zompist bboard

Opera wrote:Maybe you had already verified it before? Some sites keep that in mind and don't ask again.

I know, this is what I don't like...

Woohoo, my copy of PCK arrived! That was quick. I skimmed over it, and read the first few chapters last night instead of sleeping. Honestly, I felt like it was actually significantly better than the LCK, but I don't know how much of that is just that I already knew pretty much all the LCK information, whereas a lot of this stuff is new to me.

One quick thing I noticed is that the diagram on pg. 44 doesn't seem to have any thin/thick line distinctions, as the text on the next page would indicate, so I'm not entirely sure how to read it...

Also thumbs up for enormous bus-sized angry yaks as the Transportation of the Future.

Meh they're sending it by rowboat so I won't get mine for another month.

Whimemsz wrote:One quick thing I noticed is that the diagram on pg. 44 doesn't seem to have any thin/thick line distinctions, as the text on the next page would indicate, so I'm not entirely sure how to read it...

That may be unclear... the thick line is the little line within the planet; the thin line is the long line leading from the planet to the sun.

Ohhhhh...okay, yeah I misunderstood. Makes more sense now. Thanks.

Woo! Just got my copy of LCK as a highly belated birthday present. I am a fan. If only it were signed by the author!

Come to Chicago and it will be done.

This sounds like a good vacation idea.

I ordered both. Amazon says the delivery date is December 7, but they took nearly 4 months the last time, so I'm not inordinately excited.

Bought it.

Just because it has to cross the Allegedly Peaceful Border, it will take 2 weeks....

Received the LCK book from Amazon.co.uk, it only took a few days. Unfortunately, it's a Sinterklaas present, so I'll have to wait for over a month to actually read it. Browsed it though, and duh! of course *I can has cheezburger, since everyone knows it's I can haz cheezburger.


JAL

Ha. The website says "can has" though.

You bought your own Christmas present? I hope you don't tell yourself what you bought and spoil the surprise...

zompist wrote:Ha. The website says "can has" though.

It does, and it is obviously wrong :).

You bought your own Christmas present? I hope you don't tell yourself what you bought and spoil the surprise...

Well, I'll let my wife give it to me, and I'll act really surprised :).


JAL

Yiuel wrote:Bought it.

Just because it has to cross the Allegedly Peaceful Border, it will take 2 weeks....

That's a normal shipping time for packages within the States, too, sorry to spoil your latest gripe about America.

/p{.tI.ku:/ wrote:

Yiuel wrote:Bought it.

Just because it has to cross the Allegedly Peaceful Border, it will take 2 weeks....

That's a normal shipping time for packages within the States, too, sorry to spoil your latest gripe about America.

Not with Amazon. And two weeks is a minimum.

(Also, in Canada, it would be maximum 5 days. And that would be interprovincial.)

Yiuel wrote:Not with Amazon. And two weeks is a minimum.

(hasn't arrived yet)

(Also, in Canada, it would be maximum 5 days. And that would be interprovincial.)

Congratulations.

Apparently 9 days was enough to get it to northern Europe, got it today!

Aszev wrote:Apparently 9 days was enough to get it to northern Europe, got it today!

Well I'll be damned. It just arrived. (2 days)

zompist wrote:You bought your own Christmas present? I hope you don't tell yourself what you bought and spoil the surprise...

My father does that sometimes, but usually forgets what things he's gotten for himself by the time that he opens them.

Aszev wrote:Apparently 9 days was enough to get it to northern Europe, got it today!

I ordered it on the 13th (Amazon UK), I got dispatch confirmation on the 14th, and I think I got it the 18th or 19th (my message here was from the 20th, but I posted 1 or 2 days later), so that's 2-4 working days. Not bad.

EDIT: I'm talking about the LCK, not the PCK, which is not yet available with Amazon UK.


JAL

Finally ordered both the LCK and PCK today.

It arrived last Friday, indicating again to me that Amazon like to under-promise and over-deliver (they had said to allow 4 weeks).

Early, post brief-skim thoughts:

*It covers a lot of ground, as advertised. I do wonder if segmenting into different books would be worth it, but as Mark mentions, the economics of this probably doesn't work.
*Given that planetary climate is something I've never been very good at, I'd ideally prefer to be babied through this a bit more. I do understand broadly how zones etc. work; it just seems to me that there's still an element of arbitrariness to it (ie. the boundaries between climate zones can be a bit fuzzy), which I always worry will come out eventually as being implausible. But that probably reflects my unfamiliarity with the subject.
*Social change. I think the parts in the Culture chapter what archetypes societies value and how they work internally is very valuable and essential for a lot of fantasy/sf writers, who tend not to be history nuts by nature. But what I wonder about - and I don't know if there's a simple description/mechanism to this - is tipping points for change. We know that sometimes the most interesting parts of a society to write about/describe are the wobbly ones that give rise to dramatic changes. How is it, for example, that the revolutions of 1848 could be described as something of a short-term failure (they did nothing to reduce the disconnect between the populace and the governing class in terms of expectations), but a longer-term success (after many hiccups, liberal democracy did eventually become the new social norm in the societies in question)? What exactly was it that tipped Qing society over in 1911, when it had already survived so many calamities? I don't know the answers to these questions. It seems that societies can flip poles quite abruptly somtimes, and I'd be interested in knowing precisely how it happens.

I thought it'd be hard and unproductive to keep writing Construction Kits. Plus I didn't find any reasonable division point that'd (say) produce two equal-sized books.

The tipping point question sounds interesting... why not start a thread about that?

I think disease and how it affects societies and more should have been included in the PCK

Zelos wrote:I think disease and how it affects societies and more should have been included in the PCK

Good one - especially large epidemics and pandemics. Think black plague, but also veneral diseases vs. sexual mores etc. Also, allied to this, famine (as it also causes wide-spread death)*.


JAL

*I don't own the PCK yet, so this may well be covered already.