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Whirling posted:Yeah that's a thing that's always made me a little wary in sci-fi is the idea that an AI is the most competent and qualified being to lead society because of how smart it might be and its always better to let it do what it wants. Go read the Radch trilogy, first book stars a ship AI and ship/station AIs remain major characters in the latter two. If you're willing to dip your toes into self-pub, Starwalker and The Last Angel both feature ship AIs as the protagonists. Depending on how broadly you define AI, the Murderbot books or maybe the Cassandra Kresnov series would also qualify; as a Ghost in the Shell enjoyer I'd probably rec the latter to you regardless. Going into more old-school stuff, the Bolo stories are almost all written from the perspective of far-future hovertank AIs. Quality is kinda variable, though. And I've never read Klara and the Sun but it looks like something I'd probably like, so onto the TBR it goes.
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Mar 13, 2024 22:01
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Whirling posted:Yeah that's a thing that's always made me a little wary in sci-fi is the idea that an AI is the most competent and qualified being to lead society because of how smart it might be and its always better to let it do what it wants. Yeah, that's why I liked the early Polity stuff. I'm willing to entertain the idea that after making machines for everything else we made machines for as-good-as-possible government, but of course the fun of SF is seeing where good ideas go horribly wrong and he seemed to be heading that way, but then drifted off to whatever the gently caress he's got going on now. Pity, I loved his maniacal ecosystems.
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Mar 13, 2024 22:11
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Whirling posted:Anyway, any books with more interesting/fun takes on AI? I'm not sure AI will ever actually exist (the cool sci-fi version, not the algorithms that vomit up garbage art and word salad), but man do I love AI characters in fiction, like Durendal from the Marathon games or the Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I should really read The Culture but other recommendations would be lovely For some old school 70s grognard AI fiction, I recommend When HARLIE Was One by David Gerrold. Has one of the earliest representations of a computer virus in it.There's two versions iirc. The author did an update some time in the 80s because computers had gone in a slightly different direction.
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Mar 13, 2024 22:39
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David Gerrold rules. Buy a tribble from him. Buy two
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Mar 13, 2024 22:52
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And if you want to go really old school, there's Murray Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe."
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Mar 14, 2024 00:12
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ToxicFrog posted:
Ishiguro has written like 4 absolute bangers, jealous if you haven’t gotten read one yet.
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Mar 14, 2024 00:13
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Klara and the Sun is maybe my single favorite novel. I also think it is a much darker novel than reviewers took it to be when it came out.
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Mar 14, 2024 00:20
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Cephas posted:Klara and the Sun is maybe my single favorite novel. I also think it is a much darker novel than reviewers took it to be when it came out.
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Mar 14, 2024 00:23
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buffalo all day posted:Ishiguro has written like 4 absolute bangers, jealous if you haven’t gotten read one yet. I'm not sure I've even heard of him, and I definitely haven't read any of his books.
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Mar 14, 2024 00:42
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I really liked the film adaptation of Never Let Me Go. Been meaning to read the book for a while now
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Mar 14, 2024 00:47
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Remains of the Day is quite good although in no way Sci Fi. The Merchant Ivory adaptation is also pretty good.
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Mar 14, 2024 00:52
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mystes posted:An Ishiguro book? Dark? you'd think for an author whose work is regularly blurbed as being suspended over an abyss, klara wouldn't be called a "christmas gift of a novel" or whatever lol. Well, honestly, that was just one reviewer (michael silverblatt). I was mostly startled by my coworker reading it and saying it was a nice story with a happy ending. Though I did notice that some reviewers seemed to misread the story, saying that Klara's visual perceptions and strange logic were evidence that she was malfunctioning. When I think what was being conveyed was that the artificial friends have distinct and emergent consciousnesses that mark them as true individuals and irreducible life forms, rather than mere replicas of models. And that Klara's pseudo-magical thinking is both an example of a complex consciousness making sense of the world by the limited data it is exposed to, while also ironically allowing her to perceive an underlying metaphorical truth, a sort of elemental truth obscured by consensus reality.
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Mar 14, 2024 01:04
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buffalo all day posted:Ishiguro has written like 4 absolute bangers, jealous if you haven’t gotten read one yet.
