And what’s on your to read shelf?
Just finished Ministry for the Future and now planning to jump in to Nemesis Games.
Infinite Jest.
Or rather, trying to read it. It’s more like an eternal cycle of starting, stopping, and then restarting again.
DFW’s writing is great though.
Other than the infrequent bits where he discusses home life and social events (which I tend to skim), it’s a pretty engaging read. It’s also kind of shocking how little he could get anyone from the alphabet agencies to care. I’m approaching the end and it’s getting exciting in that nerdy way that a good hacker story does. Hope you enjoy it.
Just finished a book from the 1930s by a Czech author Karel Čapek called War with the Newts.
It’s sci-fi based on earth in 1930s but what I found the most interesting is
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seeing an author from 1930s write and think on paper (casual racism and sexism, for example),
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the echoes of the looming WWII
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the retro futurism - I love seeing what people from the past imagined would happen with technology. They are often right, often cutely wrong.
Oh! Never read anything from Čapek. Thanks for bringing him to my attention!
TIL: His brother invented the word “robot”, which Karel Čapek used in the book R.U.R.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%C4%8Capek#Etymology_of_robot
