March: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse #1) by Dennis Taylor
Discuss The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein in the comments below.
Fiasco was translated into English in 1988 by Michael Kandel:
Fiasco (Polish: Fiasko) is a science fiction novel by Polish author Stanisław Lem, first published in a German translation in 1986. The book, published in Poland the following year, is a further elaboration of Lem's skepticism: in Lem's opinion, the difficulty in communication with alien civilizations is cultural disparity rather than spatial distance. The failure to communicate with an alien civilization is the main theme of the book.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @08:25PM (2 children)
I always took Stu (and indeed the entire book) as a semi-proxy for the American Revolutionary War, with Stu being somebody like Pierre L'Enfant [wikipedia.org], or one of the other French noblemen who threw their resources into supporting the cause of US Independence. As such, I never worried too much about his nebulous motivations, as "fiction reflects real life."
The thing I never understood was that early reveal that "Manny is female!" They make a big deal of it, but then it turns out to have no bearing or influence on the story... and indeed was entirely neglected. I always took it to be an early draft idea which got missed during the later revisions and edits. Maybe I'm missing something, though.
(At least it's better than the post-hoc, "by the way, Dumbledore is gay" style of character development...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @08:52PM
Yep, you're missing something all right. There is no "reveal" of the gender of Manny, because *he* is a Hetero-Cis male:
I can only assume that you haven't read the novel, are trolling or both.
But you go girl! Wow! There's a reveal for you! OP AC is female!
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday February 14 2019, @05:16AM
Well the other AC thinks you are trolling, but I think you meant Mike, not Manny. There is a scene where Wyoh is telling Mike jokes and it laughs at all the same ones as women, not men. You are right that it didn't make much difference to the rest of the book. Heinlein did that a fair bit, threw in a lot of stuff that filled out the story and gave him possible plot hooks for later. He didn't always use them.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.