/lit/ - Literature

One of this board's OG memes writes about internet bullshit and has literal blog excerpts and emails in his novels. Think hard on it.

>>12918584
Dave Eggers touches this once in a while

>>12918584
Honestly, for a story about the internet it doesn't get better than this

>>12918584

>>12918780
if you haven't watched this then you need to. Otherwise you can read "The Fortunate Fall" by Raphael Carter. Its a 1994 post-cyberpunk book about a woman that reports news by "streaming" all her senses to people watching in highly advanced VR machines. It would feel almost too new even today despite being written 25 years ago.

>>12919325

>>12919325
based

>>12918590

I'd assume Tao, but maybe Pynchon?

>>12918584
Patrick Sean Farley, The Guy I Almost Was
(comic strip but still)
http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/

>>12918780
Beat me to it

>>12918584
Read Joshua Cohen

>>12920741
This

>>12918584
I want her to puke in my mouth like a bird mother feeding her young

>>12920741
I tried

>>12918584
https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/the-gig-economy/

this ones pretty good

The Internet and the ultra-connectedness of modernity is the worst thing that ever happened to both the world and fiction.

>>12918584
You can't have this discussion without mentioning Goon Squad.

>>12922186
Yes, and who is writing about it?

>>12918584
Internet Dreams is pretty good

>>12919389
Shits been out of print forever and it costs $80

>>12918584
I think theMystery.doc by Michael McIntosh has a lot of exploration of the internet, haven't read it though

>>12919389
>Raphael Carter.
"Raphael Carter was one of the earliest bloggers, maintaining the Honeyguide Web Log from 1998 to 2002, but despite this, it can be remarkably difficult to find personal information about zir. (Carter doesn’t have a current public online presence, but in the early 2000s, zie was using zie / zir / zirs / zirself pronouns.)"

I was interested up until 'zir'

I'll probably read it anyway

>>12918584
joshua cohen

>>12922871
This actually has more understanding of the Internet than Book of Numbers

I'm writing one right now. It's in hypertext + interactive elements.
Any suggestion what do you wish to see in that type of fiction and what not?

>>12923986
Published online then and not book form?

>>12918780
I'll be honest. Lain was pretty good and some of the predictions it made almost 20 years ago are remarkably accurate. That being said, it has got to be one of the most overrated anime in existence. Some people who are way too into cyberpunk act like it's the best, deepest, most prophetic piece of media of all time.

>>12924030
>most prophetic piece of media of all time.
That honour belongs to Texhnolyze.

>>12918584
Circuits of the Wind is a really big novel about the early Internet. Love the 80's and 90's feels.

>>12924021
Yes. Online or as .exe. Though hypertext literature sometimes exist in printed book form (The Infinite Deadlock), I don't think it's necessary anymore

>>12924055
Too bad it's unwatchable

bump

>>12924080
Thanks anon, sample is promising.

>>12923127
Another one I never heard of but am going to read. Can't yet tell if it's a great book or another House of Leaves.

>>12923864
agreed

>>12918584
I posted the current version of what I'm working on on lit a while back under this trip. It's written in the language of the internet, words are links and links are words. Nobody bothered to "read" it to see how ahead of its time it is, maybe you will.

>>12918584
Homestuck

>>12925487
but house of leaves was a lot of fun

>>12922871
I was vaguely disappointed the book wasn't about somethingawful desu senpai.

4chan.org/lit

>>12918584
Headcrash by Bruce Bethke is OK - but Stealing the Network is a keystone fictional work for anyone interested in electronics.

Is there literally any book worth reading where the characters grew up on the internet(aka literally me)

>>12924080
Glad to see COTW mentioned here. It's a wonderful, if obscure book and captures so much of the early net.

>>12927193
> where the characters grew up on the internet
That's literally the plot of Circuits of the Wind. But it an X'er pov, not gen Y/Z.

>>12922871
This book is terrible, and I hope you are ashamed for promoting it.

>>12927972
desu there is one chapter, "safari" that is decent.

>>12920741
>(((Cohen)))
No

The internet is an aesthetic void. It’s amazing something can be so overbearing in our lives while also holding absolutely no value to our conscious minds. Just a consideration, when is the last time you had a dream where the internet made an appearance?

>>12923037
It's on libgen. Can you not pirate?

>>12927972
why do you think is terrible?

>>12921595
do you know the password?

>>12928100
That's an interesting point. I will be thinking about this...

>>12918584
The Circle

>>12928328
No! Is it just me or is Eggers 100% out of touch

Snow Crash

>>12929122
It's not just you. He's almost as bad as Joshua Cohen, really.

>>12918584
Boxer, Beetle
Internet fiction from the early oughts

>>12920741
dont actually do this

>>12928328
This book is widely regarded as terrible.

>>12930332
and for good reason!

>>12928155
Here is the link to the viewable version
https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/the-gig-economy-2/

>>12918590
DFW natch

>>12918584
No one mentioned Bleeding Edge wtf is wrong with /lit/

bump

>>12931180
Sad

>>12923028
Is that even real? I thought it was a troll

>>12933385
Who is the author?

OP: What about Justin Hall? links.net

>>12918780
overrated and overhyped anime, so boring

>>12922871
I'll read it, thank you, have a nice day.

>>12934131
I don't know, links.net is a long many-years blog, but not really a book. Certainly not fiction.

>>12924080
Found a free Kindle, will read.

>>12930273
Never heard of it. Will look into it. Thank you.

>>12928100
I've had multiple dreams about browsing 4chan. Text and images scrolling down through a blue board, some of it looks sensible but it moves too fast for me to read it.

>>12935583
This is exactly the sort of experience I would like to read in literature.
I also wonder if the offline world (physical space) has become more generic since the rise of online space.

