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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?

#531

Post by hprotagonist »

Dowwie wrote: post #498
hprotagonist wrote: post #12

see my nick, but in addition to stephenson, the books i come back to over and over again for comfort and wisdom include: - Lord of the Rings: The other bible. Not even the very wise can see all ends; be of good cheer. - A Wrinkle In Time: 9 year old me, there is such a thing as a tesseract, and there is also Mrs. Beast. - The Master and Margarita: apocalyptic reading from someone who knew, and a cat who always pays h…

HBO better not disappoint us with their Snow Crash series. This was such a fun book.

I’m not keen to watch it. It’s probably unfilmable; all the exposition text is hard.

If you’re going to try, I think the visual style that would work the best would be animated. The real world could be done in Heavy Metal style, and the ‘verse done like ReBoot — or maybe akira or something. I’m not at all excited about a live action version.

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

#532

Post by newswasboring »

rtkaratekid wrote: post #528
tingol wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I read the book around 4 years ago I think, and I don't find it refreshing at all. One possible reason is that I grew up a Hindu and have found this baseless mysticism just tiring. And it is quite baseless, at no point in the book does the exalted one ever question himself, maybe once but it took him half a page to pat himself on the back and move on. He was born with the knowledge of exactly what his purpose is, never quite learns anything from anybody and quite frankly is condescending to the max.

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

#533

Post by throwqwerty »

mcv wrote: post #522
throwqwerty wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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

Below I linked to a published literary essay and I got downvoted.

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

#534

Post by throwqwerty »

krapp wrote: post #521
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

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…

>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

i don't know about fantasy but for sci-fi i think it's obvious: it's because a technocracy inevitably becomes a fascist dictatorship. that's why the nazis were heavy on industry and eugenics ("science" is the ultimate moral authority and all that). it's also for example why the mcguffin in Captain America: The Winter Soldier is so plausible (it was hydra whose aim was to use an ai to a-priori adjudicate who was guilty etc).

why writers in particular? not sure. probably having something to do with feeling confident in their ability to create fictional worlds and translating that into some kind of presumption of ability to govern real worlds.

Edit: lol no responses only downvotes. Don't point out flaws in technology ideology or else people will get bad. Lol

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

#536

Post by throwqwerty »

newen wrote: post #450
throwqwerty wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whenever someone mentions ender's game in a positive light i worry about that person https://web.archive.org/web/20070206121131/http://www4.ncsu.... tldr; orson scott card is a bigot and ender's game is nazi apologia. if you don't want to read the above it's been written about in numerous places (google "ender's game book fascism").

Can we as a society please stop ruining stuff just because the author had bad opinions or whatever?

so you think propagandist literature has no effect on its reader?

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

#537

Post by mcv »

throwqwerty wrote: post #533
mcv wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

>I normally downvote comments that complain about downvotes, but not for quoting well-sourced interesting/concerning background facts about relevant authors. Below I linked to a published literary essay and I got downvoted.

Not by me, though. I think that comment could have used a bit more explanation beyond calling it "nazi apologia" with a link. Like a bit more explanation of what exactly makes it nazi apologia.

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

#538

Post by utxaa »

weeksie wrote: post #39

Depends on how old you are, or for me it did. Some books resonate at different points in a person's life. The fiction that's had the most impact on me as an adult was all stuff I read in my early 30s. * Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller — Perfect for a single man in his 30s. Very solipsistic and hedonistic, which is a great way to explore that decade. Each of the books in the series is a novel length prose poem. Absol…

if you haven't, you will love barth's "the floating opera". my guess is that you won't be able to put it down.

also, "the sun also rises", "the stranger", "death in venice".

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

#539

Post by flyingfences »

bhaprayan wrote: post #425

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance :) Favorite quote from the book — “Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep…

I finally got around to reading it about a year ago and the line that hooked me was right in the beginning. "We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on 'good' rather than 'time' and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes."

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

#540

Post by utxaa »

_anastasia wrote: post #16

I really enjoyed the Martian and have found it to be a nice distraction if I'm bored - it's not too heavy and short enough to read in one sitting, but has plenty of entertainment nonetheless. Otherwise, the Hitchhiker's Guide is always a great read. Anything by Dostoevsky.

"Anything by Dostoevsky" and Camus.
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