Just completed this trilogy and damn, I'm so broken now. And honestly scarred.Even though it is clearly inspired by the Golden Age SciFi, it's scope and the dimensions (quite literally) described are mind-boggling.At this point, I don't care about engaging prose or well-written characters, since this was obviously the weakest point in these books, but the plot and concepts made it up several times over.Is there any other hard SciFi out there which has the sheer scale and imagination and (sorry to say) "epicness" like this trilogy?
Count to a Trillion by John C. WrightRevelation Space by Alastair Reynolds and Xeelee (start with Vacuum Diagrams) by Stephen Baxter as well. Both of those are more "related stories" than coherent series, even if there is an overarching narrative.You might also want to check out the Dune books.
>>10379546Nice, thanks.
>Peter F. Hamilton - Void>The Forever War>The Book of the New Sun>Jerusalem Delivered (catches dat feel, although not sci-fi)>Golden Age by John C. Wright >Beyond by Janet E. Morris>The Night Land (if you can handle really weird prose, might even be a plus); Awake in the Night Land, is even better.>Space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet)
what was the absolute WORST reveal or plot twist a book has ever pulledpic related has my vote
Is it a worthwhile read?
It's like 80 fucking pages so yeah. Why even bother asking that question? You can easily figure out what you think about Buber's thought in ten seconds on Google, and in about an hour or two you could just read the book. Why post a completely contentless thread?
>>10378994How are you able to retain anything if you read it in under two hours? Nonfiction and philosophy i am usually somewhere between 10-20 pages an hour (depends on the book and if im taking notes). Its at least an 4 hour read.
Yeah, it's extremely dense however.
>>10378979What's your while's worth?
>>10378979Yes. If for no other reason than that it gets the brain going. A kind of stimulant. That was my experience, anyway.
Review other people's workRead your own aloud before posting
>>10373148I read the first line and dropped it. Nothing but typical dilettantism.
>>10378516How do girls speak then? Got female dialogue you've written yourself to share?
>>10378517
I found a story I wrote in 2007. Enjoy.chapter oneJames' diaryJanuary 10, 1899today we moved into a nice, new house in old arkham. i expect it to be a good place to grow up in. it has five bedrooms, each with a four poster bed, two bathrooms, with gleaming porceline and marble, four kitchens, a marble staircase, and a grand foyer.january 11, 1899last night, the most terrible thing happened. father fell ill with phnemonia, and mother had to go to a conference at arkham tower! also, i have lost my copy of a christmas carol! oh well, i guess i must go to harolds bookstore in the morning.january 12, 1899Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>10379548chapter twoHarold's Diaryjune 10, 1910today i came to old arkham to investigate a burgulary, and now im locked up in this damned room, in this damned house, in this damned town! this room has the worst furnishings. a skeleton on the floor, a diary next to it, a blood splattered broken four poster bed, a knife stuck in the closet door, and, on top of it all, it smells of death!june 11, 1910im still in this damned room! at least there is a telephone in here. i have called the police, and their trying to break into the room. soon, ill get out of here.june 12, 1910Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
This book is like a small read thread saving me from complete insanity
>>10379306I'm an academic but not in this area. My knowledge is very very limited about China and Daoism, but I'm very familiar with the I Ching and the hexagrams. I could say all I know about China comes from my studying of the I Ching.>>10379390English is not my first language and I mess up when I try to explain something tricky like that.Suppose you are in a dillema and you don't know what to do. You can perhaps ask a friend and thus borrow from his life experience an advice that you can choose to follow or not, which can help you even if you don't follow through. When we can't move, we ask for feedback from the outside. Even a shitty feedback can help you understand your own dillema better and perhaps even make you more certain of the path which you were considering before. The I Ching, in one simplified and limited interpretation, can be used as a tool to think a certain problem in a new way. It does that through the combination of a perfectly structured set of possibilities in relation to one another and the fact that each interpretation is unique and coming from the diviner and querent at a given time towards a given circumstance. The structure makes it so that it is "even out", while divination allows the I Ching to be more than just a rigid cosmological theory of everything. The feedback it gives is thus, more neutral than of a friend (who would be emotionally involved in your situation), but also provocative since it is too vague for you just follow it the way it was said to you, you must interpret it first.What I'm saying is, if you don't believe in mystics accessing the future, no problem, read the I Ching even so, it is much more than that.The argument I'm making is perhaps better explained herehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm6FM28d9_Uhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfRF-5EGAOk
Anyone studied zhuangzi?I'm really struggling to find ANY point to the chapters with Confucius. Like there are parts where I think, THIS is where Zhuangzi is going to critique Confucius but he doesn't, just portrays him.>>10379306I've done some divination's with the I ching, desu they all meant a lot to me and I'm suffering for not listening to them.
"The uncanny thing about the I Ching is that it seems to work, even in hands of its critics it seems to work".I was sceptical af at first, but after getting great answers 10 times in a row, the answers which seem to completely relate to my questions I started using it regularly.
