Rebinds made from Gollancz omnibus editions

I had several discussions concerning planets and attacks on them recently. All discussions there center around inhabited planets with civilian populations, especially with native populations. However, as far as we know, most planets do not have native life and, while there are likely to be full colonies with civilian populations, it is likely there are going to be quite a lot of military outposts - especially not on normal, Earth - like planets but on asteroids, Moon - like moons, on places like Mercury or some moons around gas giants, to name a few. And it is likely that some part of the wars (maybe even most) would be fought over these places. 

I would like to talk about them. Because it seems that, for example, all personnel on these bodies would be combatants (maybe expect medics), so maybe full-on bombardment of them would not only not be a war crime, but actually a recommended tactic. Most of the counterarguments against such things, on just ramming them, is that it kills the population and resources - but if the only value of the place is that it holds enemy combatants, there is no reason not to do so, right? Well, unless you want prisoners and the palace for yourself.. . But what do you think?

If you’re a crab, how do you think the world looks like ?

As Marvin digs for answers, he discovers who may be behind the hijacking. Lily gets an old lesson from Geoff with a new twist. What will they learn? Find out right now in this chapter of Siege of Silicon.

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/1EVzf6WFJKFuPzTFvTqX5F

RSS Feed
https://anchor.fm/s/ff975e14/podcast/rss

Full Story Synopsis:
Lily Townes is a process engineer; she's uprooted herself to work in Taiwan on revolutionary high-k metal gate transistors. Trouble begins when a chemical leak forces an evacuation of her factory. Only Lily notices something isn’t quite right. What she finds baffles and scares her smartest colleagues. They embark on a hunt to decipher the technology and find out what, or who is behind it all.

Outside of the fab, a man named Joseph is on a crusade to bring order back to the world through any methods he deems necessary. In his search, he finds a link between a mysterious pattern drawn by a missing fisherman and a piece of strange technology.

As a dangerous splinter of the military gets wind of the discovery, Lily must brave the dense rural jungles of Taiwan, search in the narrow streets of Taipei, to find her answers before the soldiers do.

A lot of fantastic indie books on sale for 99c. I am one of the authors (Agent G, Rules of Supervillainy, and Psycho Killers in Love) so I'm biased but I also love works like WIld Space and Exile. I hope people will check out some of these.

The weakest out of the "Children of ..." trilogy. Too much personal drama for a couple of characters. Although, characters have conceptually interesting nature - Tchaikovsky is ofc creative. But why humanize them and the story so much?

I strongly recommend "Children of Time" and "Children of Ruin", but not this book. Was bored after ~1/3 - 1/2 of it.

I understand I was supposed to feel for the girl, with her tough life being an intellectually inquisitive person in a society of degrading idiots and an asshole uncle. But I didn't feel anything besides annoyance, the more every time she was in the center. This annoyance peaks in the very end when she's the only one chosen to be "uplifted".

Previous two books were epic stories of multiple species being uplifted into the new community together with Humans, with multiple individual stories as the background or driver of the story in critical moments. This one is a book about Liff and virtual Interlocutor-Miranda with the corvids just being there to fit into the concept of the series.

Corvids were great btw! Loved their interactions and constant existential crisis.

Even the best of audio dramas can have slip-ups. Past success doesn’t make one immune to the occasional hiccup, or lapse in judgement. A certain amount of slack is certainly due, but that doesn’t mean we ought to omit any criticism. Such is the case with season five of Live From Mount Olympus.

You might know the story of Pandora. The curious woman who opened a box and let all of the evils into the world. But it wasn’t a box, it was actually a jar called a pithos. And maybe the story you think you know isn’t really what happened. Hermes and Athena are going to work together to weave a new story of Pandora.

This season is only three episodes long. They kind of go for a Rashomon style approach. Each episode retells Pandora’s story a little differently than the last.

First, we get a version that is more or less a retelling of Hesiod’s version of the Pandora story. They really play up the sexism angle to comment on the sexism of the original story. The gods create Pandora with traits to punish humanity for stealing fire. Traits such as the ability to deceive men and lead them astray. She is given as a wife to Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus. Pandora immediately falls in love…with cooking, cleaning, and looking pretty for Epimetheus. And, of course, curiosity gets the better of her, and she opens the lid of the jar.

The next story portrays Pandora with more agency. The traits the gods gift her allow her to think for herself, and navigate the world. She is constantly curious, but that’s because she literally was born yesterday. In fact, her curiosity is portrayed as a good thing. However, just like the first time around, Pandora winds-up opening the pithos and releasing all of the evils into the world.

