Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

The truth is, if you ask me this 100 times, you'll probably get 100 different answers, because it's impossible to really pick just one (well two, separating by fiction/non-fiction). But for today I'll go with:

Fiction: Neuromancer

Non-fiction: The Selfish Gene

View on HN

The Neuromancer has the greatest opening sentence of all times imho: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Sadly (for me) this now needs an annotated version for younger reader to fully understand.

I'm starting to feel old on a more and more frequent cadence.

This is a great line, though it might not have aged well. Younger generations might just think "Oh, the sky was black"

My kids would think the sky is blue because our TV shows a solid blue screen when there's no signal. For people with TVs like mine, I suppose the line still works.

as a genxer I was not sure if he meant blue or grey and snowing.

The Selfish Gene gave me lots to think about during my escape from the influence of religion in my life. That book gave me a solid idea that a lot of mystery could be explained by very simple concepts over a long period of time.

Came to say The Selfish Gene for nonfiction. Changed the way I thought about things.

Haven't read The Selfish Gene, but reading the summary it looks like it touches on some very similar themes as Stephen Pinker's How The Mind Works, which I thought was also a great book. Gave me a good intuitive understanding of how the human neural system evolved, and I found so much of the book to be prescient and timely in our current "AI era".

What people forget to mention is when they have read a book. I read the Selfish Gene when I was a teen and it left a lasting impression. It was published in 1989. How the Mind works was published in 2011.

Reading the Selfish Gene today as an adult, when you've probably read a dozen similar books already, is not going to have the same effect. It's going to be pretty boring. That's why asking for book recommendations is flawed to begin with.

What similar books are there to The Selfish Gene? I read it not too long ago and found it astonishing.

People are generally enthralled by Sapiens which is just a very mediocre extension + shallow interpretation of Dawkins’ thesis.

Probably too similar, but do follow up with "The Extended Phenotype" if you haven't already.

I have been meaning to come back to this since reading Selfish Gene, but haven't gotten to it! I suppose I should :)

Dawkins is not an original researcher. He is wonderful at synthesizing research and writing eloquent popular books.

The importance of The Selfish Gene is to write a correct summary of the neo-Darwinian project. In the future (perhaps even now), it will be more famous for the coining of meme (in an appendix IIRC).

However, The Extended Phenotype is a remarkably original exposition of important (then) contemporary frontiers of Darwinism. It is a powerful idea, powerfully described.

It is certainly his most important original contribution to the literature. And a beautiful book. True and convincing. It will change your view of the world. There is no higher praise.

"The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture" by Darrel Ray follows in the footsteps of The Selfish Gene to certain logical conclusions about clusters of related memes/concepts (specifically: how religion(s) formed and evolved as clusters of overlapping concepts)

The Selfish Gene was published in 1976, not 1989. I read it as a teen in the 90s and it is probably my favourite book of all time.

Also,

Bill Bryson’s “Short History of Nearly Everything”.

Brian Greene’s “The Fabric of the Cosmos” (and all of his other books)

Richard Dawkins’ “The Ancestor’s Tale” and “The Blind Watchmaker” are also amazing.

Fiction:

Adrian Czajkowski‘s “Children of Time” and Orson Scott Card‘s “Ender’s Game” are both anong my favourites.

How the Mind works was published in 1997, and The Selfish Gene in 1976.

> Fiction: Neuromancer

I've tried twice to read this, but it looses me about 10% in for some reason. Is it worth continuing past that? Does it get "better"? Or does that just signal that the whole book isn't for me?

I was in your boat. I revisited later and powered through and it does indeed get better. The narrative forms into something more cohesive and you start being less exhausted by all the lingo because you've learned it. You settle in. You have to sort of try to immerse yourself. I'd recommend trying to read in larger chunks of time and really absorb the aesthetic of the world.

This is exactly how I feel about Dune. The invented words and world-building are overwhelming at first, but once you absorb them it makes the narrative richer.

At least Dune has a glossary in the back.

Herbert was very clever in the sense that his made up words were close to real words. They were easily guessable.

> exhausted by all the lingo

I think that was my problem with Burning Chrome. Every sentence contained a new word or three that the reader is supposed to guess by context or conversation. Combined with something that read like stream-of-consciousness narration. I literally had no idea what was even happening after 30 or 45 minutes of reading.

But then I had the same problem with Shakespeare, so maybe I'm just dimmer than most folk.

I love Neuromancer specifically for the first third or so, so maybe the latter?

IMO the first part of the book is peak cyberpunk vibes. In particular I read it almost like I would read poetry, late at night when I can't sleep, sometimes jumping back and forth between pages.

I think when you read it matters. I read it after cyberpunk was already established and so I honestly don't remember much about it.

Neuromancer definitely has a unique prose style that Gibson came up with. And a lot of people do find it to be something of a turn-off. Me, I enjoyed it on the first read 30+ years ago and still enjoy it on re-reads. But it's hard to say whether or not somebody else will find it enjoyable. All I can say is that I/ve enjoyed Neuromancer enough to read it 4 or 5 times and will probably read it again at some point.

It's been a long time since I read it, but it definitely gets better.

I was like you. Plowed through it a couple of times but most of the book didn't make sense.

Then I read a big plot summary I found online and read it again and I really enjoyed it.

It might be worth reading the short stories in 'Burning Chrome'.

Also, there is an excellent BBC audio drama made from the book. It's on Youtube.

I read it fast and ignored all the words I didn't understand. You get in the zone. It was great.

Neuromancer is by far my favorite novel. On first reading, it felt to me like someone was finally describing the world in a way that I saw it, but couldn't articulate myself. I come back to it every couple of years and it never fails to entertain me.

That's why it's an interesting question worth asking andbthinking about.

It's fine that it's hard to answer, or the answer changes. The goal is not to actually determine the correct answer but to explore the possible answers and the reasoning that produces them, and the differences that different people produce.

How do people read Neuromancer its just technobabble

As a stylish thriller mostly

A lot of the appeal is aesthetic / stylistic. Yes it's "hard to read" compared to more "traditional" works, but it has its own unique appeal... an appeal that resonates with some people and not-so-much with others.

Another part is that Gibson was the first to put together cyberpunk as a genre and an aesthetic and a little dystopian futurism. It was truly the first that spawned a number of now familiar ideas like AIs battling firewall and attack and VR as a UX method.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com