[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever met my Cracker grandparents.
[/QUOTE]
Oh hell, my humblest apologies. Old school Floridians are certainly Southern.
Rhonda, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to be from anywhere in particular. Maybe Turkey.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Of course, if you mean Tampa is a beacon of liberalism, civilization and sophistication compared to Atlanta, I’d have no choice but to cede the point. 
[/QUOTE]
I’d say the two towns are similar in a lot of respects. Atlanta’s African American population is probably much larger, but it is a fairly liberal town by Southern standards. I’d say that Tampa is a beacon of liberalism compared to the rest of Georgia, for sure.
Sorry for the hijack.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
If you’re referring to Dies the Fire I don’t know what you mean. If you can suspend belief far enough to swallow the blackbox premise of all powered technology and explosives on Earth being rendered inoperable by Alien Space Bats, the rest follows logically enough, including the die-off of at least nine-tenths of the human race. (Though I don’t believe the built infrastructure of industrial civilization would decay quite as rapidly as he imagines. True, there would be nobody to maintain the paved roads any more, but, considering that there would also be hardly any wear and tear on them any more, they should last practically forever.)
[/QUOTE]
I meant it’s a totally retarded book. It’s high school grade writing and a big fantasy wish fulfillment - I mean, have you ever sat around the fire at an SCA event and heard morons prattle about how, if it’s The End of the World As We Know It, we’d be the ones who knew how to survive, because, uh, I made this tent myself with a sewing machine, and I made this armor, and we live just fine pretending to be medieval people once a month or so. In a previous thread about the book, though, it was all people who had experience with the SCA who thought it was really stupid, so YMMV. (Seriously, I love you, South Downs, but you know what I’m talking about, don’t pretend you don’t.)
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
I meant it’s a totally retarded book. It’s high school grade writing and a big fantasy wish fulfillment - I mean, have you ever sat around the fire at an SCA event and heard morons prattle about how, if it’s The End of the World As We Know It, we’d be the ones who knew how to survive, because, uh, I made this tent myself with a sewing machine, and I made this armor, and we live just fine pretending to be medieval people once a month or so. In a previous thread about the book, though, it was all people who had experience with the SCA who thought it was really stupid, so YMMV. (Seriously, I love you, South Downs, but you know what I’m talking about, don’t pretend you don’t.)
[/QUOTE]
If the plural of auditorium is auditoria, what is the plural of scum? 
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
You must never have been down here. Southern conservatives, rich or poor, are way more idiotic. Even the ones with Ivy League graduate degrees. As we all have painfully learned, these past seven years.
[/QUOTE]
No, I don’t believe you’re correct. I’d have to go with the poster to whom you were answering.
[QUOTE=RikWriter]
No, I don’t believe you’re correct. I’d have to go with the poster to whom you were answering.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, c’mon! Where you come from, Charley Reese had a newspaper column for thirty years! Idiocy is the default position!
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Oh, c’mon! Where you come from, Charley Reese had a newspaper column for thirty years! Idiocy is the default position!
[/QUOTE]
Well, for one thing Charley Reese is more of a Libertarian than a conservative.
For another, he’s in Orlando and I am in Lakeland.
[QUOTE=Bridget Burke]
From Stirling’s acknowledgements in Conquistador:
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, the Honorable Reginald Houseman takes quite a beating in those books, doesn’t he?
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
This is obviously a tangent, but (spoilers for the Honor Harrington series coming up) I thought it was hilariously preposterously beyond ridiculous that the following sequence of events could possibly come to pass:
(1) The Star Kingdom of Manticore (which is the “good guys”, and, despite being a monarchy, is the political analog of the US) (at least as far as liberals and conservatives are concerned) has long been in a cold war with the People’s Republic of Haven (which is evil and facist and expansionist with traces of French revolution and communism)
(2) The cold war becomes a shooting war
(3) There is much fighting back and forth. Zillions of people are killed
(4) Finally, due to awesome technology and bold military leadership, the SKoM gains the upper hand, and is charging, unopposed, across the galaxy, and will clearly soon capture Haven itself, finally ending the war.
(5) The prime minister of SKoM is assassinated (in an attempt which was aimed at various members of the royal family, as I recall). In wartime.
(6) Due to the way the government works, the person who now takes over as prime minister is a “liberal”
(7) The new liberal prime minister (and bear in mind that the government is basically parliamentary, but with popular election, so politicians have to respect the will of the people), who took office in the middle of war time, a war against a hated foe, a war where all of a sudden total military victory looks imminent; who took office due to the dastardly assassination of his predecessor (granted, an assassination which was not PROVEN to be due to the enemy, but still…); this liberal prime minister decides to… STOP THE WAR! And offer a peace treaty! And give the enemy time to rearm!
