What are you reading right now?

[William Murderface]

I don't really know. I guess because we don't want to die on that hill morally or something, not that it will matter once they shoot whatever they have left at us.

The other terrifying thing the book brings up is how our infrastructure just dies almost immediately. From EMP to stuff like server farms being lost when power goes out to the banking system being vaporized to the lack of medical and emergency services to grocery shelves never being restocked again, it's the complete postwar breakdown of everything that will kill so many people. What do you do when your mom can't get her meds? Mercy kill her? Or when you realize your children are slowly dying from radiation poisoning? Or you are hungry?

It's almost like it would have been a better thing had we never invented the bloody things in the first place.

 

[Jewthulhu]

I just finished Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobson. That is the most horrifying book I have read in a long, long time. It shows not just the effects of a nuclear strike, but just how easily it can happen, how ineffective our countermeasures our, and how quickly it can spin entirely out of control and lead to the end of the world. The premise is the Norks fire an ICBM at DC and vaporize it and at the same time shoot an SLBM at the Diablo Canyon nuke plant in CA which will essentially take out central CA for the next eon. (The effect of the nuke going off overtop of the fuel rods creates a nuclear fire that will burn through the crust for the next two hundred years, not to mention all the fallout and secondary effects to the area). We shoot our Minute Men missiles at the Norks, but they have have to pass over Siberia, so the Russians think they are under attack, which leads to the end of all things. And of course, the sheer time constraint that people are working under (roughly 30 minutes from the initial Nork launch to DC vaporizing and 6 from the sub launched missile that takes out CA) and the lack of information everyone has.

It was a really good book, but frightening because you know sooner or later someone, somewhere will open up some canned sunshine and all the experts seem to agree that once one goes off the only possible result is the whole world is over because we'll all get dragged into it.

It's all researched and interviews and has a ton of sources and citations and footnotes, so it isn't just like the author is making it up as she goes outside of the scenario, but it is a truly frightening book to think our lives are basically in the hands of a handful of people who have to make decisions on the fly and a system designed to ensure mutually-ensured destruction so nobody wants to go to war, but fails to take into account madmen like the mullahs or someone like Kim Jong Un.

I've seen from people who read it and are somewhat knowledgeable on nuclear operations that it wasn't a good or very accurate book. Some called it downright bad. Most seemed to recommend "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States" as a more accurate book. I haven't read either so I can't comment more on it than that.

I'll save commenting on the subsequent conversation on nukes to not derail the thread

Ironically, my next book is "Managing Nuclear Operations." It's an 80s book about how nuclear wars would be fought from the more technical side.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Most seemed to recommend "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States" as a more accurate book. I haven't read either so I can't comment more on it than that.

I have read that one a while ago. It has surprising little TDS for something which has Trump as a key player but it still shows up in some places, in particular the one scene about Trump's first reaction and his going for the football really doesn't mesh well with what we actually know of Trump and his relation with the USSS. The more interesting part of the book is the showcasing of the mentality of the North Korean leadership and how they came to the decision to use their nukes, explaining how miscommunication between South Korea, US Military and Trump made them see something which wasn't there.

 

[AnOminous]

Ironically, my next book is "Managing Nuclear Operations." It's an 80s book about how nuclear wars would be fought from the more technical side.

I know everything I know about nuclear war from Dr. Strangelove, the movie Threads, and my own dreams about riding around in a pickup truck with a minigun mounted on it shooting radiation mutants as me and my buds drove around in the wasteland. Not joking, that used to be a recurring dream I had that was really fun. I had another where for some reason I was always in a passenger jet looking out the window and saw the mushroom clouds from above.

I almost don't want to know more. Luckily I live close enough to a military base that if things really do pop off, I won't.

 

[MauMau]

We shoot our Minute Men missiles at the Norks,

Well, maybe we would save our limited number of missiles, and use our technical means to get advanced warning, and use planes to drop nuclear bombs on the targets.

