Just finished reading K.J. Parker's Devices and Desires. What struck me at first was "Eh, no, medieval people didn't think like that," but after mentally shifting gears to thinking of it as an author tract like HPMOR, with modern characters in a quasi-historical setting, it was much more enjoyable.
Do blog posts count? Out of Yvain's nearly uniformly excellent posts WHO BY VERY SLOW DECAY stands out in July. He is not kidding when prefacing it with the trigger warnings "death, pain, suffering, sadness". Ignore them at your peril.
Vihart's "Twelve Tones" is quite possibly the most mind-expanding mix of interdisciplinarity (math, music & creativity) in 2013 I've seen so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4niz8TfY794
I guess it falls to me to fill this up.
In Memoriam, a reimaging of Toaru Majutsu no Index that generally raises the competence of everyone involved. Significant changes; prior knowledge not required.
Overlady, Zero no Tsukaima as seen through the lens of the Overlord games. Guess who's the new Overlady. Prior knowledge of ZnT definitely required; prior knowledge of Overlord positive but not required.
Halkeginia Online: Sword Art Online meets Zero no Tsukaima meets Island on the Sea of Time. In short, Louise summons Alfheim, as it turns out that AGI beats magic but AGI has odd priorities. Prior knowledge of ZnT and SAO required. Warning: TVTropes link.
Uchibi Sasuke: Naruto crackfic-with-plot. Highly amusing. Prior knowledge preferred, but fic is not to be taken seriously.
Game Theory: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, with a slightly saner and far more rational Precia Testarossa. Highly recommended, prior knowledge of Nanoha preferred but not required; it's a rewrite. Complete, sequel in progress.
Descending:
"Don't Shoot the Dog" by Karen Pryor is about conditioning / elementary hedonics for humans and other mammals. This book is really really important and I should write more about it at some point.
http://www.sagaofsoul.com/ for all your "magical girls who wonder why their attacks are much less powerful than the mass-energy of the matter they can apparently create, who teleport to space so they can look at the Earth, and who synthesize unbihexium so scientists can get a look at it" needs.
Descending order:
Qualia the Purple; copying over my interim review from MAL:
Qualia the Purple was quite the curious read. I started it after being linked it as possibly the only example of manga discussing 'philosophical zombies', then I noted the second main character had purple eyes and began reading it to see if she'd be a hafu for my essay (the art is not great and the story was not compelling enough to keep me reading), then I kept reading because it seemed like it was improving into a light fluffy Haruhi Suzumiya-style manga with some superficial science, then it veered hard into Higurashi-level horror, then it did some shallow quantum mechanics, then it veered into really good hard SF on an almost Greg Egan level with a remarkable take on Lagrangians & Fermat's Principle of Least Action (the closest I can think of are Chiang's "Story of Your Life" and Egan's "The Infinite Assassin"), and then impressed me even more by observing that quantum indeterminacy seems like it should apply to the past as w
It's not a mistake (or it shouldn't be) to post about something that's come up before. You advertised it differently, and I imagine your recommendation carries more weight than mine here. And now we have the link to an earlier recommendation, which is I think the main reason for that one thread rule.
I just want to mention how much I appreciate these threads: this is my most trusted source of media recommendations! Thank you to all involved.
I first read Metagame by Sam Landstrom around 2008. At the time, I was an effectively broke high school student who had decided that I liked AIVAS from the Pern series and wanted more of that, which got me pointed to science fiction, despite the school library making it impossible to tell science fiction from the literary kind by shelving them in the same place. Which meant that, by default, I ended up wandering the Internet looking for long science fiction. Metagame was, at the time, available on the author's website as full text, and I came out the other end of the novel most of a day later with my mind blown. And then I reread it...
The short version of the premise is that some sort of almost-Friendly AI has taken over the world, attached everything a human can do to a point system, and offers immortality (by brain transplant; there's no uploading, apparently) to the people who "win" the game by amassing massive point totals (keep in mind this is 2008, well before "gamification" hit mainstream thought) - but the Game also has zones and rules about how to kill people, and thus "losing" and "dying" are the same concept. Also, there are clones that are morally equivalent to "expensive pieces of furniture" and with ~95% human genetics but are clearly sentient and sapient at human-like levels. These concepts collide (sometimes awkwardly); plot ensues.
Metagame is very clearly a book written in service of its worldbuilding, rather than the other way around, and this shows as occasionally excessively "tellish" prose, occasional protagonist idiot-balls, and a general sense that the book does not actually pick up until Act/Part II (did I mention it was divided up into parts that exactly match modern interpretations of Greek three-act structure?) It is also an interesting read when interpreted as a almost-FAI weirdtopia where the original AI seed value programmers still retained the idea that human meat was special and privileged, thus preventing a) uploading and b) nonhumans with human-level intelligence from being recognized as moral agents.
This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.
Rules: