For the Wyndham!
User Profile
XML apologist. Erlang enthusiast. Currently JVMs & Performance stuff at Netflix. Previously JVMs & performative stuff at Twitter. He/him.
This link opens in a pop-up window
2025 Reading Goal
8% complete! Ian Brown has read 2 of 24 books.
User Activity
RSS feed Back
Ian Brown quoted The Postmaster by Rabindranath Tagore
But clearly no god can be more malevolent than a man-god.
— The Postmaster by Rabindranath Tagore (Page 54)
Ian Brown started reading The Postmaster by Rabindranath Tagore
Ian Brown started reading Shikasta by Doris Lessing
Ian Brown rated Stowaway to Mars: 3 stars
Ian Brown finished reading Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham
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 reviewed The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
.@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
.@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 …