For the Wyndham!
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XML apologist. Erlang enthusiast. Currently JVMs & Performance stuff at Netflix. Previously JVMs & performative stuff at Twitter. He/him.
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Ian Brown quoted Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham
Certainly they will survive. I think that if you were to dig down deeply into our real motives you would find that the chief reason why we have not committed suicide or died out already from discouragement at the futility of existence is our faith in the machines. For many thousands of years we have fought Nature and held our own, but at last she has the upper hand. She is sweeping us away as she has swept the rest onto her huge rubbish heap where the bones of the dinosaurs molder on the fossils of a million ages. What has been the good of us? Nothing, it seems, and yet.. our minds will not accept that. There lingers, perhaps illogically, the idea of a purpose behind it all ... But physically we can go on no longer. For any other species of animal it would mean utter extinction, but we have what the other animals have never had - mind. That is our last trick. Our minds will not die yet. The machines are as truly the children of our minds as you are the child of your mother's body. They are the next step in evolution, we hand over to them.
— Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham (Page 170 - 171)
Ian Brown quoted Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham
Tradition is a useful weed for binding the soil, but it grows too quickly and chokes the rest. Periodically it must be burned out.
— Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham (Page 169)
Ian Brown quoted Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham
"One of the odd things about you men of action is that you so frequently forget that there are other men of action."
— Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham (Page 8)
Ian Brown started reading Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham
Ian Brown set a goal to read 24 books in 2023
Ian Brown started reading A World on the Wing by Scott Weidensaul
Ian Brown
boosted
Ian Brown reviewed The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …
.@annaleen@wandering.shop's epic tale of #enshittification on a geologic time scale.
4 stars
A really wonderful take on colonization and identity. Fast paced and full of some truly original takes on technology and the balances (and imbalances) of power resulting from the dynamics of capitalism in a seemingly post-scarcity era.
Who owns the land? What is intelligence and what rights (if any) does intelligence deserve? What if naked mole rats could talk and what if Miyazaki's catbus was part of an anarchist collective that lived under an active volcano?
These and many other questions are wrestled with in the this light and heavy sci-fi gem.
Ian Brown reviewed The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …
.@annaleen@wandering.shop's epic tale of #enshittification on a geologic time scale.
4 stars
A really wonderful take on colonization and identity. Fast paced and full of some truly original takes on technology and the balances (and imbalances) of power resulting from the dynamics of capitalism in a seemingly post-scarcity era.
Who owns the land? What is intelligence and what rights (if any) does intelligence deserve? What if naked mole rats could talk and what if Miyazaki's catbus was part of an anarchist collective that lived under an active volcano?
These and many other questions are wrestled with in the this light and heavy sci-fi gem.
Ian Brown finished reading The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future.
Destry's life …
Ian Brown started reading The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …
SCIFI FTW
Ian Brown reviewed Shift by Hugh Howey
Shift happens.
4 stars
Content warning Mild ones, really, but maybe read the book first.
Not quite as compelling as the first, but man, still a mind-bender. Mild spoiler here is it does travel into the past. One of the things that makes "Wool" so good is it is entirely in the future. That provides the prose some latitude and that can help make or break a book when it starts to get into the awkward drama around social mechanics and institutions we are already familiar with. Anyway, before you read this write down the Silo numbers from wool, and the names of the key characters. Also don't look up anything online because spoilers abound.
Ian Brown reviewed The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
I needed that!
5 stars
Holy smokes! This was such a fun read by @scalzi@mastodon.social. Funny as hell, and with barely any tears. Maybe even no tears if you are a desiccated and empty shell like so many of us these days. Anyway, this book is brain-floss perfection, full of laughs and wit. The auther, per the note at the end, wrote this in 2021 after COVID and January 6th and writer's block and at least one existential crisis. Coincidentally I read this book after a week of the family and I, hundreds of miles from home and alledgedly on vacation, dealing with our second trip through COVID. I'd also just ripped through the first two books of Hugh Howey's "Silo" series ("Wool" & "Shift") while in the grips of the virus. Those are pretty heavy reads, and a mild fever only added to the emotional weight. This book was the perfect antidote to …
Holy smokes! This was such a fun read by @scalzi@mastodon.social. Funny as hell, and with barely any tears. Maybe even no tears if you are a desiccated and empty shell like so many of us these days. Anyway, this book is brain-floss perfection, full of laughs and wit. The auther, per the note at the end, wrote this in 2021 after COVID and January 6th and writer's block and at least one existential crisis. Coincidentally I read this book after a week of the family and I, hundreds of miles from home and alledgedly on vacation, dealing with our second trip through COVID. I'd also just ripped through the first two books of Hugh Howey's "Silo" series ("Wool" & "Shift") while in the grips of the virus. Those are pretty heavy reads, and a mild fever only added to the emotional weight. This book was the perfect antidote to wherever the fuck my head was at after all of that, and a great way to use one of the few remaining days of our "vacation". Anyway, what I am trying to say is that this a wonderfully written, fast-moving, fun-as-heck rip of a read.
You will love it. Probably.
Ian Brown finished reading The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
Ian Brown started reading The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
Figured I need a break from the Wool/Silo universe for a day or two.