High Street at Cruelery.com

George Orr · 2012-05-08 19:56:11

I ran across this last night and I think it is neato and so I am sharing it with you. If you are not familiar with a certain classic film you will not know WTF any of this is about. If you are familiar, I hope you dig this as much as I did:
A Story By Peter Watts

opsec · 2012-05-08 22:35:35

Nice. I'm half through it, save the rest for the morrow.

I don't know if you're a Tolkien fan, but if so you'd enjoy The Lost Ring, it takes up from where the LOTR left off, but from Mordors perspective. Hit the bottom of this post for PDF, mobi or OD versions (free and legal).

Different genre entirely, but another great multiple perspective tale is An Instance of the Fingerpost.

nfidelbastard · 2012-05-09 09:22:25

George Orr wrote:
I ran across this last night and I think it is neato and so I am sharing it with you. If you are not familiar with a certain classic film you will not know WTF any of this is about. If you are familiar, I hope you dig this as much as I did:
A Story By Peter Watts

I heard the podcast of this. Excellent story.

opsec wrote:
The Lost Ring, it takes up from where the LOTR left off...

Thanks for this. I'm a huge fan and this sounds interesting. I don't know if I can bear reading 139,000 words on my comp. monitor though.

Here's one more story, giving the the opposition's view of a classic book. "ULLA", in PDF form
"ULLA" is the "Martian's" version of War of the Worlds. There is also a podcast of the story at EscapePod

Johnny_Rotten · 2012-05-09 15:08:19

Heh,

I read the Last Ring Bearer. Mostly after reading that the Paypal founder cuckoo behind the Blueseed was a big fan due to its Ayn Rand point of view. I figured that would be good for a guffaw. And it was. Those friggin' fascist elves and the warmongering democratic process twisting Gandalf sure made a mess of the planet.

The orcs were the only ones who believed in science and had a society flexible enough to learn from their mistakes through market forces. Only they were on track, via capitalism, to bring the world out of the stone age and feed the people. All smashed by the power hungry bastards who would use pagan religions to keep the people in the dark ages for their own gain

Course it was written by a Russian in the Perestroika period. Right before the unfortunate era of selling off the state in bargain basement deals to the Oligarchs. So it has all that naive capitalistic utopian yearning going for it. Great fun that. Best part of the book.

Devolves from a fun premise to a worn spy/ soft porn novel pretty quickly.

Rotten's one line review says read the first part, don't fret if you never finish it in this lifetime.

George Orr · 2012-05-12 10:33:49

opsec wrote:
Different genre entirely, but another great multiple perspective tale is An Instance of the Fingerpost.

Alas, I cannot agree. I read it years ago and, while I liked the Rashomon-esque perspectives, I thought it went on too long, and I found the conclusion too preposterous.