Sci-Fi

[Anonymous No.20594361]

Books set within a K3-4 civilisation?

[Anonymous No.20594367]

My diary ;)

[Anonymous No.20594408]

>>20594361
Too alien of an experience for people desu. Although, you could have a book about regular or so humans in the galaxy or universe run by K3 or 4 civ/beings.

[Anonymous No.20594439]

>>20594361
Greg Egan - "Incandescence", and "Schild's Ladder", but both have a rather minor focus on the Amalgam itself (the K3 civilization in the stories), instead it's overall quite human Amalgam members dealing with some other shit - respectively xenoarchaeology and a spacetime collapse type of the End of All Universe that they are not exactly sure is a bad thing.

>>20594408
>Too alien of an experience for people desu.
Why?

[Anonymous No.20594460]

>>20594439
Well, honestly, it depends with what other technology this comes with. If lets say you can harness energy of the galaxy, what do you do? Do you have advanced anti aging technology and VR and spend your time in your own fantasy universe? Constantly be in drugged out pleasure haze?

[Anonymous No.20594711]

>>20594361
Three Body Problem and many of the Chinese sci-fi novels

[Anonymous No.20594719]

>>20594361
Rubbish.

[Anonymous No.20594725]

Energy fiends are thirsting for their own annihilation

[Anonymous No.20594734]

>>20594361
>>Karashev Scale with more than type 1, 2 and 3.
Xeelee Sequence

[Anonymous No.20594980]

>>20594725
any living creature is an “energy fiend”
Stop fiending for energy and see your own annihilation.

[Anonymous No.20595217]

>>20594460
>Well, honestly, it depends with what other technology this comes with. If lets say you can harness energy of the galaxy, what do you do? Do you have advanced anti aging technology and VR and spend your time in your own fantasy universe?
In Egan's works, humanity (and a plenty of aliens) by that point have existed for a long time as pure data in digital simulations processed by orbital computers across the galaxy, though they can program copies of themselves into cloned bodies or machine platforms when they want to. They do interstellar travel by transmitting digital copies of themselves, and one individual typically exists in multiple simultaneous copies that inevitably develop into mutual strangers due to diverging experience and travel lag.

>Constantly be in drugged out pleasure haze?
Amalgam members can do that, but they generally don't, as it's seen as something pointless. Being computer programs means that they can directly tweak their own minds and perceptions on the fly, and doing something like setting your own pleasure perception to maximum level at all times is trivial - and suicidal. One can just as easily just stop execution of his own mind in that moment and become a snapshot of himself experiencing absolute pleasure for no reason, for all of eternity (or at least as long as the hardware storing you exists). Adopting an artificial view that does not permit any dynamics (i.e. programming yourself to believe in something regardless of any possible input forever) is also seen as something akin to death - in both cases, you only continue existing for others as a static snapshot, with no input of any interest.

One can do that, but those who do become just pointless stored data, while those who prefer other pastimes get to proliferate and generally meaningfully exist on.

>If lets say you can harness energy of the galaxy, what do you do?
Amalgam members are mostly driven by curiosity of finding and interacting with new and unfamiliar things - super-cool digital simulations is cool and everything, but eventually they consist out of nothing but math and regurgitated things from the physical reality, so said reality is inevitably the only source of things worthy of attention, unless you are a mathematical autist who's legitimately happy to form theories of N-dimensional typologies until suns die out.

Mostly these folks spend their time transmitting themselves from place to place in search of other people to interact with and cool projects to take part in.

[Anonymous No.20595247]

>>20595217

The protagonist of Incandescence is approached by a weird alien that tasks him - as the only DNA-derivative life form in reasonable range - with discovering and assisting another DNA-derived civilization in a distant part of the galaxy that regular means usually can't reach, as it is inhabited by local isolationists - which is much better and more interesting that anything else he could do otherwise.

In Schild's Ladder, some scientifically-inclined Amalgam fellows have devised a Dyson-sphere scale structure for the purpose of experimentation, and a human-derived researcher proposes a very interesting experiment to use it for. Said experiment unexpectedly causes propagating false vacuum decay - i.e. a growing bubble the straight up unravels our space-time. The Amalgam treats is more as a very curious phenomenon or at worst a nuisance, as the sub-lightspeed propagation means that it's trivial for everyone who is not completely planet-bound to just stay way ahead of the front for literally billions of years, if they want to. It's not much of a spoiler, since this is how the story begins. The rest of it is another guys and his perspective on the interstellar community deciding what exactly to do with this thing, and why. And as it turns out - the process not only unravels our space time, but naturally creates a new, completely different one, and it's already inhabited by intelligent lifeforms - and there's literally no difference between stopping our Universe-ending event and causing such an event for them.

What I like about this part of Egan's writing is cool and unusual ideas in entirely relatable perspective - Egan's post-Humans mostly differ from normal humans by having much more curiosity and compassion, and much less resentment.

What I dislike is that he's not a very capable writer period.

[Anonymous No.20595730]

>>20594361
do the last parts of Asimov's "The Last Question" count?

[Anonymous No.20595754]

>>20594361
Halo Forerunner saga

[Anonymous No.20595807]

>>20594361
i think Blame! is one of the few works in any medium that pulls off a type III civilization.
Its set in what is like a galaxy-sized dyson sphere with the protagonist trying to get to the outer shell through like, eons of time. pretty cool stuff.

Type 4 would just be like, abstract theological poems i guess.

[Anonymous No.20595813]

>>20594439
We’re not even close to type 1. Most people can’t even wrap their heads around the concept that electricity doesn’t just come magically out of a hole in the wall.

[Anonymous No.20595908]

>>20594361
The Last Question

[Anonymous No.20595928]

>>20595813
>Most people can’t even wrap their heads around the concept that electricity doesn’t just come magically out of a hole in the wall.
Not really, they simply don't think about it because it doesn't matter to them, but if it did matter, they'd have no issue wrapping their heads around it - as proven by literal millions of upright apes graduating yearly as "Electricians", so this has very little relation to the extent of what would be considered "too alien to write about".

You might as well claim that a hunter-gatherer society is too alien of an experience to describe in human literature, because most people can’t even wrap their heads around the concept that food doesn't just magically grow on the shelves in a supermarket.

[Anonymous No.20595953]

>>20594361
The book of Genesis.

[Anonymouṡ No.20595976]

>>20594408
>Although, you could have a book about regular or so humans in the galaxy or universe run by K3 or 4 civ/beings.
Maybe. But probably such beings would be so far beyond humans there couldn't be any dramatically interesting interaction. To put it another way — we could well be living in a universe controlled by a K4 civilization. We would never know.

[Anonymous No.20595986]

>>20595976
Unless they like, told us.

[Anonymouṡ No.20596012]

>>20595986
How would you tell, say, a housefly about human civilization?

[Anonymous No.20596059]

>>20595928
I think we’re in agreement: the question was “why is it too alien for people to care or take an interest,” (not “why is it too alien to write about?”) the answer being that it’s too far removed from their day to day lives for it to matter to them. Hunter gatherer tier literature is at least relatable to most/all. The sort of dorks who dig that sort of sci-fi and the potential philosophical implications (i.e. me and and maybe you) are far from the norm, and authors need to eat too. Better to write Star Wars tier shit, much as it pains me to say it.

[Anonymous No.20596068]

*my interpretation of the question

[Anonymous No.20596078]

would be pretty boring imo. I guess Roadside Picnic kind of counts for an alien force absolutely outside of human understanding.