AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 343
ARES III SOL 338
Despite having spent the morning harvesting potatoes in the Hab and the early afternoon harvesting or replanting the surviving potatoes in the cave farm, everyone rushed to bring out the computers for the book reports. The confused, faltering efforts to tell stories about the current heroes of Equestria had proven one thing: storytelling was hard.
“All right,” Starlight said once everyone was gathered. “Dragonfly, why don’t you go first?”
“Fine by me,” Dragonfly said, looking “I didn’t make it all the way through Foundation, and I’m in no hurry to finish it. When I read the description I was expecting empires, space ships, huge battles, big darn heroes. And what did I actually get?” She tapped the top of her computer. “Math. Math and books and talk, talk, talk. Hardly anything really happens at all! Or if it does happen, it happens way over there somewhere so that it won’t bother anybody. If this is what Isaac Asimov is like, I hope he didn’t write very many books.”
“Only about four or five hundred,” Mark muttered.
“All right,” Starlight shrugged. “So we won’t go there. Fireball, what did you think of The Golden Spiders?”
“It was fun,” Fireball said. “But a little confusing. Had to look up what ‘displaced person’ meant. Then looked up immigration. Did you know humans don’t want to let other humans move from one place to another? Make it hard to do so? Dragons not put up with that for long. Stupid idea.”
“Preach it, brother!” Dragonfly cheered.
“Be quiet, you,” Spitfire said. “Your queen number one argument for, wossword, in-meague-ray-shun.”
“Spitfire, leave Dragonfly alone,” Cherry Berry said quietly.
“Anyway,” Fireball continued, “I figure out blackmail just fine. Know some dragons who do it. Nice roof you got, fresh straw, burn nice, too bad if someone sneeze, and not getting lots of gold make snout itch. So I got the idea. But what made it a good book was two main characters. Character who tells story is funny, smart. I like him. And his boss, the fat human, I think I like too. I want to know what makes his head run. I like the book lots. Is there more?”
“NASA sent over forty books by Rex Stout,” Starlight said. “I think they were looking for long series or prolific authors or something.” She turned to Cherry Berry. “Now for Ringworld. Cherry?”
Cherry had been blushing deeper and deeper as her turn approached. “Mark,” she said quietly, “are all humans this obsessed with sex?”
“Um…” Mark shifted a little uncomfortably. “I didn’t think Ringworld was all that-“
“A device that triggers sexual bliss on command?” Cherry asked. “A world where sex is used to seal every bargain? What kind of imagination comes up with that?”
“An imagination that wants to sell a fuckload of books?” Mark suggested.
Cherry blushed even more deeply. She reminded Starlight a bit of Big MacIntosh for a moment.
Mark apparently got the hint. “Oops. That was unintentional. My bad.”
Cherry Berry coughed and moved on. “Most of the book is really interesting. Radically different aliens- like us- gathered together to explore a bizarre new world. Crash-landing on that world. Relying on each other to find a way home. It had action. It had big thoughts about luck and design and stuff. It had emotion. But it also…”
Starlight wondered why Twilight Sparkle wasn’t here now to rescue them. Cherry’s blush had to be visible across at least a few dimensions…
“Look, the ri-ri-the sex stuff is really distracting, that’s all I’m saying!” the commander finished. “And there’s no way I could read this book aloud without thinking about what’s in it!”
“How about we trade books?” Dragonfly asked. “And maybe I could translate that one for my queen when we get back. You know she loves the racy books.”
“I did not need to know that,” Starlight said. “Moving on. Spitfire, how did you make out with Equal Rites?”
Spitfire tapped her computer. “This story,” she said, “is home.”
“Home?” Starlight leaned closer. “How do you mean?”
“More like, it home if we had humans run things instead of princess,” Spitfire continued. “Some stupid stuff. Why can’t boy or girl be wizard? Or witch? But then I think. Back home I know unicorns built in Cloud Valley, earth pony in capital. I think of pegasus want to teach magic. I think of earth pony who want to fly.” She looked straight at Cherry Berry as she said this. “So girl want be wizard, is, um, like earth pony want fly. Thing.”
“Metaphor,” Starlight said.
