Comment by aaroninsf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aaroninsf | Hacker News Reader

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I... would not describe that trilogy as a fun read, though I think you were being sardonic in as much as the premises throughout are apocalyptic and nihilistic.

Whenever the CSD and the JdF fault are mentioned, I scan to see if this trilogy is mentioned, and if so, if a content warning is attached.

I have many ties thought, I would like to recommend this to people as disaster-porn,

but (not unlike Accelerando), I can't, generally,

because it is also unremittingly disturbing BDSM torture-porn.

I have wondered recently whether with the help of AI tools like Hyperwrite, one could excise that content and leave the other aspects coherent.

TLDLR if Watts isn't a hardcore devotee of BDSM, crossing over into fetishization of torture especially of women, you wouldn't know it from these novels.

A shame as the stuff about the rift itself is quite good.

I agree that the Achilles Desjardins torture porn was disturbing, but I've always interpreted it as an argument against Utilitarianism, and not BSDM porn per se. It's a more vividly disturbing version of The Ones That Walk Away From Omelas.

Watts sets up Desjardins as a Utilitarian demon, an evil that we tolerate because his specific evils are less than the overall good he provides the world.

In the end it turns out that the overall good he provided the world was a deception, and the man was revealed to have been pure villain for the entirety of books 3 and 4.

But yeah, I agree with you that I'd prefer to have not read those scenes. I'll still recommend Starfish, but not its sequels.

I am distinctly more skeptical, I find it implausible that these scenes would be given their centricity and word count and "rich detail" were they there merely a necessary evil to construct an argument or move the plot. There is no shortage of celebrated examples of literature treating the grotesque, violent, dehumanizing, painful, etc... without lingering on it. The abhorrent can be evoked without fetishization. :/

I only recall a couple segments in the fourth book of that nature, all skippable. "Fun read" doesn't have to be "happy ending".

All of Peter Watts' work is delightful and pleasant. He's well known for this! /s

I just loved how happy and not existential crisisy at all Blindsight and Echopraxia made me feel!

Although come to think of it, Portia would be a good name for some near-gen AI model...

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