Re: [AFMUG] bored

Bill Prince Fri, 24 Jul 2020 21:35:20 -0700

When I heard they were going to make a Dune movie, my first thought was, nope, that can't be done. I was right.

bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>

On 7/24/2020 8:07 PM, Chuck McCown wrote:

First three Dune books are pretty good.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 24, 2020, at 9:04 PM, Ken Hohhof <af...@kwisp.com> wrote:

My wife was into science fiction. She always bought these every year:

https://us.macmillan.com/series/yearsbestsciencefiction/

After she died, I took boxes of them to the AAUW book sale.

She also tried to convince me Dune was great literature. I have nothing against SF, but that’s not my idea of a good time. When I was a kid I liked reading Jules Verne. And watching Flash Gordon in TV.

There are some underrated old sci fi movies, like Forbidden Planet, Enemy Mine, The Day The Earth Stood Still. Many movies were based on novels. You could track down the books. I remember reading On The Beach.

I used to watch stuff like Twilight Zone, I must be too lazy to read. Maybe I need a cognitive test. Person, woman, man, camera, TV.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/hwqglc/person_woman_man_camera_tv_hotdog/

From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Mark Radabaugh
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 9:11 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] bored

So y’all were supposed to find me some other good SciFi books. There is a lot of SciFi out there but the vast majority of it reads like the narration of a first person shooter. Boring.

Martha Wells “All Systems Red” is amusing.

Mark

On Jul 24, 2020, at 6:27 PM, Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com> wrote:

The movie is shit, but apparently it wasn't even supposed to be a Starship Troopers movie. The original title was "Bug Hunt on Outpost 9". Someone at the Heinlein estate thought it had too much similarity to Starship Troopers and there was a legal dispute. The studio agreed to pay licensing to use Starship Troopers IP. The director had apparently never even heard of the book and was annoyed at having to rework the movie into the "Starship Troopers" framework.

On 7/24/2020 5:59 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:

Why are people talking about Starship Troopers lately? I’d never heard of it. I asked my son what it was about and he said bugs. Bad bugs? Yes. Good movie? Stupid movie.

Was it satire? There’s a fine line between satire and stupid.

From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Mark Radabaugh
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 4:15 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] bored

Heinlein hasn’t aged as well as I would have expected. Some great ideas but the sex bits appealed a lot more to a teenage male than they do some 40 years later.

Asimov has held up very well - as good today as it was when it was written.

For newer SciFi:

I absolutely love Dan Simmons “Hyperion Cantos”. A bit slow to start but a fantastic work. Don’t start it if you have other things you need to do.

The “Imperial Radch” series by Ann Leckie is also one of my very favorites. A bit hard to wrap your head around at first but once you figure it out it’s excellent.

If you want something that’s just a plain fun easy read - “Old Man’s War” by John Scalzi is a concept straight out of Heinlein’s style, with a slightly different twist on the sexuality.

Mark

On Jul 24, 2020, at 4:53 PM, Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com> wrote:

I liked Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

The idea that citizenship is not a birthright but something you earn through service to society was interesting food for thought. It's not something we could do realistically, but it was interesting to think about. On the other hand, the idea that every soldier takes care of his own logistics is pretty dumb though. Heinlein must have found it objectionable to have more people in the rear echelon than you have actual fighters, but frankly modern wars are won by logistics. Having more soldiers is irrelevant if they don't have food, ammo, clothing, and fully working equipment; and expecting every Gomer Pile to take part in every aspect of that would be dumb.

Puppet Masters wasn't bad either. It spawned the whole body snatching subgenre in sci fi.

On 7/24/2020 4:14 PM, ch...@wbmfg.com wrote:

I get Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair confused. Didn’t really like either of them. Been a while since I read any Bradbury or Heinlein.

From: Ken Hohhof

Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 2:01 PM

To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group'

Subject: Re: [AFMUG] bored

I talked to an old college friend the other day, he had just read and was recommending “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis.

From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Adam Moffett
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 2:54 PM
To: af@af.afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] bored

Books are better.

I found the 1911 edition of the Boy Scouts Handbook enlightening. The views expressed by the author(s) are a glimpse into a different time. It also discusses survival and outdoor skills in broad terms. If you tried to build a bow or a log cabin from the instructions in that book you'd have to do a lot of your own figuring to fill in the blanks, but maybe that's the whole point, and maybe that's the piece we're missing from society today. Like maybe the journey of figuring out the precise techniques to carve the notches into the logs is a better experience than emulating a you-tuber who shows you every single step.

My other recent recreational book was the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees. I lived 40 years on this earth only ever learning a handful of major tree types (Oak, Maple, etc). I'm embarrassed to say I was calling every needle leafed tree a "pine" for most of those years. I finally decided to educate myself on the topic.

On 7/24/2020 3:29 PM, ch...@wbmfg.com wrote:

I am not much of a sports fan... I thought. But with no sports on I am really missing them. I would at times catch part of a game to pass the time. That option is gone for the moment and there nothing but crap on to watch... Need a good book I guess.

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Re: [AFMUG] bored

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