I love all the culture books, it’s hard to choose a favourite. Excession gives us insight into the ships, which doesn’t really occur in any of the other books.
They all involve time lines way beyond a single human lifetime which blows my mind every time I read them.
His use of split time lines and different narrative threads coming together is the big pay off.
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Amazing book - also read it when I was a very young teenager. Blew my mind. Thought Lynch’s film adaptation was total shite when it came out. I had no idea there was a upcoming movie… super curious about that now 
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Viellneuve did such a good job with 2049 I’m confident about Dune being good. But the Lynch film is a childhood favourite!
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as long as it doesn’t make Paul out to be a hero…
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haha… well I haven’t watched it since and I was a kid - that was almost 40 years ago and I am sure my judgment as a kid was highly likely way off the mark so as a learning experience I am gonna get me a copy and watch it this weekend… I’ll probably love it. And cry.
… and yes I totally agree … I thought Villeneuve’s 2049 was excellent.
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the sci-fi channel mini series is worth watching over the movie I feel. It’s not holywood edited to hell and back and actually has a coherent story.
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damn what rock have I been living under? … I never knew about that either - thanks for the tip!
I’ll have to look that up
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sorry for derailing things there… I mostly read non-fiction and I read multiple books at the same time as my attention span tends to drift but the best book I am reading and have read in a long long time is by far ‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers. I keep re-reading parts of it which is why I can’t seem to finish it.
It took me by surprise. The opening chapters had me in tears… on a train in rush hour (just before the pandemic kicked in and we all had to stay home)
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My favourite sci fi novel by the master
He is missed
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On this topic, play this: https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html
Seems silly at first, but trust me, its amazing, and a clever/hilarious commentary on uncontrolled growth
Ive gotten hooked recently into Terry Prachets Discworld series. Decent mix of fantasy\sci-fi but more importantly the guy was hillarious
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Great thread. Lots of good stuff here.
Just finished re-reading the sprawl trilogy by Gibson. Every five or so years I read them, ever since high school. I’ve never found the right book to read afterward, once I’m in that mood.
Also recently finished “assimilate” by Reed. Some of it is great, some of it is the same stories anyone familiar with the subject has heard over and over.
Not sure what to read next. I’ve been saying it for a decade but I wish winds of winter would come out already. My house is clogged with books and I’m a bit overwhelmed with options.
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I bought Chaos over a decade ago and keep reading part of it and getting sidetracked… I think I need to sit down and finally finish, it’s really, really well written and totally fascinating.
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Just started Gene Wolfe’s “shadow of the torturer” this morning, again, from the book of the long sun series. Another series I’ve been reading since childhood. Gonna be alternating between this and Tanith Lee’s “flat earth” series for the next couple of weeks. Need some new material!!!
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Φ=-1/φ=0.618
I think 
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Ligotti takes the penetrating lens of his imagination and turns it on his audience, causing them to grapple with the brutal reality that they are living a meaningless nightmare, and anyone who feels otherwise is simply acting out an optimistic fallacy. At once a guidebook to pessimistic thought and a relentless critique of humanity’s employment of self-deception to cope with the pervasive suffering of their existence, The Conspiracy against the Human Race may just convince readers that there is more than a measure of truth in the despairing yet unexpectedly liberating negativity that is widely considered a hallmark of Ligotti’s work.
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Well now I have to read the damn book to figure out what the hell that means.
I read that one too! The Golden Ratio by Marco (or Mario) Livio. Really fascinating.
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