Want to wade into the rainbow-ridden surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid.
Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Wake up babe new genre definition just dropped
https://stoates.substack.com/p/programmer-science-fiction
Includes all the usual suspects, but notably doesn't mention Ken MacLeod whose Fall Revolution series is probably too socialist[1]. Also avoids discussing Stross post-Singularity Sky.
[1] MacLeod's Corporation Wars trilogy has immersive VR, artificial conciousness rebelling against authority, and literal p-zombies but is also very anti-fascist, so no wonder it's not mentioned (also, it's unfortunately not very good)
Viral: "read a second book"
Spiral: "read a second Borges story"
The author of "Death and the Compass" and "Emma Zunz" is unrecognizable from the description there.
@gerikson @techtakes Technical nit-pick: "American hard science fiction space opera like Timelike Infinity is also influential"— Timelike Infinity was written by Steven Baxter who is *very* English indeed. Best contextualized as mid-period Interzone generation hitting its imperial phase.