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AggroChat #205 – Behemoths and Escapism

May 21, 2019May 27, 2018 by AggroChat

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Tamrielo

Tonight we change things up a bit and instead of recording the Game of the Month show… we are in fact doing a normal style show. By normal… I mean we are recording with a Tam who has been day drinking. We start off the discussion with Dauntless that just launched on the 24th… and by launch I mean it is a free to play game going into open beta which is absolutely a launch. Ash talks about Hyrule Warriors on the switch and his experiences playing through it and all of the new content that came from the 3DS version. Tam talks a bit about Far Lone Sails a game where you drive a sailboat train and constantly keep moving ever steadily to the right. Finally we talk about games as escapism and this turns into a far darker discussion than I had intended it to. We each sorta talk about how we use games to cope with whatever we are dealing with.

Topics Discussed:

Dauntless
Hyrule Warriors – Switch
Far Lone Sails
Games as Escapism

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Reading Challenge Interlude: The First 25 Books

May 25, 2018 by Grace

I started working my way through NPR’s list of the top 100 sci-fi and fantasy novels almost two years ago, in August 2016. Rendezvous with Rama represents the 25th book on the list, so I’m officially averaging a little bit faster than one book per month. I wanted to use this milestone to look back at what I’ve read so far and see how my personal rankings match up with the list.

I’ve been updating my spreadsheet every time I finish a book, and adjusting my rankings as I go. Goodreads also has a version of this list, with a different ranking order based on their users. I’ve included all three (NPR, Goodreads, my personal rank) because I think it is useful to see how they compare. I have some suspicions about how the demographic differences between Goodreads users and NPR survey respondents play out in the different rankings.

Since I’ve been updating my order as I go, it’s been interesting to see how things have shifted. For example, The Space Trilogy and The Xanth Series started at the bottom of the list and haven’t budged. Nothing since has been quite as bad as those two. Likewise, the Doomsday Book was my first 5-star review, and it has stayed at the top of my list until getting dethroned by Rendezvous with Rama, 20 books later. The amazing books and the truly awful books are all pretty easy to place. What is really difficult is sorting all the 3- and 4-star books. It is getting even harder as I finish more books and the less-memorable ones start getting fuzzier in my mind.

The lonely 1-star entry, C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, earned that honor for being boring, preachy, and unoriginal. Also for being a product of its racist, misogynistic time. And if I’m being honest, because I just don’t like C.S. Lewis’ work. I would be surprised if anything displaces it for last place, but there’s still 75 more books ahead so I can’t be sure.

Among the 2-star books, Sunshine is the least bad since its main crime was that I really didn’t like it. The other two 2-star books are there because they are gross and awful and it makes me mad that anybody likes them enough for them to be on a “top-100” list.

The 3-star group is full of books that are either “fine, but just not my thing”, or “pretty good but with some sort of flaw that annoyed me”. The Illustrated Man earns the top spot in this group because it had so many interesting ideas. Lucifer’s Hammer ranks at the bottom because while it is well constructed, many parts just do not hold up well today.

There are more 4-star books on the list than any other group. It makes sense since every book on this list is supposed to be good. They are really hard to rank relative to each other because I enjoyed all of them in some way. I couldn’t really tell you why Caves of Steel is on the bottom, other than I liked all the others slightly more for one reason or other. It’s still a great book. The Mars Trilogy is at the top mostly because if I were just ranking the first book in the series it would be 5-stars, and in my head I’m comparing everything else to that.

All of the 5-star books are amazing and seriously you should go read them right now if you haven’t already. Rendezvous with Rama and the Doomsday Book would be completely tied if it weren’t for nostalgia pushing Rama ahead for me. All of the 5-star books are very different but they are all fantastic reads.

One change I am making going forward is to be more forgiving about quitting a book if it is just not working for me. Especially for the very long books, if I’m not engaged after 3-4 hours of reading I give myself permission to just stop. None of the books so far that started out poorly for me ended up being great by the end. At best they got a mixed review and 3 stars. Life is too short to force myself to power through when I could move on and discover a new favorite that much sooner.

I’m excited to keep moving forward with this project. There are so many books left to read, and I can’t wait to see how my rankings change with all the new additions. It is daunting to know that it will be years before I am done if I keep at least my current pace, but it’s also nice to think that I have 5 – 6 years worth of great books ahead!

Reading Challenge #76: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

May 22, 2018 by Grace

Welcome back for another reading challenge post. This time I got to read one of my all-time favorite books, so my review might be a little biased. It’s Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1973.

As I work my way through this reading list, every time I get to a book I have read before and remember enjoying I get a little worried. Will I still like it? Does it hold up well? Is this re-read going to make me hate something beloved from my childhood? Luckily for me this time, Rendezvous with Rama is just as amazing as I remembered.

Some books I enjoy because of the characters, others because of the intricate worldbuilding. Rendezvous with Rama I love because it is a beautiful thought experiment. The book is about humanity’s first encounter with aliens. Or rather, with an alien artifact. Dubbed “Rama”, a huge cylindrical spacecraft passes through the solar system, and there’s a rushed scramble to mobilize an expedition. The closest vessel gets conscripted for this task, and have to do their best to gather as much information about Rama as they can before it travels on its way past our sun.

Rama is a fascinating enigma. There’s no explanation of where it is from or why it came. When the expedition gets inside, there’s no reception waiting for them, just an inside-out world full of more questions. The place is so alien that when the explorers finally run into “creatures”, they aren’t even sure if they are animals or robots. Then, just as they finally discover a tantalizing archive of alien artifacts, they have to leave Rama or risk being carried too far away to return safely.

There’s a few moments of tension, with threats from people afraid that Rama might be a weapon, and from the spaceship itself. Mostly, however, the book is content to simply lay out the curiosities of the alien vessel for the reader to consider. It works because the idea of it is so intriguing. The biggest failing is that the characters are not very developed. The crew do their jobs with little conflict beyond good-natured competition over who gets to explore new things first. It’s honestly exactly what you would want from humanity’s first expedition to an alien artifact, even if it doesn’t make for dramatic reading.

The end leaves your head full of questions in the best possible way. Yes there are several sequels, although my understanding is they were mostly written by Gentry Lee with some input from Clarke. I remember enjoying them too, although I suspect they won’t stand up nearly so well to a re-read. For now I like the purity of Rendezvous with Rama. I truly can’t recommend this novel highly enough.

TL;DR: An alien spacecraft passes through our solar system, and leaves behind more questions than answers. One of my all-time favorite books.

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Rating: 5/5 stars

Next up: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

AggroChat #204 – Zeds, Mechs and Angst

May 21, 2019May 20, 2018 by AggroChat

Featuring: Belghast, Grave, Tamrielo and Thalen

Tonight we are down both an Ashgar and a Kodra… and the intro felt really weird to start with Grace. Tonight we had one of those nights where we felt like we didn’t have an awful lot to talk about… but then wound up running over time anyways. Bel talks about his experiences with State of Decay 2 on both Xbox One and PC and how it has changed from the original. Grace talks about her experiences with the Warmind Destiny 2 expansion that then spawns a discussion about why we feel D2 has a bad attach rate. Bel and Grace talk about how not excited they are for Battle for Azeroth in World of Warcraft, but how otherwise generally awesome the experience of leveling alts has become. Tam and Thalen talk about their further experiences with Battletech and coming to terms with the random headshots.

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