Technical nonfiction and spec fiction. She/her. Melbourne, Australia. Generation X. Admin of Outside of a Dog. BDFL of Hometown (Mastodon) instance Old Mermaid Town (@futzle@old.mermaid.town). Avatar image is of a book that my dog tried to put on their inside.
My rating scale: ★ = I didn't care for it and probably didn't finish it; ★★ = It didn't inspire but I might have finished it anyway; ★★★ = It was fine; ★★★★ = I enjoyed it; ★★★★★ = I couldn't put it down.
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It’s not grabbing me. The Lena character is insufferable and shallow and irritating. The diary excerpts are especially cringeworthy.
I don’t know if it’s Palmer trying to write women or something else, because there’s only one other woman in the book and she is a very minor character.
Putting it down.
Psychopaths, at one extreme, process reality in a way that is denuded of emotional content; often, killer psychopaths admit they don't really feel emotion, but instead "act" emotion. Great novelists, by contrast, process reality by a process of self-glorifying self-fictification. Computer geeks, by further contrast, break down their lives into a series of tasks and challenges; it gives them huge self-confidence, but little emotional competence.
— Debatable Space by Philip Palmer (Page 81)
The first person in this part of the book is, herself, something of a psychopath.
Only got five pages in before bad light stopped play. Reading by candlelight is not recommended.
Some sf from the 1950s holds up today. This ... does not. It's from a time when women were inconsequential and invisible, that being gay was a character flaw, that rugged male individuals were the solution to any bureaucracy. I did not finish this book and I will make a note to never touch or recommend anything by this author again.
Content warning Homophobia in a 1959 book
Ok I'm done with Next of Kin. I got about halfway through, managed to grit my teeth that every single character in it (even the aliens) is male, but once the protagonist started using his gaydar on other characters, I knew I couldn't finish it. Disposing of this book in the recycling.
“Hasn’t aged a bit” says the endorsement on the cover by Jack Chalker, 1944–2005. Au contraire, Jack, upon finishing the first chapter, which contains no women at all, this novella from 1959 has aged a fuckton. I will probably need to hateread it in order to finish this supposed comic horror story.
I’ve only dipped my toe into modular synths, lest I unleash another hobby I don’t have time for. This book has a ton of concrete examples for three of Korg’s modular synths: the ARP 2600 M, the MS-20 Mini, and the Volca modular. Of those, I’ve only got a software version of the MS-20, so I haven’t done much actual patching.
The book is divided into sections about oscillators, filters, modulation, envelopes, etc. with lots of explanatory diagrams and lots of examples. Every few pages there is a long-form interview with a musician who uses one of the modular synths covered in the book. They’ve done a pretty good job getting a diversity of musicians, but of course it’s a mite biased towards featuring people who can afford to buy synths.
This would be a good introductory book, but for more advanced users it’s going to tread a lot of …
I’ve only dipped my toe into modular synths, lest I unleash another hobby I don’t have time for. This book has a ton of concrete examples for three of Korg’s modular synths: the ARP 2600 M, the MS-20 Mini, and the Volca modular. Of those, I’ve only got a software version of the MS-20, so I haven’t done much actual patching.
The book is divided into sections about oscillators, filters, modulation, envelopes, etc. with lots of explanatory diagrams and lots of examples. Every few pages there is a long-form interview with a musician who uses one of the modular synths covered in the book. They’ve done a pretty good job getting a diversity of musicians, but of course it’s a mite biased towards featuring people who can afford to buy synths.
This would be a good introductory book, but for more advanced users it’s going to tread a lot of familiar ground. Either way, it’s very pretty, and it’s quite well produced.
Not bad at all. I might track down the sequels. Gibson’s worldbuilding reminds me a bit of Alastair Reynolds.
A beautiful pictorial coffee-table book about analogue and modular synthesis. It uses the Volca Modular, ARP 2600 M, and MS-20 Mini as examples throughout but the concepts are applicable to all synths.
The mandatory novelty Christmas present.
Another from the trove of pelagikat’s hand-me-downs. Definitely haven’t read this one before.
David Swift, a professor at Columbia University, is on the run for his life from …
Yeah, I’ve read this before. While I don’t recall any of the plot, I’m getting deja lu on reading each scene. Going to put it down.
David Swift, a professor at Columbia University, is on the run for his life from …
I have a suspicion that I have read this book already, years ago, as an ebook.
David Swift, a professor at Columbia University, is on the run for his life from the FBI and a ruthless …
