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3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
1 Star
I started reading [b:The Rapture of the Nerds|13538762|The Rapture of the Nerds|Cory Doctorow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1335124441s/13538762.jpg|19101112] last year, but it was not engaging so I put it aside for several months. I finally forced myself to finish it. While it had an interesting concept, the writing was bombastic, the plot was chaotic, and character development was pretty much nonexistent.
If that paragraph does not grab your attention, then you probably should not read this book. Because the whole damn thing is written like that. It’s a clusterf*ck surrounded by a dense miasma of pretentiousness and confusion. And it certainly did not help that the book is coauthored and written in present tense: two things I am not fond of.
The book is set in a cyberpunk post-singularity world. I cannot tell you much more than that because I honestly never gained a good grasp of what the hell was going on. Almost everything is built of “smartmatter” which can be easily manipulated into almost anything. With a few clicks, your smart bathroom could brush your teeth, cut your hair, or give you gender reassignment surgery. So you really don’t want to hit the wrong button on the toilet.
Anyway, the story dumps you in with no background information. Seriously, the worldbuilding was horrendous – like you got roofied and woke up on another planet but everyone treats you like an idiot if you try to find out what happened. I was ridiculously far into the story before the authors deigned to give even the most cursory of background information. I had no idea what was going on. And I really did not enjoy feeling so disoriented. I was grasping at straws the entire time trying to figure things out. The short version? There was someone named Huw who was technophobic and utterly lacking in personality. He got jury duty, and then somehow ended up being the only person who could save the universe. I have no idea how or why because his skill set was as lacking as his personality. The other characters were just as flat. The writing was self-indulgent and lacked cohesion. And the plot was chaos followed by deus ex machina. This certainly was not “mindbendingly entertaining” as the cover advertised.
Maybe somewhere in there was a message about humanity, but I certainly could not find it. This definitely was not the book for me.
RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 1 Star
Writing Style: 1 Star
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 1 Star
Level of Captivation: 1 Star
Originality: 2 Stars
I started reading [b:The Rapture of the Nerds|13538762|The Rapture of the Nerds|Cory Doctorow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1335124441s/13538762.jpg|19101112] last year, but it was not engaging so I put it aside for several months. I finally forced myself to finish it. While it had an interesting concept, the writing was bombastic, the plot was chaotic, and character development was pretty much nonexistent.
"The system from the outside resembles a spherical fogbank radiating in the infrared spectrum; a matryoshka brain nested Dyson spheres built from the dismantled bones of moons and planets. The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar system has largely sworn off its pre-posthuman cousins dirtside, but its mind sometimes wanders nostalgiawise. When that happens, it casually spams Earth’s RF spectrum with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems.”
If that paragraph does not grab your attention, then you probably should not read this book. Because the whole damn thing is written like that. It’s a clusterf*ck surrounded by a dense miasma of pretentiousness and confusion. And it certainly did not help that the book is coauthored and written in present tense: two things I am not fond of.
The book is set in a cyberpunk post-singularity world. I cannot tell you much more than that because I honestly never gained a good grasp of what the hell was going on. Almost everything is built of “smartmatter” which can be easily manipulated into almost anything. With a few clicks, your smart bathroom could brush your teeth, cut your hair, or give you gender reassignment surgery. So you really don’t want to hit the wrong button on the toilet.
Anyway, the story dumps you in with no background information. Seriously, the worldbuilding was horrendous – like you got roofied and woke up on another planet but everyone treats you like an idiot if you try to find out what happened. I was ridiculously far into the story before the authors deigned to give even the most cursory of background information. I had no idea what was going on. And I really did not enjoy feeling so disoriented. I was grasping at straws the entire time trying to figure things out. The short version? There was someone named Huw who was technophobic and utterly lacking in personality. He got jury duty, and then somehow ended up being the only person who could save the universe. I have no idea how or why because his skill set was as lacking as his personality. The other characters were just as flat. The writing was self-indulgent and lacked cohesion. And the plot was chaos followed by deus ex machina. This certainly was not “mindbendingly entertaining” as the cover advertised.
