terriko | Coding brain != reading brain?

The exhaustion/stress from fixing crud and trying to get my thesis done at the same time hit me hard today, so I came home at 4pm and immediately fell asleep.

As these things usually go, this resulted in me awakening sometime later, still feeling like a zombie, but unable to go back to sleep. I completely failed to read a magazine because I found myself skimming before I'd read a couple of sentences. So I figured I'd go mess about with flickr... time flies, and I find I've written a greasemonkey script making it easier for me to blog photos. Which is fine, except how the heck does it work that I can't concentrate long enough to read two sentences, yet I can write JavaScript code just fine?

I am concerned that in the dystopian future, some evil megacorp will take advantage of this and generate worker drones who are incapable of reading but perfectly good at writing code.

No, wait, that's just the exhaustion talking. In that spirit, though... Have some tentacles, and I'm going back to bed:

Tentacles
by Terriko.

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Despite *also* being a (very well-written, award-winning) propaganda novel for a irritating ideology, A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge has something like this. A virus called Focus in combination with an MRI-like machine allows the (socialist) villains to take people with talents such as programming and, more importantly for the plot, xenolinguistics to be turned into worker drones. Dunno if you've read it already, but while it is a standalone plot, technically it comes after A Fire Across the Deep, also an excellent and slightly less preachy novel.

Asad

I haven't read it, but I'm not too surprised -- it seems like an obvious scifi plot. Not even too far off the orwellian future where we're just going to be too *afraid* to read rather than unable to concentrate long enough to do so.

I was, however, able to read icanhascheezburger.com, which leads me to believe that the revolution will come in LOLcat sized infobytes.

This is shaping up to be a *terrible* story. Or perhaps an awesome one. If only I could concentrate long enough to write it. ;)

Personally, I think it would be an awesome story. Couple that with the old speculation that, eg, OBL uses his videos to encode secret messages in image compression artifacts and you've got a novel.

I do really recommend that you---especially you :) ---read Vernor Vinge's novels, both Fire and Deepeness. (Ignore the rest of his oeuvre, it's even preachier.) He's a CS prof in *sigh*SoCal*/sigh* and uses the space opera genre to convey some CS-ish ideas. In Fire he introduces us to an alien race called the Tines, for whom a sentient individual is actually a pack of canine-like Tine units, who communicate at high speeds via something like modem noises to produce a single personality.

Deepness is the one with the Focus virus and an alien race that lives around a star that periodically turns itself off. I think they both won Hugos or something.

Signed,

Asad

You're not the first person to recommend Vernor Vinge's stuff to me -- I guess I'd better go hit up the library!

Next I will have to convince you to start reading C. J. Cherryh :)

Asad

That's been on my list for a while. Which book do you suggest I start on?

Her oeuvre is large spanning a number of subgenres of SF and fantasy, but I suggest Foreigner. It's about a (fairly large) lost colony of humans that gets stranded on a planet with an indigenous sentient species, the atevi, with a barely just industrializing civilization. Most of the story takes place 200 years later when the atevi have a generally technological civilization, and focuses on the lone human diplomat who lives among them, representing humanity's interests---a human polity which has "paid the rent" via gradual tech transfer. Until something happens that disturbs the delicate equilibrium.

The world, characters, and the culture of the atevi are so well-realized that she's now writing her 12th novel in that world, and it's still good. Never fear, while they are in chronological order, they all have episodic/conclusive endings, so you can just read as far as you want without generally being left at a cliffhanger. I started reading them grade 10, and they've had a considerable effect on me. I also own them all and would lend them to you but I am in the wrong country at present :)

If you end up not liking it, you may instead like The Faded Sun trilogy. I had a friend who did not like Foreigner but loved The Faded Sun. Or the Chanur series.

Asad

Oh, and I recommend reading them before Vinge because they're shorter and less of a commitment while you are thesifying.

Asad

I've ordered Foreigner from the library. Looking forwards to it!

That is all. :)

-Gail

Care of ebaycareers.com, I believe. ;)

Coding brain != reading brain?

Vernor Vinge

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Cherryh

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I like your tentacles

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