If North Korea actually did it, we'd probably conclude China and possibly Russia approved, which might be war. If we don't conclude that, they could just give nuke technology to other countries, like Iran, and let them attack America as well, with China and/or Russia getting away with it. I bet they have the ability to keep their client states from using their nuke technology if they don't want them to.

Most seemed to recommend "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States"

my next book is "Managing Nuclear Operations." It's an 80s book about how nuclear wars would be fought from the more technical side.

If someone wants a quick read on how nuclear war works, Jerry Pournelle put several articles about it, by himself and others, in his '80s series of books There Will Be War.
I have like a couple dozen pages scanned here, here, here, and here.

 

[Sincere Irony LLC]

I finished Catch 22 and overall it was very good. I didn't like it for the first few chapters, the use of repitition and circular reasoning for humor was grating at first but grew on my from sheer volume. Every chapter was a new character with their own absurd paradoxical traits and I began to enjoy how many different scenarios along the same lines Heller came up with. It was overwhelming at first how many characters there were, but I kept up after a bit. Unfortunately it didn't feel like all of them had a proper narrative conclusion imo, but maybe that was the point. I thought the premise was fine, if very familiar at this point in time - the satire of the absurdity of war. What was interesting about it for me reading it in 2024 is seeing these sort of criticisms applied to WW2. It's tough to imagine today any non positive depiction of the US in the European theater. There was no mention of the halls of cost which surprised me since the author was a jewish veteran. A lot of descriptions of Italian prostitutes. The humor fades as the novel progresses and becomes fairly grim for a while. If you're up for satire of war and the people who fight them it's worth a shot, if you find that sort of idea overplayed or too hippie or conscientious objector type then skip it.

 

[MauMau]

Catch 22

Major Major Major Major.

 

[Jewthulhu]

If someone wants a quick read on how nuclear war works, Jerry Pournelle put several articles about it, by himself and others, in his '80s series of books There Will Be War.

I know Pournelle from "Mote in God's Eye" and "Lucifer's Hammer." Never realized he wrote defense stuff.

I have like a couple dozen pages scanned here, here, here, and here.

Interesting read, his opinions remind me a bit of Herman Kahn's, particularly his insistence on strategic defense and counterforce.

 

[ScurvyRat]

Wind and Truth comes out tomorrow.
I'm fucking hyped.

 

[Safir]

I broke up with an IRL friend and I'm reading her favorite book to get over it.

It's The Bestiality Trilogy by Margaret "Robin Hobb" Lindholm Ogden, an international bestseller and a genre classic. It's shaping up to be the worst book(s) I ever finished, worse than KJ Parker's The Jewish Question trilogy (the first two books of which were uneven but decent).

I'm only done with part 1 and there's already

• rape,
• tard rape,
• incest mind rape,
• gay marriage,
• incest gay marriage,
• an actual pooner complete with a pooner room picked out in pastel colors straight out of Tranny Sideshows,
• bestiality,
• (in-universe) sluggish xenophilia/patriophobia,
  • also out-of-universe, but I don't ding fantasy writers for this; with the massive exception of Tolkien, it's often their job
• weed.

Except for tard rape (irrelevant, mentioned in passing), all of that is perpetrated by "the good guys"; the victims are the designated bad guys (who haven't done anything "bad" other than ineffectually fighting back and losing).
The background bad guys are Republican campaigners who turn the populace into MAGA NEETs, they've done nothing evil so far, they're just kinda there, the looming shadow of J6 moves the plot forward.

(It's a 1995 book. Time is a flat circle.)

There are no "are we the baddies" musings or anything resembling awareness, or even an attempt to sell the reader on the (((moral virtues))) of rape and bestiality, it's the basic "might makes right" emotional appeal/threat/object-lesson à la Joker 2: the bad guys will be raped into submission and murdered, lube up. To prevent any doubt or hope, the book is in first-person flashback narration.