“Whatever. So I understand that part. But the rest of it is… not like Hogwarts. Not like Middle Earth. Real people. Magic that breaks sometimes. Weird things happen just because. Monsters. Laundry. And pr-eye-vee. Had to look it up too. Means outhouse. Harry Potter only go bathroom to talk to Myrtle. No outhouse in Middle Earth at all.” Spitfire smirked, saying the next sentence with great care and even greater amusement: “No one in Middle Earth ever goes to the bathroom.”
“Or on the starship Enterprise either,” Mark muttered.
“Huh?”
“Nothing, go on.”
“Anyway, big adventure, big thought, and it feels like home.” She paused a moment then added, “If home were flat and on giant turtle.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” Starlight said. “So we have two books left to choose from. Rex Stout’s Golden Spiders, and Terry Pratchett’s Equal Rites. And since I’m getting enough magic from working on the final enchantment for the new Sparkle Drive and the new repulsor system, my vote is for the murder mystery.”
“Me too,” Fireball said.
“I don’t want to hear more about how mean people can be,” Cherry said. “I definitely don’t want a story with blackmail in it. I vote for the other one.”
Spitfire tapped her chin. “You sure no Ringworld?”
Cherry the Red Faced Earth Pony made a return appearance. “Affirmative.”
“Then yeah, I stick with mine,” Spitfire said nodding. “I like mystery, but I like feeling home more.”
Everyone looked at Dragonfly, who tapped her chin with a hoof. “Promise to stop bopping me on the head?” she asked Spitfire.
“No promise,” Spitfire replied flatly.
“Spitfire, I told you to cut it out!”
Dragonfly shrugged. “Plenty of action in both books, right?”
“Gunfight,” Fireball said.
“Magic duel,” Spitfire added.
The changeling shrugged. “Then I’m good either way,” she said. “Sorry, but I abstain. Let Mark break the tie. It’s his books, after all.”
Mark, feeling every gaze turn to him, shrugged. “Actually I’ve never read The Golden Spiders before,” he said. “I was never much into mysteries. But there’s a book a little later in the Discworld series which has tons of action, a bit of magic, and a murder mystery. Plus politics, heroism, and romance.”
“And blackmail?”
Mark shrugged. “Well, yeah, a little bit,” he said. “But if it helps, it’s not exactly a person doing the blackmailing.”
Cherry Berry’s eyes made an attempt to imitate those of a certain mailmare. “How?”
Mark grinned, pulling the computer from Spitfire and scrolling through the library for a different title. “They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to.”
The others drew closer as Mark began to read of dragons (“No dragons ever be that close together without a fight,” Fireball complained), of a drunk watchman in a gutter, and of the effect of books on spacetime (“That’s right! Twilight’s told me about that many times!” Starlight said). The aliens listened, and commented now and then, and laughed at the silliness of the cultists and the lantern-jawed innocence of the six-foot-tall dwarf boy sent to the big city alone.
All in all, it was a good beginning- and a lot better than bickering about what it was like being around Equestria’s greatest heroes.
I think you got the first rule mixed up with the second which is first don't think second don't talk.
That wasn't actually in Ringworld, it gets introduced in the sequel. The Tasp was in the first book, but IIRC it was never implied to be sexual pleasure, more like a drug. However there was the alien woman who enslaved men that way, so it's hardly a clean book even without those examples.
Dude, glad I found someone else who actually likes Discworld. Also, nice update.
one of my favorite parts of Foundation is in part 2 of book one, where someone uses "symbolic analysis" to analyze a politician's speeches, and proved that "he didn't say one DAMN thing!"
it's true that there's not much action, but as one of the main characters says in a later chapter, "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." he defeated an invasion without firing a single shot...
Myth Inc. included in that set?
Another book i read was The Silicon Mage can't remember the author.
The Mummy and The Servant of the Bones both by Ann Rice are superb reads.
Well congratulations. You made me get Ringworld.
And in the end, the Discworld was chosen....and a good time was had by all.
I really need to re-read those books.
My only experience with Foundation is listening to someone else summarize it, it took them nearly two hours to summarize the series and it left me, a Kingdom Hearts fan who studies quantum physics as a hobby to become hopelessly lost and confused. Even now trying to untangle that knot makes my head hurt.
The thing with the Foundation series is that Asimov wanted an "anti-action" story. Instead of hand-to-hand combat or clash of armies, Foundation is more of a battle of wits. However, it too often gets into the "you know that I know that you know that I know..." dialogue ad nauseam. It's not terrible, but it is nigh impossible to adapt to a visible medium, e.g. movies.
