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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Absolutely incredible, I’m disappointed knowing I’ll be done with it soon.

    Hyperion was def one of those series that I was sad to finish, like, it impacted me that “how tf can there be no more of it” way more than the norm.

    Simmons in general has a very wide variety of topics in genres & Hyperion alternates them nicely (while never really leaving sci-fi).

    any suggestions

    Maybe as a short palette cleanser ‘The Terror’ by the same author? It’s completely different, but nicely done. I’ve read a few more books by Simmons after Hyperion & this one stood out* a bit more (it’s not as polished as Hyperions, but much more than the rest I’ve read - overall easy to read, I like it when the setting/spaces are always explained, and most importantly it’s one of those stories that I gladly let live in my mind).
    Warning: it has one instance of horse riding! But it’s in horny a flashback :). It’s a historical fantasy with good semifictional characters, really tasteful blend of actual Inuit stories, historical nautical facts, & authors own derived reality of both, also one of the top tier “monsters” ever … and the Hyperion-style technical description that make sense of the basically literal alien world (the same story could have been set in planet exploration).
    [*Edit: I completely forgot about Ilium & Olympos. Those are sort of more of the sci-fi with the expected classical twist, but I stand by my Terror recommendation too, it just lacks interplanetary travel.]

    The real suggestion (and I can’t/am unable to explain why the association in my mind) is the Rama series by Arthur C. Clarke. It’s prob one of the top easiest writer/books for me to read (the way things are explained & which things are explained, how characters act, etc). It’s nicely logical & absurdity fantastical without it ever being fantastical for the sake of being fantastical (ie the big amazing things always make sense & don’t seem forced or unlikely).



  • The great fast horse Daddy!!

    wiki/Attila#Etymology:

    Most scholars have argued that the name Attila derives from East Germanic origin; Attila is formed from the Gothic or Gepidic noun atta, “father”, by means of the diminutive suffix -ila, meaning “little father” (compare Wulfila from wulfs “wolf” and -ila, i.e. “little wolf”).

    Other scholars have argued for a Turkic origin of the name. Omeljan Pritsak considered Ἀττίλα (Attíla) a composite title-name which derived from Turkic *es (great, old), and *til (sea, ocean), and the suffix /a/.

    M. Snædal, in a paper that rejects the Germanic derivation but notes the problems with the existing proposed Turkic etymologies, argues that Attila’s name could have originated from Turkic-Mongolian at, adyy/agta (gelding, warhorse) and Turkish atlı (horseman, cavalier), meaning “possessor of geldings, provider of warhorses”.

    In 2025, Svenja Bonmann and Simon Fries, as part of their hypothesis that the Huns spoke a Yeniseian language, proposed that the name Attila could come from an Old Arin adjective *atɨ-la, meaning “quicker, quite quick, rather quick, quick-ish”.