Comment by JohnBooty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnBooty | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

    If you read Neuromancer in 1984, it was mind-blowing. 
    Same thing with Snow Crash in 1992

So do you like, only enjoy art produced in the last N years?

Or art that was produced more than N years ago but didn't produce any imitators that retroactively diminished the original for you?

I guess I'm not enjoying things right. I read Snow Crash in the 2000s (and LOTR in the 90s) and enjoyed the hell out of them even though they were "outdated" and had inspired countless derivative works in the ensuing decades. In fact, I had a good time playing Ms. Pac Man just last weekend.

When I read Snow Crash it definitely felt like the product of an earlier decade but I didn't hold that against it. I like understanding the context in which a piece was made.

If you don't, that's okay and you're certainly not alone. Feels like you're missing out on some good stuff though. Possibly a lot of good stuff. Possibly the vast majority of human artistic output.

I think the "when you read it" has more to do with age than decade. I read Snow Crash back in high school in the early 2010s before even necessarily encountering a lot of the derivative media and I adored it.

> Feels like you're missing out on some good stuff though. Possibly a lot of good stuff. Possibly the vast majority of human artistic output.

Hardly. Most human artistic output does not create its own genre and spawn a host of imitators.

Classics are coordination points but generally less fun. "Seinfeld is unfunny" is real, you're genuinely better off watching something more recent if you just want to enjoy yourself.

Comparing dragons to 3d internet chat rooms is kinda funny.

Arthurian dragons have largely been the same beasts for, oh, 1000 years.

3d internet chat rooms in Snow Crash have been tried and are ... lame.

I appreciate you thinking critically, but your arguments aren't very strong.

Also, I'm not gatekeeping, I suggesting why a person might not have liked something. There's a concept called "novelty", meaning "newness". The first time you encounter something it is exciting. If you spent the first 15 years of your life using an iPhone, then read an Asimov novel that introduced satellites, you'd be like "So what?" See? When Asimove wrote about satellite communication, IT DIDN'T EXIST yet. But when you read his book, it was old-hat to you, so you probably might not like his books.

That's all I'm saying. I'm not trying to tell you how to enjoy things. Chill dude, you'll live longer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com