Maybe somewhere in there was a message about humanity, but I certainly could not find it. This definitely was not the book for me.
RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 1 Star
Writing Style: 1 Star
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 1 Star
Level of Captivation: 1 Star
Originality: 2 Stars
I'm sure there are folks that this appeals to. for me this was a slog through the authors trying to come up with their cleverest meatspace analogies and gender bending character mash ups.
Doctorow, Cory, and Charles Stross. The Rapture of the Nerds. Tor, 2012.
In The Rapture of the Nerds Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross are out on the kind of lark that only they could create. You have Doctorow’s skepticism about the Internet of Things and Stross’s Kafkaesque satire of bureaucracy on full display. And when they get together to lampoon American religious bigotry and hypocrisy, they pull all the stops. Here’s the premise: Hugh is a neo-luddite Welsh potter, whose parents have given up their meat bodies for a virtual life in in space. Poor Hugh is drawn into the center of things when he is put on a jury to evaluate the effects of off-planet technology on terrestrial society. Hugh is an absolute innocent in machinations that are his worst nightmares. Rapture holds up very well on rereading.
In The Rapture of the Nerds Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross are out on the kind of lark that only they could create. You have Doctorow’s skepticism about the Internet of Things and Stross’s Kafkaesque satire of bureaucracy on full display. And when they get together to lampoon American religious bigotry and hypocrisy, they pull all the stops. Here’s the premise: Hugh is a neo-luddite Welsh potter, whose parents have given up their meat bodies for a virtual life in in space. Poor Hugh is drawn into the center of things when he is put on a jury to evaluate the effects of off-planet technology on terrestrial society. Hugh is an absolute innocent in machinations that are his worst nightmares. Rapture holds up very well on rereading.
Uuuh I have never read anything like this. Stross and Doctorow go at such a breakneck speed with their prose that I can only compare it to uploading yourself to a computer. Every sentence there might be three or four references to complex geopolitical situations, early meme culture, space engineering techniques, and European banking. This is like the Ben & Jerry's of literature: full of chunky bits, not very good for you, and you can finish the whole thing only if you're in the right mood. I didn't love the plot, the characters, or the conflict, but that wacky wacky prose really got me through. It's just something so alien to me as a reader, but it engages my brain and my weird localized knowledge surrounding the SFF world and all the topics the authors touch on, from the Iraq War to galatic Malthesian sims. 6/10, I'd say, but wow was it something. Could've used a damn better title.
Interesting storyline with lots of twists, well-written, but characters lack depth.
Most writing collaborations I’ve seen, especially when they come from two authors I like individually, have been disappointing, often watering down the unique qualities of each writer to find a middle ground that is less interesting than each writers style on its own. TRotN is probably the first time where I’ve seen the opposite happening, two (in my opinion) damn good writers who managed to perfectly complement each other. The often more optimistic and benign mode of Doctorow mixed with the more vicious and pessimistic tone of Stross, offering a humorous take on the singularity whose comedy has an extremely sharp bite unusual for Doctorow, yet still shows some measure of hope and goodwill that is often entirely missing in Stross’ fiction.
In many ways, it seems like a big middle finger to the singularitarians, a bookend to Stross’ own Accelerando and an antidote to its future-obsessed and almost Heinleinian-übermensch-type main character Manfred Macx. While Doctorow himself never really wrote anything directly about the singularity, except maybe in some shorts, his depiction of post-scarcity societies aimed at the same target audience, and together with Stross seemed to ride on a similar wave of third- or fourth-wave hard SF enthusiasm, until it all ebbed away.
Huw Jones, our hapless hero (similar to Arthur Dent in Douglas Adams THGttG) wounds up in events he doesn’t actually wants a part in but is forced to participate, to save at various point Earth or what remains of the human race. Never the driving force, but rather the puppet of shadowy players, who hide behind many layers and use him as a ping-pong ball in their existential as well as philosophical battles.
