If you like the whole "non-planet-based world" theme of Ringworld, I suggest you read Niven's The Integral Trees and the sequel, Smoke Ring - they're about a habitable zero gravity environment, and read a bit like high fantasy. Alternately, if you want more of the ringworld universe, Niven has written tons of novels in the same universe (he calls it known space - there's an anthology called "Three Books of Known Space" on the subject).
The best of the Niven/Pournelle team-up is tied between Footfall and Mote in Gods Eye (sequel is Gripping Hand - coolest aliens ever!)
My personal favourite of his novels is Protector - except it was written back when they thought there was a tenth planet. There's an oopsie.
Really, I actually prefer Niven's short stories - look up N-Space and Playgrounds of the Mind for good short story anthologies of his work. The Beowulf Shaeffur stories (set in Known Space) are awesome (they're anthologized in Crashlander). Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex is a hilarious article on the reproductive inviability of Superman.
Sorry, I'm a bit of a Niven nut in case you couldn't tell.
Of course, the thing is that ever since that book was written, Buenos Aires is the traditional "City to Blow Up" in Sci-Fi, as a hat's off to Heinlen (even videogames like Star Control II do it).
Hmm. I'm surprised noone's read Niven & Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer". I suppose slashdotters are too busy reading Star Trek novels and watching crappy movies like Deep Throat^H^H^H^HImpact. If you're going to be a geek, read real sci-fi. Pournelles a fascist bastard, but Niven's a genius, and together the do good sht.
The first half of Lucifer's Hammer is all about the scientists saying "It won't hit us" because they know the statistical unlikeliness of it all. Meanwhile, all the survivalists and sensationalists are getting ready. Then when the Hamner/Brown comet hits (on Hot Fudge Tuesdae, as named in the funniest part of the book) half the world is unprepared 'cause they new how sensationalist it all was.
Its even got the required Space Mission - but they're just up there to study the damn thing, and are as surprised as everyone else when they watch it clobber the earth (and then the confused Chinese try and nuke the USSR - this was written in the 80s).
Hmm - maybe in its time, but I think UT gets the award for most moddable game out there now. The mutator system allowing for multiple mods running in the same game, properly organising mods into gametypes and mutators, allows for a much more robust environment. Plus it came with a level editor and SDK as well.
UT I think lets the player work within the OOP nature of the game best.
Quake 1 deserves the honour better then Half-Life though - while Doom was moddable, all the mods were levels/sounds/graphix, not actual gameplay. All the gameplay stuff (DeHackEd) were hacks, not working within the SDK - just randomly poking bytes in the.exe.
Quake 1 on the other hand was the first to actually have real mods (Team Fortress was for Quake first). While Half-Life gets the award for acutally best supporting the mod community (sponsoring, SDK's, etc) I think Quake 1 is the godfather of the process.
I think StarCraft gets the award tho, for having a "scripting/trigger" (sortof) system that even an 8 year old could work with. Still, not very powerful.
I've never even heard of this format before. Anyone know how far its gotten (plugins for major apps, built-in support in anything, a single M$ app that you can use it with)?
Then they take the small-medium town and surround it with a million miles of suburban sprawl. Build some freakin' condoes at least - and not everybody needs an acre. Its just ridiculous what they do to the landscape surrounding these towns.
I have friends who grew up in those places. Unless you have your own car and license, you must be chauffeured, or you get no life.
I'm happy I grew up in a big, stinky, industrial city. Sure, it probably ain't good for my lungs, but I didn't spend 80% of my childhood bugging my folks to drive me to the mall.
Consider that - if you screw up and someone dies because of it, you will probably be charged with "negligence causing death" either civilly or criminally. Fines will exceed your net worth, or you may end up in jail for a decade.
If a corporation kills someone out of sloppiness, they lose 0.01% of their net worth in fines. It becomes acceptable losses.
Ummm, they didn't get a choice about the investing - They were required to sign agreements dissallowing them from selling the company stock that Enron used to set up their pension plan.
