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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?

#561

Post by Dowwie »

hprotagonist wrote: post #531
Dowwie wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree and considered this as well. An anime Snowcrash could be great.

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

#562

Post by dropit_sphere »

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 no mystery at all if you believe people when they say things, and exercise the principle of charity.

Card is a believing Latter-Say Saint, and believes that a loving God has declared gay sex is forbidden. Someone who loves you would want good things to happen, ergo there must be a reason.

One can dig into the whys, but if this is really a "mystery," it's solved now.

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

#563

Post by andrei_says_ »

mordae wrote: post #356
metroholografix wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found all 3 books to be vastly overrated and mediocre at best. I would bet money that in 10 years, few will even remember them. The translation doesn't help, but the issues with the books go beyond it. It's obvious that Cixin Liu is not a good writer. The characters in TBP are cardboard cutouts and his pacing and framing of ideas awful. I feel that there is merit in his imagination but it'd be better presented in a…

Oh my god, Stanisław Lem. I have read Summa Technologiae and everything is in there. And I mean everything. I have yet to see any new horizons for humanity he hasn't covered back in the sixties. For me the single most distressing idea is that we might want to limit the speed of research in order to be able to integrate it, because the exponential growth would otherwise beat humanity's ability to adapt, leading to ver…

May I recommend Futurological Congress? Everything is in there, too.

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

#565

Post by triceratops »

weavejester wrote: post #323
triceratops wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh interesting, I didn't have that experience at all. Can you give some examples of what you mean?

It's been a while since I read it, and I only completed the first two books, but there are a few issues I recall having. Spoilers ahead, obviously. The most glaring issue I remember was how the countries of Earth were essentially a united front for 450 years. They came up with a single plan - and a very strange one at that - and then carried it out for the next half-millenia with little dissent or deviation. Given th…

Lol nvm. I thought you were talking about the Foundation series. I've never read the trilogy you're talking about. Thanks for the thoughtful answer though. Hope others find it interesting.

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

#566

Post by andrei_says_ »

jeffe wrote: post #482
vector_spaces wrote: post #44

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. This book changed my life. I read this book when I was maybe 17? And read it again last year, a decade and a half later. The most powerful lesson I learned here is what anthropologists call cultural relativism. This book also taught me that everyone is under the influence of Mother Culture and her stories. I think internalizing this can help a lot with understanding other people, building sel…

I'm surprised that this book, which is as about as heavy handed and nuanced as Atlas Shrugged, seems to have such positive consensus. Reading it at a similarly impressionable age I found it to be a typical luddite philosophy presented by a condescending pseudo-intellectual gorilla. It presented some obvious truths about human culture and its effects on the environment, but insidiously twisted everything to support hi…

The book aside, in what world are we not a culture of takers or have not destroyed the natural equillibrium(s) of our own biosphere?

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

#567

Post by gonehome »

gonehome wrote: post #557
egypturnash wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP&TMOR is kind of terrible on many levels but it may have saved my life; I was mindlessly reading it in the depths of a long, gloomy Seattle winter when something it said about the way the Dementors work made me look up from my tablet and go find a garden shop, from which I got a two foot square sun lamp that kept the suicidal urges at bay for most of the rest of my winters in that grey, gloomy town.

I also really liked that scene you're talking about. Not sure you think it's terrible though, I really liked it all the way through. For people that don't know about it, it started off as a blog post on less wrong so the first chapter or so is a little different in style. If you want to see if you'd like it I suggest people read Chapter 10 (the sorting hat chapter) and if that appeals to you to go back and start from…

[Edit] * Not sure why

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

#568

Post by ddingus »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #328
Dowwie wrote: post #264

I finally read Frank Herbert's "Dune" this year and I'm so happy about the decision to finish the book. In the book are several references to what is known as the "Litany Against Fear". You may have come across references to it in pop culture, where the beginning is often cited. For instance, Elon Musk references it often. The Litany in its entirety: > "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-dea…

"Dune" taught me to evaluate what people don't say as much as what they do. The italics in Dune were brilliant.

Scrolling through this conversation has been interesting, but I have to resonate with your comment.

After reading Dune, what they do mattered much more to me, and it's changed how I appreciate dialog in film. When it's done right, and the actors do things in resonance, it's like you can see right into the soul of a character.

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

#569

Post by esoteriq »

kleton wrote: post #377
metroholografix wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found all 3 books to be vastly overrated and mediocre at best. I would bet money that in 10 years, few will even remember them. The translation doesn't help, but the issues with the books go beyond it. It's obvious that Cixin Liu is not a good writer. The characters in TBP are cardboard cutouts and his pacing and framing of ideas awful. I feel that there is merit in his imagination but it'd be better presented in a…

> The characters in TBP are cardboard cutouts Try to read this as Chinese literature and not apply Western standards. TBP is not about individual people but civilizations. Similarly, if you read Tale of Genji expecting a plot, you will be disappointed. But that doesn't mean it will be forgotten in 10 years.

Yep. Individual character development isn't Liu's strongest suit. His characters are mostly just allegories to prove a point. (Wenje - bitterness, Luo Ji - logic, etc.) But Liu is brilliant in his deception of mass psychology--the various ways in which large groups react to hopelessness.

Interestingly, I see a lot of parallels between Liu and Thomas Hardy. They both wrote sweeping tales that use individuals to represent abstract ideas. So, it's not just an Eastern thing.

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

#570

Post by maps7 »

Dowwie wrote: post #264

I finally read Frank Herbert's "Dune" this year and I'm so happy about the decision to finish the book. In the book are several references to what is known as the "Litany Against Fear". You may have come across references to it in pop culture, where the beginning is often cited. For instance, Elon Musk references it often. The Litany in its entirety: > "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-dea…

Has anyone listened to Dune as an audiobook and would you recommend it?
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