Comment by philipkglass | Hacker News Reader

Comment by philipkglass | Hacker News Reader

If you liked Accelerando (and I sure did!), you may also like Stross's Palimpsest and Glasshouse [1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest_(novella)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse_(novel)

The rougher The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams is also worth trying:

http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/

Also A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, and Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution series. The latter can be read out of order; I read The Cassini Division before any of the others. Excession by Iain M. Banks is also one of my favorites, though it has a significant learning curve if you haven't read any of his Culture books before. All of these have things to say about runaway technological change and superintelligence. They all have a high "sensawunda" index, for those who recognize this old SF fan term.

[1] I have read and enjoyed most of Stross's output, but it has a lot of thematic variations and someone who loved Accelerando may not care for e.g. Rule 34.

Worth noting the author's warning on TMoPI: "This online novel contains strong language and extreme depictions of acts of sex and violence." This is very much not a routine notice, and it runs the gamut from elder abuse to self-mutilation to suicide to torture to necrophilia to drug abuse to underage sex. It is fascinating, but it is a story of deeply unhealthy people doing deeply unhealthy things.

I say this as someone who appreciated it enough to buy it hardcopy.

It's a fair warning, but (apart from the "over-controlling parent" track), the book is not all about those things. I find a classic like Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" more disturbing (still worth it), though it has only a single crime and is otherwise filled with nice, supporting people.

Strongly recommend reading A Deepness In The Sky before reading A Fire Upon the Deep. They're both good books but ADITS is phenomenal and much more similar to Accelerando, whereas AFUTD is less "hard sci-fi" and more "fantasy".

I'd absolutely disagree. If you read ADITS before AFUTD, you'll miss out on one of the major themes of ADITS - that you, the reader knows what's going on, and that the characters don't. That you know how it ends (well, ish), that you know the secrets they don't. That tension - maintained over such a large book - is what makes it so good!

I read ADITS, and then only got partway through AFUTD before getting distracted. You have me curious enough to consider a second attempt at reading through the latter. My parting impression of ADITS was just deep disgust and sadness about the human cultures.

Yes. Although AFUTD is set after the events of ADITS in the in-universe history (so ADITS is logically the prequel even though it was published later), the back story of Pham (who appears in both) is intentionally mysterious in AFUTD, and thus ADITS in effect contains spoilers if read first.

I have yet to read Accelerando, but Glasshouse was amazing. It definitely gets my endorsement.

I would further suggest that anyone who likes Glasshouse might like Permutation City by Greg Egan.

I have never read Glasshouse but I loved Permutation City (though I think Diaspora and Schild's Ladder were even better. Luminous/Dark Integers and Palimpsest are tied in my mind for "best short story")

I would posit that since you like Greg Egan, I consider Egan one of my 3 fav. authors, and Accelerando was the book that...well... got me to read books! That it's reasonable to suspect you would strongly like it as well. :D

I do expect to like Accelerando when I finally get to it. Stross is one of my favorite authors as it is. Beyond the aforementioned Glasshouse, I've also read and enjoyed Halting State and almost all of the titles in his "Laundry Files" series. I have copies of Rule 34, Accelerando, and Singularity Sky here waiting to be read. Just need to find time to get to them all. :-)

"The Apocalypse Triptych" [1] is a really interesting collection of short stories. There is a really nice story by Ken Liu that has a pretty solid animation series based on it, "Pantheon" [2]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apocalypse_Triptych

2. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11680642/

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