I'd be more concerned if right-to-lifers bought an abortion clinic's calling information. Forget loss of money or privacy - how about bombing or lynching?
There's also the issue of them knowing the names of people you call now. Think about it - they know your friends names now. Imagine the junkmail they could send. The sort of social engineering we normally only see in E-Mail viruses suddenly becomes much more powerful and much more personal. They can no longer just ape your on-line life to trick you - they can ape your actual real life - you can get a snail-mail from a friend you know saying how your other friend struck it rich doing X. It is, of course a scam - but it grossly increases the maximum IQ to fall for it.
I've found most of the indy bands I've bought CD's from still go the extra mile to get album art and inserts. They might be shoddy quality, but there almost always there. Sometimes damn cool too.
Oh, I agree - I set up gamepads on my machine all the time. Except there are a few problems.
First, quality per dollar in gamepads on the PC is terrible compared to consoles. I can get an indestructible and robust GameCube gamepad for 25CAN while I can get a Gravis with less buttons, less axes, and will break in a year for 30CAN.
Second, gamepads reflect the difference between console and PC games. PC games are, in many cases, designed like PC applications except with artificial environments. Civ is a Nation Management Software hooked up to simulated world. That sort of thing must be done with mouse and keyboard. The inverse exists on console games - Twisted Metal Black is designed for 4 players to clobber each other on a game pad with an analog stick, 4 shoulder buttons and 4 right-thumb buttons. Twisted Metal 2 on PC had no splitscreen and overcomplicated keyboard controls.
I have yet to see anyone other then a handful of indies make PC games that are designed for mulitple players using multiple gamepads on 1 machine like a console is. Some have splitscreen, but those are often FPS games that suck outside of their standard control system (keyboard/mouse).
The fact is that people tend to design for the system's starting hardware. There are few 4-player PS2 games. There are few PS1 games that support an Analogue stick. Most PC games are designed around a keyboard/mouse. Damn few PC games are meant to have more then one user on the same machine - because almost nobody has the hardware to do that (I do - Atomic Bomberman is why).
Besides, most of the good reasons to own a console are not ported to PC.
The gamepad is also better for anysort of vehicle game other then tanks. Space fighters, racing games, hover vehicle games, flight sims - they're all nicer once that god-aweful overcomplicated keyboard diagram has been thrown out the window and replaced with a nice friendly little gamepad.
Prettymuch the only thing the keyboard/mouse hybrid is better as is RTS, FPS, and Turn Based strategy... oh, and Maxis-style Sim games.
This is why the PC has no popular games outside of those genres. Even the car games like GTA have moved over more and more to the consoles.
I assume that you meant "listen" not reason. You obviously don't reason to techno. Techno does not have many famous people. Many electronic musicians go to great lengths to avoid being famous, despite producing background and soundtracks for all the famous people.
My best friend is an independant local techno artist. I think his stuff is pretty friggin' good - but maybe that's cause I'm comparing it to the utter crap they play on the radio these days.
Anyways my point is that techno actually does better then many genres at having local independant acts that don't suck.
Good god - it was a survey? Then his study gets a great big "No Fucking Shit" from me. Except he got it completely ass backwards. I was tempermental, short-attentioned, and downright psychotic in my youth. I didn't get into video games till I was 12.
Now I'm a gamer nut. I'm a lot better balanced, but I don't try and attribute that to games, I attribute it to losing my virginity. Whatever.
My point is - antisocial violent pissed off friendless losers like videogames a lot (violence, escapism, and a vague substitute for the human contact they couldn't get if they wanted it). The cause and effect goes the other way.
I was recommended to your novels when I was quite young, and found many of them quite good. I very much enjoyed the Incarnations of Immortality, particularly the first novel of the series. However, I quickly discovered the controversy surrounding your work, and learned why when reading the Bio of a Space Tyrant series. Re-reading the Incarnations drove this point home for me - how do you respond to all the charges of sexism in your work? The female characters in your novels are almost always pathetic damsels, even when in powerful roles like the Incarnations. No matter what they are always drop-dead gorgeous and hopelessly smitten with the male protagonists.
