Jonas David's Blog, page 41

Peace on Earth, by Stanislaw Lem

I finished Peace on Earth[image error] and I think it’s possible that I didn’t ‘get’ this book. I have found afterward that it was meant to be a satire, and though some of it was funny, I took it more of a straight up sci fi adventure/thought piece. Maybe that is why I was a bit disappointed.

The idea of someone with a split brain was the most interesting factor to me, and the reason I wanted to read the book in the first place. So when the story veered off into moon robots and different technologies in the society, I got a bit bored. A huge amount of time is spent describing technologies on the moon, and different kind of weaponry that has evolved, and the main characters experiences there. But all of this is told as a flashback, so there is no tension. Even then, the character is experiencing all this through a ‘remote’, a robot he is controlling with his mind–so he’s not even on the moon himself to be in any danger.

Quite often I think sci fi writers forget that there needs to be danger and excitement, and plot and characters even, when they get excited showing off all the cool things they dreamed up.

Got kind of bored with this one, but the parts about consciousness were thought provoking and interesting. I’d still recommend it because Lem is a great writer.

Unseeing

Humans are particularly good at not seeing things they find uncomfortable, or that upset the way they think the world works. In The City & The City[image error] this idea is taken literally…

Two cities occupy the same space, and each ignores the other. Language, script, styles of architecture and clothing let the citizens know who and what they should see. Why these cities ended up like this is still yet to be revealed, but the idea of it is very interesting to me.

In working to solve a murder, the detective of the story finds that a van was stolen and taken across the border to the ‘other’ city. This border crossing was done legally, with a permit, however since the van was in the style of the ‘other’ city, no one saw it. Or, they saw it, decided it was in the neighboring city based on its style, then unsaw it. Or willfully decided not to be aware of it. This is making it terribly difficult for the detective to find witnesses…

Loving this book so far–it’s a modern day detective novel, but set in a bizarre city that makes the mystery all the more entertaining.

Check it out!

Weaponized insanity

No, this isn’t a political post…

I’m still listening to Peace on Earth[image error] and in it, they have the idea of a drug or weapon that induces psychosis. This would be a much more effective way of eliminating someone who knows too much. Killing them would draw attention to them, and start an investigation–but if they just slowly go mad? No one would suspect. And it invalidates any information they might have against you, because no one can believe or trust an insane person.

This is a really neat concept, and I wonder if there are such strategies employed today–maybe forced drug addiction to discredit someone, for example.

Interesting things in this book so far…

Game of thrones season 7 ep 4

What a great episode! Some things we’ve been waiting a long time for finally happened, spoilers blah blah spoilers

 

We finally get to see a dragon in action, and it wrecked everything in its path. This is the action scene I’ve been hoping for since those little lizards first poked heads out of their shells, and it was worth the wait! These guys sure do make good battle scenes. It can’t top battle of the bastards, in my opinion, but following Bron through the chaos, fire and explosions was really thrilling. It felt almost like a modern war with bombs and artillery. I am sort of mystified why it was Bron who fired the scorpion, though, that seems somewhat random… but I’m glad we got to see Bron anyway! He had one of the many great lines in this episode. After young Dickon complains about the smell after a battle, Bron says “Men shit themselves when the die. Didn’t they teach you that at fancy lad school?” I laughed.

Will Jon bend the knee? Dani won’t give in, and Jon seems like he’s too good and too worried about his people and the realm in general to say no, if it will get him what he wants. I guess Dani and Jon are supposed to be attracted to eachother now? I didn’t get that at all, though, and I hope they aren’t going to be one of those no-chemistry couples. Davos had a great line though, after Jon says Dani has a good heart he says “I saw you staring at her heart.” I laughed at that, too.

Arya finally returns to Winterfell and sees her sis and bro! Bran is a weirdo, but we get a bit of an explanation why– “I remember being Bran, but I remember so much else, too.” Somehow he absorbed loads of memories when he was in the tree thing, it seems… intriguing! I was surprised to see that dagger again, and pleased when Arya got her deadly little hands on it. Her sparring with Brienne was awesome, and a good illustration of how capable Arya has become after all her faceless training.

“Who taught you how to do that?”

“No one.”

Awesome.

Watching Jamie charge at Dani with the lance at the very end was so intense, because either way it goes, you’re not going to be happy… all the characters have grown on me so. What a nail biter!