>>12935966
A book you may like is "Entropy of Imagination" and its precursor book "The Spiraling Web" although you should read Entropy of Imagination first.

>>12936443
>Entropy of Imagination
Plot, for those interested: "Thousands of years ago, before he was trapped on an isolated computer system, Flatline was programmed to conquer the world. Today he's escaped back to the World Wide Web, where he hopes to find his way back to the real world. Except the World Wide Web has forgotten there ever was a real world."

>>12919639
Deep cut. This was good.

>>12918584
Pynchon - Bleeding Edge (2013)

>>12924080
why the fuck all the amazon reviews are written by christcucks? are you tricking me nigga?

>>12937381
my money is on typical amazon glitch. doesn't the title come from the bible?

>>12923986
anon, lets talk more about this
tell me about your project
im very interested in hyperfiction/netprov/interactivity/computer aesthetics

>>12938489
Same. Does anyone here remember The Hypertexts?

>>12918584
Didn't Franzen or Rick Moody include the Internet in their books

WHY DOES THIS KEEP GETTING PAGE 10 BUMPED. The OP image is so stupid looking like what the hell kind of advertisement was this even for

>>12922882
Me.

>>12935583
Holy fuck, I thought I was the only one. Imagine what information might be contained in those dream posts.

>>12938900
Go back to r-e-d-d-i-t, k?

>>12939061
Anything published, anon?

I've been working on a novel about a Doomer type guy who lives alone and spends his time immersed in the internet trying to soak in as much esoteric / forbidden knowledge as possible. I want to write something that evokes that feeling of watching gore videos at 4AM. He buys a gun. Some more stuff happens. Mexican cartel maybe gets involved.

I'm lazy though so it probably will be a year before I finish the second draft.

>>12931180
Agreed, current /lit/ is full of babbies that cant read

>>12939096
>look Mom I'm on 4channel!
guaranteed newfag

>>12938736
no, whats that?

>>12939583
Long-running hypertext poetry journal, http://www.thehypertexts.com

>>12918584
Days like today I wish the Internet had burned down

>>12936443
sounds interesting. how could I know such book exists without browsing /lit/ every day?

>>12941133
Oh thank you, I 'm glad someone finally tried out my recommendation. I had a weird ass experience reading that book if anyone wants to hear it.

>>12941332
Yes, please tell. I was the one you initially responded to. I've made an interlibrary loan to read it.

>>12941862
Ok, so I was on a flight that was crossing the Atlantic which was about 7-8 hours long. Pretty much as I was reading the book I tuned out the outside world entirely and used what felt like a majority of my brain on imagining what was happening inside the book. I know it is cliche but I really did feel like I was literally experiencing and inhabiting the story. I felt this to such an extent that when I left the plane and was sitting in the airport it had felt like I had woken from a dream. It even had that quality of slowly losing the feeling of the dream after a short time waking up.

I attribute this to being very sleep deprived, jet lag, the constant drone and darkness of the plane, and the music I was listening to combing to put me in some sort of hypnotic/dreamlike state. It was a very weird experience

>>12941968
Sometimes a very well written novel will do that to me.

>>12918584
It's invariably cringe.

>>12942131
That's good it happens to you often. It was the first time I had felt that to that extent and I was amazed by it.

>>12918780
>>12931180
>>12937170
these, plus pic related
>>12928328
read it, it's so goddamn awful that I can hardly put it into words

>>12942194
I tried to read Fanged, got the PDF which someone posted on here. Honestly thought it was super cringe.

>>12928131
I know but the cover is so pretty i want it on my shelf

>>12930273
What's it about?

>>12918584
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain

>1998

>>12928328
>normies colonzie teh interwebs
the book

>>12945832
Books about non-normies are better

>>12944957
The 90s seem like a much more creative time wrt Internet topics

>>12946393
>... wrt...

DO NOT DO THAT.

>>12946401
Ok sorry I wont.
But in the 90s the internet was new and it seemed more exciting. Then it took social media/smartphones to up the game. So now in the past 10 years there have been more online culture type writings, but I think the ones of the 90s had more excitement to them.

Why do you guys flock to overdone photos like this one? She just looks like a piece of plastic at this point.

>>12947131

GENESIS, AND ENTHUSIASM, ARE MUTUALLY INEXTRICABLE; IN POSTMATURITY EVERYTHING IS LETHARGY, BANALITY, MELANCHOLY.

>>12928328
what was wrong with the book, i was writing a story related to internet dystopia values albeit a little discouraging when you find that things have already been done. where did this book fail verse where did the others succeed?

>>12947828
Because you can tell that Eggers wasn't there. He doesn't get it. It falls flat. I would say that's the case with ALL of his work, but this book especially felt so fake - it wasn't genuine. Some of the other books talked about on this thread were really there, really good - and you can feel if when you read them. There are some great books here. And to them I would add George Saunders.

>>12919325
Good book but not about the Internet.
Bleeding Edge, however...

>>12947199
Douglas Rushkoff's Cyberia is a more exciting book than any nonfiction book about the internet since 2000. It was written in 1994 so that explains it - the enthusiasm of genesis.

>>12947216
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/digital-native-interview-b-r-yeager-amygdalatropolis/
So you know what your getting into

>>12949403
yes it is

>>12947158
Well sir, not everyone can afford to live in communities like Stepford.

>>12947216
Is this book actually any good? Can't tell from the sample. Definitely an underground writer either way.

>>12949635

I CONCUR.

I WONDER WHO WILL WRITE RE US.

>>12930628
Now this is what I call cosmic horror

>>12949725
>tfw your gf melts on a hot day

>>12922186
I feel like people can't read big books anymore because of the Internet.