@nyrath@iamgerardthomas There's definitely a really big hump to get over with Blender. Compared to a lot of other design programmes, it seems very unintuitive at first. Once that bridge is crossed though, the basics come pretty fast.
I need some new science fiction to read, who has some suggestions? I don't like military sci-fi. For reference, my favorite series is the Expanse, I also enjoyed Scalzi's Collapsing Empire, I love Robert Charles Wilson's books. I mostly enjoy space operas and unique stories about technology, for example I really liked the recent book Mountain in the Sea about AI and intelligent octopus. Suggestions from the awesome Bookstodon community? @bookstodon#Bookstodon#Scifi#ScienceFiction
@Jennifer@bhalpin@bookstodon seconding the Vorkosigan series. The tone in the books swings a LOT with some very dark stuff in it and then lighthearted comedy but I loved the series. Agree with starting with “The Warriors Apprentice”
Watched it for the umpteenth time last night. 42 years old and as long as you're not watching the original theatrical release, it's a near perfect film. A pure masterclass.
In the surprisingly bleak “Masquerade” (1941), metamorphic aliens on Mercury’s radiation-blasted surface parrot human actions. Beneath their clownish behavior is a plot, a plot to takedown an Earth corporation. #scifi#sciencefiction
In “Tools” (1942), the unchecked capitalist vastation shifts from Mercury to Venus and a new form of power. Instead of harvesting the sun’s rays as in “Masquerade,” the monopoly Radium, Inc.—which “owns the Solar System, body and soul” (122)–exports shiploads of radium from the Venusian mines harvested by specialized robots with ‘radon brains.' #scifi#sciencefiction
10 authors, of whose books I've read at least five:
Ursula Le Guin
Kim Stanley Robinson
Octavia Butler
N. K. Jemisin
Becky Chambers
Iain M. Banks
Martha Wells
M. R. Carey
Lois McMaster Bujold
Vonda McIntyre
10 authors, of whose books I've read at least five:
Terry Pratchett
Brandon Sanderson
Neil Gaiman
Piers Anthony
Brian K. Vaughan
Warren Ellis
Garth Ennis
Kieron Gillen
Bryan Lee O'Malley
Matt Fraction
Gosh that was harder than I thought it would be. I felt like using #GraphicNovels might be cheating but I guess I don't read a ton of longer series otherwise.
Karen Joy Fowler: Cory told me that you, and I quote, "knocked it out of the park" last week.
Me: (flustered) Uh … I … well, I, uh, wrote a story I thought he might like. As I did with Bob … I mean, I don't TAILOR my stories to each instructor but–
KJF: –but you thought @KellyLink and I would enjoy a story about eating children?
Me: Uh …
Anyway, the story that @pluralistic liked is in ParSec #10 today:
@angusm@KellyLink@pluralistic This reminds me of a barnstormer of an argument I had with my agent circa 2008, culminating in her sending me an email saying "FOR GOD'S SAKE, YOU CAN'T HAVE THEM EATING THE BABY'S FACE! YOUR READERS WILL HATE YOU!"
(My reply was something like, "Caitlin, are you projecting much?" (She'd just had another baby.))
@angusm@KellyLink@pluralistic We agreed to submit the MS to an editor of mine who had three toddlers. They agreed the baby-face-eating was in the best possible taste and published the book. (That was 10 Laundryverse novels ago.)
It was a great surprise to everyone when an unassuming Australian physicist worked out the equations that permitted faster-than-light travel.
It was an even greater surprise to find that the engineering required to build a device to implement the theory was found to be almost trivial. It was not even particularly expensive - a typical EV car cost more than an FTL drive unit.
In accordance with things coming in threes, there was one final surprise: Organic life could not survive the process.
It only cost the lives of five astronauts - and several dozen test animals.
Once this was proven, enthusiasm for the FTL projects around the globe dropped dramatically. But some did continue. One of the more interesting aspects of the mathematics was that the process did not involve any sort of acceleration. The device simply created a field that linked two points in space. Increasing the energy just increased the size of the object transferred.
All you had to do was define the relative coordinates of the origin and the destination.
The first probe sent further than across a room vanished. So did the next three. On a hunch, the engineering team of the fifth probe fitted a powerful transmitter, and sent it on its way. Again, the return program appeared to fail.
And then, a few minutes later, the NASA Deep Space Network reported receiving a beacon message from the probe - just inside the orbit of the moon. The probe had been gone 30 minutes.
Astronomers quickly worked out what was wrong - it was not a problem with the probe, it was because the Earth, and the Solar System had moved.
Having worked out that problem, the next probe was retrieved successfully. And then sent on the first real mission: to a point outside the Milky Way to image our home galaxy.
The probe dutifully returned several hours later, to a point far enough away to not fall to Earth, but close enough to transmit the data it had gathered. The image of the galaxy was all that the designers had hoped for.
The radio transmissions were less expected. Hundreds of them, very high powered, but all structurally the same. And only able to be picked up outside of the radio noise and gas clouds within a galaxy.
When decoded they all basically said the same thing, in many different ways.
@rdm this would immediately get used by terrorists, I don't think humans would survive more than a week of this was possible. Cool story though, love "first contact" kind of stuff :)