/lit/ - Literature

>>4788052

>op
>baby's first sci-fi

Wat? Just...wat?

I'm responding only because I sincerely hope you aren't trolling. Island (along with brave new world though, though less talked about) has been on all time lists for decades and isn't even remotely science fiction, not even if you are referring to the moksha-medicine chapter. It's blatantly obvious that it's a fictional insert of Huxley's mescaline experience described in Doors of Perception.


Though I agree with you in principle, Huxley was a goddamned genius and your post was bad and you should feel bad. Lmao

>>3084200
>Just like there isn't a typical way of living like an atheist

>implying 99% of atheists don´t belong to either Dawkinsian, Marxist, or Nietzschean sect
>implying 90% of those do not follow Dawkins, Sagan & co. as fervently as if their writings were holy writ
>implying the so-called "freethinkers" are not simply rehashing the bullshit arguments of the trendy atheists
>implying their way of life is in the end not a perfectly boring bourgeois suburban white-collar day-labor.

I lol´d.

>>2557384
>>2557385
>None of the new atheists have written anything like that.

ORLY?

Seriously, have you read the books? For now I´ll stick with Dawkins: he claims that
a) all religion - moderate, fundamentalist - teaches that blind, unquestioning faith is a virtue. This he derives from the fact that both moderate and fundamentalist religion believes in God.
b) therefore all religion is equally irrational and therefore must be fought. This is their actual argument against moderate religion, in case you haven´t noticed.
c) religion must be destroyed. This claim is not made directly, but if you add his belief that people are religious only because they have been indoctrinated in childhood to the belief that raising your children religiously is child abuse, you get the result that religious childrearing must be outlawed and criminalized, and religion will thus be destroyed. For Dawkins there is nothing good or valuable about religion, certainly nothing that couldn´t be had without it - and a plethora of evils it supposedly causes and for which it merits demise.

Pretty much the same can be found in Hitchens and of course Harris, that zealous retard. Not so sure about Dennett, but I wouldn´t expect a significantly more sensible approach, given his public association with the other three.

Your call.

>>2367185

>only as strong as our weakest member
>only as strong as a quadriplegic tard
>only as strong as a vegetable confined to a hospital bed

If you believe this shit for a moment, you're retarded. I don't like Rand, but this is insane.

>>2299669

there are plenty of books (especially academic texts) that are nearly impossible or actually impossible to torrent.

also, not supporting people whose material you enjoy is for faggots.

Bob Dylan or Haruki Murakami winning a Nobel will only confirm what everyone has always believed about the Nobel committee.

>>2102976
I thought the "No." post was a witty nihilist joke.

Apparently not.

Let's try a thought experiment.

That dollar bill in your pocket. How much is it worth?

MFW the greentext is a valid course of logic.

>>1978348
Hey dick munch, I grew up in a white trailer park, got beat up by white guys all the time, callin me faggot. Not to mention white trash like to find excuses for rape just as much as black trash.

Hitler was a Christian.

By the way, 3/10

The problem with her philosophy is that every human action has a shitload of consequences which can influence other people in either positively or negatively. Sometimes (quite often actually) an actions benefits the said person, but passively negatively influences someone else. Rand argues that nobody should be obliged to help others, but deciding not to help others does in fact influence people in a negative way, eg harms them, eg interferes with their freedom as defined by ayn. In ayn rand's ideal world, people either benefit from your actions or aren't affected by them at all. In real world however every action has a reaction that influences everyone else. To follow objectivism and satisfy your selfish ideals you have to take lots of actions that will likely negatively influence a number of people. And being passive, not helping your fellow human being is an action on its own, an action that influences other people negatively.

The Big Sleep
>This is the first...and last, Raymond Chandler book I'll read. It's just one big male fantasy. The women are all "dames" and "broads." They're bad girls and seductresses who get slapped around by the men. The book feels dated--I didn't understand some of the phrases and dialogue from the era. I also couldn't get past all the cliched characters and dialogue which I suppose isn't fair since Chandler was probably the originator of this genre! But they've appeared and been parodied so many times, it was difficult not to roll my eyes

>>1499462

>>1435609

>Babylon 5
>one of the worst sci-fi shows

BSG only wishes it had a consistent storyline.

>>1385057
Yeah, actually, I AM MAD. Because those in favor of the charges brought before the man are trying to say that those opposing the charges are advocating child rape. And that isn't it at all. We are OPPOSED to the idea that obscenity laws can be wielded in a way that can so blatantly restrict freedom of speech.

Mind you, he is being charged WITH OBSCENITY *not* CHILD EXPLOITATION!

OBSCENITY DOES NOT JUST COVER PEDOPHILIA AND NOT JUST NON-FICTION SEE THE LINKS I HAVE POSTED ABOVE, YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKERS!

>>1384810
>>1384838

This case can set a precedent that allows law enforcement to charge people with obscenity without any real check. And mind you, being charged with obscenity, with any crime of that nature, is social suicide for most people. This causes all but the most apathetic writers and artists to watch what they are writing and drawing out of fear of being persecuted. This creates what is called the "chilling effect."

Which, considering the level of mental deficiency that the posts I have been seeing in this thread imply, you people DON'T know what the "chilling effect" is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect_%28law%29

Now you may say, "durr well they just can't sell it in Florida, big deal hurr." This may be, but with the book publishing industry breaking down as is, they will probably want to sell a book in as many stores as possible. Which may lead to bookstores not carrying certain books altogether. Writers need to make a living too, and they may just not write about certain subjects so that their book may actually have a feasible chance of selling.

Now, I'm probably jumping the gun, but I can't be at all comfortable with the stage this case sets.

Egh, what the hell, OP. I don't care whether you're arguing for or against books. Mediums are mediums. They aren't objectively better or worse than the other ones. There's things you can do in movies you can't do in books. I know from my own experience there's things that work better in comics than in novels or short stories, and vice versa. Mediums are simply vehicles for our ideas, and how effectively we utilize them is up to us.

If a medium sticks around for decades or centuries, there's probably some function it's hitting with people, so it's silly to try to tier it out.

Saying a book engages no senses is just stupid, though.