Echopraxia

Loved it too! Try echopraxia next.

I have a couple I would highly recommend: The first is Stanislaw Lem's "Imaginary Magnitude." Most stories there are written as sort of prefaces to non-existent technical/scientific books, papers, articles, etc. The last one, Golem XIV, goes a bit beyond and includes an entire lecture. The content is incredibly detailed and technical, Lem knew his Technology and Science for sure, so sometimes it's incredibly accurate and prophetic. Even though it was written in the 1970's, Lem was already describing things that look uncannily like neural networks, emergent communication systems, and machine-generated literature, decades before they existed. And... most of them are also really really funny. Here are small summaries that ChatGPT helped me write for some of the stories there: ---- Eruntics ---- A faux-scientific introduction to a field studying “erunts”: biological (or semi-biological) agents, think bacteria/neural colonies, that can learn to read, write, and communicate. These bacterial colonies learn to communicate through several learning iterations across many mutations and generations, much like, say, Neural Networks, and they even develop their own proto-language as they evolve.…

I caught up with some science fiction this year. The Murderbot diaries books by Martha Wells - 6/10. Mixed on these. They're fun to read. The setting is cool and the worldbuilding is shallow but effective (i.e., don't read it if you want game of thrones in space). Each novella takes an afternoon to read. I think "snarky violent droid" is overcooked these days and lost interest after book 5. Light by M. John Harrison - 7/10 excellent prose; great multiple-storyline plot; the journey was better than the destination, but it kept me thinking Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson - 7/10 Fun. If "near future Nigerian/British post-colonial frontier action with guns, robots, and psychic aliens" sounds cool to you, check it out. I liked his Rosewater Trilogy just as much. Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - tough to rate these. brilliant ideas, VERY challenging plots. I wish I didn't get so confused by the end of each book.…

Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts [1] I enjoyed the ideas in these books. The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again [2] by M. John Harrison. Beautiful writing. His descriptions give me vivid dreams if I read before bed. The Thursday Murder Club [3] by Richard Osman. Light reading, amusing, beginning of a series. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echopraxia_%28novel%29 [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49201192-the-sunken-land... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49201192-the-sunken-land-begins-to-rise-again) [3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54846475-the-thursday-mu... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54846475-the-thursday-murder-club)

I couldn't tell whether you were joking about pirating it, but for others who might be interested, the author has made it available for free download from his website [1]. I love Blindsight as well, and I think I like the other book in the series, Echopraxia (not available for free download though) even more. Both books contain lengthy bibliographies citing various scientific papers the author has drawn ideas from, and on my first readings of both books I ended up spending as much time chasing down interesting references and reading them as I did reading the original books. [1] https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

Love Peter Watts' work but be warned that his writing is super depressing (in a good way), specially his Rifters Trilogy. My favorites are still Blindsight and it's follow-up, Echopraxia. The ideas on those books about sentient life are eye opening and something I still think is heavily debated in the scientific community.

Someone posted this on a previous book list and I read it and I'm so glad I did, now I've read Echopraxia, and I've bought all his other books and I'm on those as well, totally awesome. I still think about this series and the vampires and hive minds.

Watts’ Blindsight and Echopraxia are excellent hard scifi too, though less focused on AI.

- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin - Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - The Tao Te Ching - The Gateless Gate (Koun Yamada translation/editing) - The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) by Neal Stephenson - The Invisibles by Grant Morrison - Incerto (Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, The Bed of Procrustes) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Iron John by Robert Bly - Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - The Character of Physical Law by Richard P. Feynman - Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges - 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Pharmakon by Dale Pendell - The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss - Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton - The Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual by Gary Gygax et al - Introduction to Algorithms by Charles E. Leiserson, Clifford Stein, Ronald Rivest, and Thomas H. Cormen

This is a little more Lovecraftian Horror than science fiction, but I loved Matt Ruff's "Lovecraft Country". Equal parts what you'd expect, with an exploration of how shitty America was for black people in the 1950s. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25109947-lovecraft-count... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25109947-lovecraft-country) Ted Chiang's "Stories of your Life" have been recommended here a bunch, since Arrival was based on one of the stories in the collection. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_L... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_Life_and_Others) Peter Watts' Blindsight and Echopraxia are both excellent explorations of the human mind and consciousness. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48484.Blindsight and https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18490708-echopraxia Bonus: Echopraxia comes with an optional audiovisual component that stands alone quite well: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30ED0756E00786E2 And don't let the mention of Vampires scare you off; this isn't a Twilight wannabe, and it's very likely not a take on Vampires you've seen before.

Sure. On the other hand, I found Watts's Rifters trilogy to be strong throughout, and I'd previously assumed that he'd turn in the same strong performance with his latest series. In what way does Echopraxia fail to live up to its predecessor? I'm eventually going to get around to it, but if it's going to disappoint me, I'd like to know ahead of time so that I can go into it with my expectations better calibrated.