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Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

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Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#521

Post by krapp »

betageek wrote: post #497
adaisadais wrote: post #251

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. My best friend in 7th grade had older siblings and they had all read Ender’s Game. He read it and told me I had to read it. Being the impressionable 7th grader (2006-7) that I was I gladly obliged. I found the book to be deeply fascinating. It opened my eyes to ‘new’ technology like ‘ansible’ (can communicate anywhere in the universe instantaneously) and really opened up my imaginati…

It is one of the great mysteries of life how an author can write a couple of books (this and Speaker for the Dead) that are literally all about loving the 'other' and still be homophobic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card#Homosexuality

It's a phenomenon dubbed the "Brain Eater" by author James Nicoll on Usenet[0]. I don't know what it is about science fiction and fantasy authors in particular - maybe it happens in other fiction genres too and I'm just not aware because I don't read them as much, but a lot of them seem to succumb to extremist (usually right-wing authoritarian) politics, fringe science, conspiracy theory or other such crackpottery at some point in their careers, with their writing sometimes suffering as a result of these beliefs seeping in and taking over.

[0]https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FilibusterFreefa...

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#522

Post by mcv »

throwqwerty wrote: post #520
betageek wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is one of the great mysteries of life how an author can write a couple of books (this and Speaker for the Dead) that are literally all about loving the 'other' and still be homophobic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card#Homosexuality

>In an August 2013 essay Card presented as an experiment in fiction-writing called "The Game of Unlikely Events",[173] Card described an alternative future in which President Barack Obama ruled as a "Hitler- or Stalin-style dictator" with his own national police force of young unemployed men; Obama and his wife Michelle would have amended the U.S. Constitution to allow presidents to remain in power for life, as in Ni…

> "national police force of young unemployed men"

How can members of a police force be unemployed?

> "I'm sure that by quoting this paragraph from wiki I will get more downvotes."

I normally downvote comments that complain about downvotes, but not for quoting well-sourced interesting/concerning background facts about relevant authors.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#523

Post by Cro_on »

Ulysses.

Surprised I haven't seen it mentioned yet, as it normally is in book threads on HN.

The reason that it had, and still has, such a positive influence on my life is the plethora of literary tools which it possesses. It allows for infinite play and imagination, while still being the apparent product of extreme dedication and earned mastery.

In fact, I prefer Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man as a novel, and I'm sure that the Wake is a perfect encyclopedia of language, cryptography, history, et al. But Ulysses takes it as an (humerous, profound, tricky, psychoanalytic, poetic, radical) example of the process of artistic experiment, the practically infinite range of the possible, and the unforgiving merit of deep study and eclectic knowledge.

I go back every so often to bounce my own ideas and troubling sentences off of it, more often than not just to get a little bit of validation.

Next would be Hesiod - Theogany, a 900 line 'epic' poem from the dawn of written literature. He is considered to be the first economist, though at that point of course it is simply philosophy. It explained for me the concept of emergent consciousness in a very biblical way, and let me realise the notion that religious works are just misunderstood metaphors; products of an imperfect language. It's unsurprising I suppose that something so short, that was written almost 3000 years ago, has such incredible lessons and timeless human value.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#524

Post by cdoctorow »

ASVVVAD wrote: post #53

Surprised how no one mentioned Little Brother[1] by Cory Doctorow and the sequel Homeland[2] It's near-future Sci-Fi and since it was written in 2008, it's more or less present now. It dives into a lot of topics that are relevant nowadays 1. https://craphound.com/littlebrother/ 2. https://craphound.com/homeland/

Thanks, that's awfully kind of you. The third Little Brother book, Attack Surface, is out on Oct 12. We're recording the audiobook this week (fully remote - I'm in my garage, the director is in her house, and the actor, Amber Benson, is in her basement studio and we're all vtc'ed together -- Amber's amazing, but the process is...weird).

https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/13/21177769/cory-doctorow-att...

There's also a new edition of LB/Homeland coming on July 7 with an introduction by Ed Snowden.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#525

Post by cdoctorow »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #278
ASVVVAD wrote: post #53

Surprised how no one mentioned Little Brother[1] by Cory Doctorow and the sequel Homeland[2] It's near-future Sci-Fi and since it was written in 2008, it's more or less present now. It dives into a lot of topics that are relevant nowadays 1. https://craphound.com/littlebrother/ 2. https://craphound.com/homeland/

I absolutely love Walkaway by Cory Doctorow.

Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#526

Post by randomsearch »

eliben wrote: post #445
randomsearch wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greatest book I’ve ever read. Timshel.

Funny coincidence - I'm just rereading this book now, and I think I like it more than the first time (~11 years ago). Getting older makes me appreciate Steinbeck even more. But I'm not entirely sure about his discussion of the word "timshel" in the original Bible. I'm a native Hebrew speaker, and I don't read any "may" into it - it's more of a declaration of the future like "you will rule/control it" rather than "you…

That's interesting. Steinbeck researched his books extremely thoroughly, so you'd expect for something so central it'd be correct. Would be good to follow this up with experts now that we have the luxury of the internet.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#527

Post by bsenftner »

ctchocula wrote: post #358
kidintech wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV. I'm a big Hesse fan, and I tried reading The Glass Bead Game twice; couldn't get past 30-40% of it in either try, it was just too boring.

Same here. I was surprised, because Siddhartha was very easy reading, but I couldn't get past 60% of The Glass Bead Game either, because it was so dry.

I wonder if this is a pre-Internet generation / post-Internet generation assessment of story pace. Because I, born in '64, do not find the prose dry or slow at all. Other readers I've discussed the novel, I've noticed people born after the "jump cut edit" revolution that refaced entertainment media (basically MTV) have a harder time getting into the flow of earlier entertainment.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#528

Post by rtkaratekid »

tingol wrote: post #257
rtkaratekid wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just finished reading this and found it incredible how one book could reveal so much of myself to myself.

What did it reveal? I found it to be the most overrated book I've encountered so far. I'm positively inclined towards Buddhism but it was just cheap mysticism whenever it was time to say something meaningful. A trope of Hesse's in general...

For me it was less of a commentary on Buddhism and other actual teachings and more of a way to understand and feel okay about leaving paradigms you were raised by that don’t fill “the cup.” Maybe that’s not the takeaway most people want to hear, but I found that the way that topic is approached in this book refreshing. Does that make sense? As far as actual, less “meta” books, I’ve certainly found more helpful. But this one helped me feel less guilty about searching.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#529

Post by rtkaratekid »

erikbye wrote: post #505
rtkaratekid wrote: post #147

“The Things They Carried” a haunting book about American soldiers in the Vietnam war. It’s helped me understand the horrors of war and life, the significance of a person’s perception of an event rather than pure facts, and appreciate life in general.

How does it compare to Dispatches?

Never read it, sorry :/
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