[HN Gopher] Andrew Hunter Murray on dystopias
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Andrew Hunter Murray on dystopias
Author : dance-me
Score : 32 points
Date : 2021-11-17 20:54 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thebrowser.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thebrowser.com)
| taneq wrote:
| How could a stray planet(oid?) possibly affect the rotational
| momentum of the Earth enough to stop it from rotating entirely?
| That seems like the kind of physics gaffe that would give me a
| _tyrescreech.wav_ end to my suspension of disbelief.
|
| (Kind of like in Three Body where the sun is described as having
| a... crust? Which keeps the hot gases contained within it? And if
| punctured will spray a jet of solar plasma strong enough to cook
| planets out into space?)
| user-the-name wrote:
| > I also subscribe in a very self-interested way to the School
| of Disbelief Suspension, and hoping the reader will meet me
| halfway. I was trying to write a world where you can absolutely
| believe it, once you have accepted the enormous and unlikely
| sci-fi premise.
| flerovium wrote:
| > The Last Day is a story set a few decades from now in a world
| like our own but with one catastrophic and enormous difference
|
| Do you need a catastrophic difference to get a dystopia? This
| works as well for me:
|
| > The Last Day is a story set a few decades from now in a world
| like our own.
| safanycom wrote:
| The sunlit side of the earth is far too hot to inhabit in many
| places - the 'Coldside' is uninhabitable in just the opposite
| way. Life clings on in a narrow, sunlit ring - a kind of
| Goldilocks Zone
| user-the-name wrote:
| Andrew Hunter Murray is also a researcher for QI, and co-host of
| the related and very entertaining podcast No Such Thing as a
| Fish.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| I've only ever listened to the podcast.
|
| Giving these familiar voices faces did uncomfortable things to
| my brain.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I once went to a live podcast recording after having listened
| to the hosts for ~300hr without knowing what they looked
| like. It's hard to describe how uncanny it was. It was sort
| of like watching a movie with poorly dubbed dialogue.
| fredley wrote:
| You can also see him on stage in the West End. Quite the
| talented chap.
|
| https://www.austentatiousimpro.com/cast/
| toyg wrote:
| And a de-facto voice-double to Stephen Mangan if he wanted to,
| I swear I can never distinguish the two on the radio.
| jspash wrote:
| Random anecdote: I used to work with a Stephen Mangan voice-
| elganger!
|
| I try not to post reddit-like comments like this, but found
| it strange that there are other people out there who sound
| like this.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Also writes for Private Eye and hosts their Page 94 podcast
| (which is infuriatingly infrequent in episodes.)
| gnat wrote:
| It's an interesting book, and a fun read. It's not hard sf, but
| he has done a good job of imagining plausible consequences for
| his one "what if". It's simultaneously a good read for the
| physical consequences (hot zone, water levels, food supply) but
| also political (fragility of democracy) and personal (navigating
| mysteries, distrust, zero-sum situations). He's a competent
| writer and this was a well-executed novel. (Surprisingly so given
| it was his first)
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