/lit/ - Literature

...wow

>>9683091
>>9683058
>Failure of kings. Absence of kings. Absence of kingly principles. Disbelief in kings. Frustration with kings. Malaise. Vampirism without actual vampires.

Mmmm. Or, in pic related, vampirism with actual (transhumanist) vampires. In many ways, the resurrection of the vampire (as literally done in the book) and the fictional re-imagination of the vampire (as written by the author) is both an expression that better the devil you know. Paradoxically, the *rabid posthuman nihilism* of Blindsight becomes meaningful, because the act of being predated upon is something we know how to respond to, as long as there is a predator. But predation not predicated by a predator results in dread, anxiety, exhaustion. Now I think the narrative is not self aware of this since resurrection of the vampire is implied to be due to a combo of ambition and naivety. But I read it as the embodied manifestation of what was already present. The long awaited resolution of planetary anxiety and subsequent catharsis. And then resentment can play out in the material plane. With the fine grain of embodied tragedy. And explosions! It's not that we create our own monsters to fight them, but rather we wish to make them visible.

The threat posed by resentment was ofc the selective pressure that led to the grand occlusion of sovereignty. Foucault got a whiff of this but in many ways it's already out of date, because bodies don't matter when they're symbolically interchangeable. Even in the panopticon prisoners are assigned a number and cell, and the time you stay in (or your execution) refers to an outside life you led. It is this reference that is lost, because the purpose of the prison has been forgotten. The prisoner can at least say "I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me!", while we're left hurling words into the wind.

>For me anyways besides shitposting I guess I have this demented belief that art will suffice, that art can somehow pull this stuff together and give it a face, voice, words. Otherwise it's just all too much. Activism seems silly but so does cynicism. Optimize for Intelligence is not so crazy a motto.

And I think the fact that good fiction persists gives us a reference to the outside. Even pure nihilism can do this by negative theology. The appeal of the Landian demon. Garbage time is running out tho. We may be the last ones who can enjoy such art. Even if all of this was preserved, their meanings may not be.

>>9683209
See you (and all of you anons) on level 2.

>>9683638
Adding "accelerationist" to anything improves it.

>>9684081
Inshallah, brother.

>>9684464
kek

Recommend similar sci-fi

Okay so I enjoyed it, but I'm a real dumb-dumb, can any of you goys help me out?

So Rorschach wanted to destroy humanity because it saw it as a virus right?
If it was so immensely intelligent and powerful why not just send tens of thousands of meteors at Earth? And why not just use those meteors to destroy Theseus when it wanted to attack them?
Why didn't it do that when it read their minds? Surely it would've been able to figure out that they would kamikaze Rorschach in the end to save Earth right?
Why exactly did Sarasti tear open Siri's hand?
Sarasti was being controlled by Theseus the whole time right?
What was up with that 'mutiny' at the end, and why did Sarasti/Theseus let it happen?

Any of this addressed in echopraxia?
Thanks in advance.

did it bother anyone that in almost every paragraph in this book there are italicized words and phrases ? What the fuck is Watts' problem ?not like the prose and the books content are even remotely complex to require this "stressing" effect.

Book was kinda shitty but it really made me think.

Just finished this. Great stuff. Do you guys know more SF like this? I hear the direct sequel isn't that good.

Is this any good?

My friend gave me a pretty glowing review of this, anyone else read it?

>>6864543
pic related

everything is strategy

>>6579879
> favorites from the last 10 years or so that aren't complete garbage

pic related