I found the characters in "And Eternity" in particular most ridculous, such as the young prostitute and the heroic pedophile. The writing of the prostitute reads like it was done by someone who had never met a woman, a child, or a person living outside of a country club. It was the 700 Club concept of what a poor prostitute girl on the street must be like - with the pointless sexual fantasy of this little girl lusting after the judge. Half the novel is spent in a sad attempt to justify pedophilia.
I often wonder how can a man with a family of women understand so little about them, continually adding Barbie doll after Barbie doll to his stories?
So my question is this: How do you explain the anachronistic objectification of women in your novels?
Okay, let me spell it out for people who aren't really keeping up with the last 3 decades
modern nuclear reactors are incapable of meltdown
Seriously folks, they just aren't. Not the ones that were designed with more then piss for brains anyways. There are accidents that can happen. Waste is dangerous - parts can explode *But* the giant plume of radioactive steam being released by a full-scale explosion in a process we call a Meltdown is no longer possible in a modern reactor. CANDU reactors in particular are safe as houses - the only problem with them is they produce weapons-grade plutonium as their primary form of waste.
Heheh, its funny - I've been working in a high-tech firm for only a few weeks, and yet I already misunderstood the purpose of this article: I thought they ment eltronic noise - like magnetics static buildup or something.
Yeah, I have an Athlon XP - I can't talk on the phone in the same room as that computer.
My old Duron has an extra internal case fan and its quieter. Oh, well. Maybe an old Mac Cube (no fans - all convection cooling) would be best.
Slashdot Mirror
If you like the whole "non-planet-based world" theme of Ringworld, I suggest you read Niven's The Integral Trees and the sequel, Smoke Ring - they're about a habitable zero gravity environment, and read a bit like high fantasy. Alternately, if you want more of the ringworld universe, Niven has written tons of novels in the same universe (he calls it known space - there's an anthology called "Three Books of Known Space" on the subject).
The best of the Niven/Pournelle team-up is tied between Footfall and Mote in Gods Eye (sequel is Gripping Hand - coolest aliens ever!)
My personal favourite of his novels is Protector - except it was written back when they thought there was a tenth planet. There's an oopsie.
Really, I actually prefer Niven's short stories - look up N-Space and Playgrounds of the Mind for good short story anthologies of his work. The Beowulf Shaeffur stories (set in Known Space) are awesome (they're anthologized in Crashlander). Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex is a hilarious article on the reproductive inviability of Superman.
Sorry, I'm a bit of a Niven nut in case you couldn't tell.
Mod the parent up - its a damn good post for an AC.
We both know it would be a million nerd DOS attack. Nerds don't walk - it excites their asthma.
Of course, the thing is that ever since that book was written, Buenos Aires is the traditional "City to Blow Up" in Sci-Fi, as a hat's off to Heinlen (even videogames like Star Control II do it).
Kind of funny - half my family lives there.
Hmm. I'm surprised noone's read Niven & Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer". I suppose slashdotters are too busy reading Star Trek novels and watching crappy movies like Deep Throat^H^H^H^HImpact. If you're going to be a geek, read real sci-fi. Pournelles a fascist bastard, but Niven's a genius, and together the do good sht.
The first half of Lucifer's Hammer is all about the scientists saying "It won't hit us" because they know the statistical unlikeliness of it all. Meanwhile, all the survivalists and sensationalists are getting ready. Then when the Hamner/Brown comet hits (on Hot Fudge Tuesdae, as named in the funniest part of the book) half the world is unprepared 'cause they new how sensationalist it all was.
Its even got the required Space Mission - but they're just up there to study the damn thing, and are as surprised as everyone else when they watch it clobber the earth (and then the confused Chinese try and nuke the USSR - this was written in the 80s).
Good book.
Well, if it was the Mayans, then we can all rest assured it will hit south america anyways. I'll just move to Edinburgh to give it a wide berth.
UT code cannot be concealed - UT code can be pulled in and out of the engine, so technically all UT mods are opensource.
