The Sword and Laser discussion

I listened to the audio book and it took a lot of time. I really wish I would have read it as I think I would have finished it quick and moved on and not fought with finishing like I did with the audio version. I felt a lot of it was predictable and I had no investment in the characters after 15 hours of listening. Maybe it was because it was the way the audio book was read with alternating narrators. Then it seemed like the last 3-5 chapters were rushed, (view spoiler)[All of this build up and history and then hurry close the rift, get to the right time and end the war. Over, Out and Done. (hide spoiler)]

my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I liked it.

There are some books that I think about long after I’ve read them. This won’t be one of them. There was nothing really wrong with it (awful narration, imo, aside), but there was nothing to make it stand out either. It was a mid season filler episode kind of a book.

I liked it fine. Just wasn’t overly invested in it.

Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth wrote: "It was a mid season filler episode kind of a book."

This is almost exactly how I felt about it. It was like the Star Trek writers remembered that they hadn't yet done a time-rift episode yet this season and threw something together. But then the author stretched that Star Trek episode out a good three hours too long.

I find it kinda more like Yesterday's Falcon maybe with all the Star Wars riffs. Obvious Han Solo and Cantina, and the "amoral or are they" smuggling bit. Maybe this one broke the universe by doing the Kessel run in twelve parsecs. The Voicers have that weird Force or maybe Bene Geserit feel.

Anyhoo, yes, the book owed a lot to its predecessors in fiction. They were easy to spot. Still fun.

Yeah, I’m not against reading something formulaic when the formula is well-executed. I recently finished the space opera trilogy about a character in a space navy who’s named Siobhan Dunmoore, and it’s even more derivative than this with clear Klingon analogues for the bad guys, but it’s well-written, so I have nothing bad to say about it.

As Ruth says, these are just standard trope-y stories, the SFF equivalent of beach reads. Nothing wrong with that from time to time.

I'm of two minds about it. I didn't get all that invested and outright didn't like some of the characters.

On the other hand, I thought it was a very good exploration between how history is remembered particularly big myth-making historical events, and how those events actually happened. (view spoiler)[ I don't actually think anything was changed I think the crew of the Joana always got stuck in that anomaly and events always had unfolded as they did (hide spoiler)]

I want to say if they'd made some of the characters more likable I would have enjoyed the book more but that would have sort of ruined the point of the book's point. About historical heroes not always being the heroes you think they are.

Dazerla wrote: "I want to say if they'd made some of the characters more likable I would have enjoyed the book more but that would have sort of ruined the point of the book's point. About historical heroes not always being the heroes you think they are."

That’s a very good point.

I don't totally buy that. Take Jereth for example. He's a con-man, with the conceit that (view spoiler)[a con-man would make a good Negotiator, especially if he's not completely authorized to negotiate. (hide spoiler)] The way he's written though he's not an especially convincing con-man. He's more like those people in Paris who try to convince you that you dropped a valuable ring and want a reward to give it back, rather than say a Paul Newman/Robert Redford/George Clooney artiste-of-the-swindle and master of the long con. (view spoiler)[The book says he's good, really good - I mean he orchestrated the whole Jetsetter heist even if Leeg did the heavy technical lifting - but he talks and acts like a two-bit hustler. He didn't raise my confidence a lot and I'm dubious he could have pulled something like that off (hide spoiler)]. Put differently, I don't have a problem with him being not-particularly-likable, I just don't think he was very convincing in the role he was supposed to be playing. Ocean's Eleven this was not.

Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth wrote: "There are some books that I think about long after I’ve read them. This won’t be one of them. There was nothing really wrong with it (awful narration, imo, aside), but there was nothing to make it ..."

Great way to put it! I'm trying to retain enough info for March for discussions and then moving on.

Oaken wrote: "I don't totally buy that. Take Jereth for example. He's a con-man, with the conceit that [spoilers removed] The way he's written though he's not an especially convincing con-man. He's more like tho..."

I felt like they were trying to make him too likable at the end...(view spoiler)[Clearly he must negotiate the peace, but I don't see the skill so he must have more 'skillz'... (hide spoiler)]

Calvey wrote: "Oaken wrote: "I don't totally buy that. Take Jereth for example. He's a con-man, with the conceit that [spoilers removed] The way he's written though he's not an especially convincing con-man. He's..."

I don’t think he needed to be great just available. We find out the aliens were over extended and were looking for a way out.

Iain wrote: "I don’t think he needed to be great just available. We find out the aliens were over extended and were looking for a way out."

Add that the aliens didn't consider the humans fully intelligent, not sure how that worked, and the shock and horror probably also really worked in their favor as well.

I'm with most of you. A perfectly decent but unexceptional read. Part of the issue was that it didn't play with the nature of time etc so I never got the feeling that the historical outcome wouldn't happen. The ships were trapped in a rift that left them on battery power only and the batteries were draining, but again, it never felt like they were all going to die, even though that fear was reasonable for the characters. A few things like didn't make internal sense even (view spoiler)[ like the aliens not considering humans intelligent. They're fighting an interstellar war with us, but they aren't sure we're intelligent? Seriously? (hide spoiler)]

I think in some ways this tried to be like Becky Chambers' Wayfarer books which really aren't about the plot or what happens but more about the characters and how they grow. But it's trapped in a structure where the plot IS important, so how it's handled matters.

