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So I bought Neuropath yesterday and read the whole thing in a day. It's a pretty good horror thriller but way too much time is spent on Bakker shoving his nihilistic philosophy, via discussion of the story's MacGuffin, down your throat. I will say the guy is able to construct fairly horrific scenes and concepts that say with you after your literary adventure is over; I have spent most of today uneasy and disgusted. This is the first Bakker book I've read - my brother loves the PoN novels, of which he has lent me the first; I think I'll continue down the rabbit hole.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:16
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superh posted:I must be a terrible person because I enjoyed neuropath too, as terribly bleak and nihilistic as it is. PoN is better though, give it a shot! Oh I enjoyed it; I couldn't put it down. It was just a total mindfuck, is all, and left me kind of depressed.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:54
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Cardiac posted:The reason for reading Bakker is the fantasy series, which are pretty amazing in scope and characters. I meant the rabbit hole as in "reading the rest of his books" not "giving a poo poo about, and exploring his opinion;" his philosophy and opinions are garbage imho. I've been meaning to read PoN for a while now; I think I'll tackle it after I'm done with some cosmic horror stuff I'm reading.
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Nov 6, 2014 14:43
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General Battuta posted:Yeah, the argument pushed in Neuropath is a triviality. It's like listening to someone at a party try to blow your mind with the idea that morality is a human construct. Then he asks if you've heard of a world called 'Gor' Exactly. My problem with the ideas peddled in the book were that because our consciousness is partly or mostly composed of electrochemical processes, that can be mechanically subverted and augmented through outside intervention, it means human experience is meaningless, while the idea that the world has meaning because humans build meaning is off the table or at least never brought up. It felt like Neil was an author insert and the grand purpose of the book was to say "dude you're just a bio computer, bro, as i have expertly proved through the fact that you can alter a person's identity through purposeful brain damage, so just kill yourself, k?" Also, it's pretty much a long-form version, conceptually, of a Thomas Ligotti short story called "Purity." Dystram fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 17:09
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JerryLee posted:Reading that is just Benjanun Sriduangkaew sure is a stupid loving name.
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Nov 17, 2014 01:30
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, not even solely in regards to Bakker but in terms of the SF community and the state of discourse generally.