/lit/ - Literature

Starting Nov 1st in the discord we'll be reading The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu.
You can get it here.
https://mega.nz/folder/CwkhHaID#hJHdeI9mLgDya9opdkC0cA

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe - Kij Johnson (2016)
What an enjoyable novella. This was the author's response to Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. It was nominated for several awards and won a few, well deserved I'd say. The protagonist is a 55 year old woman who was a far traveler in her youth and still retains a good measure of that vigor despite her many years as a professor at a women's college.
The Dream Lands were a wonderful setting, full of interesting locales and fantastical imagery. Creatures beyond knowing are a common occurrence, the Old and Elder Ones are occasionally wroth and annihilate entire regions, and math, physics, distance and any sort of measurement are inconstant. The Other Ones are even more mysterious in their ways.
Dreamers from the Waking World are seen now and again and often become people of great import if they stay. In this particular case, a man has decided to take girl back with him to the waking world. As a result, the protagonist must travel the world, facing all its perils, to find a way to the Waking World to retrieve her. Despite all the darkness of the world and its inhabitants, much remains bright and noble.
A current of feminism flows through the writing in the form of strong, independent, women not wanting to be defined by men by rather to be defined by their own accomplishments and dreams. However, such is their society that this would leave them in quite a precarious position at best. Perhaps it's better in the Waking World they muse, but it's difficult to know because as far as anyone knows there's never been a woman from the Waking World in the Dream Lands. It may be that women aren't allowed to have expansive dreams and ambitions of their own there either.
The resolution and ending were a bit too convenient for me, but didn't much detract from the whole.
I'll have to consider her other works again.
Rating: 4.5/5 (rounded down)

>>16664222
Do not post discord tranny nonsense next time you make a general.

Also posting a goodreads group that cannot even be accessed is really dumb

The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred - Greg Egan (2016)
This was unlike anything else by Egan that I've read. It's about politics and little else. The two primary issues are discrimination and refugees, though several other issues are are present to varying degrees. There are many indictments against the perceived failures of their government, which doesn't take much of a stretch to relate them to existing governments. There are also ethical dilemmas presented, though at this point the trolley problem doesn't mean much to me, but its inclusion seems to have affected others quite a bit. Personally, I think in this case it would have been better to destroy the metaphorical train and avoid the problem altogether, though that quite possibly present a far greater problem. The best option would have been for the train to never have been built, but that's far more difficult proposition.
Rating: 3.5/5, rounded down.

The Plagiarist - Hugh Howey (2011)
Universities simulate worlds to mine all academic value from them and a multitude of industries have sprung up from harvesting their popular culture. The protagonist specializes in finding worthwhile books in simulated worlds, but he also uses them to live out a second life that feels far more fulfilling than his actual one. Porn is involved as well, because when isn't it? "Regular porn had nothing on virtual whores who didn't even know they were virtual"
Full plot spoilers: That second life collapses when they start doing their own simulations and so they are formatted and begun anew, because it's just easier that way. As you might expect, the protagonist is a simulation as and is formatted just the same for the same reasons. His simulators are probably simulations as well. So goes the infinite regression of simulation. In a particular bit of silliness, it's stated at the end that the main reason why his world hadn't been deleted yet was because his haiku were so wonderful.
Rating: 2.5/5 (rounded up)

>>16664246
Turns out whomever makes the thread does want they want. It isn't publicly accessible, no. I could do a vote on it again, but I doubt the result would be any different.

>>>16664353
^^^moving here because this retard put a discord in the OP. Remember that putting Discords in the OP is against the rules and is reportable.

>>16664222
testing test

>>16664222
>>16664222
Oh, Discords are allowed on this board again? Okay, here's a better sffg discord: https://discord.gg/FXDaKEy

The one in op is run by a tramsgender pedyfile.

I'm looking for some recommendations similar to Universal Century Gundam. Humans on Earth vs humans in space colonies stuff.

Solo test etc etc

Most variations of the phrase "tramsgender pedyfile," spelled correctly, now make your post disappear. I guess the guy who runs the one discord became a mod here and got access to the wordfilter and doesn't want to be called what he probably is.

>>16664360
Could you show where that is in the rules?

BRANDORF SANDERSHANK