I mean, COME ON! It’s one thing to say that liberals are pacifists who are too hesitant to use military force and too willing to overlook the evil deeds done by others (although in the post-Iraq mindset that seems pretty silly). It’s another to say that anything but a crazy fringe of liberals are so anti-war that they would stop a nearly-won war just out of political spite, AND that the populous would somehow support them. Sheee-eesh.
[/QUOTE]
Steps 6 & 7 are incorrect.
The existing govt. consisting of the Crown Loyalists and Centrists basically dissolved when the PM was assassinated. The new govt. was a bastard coalition between the Conservatives, the Liberals, and the Progressives. They really, really hated each other, but they hated the thought of being powerless for the next 20 years even more. True, the Manty govt. was a democracy, but the PM was elected by the House of Lords (who did not stand for general election), not Commons. The new PM was Baron High Ridge, the head of the Conservatives, whose basic position was that all political power should rest with the nobility, and the peasants should know their place. It was never their intention to make peace with the Peeps. Their original intention was to prolong the war just enough to make it look like the Cons, Libs, & Progs won it, not the CLs & Centrists. Once Thiesman killed St. Just, and a new Haven govt. was formed, the Manty govt. were purposely avoiding signing a final peace treaty just so they could maintain their wartime powers longer. They were supremely confident that their tech advantage would be able to handle anything that Haven could throw at them, to their sorrow. But it wasn’t just the Libs running the show at that point, in fact, I’d say the Cons. had more input into their policies.
I haven’t read the Honor Harrington books but from what I’ve heard they’re a transfer of Napoleonic era history to a SF setting. Manticore is Great Britain. Haven is France. And in 1801, in the middle of the Napoleonic War, the British Prime Minister, William Pitt, did suddenly leave office (over a domestic political issue unrelated to the war) and the new Prime Minister, Henry Addington, negotiated the Treaty of Amiens to stop the war. And Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated during the war (although it was in 1812 and not related to this treaty).
To answer the OP, Dies the Fire is obviously quite popular as it has sold a shitload of books and they keep paying him to write more of them.
I don’t know how popular they are outside of the SDMB, but I’ll tell you this much–His prose SUCKS! I’m on my 6th one, and I’m totally sick of hearing people described exactly the same way over and over and over.
On one page, Marion Alston’s face was a “mask of obsidian.” On the very next page, her face was a “mask of basalt.” What’s next? A mask of onyx? A mask of ebony? A mask of Bakelite?
Didn’t the guy have an editor?
[QUOTE=Green Bean]
I don’t know how popular they are outside of the SDMB, but I’ll tell you this much–His prose SUCKS! I’m on my 6th one, and I’m totally sick of hearing people described exactly the same way over and over and over.
On one page, Marion Alston’s face was a “mask of obsidian.” On the very next page, her face was a “mask of basalt.” What’s next? A mask of onyx? A mask of ebony? A mask of Bakelite?
Didn’t the guy have an editor?
[/QUOTE]
Marion Alston is not in the Dies the Fire books, she’s in the Island in the Sea of Time books.
[QUOTE=Green Bean]
I don’t know how popular they are outside of the SDMB, but I’ll tell you this much–His prose SUCKS! I’m on my 6th one, and I’m totally sick of hearing people described exactly the same way over and over and over.
On one page, Marion Alston’s face was a “mask of obsidian.” On the very next page, her face was a “mask of basalt.” What’s next? A mask of onyx? A mask of ebony? A mask of Bakelite?
Didn’t the guy have an editor?
[/QUOTE]
YMMV, but IMO, Stirling’s prose reads like the wind. Harry Turtledove, now, he needs an editor!
I got into an apocalypse-story frenzy a while ago, and this was one of the books I read. Really, really boring. My sister-in-law is a fan, I believe, and she is not a doper.
Joe
On the recommendation of an earlier SMDB thread, I tried to read it, I really did. I read the 1st chapter, then reread it.
I enjoy intelligent sci-fi. Dies the Fire, IMHO, isn’t.
Love, Phil
Justin_Bailey writes:
> How popular is Dies the Fire outside of the SDMB?
I spend a lot of time socializing in the science fiction community. I’ve never heard anyone discuss Dies the Fire. There was a period when I heard a few people discuss S. M. Stirling, but that was more than fifteen years ago. Of course, the science fiction community is very large, so it’s entirely possible that some parts of it love Stirling while other parts hardly think about him. Still, it’s certainly not true that he is considered an essential part of the science fiction reading experience.
[QUOTE=RikWriter]
Marion Alston is not in the Dies the Fire books, she’s in the Island in the Sea of Time books.
[/QUOTE]
Well, if you want to be pedantic about it, I also misspelled “Marian.” 
I was referring to Stirling’s prose in general, anyway. I just happen to be reading Oceans of Eternity at the moment.
what are the better alternatives for post-apocalyptic what-if-technology-went-bye-bye novels? that doesn’t involve zombies?
I just bought this book a few weeks ago because I kept seeing it mentioned here. Haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’d never heard of Stirling before, but I like PA books.