Third Reich (sound of spitting) or DEC.
One day, the United States will decline and fall, and I hope something else will be around to replace it. That's not necessarily a bad thing: modern Turkey came out of the Ottoman Empire, Israel and a future Palestinian state out of the British protectorate of Palestine, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand from former British colonies.
My cousin reviewed this book a couple months ago.. although if I recall correctly he said there was no sex in it... which in this case was a good thing, I guess. Anyway, you can check out review for a slightly more insane take on this book if you just can't get enough.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
Warning: If you haven't read Snow Crash, by Stephenson, then this will spoil it for you. Go read it right now, or else.
Uh... it occurs to me that Hiro Protagonist used his swords and a hypercool rail gun both in Snow Crash, as well as other weapons I've probably forgotten. A lot of the action was YT spraying people with liquid nuckles, etc. And Uncle Enzo's shaped glass-busting charge seemed like a very physical thing to me. True, Hiro did end up winning over Raven in the Metaverse, but that was virtually a given considering their relative skill sets, and it was still swords and bikes and other neat, "Hiro" type things.
And don't forget the rat thing up Rife's ass at the end. That was friggin' awesome.
The author of "Crosstime Engineer" is Leo Frankowski. Remember, google is your friend.
This is the first time I've gone out and purchased a book based on a review on /. It got a lot of good comments so I figured what the heck. Now, maybe it's just me but I went to the store expecting to find this in the new releases section. It was actually buried on the shelf in paperback. Are /. reviewers in the habit of reviewing books that came out a year ago or am I just missing something? Not meant to be a troll or anything, I'm just curious.
Heck, even the Boston Braves won it in 1914.
He was looking for the former president of the republic of Kodak; the one that Raven and his friends took from the "government" there with the nuke. He found him, talked to him a bit, and then was harassed by a few people from New South Africa; he cut off a head of one guy and slashed some more, then escaped by cutting through the tent using the millimeter wave radar his gargoyle getup had.
Didn't you rate Waterworld 9.5/10?