I think Children of time was the first thing of his that I read. I had fleshed out my reading list by adding all of the Hugo and Nebula nominees that sounded interesting to me, but I didn’t know anything else about it. I was blown away and devoured the series. I think it’s one of the all-time great SF series. I read Dogs of War recently, and liked it very well. Shroud is amazing. His fantasy stuff is pretty great, too.
Yeah, I was at 71 or 72 books in 2025. 16 books so far this year.
I like the Mielville books, but I have to space them out because they’re often kind of soul crushing. Tchaikovsky is my favorite contemporary for sure. I made a post about him a while back. I haven’t read Strife yet, but I’ve read an awful lot of his other works. He’s honestly brilliant, though some of his books seem like he spent a lot more energy on them than others.
I used to prefer physical books, but started with ebooks when I was traveling for work and didn’t want to deal with the weight and mass. Two things have made me a convert. One is that I love, love, love being able to long-press on a word and have the dictionary come up. The other is that I like reading in bed before sleeping with the lights off and the screen in dark mode. With physical books I have to have a light on, and it’s much less conducive to sleeping.
I just checked and almost none of Zelazny’s stuff is available in ebook format, which is mostly what I read. My son gave me a cool leatherbound version of The Great Book of Amber, which is how I read those. I read so much that I mostly go through the library for my books, and do it digital. I’ll see though. It’s even possible I have the paperback in the garage.
I’ll add it to my list (I read a stupid amount).
Yes, I believe so, but in the 80s. I don’t remember it well.
One time I was laying on my back in the living room, eyes closed, resting. I yawned one of those big yawns and opened my eyes midway through because I heard a sound. What I saw was my dog’s eyes looking into mine, really, really close. Closer than they’d even been. The reason they were so close was because his nose was fully into my open mouth.
I’m just glad he didn’t drool.
The first five books (apparently referred to as “the Corwin cycle”) are still a treasure, and if you have an inclination to reread them, I wouldn’t hesitate. I don’t regret rereading the last five (Merlin cycle), they’re just clearly inferior.
I never paid attention to other people’s reviews back in the day (* caveat below), but now that I keep my own notes on what I read I like to poke around and see if my opinion differs wildly from others. It was interesting to see that the Merlin cycle was widely panned at the time, with some of the same complaints I made above.
You should give attribution. I’ve for sure read this before, and it’s clearly what the cartoon is referring to.
Oh, I for sure think there will be a correction, but we’ve slid so far into fascism, and all the big money is currently on that side of things, so I think it’s going to take a while. Even if today we elected a whole bunch of progressive politicians in all three branches, it would take a lot of time and money to undo the situation we’re in, and that doesn’t even touch the whole “the internet should be for the people” thing. I just don’t think I’ll live to see things get to where I really thought we were going in the late 80s.
Pre, or post Apple ][s in þe classroom?
Probably pre, but it might depend on where you were. I graduated high school in 1980.
Maybe our generation is þe most bitter. We saw what could have been, and watched it degrade
I for sure am. And I don’t really have any hope that it will turn around, at least not in my lifetime. The whole country has been enshitified, really. It’s very sad.
I don’t think I’d even post the comic of someone I knew to be terrible.
Okay, good info. Sadly, is hard to trust anything with the Google name these days.
I’m an old guy with a CS degree. I watched the Internet and the web come into existence. I had so much excitement and hope for it. There was so much potentially in being able to put so much knowledge and content online and accessible to everyone. To have applications you could run from a common interface. I thought it would be so glorious.
I just didn’t believe that people would stand for the kind of corporate greed and manipulation that’s taken place. It’s one of the saddest things ever.
I’ve always really liked this one
I hadn’t read the discussion but saw there was one and had wondered why anyone would want to remove an artist’s signature. That’s crazy. What a weird world view.
Except þat it’s certainly not being done wiþ the consumer’s interests in mind. It’s done for surveillance capitalism, and it’s done for control.
That was my whole point. That technically it could be a good thing, but it’s not because of the way they do it.
Not sure I could trust a TV made by Google.
I’m telling about the kind of peanut butter most people buy. For instance, according to the Skippy peanut butter site, two tablespoons of Skippy has 4g of added sugar, which is about a teaspoon. It’s not Nutella levels for sure, but it’s still a lot.
Yeah, even considering the angle, that seems off. I just did a search and plucked one of the first to come up; I wonder if that version has been messed with.
For the younger folks, that’s basically the plot of half the episodes of Bewitched.