Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World • Hacker News Board

Re: Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

#91

Post by Sin2x » Tue, Sep 27, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

daniel-cussen wrote: post #90

Sin2x wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it was actually written after the revolution and the so-called "War communism" phase of the 1918-1921 Russia. To me it's more of a study on how the collectivist "paradise" would work after it works out its growing pains.

Things got ironed out quite a bit, the fifties and sixties were really good. Cuban Revolution, suddenly there was sugar in the kitchen. Big sugar rations! Increased rations! Then later increased even more! And while yes basically they were poor they were at least all equally poor, that is a much better outcome. They had privacy from Capitalism (weren't getting big data analytics extracted from them), and plus, Russia…

Fifties and sixties weren't really collectivist (neither was any time except for the war communism of 1918-1921 for that matter). Individual citizens had private property.

Re: Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

#92

Post by daniel-cussen » Tue, Sep 27, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

Sin2x wrote: post #91

daniel-cussen wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things got ironed out quite a bit, the fifties and sixties were really good. Cuban Revolution, suddenly there was sugar in the kitchen. Big sugar rations! Increased rations! Then later increased even more! And while yes basically they were poor they were at least all equally poor, that is a much better outcome. They had privacy from Capitalism (weren't getting big data analytics extracted from them), and plus, Russia…

Fifties and sixties weren't really collectivist (neither was any time except for the war communism of 1918-1921 for that matter). Individual citizens had private property.

Always always there's private property, always, like it is not about whether you own your own underwear it's more about who owns the means of production. And further I highly question sources I don't personally read in Russia, in Russian, because if you read it in English in Oceania you're reading what the defectors say. 100% pure defector speech. Why would a Russian Communist suck up to the West and write in American English? Or a Chilean Marxist, would he speak American English that ordinary Americans could read? How could that ever come about? There's tons of Chileans who are very talented and got offers to study or work in USA and they learned enough American to say "FUCK THAT SHIT!"

Why? Because they consider America the culprit of 9/11, you know 9/11, nine eleven, nine eleven. The 9/11 bombings. The 9/11 bombings and terrorism. The 9/11 bombings and terrorism that were commemorated 38 years later with similar direct deaths and highly monument-specific bombs, as a retaliation for 9/11. 3000 dead, 3000 dead, no children, no children, monument, monument, capital, capital, terrorism, terrorism. Nine eleven.

Re: Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

#93

Post by defrost » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 4:59 AM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #7

defrost wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polish in birth and in spirit, a Soviet writer by location duing his more productive years: > Lem was born in 1921 in Lwów, interwar Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) > In 1945, Lwow was annexed into the Soviet Ukraine, and the family, along with many other Polish citizens, was resettled to Kraków, where Lem, at his father's insistence, took up medical studies at the Jagiellonian University. > After the war, under the Polis…

That's a mighty stretch you try to construct. Born in Poland, lived in Poland, just had the bad luck for being there during times when soviets cough cough russians were taking whatever want, and terrorizing the rest. For most Polish people this would be quite an insult even disregarding current war waged by russia just next to them, which is pretty much impossible to ignore if you live there.

FWiW I have a couple of good friends | past co-workers from Poland in addition to one fairly influential teacher (I'm in Australia) and understand the history and absolutely not Soviet aspect of this argument.

The phrase "Soviet Writer" can be treated more loosely though and can be taken to embrace those that wrote about or had their writing influenced by Soviet events and it's difficult to imagine Lem not being aware of nor affected by the social upheaval radiating out from the formation of the USSR.

His identity is Polish, his writing contains elements that stem from | react to Soviet history and culture .. it's hard to write and not be affected by loud neighbours that raid your kitchen and stomp on your belongings.

Re: Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

#94

Post by thesz » Sun, Oct 02, 2022, 11:12 PM UTC

yamtaddle wrote: post #54

thesz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are talking about second Prey game, not the first. First Prey game was unusual first person shooter, very interesting one. I haven't played second game.

Right, the basically entirely-unrelated game under the exact same name, from 2017, not the one from 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2017_video_game) (tons of spoilers there, I'm sure) [EDIT] It'd also have been pretty weird if the '06 Prey had seemed like it had some Blindsight DNA, since that novel was released a few months after the '06 Prey. And I don't want to overstate the connection, but it's enough t…

I was not able to finish Blindsight. It is too pretentious for me, it ignores what state of art was at the time. Let me quote an old comment [1] of mine:

Do you know that current 1sqkm radio telescopes produce data that can't be processed at real time in any cluster environment in use at 2015-2016? They scan skies at precision I just cannot express in words, let's try math.

https://www.skatelescope.org/uploaded/2950_31734_2007_IAU_Ta...

"...with a resolution of few micro-angular-seconds..."

sin(5/57/60/60/1000000) equals to 2.4366472e-11. It is sine of roughly 5 micro angular seconds (1 radian is about 57 degrees). 1/sin(5/57/60/60/1000000) is roughly equal to distance where current SKA can distinguish 1 meter radio-emitting object and it equals to about 41 million kilometers - a fourth of the distance between Sun and Earth.

These Firefall objects just won't be "unnoticeable until their entry to the atmosphere" in the state of the art sky scaling systems of Blindsight's time.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381870

Despite me being very unrespectful to Watts works, I recognize his influence. So, what is this Blindsight-related-story you are talking about? I read many of them and I cannot remember any that resembles your description.