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facultyofsight
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A I thought it was your book. Didn’t read the author’s name on the cover 🙃😅

Replying to Avatar Lyn Alden

What if humanity could find some alien tech and thus greatly accelerate its own technological progress? But what if that tech was hoarded by a small group of people?

Anyway, here's a review of Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen. It's a 22nd century hard science space opera set in our solar system, written by a retired engineer. One of the more successful indie sci fi books in recent years. It's also one of the most successful books to have bitcoin in it; it's a small background role, but bitcoin is one of the leading types of money in the solar system.

Marcus, an indebted down-on-his-luck asteroid miner (and secretly, a bit of a space pirate as of late, given how bad things have gotten) finds his ship taken over by a wealthy genetically modified corporate heiress named Miranda. She has bought his defaulting debt contract that his ship collateralizes, and has gained admin access over his ship's computer. And she knows he is secretly a space pirate, which altogether gives her multiple types of leverage over him. She wants him to take her on a mission to the edge of the solar system to do something she won't say, involving unimaginable treasure, and he has little choice but to go along with it. Secretly, however, he plots how to regain control of his ship as they go, because he recognizes how much of a suicide mission it is because of who guards the space out there.

Pros:

-The hard scientific realism in the book is great. The type that basically takes an engineer to write. No wonder he has endorsements from like, the co-founder of Autocad and such. It's also a smooth read, all from Marcus's perspective.

-Although the story mostly takes place on one ship with a few characters, the worldbuilding is a solid start. I assume it'll be expanded later in the series. The technological situation and structure of society are very fleshed out relative to how little we actually see, given the tight setting. The world feels realistic and lived-in.

-High nostalgia factor. Fans of Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, and more recently the Expanse, and all sorts of classic sci fi literature over decades, will find a lot of references or similarities in a good way. The author is very well-read on the genre.

-The audiobook is pretty unique and great. Unlike most audiobooks, it has a full-cast production, meaning that each line of dialogue sounds like the person speaking it, rather than just one person reading a given chapter's narration and dialogue. I listened to this one rather than read it. You can only buy the audiobook on the author's website though, not Amazon/Audible. (Amazon/Audible have been kind of shitty to authors lately.) The other version of the book are available on Amazon.

-AI gets a really good treatment here, and the third main character, an AI, is my favorite character in the book.

-There's a lot of suspense throughout. Most of it is not really predictable how it's going to end since it doesn't follow a basic tropey structure. Even if you don't particularly like some of the characters (and indeed they're designed to be rather unlikable), you're likely to find yourself reading further to see what happens.

Cons:

-The book is about 500 pages, and I think 50+ could have been cut out of the middle to make it stronger. The dialogue between Marcus and Miranda gets rather repetitive after a while. And because of the limited setting (mostly on one ship), most of the worldbuilding is done via exposition by Marcus. So if readers hate "info dumps", they'll probably get annoyed at this. I personally don't really mind exposition as long as it's good, so this wasn't a dealbreaker for me (the "don't do exposition!" advice to authors is overdone in my view). I just think the middle could have used a trim. And although most of the book is not predictable, one aspect imo very much is, and that's where a lot of the repetition is.

-There are some unnerving aspects/scenes in it. I can't really say what they are without spoilers. Let's just say being in Marcus's head for 500 pages isn't, uh, my cup of tea. The book is self-aware about it, though. It's an intentional choice to have put these unnerving aspects in, so it's not a con per se but it's more something that will put off some readers. And it's a little more understandable by the end.

Overall, a unique story. And for the audiobook, I do think that over time more audiobooks will be made with this more complete type of cast. Audiobooks used to be very expensive and a small piece of the market, and only in recent years have they become very popular. As they become a bigger and bigger share of the fiction market up to some substantial percentage, I think more work will go into their quality and details.

Wen audio book

She still doesn’t get… rambling on reddit won’t solve her loneliness.

She works in a restaurant I guess, usually the easiest environment to get in touch with new people and she’s still too egotistical and hopes for miracles.

Like the meme that the drowning person sends away boat after boat in hope for god to save them

Yeah sorry. Hadn’t found the time to get into noKYC setup of wallets.

Regarding the masses and normies, they are far from thinking about those things. They are captivated by Russia Ukraine, local politic debates about nonsense and that trump is bad…

Der Nikolaus könnte auch schon am 5.12 kommen

10y from now:

Remember this. The humaoids you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the humaoids who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep.

Could you have it as two separate products and the payment method is tied to it. Product A fiat payment and same product B just with pay in btc button, no classic add to cart?

Could you than implement this btc product B as an upselling card below the “add to cart” button on the A page so that users know about it

This could become a pain in the ass to maintain though, especially if you want correct automated inventory

Replying to Avatar HODL

At first one could think about ego driven social aspects:

not being appreciated in comparison to child labor and nursing. Not a greater social appreciation. Not respected in his job with which he provides.

But on an even deeper scale it makes sense:

not respected by his children cause they can’t grasp things with young brains. Not being appreciated when they have to be strict. Not loved when they have to teach lessons

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At first one could think about ego driven social aspects:

not being appreciated in comparison to child labor and nursing. Not a greater social appreciation. Not respected in his job with which he provides.

But on an even deeper scale also not respected by his children for that cause they can’t grasp it when being young and not appreciated when they sometimes have to be strict.