What are you reading, watching and listening to? - All languages

[zompist]

It's really a card game first! The occult associations came later.
As a teenager, I actually knew how to use a Tarot deck for fortunetelling. I wish I could tell something deep about the cards channeling Jungian archetypes -- the sad truth is they're mostly channeling the Barnum effect

Just as well... the occult makes for good fiction, I don't think it'd be better to live in a world where it was real!

Imagine Elon Musk starting a new business to disrupt and exploit the occult industries... that doesn't end well.

[Ares Land]

Imagine Elon Musk starting a new business to disrupt and exploit the occult industries... that doesn't end well.

Actually a minor plot point in one of the Laundry Series novels, can't remember which.
(I've enjoyed the first four or five books in that series, but I didn't like the newer ones much)

[zompist]

Imagine Elon Musk starting a new business to disrupt and exploit the occult industries... that doesn't end well.

Actually a minor plot point in one of the Laundry Series novels, can't remember which.
(I've enjoyed the first four or five books in that series, but I didn't like the newer ones much)

I only read those first books. I appreciate the fact that Stross has gone full gonzo... essentially asking, what if the Laundry fails?... I felt like the Culture novels suffered because Banks never gave the Culture an adversary that actually threatened it. But I don't much care for apocalypse stories... or maybe for long book series.

[Ares Land]

Imagine Elon Musk starting a new business to disrupt and exploit the occult industries... that doesn't end well.

Actually a minor plot point in one of the Laundry Series novels, can't remember which.
(I've enjoyed the first four or five books in that series, but I didn't like the newer ones much)

I only read those first books. I appreciate the fact that Stross has gone full gonzo... essentially asking, what if the Laundry fails?... I felt like the Culture novels suffered because Banks never gave the Culture an adversary that actually threatened it. But I don't much care for apocalypse stories... or maybe for long book series.

The trouble with the latest Laundry novels is

More: show

that the series had build up to Case Nightmare Green -- Earth's inevitable takeover by Lovecraftian horrors. But then it turns out anticlimatic -- Britain is taken over by Nyarlatothep but nothing much happens,really. At times you get the idea that Stross would actually prefer Nyarly to the Tories.

[zompist]

But then it turns out anticlimatic --

More: show

Britain is taken over by Nyarlatothep but nothing much happens,really. At times you get the idea that Stross would actually prefer Nyarly to the Tories.

Yeah-- and that's a pretty good joke. But it's not as good a joke as the original one (higher math + comp sci = magic). If things don't actually spiral into doom, it may not age well in 20 years.