There’s rarely a moment of rest, everything spins faster and faster and stakes get raised to almost insane levels until it looks like it couldn’t go farther or get worse, but then it does. Originally started as a single story collaboration that got a sequel and then later a third to finish of a whole book, it’s a tour-de-force that, like Accelerando, has an extremely high idea density and tries to show of its cleverness in almost every sentence. That said, unlike Accelerando, its infused with humor and level of self-awareness almost completely absent in the former work, which makes it, not better, just different (also much funnier).
When Accelerando came out, lots of people fell prey to the whole technological singularity belief system and took it as axiomatic dogma. Accelerando didn’t even make it look good, merely glossed over most of the terrors it invoked. TRotN hammers those terrors home from every page, shows just what we have to lose if something like the singularity would really happen and just how helpless all of us would really be, how little power we would have to deal with it or shape those events. Some of the people who follow the Kurzweil-cult imagine themselves at the top of a wave of change, just like Rand-cultists imagine themselves as John Galt instead of the billions of nameless randos who were his victims.
For all of that, this is a pretty entertaining, fast read that masks most of its intention by never preaching outright and allows you to enjoy it just as a wild ride if you chose to do so. Even if you don’t care for the subtext, it has lots of clever science fictional ideas and knows how to make them work as part of the story.
I wasn’t expecting much from the book (as I said in the beginning, most of the collaborations I’ve read were pretty meh), but its probably one of the best surprises I had in recent times.
In many ways, it seems like a big middle finger to the singularitarians, a bookend to Stross’ own Accelerando and an antidote to its future-obsessed and almost Heinleinian-übermensch-type main character Manfred Macx. While Doctorow himself never really wrote anything directly about the singularity, except maybe in some shorts, his depiction of post-scarcity societies aimed at the same target audience, and together with Stross seemed to ride on a similar wave of third- or fourth-wave hard SF enthusiasm, until it all ebbed away.
Huw Jones, our hapless hero (similar to Arthur Dent in Douglas Adams THGttG) wounds up in events he doesn’t actually wants a part in but is forced to participate, to save at various point Earth or what remains of the human race. Never the driving force, but rather the puppet of shadowy players, who hide behind many layers and use him as a ping-pong ball in their existential as well as philosophical battles.
There’s rarely a moment of rest, everything spins faster and faster and stakes get raised to almost insane levels until it looks like it couldn’t go farther or get worse, but then it does. Originally started as a single story collaboration that got a sequel and then later a third to finish of a whole book, it’s a tour-de-force that, like Accelerando, has an extremely high idea density and tries to show of its cleverness in almost every sentence. That said, unlike Accelerando, its infused with humor and level of self-awareness almost completely absent in the former work, which makes it, not better, just different (also much funnier).
When Accelerando came out, lots of people fell prey to the whole technological singularity belief system and took it as axiomatic dogma. Accelerando didn’t even make it look good, merely glossed over most of the terrors it invoked. TRotN hammers those terrors home from every page, shows just what we have to lose if something like the singularity would really happen and just how helpless all of us would really be, how little power we would have to deal with it or shape those events. Some of the people who follow the Kurzweil-cult imagine themselves at the top of a wave of change, just like Rand-cultists imagine themselves as John Galt instead of the billions of nameless randos who were his victims.
For all of that, this is a pretty entertaining, fast read that masks most of its intention by never preaching outright and allows you to enjoy it just as a wild ride if you chose to do so. Even if you don’t care for the subtext, it has lots of clever science fictional ideas and knows how to make them work as part of the story.
I wasn’t expecting much from the book (as I said in the beginning, most of the collaborations I’ve read were pretty meh), but its probably one of the best surprises I had in recent times.
Not so keen on this book. [a:Charlie Stross|5821298|Charlie Stross|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] wrote [b:Accelerando|17863|Accelerando|Charles Stross|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1388240687s/17863.jpg|930555] in the early 2000s ([a:Cory Doctorow|12581|Cory Doctorow|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1361468756p2/12581.jpg] also wrote a singularity book). Both apparently no longer agree that a singularity is likely or desirable, and hence have written this book to counter act those.
It's a relatively standard Stross/Doctorow book. But I just didn't really get too invested in it. Plot wise it's a little all over the place. It didn't grip me like other books have.