Comment section: 'I'm shipping Fireball with The Stump!'
Constable Carrot of the ankh-morpork city watch reporting for duty.
"Dragonfly said, looking “I didn’t make it all"
Missing text?
love Discworld, also thanks for the update!
god the more i think about it the more i think what there going to think of child books and books like Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes
Trying to explain the Discworld series to the uninitiated falls into the same category as trying to explain Pinky Pie.
Execelent choice, though not sure which order to read them in. Color of magic is technically the first story and introduces many key characters but it's really not as good as some of the later ones.
Ringworld, the absolute technological marvel, with enough living space to house several hundred quadrillion people, and all Cherry gets from that book is sex?
I guess Discworld has made everyone forget about Xanth? I can't help wondering with their perspective on it would be like. Then again, Xanth is a world based so heavily on English puns that they might struggle with it.
9038268
Barbara Hambly wrote The Silicon Mage. *makes note to reread it*
The ringworld reminds me mercedes lackey, and some of the things she got away with in that because the readers were kids.
9038448
Give those two by Ann Rice a read. Worth it if you can find them.
9036214
South-central, between Milwaukee and Madison.
9038430
Xanth was decent for the first couple books. Then it devolved into characters trying to see underaged girls' panties, horrible puns, and an entire chapter at the end of each book where he thanks readers for the various puns. That, and I just do not like Piers Anthony any more.
That reminds me I need to buy new copies of Asimov's Foundation series, the old copies kinda fell apart and were translations anyway.
Stop abusing the Cuddlebug, Spitfire!
9038266
Maybe I didn't get far enough, but it seemed like noone made meaningful decisions or got much chance to be protagonists. They were just there to have shaggy dog stories and witness events unfold. It's a pretty common style of sci-fi, I just really strongly dislike it.
This was nice. But I have a comment about the AN: Cherry's reaction seemed in opposition of prurience. You may have meant "prudishness."
Burninating the countryside,
burninating the peasants.
Burninating all the people,
and their thatch-roof cottages!
Thatch-roof cottages!
9038430
The first Xanth book was great. The second was a solid followup. The third was memorable, as well.
They devolved gradually into teenager-targeted fanservice and uninspired puns after that. I had quite a few of those books, years ago. Twenty-something of them, I think. I may still have them in a box in my closet, but I have no inclination to read them again, except perhaps those first three.
9038548
And the Trogdor comes in NIIIIIIIIIGHT!
[THE PAPER]
Well Foundation is a bit on the heavy side as Asimov stories go.
On the other hand you have all the robot short stories, the four Robots novels (Caves of steel, the naked sun, robots of dawn an robots and the empire), the Lucky Starr series and the Norby series that are quite more easy on the reader.
God damn you, Overstreet. After years of thinking I was all right, and completely out of the blue, tonight I finally wept--sobbed, bawled--over the loss of Sir Pterry. I did not see that coming.
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I used to like the Xanth books a lot when I was a teen, but then I lent the first trilogy to my father. When he was finished, he said to me, "Well, that was very entertaining and imaginative, but… isn't it rather sexist?"
From that moment on, I could not un-see the sexist assumptions and patterns woven throughout the books, and most of Piers Anthony's other writing that I came across. It was always there, like a persistent background hum, touching and informing everything that happens — and I hadn't noticed until someone else pointed it out to me. It was a really sobering realisation to me as a teen.
I do wonder if the gala with the snooze ever happens in this uboverse. I mean discord clawed his po open to a sock dimension. Also creates them. Like that Nd one.
admittedly all i can do is nod my head and pretend to know with ringworld and Discworld are
9038425
maybe she didn't get far enough into the book yet?
Surprised that Diskworld wasn’t an option.
9038430
Someone else here has read some of the Xanth series? I wonder what they would think of Grey Murphey's "ability."
Please tell me that NASA sent them Doctor Zhivago or War and Peace.
9038527
Honestly, it's probably both. Or affected prudishness to (poorly) hide the prurience.
@Kris Overstreet:
Given Mark's taste and personality, I would think he'd be fond of Heinlein. Though I suppose that's yet another author with a sort of peculiar preoccupation with sex in his stories.