Ultimately a 3 star book for me. I'll look at other stuff by the author but won't rush out to buy it and this isn't going to be a re-read book for me.

I took it to be the tendency to lionize important figures. The history part tells us how the propaganda went. The novel shows us the flawed people they actually were.

John (Taloni) wrote: "I took it to be the tendency to lionize important figures. The history part tells us how the propaganda went. The novel shows us the flawed people they actually were."

That was definitely the best part of it - the distortion of real events by time, distance and our tendency to put figures like this on a pedestal.

Never meet your heroes.

I don't think that applies to Veronica and Tom 😉

Rick wrote: "They're fighting an interstellar war with us, but they aren't sure we're intelligent? Seriously?"
What is "intelligent" though? I found Blindsight to be an interesting take on that. Evolution could conceivably create an advanced species that isn't necessarily "intelligent" in the way we think of it; i.e., self-aware and/or with any understanding/empathy for any goals other than growth. This book didn't go anywhere near that but its not that big of a stretch when you spend some time with the idea.

Oaken wrote: "Rick wrote: "They're fighting an interstellar war with us, but they aren't sure we're intelligent? Seriously?"
What is "intelligent" though? I found Blindsight to be an interesting tak..."

I think the assumption that a star-faring civilization is NOT intelligent, though, is far-fetched and wouldn't be a very, um, intelligent default assumption.

I get that the aliens are telepathic and that we didn't communicate that way would lead to confusion but unless we're their first alien species encountered or the assumption in world building is that all other species that they've met are also telepathic in ways that are compatible, it feels like an odd assumption for another advanced civilization to have made.

This is kind of a failure in world-building in the book, since we don't know any of these things. The book spends next to no time with the alien ambassador, so we don't get anything much from their perspective.

Tassie Dave wrote: "Never meet your heroes.
I don't think that applies to Veronica and Tom 😉"

At Worldcon 2018 my wife and I had a choice: Get on the road and head home (San Jose to Orange County, south of Los Angeles) and hope to get home before dark, or wait around for an S&L meetup with Veronica.

We got on the road, but I'm still kicking myself for not taking the coupla hours to do the meetup.

Rick wrote: "I think the assumption that a star-faring civilization is NOT intelligent, though, is far-fetched and wouldn't be a very, um, intelligent default assumption.

I get that the aliens are telepathic and that we didn't communicate that way would lead to confusion but unless we're their first alien species encountered or the assumption in world building is that all other species that they've met are also telepathic in ways that are compatible, it feels like an odd assumption for another advanced civilization to have made. "

I dunno, I’ve heard weirder things, especially in sci-fi.

I mean, people still believe that fish and lobsters don’t feel pain, which is absurd. And now we know that spiders dream, as well as have the ability to count. (Hello Children of Time.) We tend to dismiss the idea that other creatures — and our fellow humans — share any commonality with us.

Some white doctors and nurses still believe that black people don’t feel pain as much as white people, which is literally insane. Yet it is pervasive. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... and https://batten.virginia.edu/about/new...) Wanda Sykes stand-up bit about it: https://youtu.be/f8dml_mZEMs

I’m currently rereading Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin, which is a collection of short stories about the eccentric Haviland Tuf who finds an ancient, kilometers-long spaceship designed to wage war through genetic manipulation.

Just this morning I got to the one where a human colony is under attack by the native lifeforms so they employ Tuf to find a solution. Spoilers for a 40-year-old book: turns out the critters are being manipulated by intelligent ocean-dwelling natives, but they have no sensory organs and are immobile, sort of like giant clams. So the humans have been eating them. Faux pas, indeed.

To wit:

“To the dreamers, it seemed as if some terrible new predator had evolved upon the landmass, a place of little interest to them. They had no inking that you might be sentient, since they could no more conceive of a non-telepathic sentience than you could conceive of one blind, deaf, immobile and edible. To them, things that moved and are flesh were animals, and could be nothing else.”

So I don’t find it too terribly far-fetched that one set of aliens might find a non-telepathic species fails to meet their expectations of intelligence, regardless of whatever other clever things they might do.

I’m reminded of this exchange from Aliens:
Ripley: They cut the power.
Hudson: How could they cut the power?! They’re animals!
https://youtu.be/yFUe-OA2zy0

Biases are funny that way.

Rick wrote: "I think the assumption that a star-faring civilization is NOT intelligent, though, is far-fetched and wouldn't be a very, um, intelligent default assumption."

Given the number of different cultures that have been assumed to be less intelligent than Europeans after giving this, some thought I don't find this as far-fetched as I originally thought it was. And that just with Europeans looking at different human cultures and apply their own cultural standards and the want to colonize or enslave the people's the encountered this doesn't include miscommunication that must occur between species from different planets.

Also, maybe it's just me but I got the feeling that this was the first intelligent alien contact that both species had had.

I just finished this a couple of weeks ago and I don’t remember much of the story now. It really didn’t stand out.

My copy just came in the mail, gonna start reading it today.