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Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover …
Content warning Teixcalaanli reaction to imagos
i like how Twelve Azalea's immediate reaction is to assume the dead person takes over entirely. A neat bit to show how past-obsessed his culture is (& also a hint for later, of course)
Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover …
Content warning Nineteen Adze's epiphet
"whose gracious presence illuminates the room like the edgeshine of a knife"
turns out an adze is a cutting tool, so this isn't just a statement about her, it's also a pun, and i never realised before today
perhaps i should look up more of the less-obvious names? i bet there's more things like this
Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous …
Coder, décoder : un processus essentiel à la vie, à nos relations sociales, à nos …
This one's fun, and not too long. Also I'm jelous of the food now (it's about an alien species which mainly communicates through things humans can only perceive as taste, so 'talking' means 'creating elaborate dishes')
but also it ends so sad, and unrevokable? i like it though
Coder, décoder : un processus essentiel à la vie, à nos relations sociales, à nos …
have read a few of the novellas in here already, but mostly this has been lying around here.
iirc i mostly got it since more non-english fiction + a new story by Ada Palmer sounded appealing
@jana oh hm, wanted to start reading sth else, but now i'm kinda tempted to reread this again just so we can have conversations about it as we read?
Phileas Fogg, gentleman anglais, parie avec les membres de son club qu'il fera le tour …
I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought! It's a fun adventure story, and I think probably fits in a lot better with other 19th century adventure stories than it does with other science-fiction of the time, though it's also not as if they were too distinct back then. But while it does obviously focus on technology and how it has changed (and continues to change) the world, it's definitely meant as a realistic, contemporary (published as a serial in 1872, afaict with the dates in the story roughly matching with actual dates) story — e.g. at particularly desperate moment the idea of crossing an ocean by balloon shows up, but is dismissed immediately as undoable.
Definitely the best parts are when Verne pokes fun at the whole British-Empire-gentlemen culture and its absurdities. It's not in any way anti-imperialist, but ig it's refreshing to read this sentiment in …
I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought! It's a fun adventure story, and I think probably fits in a lot better with other 19th century adventure stories than it does with other science-fiction of the time, though it's also not as if they were too distinct back then. But while it does obviously focus on technology and how it has changed (and continues to change) the world, it's definitely meant as a realistic, contemporary (published as a serial in 1872, afaict with the dates in the story roughly matching with actual dates) story — e.g. at particularly desperate moment the idea of crossing an ocean by balloon shows up, but is dismissed immediately as undoable.
Definitely the best parts are when Verne pokes fun at the whole British-Empire-gentlemen culture and its absurdities. It's not in any way anti-imperialist, but ig it's refreshing to read this sentiment in "the other way", given how embedded making fun of frenchness often is in english culture and writing?
(also, since at some point i got asked: the voyage in the book is fictional, but apparently its popularity led to people actually trying this, and Nellie Bly did it in 72 days in 1890)
Oh also it's a product of its times, so expect racism and such, but tbh i have read much, much worse from this period, and in most of the chapters it's easy enough to ignore.
This edition contains only the story "Insert Knob A in Hole B," printed on a …
Jana shoved this at me. It's fun, but a little longer than it needs to be i think.
Phileas Fogg, gentleman anglais, parie avec les membres de son club qu'il fera le tour …
done! still think the best parts are whenever Verne can poke fun at Britian & its empire. The adventure stories are also fun to read, but well, they are 150 years old now, and not everything has aged well …
Phileas Fogg, gentleman anglais, parie avec les membres de son club qu'il fera le tour …
they're in the USA! *immediately get cought in a riot*
sections on Hong Kong & China are sadly short, but perhaps that's for the best given Verne's (tbh probably not untypical) perception of them? (though he did write an adventure novel set entirely in China, wonder if i should read it sometime)
Phileas Fogg, gentleman anglais, parie avec les membres de son club qu'il fera le tour …
Passepartout & Fix are such a funny pair though, am enjoying their dysfunctional adversary
ah we're in india, racist edition. do like the elephant though, he's cute
found myself in the mood to read more french again and this was at hand
The year is 3589, fifteen hundred years after Commonwealth forces barely staved off human extinction …
not a new thought by any measure, but i don't think i'm in any hurry to read books 2 & 3 of this now