It's a relatively standard Stross/Doctorow book. But I just didn't really get too invested in it. Plot wise it's a little all over the place. It didn't grip me like other books have.
Doctorow, Cory e Charles Stross (2012). The Rapture of the Nerds. A Tale of the Singularity, Posthumanity, and Awkward Social Situations. New York: Tom Doherty Associates. 2012. ISBN 9781429944915. Pagine 352. 13,77 €
Il primo romanzo (o uno dei primi, e comunque il primo che ho letto io) sulla Singularity, o meglio – come recita il sottotitolo – sull’umanità della post-singularity.
La Singularity, o Singolarità tecnologica come la traduce in italiano Wikipedia, è legata all’idea che il progresso tecnologico acceleri fina a raggiungere un punto oltre la capacità di comprendere e prevedere degli esseri umani, aprendo il campo all’avvento di una intelligenza superiore a quella umana biologica e all’incremento artificiale e sintetico delle facoltà intellettive e delle capacità vitali di ciascuno. Se volete saperne di più, vi consiglio di leggere la voce di Wikipedia Singolarità tecnologica e i link che vi trovate. Quello che so io sull’argomento, che non è moltissimo ma nemmeno poco, l’ho imparato leggendo un imponente librone di Ray Kurzweil, famoso soprattutto per i suoi sintetizzatori ma in realtà inventaore dall’ingegno quasi rinascimentale, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.
Kurzweil, un visionario al limite della follia che fa più soldi di quelli che riesce a sperperare, ne ha fatto anche un film, che però non ho visto. Questo il trailer:
Naturalmente, tentare di immaginare come saranno la vita, la società, i rapporti e le dinamiche interpersonali dopo un cambiamento così radicale, su cui ovviamente neppure i futurologi sono d’accordo non è per niente facile. È la freccia del tempo, ricordate? anche se il passato è uno solo i futuri sono infiniti:
There are many futures and only one status quo. This is why conservatives mostly agree and radicals always argue. [Brian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices. London Faber & Faber. 1996, p. 133]
Inventarsi una storia che sia altrettanto fantasticamente strana come la prospettiva stessa della singolarità, poi, è impresa quasi impossibile. Ma è quello che sia aspettano gli acquirenti e i lettori del vostro romanzo, cari autori. We won’t settle for less.
Purtroppo non ce l’avete fatta. A meno che vogliate proprio farci credere che l’incredibile attesa per la singolarità, che io per parte mia aspetto con più ansietà del ritorno di Cristo in terra, sfocerà in dopo in cui non solo la natura umana resterà sostanzialmente immutata (e questo non faccio troppa fatica ad accettarlo, anche se mi sembra che i grandi cambiamenti tecnologici abbiano anche cambiato radicalmente il nostro modo di pensare e di agire, come argomenta efficacemente Steven Pinker a proposito della violenza: The Better Angels of Our Nature), ma si porterà dietro tutti i guai di un American way of life da satira se non da barzelletta: un sistema giudiziario capriccioso e incomprensibile, i fondamentalisti cristiani, i padri assenti e le madri invadenti. Tutto troppo già letto e già visto.
Un’altra cosa, come diceva il compianto Steve Jobs: non è un romanzo solo, sono tre tenuti insieme da una tenue cornice, come i Classici di Topolino o più nobilmente, il Decamerone o i Racconti di Canterbury. O come una commedia all’italiana degli anni Settanta.
* * *
Però gli autori hanno intelligenza e arguzia da vendere, e il romanzo ha più di un passo memorabile. Di seguito le mie annotazioni, con i riferimenti numerici all’edizione Kindle.
“Of course it’s organic—nothing but carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and a bit of phosphorous and sulfur.” [66]
“’Ello!” he says around a mouthful of Huw’s sandwich. “You look interesting. Let’s have a conversation!”
