Author Topic: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station  (Read 39528 times)

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
If y'all looking for good books, I recommend The Library on Mount Char and (for Starslayer and E in particular, but anyone who's interested in the collision of Lovecraftian occult and real-world espionage) the fantastic Declare by Tim Powers, which posits a secret Cold War race to survive and secure the entity on Mount Ararat.

Ooh, haven't read Declare - making a note of that. I recommend The Anubis Gates, also by Powers. It's my favorite time-travel story ever.

 

Offline StarSlayer

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
You name-dropped Sabriel and that makes me exceedingly happy.

It's one of my favorite books (sequels inclusive, prequel not).

If y'all looking for good books, I recommend The Library on Mount Char and (for Starslayer and E in particular, but anyone who's interested in the collision of Lovecraftian occult and real-world espionage) the fantastic Declare by Tim Powers, which posits a secret Cold War race to survive and secure the entity on Mount Ararat.

Thanks for the heads up.  I'll put them in the queue, they sound a little like A Colder War?
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
Declare is, yes.

 

Offline The E

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
You name-dropped Sabriel and that makes me exceedingly happy.

It's one of my favorite books (sequels inclusive, prequel not).

If y'all looking for good books, I recommend The Library on Mount Char and (for Starslayer and E in particular, but anyone who's interested in the collision of Lovecraftian occult and real-world espionage) the fantastic Declare by Tim Powers, which posits a secret Cold War race to survive and secure the entity on Mount Ararat.

Started with Library at Mount Char. It's real good (and quite ****ed up). Declare has been on my to-read list ever since Stross started the Laundry series, just have to get around to it.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
I'm doing a Reddit AMA today. Come say hi!

And just for you here's a random chunk of the book

Quote
Two days from the mouth of the Inirein, two days before the arranged time, she woke in the night to bells. Fought her way up onto deck through swarming marines and shouting crew to see:

Distant fireworks. The arc of rocket flares falling into the sea. Sharp sunrise flash as Scylpetaire, in the middle distance, fired two more. Light on the water like a drowned moon.

And a pair of ships pinned in the glare, their lateen sails taut, straining. Oriati-pattern dromon galleys. Bannerless.

Two raiders closing from astern, riding the weather gage.

Maybe they’d thought to slip into the formation and take one of the transports in silence. More likely they’d sighted one of the transports and one of the escorts, and — thinking that the tax ships would sail one by one, as insurance against a devastating early storm — they’d assumed the escort was out of position, and made an attempt.
Scylpetaire had caught them.

Fireworks popped above Scylpetaire, then Sulane, red, blue, white white white: signals passed to the flagship, orders relayed on to the rest. Baru watched in anxious fascination while Mannerslate’s captain brayed for calm and a steady course.

The Navy frigates made dark avian forms in the night. Scylpetaire shadowing the raiders as they turned off, cutting sails to go against the wind. Day-bright for an instant as she launched volleys of flares to keep the raiders in sight.

And then Welterjoy’s sails caught the aurora light, running full on the wind, crashing through the wavefronts as she raced to intercept. She sailed dark, trusting Scylpetaire’s flares and Sulane’s signals to guide her in. Baru, engrossed and exhilarated, lost in the mechanics of wind and chase, pointed and called to the crew. They shouted to each other in the rigging, excited. Only the marines kept their silence.

Light kindled at Welterjoy’s prow. Two white rockets leapt forward like exocet fish. The wind grasped them and smashed them into the water astern of the fleeing raiders.

“They’ll have the deflection now, your Excellence,” Purity Cartone murmured. Baru leapt in surprise.

Welterjoy fired again: eight rockets at a more confident angle. One of the fat steel tubes tangled in the lead raider’s rigging and, after an instant of furious incandescent sputtering, popped into a shower of grease fire.

The raider’s rigging and deck began to burn. Whatever the crew tried as an answer only spread the inferno. The mainsails and the masts burst into sheets of fire. Baru watched, not horrified, thrilled on some fundamental level to witness at last the Navy Burn, the Masquerade’s chemical edge. The wind carried the smell: acrid, ferociously artificial, a cremation of linen and hemp and flesh.

