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Julia

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Re: Julia

#11

Post by cwnyth »

sevensor wrote: post #10
cwnyth wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clicked on it because I thought it was about the programming language Julia. I'm still not fully sure what Julia here actually is.

Julia Set. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_set

Thank you!

Re: Julia

#12

Post by khafra »

NuclearPM wrote: post #2

Needs a twist or a reason to care about the characters.

They're the last living humans, and the last human-derived mind?

I like Cordwainer Smith and Peter Watts; so I really liked this blend of their styles and subjects.

Re: Julia

#14

Post by pvillano »

My [interpretation? fanfic?] is that Julia is like a carnivore, and humanity is not it's first prey. Every creature that eats, eats to steal the disentropy of it's meal. Plants can steal order from sunlight, and certain microbes can steal order from thermal vents, but carnivores, herbivores, and decomposers steal order from the work of other organisms. The improbability of living is sustained by arranging stolen amino acids into one's own proteins, powered by the toppleing of sugar towers back into a jumbled mess.

Julia does not reassemble amino acids like earth life does. But it does absorb disentropy from it's prey. The extreme specificity of an interstellar spacecraft, it's contents and occupants, is absorbed by Julia, so that it can move, grow, and attract more prey.

Re: Julia

#18

Post by dannyobrien »

Edd314159 wrote: post #16
yolkedgeek wrote: post #13

Am I too dumb? I literally understand none of this.

Right there with you. Everyone else on HN is a genius so will love it, but for me this is just incoherent words.

What parts of it were confusing? I think science fiction can be confusing if you haven’t read a lot of it, because part of its art is to try and set the scene in as compact way as possible, with a combination of cues that you can work out from their context or by reference (like “laminate” and “squarely” — yes, I had to look it up), and some are the puzzles that the rest of the story will resolve (who/what is Julia? What do they want?)

It’s ok if it’s not your thing. It’s like an emotional crossword puzzle.

Re: Julia

#19

Post by n4r9 »

sevensor wrote: post #10
cwnyth wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clicked on it because I thought it was about the programming language Julia. I'm still not fully sure what Julia here actually is.

Julia Set. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_set

Funny how that page spends so much of the introduction comparing Julia to Fatou, but the page for Fatou only mentions Julia in passing.
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