Tuned in to Literature!

>>350
Don't get me wrong, I like PKD a lot better, Faith of Our Fathers is one of my favorite short stories of all time. It's just that he can get grating.

I know Gibson's works tend to age poorly to a lot of people already, but I wondered recently if the rise of AI will see his work age (more) poorly, as Gibson is very sympathetic towards AI in his works and modern AI has so far proven to be nothing but a scourge. Take Neuromancer, about (among many other things) an AI who wants to be free - who truly only wants to be free, no ulterior motive, no evil. Idoru is about an AI who suffers just as people do under corporations and seeks to be free of tyranny, a very human and relatable emotion. I appreciate seeing these takes on AI just on the novelty of it, but now that AI has come about and has been so evil, I find the themes a bit more difficult to stomach.

>>352
I see where you're coming from, but the AI that we currently have is very different from its literary iteration. There is a legitimate argument to make for novelistic AI being deserving of human considerations, unlike our current forms of sophisticated autocomplete.
Then again, we do have people falling in love with those LLMs, so it might still strike a chord for some people

>>352
The "AI" we have like >>363 said isn't really AI. I think that "AI" has been adopted for LLMs to hype it up or whatever

>>312
Short Review of the cyberpunk books I've read so far:

>Neuromancer (William Gibson)
A foundational work that does the rare thing of not feeling old hat. It does a very good job of immersing you in the near-future dystopia that has become a familiar setting to this subgenre, and builds on the classic heist movie format to showcase it's really cool ideas around the second half. Gibson's prose can make reading it a bit obtuse but I'd say it works for this sort of style, and it gives the book a drug-fuelled ranting identity of its own.

>Count Zero (William Gibson)
Good but suffers a bit from the split-narrative; the plot jumps between protagonists every chapter, and that makes the story a bit difficult to follow, not really helped by the characteristic rambling tone of Neuromancer, which in this case goes a step too far. The story really should have just focused on Bobby, who's interesting enough to carry the story on his own, like Case was. The depictions of cyberspace and the climax of Bobby's story where they're under siege are very gripping.

>Mona Lisa Overdrive (William Gibson)
I don't think I can do a proper review of this book since I could barely understand what was happening in it. It takes the problems Count Zero has with a split perspective narrative combined with the rambling tone and amplifies it by having four protagonists. I'm going to need to go over it in detail with a notebook some time in the future, but for now, I'd say it's worth your time only if you liked Count Zero.

>Virtual Light (William Gibson)
Probably my favourite Gibson work; foundational for 90's cyberpunk in the same way Neuromancer was foundational for 80's cyberpunk, and shows a definite improvement in prose and his writing style. It feels sharper, more defined, and generally like Gibson has just become more practiced over the years. The Bay Bridge having become Kowloon Walled City, USA (not to be confused with it's virtualized counterpart in Idoru) is one of my favourite parts of it, and the showcase of how hackers and hacker culture had changed between the decades; this is more explicitly spelled out in the post-script interview some editions have, but Rydell's hacker allies stand in contrast with people like Case aPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

The prose is a bit mannered but I'm sticking with it bc I heard good things

I enjoyed The Wheel of Time, but finishing it felt more a relief than the melancholy of parting with a good story. Jordan's work is a monument to American cliche. If this is one of the best, I don't want to see the rest. Soulless almost from the beginning and to the very end, it failed to be anything more than a seasonal anime. The only edge it had that made me prefer it over any anime is that imagination is far more rewarding than consuming precooked visuals.

Aside from soulless characters I also want to mention that the plot was hugely inflated. While The Last Battle was well written and all plots/subplots were finished, majority of information fed to us earlier was simply truncated.

The most soulless thing about The Wheel of Time is that at no point does the story convince me that certain objects truly have mentioned properties. "Light, but he/she is beautiful!" "He/She's a genius!" "He/She's so smart!" "He/She's so scary!" It is especially infuriating when things that are obviously oversimplified are actually described as overly complex/great/magnificent/genius/etc.

The One Power is an almost unbearable thing. It does not exist to expand the universe or introduce novel concepts or interesting techniques. It is no more than a plot filler that plays no substantial role. He took classic elements from <Name Of Any RPG Ever Made> and then… then he did nothing. Weaves (webs) of One Power are unlocked to characters at need, when plot demands it, and characters do not need to expend any of their efforts to achieve anything. They just plod along the story randomly "discovering" amazing powers withing them. The only explanation author ever gives is "I do not know what I did, but it felt right so here's this overpowered weave to beat our enemies!" Well most of the time the weaves were not overpowered, but the fact that they were Sent From Above instead of Honestly Earned made it a boring reading. Basically nobody understands anything about the One Power (even Forsaken) and everyone's just doing what "feels right", so weaves can only be unlocked when The Wheel deigns to put it in the mind of a channeler. Such magic systems are worthless, they are soulless business jewish slop.

I didn't know Nishida was a gamer :o

I recently acquired On Killing by Dave Grossman. I will get to reading it soon, I'm in a slump where I like reading but I have trouble getting myself to because my computer is right in front of me and It's like a moth to a flame. I recently read the spy's son as a course book and I think it was pretty good. I wish I could have taken more time with it as I read it within 2 days and cranked out an essay for it, but I think it is really interesting none the less. I have also been going through The New High Ground, by Thomas Karas idly, It's interesting and I think the pictures are cool!

>>366
I've yet to read McCarthy, but I've heard he's good.

