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I just finished The Three-Body Problem on a recommendation from someone working at the bookstore and it didn't really satisfy what I was looking for. I asked for something very heady and philosophical like His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem and while The Three-Body Problem raised some questions, I felt it was too reliant on story and not enough philosophical dives. It hasn't really given me that much to think on. I found the book satisfying and may read the sequels if they are the same quality but maybe you all can help me out more. Any recommendations for very philosophical stuff that's less about driving a story forward? It can be new or old, but I would love some new authors if anybody has them. Also, are the sequels to The Three-Body Problem worth reading? I don't usually read sequels because they tend to go off the rails.
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Mar 30, 2024 18:24
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Thanks for all the recommendations yesterday. I haven't read most of that, so I've got plenty to keep me occupied. With such a large genre it's hard to know what I'm buying without getting some ideas first.
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Mar 31, 2024 14:49
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Just finished Quarantine by Greg Egan and wanted to thank the thread again for the recommendations. That was definitely more like what I was looking for and now I don't whether I'm smeared or just killing myself over and over.
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Apr 1, 2024 20:32
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^^^ Good timing on the post. I'll check this one out too.Isolationist posted:There aren't a lot of books like that, Egan's a hell of a writer/comes up with interesting concepts and explores them. I've never met anyone IRL who had read Quarantine! I liked how malleable the Nick was. Nick starts with no allegiance, is forced to another, convinced to follow another group, then finally thinks for himself somewhat. But influenced by mods the whole time by choice. It's represented well in the smearing and choosing quantum eigenstates. He was even malleable to the quantum level. I liked the timing on the bubble reveal too, it was a galactic scale solution to a quantum problem. Not a huge fan of the epilogue though. pradmer posted:Valis (#1) by Philip K Dick - $1.99 Just finished reading this. Curious what other people's thought on it are? I thought that every male character was a split of the authors personality like Horselover Fat. This was until almost the very end when the Rhipidon society visits Sophia on the farm and then looking at the wikipedia. I still lean toward Kevin and David being the author though. David is his devout Catholicism and Kevin is his extreme cynicism. Horselover Fat is his personal religion heavily influenced by Gnosticism, believing in a God based on wisdom and knowledge. I kind of saw the women as splits on the author's personality as well and their deaths were kind of like the authors loss of faith. Gloria dies and he loses his secular cynicism and turns to Catholicism. Sherri dies when he loses faith in Catholicism and turns to his Gnostic ideas and VALIS. Sophia is his budding theology dyeing, but its durable and the author continues as Horselover Fat in the end. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Apr 4, 2024 |
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Apr 4, 2024 02:27
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anilEhilated posted:Well, yeah, their names start with the author's initials. I like VALIS a lot, the autobiographical narration helps to make the weirdness stand out but I genuinely can't imagine what reading it as one's first PKD book would feel like. I missed that, but it makes sense. Especially because Horselover Fat becomes independent and is able to "send postcards to the author" kind of like how Kevin is independent enough to recommend the movie VALIS. I haven't read any of Phillip K. Dicks books before reading VALIS, although I have seen Blade Runner. It reads as a book written by an author known for science fiction writing, but not really a science fiction book. Beside the token reference to VALIS possibly having other worldly origins, it's a reflection on religion, especially Gnosticism. The only reference that really took me out of it was the Richard Nixon tie in. I can see how it was the important event when he was writing the book but it seems trivial compared to the other topics, and kind of ruins the timeless feeling of the book. He's a good writer, even in this weird format. He made it very clear that Horselover Fat was him but kept it ambiguous enough with the other personalities to keep me interested.
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Apr 5, 2024 15:38
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Kestral posted:If you're in the mood for Big Sci-Fi Ideas though, I'll also recommend the palate-cleanser I went to hatereading 3BP and its sequels: QNTM's Valuable Humans in Transit and Fine Structure. Absolutely wild stuff that is also reasonably well-written and wasn't authored by someone writing in the worst traditions of Golden Age SF. I haven't read all those stories in this collection but what I have is good. "Lena" is written like a Wikipedia article. That format really works for talking about mapping out a human brain and the possible side effects of that. Edit: Regarding 3bp. I didn't like how the aliens effectively brute force solves the titular problem but then it's revealed to be moot because their planet will fly into their sun anyway. Wouldn't every planet be uninhabitable by that metric? The earth isn't always going to be in a habitable zone around the sun. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 16:55
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