Hmm - maybe in its time, but I think UT gets the award for most moddable game out there now. The mutator system allowing for multiple mods running in the same game, properly organising mods into gametypes and mutators, allows for a much more robust environment. Plus it came with a level editor and SDK as well.
.exe.
UT I think lets the player work within the OOP nature of the game best.
Quake 1 deserves the honour better then Half-Life though - while Doom was moddable, all the mods were levels/sounds/graphix, not actual gameplay. All the gameplay stuff (DeHackEd) were hacks, not working within the SDK - just randomly poking bytes in the
Quake 1 on the other hand was the first to actually have real mods (Team Fortress was for Quake first). While Half-Life gets the award for acutally best supporting the mod community (sponsoring, SDK's, etc) I think Quake 1 is the godfather of the process.
I think StarCraft gets the award tho, for having a "scripting/trigger" (sortof) system that even an 8 year old could work with. Still, not very powerful.
I've never even heard of this format before. Anyone know how far its gotten (plugins for major apps, built-in support in anything, a single M$ app that you can use it with)?
At no time did he say "carrying whatever they want". Airport security is still necessary - including checking all carry-on luggage.
Then they take the small-medium town and surround it with a million miles of suburban sprawl. Build some freakin' condoes at least - and not everybody needs an acre. Its just ridiculous what they do to the landscape surrounding these towns.
I have friends who grew up in those places. Unless you have your own car and license, you must be chauffeured, or you get no life.
I'm happy I grew up in a big, stinky, industrial city. Sure, it probably ain't good for my lungs, but I didn't spend 80% of my childhood bugging my folks to drive me to the mall.
Consider that - if you screw up and someone dies because of it, you will probably be charged with "negligence causing death" either civilly or criminally. Fines will exceed your net worth, or you may end up in jail for a decade.
If a corporation kills someone out of sloppiness, they lose 0.01% of their net worth in fines. It becomes acceptable losses.
Whoopie.
Ummm, they didn't get a choice about the investing - They were required to sign agreements dissallowing them from selling the company stock that Enron used to set up their pension plan.
This is hilarious - maybe fax it too? Wait, that's not right - then its not a JPEG.
You'd have to do it in many, many e-mails. That much the better.
I'd be more concerned if right-to-lifers bought an abortion clinic's calling information. Forget loss of money or privacy - how about bombing or lynching?
There's also the issue of them knowing the names of people you call now. Think about it - they know your friends names now. Imagine the junkmail they could send. The sort of social engineering we normally only see in E-Mail viruses suddenly becomes much more powerful and much more personal. They can no longer just ape your on-line life to trick you - they can ape your actual real life - you can get a snail-mail from a friend you know saying how your other friend struck it rich doing X. It is, of course a scam - but it grossly increases the maximum IQ to fall for it.
I've found most of the indy bands I've bought CD's from still go the extra mile to get album art and inserts. They might be shoddy quality, but there almost always there. Sometimes damn cool too.
Oh, I agree - I set up gamepads on my machine all the time. Except there are a few problems.
First, quality per dollar in gamepads on the PC is terrible compared to consoles. I can get an indestructible and robust GameCube gamepad for 25CAN while I can get a Gravis with less buttons, less axes, and will break in a year for 30CAN.
Second, gamepads reflect the difference between console and PC games. PC games are, in many cases, designed like PC applications except with artificial environments. Civ is a Nation Management Software hooked up to simulated world. That sort of thing must be done with mouse and keyboard. The inverse exists on console games - Twisted Metal Black is designed for 4 players to clobber each other on a game pad with an analog stick, 4 shoulder buttons and 4 right-thumb buttons. Twisted Metal 2 on PC had no splitscreen and overcomplicated keyboard controls.
I have yet to see anyone other then a handful of indies make PC games that are designed for mulitple players using multiple gamepads on 1 machine like a console is. Some have splitscreen, but those are often FPS games that suck outside of their standard control system (keyboard/mouse).