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Mar 14, 2024 02:18
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Tarnop posted:I really liked the film adaptation of Never Let Me Go. Been meaning to read the book for a while now Both the film and the book are really good, especially if you come to them in the dark, and even more so if you're already familiar with the tropes of boarding school fiction. Pretty soon you notice what's not in the story.
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Mar 14, 2024 04:14
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Hobnob posted:Both the film and the book are really good, especially if you come to them in the dark, and even more so if you're already familiar with the tropes of boarding school fiction. Pretty soon you notice what's not in the story. Oh yeah. I loved how the dawning horror just quietly sneaks up on you in that one. The only Ishiguro book I didn’t like was The Unconsoled and that’s because it was so much like my most aggravating dreams that I couldn’t finish it. It is not a bad book at all. In fact my whole problem with it was it was done too well. It was just too much for me. Too much dream logic where you’re going somewhere and trying to do something only to have reality suddenly shift and derail you and set your wheels spinning trying to find your shoes so you can leave a store, or trying to remember what exam you’re supposed to take when you can’t even remember what classes you attended, or boarding a train only to realize it’s going the wrong direction. It was absolutely relentless with that kinda thing. I had to dnf the book because it drove me absolutely mad only like my worst nightmares can
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Mar 14, 2024 04:28
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Harold Fjord posted:Orconomics is the perfect palette cleanser to follow Exordia
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Mar 14, 2024 04:51
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DACK FAYDEN posted:did the third one of those ever come out? I liked the first two It came out in September and I thought it was pretty good. If you enjoyed the first two, it was a solid conclusion and mix of the economic and fantasy heroics parts.
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Mar 14, 2024 05:12
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Cephas posted:you'd think for an author whose work is regularly blurbed as being suspended over an abyss, klara wouldn't be called a "christmas gift of a novel" or whatever lol. Well, honestly, that was just one reviewer (michael silverblatt). I was mostly startled by my coworker reading it and saying it was a nice story with a happy ending. Though I did notice that some reviewers seemed to misread the story, saying that Klara's visual perceptions and strange logic were evidence that she was malfunctioning. When I think what was being conveyed was that the artificial friends have distinct and emergent consciousnesses that mark them as true individuals and irreducible life forms, rather than mere replicas of models. And that Klara's pseudo-magical thinking is both an example of a complex consciousness making sense of the world by the limited data it is exposed to, while also ironically allowing her to perceive an underlying metaphorical truth, a sort of elemental truth obscured by consensus reality. It was a happy ending book because she literally spoke to God and He answered 
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Mar 14, 2024 07:42
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Hobnob posted:Both the film and the book are really good, especially if you come to them in the dark, and even more so if you're already familiar with the tropes of boarding school fiction. Pretty soon you notice what's not in the story. Yeah that was me when I saw the film. It got good reviews in whatever I was reading at the time so I went in not having seen a trailer. I'm also English so I grew up reading a bunch of weird boarding school poo poo.
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Mar 14, 2024 11:53
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The Storybundle folks just dropped their 2024 World SF bundle, ten books for $20 - anyone got any positives / negatives about any of the included..? https://storybundle.com/worldsf
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Mar 14, 2024 12:05
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Never Let Me Go is just so loving good I love it. If you haven't read it, you really should.
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Mar 14, 2024 13:55
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Whirling posted:Anyway, any books with more interesting/fun takes on AI? Peter Watts’ Sunflowers stuff (especially The Freeze-Frame Revolution) has a neat take on AI. Whirling posted:Yeah that's a thing that's always made me a little wary in sci-fi is the idea that an AI is the most competent and qualified being to lead society because of how smart it might be and its always better to let it do what it wants. Starfish (also Watts) has some really funny responses to this kind of stuff with its smart gels / head cheeses. But as I’m sure you’ve seen in this thread, the Rifters books are heavy on 90s edgelordiness, so keep that in mind.
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Mar 14, 2024 14:27
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ToxicFrog posted:I'm not sure I've even heard of him, and I definitely haven't read any of his books. He's good is what I'm saying.
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Mar 14, 2024 14:40
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Cephas posted:Klara and the Sun is maybe my single favorite novel. I am ever so slightly hesitant to start on this, for the admittedly silly reason that Klara is coincidentally the name of my (human) daughter and I feel trepidation at reading about someone with that name having anything bad happen to them. Goddamn, I'm a big softy.
