In the situation she's describing, it's fine. If machines are going to feed all of the humans and then use them as batteries, the machines would be the "you".

However, if the Matrix was set up such that a small subset number of humans were used for their energy, and then the machines liquifed/reduced the entire rest…

I just finished Fall of Hyperion about an hour ago and that's the first thing that popped into my head as well. The TechnoCore could also uses the billions of people with neural shunts/datalogs that were in their heads any time they wished as well, not just when using a farcaster.

I never really thought about the…

The quality sucks but this is my favorite moment and they do it all the time as well

Followed by

Harry Dresden has something to say about this.

There's a bunch of online magazines as well that you can sell too. Analog as I understand it is the most popular. IGMS also seems decent.

I only recently found Hyperion (boy have I missed a novel), reading Fall of Hyperion now. And yeah, the first book is told like the Canterbury Tales. Fall doesn't and I believe the following two of Endymion and Rise of Endymion don't either.

I stopped at Chainfire (the third to last book) and only very briefly wonder what happened in the last couple books over the years (got a friend to tell me the actual ending, which was awful). You were smart by not wasting your life on it. Horrible, just horrible.

I can't believe it. I thought those characters were done (just saw Omen Machine is set in that world too). I stopped at Chainfire, I just couldn't take Goodkind's terrible writing any longer. I want to throw up knowing that guy is still selling new books.

Troll!!!!!

All the gas giants being added to the sun would change it's mass by .13%. If I didn't screw up the math, with a 6.2*10^11 kg/s burn rate of the Sun, it's 136 million extra years.

He'd be a good king. Unfortunately, his daughter and grandson are such monsters that he has to do despicable things to protect them. And him being a dick of Tyrion makes him hateable.

If something is not moving the plot along, then it needs to get cut. Stretching out a season to put in fluff so that you can make more bad episodes that do nothing is not a correct answer. Good writing is and letting the characters do stuff in a logical and consistent manner according to their personalities and not…

I've definitely used number 8 a few times. Woke up in the middle of the night realizing that I had the wrong answer on a pre-calc test I'd done the day before. Figured out I had screwed up a small part on my thermodynamics exam a few years later. Always thought it was cool how I'd process that stuff during my sleep.

That's the entire basis for why General Relativity works. The story goes that Einstein was in his office, leaning back in his chair. He fell backward and realized you can't feel your own weight as you fall. So gravity is just being in an accelerated reference frame. It's called the Equivalence Principle in GR.

While I agree that they should be read in order, if it comes down to getting someone to read the series or not, I'd rather present one of the strongest books that's only 1/3 of the way through instead of halfway like Small Favor or Changes.

Book 2 really is bad and I have the same problems. It's the one book I skip…

I was able to read some of the Mercy books that a buddy let me borrow but it never captivated me. Just didn't have the action that Dresden or Morgan have. They were enjoyable enough that I'd still read newer ones if it was handed to me.

Small Favor (book 10) was great. The series ramped up starting at Dead Beat, built up the characters/world a bit more in 8/9 and Small Favor ramped it to another level and hasn't looked back.

Book 2 is by far the weakest but you didn't give the series a chance at all. It's the best urban fantasy out there imo and just plain fun to read. Get Dead Beat (book 7) and if you can't enjoy that than I guess it's not for you.