Can’t wait for the next one!

 

 

 

Split brain

I’ve been listening to Peace on Earth, by Stanislaw Lem[image error] and the character has had his right and left brain split. It’s quite interesting so far, and deals with a lot of philosophical questions like ‘is it me inside my head, if i don’t know what it’s thinking?’ So far the plot seems to be that he saw something he shouldn’t have, but only his right brain has the memories (the side of his brain that is his subconscious side, not his conscious side, so he doesn’t have direct access to it.) People seem to want to interrogate that side of him, but are unsure how.

There are real examples of people with their brains split, and images shown to one eye not being perceived by the conscious mind… it’s a strange thing to think about, and I am enjoying this book a lot so far!

My books are free again

All my kindle catalog is free for this weekend!

Queen of Bones[image error]: About a soldier and a sorcerer tracking a murderer through a desert

In the Water[image error]: About an encounter with an alien that affects consciousness

Iapetus Shift: A Science Fiction Novella[image error]: About a shape-shifting assassin trying to get out of the business

Check them out, free, today and tomorrow, and if you like them please leave a review on Amazon–even just one sentence and a star rating is very helpful!

Multitudinous progeny

Different creatures have different strategies for passing on their genes. Spiders for example, produce thousands of offspring and send them flying off on the wind without a care for their survival–with a thousand chances, a few are sure to survive. Humans and other mammals, on the other hand, put all their energy and effort into one or two offspring, and making as absolutely sure as possible that they survive. What would our world be like if humans took the spider’s approach to procreation?

A human giving birth to a thousand human eggs… what would the tiny hatchling human be like? What would it eat, how would it grow? Perhaps it would take the strategy of the caterpillar, and be in a different form at a young age, eating loads of food until it built up enough energy to transform. Most of them would die, of course. As do most spiders, or other animals that lay huge broods.

I think humans would be very different, if that was their way. They would be less caring, less helpful, less social. More loners and individualists. Less empathetic. We probably wouldn’t have society as we know it, and would not have accomplished what we have, since we wouldn’t work together as well.

Odd John: another biography style story about super smart people

I just finished Odd John[image error] and it reminded me a bit of The Glass Bead Game[image error] in that it was a historical/biographical style telling of a group of super intelligent people who the rest of the world doesn’t understand. It was about ten times more entertaining, though that isn’t saying much. It was also written around the same time so maybe fictional biographies were a fad then.

This story was interesting, and gave me a lot of ideas to pirate. It follows the path of one character, John, from his birth to death. He starts out as a genius baby learning to read and speak and do complex math, physics and more all in his first years. From there, he moves on to even stranger/more amazing feats.

The end is what one might expect from a group of hyper smart people trying to start a colony. The world can never accept what it doesn’t understand. The author leaves it a bit vague what the group is trying to do with their collective smarts, but whatever it was, we normals would never have understood…

An interesting book, but I wasn’t a fan of the way it was written.

Becoming critical

I remember I used to love every book I read. Now I find it harder to do so. Probably this is a consequence of reading a lot of books. I have a higher baseline of quality. I also have seen so many plots/ideas/character types that they don’t impress me or excite me anymore.

Whatever it is, I don’t like being that guy who has something negative to say about every popular thing that comes up. So I try hard not to be that guy, even if my brain is going ‘whyyyy do people like this so much??’ It’s just really annoying, isn’t it? When you are loving something and some doofus pipes up with ‘this is dumb and bad because abc.’ Even if he’s right, you just want him to go away.

So even if I’m turning into that guy on the inside, I will strive not to show it on the outside…

Game of thrones Season 07 episode 03

Things are really speeding along… and, I appreciate it.

We’ve seen plenty of battles, we don’t need to see another one. We’ve spent long enough waiting for Jon and Dani to meet, we don’t need any more travel sequences. Things are happening, and it’s great that the writers feel confident enough to get done what the story needs to happen without focusing too much on the trivial fighting of it.

We’ve been having more intensely awesome conversations, than intense battles.

Olenna’s final finger at Jamie was amazing, and a great way for her to go out.

Cersie’s revenge was terrible, and just her style– but both of these deaths, were not shown. We don’t need to be shown the brutality any more, after seven years of it, we can imagine. Now we can spend more time on the story, instead of just the exciting images.

Loving this season so far, and looking very much forward to more…