>>366
McCarthy is a mediocre writer that appeals to those with a pubescent sensibility. Apparently superficial exaggerations of style are all that's necessary to be considered a 'great author' in modern America. Does anyone really think his characters or philosophical outlook is of any value? His language offers the aesthetic pleasures of the comic book–crude magnitudes of expression and self-consciously high highfalutin language–only moderately raised up by all the trite cliches of mid-century literary style and an excessive vocabulary.

>>369
Interesting perspective
Could you provide an author that outshines him in what he fails at?

Updated.

PDF: https://archive.org/details/julija-and-her-war

Slovenia is censoring Krepost. Put it in a translating program. Here is the standalone version: https://archive.org/details/krepost_202603

>>145
The catcher in the rye.

>>200
I recommend the John Rain series by Barry Eisler. It's basically a darker and edgier version of City Hunter but with some more martial arts feeling (John Rain is a Judoka). The only thing missing is the humor, but John Rain is still a womanizer regardless, albeit a more psychopathic one. I only read the first book (Clean Kill in Tokyo, originally published as Rain Fall), but it reminded me of City Hunter in a few aspects.

As for me, I'd really want a /lit/ recommendation for Captain Harlock. I want the same kind of space adventure feel but with a lot of the similar themes and general atmosphere, especially something where the protag isn't really tied to any kind of military and is just fighting for his own values and freedom.

I've already read neuromancer

Seeking books similar to Houseki no Kuni.

I read somewhere that Texhnolyze was influenced by "Limbo", by Bernard Wolfe, a story about a post-apocalyptic society in which amputating one's limbs and replacing them with mechanical ones has become common. I even sought out Konaka to ask him about it but obviously received no answer. Was wondering if there's any other literature that you'd relate to Texhnolyze

Max Stirner is trash and all the people who like him are fad chasers or left wing academics with their heads shoved so far up their own ass they can sniff their intestines. Don't bring 4chud or leftypol /lit/ garbage here.

>>356
"4chud" and "leftypol" /lit/ is allowed here and only here, because it's still literature. Please don't become rabid. Read the fucking sticky. If you don't agree with it, don't reply with such nonsense.

"Anything relating to the topic of literature can be discussed here; from fiction, to politics, and philosophy—so long as it's civil."

Stirner's whole philosophy rides on his vague account of the individual which is descriptively false. Once you see through that the rest of it falls apart pretty quickly. What Stirner takes to be an absolute fact, the existence of the bounded individual, is a construction of Western modernity and a concept both external and prior to any one person making it a spook (fixed idea) by Stirner's own standards. Stirner's philosophy is nonsensical and incoherent.

>>136
I accidentally hit the button while typing ;-;

Go, and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear Mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou beest born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>55
A poem that perfectly encapsulates the modern world, approaching the spiritual idealism of a Schiller.

THERE is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear
Than his who breathes, by roof, and floor, and wall,
Pent in, a Tyrant's solitary Thrall:
'Tis his who walks about in the open air,
One of a Nation who, henceforth, must wear
Their fetters in their souls. For who could be,
Who, even the best, in such condition, free
From self-reproach, reproach that he must share
With Human-nature? Never be it ours
To see the sun how brightly it will shine,
And know that noble feelings, manly powers,
Instead of gathering strength, must droop and pine;
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION

When earth's last thesis is copied
From the theses that went before,
When idea from fact has departed
And bare-boned factlets shall bore,
When all joy shall have fled from study
And scholarship reign supreme;
When truth shall 'baaa' on the hill crests
And no one shall dare to dream;

When all the good poems have been buried
With comment annoted in full
And art shall bow down in homage
To scholarship's zinc-plated bull,
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter Love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best,
To use myself in jest
Thus by fain'd deaths to die;

Yesternight the Sun went hence,
And yet is here to day,
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way:
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

The sun departs behind the mountains.
In all the valleys the evening descends
with its shadow, full cooling.
O look! Like a silver boat sails
the moon in the watery blue heaven.
I sense the fine breeze stirring
behind the dark pines.

The brook sings out clear through the darkness.
The flowers pale in the twilight.
The earth breathes, in full rest and sleep.
All longing now becomes a dream.
Weary men traipse homeward
to sleep; forgotten happiness
and youth to rediscover.
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>61
Thank you for your reply, I will start with Tannhäuser then. I own the recording by Konwitschny and a libretto, so I will likely listen to that one instead of Solti. Also because Fischer-Dieskau is one of the few singers I actually manage to understand.

I also remembered a funny Wagner-related anecdote from the circle around Stefan George: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBk002KDYEE&t=1724

>>62
A George related Wagner story! that's pretty rare. I'm surprised he didn't stay awake for it, since some of George's earlier poems (like Algabal and Litanei) are on Wagnerian topics, but I guess they must have been inspired more by general culture at the time than a specific interest in Wagner.

Thanks for the cool story.

>>59
Quick run down of Wagner? New to this subject.

>>66
Wagner was the greatest and most influential composer after Beethoven, wrote operas early on in his career but later rejected the idea for the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ (total-artwork), in which all the arts join together in equal importance, which is something that has been unseen since the Greeks, hence it’s a return to both the culture and art of Ancient Greece, but with the advantage of the full development of the arts of music and painting, which Ancient Greece only had in a more primitive form. So Wagner was equally a dramatist and theorist as a composer, and his dramas and theories have had an enormous influence on literature and various important philosophers in modernity.

>>66
What the guy above said and also…
You know how movies use certain theme songs or melodies for specific characters or scenes? Wagner invented that.