I’m reading this on my lunch breaks:
PiHKAL
Rice Cooker by Russell Hobbs
A classic.
Girl dinner
peam
Great book—really looking forward to the film. Hope they do the book justice!
Oh it really is, I had to remind myself everytime I have work in the morning to stop reading and go to sleep lol Please suggest me a book for my next read.
If you liked Project Hail Mary, then you should read the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor. The premise is as follows:
Bob is dead. Long live Bob.
Software engineer Robert Johansen uses his share of the money from the buyout of his company (the rest having been split amongst the employees) to start a trust to support his end-of-life maintenance needs. But Bob’s idea of “end-of-life” is being cryogenically frozen until such a time as whatever killed him can be fixed. What he wasn’t counting on, however, was getting hit by a car later that day and waking up over a hundred years later. Finding that, not only has he not been revived, but instead digitised, but also that the christofascist government doesn’t recognise him as a human or worthy of rights, he is surprised to also be informed that the reason they instantiated his consciousness was to become the guiding intelligence of a Von Neumann Probe, and that Bob is going to the stars… At least, he should be, as long as none of the opposing factions in the government or any of the other countries also building their own probes nuke him first.
Bobiverse is an example of hard science fiction, with similar limitations to what PHM uses. The primary conceits that go beyond what’s currently assumed to be possible are:
- the assumption that it is possible to simulate consciousness using electronic media
- the existence of some method of interacting with the fabric of reality to warp spacetime through a reactionless drive (here called “subspace theory”). This assumption allows for interstellar travel over reasonable time scales (but not superluminal travel) and, later, communications. Think a combination of the “Ansible” and the Bussard ramjet from “Tau Zero”
- the fantasy that most people have comprehensible reasons for their actions.
They never do, so I’m not hopeful. But I’m still gonna watch it
Preparing for the movie I see 🙃 I love this, read several times over.
Not really, i came to know there’s gonna be a movie when I was looking to download the book.
Post-apocalyptic tale of tech-priests, kind of. It starts slow, and then you get used to it.
It only starts slow if you don’t appreciate the unique humour of a world that has forgotten itself completely misinterpreting archeological artifacts in hilarious ways. This is one of my favourite books ever, in large part because of the description of Brother Francis’ reactions and reasoning upon reading the words “fallout shelter”, and other such examples of the beautifully dry and matter-of-fact humour present throughout the book.
Yeah, I’m also enjoying that. I’ve been working my way through Catch 22 as well, and the humor has a bit of the same dryness, but I wonder if this book has a little more humanity to it.
I think that you’ll find that it does, by the end. Its a shockingly hopeful and beautiful book, for a story whose primary lesson is “humanity never learns from its mistakes, people die, and the uncaring world moves on”
Audiobook while I drive, but still
Such an excellent series. Once you finish it, if you like it, check out his books “earthside” and “outland”. Honestly, just read his entire oeuvre. Even his short stories are amazing.
Does this count?
PIC18(L)F2X/4XK22 Data Sheet
Nice, that’s a beast you got there. Some of those 8 bit pics don’t have enough flash for
printf.What’s funny is we’re coding something fairly simple in assembly at my university, so even this PIC’s resources are overkill for us (PIC18F45K22)
Having more instructions would be nice, though. Any loop other than a simple decfsz-goto loop requires some ingenuity
Nice. Asm probably has an advantage here. C’s stupid integer promotion rules can sneak up on you and also blow up flash use. To avoid it, you need to cast everything in every math expression.
👀
Miss so much reading to my kids, different happy times now but still miss that. They love books because we put the time to read them and they saw us reading, all winning all around.
Indeed! Proud of my little one, she doesn’t know how to read yet, but she’ll still grab as many books as she can carry to her bed and flip through them all 😅
A bit of light science I see!
It’s a good read, the author goes into great detail about the dietary needs of giant flying lizards, and about the toxicity of hot sauce on their biology.
Wow! One of my least favorite Discworld books, but that cover is fantastic!
Nice! I just finished The Crippled God the other day!
We should make a malazan fedi
Haha! That cover is kinda ass. Great book, though. Maybe my favorite in the series.
What’s this one like? I LOVED the first book but found the second a little disappointing
It’s weird. I don’t hate it, but the author spends way too much time dealing with “timeline forks” (I’ll call it that to avoid spoilers) in a limited setting with a lot of reiteration and lack of any real plot advancement or character development. It’s not awful, I don’t hate it, but it’s a completely different book than the first or second. If you liked the first and didn’t care for the second you probably won’t like this one at all.
I’m not the Op, but I found book 3 even more of a let-down than book 2. Just felt a bit more contrived, even though it did add some valuable contributions to the universe, and I’ll read book 4 when it comes out.
Off to a great start! It feels a lot faster paced than the first book
I’m on oathbringer, finally getting back into it after sitting on it for something like 6 years. On page 960 or so…
Great series. I’m on this one:
I’m on the final book, trust me it gets so much better. Has become my favorite series of all time.
I wish I could read this again for the first time. Great series so far
First Contact, exploration of consciousness, sentience/intelligence (and their relationship), Transhumanism, Hard Sci-fi, not challenging but it will not hold your hand through the book.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the book has vampires, but explored in a reality where vampires are an extinct offshoot of homosapiens, resurrected for specific purpose. The explanation of vampires is fascinating, grounded in evolution and actually… believable? This is not a vampire book at all but their presence is not only plausible, it’s core to the themes of the book. Highly recommended.
One of the best books I’ve ever read. Central thesis is absolutely mind-blowing, it’ll unfold in your mind like a horrible realization. 10/10 would get existential dread from again
Also recommend, excellent book.
Hate vampire books, but love this book. It’s not a vampire book, but the vampires in it are handled in a crazy cool way. Highly recommend.
The sequel is a bit… it’s fine. Still good. Required reading. It’s got nothing on the first book though.
The most depressing scifi!
Loved it, but omg what a psychological load to wrestle with. Feels like Asimov took a bad acid trip
Just re-reading my favorite fantasy series for the umpteenth time
I just started reading book one, the world building is absolutely fantastic. I feel most high fantasy books are really hit or miss for me, but I understand now why Sanderson is considered top tier. Looking forward to the rest of the books, and also the Mistborn series!
It’s amazing worldbuilding but fair warning, many consider the Stormlight books to drop considerably in writing quality for the last entries. Take them slow and enjoy the ride without burning yourself out on the (huge) amount of pages.
Mistborn on the other hand, you can feel that they’re somewhat older books of his, with a few more awkward/obvious character elements but they stay fantastic throughout.
The payoff in Mistborn made the series for me. Really stuck the landing.
If anything, it could have used more meat at the center. Book one as a high fantasy heist was great. Two and three felt like a sprint through what should have maybe been another hundred pages each.
But it’s still my favorite Sanderson work to date, not including the last three books of Wheel of Time
Honestly, I really liked the last couple of storm light books. They definitely feel different than the first three, but I still really enjoyed them.
Rocannon’s World by Ursula K. LeGuin, just finished it, it’s a pretty quick read. I started with The Dispossessed and decided to go back and read her sci-fi novels in the order they were written. Not quite as much social commentary in this one which is what I liked most about The Dispossessed, but still enjoyable, and an interesting blend of fantasy and sci-fi.
