Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series)

science fiction and fantasy writer, author of the American Craftsmen trilogy, Border Crosser, and the Agent of Exiles audio adventure series.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

Other places to find me: https://t.co/UdoUfECcLS
or https://t.co/kDR6hc9qmm

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@adrianmckinty Welcome to the AMU (the Adrian McKinty Universe).

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@adrianmckinty PKD going mainstream in American culture is an odd turn of events. But gnosticism finds fertile ground in empires which seem to have no outside to escape to.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@adrianmckinty All very cool stuff--did you ever read Peter Watts's Blindsight? Good consciousness theory SF from 2006 (though not a perfect narrative). And more recently Ray Nayler has been writing interesting SF in this area as well (starting with The Mountain in the Sea).

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@honigmaydl Saw it, enjoyed it, but never relied on it for any factual matters.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@adrianmckinty Of renewed interest with our current crop of empathy-free Turing Test passers, and also perhaps something that's happened more than once when the creature goes from the text to the visual.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@adrianmckinty I've been mulling over lately how the film Blade Runner ultimately makes the opposite argument from the book--the book argues that there is something distinct about human empathy that even the best replicants don't get, while Roy's last actions and monologue contradicts that.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@mikesalter74 @sentantiq Ha, yeah, and I wonder how he sounded when he recited those bits publicly--still dry deadpan, or getting into them a bit?

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@sentantiq Agreed--relatedly, Herodotus is pretty clear about when he switches from his recitation of the old stories of various mythical east-west conflicts (making them smaller in the telling) to matters where he has a chain of reports or sources.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

"anti-posh" may be better wording.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

As both Beelzebub in #GoodOmens Season 1 and as Raskova in #StarCity, Anna Maxwell Martin uses her voice to convey someone who's not posh yet dangerously intelligent.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@adrianmckinty Just saw this while searching for Anna Maxwell Martin--she killed it in the first episode of Star City. Between that role and Beelzebub in season 1 of Good Omens, she's great at conveying anti-posh + dangerous intelligence.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@adrianmckinty Finally read your Barton Fink essay. The Coens may have understood noir better than anyone else I've seen. The Big Lebowski demonstrated that you could put nearly anybody into the noir pinball machine and get an interesting result.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@thekarachikid I haven't see all season 5 yet, only the first episode (just got Apple again). But yep, Star City is that good--great on the historical details, and intense. I don't want to oversell it though--mostly pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed seasons 1-3 of FAM, but 4 dropped a bit

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

Holy crap, first episode of #StarCity is quite good. Much more intensity than the 1st episode of this season of #ForAllMankind.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@adrianmckinty In one of his later public appearances, he stopped by the small DC SF convention Capclave in Oct. 2011--still a complete hoot despite the progress of Alzheimer's.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@stephenRB4 Agreed--and I blame the internet for nearly killing all forms of creative irony even in day-to-day speech.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@sentantiq It seems that no one gets the death of the author thing anymore except as a kind of double entendre, which is sad for me, as it's a liberating idea while writing to assume that readers won't connect my life to my worst characters.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@farmanojev @adrianmckinty @sentantiq Or in her case, "Death! Death! Death!" (at least in that translation.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@adrianmckinty @farmanojev @sentantiq I'm enjoying this one a bunch so far--there's a dark humor that goes with the idea that the protag may have already been at least a bit in hell as a grad student.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@farmanojev @adrianmckinty @sentantiq Speaking of talking to the dead, I'm current listening to RF Kuang's Katabasis--a "dark academia" fantasy set in a world where Cambridge University has a magic department, and the grad student protag goes to hell to get a recommendation letter from her dead adviser.

[Tom Doyle (SF/F author American Craftsmen series) @tmdoyle2]

@farmanojev @adrianmckinty @sentantiq Oh yes, but I haven't seen a translation of the Tain with sleekit yet! The illustrated edition I have has this on the cover: https://t.co/ius9CeNaQW