>>10376333This, trips confirm.
>>10373407>People are genetically predisposed toward a particular philosophy
“Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and to be called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul, and he who concerns himself about other things than those which lead to salvation is very unwise.”― Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
>>10378882Those who "just enjoy reading", don't browse lit.
>>10378903Id be inclined to agree because i used to think i was reading but i was really just scouring books and /lit/ because i was looking for answers. Now that i just genuinely enjoy reading and finding interesting threads here
>>10378823you killed your point by being too heavy handed.The lesson 'ignorance is bliss' can mean that 'knowledge is sometimes harmful', but it does not follow that god is the goto answer for all your angst.Still, pretty good troll thread, 6/10
>>10378973>god isnt the answer becuz muh fedora teapot swagetti monster sed so
All of the by far worst people I've ever met in adult life have been intelligent and gone to or work in university. They have all been godless, thoroughly hostile to Christianity, and to a man either "liberal" or some form of Marxist. They are all vain, arrogant, petty tyrants, in complete servitude to political conformity (but in their own mind imperious inquisitors), and hypocrites of the worst kind. Worst of all, the ones in the humanities, completely detached from all reality save their hermetic ideology, will never utter a word of any truth or even value whatsoever. Imagine all those libraries full of "Racial Microaggressions in Harry Potter" and "The Othering of Muslim Freedom Fighters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer." It's nightmarish. Just think! All those lifetimes wasted on fashionable cant. All those intellects dashed upon the rocks of vanity. I am thankful I realized the future that awaited me had I pursued my education beyond my Masters. There but for the grace of God go I. I call upon the mercy of Jesus Christ to scour those rancid institutions from the face of the earth before they corrupt another naive soul.
If you could force every world leader to read fives works of philosophy or literature what would they be?
>>10379470This is pretty tame by their standards.
>>10379482I think he studied philosophy at university before he became a banker.
>>10379482>He instead studied Philosophy at the University of Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense, obtaining a DEA degree (a master level degree, with a thesis on Machiavelli and Hegel)
>Whatever>Decline of the WestThat should reverse the social progressivism, then it's just smooth sailing from there.
>>10379427>They will hate what you force on them. Good, I'll force them to read Das Kapital and maybe we can be rid of Communism and Socialism forever.
Why is the european literature so much better than american? What is it about our land that does not produce artists?
>>10378607Eliot was an expat tho>Walt WhitmanTry again
>>10379206>Eliot was an expatLike all good american poets really makes ya twinkle
>However, one must not look to the United States for what distinguishes man from other beings in creation, which is his excerpt from immortality and the ornament of his days: the letters are unknown in the new Republic, though they are called by a host of institutions. The American replaced the intellectual operations by the positive operations; do not impute inferiority to his mediocrity in the arts, for it is not on this side that he has paid attention. Thrown by different causes on desert soil, agriculture and commerce have been the object of his care; before thinking, one must live; before planting trees, they must be felled to plow.>The primitive colonists, the spirit filled with religious controversy, carried, it is true, the passion of the dispute to the heart of the forests; but it was necessary that they should first march to the conquest of the desert with their axes on their shoulders, having for their desk, in the interval of their labors, only the elm they were squaring. The Americans have not traversed the degrees of the age of the people; they have left their childhood and youth in Europe; the naive words of the cradle have been unknown to them; they enjoyed the sweets of the home only through the regret of a country they had never seen, whose eternal absence and charm they had mourned for. >There is in the new continent neither classical literature, nor romantic literature, nor Indian literature: classical, the Americans have no models; romantic, the Americans have no middle age; Indian litterature, Americans despise the savages and hate woods for they think they were designed to emprison them.>Thus, it is not literature apart, literature properly so called, which is found in America: it is applied literature, serving the various uses of society; it is the literature of workmen, merchants, sailors, laborers. Americans scarcely succeed except in mechanics and science, because science has a material side: Franklin and Fulton have seized lightning and steam for the benefit of men. It was up to America to endow the world with discovery that no continent could ever escape from browser research. >Poetry and imagination, shared by a very small number of idlers, are regarded in the United States as puerilities of the first and the last age of life: the Americans have had no childhood, they do not have not yet old age.t. Chateaubriand from his memoirs from beyond the tomb, written around 1820 or something close to that
Do not expect any more good literature to come out of Europe in the near future
>>10379206>Melville wasn't an American because he moved Does that make Nabokov American?
why the fuck do people like lord of the flies
>>10378947Nah
>>10379087Oh, ok
is great for <16 kids to get into deeper textual analysis since the themes, symbology etc are pretty overt and easy to see.
Its a good novel but not even close to Golding's best. The Inheritors is 1000x better.
cos it's a good book. the ending is a great example of how social reality isn't absolute and the actual encounter with the lord of the flies stays with me
reading together
>>10376681
>>10376681Do these women get paid for this?
