Pestilence embarking on a solo career

[Michi]

Pestilence to leave Four Horsemen of Apocalypse to concentrate on solo career

 

[mlau]

Actually, I think that you're being a bit optimistic.

I see the pandemic (pestilence) leading to famine (meat plants closing, farmer's can't harvest/dumping produce) leading to war (food shortage, disease, leaders trying to blame someone) leading to death.

Cheery, eh? Sorry to be a downer.

 

[Bert2368]

Actually, I think that you're being a bit optimistic.

I see the pandemic (pestilence) leading to famine (meat plants closing, farmer's can't harvest/dumping produce) leading to war (food shortage, disease, leaders trying to blame someone) leading to death.

Cheery, eh? Sorry to be a downer.

Pretty much all part of what William Gibson called "the jackpot" in The Peripheral. Which book I can recommend if you are still needing some SF to divert you:

https://books.google.com/books/abou...BAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button

 

[Michi]

Death and Pestilence joined forces again some time ago. Now it looks like Famine might join the party as well

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/12/us/hunger-crisis-deaths-coronavirus-oxfam-trnd/index.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/nyregion/coronavirus-hunger-relief-nyc.html

 

[Bert2368]

My mother was a child in New York City during the great depression, born in 1929 (a Brooklyn girl, before Springsteen made that sound cool).

The stories she told me about stuff she saw growing up, you wouldn't want them happening on your block. Then, as a young teenager, trying to go to the beach in summer only to have her swimsuit ruined by globs of crude oil or bunker fuel in the water and on the sand from all the ships being torpedoed along the USA Atlantic coast. Getting her first crappy gofer job at an office in the good old Empire State building and having work cancelled shortly after because an air crew crashed a twin engine bomber into the building and took out the whole floor + the elevator shafts she had been riding to work in.

Let's NOT repeat history.

 

[Marek07]

Pretty much all part of what William Gibson called "the jackpot" in The Peripheral. Which book I can recommend if you are still needing some SF to divert you

Thanks for the suggestion. I need one and haven't read any Gibson for a while.

 

[Michi]

Gibson is brilliant. If you like Gibson, you probably also will like Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash". And, for more SF, try Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon". It falls sort of in between Gibson and Stephenson, but adds a much more gritty edge, plus a little gratuitous violence and pornography.

Both are excellent reads.

 

[ian]

Snow Crash is awesome. Was maybe my favorite book for a few years there. Also loved Seveneves.

 

[Barmoley]

Altered carbon series and Market forces by Morgan are good too, even though different from snow crash.

 

[billyO]

Thanks for updating and letting me see this.

 

[Marek07]

Gibson is brilliant. If you like Gibson, you probably also will like Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash". And, for more SF, try Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon". It falls sort of in between Gibson and Stephenson, but adds a much more gritty edge, plus a little gratuitous violence and pornography.

Both are excellent reads.

Snow Crash is brilliant - that was my route to Gibson. Haven't read Altered Carbon though I enjoyed the 1st season on Netflix. It's now on my list.

 

[juice]

Pretty much all part of what William Gibson called "the jackpot" in The Peripheral.

Good read, that. "Agency" (the followup) far less so, IMHO. (Assuming my ratings in Calibre are correct, of course )

And, for more SF, try Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon". It falls sort of in between Gibson and Stephenson, but adds a much more gritty edge, plus a little gratuitous violence and pornography.

Well, I'm LITERALLY re-reading this series as we speak - just started book three.

This was a weird series, I found. My ratings on these were 5-2-4 chronologically. Man, he can write, I love the way he puts words together.

The second book (that I've just read, for only the second time in a decade) was just dull - my Goodreads review says:

Was OK, just. Pretty much meandered along until it finished. Not as good as hoped, that's for sure.

Nothing like as good as "Altered Carbon".

And having read it over the weekend to see if I still agree with it, I do, entirely

 

[Bert2368]

Neal Stephenson wrote another book I read recently:

The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Which is a rather different style of SF from Snow Crash, but I liked.