“You don’t look interesting to me,” Huw says, plunking the rest of his food in the backpacker’s lap. “Let’s not.” [190]
[…] a twenty-first-century situationist artist or politician called Sarah Palin. [761]
Boy, you can snap your fingers and before you know what’s happening, there’s a flash conspiracy in action—not your real good old-fashioned secret new world order, nobody can be arsed tracking those things these days, but the next best thing. A self-propagating teleology meme. Goal-seeking Neat Ideas are the most dangerous kind. [955]
[…] Don’t get up to anything I wouldn’t.” [985]
[…] thick gubernatorial Austro-Californian accent. [1172]
[…] neverglades […] [1259]
[…] a very Grimm fairy tale […] [1311]
[…] trash-transcential-transcendental […] [1454]
Yesterday, all his troubles, so far away. [1469]
[…] “It’s the gnostic sexual underground,” […] [1521]
[…] First Church of the Teledildonic […] [1568]
[…] No skin, no sin […] [1582]
“You don’t need to know,” Sam says calmly, “’cuz if you knew, I’d have to edit your memories, and the only way I know to do that these days is by killing you.” [1760]
He’s Asperger’s. Me, I’m just poorly socialized with a recursive introspective agnosia and a deficient situational relationship model. [1788]
[…] from sodomy to simony by way of barratry and antimony. [1904]
Hyperspace bypasses, Vogon poetry, the heat death of the universe: none of these things feature in the extraordinary situation now pertaining to the end of the world as Huw knows it. [2458]
But love is blind, and love that mourns for loss is blinder still, and Huw loved Bonnie, and nothing would change that. [2498]
There is no invisible sky daddy to give us immortal life and a harp and wings when we die. If we want an afterlife, we have to work hard and make it for ourselves. [2684]
“Conspiracy theories are even more tedious than identity politics. You have beliefs and I have logfiles. Which one of us is more likely to be right?” [2744]
“You are the reductionist in this particular moment, I’m afraid. You wanted to feel happy, so you took steps that you correctly predicted would change your mental state to approach this feeling. How is that any different from wanting to be happy and eating a pint of ice cream to attain it? Apart from the calories and the reliability, that is. If you had practiced meditation for decades, you would have acquired the same capacity, only you would have smugly congratulated yourself for achieving emotional mastery. Ascribing virtue to doing things the hard, unsystematic, inefficient way is self-rationalizing bullshit that lets stupid people feel superior to the rest of the world. Trust me, I’m a djinni: There’s no shame in taking a shortcut or two in life.” [2889]
Different governments all tended to blur at the edges anyway, into a weird molten glob of Trilateralist Davos Bilderberger paranoia, feuding and backbiting in pursuit of the biggest office and the flashiest VIP jet. [2945]
“You just don’t want me to put metal in the microwave, because then I’d have as much power as you,” Huw says, quoting a memorable bit of propaganda from the contentious era of the uplifting, a quote from Saint Larson, one of the period’s many canonized funnybeings. [3005]
[…] there but for random luck go I […] [3241]
[…] “On the basis of a sample size of one,” […] [3829]
[…] borderline-aspie nerd […] [3837]
He’s a really smart high-functioning Asperger’s case who deals with social interaction by emulating it in his head, running a set of social heuristics, and looking for positive-sum outcomes. [3911]
[…] when confronted with limitless possibility and potential, the only legitimate response is to voluntarily assume constraint. Free jazz has its place, but it’s interesting only in contrast to the rigid structures in which it is embedded. [4115]
There’s an old saying about never attributing to a conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence. [4323: la massima sarebbe addirittura di origine napoleonica: Hanlon's razor]
Il primo romanzo (o uno dei primi, e comunque il primo che ho letto io) sulla Singularity, o meglio – come recita il sottotitolo – sull’umanità della post-singularity.
La Singularity, o Singolarità tecnologica come la traduce in italiano Wikipedia, è legata all’idea che il progresso tecnologico acceleri fina a raggiungere un punto oltre la capacità di comprendere e prevedere degli esseri umani, aprendo il campo all’avvento di una intelligenza superiore a quella umana biologica e all’incremento artificiale e sintetico delle facoltà intellettive e delle capacità vitali di ciascuno. Se volete saperne di più, vi consiglio di leggere la voce di Wikipedia Singolarità tecnologica e i link che vi trovate. Quello che so io sull’argomento, che non è moltissimo ma nemmeno poco, l’ho imparato leggendo un imponente librone di Ray Kurzweil, famoso soprattutto per i suoi sintetizzatori ma in realtà inventaore dall’ingegno quasi rinascimentale, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.