The fact is that people tend to design for the system's starting hardware. There are few 4-player PS2 games. There are few PS1 games that support an Analogue stick. Most PC games are designed around a keyboard/mouse. Damn few PC games are meant to have more then one user on the same machine - because almost nobody has the hardware to do that (I do - Atomic Bomberman is why).
Besides, most of the good reasons to own a console are not ported to PC.
The gamepad is also better for anysort of vehicle game other then tanks. Space fighters, racing games, hover vehicle games, flight sims - they're all nicer once that god-aweful overcomplicated keyboard diagram has been thrown out the window and replaced with a nice friendly little gamepad.
Prettymuch the only thing the keyboard/mouse hybrid is better as is RTS, FPS, and Turn Based strategy... oh, and Maxis-style Sim games.
This is why the PC has no popular games outside of those genres. Even the car games like GTA have moved over more and more to the consoles.
I assume that you meant "listen" not reason. You obviously don't reason to techno. Techno does not have many famous people. Many electronic musicians go to great lengths to avoid being famous, despite producing background and soundtracks for all the famous people.
My best friend is an independant local techno artist. I think his stuff is pretty friggin' good - but maybe that's cause I'm comparing it to the utter crap they play on the radio these days.
Anyways my point is that techno actually does better then many genres at having local independant acts that don't suck.
Not to mention how most MS apps earn an MS prefix when you talk about them.
Good god - it was a survey? Then his study gets a great big "No Fucking Shit" from me. Except he got it completely ass backwards. I was tempermental, short-attentioned, and downright psychotic in my youth. I didn't get into video games till I was 12.
Now I'm a gamer nut. I'm a lot better balanced, but I don't try and attribute that to games, I attribute it to losing my virginity. Whatever.
My point is - antisocial violent pissed off friendless losers like videogames a lot (violence, escapism, and a vague substitute for the human contact they couldn't get if they wanted it). The cause and effect goes the other way.
Mr. Anthony
I was recommended to your novels when I was quite young, and found many of them quite good. I very much enjoyed the Incarnations of Immortality, particularly the first novel of the series. However, I quickly discovered the controversy surrounding your work, and learned why when reading the Bio of a Space Tyrant series. Re-reading the Incarnations drove this point home for me - how do you respond to all the charges of sexism in your work? The female characters in your novels are almost always pathetic damsels, even when in powerful roles like the Incarnations. No matter what they are always drop-dead gorgeous and hopelessly smitten with the male protagonists.
I found the characters in "And Eternity" in particular most ridculous, such as the young prostitute and the heroic pedophile. The writing of the prostitute reads like it was done by someone who had never met a woman, a child, or a person living outside of a country club. It was the 700 Club concept of what a poor prostitute girl on the street must be like - with the pointless sexual fantasy of this little girl lusting after the judge. Half the novel is spent in a sad attempt to justify pedophilia.
I often wonder how can a man with a family of women understand so little about them, continually adding Barbie doll after Barbie doll to his stories?
So my question is this: How do you explain the anachronistic objectification of women in your novels?
Yes, Anthony sucks.... however, Discworld is Pratchett. Don't knock Pratchett.
Okay, let me spell it out for people who aren't really keeping up with the last 3 decades
modern nuclear reactors are incapable of meltdown
Seriously folks, they just aren't. Not the ones that were designed with more then piss for brains anyways. There are accidents that can happen. Waste is dangerous - parts can explode *But* the giant plume of radioactive steam being released by a full-scale explosion in a process we call a Meltdown is no longer possible in a modern reactor. CANDU reactors in particular are safe as houses - the only problem with them is they produce weapons-grade plutonium as their primary form of waste.
Heheh, its funny - I've been working in a high-tech firm for only a few weeks, and yet I already misunderstood the purpose of this article: I thought they ment eltronic noise - like magnetics static buildup or something.
Yeah, I have an Athlon XP - I can't talk on the phone in the same room as that computer.
My old Duron has an extra internal case fan and its quieter. Oh, well. Maybe an old Mac Cube (no fans - all convection cooling) would be best.