New Comic Day

[newnumber6]

So, finally my net is back up, too. For the last few irritating days, while it would be incorrect to say I had no net, it was functionally true. Every page I hit, I had approximately a 10% chance every refresh of it loading, and even then, most of the images, etc, each had their own 10% chance. So annoying. I'm really starting to think that the net has become a prosthetic to my mind, because I feel so lessened without it. Want to know something, just look it up, instantly... oh, I can't. Woe is me.

Anyway, moving on. New Comic Day today (delayed a day due to Labour Day)! This week I got one book:

New Warriors #4 (pretty good).

Full reviews up as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.

Pretty hot day out today.

Oh, and, I'll do some Book Foo too...

Finished: Accelerando, by Charles Stross
Started: Pandora's Star, by Peter F. Hamilton

Thoughts on Accelerando behind the cut (not terribly spoilery, but some minor plot elements talked about). Overall, really enjoyed it.

I often find finishing a book feels like finishing a meal. Some you don't feel it so much.. it's just fuel, even if you enjoyed it. But some are like this, they touched on and satisfied a craving inside you may not have even know you had, and so where after you're done you feel the need to sit back and savor, and think, "Mmmmmm, Accelerando."

Accelerando follows three generations of a 'family' through what is essentially a technological singularity of rapidly increasing change due to intelligence enhancement and burgeoning AIs.

It's style is very idea-dense, with new ideas being thrown at you on every page (not to mention jumping forward in years with every chapter)... which I suspect is in part to bring home the sense of 'future shock'. Sometimes jumps like that can annoy me, but here it's still remarkably readable, and I had fun pretty well all the way through, although I think I'm a little more optimistic about the hopes of post-humanity than the story is. One of the things I particularly liked was the exploration of many different forms intelligence could take with higher technology, and the issues those raise - how do you work your democracy when you have normal people, copies of normal people, AIs of various sizes and complexities, both naturally evolved and produced by uploading people or animals, group minds who each have their own individuality while also, together, running somebody else... who, exactly, gets votes?

I'm becoming more interested in the singularity as a SF concept, at lest lately. They call the Singularity 'the rapture for Nerds', and I guess I'm nearly ready to join the religion. Okay, not really, but it is incredibly appealing to my sensibilities and at least comes closer to promising 'heaven' scenarios I could at least halfway consider plausible.

Also, I have come to agree with some of the characters in the novel. We need to be dismantling the solar system ASAP. Screw colonizing Mars, let's tear it apart for computronium. ;)

Definately going to have to read more Stross. I was already planning to (since he wrote a series of 'British intelligence agency tackles Lovecraftian Horror' type books I've been interested in), but this book speeds up my desire.

Comments

[monkeykong.livejournal.com]

"British intelligence agency tackles Lovecraftian Horror" sounds excellent. Do you know what they're called?

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

I don't know the name of the series as a whole (I've heard them called the "Laundry" books, after the nickname of the agency I think, but I don't know if that's official). The first book is "The Atrocity Archives". The second is "The Jennifer Morgue"