When Welterjoy had finished with the other raider (the fire burned even when wet, spread across the water, a less gentle aurora) a string of fireworks went up from Sulane. “No aid to survivors,” Purity Cartone read, eyes gleaming with reflected starburst. “Resume formation. Convoy proceeds.”

 
Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
the fires are the best
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
Are your books being translated (to Polish, in particular)? I'd love to buy them, but buying a paper book in the US, with dollars and having it shipped over the ocean ends up being a bit pricey (not to mention takes too bloody long). I'd like to know, is any of them available for local purchase with my worthless Polish money? :) This here is certainly a good read, but it might be a while till I get an e-book reader for myself.

Also, just an aside, are you familiar with Marek S. Huberath? A great, if obscure Polish SF writer. This fragment made me think of one of his stories.

 

Offline StarSlayer

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
Woke up this morning...




“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 
Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
TEN ****ING DAYS
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
Are your books being translated (to Polish, in particular)? I'd love to buy them, but buying a paper book in the US, with dollars and having it shipped over the ocean ends up being a bit pricey (not to mention takes too bloody long). I'd like to know, is any of them available for local purchase with my worthless Polish money? :) This here is certainly a good read, but it might be a while till I get an e-book reader for myself.

I haven't sold any translation rights yet, sorry :(

TEN ****ING DAYS

Just one day if you're in the US! woop woop

 

Offline Axem

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
Canadian mail system is ahead of the curve.  :cool:

[attachment deleted by nobody]

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
Canadian mail system is ahead of the curve.  :cool:
Even though I live in the US and Amazon said it would be delivered tomorrow, it came today! Perhaps your Canadian mail system has rubbed off on my state.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline Hellstryker

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
Hasn't shipped at all yet for me, amazon says 6-7 more days D:

 
Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
Welcome to my world!
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline StarSlayer

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station



“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 
Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
i hate you
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
I've got a story up on Tor.com today, Please Undo This Hurt.

Quote
“Just imagine a hypothetical. Imagine you’re right about everything—the universe is a hard place. To live you have to risk a lot of hurt.” You’re going to wonder how I came up with the rest of this, and all I can offer is fatigue, terror, maggots in my air vents, the memory of broken skulls on sidewalks: a kind of stress psychosis. Or the other explanation, of course. “Imagine that our last chance to be really good is revoked at the instant of our conception.”

He follows along with good humor and a kind of adorable narcissism that I’m so engaged with his cosmic bull**** and (under it all) an awakening sense that something’s off, askew. “Okay . . .”

The twin red suns multiply our shadows around us. I drift a little ways above myself on the wine, and it makes it easier to go on, to imagine or transmit this: “What if something out there knew a secret—”

A secret! Such a secret, a secret you might hear in the wind that passes between the libraries of jade teeth that wait in an empty city burnt stark by a high blue star that never leaves the zenith, a secret that tumbles down on you like a fall of maggots from a white place behind everything, where a pale immensity circles on the silent wind.

”What if there were a way out? Like a phone number you could call, a person you could talk to, kind of a hotline, and you’d say, oh, I’m a smart, depressed, compassionate person, I’m tired of the great lie that it’s possible to do more good than harm, I’m tired of my Twitter feed telling me the world’s basically a car full of kindergartners crumpling up in a trash compactor. I don’t want to be complicit any more. I want out. Not suicide, no, that’d just hurt people. I want something better. And they’d say, sure, man, we have your mercy here, we can do that. We can make it so you never were.”

 

Offline The E

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
That story was deeply unsettling to me. It cuts a little too close to what my thoughts look like during depressive phases to be comfortable reading; it is definitely a story I will recommend, but probably never ever reread.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 
Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
filed under 'not touching with a bargepole'
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Baru Cormorant Infiltration Station
Yeah it's cosmic depression horror so if you want to dodge that maybe give it a pass.