I picked up Thud! first, didn’t know squat about Pratchett or Discworld at the time, was just looking a fun sci-fi/fantasy book and the local bookstore had a “So and So Who Works Here Recommends” shelf and that was one of the them. I liked the cover (giant club bearing down hard on a helmeted head) so I got it. So…

Aaaaaamen.

I went to a magnet high school, too, and I know what you mean— just because nerds and geeks are usually on the receiving end of bullying doesn’t mean that they can’t dish out their own brand of it when they’re on top. It was a rude awakening for me to realize that the girl I thought of as my “enemy” back in high…

Technically he is Undead but he is an eldritch abomination who is incredibly powerful on his own, plus a huge army of undead he can summon to fight. A weapon of the Hellsing Organization he will destroy whatever his master orders him to.

That’s why so many people in the IT world are complete bastards. I see that shit weekly. These are the guys who were bullied or outcast in school, but now have some power over others in the workplace because having any tech knowledge is like magic to most people. I see so many coworkers lord that shit over anyone who…

Authors can make homophobic, racist, sexist, etc. characters, but if they do so, they have to keep a critical eye on them. Otherwise, they endorse their characters’ beliefs and behaviors.

That was kindof beautiful. That is something I really dislike about some aspects of geek culture. It’s what turned me off of moviebob. His whole “these are the people who beat us up for our lunch money and now they get our movies” speech just felt way to personal for me t take seriously.

What I find really interesting is that as a 13 year old (straight) boy, I read Orson Scott Cards “Songmaster”. Several of the main characters are gay (including the protagonist), and I remember being a little confronted by it at the time. But I came away with a strong sense of empathy for the characters, and in no way…

I met him once; my local comic shop owner met him a few times too. Apparently he started to go off the rails after his son’s death, and possibly after a Mormon mission overseas.

And you win for having described the last year in nerdom. So many of us are so perfectly willing to be Ender. We may all hate Orson Scott Card now, but damn if he doesn’t get so many of us.

I think this is a good point. There are a lot of books that are trope-busters in their own time that don’t age quite as well because the landscape changes to mirror them, and they lose their impact on subsequent generations. I was just reading on Trudi Canavan’s Twitter the other day that someone who reviewed one of…

Ah, I didn’t know that, thank you.

i never read ender’s game up until a couple of years ago, and ender is indeed unsympathetic to the point he comes off as a, well, sociopath, to use an outdated word. that, and a lot of the book reads as a warfare tactics manual. this was something i thought was intentional at first and i liked it, since i often enjoy…

Damn, that’s one of the best summations of the dark side of geekdom I’ve ever read.

I hate (read: don't actually) to be that person, but I loved Ender's Game when I read it as a kid. I read the whole series of novels. Orson Scott Card's politics about homosexuals has rendered all of his work unreadable to me. I have a hard time separating author from fiction, and as a gay guy: I'm not a big fan.

I think that would have been too cliche for me. I liked that they committed to one reality of things but then left you with enough to wonder about the consequences of that narrative choice.

Banner is angry all the time because he keeps getting rejection letters from prominent, high-impact journals.

I'm pumped. Two Dune references in as many days.
Paul is an interesting case. His motivations boil down to two things, a deep-seated hate fueling his desire for revenge, and an altruistic desire to save humanity from itself. He hates the Harkonnens and the Emperor for what they did to his father and friends. But what…

It’s certainly not one that the careers officer in high school ever suggested to me. Things might have been very different ...

Not to mention live for thousands of years, be hated by all mankind, "betrayed" by your descendants (his sister's descendants? I forget), and repeatedly create and kill a clone of your father's best friend.