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:
Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.
This is a repost from last month's thread, because I posted at the end of the month and it had low exposure.
I once read a transhumanism short story by Isaac Asimov but have forgot the title and short story collection it was in, I'm trying to find this story again. The plot summary goes as such: A retired businessman is reminiscing about the frontier days of cognitive enhancement where 'chipped' professionals were a high value rarity and his firm was so lucky to have the opportunity to interview two at the same time and he had to choose which one to hire. A key limiter to the 'chipping' was that those professionals were ten times as smart for one tenth the productive lifespan, meaning early onset of senility and retirement. The retired businessman laments that the current generation of 'chipping' is so dialed down and legislated that they are nothing special.
If this rings a bell and you can give me a title to this short story, you will have my eternal gratitude.
5Shmi
2312) by Kim Stanley Robinson, the author of Red/Blue/Green Mars (which I did not read).
The protagonist, Swan Er Hong, is probably the single most annoying character in recent memory, more so even than Catelyn Stark of GoT (in the books, not the show). Despite being 130 odd years old, she is mostly driven by impulses fitting for a 13 year-old. She is also bossy, short-tempered and not very smart. Whether this is intentional is not clear to me, probably not. Fitz Wahram, a diplomat, who is much more reasonable, is under her spell and often goes out of his comfort zone for her, with considerable risk to his life and health.
This book is a rare case where I wish for the main character to bite the dust already.
Oh, and the long scientific ruminations by the author, judging by the parts close my area of expertise, physics and quantum computers, are total rubbish.
I put down the book when it describes Swan's more stupid antics, and pick it up again when I have nothing else to read.
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: