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Ian Brown

igb@books.hccp.org

Joined 1 year, 12 months ago

XML apologist. Erlang enthusiast. Currently JVMs & Performance stuff at Netflix. Previously JVMs & performative stuff at Twitter. He/him.

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Ian Brown's books

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8% complete! Ian Brown has read 2 of 24 books.

Stowaway to Mars (2022, Random House Publishing Group, Modern Library) 3 stars

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  (Page 170 - 171)

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The Terraformers (Hardcover, 2023, Tor Books) 3 stars

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.

The Terraformers (Hardcover, 2023, Tor Books) 3 stars

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.