9038463
Agreed. Xanth was very hit or miss. A few were excellent. A few were terrible. And a lot of them were about characters who might otherwise have been interesting, doing nothing but walk through a forest for hundreds of pages encountering bad puns.
Kind of like Ringworld though, Xanth had a strange preoccupation with sex. I was probably 7 or 8 when I first read A Spell For Chameleon. I'd asked my parents for a book with magic and swordfighting and dragons and stuff. That was what they gave me. So I was a bit weirded out when pretty much the first thing the protagonist does in the very first few pages of the book is masturbate on some plants.
You don't remember that from Xanth, do you? Neither did my parents when they gave it to me. But yeah, that was how Bink was introduced.
9038463
Piers Anthony got...kind of creepy at some point. Xanth always had the undertones. The whole interspecies breeding thing was fundamentally built into the world, and the "Adult Conspiracy" was amusing, but a lot of it was basically reasonable-in-context world-building. Some of his other books though, that weren't Xanth...got way out there.
On the other hand, not all of them. On a Pale Horse was very good, for example.
9038618
If you want an introducton to Discworld, there are a couple of excellent crossovers here on fimfiction that are faithful to the spirit of the series. Try The Wizzard and the Pony and Binky Pie.
9038616
I mean, Chameleon is basically a walking "women are bitches on their period, amirite fellas?" joke. Eeugh.
NASA should have sent them the Hyperion Cantos
That is quite possibly the greatest mark of praise any author can attain: For their works to genuinely not need an introduction.
And yeah I can see the ponies recognising Equestria on the disc.
Fireball would probably have… odd feelings about Guards Guards. One the one hand, swamp dragons. On the other hand, draconis nobilis. The first is one of if not the most pathetic portrayals of dragons in fiction. The other is what every wyrm want to grow up to be.
9037769
Have you considered introducing the Wiz Biz serie to Starlight? Not sure if the concept of implementing programming concepts to unicorn spellcasting is feasible...or desirable.
9038856
Believe it or not, I've never read any Discworld book. I've picked up a bit of knowledge about the series through osmosis, just from all the references I've encountered. I played the Discworld game on Playstation (but didn't beat it, because it's wicked hard), and I even read a Discworld-based fanfic here on FiMFiction. So, I'm not completely ignorant of it. However…
I think what put me off Discworld a bit was that it struck me as a ripoff of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Just switch from humorously mocking sci-fi tropes to humorously mocking high-fantasy tropes, and you're there.
Uh oh. Something is going on between spitfire and dragonfly.
Have we not had an argument over which Discworld book to start with? That's a classic argument!
I started with Small Gods and I don't know if it's the best start, but it is a good one!
Sir, Its Private Carrot.
He's arrested the Dragon.
9038981
Probably i am a remote outlier, But the first “Discworld” book i've read is Strata. It is not official cannon, but considering its Pratchett and ringworld in one book, it's probably relevant.
The beauty of discworld is that you don't need to read them in any particular order, if you like the Sam Vines stuff or the Tiffany Aching stuff, you can read their books and ignore the others (Just look at the character list on the official Pratchett website to see which ones: https://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/characters/)
The other series that might hold their attention would be the Dresden Files.
9038512 It's rather tough to make a meaningful decision when, after you've made it, Hari Seldon's ghost comes along and says, "You know, my math made sure you'd have no other choice than to do that."
9038791 Heinlein's stuff has... not aged well at all. It is all sorts of problematic, which is a strong reason why NASA might choose not to hand it off to aliens as a boredom prevention tactic. (Of course, that just raises more questions as to why they'd send ANY detective stories...)
9038918 Skip everything before Men at Arms, then go from there. The farther Pratchett went in his writing, the more he went from fantasy-trope parody (and then pop-culture parody) to more cutting social satire. The early books (including Equal Rites) are pretty much as you say, especially The Colour of Magic (which is actually a collection of short stories which directly attack certain tropes- most notably the Hive of Scum and Villainy, the Unspeakable Extradimensional Horror, and... Pern.)
9038981 From thematic content and presentation, you can make a case it's one of the best. My personal favorite is Night Watch, but you really can't feel the deep emotional attachments without having read all the Ankh-Morpork City Watch books that come before.
9038990 Also, Strata was written a couple of years before the first Discworld stories.