Left on Read: Echopraxia
Added 2024-07-28 09:31:38 +0000 UTCRiley and November read another book... the sequel to Peter Watt's Blindsight, Echopraxia! Contained herein: a discussion of god in the context of science fiction, the utility of thinking like a parasite and letting your limbic system steer the ship, and how to keep a book interesting when you've established that certain characters are forty standard deviations smarter than every baseline human and the reader.
Comments
I’m sure ppl have suggested this before, but if you’re interested in more speculative fiction dealing with how human corporeality informs our ability to communicate and form meaning, the Southern Reach trilogy FUCKS and is fantastically written!
Johnny
2025-01-24 20:09:38 +0000 UTCThe Blindsight Cinematic Universe short stories 'ZeroS' and 'The Colonel' are good and worth it, useful context
Tristan Ryan
2024-09-07 17:40:04 +0000 UTCPlease, I am begging you, read Embassytown
Suggestive Cacti
2024-08-22 07:20:57 +0000 UTCI completely agree that it's maybe not as tightly written as Blindsight, but I absolutely love it anyway. I especially like the overall question of agency and will and decision making. There are no coincidences in this universe, but also causality inevitably fades into such a fog that nobody, not even the vampires, can know whether they're doing things because they decided to, or because someone or something else made them decide that. We make decisions and form beliefs and values based on the circumstances we encounter, but those circumstances are themselves shaped by conscious and unconscious forces, and in the end it's valid from a certain perspective to say that the solar system or the universe is a machine for making Dan Brooks step off a cliff. Even if the universe may have been edited to make that happen, who edits the editor and so on
-Kris-
2024-08-06 20:53:51 +0000 UTCThe fear of death that prevents Dan from doing the smart thing and blowing up Valerie, Portia, and himself rather than returning to Earth is specifically described as being so core to baseline function that the bicams had to edit it out to make their hive work. They couldn't be properly smart like they wanted until they removed the ability to either be aware of or care about their own mortality
-Kris-
2024-08-06 20:39:45 +0000 UTC
![[R-18] Podone](https://xaiju.com/istorage/101964.jpg)
