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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2464 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 16, 2022

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Somebody please recommend me some cosmic horror to read. I prefer cosmic horror of the Chambers variety, but I would be happy with anything really. I don't even mind if it isn't horror - if it spends a lot of time hanging out with strange beings we can hardly comprehend that would be neat, especially if it deals with things like memetic contagion - although I would prefer books with high body counts.

The titles I have most recently read which are along the lines of what I'm thinking of are stuff like the JDATE series (although less comedy and idiocy would be better for my current mood) by Jason Pargin, The Library at Mt Char by Scott Hawkins, The Immaculate Void by Brian Hodge, There is No Antimemetics Division by QNTM, and even Perdido Street Station by China Mielville would work (I also reread Kraken recently but PSS is a better example of an outlier).

Also, while I would prefer a book, any cosmic horror media recommendations with similarities to the King in Yellow would be appreciated.

Mostly not horror, and I think the bits with strange-beings-we-can-comprehend-after-some-effort are better than the bits with strange-beings-we-can-hardly-comprehend, but you might like Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep". Maybe Peter Watts' "Blindsight"? I think those are the two books I've read that have come the closest to truly answering John Campbell's famous challenge, "Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man".

I tried to read A Fire Upon The Deep when I was a teenager and couldn't get into it. From memory the writing quality veered from fantastic to awful and back again and the plot didn't hook me, so I moved on. But I had different sensibilities back then, so I'll give it another go.

Blindsight I haven't read because when it came out all I heard about it was "space vampires!" and so I put it in the category of Brian Lumley style shlock (which I love sometimes, but it isn't what I'm looking for right now) and forgot about it. But you have sold me on it too, if you think it meets that challenge!

Watts' slideshow on vampire biology is what sold me that it wasn't schlock... but hunting that link down now I can only find the original Flash format. He has an appendix with some material in the same vein but that's loaded with spoilers.

AFotD has a sequel with problems (not nearly as interesting) and a prequel with very different problems (the horror bits are horrifying but very personal and not at all cosmic) but I had zero complaints about the first book... which you should probably take as a warning sign; your tastes and mine may just differ too much for my recommendations to be useful for you.

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