welcome to the lorefort

Books / writing / quotes / Star Wars. Imperial Radch, Machineries of Empire, Broken Earth etc.

[imifos]

illustration by angie hoffmeister for shirley jackson's we have alwaysl lived in the castle

[nat-20s]

out of curiosity, how many books have you read this year

0

1-5

6-10

11-15

16-20

21-25

26-30

31-35

36-40

41-45

45-50

over 50

Remaining time: 6 hours 58 minutes

[trekinist]

> The Stalker says he can take me to the Zone

> I ask if the Zone is creepy or wet

> He doesn't understand

> I light a cigarette and make my speech about what constitutes something being creepy or wet

> He does not laugh and says "The Zone demands respect"

> it's creepy AND wet

[detroitlib]

"No Gas! Reading is not Rationed. Let's Go Read! Kalamazoo Public Library"

[whispersmith]

What We Are Seeking really good. I love ambiguity and characters with belief systems that don’t map onto contemporary ones but illustrate lived experiences. yay religious infighting incomprehensible to the narrator!

[whispersmith]

Hierarch Niranhin says the kids are always on the phone

[shirleyjacksons]

marcia lucas :((

[shirleyjacksons]

Marcia Lucas Dead: 'Star Wars' Oscar Winner & 'American Graffiti' Editor Was 80

Marcia Lucas, who won an Oscar for editing 1977's 'Star Wars' and got a nom for 'American Graffiti,' both directed by her then-husband Georg

star wars wouldn’t have been anything without her

[whispersmith]

I haven't read a ton of Daniel Kraus, but his 2/2 rating for me leaving a book going "that was upsetting (positive)" makes his take on an organic ship sound positively chilling

[vetchtibbles]

a moment of silence for my roommate who has to endure me doing linguistics homework. out loud. making sounds with parts of my mouth and throat I didn’t even realise I could use to make sounds. repeatedly and with passion

[teacupsandcyanide]

i think the moment of silence needs to come directly from you on this one

[whispersmith]

I’ve spent a decent amount of time complaining that there’s more fantasy than SF being published, and therefore my currently-reading list and TBR are absolutely an embarrassment of riches regarding how many spaceships are involved

[sfemonster]

A parade of empty beasts. Art from a zine i made called moon chase ♥︎

[tsunflowers]

a scene in "the iron garden sutra" that I found to be completely baffling is late in the book when the main character expounds on his theory of what happened to make the spaceship they're on so fucked up to his love interest. he's like "they started their journey in the year 2093." his love interest interrupts and is like "you made that number up, there's no way you know." the main character says out loud "well I've studied this period of history a lot so I know the dates pretty well and I think a concrete date is better for storytelling" but what he thinks to himself is "and I saw it written on a plaque in the ship but I'm not trying to prove a point" so he has a concrete answer, he has a good reason to know something his love interest doesn't bc they've explored different parts of the ship, but he pretends he doesn't know and just says some other shit. I think it's meant to show that he prioritizes conflict avoidance over being right but it made me feel like he was an insincere person who when accused of making shit up makes some more shit up

[whispersmith]

Three-quarters of the way through, The Iron Garden Sutra is a book that suffers from comparison. I partially blame my inflated expectations after The Dragonfly Gambit, which really stuck with me. Iron Garden Sutra has some neat ideas (generation ships typically only work for three generations due to knowledge loss; a monk who never really believed realized he’s been having crises of faith and been poorly served by his cloistered life the whole time). But so much of the book’s flaws are also the prominent flaws in a lot of adult/new adult SF today. Iron Garden Sutra gestures at atmospheric settings but offers no shifts in the prose to back them up, such that reading the book feels more like seeing a single unsettling image than reading a story. There are plenty of mentions of fungi and mycelium and oddly muscle-like plant fibers, plenty of bones and even guts and autopsy. But none of it is /scary/, all of it just as flatly aestheticized as a mushroom t-shirt from a gift shop. Compare Iris to the monk of Monk + Robot; maybe the two books are in conversation, but instead it feels like Iron Garden Sutra is following the trend. Some millennial search for or curiosity about religious orders, some evocations of the Jedi (he has a lightsaber, and a way to use it without conscious thought!). And I went on a journey with this book because I’m actually very ready to like those things, even very ready to like as swerving and hesitant a character as Iris. I even like the grumpy love interest, Yan! But I couldn’t help thinking about Monk + Robot, and Sisters of the Vast Black, and Mexican Gothic, and how good a “creepy spaceship” story can be, in comparison. I hope this book finds an audience that can do better for A. D. Sui than I can.

[sivavakkiyar]

Jorge Luis Borges

[whispersmith]

Blasting through Iron Garden Sutra because it’s a smooth read and I want to do Radiant Star next

[loudlysilenced]

The death in the family

[sixappleseeds]

princeton university press is having a 50% off sale and i limited myself to just three books but the temptation to go back and browse for more is extremely strong

so i'm telling you all about it instead. it goes until june 9!