Krugman on Charles Stross' Neptune's Brood

[james_davis_nicoll]

I’m reading an advance copy of Charlie Stross’s Neptune’s Brood. (Hey, I have connections!) And it is the best thing by far written on the subject to date, partly because it is, as far as I know, the only thing written on the subject to date.

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Someone in hollywood's got to be reading that and wondering how in hell to make a movie out of it.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Because nothing says "box office" like an endorsement from a Nobel-Prize-winning economist.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough my agent and I had this exact conversation last week. Yes, someone at a film studio asked for an advance copy. No, we don't expect them to buy the movie rights: it's a very long shot.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

For the record, I was only teasing!

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Why yes, if he's a regular columnist for the New York Times, I do. Looks like I was right, too, dosen't it?

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

"Krina and Ana each possess half of the fabled Atlantis Carnet, a lost financial instrument of unbelievable value—capable of bringing down entire civilizations. Krina doesn’t know that Count Rudi suspects her motives, so she accepts his offer to get her to Shin-Tethys in exchange for an introduction to Ana."

The description Amazon gives for this book is less than exciting. "a lost financial instrument of unbelievable value" ? YAWN! I haven't heard of such an intriguing maguffin since three little kittens lost their mittens....

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

May I conjecture that you are not a professor of economics?

What gets them excited is different from that which you and I find exciting.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

It's actually quite awesome, and my interest in and knowledge of economics aren't particularly high.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

I hope this isn't one of those things where "That lost account has been earning compound interest for centuries, and is now worth more than the GDP of the world! Let's go claim the account!"

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Since it's a Stross story, I expect things are more complicated than that.

However, I wish to add that [SPOILER, after-horse-has-left-the-barn style, FOR MACK REYNOLDS'S 1956 "STORY COMPOUNDED INTEREST"] I thought Mack Reynolds's 1956 story "Compounded Interest" was a fine story at the time that I read it, around 1970. I am sorry if you have seen the idea too often.

I know Douglas Adams [NOT REALLY MUCH OF A SPOILER FOR A THROWAWAY JOKE IN THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY] used it as a throwaway joke in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in 1978, but I can't recall encountering other instances.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

You're forgetting Wells' The Sleeper Awakes (1910), where the compound interest from the eponymous sleeper's bank account has caused the complete restructuring of society around the monumental wealth wielded by the state in trust on the Sleeper's behalf.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

A classic which, I blush to admit, I have not read.

The twist in the Mack Reynolds story [ANOTHER SPOILER FOR "COMPOUNDED INTEREST"] is that the bankers' mysterious customer pbyyrpgf gur cebprrqf gb cnl sbe na awesomely expensive gvzr znpuvar, jvgu juvpu ur vagraqf gb ivfvg cnfg praghevrf naq vafgehpg the bankers ba ubj gb vairfg uvf zbqrfg vavgvny pncvgny. So that's stealing two ideas from H. G. Wells.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Isn't there also one version of this named something like ``John Smith's Dollar'', where after forty generations the initial dollar has come to world-menacing proportions?

(Oh, there it is: John Jones's Dollar, by Harry Stephen Keeler.)

[nelc.livejournal.com]

The description could possibly do with vamping up a bit, but the first draft of the novel was jolly good.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not too happy with that blurb either. How about: "Robot assassins! Mad priests aboard a flying church crewed by animated skeletons! Atomic powered robot mermaids in space! Communist space squids! And a heist!"

Does that help?

[botrytis.livejournal.com]

I could almost picture that as a Futurama episode.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

The good old days of Ace blurb writing.

[ilya187.livejournal.com]

I hope "Neptune's Brood" is not another Heinlein tribute. That's what killed "Saturn's Children" for me.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

It's not a Heinlein tribute novel. Honest. (It may be a Karl Marx tribute novel but that's another matter ...)

[martinl-00.livejournal.com]

Das Orbital?