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Mar 14, 2024 16:27
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NoneMoreNegative posted:The Storybundle folks just dropped their 2024 World SF bundle, ten books for $20 - anyone got any positives / negatives about any of the included..? Ekaterina Sedia is good. I read The Alchemy of Stone a few ago and enjoyed it. Haven't read this one, though.
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Mar 14, 2024 17:42
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Groke posted:I am ever so slightly hesitant to start on this, for the admittedly silly reason that Klara is coincidentally the name of my (human) daughter and I feel trepidation at reading about someone with that name having anything bad happen to them. If you dont mind ebooks, there are some apps that have name / word replacement filters for books. My moon + reader app does this. It comes in handy for when main character shares my real life name  It does weird medium out when that happens. Or worse, when the romance novel features a love interest with my sibling's irl name lmao
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Mar 14, 2024 18:57
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Another good writer about AI is Aliette de Bodard, who writes sci-fi in a very Vietnamese-influenced universe. Her AIs are flat-out people: not humans, but people. IIRC all the ones we encounter are ships. They project personas that people can interact with, or they talk to people directly. I highly recommend the mystery novel The Tea Master and the Detective as a starter. de Bodard's AIs are closest to the intelligent ships in the Culture: not profoundly inhuman, but having their own motivations. Most of the Xuya novels are also lesbian romances.
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Mar 14, 2024 19:16
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loving fine, I will buy my first Ishiguro today if you all promise to stop banging on about him
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Mar 14, 2024 19:17
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mdemone posted:loving fine, I will buy my first Ishiguro today if you all promise to stop banging on about him
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Mar 14, 2024 19:28
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Stuporstar posted:The only Ishiguro book I didn’t like was The Unconsoled and that’s because it was so much like my most aggravating dreams that I couldn’t finish it. It is not a bad book at all. In fact my whole problem with it was it was done too well. While I really liked The Unconsoled, this is a 100% accurate description. In retrospect, you could argue that this marked his transition from his earlier historical fiction to his more recent books, which have been mystery, scifi or fantasy novels in terms of their setting.
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Mar 14, 2024 21:27
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Another good writer about AI is Aliette de Bodard, who writes sci-fi in a very Vietnamese-influenced universe. Her AIs are flat-out people: not humans, but people. IIRC all the ones we encounter are ships. They project personas that people can interact with, or they talk to people directly. I highly recommend the mystery novel The Tea Master and the Detective as a starter. Aren't AIs in that setting born as humans and then uploaded into a matrix?
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Mar 14, 2024 21:55
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Orconomics posted:Sethiroph
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Mar 14, 2024 22:04
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fritz posted:Aren't AIs in that setting born as humans and then uploaded into a matrix? I don't remember that; I may have missed the novel/novella where we found that out.
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Mar 14, 2024 22:29
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Pushing Ice by Alistair Reynolds - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0819W1L1W/ From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D184Q7Q/ Deus Irae by Philip K Dick and Roger Zelazny - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008LQ1SLK/ The Night of the Long Knives by Fritz Leiber - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086MJY3SK/
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Mar 14, 2024 22:32
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pradmer posted:From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury - $1.99 Anyone read this? Edit: actually all three of these look interesting Whale Vomit fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 23:15
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pradmer posted:Pushing Ice by Alistair Reynolds - $2.99 This is really good. It's a big story that scales out over millennia and myriads of time, told from the perspective of people caught up in some bullshit and experience a lot of relativistic time compression.
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Mar 14, 2024 23:50
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Whale Vomit posted:Anyone read this? It is beautiful and very October Spooky, jack-o-lanterns and cobwebs vibes. You cannot go wrong with Ray Bradbury.
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Mar 15, 2024 00:49
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I'm sure you can, but you often wouldn't. It's one of those things where it might as well be unreviewable do to status, but if his books came out today we'd have the usual divisive reaction with plenty of roasts in the thread I think.
Heavy Metal fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 13:48
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I only read Bradbury as a teen and I never loved him. There's a sort of melancholy that I never really vibed with. I wouldn't claim it was bad, but not my taste.
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Mar 15, 2024 14:20
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I read Never Let Me Go yesterday and it was good as expected but also depressing as expected, which was why I had put it off for so long. Started Klara and the Sun but I sense more tragedy and think it's going back on the list for now. Back to my usual escapist trash 
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Mar 15, 2024 15:22
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