There's a horrifically funny scene in which the protagonist, Bestiality, found out his dad #2 (he has two loving dads, and an evil unworthy peasant slutwhore of a mother he disowned), a professional animal trainer, hadn't killed the dog Bestiality had "been with":

Spoiler: paraphrased

Bestiality: And all that time, I thought you'd killed him!
Dad #2: What the fuck? Why would I execute an innocent animal for a crime you committed? How evil do you think I am?
Bestiality: ...
Dad #2: But, if you thought I'd murder any dog you fucked, why did you keep fucking them?
Bestiality does not consider the question worth of consideration.
Dad #2 compromises, telling Bestiality to not fuck the animals in Dad #2's care. Bestiality makes no such commitment.
Then it turns out they're gay married.

If you've read the other other book, you might remember there's a scene in it when Harry Potter finds out his dad was a school bully. Bestiality, not so: "What? My dad and his brother raped their stepbrother to insanity and death? Baaaaw I'll never be as stronk as they! Life is so unfair!"

I'll probably drop this. (I did not pay for the book.)

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Finished Asimov's Foundation. Good read and feels like it holds up. Given men always think about the Romans, no wonder Asimov became popular.

Next up: More short fiction and maybe a genre mixup before I round out the year with Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama.

 

[ScurvyRat]

Wind and Truth comes out tomorrow.
I'm fucking hyped.

its infected with reddit.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my year has been ruined.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

its infected with reddit.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my year has been ruined.

how infected

 

[William Murderface]

I am about halfway through Mark Gilmore's Artillery Employment at the Battle of Gettysburg. I'm about two thirds of the way through it and it's very detailed, but mostly covers the topic from the Union side, specifically on the first and third days of the battle.

 

[ScurvyRat]

how infected

there is an entire chapter where a librarian is being mean to to Kaladin's spren because she's a SPREN and not a human. So Kaladin asks her basically "who hurt you"

Spoiler: Page where "everyone clapped"

 

[if the light takes us]

there is an entire chapter where a librarian is being mean to to Kaladin's spren because she's a SPREN and not a human. So Kaladin asks her basically "who hurt you"

I stopped reading after the second book, but isn't this supposed to be the epic climax to a superhero war story? Why the fuck is Kaladin sitting around in a library delivering an "everybody clapped" Reddit speech?

 

[ScurvyRat]

Why the fuck is Kaladin sitting around in a library delivering an "everybody clapped" Reddit speech?

Spoiler: spoilers for books 3-5

Syl wanted to get him a copy of "The Way of Kings" before his le epic trip to Shinovar with Szeth. He's supposed to help Szeth's fucked up mental state and Wit even directly calls him "Roshar's first therapist."
I guess Kal is gonna convince Szeth he's trans

 

[gobbles]

its infected with reddit.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my year has been ruined.

So Kaladin asks her basically "who hurt you"

I’m 25% in, and ohmygod you’re right. The scene with the Sibling (a tower) coming out as non-binary? Ludicrous. It’s a building.

Why go to the effort of making Jasnah and Wit bang but then underscore that Jasnah isn’t into sex? It’s bizarre. How did this drive her as a character or further the plot? Are we being set up for her to enjoy sex in 1000 pages? It seems like Sanderson wanted the installments to feel more “adult”, so he included (irrelevant, unsexy) coitus like how children will cuss to seem cool and grown-up to their friends.

I wish BS would go back to being an unapologetically conservative Mormon.

 

[bango skank]

its infected with reddit.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my year has been ruined.

Not surprising after the most recent Mistborn ended with Wax’s (five year old) son going “I don’t like girls, I wanna get BUTTFUCKED by a BOY!” But I’m due for a free month of audible so for 60+ hours of passive entertainment at the price of free I’m still gonna check it out.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Finished The Best of Edmond Hamilton and that marks the second short fiction collection down.

Current TBR list (I rotate around, 1 novel and 2 short fiction collections)
Novels

Sci-Fi/Fantasy
1. Rendezvous with Rama
2. Lest Darkness Fall
3. Day of the Triffids

Non-SF
1. The Long Goodbye
2. Our Man in Havana
3. Flashman

Short Fiction

1. The Continental Op
2. The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian
3. The Best of Leigh Brackett
4. The Complete Asimov Vol 1.