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RobertLumley comments on October 2012 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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Fiction Books Thread
I finally got around to reading Blindsight by Peter Watts last month (free online). I stopped reading (long) science fiction a while ago because everything I picked up wound up being a space opera. (The last one I really loved was Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds, which is relatively focused, so I started reading the main Revelation Space books -- and they were good, but I seem to have lost the taste for that sort of thing.) Anyway, Blindsight is the kind of thing that I read science fiction for. There's a reason it gets referenced and recommended so much around here.
Let me warn the Harry Potter nerds off of The Casual Vacancy. The plurality of the book is Dursleyish people having unpleasant sex.
It's somewhat better than that, but it's basically about various ways that cooperation can fail. It's not just the sex that was unpleasant.
Rudy Rucker's Ware Tetralogy. I'm thisclose to starting Freeware. I'm about to finish book 2 (The Golden Apple) of the Illuminatus! Trilogy...in fact that's what I'm currently reading... :) I just got Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross...haven't got around to reading it yet though... And I have about 39 fiction+nonfiction books on my current reading list, so...phew....
I read Rapture recently.
I love the Illuminatus! trilogy. I have a soft spot for Discordian ideas in general, actually.
Starfish by Peter Watts is an awesome novel about transhumanism and broken people and societies. It's got unlikable (as people) characters that you grow to love and a very thought out and unique setting. I can't say I enjoyed the sequel as much, though the concept of Guilt Trip is pretty awesome, and I didn't get more than a chapter or so into the third book. But I strongly recommend Starfish on its own.
Could someone recommend a fun romance novel? Preferably heterosexual with some dominance/submission.
Disclaimer: I have read very little romance. Also I'm not particularly into the dominance/submission dynamic.
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the O.G. of romance novels. It's funny and engaging and has well-drawn characters. No dominance stuff though.
Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind is a good read (with obvious cultural baggage) that has a bit of this dynamic between Rhett and Scarlett.
Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead is not a romance per se, but the romantic subplot is full of power games.
Rand is a love-or-hate author. If you read the first chapter and you don't like it you probably won't like the rest. If you decide not to read the whole book, though, then before putting it down you might as well skip ahead to the (in)famous scene in Chapter II of Part 2. Trigger warning for sex that a fly on the wall would find indistinguishable from rape.
Hmm, maybe I'll read P&P since it comes free on the Kindle.
Sharon Shinn writes speculative fiction, and most of it's pretty heavy on the romance, all heterosexual so far as I can remember. I don't know if it'll push your BDSM buttons - there's nothing explicitly like that I can think of, although she does tend to throw characters into weird not-necessarily-sexual power dynamics, does that count? Start with Archangel.
Thanks! I'll check it out.
Kushiel's Dart (but not the sequels). The worldbuilding is delightful.
How strange! I had the exact opposite experience. By mistake I read Scion first. I then went in order, got to the end, and looped around to Dart. I thought Scion stood on its own extremely well and have been recommending friends start with it; I was almost unable to finish Dart and dismissed it as "Guess she hadn't learned how to write yet".
(My friend who started with Scion on my advice also ended up enjoying them all except Dart, and I suggested to Alicorn that she not start with Dart, she refused my suggestion, and then she disliked Dart and didn't read the others which was my prediction all along.)
Kushiel's Avatar continues to be my favorite of all of them, and the new Naamah series isn't bad either.
I started the next one, but haven't finished it yet, may yet plod through to get to the later ones if I am bored on an airplane in the future.
I have not enjoyed these books at all. Kushiel's Dart's virtues, while not nonexistent, probably don't include something best described as "fun" - it is not light or humorous or particularly merry.
I liked all the descriptions of how the different parts of society work logistically.
Good catch! I'm just trying to ease into the romance literature as I've never read one before. But I thought I might enjoy one because of how often I fantasize about being married.
If you're interested in romance->marriage, you may actually like Amish romance novels.
Will check it out, thank you!
Of course not many romance novels are about married characters! :-)
Really?? Shows how little I know :(
The Laundry Files by Charles Stross, basic premise, advanced mathematics and computing can summon lovecraftion monstrosities. Spy drama, parody of beaurocracy and an interesting take on the history of the 20th century.
There's a short story free online (no massive spoilers) and the main novel series is available on Amazon.
I've started reading Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. The first section, while plagued with Ye Olde Australian, managed to hook me, so unless it's quite awful I imagine I'll finish reading it. It comes somewhat recommended from my boyfriend, who claims there's no way they'll be able to competently turn it into a screenplay.
Finished the rest of it tonight. Boyfriend correct on all counts (as he tends to be).
Attempt at a spoiler-free stream-of-consciousness review (hey, it's 0153 here) follows:
Written transcriptions of various accents are abundant, but they are somewhat necessary to the plot and not terribly grating. That, or reading too much Homestuck has dulled my sensitivity. The six narratives have to be connected, of course, and some of the connections are much more contrived than others. Weird use of the word orison.
At one point the author cops out of a contrived scene by having the POV character reveal that they knew it was contrived all along; now that I think of it this happens at least three times -- perhaps it counts as a motif? A bit preachy toward the end and in the middle. One of the narratives is told as an interview dialog, and in my opinion the format stunts the plot's growth. It's a bit like Christian Bale's performance in Equilibrium.
Some LW-tropeage on synthetic humans, more or less coextensive with the economy of ems and so on. Existential risk shows up in the middle two narratives, but isn't played for keeps.
I'll probably read Number9Dream at some point, and perhaps Ghostwritten.
Fiction on mind merging seems high on mysteriousness and hand-waving and low on plausible speculation in my experience. Anyone have any recommendations?
The short story Closer by Greg Egan deals with the subject.
Embers, an ongoing 600k word Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfiction. (Do fanfictions fall under 'fiction books' or 'other'?) It's actually in many regards the single closest thing to Methods of Rationality I've found - less humor, true, but it's a reinterpretation of a children's story with more intelligence in, more focus on exploring the full consequences of ideas. The author's notes include reasonably extensive citations from her historical research. On several occasions characters have said things which amounted to 'You know, what if my hypothesis were wrong - wouldn't the world make a lot more sense that way?'
You don't need to have seen the show to know what's going on, but it'll help, and the show is worth a quick watch if you've got time on your hands anyway. Don't skip this work just because you don't have time for the show right now, though.
If you strongly enjoyed Methods, I expect (weakly) that you will strongly enjoy this.
it says it follows another fic called "Theft absolute," is reading of that necessary?
Not at all; I didn't. It is, however, 751 words total. It will also almost certainly not make sense without the context of the show.
It seems to just be a short description of where the fic AU diverges from canon. It's worth reading if you're going to read the rest; it's very brief.