Kurzweil, un visionario al limite della follia che fa più soldi di quelli che riesce a sperperare, ne ha fatto anche un film, che però non ho visto. Questo il trailer:
Naturalmente, tentare di immaginare come saranno la vita, la società, i rapporti e le dinamiche interpersonali dopo un cambiamento così radicale, su cui ovviamente neppure i futurologi sono d’accordo non è per niente facile. È la freccia del tempo, ricordate? anche se il passato è uno solo i futuri sono infiniti:
There are many futures and only one status quo. This is why conservatives mostly agree and radicals always argue. [Brian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices. London Faber & Faber. 1996, p. 133]
Inventarsi una storia che sia altrettanto fantasticamente strana come la prospettiva stessa della singolarità, poi, è impresa quasi impossibile. Ma è quello che sia aspettano gli acquirenti e i lettori del vostro romanzo, cari autori. We won’t settle for less.
Purtroppo non ce l’avete fatta. A meno che vogliate proprio farci credere che l’incredibile attesa per la singolarità, che io per parte mia aspetto con più ansietà del ritorno di Cristo in terra, sfocerà in dopo in cui non solo la natura umana resterà sostanzialmente immutata (e questo non faccio troppa fatica ad accettarlo, anche se mi sembra che i grandi cambiamenti tecnologici abbiano anche cambiato radicalmente il nostro modo di pensare e di agire, come argomenta efficacemente Steven Pinker a proposito della violenza: The Better Angels of Our Nature), ma si porterà dietro tutti i guai di un American way of life da satira se non da barzelletta: un sistema giudiziario capriccioso e incomprensibile, i fondamentalisti cristiani, i padri assenti e le madri invadenti. Tutto troppo già letto e già visto.
Un’altra cosa, come diceva il compianto Steve Jobs: non è un romanzo solo, sono tre tenuti insieme da una tenue cornice, come i Classici di Topolino o più nobilmente, il Decamerone o i Racconti di Canterbury. O come una commedia all’italiana degli anni Settanta.
* * *
Però gli autori hanno intelligenza e arguzia da vendere, e il romanzo ha più di un passo memorabile. Di seguito le mie annotazioni, con i riferimenti numerici all’edizione Kindle.
“Of course it’s organic—nothing but carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and a bit of phosphorous and sulfur.” [66]
“’Ello!” he says around a mouthful of Huw’s sandwich. “You look interesting. Let’s have a conversation!”
“You don’t look interesting to me,” Huw says, plunking the rest of his food in the backpacker’s lap. “Let’s not.” [190]
[…] a twenty-first-century situationist artist or politician called Sarah Palin. [761]
Boy, you can snap your fingers and before you know what’s happening, there’s a flash conspiracy in action—not your real good old-fashioned secret new world order, nobody can be arsed tracking those things these days, but the next best thing. A self-propagating teleology meme. Goal-seeking Neat Ideas are the most dangerous kind. [955]
[…] Don’t get up to anything I wouldn’t.” [985]
[…] thick gubernatorial Austro-Californian accent. [1172]
[…] neverglades […] [1259]
[…] a very Grimm fairy tale […] [1311]
[…] trash-transcential-transcendental […] [1454]
Yesterday, all his troubles, so far away. [1469]
[…] “It’s the gnostic sexual underground,” […] [1521]
[…] First Church of the Teledildonic […] [1568]
[…] No skin, no sin […] [1582]
“You don’t need to know,” Sam says calmly, “’cuz if you knew, I’d have to edit your memories, and the only way I know to do that these days is by killing you.” [1760]
He’s Asperger’s. Me, I’m just poorly socialized with a recursive introspective agnosia and a deficient situational relationship model. [1788]
[…] from sodomy to simony by way of barratry and antimony. [1904]
Hyperspace bypasses, Vogon poetry, the heat death of the universe: none of these things feature in the extraordinary situation now pertaining to the end of the world as Huw knows it. [2458]
But love is blind, and love that mourns for loss is blinder still, and Huw loved Bonnie, and nothing would change that. [2498]
There is no invisible sky daddy to give us immortal life and a harp and wings when we die. If we want an afterlife, we have to work hard and make it for ourselves. [2684]
