magibrain | I know God is an ironist, but isn't this taking it a bit far?

Just finished reading S.M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time, which I had a few quibbles with, but which otherwise danced merrily on so many of my happy buttons that I would have forgiven it much more. (And one of the main characters is a badass Southern black lesbian who commands a Coast Guard vessel and later an army. (And our love.) I just want to draw hearts all around her, and I am very much not a heart-drawing person.)

I don't know if any of the Stargate folk on my list have read the book, but if you have, please tell me whether you also desperately desire a fic with Ian Arnstein, Doreen Rosenthal, Sam Carter, and Daniel Jackson all hanging out and being amazing. I'd write it myself, but I think the four of them combined may exceed my ability to write smart and informed people. At the very least, I'd have to gloss over half of what they said or spend a long, long time doing research.

On a slightly wider fandom note, I feel like the crossover potential of this book is high. (A quick synopsis: an unexplained Event occurs over the island of Nantucket, carrying the island and some of its surrounding waters – including a Coast Guard training vessel – into the Bronze Age. As you can imagine, this complicates life somewhat for the island residents.) The Event could be centered over Cheyenne Mountain or Manhattan! (Either only over those places, or over those places in addition to Nantucket, which could lead to some really interesting ham radio discussions and expeditions to re-forge connections through miles and miles of wilderness.)

Anyway, there are more books in the series and apparently a parallel series from the other side of the Event (where you have a densely-populated modern world in which suddenly no technology works; also likely to dance merrily on all of my buttons), so I suppose I know where a whole bunch of my money is going next time I have any to spend.

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I loved the Island books.

The other series, erm, he kinda killed everyone at the beginning and didn't notice. The scienceFAIL made my disbelief chew through the suspension straps and run screaming down the street. I can only surmise that Mr. Stirling urgently needed to put beans on the table.

...my browser ate my reply, and this isn't the browser with Lazarus on it. Oh, well.

The gist: having read the synopsis of the other series, I imagine that the line where technology stops working would be glaringly arbitrary and be the sort of thing that would give tabletop gamemasters headaches if they were playing with any halfway-inquisitive players. But at the same time I've learned that if you give me enough things I really like, I'll let some really annoying stuff slide. (Like, Stargate. I'm pretty sure that any time they say anything scientific, it's wrong. And there are some ooky undertones about other cultures' myths, and a lot of straw antagonists, and a lot of things clearly done for plot convenience and not integrity. But it was also a series that was genuinely optimistic about the ability of humans to make things better for themselves, and it had a team I loved, and some really amazing dynamics of intimacy and duty, so I could roll my eyes through the cringe-worthy stuff and not be bucked outright.)

So, *shrugs*. I might see if I can pick one up from the library and see if I do resonate well enough with the things I'm likely to – shifts in prosperity, having to be inventive and find new ways of doing things, organizing things, etc. But I guess I'll keep my expectations appropriately managed. *grin*

I know God is an ironist, but isn't this taking it a bit far?

Well...

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