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There Is No Antimemetics Division (2018)

(qntm.org)
728 points squircle | 2 comments | 12 Aug 24 13:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.572s | source
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epiccoleman ◴[12 Aug 24 23:18 UTC] No.41230463[source]▶
If you like this kind of thing, the rest of qntm's work is definitely worth checking out - as evidenced already in several comments. Another good pointer to follow is to Unsong and Scott Alexander's other fiction (all shorts, spread through his old blog Slate Star Codex and new blog Astral Codex Ten).

Both of those were already mentioned, so let me drop a recommendation for something new - Worm, the first (and absolutely massive) book in Wildbow's Parahumans series. Iirc it's longer than all 5 published ASOIAF novels combined, so it's a big commitment, but that length moves through a ton of different arcs. It's centered around a "superheroes" kind of scenario with a level of analysis and thought that'll tickle the fancy of certain kinds of nerds. The main character's power is to control bugs - and it's a lot of fun to see the author make that seemingly lame power into something incredibly useful and lethal. It's just a fun read overall, lots of room to nerd out about it. I haven't read the sequel yet, but I've read good things.

Also, though they're more mainstream, Greg Egan and Ted Chiang are some of the best spec-fic / sci-fi authors I know of, and do a similarly great job of breaking down interesting concepts into compelling stories.

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RangerScience ◴[13 Aug 24 00:54 UTC] No.41231078[source]▶
Seconding all of the recommendations. Wildbow (author or Worm) has a number of other works (Twig got rave reviews; I’m uncommon in liking Pact)

And, if you like those… I’ll also recommend Practical Guide to Evil (and that author’s next and in-progress work, Pale Lights)

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1. imperfect_blue ◴[15 Aug 24 15:56 UTC] No.41257466[source]▶
I read Practical Guide to Evil to the end. It started out amazingly strong, but suffering from increasing worse pacing problems as the series progresses, where the plot progression slows to a crawl with increasing amounts of build-ups and sidetracks.

Also every second character is LGBT, which was deeply distracting when reading it because of how much it's emphasized. I'm normally not be bothered by such things but APGtE did it especially badly.

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2. kurisufag ◴[16 Aug 24 03:10 UTC] No.41262796[source]▶
I consistently confuse PGTE with `How to Succeed in Evil', which is talked about far less often, and every time someone mentions the former I try to re-find the title of the latter and wonder if I somehow phased into an alternate worldline where it doesn't exist. I'll put in a rec for HtSiE, it's nothing special but wrt rational fiction there are some classic scenes.

>Also every second character is LGBT,

The people who write these things live in spaces on the internet (or, rarely, in real life) where that's true, and they can't quite seem to grasp that it isn't normal.