So, we come to the final story. The “true” story of what happened. Pandora is telling the story to all of her granddaughters. She learned that the world needs both darkness and light. For example, lying can be a good thing if it keeps someone’s feelings from being hurt. So, Pandora reasoned that maybe the so-called evil isn’t so evil after all. That humanity needs to know how to deal with darker feelings and emotions if it is ever to achieve its true potential. So, the pithos was actually a secret test from the gods all along. At least, that’s Pandora’s take on the matter.

This actually wasn’t a bad idea in theory. It was a unique take on the story of Pandora, and I might have enjoyed it under other circumstances. However, Live From Mount Olympus is supposed to be educational as well as entertaining. Presenting your reimagining as the “true” version of the story is only going to confuse kids. Suggesting that the evils in the pithos might not have been so bad is a very modern concept. The Ancient Greeks would certainly not have viewed things that way.

Live From Mount Olympus has always been about filling in the gaps of the myths. What was going through Perseus’ head during his quest? Did he ever struggle with self-doubt? What was Demeter and Persephone’s relationship like? What was it like for Atalanta to try to balance her wild nature and the civilized world? However, this season didn’t do any of that. Instead, it just made things up out of whole cloth to tell any entirely different story.

But what really irks me is why this all happened in the first place. The creators of Live From Mount Olympus have admitted that they found Pandora’s story to be incredibly sexist. As such, they felt that they had to change the story to better fit modern sensibilities. And to that I have to ask, well, why? There was no reason they absolutely had to adapt Pandora’s story. Wouldn’t it have been better to adapt a more agreeable myth?

I would like to think that season five will serve as a lesson on how no to adapt stories from Greek Mythology. I would like to think that Live From Mount Olympus would know better. However, I do worry that this season is a sign of things to come. I suppose it is possible that things could course correct, but that remains to be seen.

Have you listened to season five of Live From Mount Olympus? If so, what did you think?

Like to the full review on my blog: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-audio-file-live-from-mount-olympus.html

No soy de esas no me quejo de nada, Siempre tome las mejores decisiones que pude tomar , pero con respecto a mi estetica no lo hice , no tengo todo mal tengo mis lados buenos aunque no soy perfecta , y siempre pensé que después que termine de estudiar y arreglar mi casa , ahorraría para operarme las lolas y no lo hice , ahora veo que a parte de las lolas también son los labios y no solo los labios también es la nariz y no solo eso , si no depilación definitiva para tener piel de bebe , y también podría ser un poco de cola rellenar un poco más , no es que tengo poco culo , tengo , pero a quien le hace mal un poco más y tal vez unas pestañas y tal vez las uñas , y tal vez una dentadura de caballo grande y blanca como mi piel de fantasma y por qué no ? En vez de usar anteojos podría usar lentes de contacto y en vez de eso podría operarme los ojos y también cambiar el color con lazer , y por qué no comprar algo de ropa , unos buenos zapatos rojos muy puntiagudos y un buen saco largo de cuero y tal vez me compré un lindo corset y solo así agarrare mi auto y saldré de mi casa a pasear siendo quien quiero ser , y que todos digan ella es hermosa ! Y tal vez comprar un buen termo y mate que me dure el agua y que pico del termo no chorree y solo así desfrutar de unos buenos mates y mirar con cara de orto a la nada y pensar mira todo lo que logré es superficial , pero me siento bien con eso . Podré ?

Lately I’ve been obsessed with O’Neill cylinders and everything that has to do with them. Therefor I thought it would be a great idea to visualize some of the cylinders fees I’ve been playing with. Note: for my calculations I’m using a centripetal acceleration of 9.82 m/s² and a radius to length ratios of 1:10. I’m also not taking any engineering problems into consideration.

Cylinder 1: T=60 s. r=895.5 m. A=5.03 km^2. v=93.8 m/s. V=22.6 km³

Cylinder 2: T=120 s. r=3 582 m. A=806.1 km^2. v=187.5 m/s. V= 1443.8 km³

Cylinder 3: T=180 s. r=8 059 m. A=4 081 km^2. v=281.3 m/s. V=16 445 km³

Ps: I must add that drawing circles (especially the big ones) is a pain without a circle compass. Had to place a lot of guiding dots, way to many for my liking. And a sadly had to remake this post because it didn’t post for some reason. Gonna copy it just in case it decides to do it again.

Continuing to clean and found this. My son got me these years ago because he knows I watch cheesy sci-fi movies. Have not watched any ...yet. Now that I am retired I should start.

Out of curiosity, does anyone use Royal Road or other platforms to discover new authors? It’s a place where you can serialized books (sort of), and it seems to have a sci-fi community as well. But maybe it’s not the right place to look?

I’ve seen most, but there are a couple I’ll add to my watch list.