“Conspiracy theories are even more tedious than identity politics. You have beliefs and I have logfiles. Which one of us is more likely to be right?” [2744]
“You are the reductionist in this particular moment, I’m afraid. You wanted to feel happy, so you took steps that you correctly predicted would change your mental state to approach this feeling. How is that any different from wanting to be happy and eating a pint of ice cream to attain it? Apart from the calories and the reliability, that is. If you had practiced meditation for decades, you would have acquired the same capacity, only you would have smugly congratulated yourself for achieving emotional mastery. Ascribing virtue to doing things the hard, unsystematic, inefficient way is self-rationalizing bullshit that lets stupid people feel superior to the rest of the world. Trust me, I’m a djinni: There’s no shame in taking a shortcut or two in life.” [2889]
Different governments all tended to blur at the edges anyway, into a weird molten glob of Trilateralist Davos Bilderberger paranoia, feuding and backbiting in pursuit of the biggest office and the flashiest VIP jet. [2945]
“You just don’t want me to put metal in the microwave, because then I’d have as much power as you,” Huw says, quoting a memorable bit of propaganda from the contentious era of the uplifting, a quote from Saint Larson, one of the period’s many canonized funnybeings. [3005]
[…] there but for random luck go I […] [3241]
[…] “On the basis of a sample size of one,” […] [3829]
[…] borderline-aspie nerd […] [3837]
He’s a really smart high-functioning Asperger’s case who deals with social interaction by emulating it in his head, running a set of social heuristics, and looking for positive-sum outcomes. [3911]
[…] when confronted with limitless possibility and potential, the only legitimate response is to voluntarily assume constraint. Free jazz has its place, but it’s interesting only in contrast to the rigid structures in which it is embedded. [4115]
There’s an old saying about never attributing to a conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence. [4323: la massima sarebbe addirittura di origine napoleonica: Hanlon's razor]
Ugh. I generally like Cory Doctorow's sci-fi takes on human society and where we're going next. I guess the difference here is that CD usually focuses on the immediate future, while this book is set further out, and it's just... Blargh.
To put it mildly, a disappointing, boring and stupid waste of an excellent title from the 2 high priests of the singularity. With a name like Rapture of the Nerds, you would expect a decent satire or deconstruction of the quite frankly rather stupid & utopian concept of the singularity.
Instead we get a few mild pokes at it and weak attempts at humour that fall flat, some of which surprisingly and I suspect inadvertently come across as painfully stupid racial stereotypes. Otherwise it's just a tramp through the same tired stereotypes & cliches.
Stross can write a decent book when he is on form and his Cthulu Mythos stuff is top notch, but his singularity books have always been his weakest. And this is the weakest of those.
And if this is typical of Doctorow's fiction then I won't bother reading any more of it.
It reads rather like they read someone using the term on reddit (or BoingBoing, if anyone apart from Doctorow still uses it) and thought they'd better get something out using the term before someone else wrote the book. Or maybe just ruin the term for everyone.
Instead we get a few mild pokes at it and weak attempts at humour that fall flat, some of which surprisingly and I suspect inadvertently come across as painfully stupid racial stereotypes. Otherwise it's just a tramp through the same tired stereotypes & cliches.
Stross can write a decent book when he is on form and his Cthulu Mythos stuff is top notch, but his singularity books have always been his weakest. And this is the weakest of those.
And if this is typical of Doctorow's fiction then I won't bother reading any more of it.
It reads rather like they read someone using the term on reddit (or BoingBoing, if anyone apart from Doctorow still uses it) and thought they'd better get something out using the term before someone else wrote the book. Or maybe just ruin the term for everyone.