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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3703 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023

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So, what are you reading?

Still on Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. Decolonization is apparently a process of sweeping away the old- such as cheiftains, who only colonialists prop up- and creating a nation based purely on the material nature of the land and people (hence Fanon's insistence on re-evaluation of available resources rather than using already-existing channels).

Reparations will come because of the market, which makes capitalist forces either tear each other apart because of the surplus of competition after losing a foreign market, or help newly decolonized nations on their terms (assuming they stand fast). It sounds a little odd. After forcing settlers out by any means, they then lay claim to money which remains in foreign hands, but must not co-operate, but wait until the money comes begging. Fanon likened it to war reparations for WWII, and what is most interesting is that there is not a word about angling for prosecutions of crimes such as tortures.

Also picking up Federov's What Was Man Created For? The Philosophy of the Common Task. It's billed as a Christian precursor to transhumanism, which is bound to be interesting. In the words of Tolstoy:

He has devised a plan for a common task for humanity, the aim of which is the bodily resurrection of all humans. First, it is not as crazy as it sounds (don't worry, I do not and never have shared his views, but I have understood them enough to feel capable of defending them against any other beliefs of a similar material nature). Secondly, and most importantly, because of these beliefs he leads the purest Christian life...He is sixty, a pauper, gives away all he has, is always cheerful and meek.'

Still on The New Science of Narcissism.

Still reading Brothers Karamazov. Like Crime & Punishment the pace rises the further through the book I get but following 2rafa's comment that it's one of the funniest books she's ever read and hearing from friends that different translations can have substantially different tones I'm worried that the MacDuff translation I chose blindly is one of the more pedestrian translations. I'm not reading it twice but switching translation halfway could be an amusing option, the last section I read where Dmitry goes on a spree would probably make a good point to transition by just re-reading from that part on.

Read the Odyssey. Enjoyed it but not as much as the Iliad. It gets a bit slow once Odysseus makes it back to Ithaca. There are some colorful adventures along the way, and the greater presence and activity of women is notable. Some parts have a sort of "world's first fanfiction" vibe like when it wanks off some of the characters a bit too much.

On the other hand I find myself opening up the Iliad again to read random passages.

Started reading Neal Stephenson's Termination Shock. It's considered the Global Warming/Climate Change themed one. I'm about 20% of the way through so far.

I generally enjoy his books and writing style, though this one feels a bit more, I guess, vague and hand-wavey than most so far. It has a few interesting concepts so far that I haven't heard of anywhere else, like the idea of "earthsuits" to allow marginal people to survive easily in extra-hot conditions. It has a some vague shadows of being woke-adjacent, though not in a preachy sense - a character is gay, but it's treated in a pretty matter of fact way and not really mentioned any more than any other characters' sexuality, rather than with paens to how awesome and brave they are.

So far, I'm enjoying it reasonably well, maybe like 6 out of 10, though I could see that swinging either way as I get further into the book.

I absolutely despised Termination Shock, giving up on it halfway through.

The characters are boring and up their own arses, and while a "Termination Shock" could very well be an outcome of suddenly stopping geo-engineering, as Stephenson himself saw, the costs of re-instantiating it are so low that a determined billionaire or even poor nation states can resume it with ease unless all of civilization has collapsed.

I will strongly recommend Anathem, it was my favorite novel by him, and a solid book overall.

Haven't read Anathem, but I did really like Reamde, Seveneves, and Cryptonomicon.

but I did really like Reamde

I found it about twice as long as it should have been. There's a passable international thriller inside, combined with a lot of MMORPG wankery, and I had a strong feeling Neal really wanted to write about the latter, but no one wanted to publish a book called "The Ideas Guy: MMORPG edition".

I found it about twice as long as it should have been.

Do you happen to remember how long it takes before it gets good? I thought I was a fan of Stephenson's spectrum all the way from "fun but too wacky" (e.g. Snow Crash) through "fascinating but too slow" (e.g. the Baroque Cycle), and Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books ever ... but I put down Reamde before anything interesting had happened in it, and I've never bothered to pick it up again.

In my opinion, the first "good" / exciting part is the stolen credit card deal, which on my Kindle shows as page 67. It's a bit of a slowish start, with the exciting bits gradually getting more common as the story goes on. I wouldn't be surprised if some people would rather skim his long-winded explanations of things. But I think there's plenty of crazy and exciting stuff going on by the final third or so of the book.

It doesn't get good. I think the best part is when the Russian hitman finds himself abandoned and alone in Xiamen and comes up with a plan to fix his suspicious appearance and reach the resident British spy lady. I guess that's it. There's some cool stuff later in the book, but if you want cool stuff, then Snow Crash is 95% cool stuff, as is Stross/Doctorow's Rapture of the Nerds. Personally I think Anathem has the best balance between a plot that stands alone on its own and cool stuff.

Don't get me started on Seveneves, it goes from being a good book for two thirds of the length, to something.

I might be in the minority, but I actually liked the third part of Seveneves. The characters aren't exactly impressive, and several aspects seemed rather dubious, but the tech was cool and I enjoyed the positive tone compared to how dark the depressing the first two parts are.

Overall I liked it, but the weird side plot about the queen of Denmark's sex life bordered on prurient.

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