>>10377306But why though?
>>10378022nice dubs bby wanna read the well of loneliness together?
>>10379451Not him but I never jerk off to this, maybe I get a little aroused when they try on a load of clothes but mostly I just fall asleep while watching and listening to themJust feels really relaxing to look at a cute girl
>On the internet>Write everything in proper grammar so I don't fall out of practice.I know it makes me look like a dumb-ass, stick-up-the-ass brainlet, but I can't stop myself. It feels gratifying to solve grammatical problems while I transpose my thoughts into words.
>>10378273This isn't /mu/.
>>10378277I thought this too, but I was playing a video-game, and someone said "That's some nice grammar."
>>10378273I understand where you are coming from anon. Personally I find that whence one becomes punctilious in the practice of proper grammar that great difficulty ensues in the cession of such. Frankly it does not cause you to appear as a "stick-up-the-ass brainlet" but as a gentleman of refined composition, willing to take the time to hone the composition of one's post in order to provide greater satisfaction to those reading them. Apologies if this comes of as something of a disquisition though honestly I quite appreciate individuals such as yourself. Enjoy the rest of your day anon and ensure that you are relaxed, I'm sure you are working hard to get where you want to be!
>On the Internet>Write everything in grammar/syntax/slang that fits the situation or whatever attitude/character/emotion I feel like doing at the time because it's fun and good practise for writing in different styles
>>10378273You are worrying about the external assertion when it's not needed. Imagine that you make an internet poll every time you need to go to the toilet.Write as perfectly as you like on the internet.
Which works by Aristotle and Plato should I read before I tackle Being and Time?
>>10379347Just Aristotle's metaphysics should be fine
>>10379358You mentioned Poetics but not Physics. This shows that you literally haven't read past the first few pages of Being and Time.
Real answer:>Meno>Phaedo>Crito>Physics>Metaphysics
The Sophist is important, don't know why no-one's mentioned it yet
>PlatoTheaetetusRepublic CritoMenoPhaedoEuthyphro AristotleEthics MetaphysicsPhysics
ITT we end the "postmodernism" question for real and for good.
>>10379396The cover is pretty terrible but the content is some of the best out there, academically. Not without its flaws but good for the postmodern novice. It's also from 04 I think.
>>10379389>PoMo is just a continuation of Marxism No. Marxism is an economic theory. Postmodernism doesn’t deal with economic issues at all.
>>10379406Postmodernism is an extension of Marxism and this is a discussion about culture so economics isn't relevant anyway.
>>10379408Marxism states that nothing but the economy matters.
>>10379418the economy is going well, i guess they must be happy
Was László Krasznahorkai molested by a paragraph as a child?
>>10376444IgenIGEN
>>10379368I see, I wasn’t too far off then. Though I wouldn’t say Valuska joined the men for personal gain, he was very much forced into it, wasn’t he? It seemed to completely destroy him, too. Maybe something along the lines of how easy it is to get preassured into doing something you know is wrong when enough people are doing it?
>>10376444Have you read the US Constitution?The entire thing is a run on sentence. Its hard to know when your on a roll or if your just not using you're periods correctly.Everything they teach you in grammar school is a lie.
>>10376444god, i'm not that fucking bad am i?christ, i need to rethink my life.
>>10377461I finished reading Seiobo a second time, a few weeks ago.From my first read, I remembered the book as indulging deeply in the enjoyment of art.But this time it turned out quite differently. In all the stories I felt a deep struggle indeed to enjoy art; but often a failing struggle. A lot of works just seem lost to us, in our time. The narration goes great lengths to achieve deep immersion into an artwork -- this is Krasznahorkai’s style of long, long-winded sentences. And this is an attempt to recreate what the Akropolis, or a relatively unknown trunk decoration from the Renaissance, or a complicated Shinto ceremony once meant.
Anyone here a fan of utilitarianism? Do you have a preferred ethical theory other than it; if so, what is it?It just appears that utilitarianism is the most practical ethical theory that we should be using. There are theories, but they ultimately end up having more questions than answers.Utilitarianism is beautiful and effective in its simplicity. What's the best thing to do? Increase utility.
Literally why the fuck should I concern myself with the well-being of people I will never meet that live half a world away from me and will never show me any appreciation for what I do
I like Sidgwicks/the utilitarian contribution to just war theory, but I find that general utilitarianism isn't very convincing.
Utilitarianism is for turgid idiots. A pluralism is required and utilitarianism has no place in that pluralism. >>10378407Still not a measure.Face it, *nglos have sloppy thinking yet think they are xXxle_scientificxXX. Same with Americans. I swear the only good one out of the lot of you is Whitehead.
>>10378383It's the worst system possible and really it can be used to argue for just about anything. Which is why bioethics is a discipline used for excusing anything major interests want.
Nick Land killed utilitarianism. Optimize for intelligence.
