Hyperion Cantos
It is the twenty-ninth century and the universe of the Human Hegemony is under threat. Invasion by the warlike rebel Ousters looms, and the mysterious schemes of the secessionist Al TechnoCore bring chaos even closer. On the eve of disaster, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to the legendary Time Tombs on Hyperion, home to the Shrike, a lethal creature, part god and part killing machine, whose powers transcend the limits of time and space. Like another fabled group of pilgrims, each traveller shares his story with his fellows, seeking answers to the unsolved riddles of all their lives. And they have resolved to die before discovering anything less than the secrets of the universe itself. HYPERION is a brilliant tapestry, a superb vision of future technology and ancient religions, of scientific revelation and timeless mystery, of transcendent joy and mind-bending horror. It is a landmark in modern science fiction.
Stats for nerds
53recommend
90mentions
75people
2008–2026years
69% recommend30% neutral1% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Blindsight is fantastic. The sequel, Echopraxia, is also excellent; it is very different, and I expect many people were disappointed that it wasn't just more of the same.
Also a big shout out to his less well-known novel, The Freeze Frame Revolution. It's about the crew of a "stargate"-seeding spaceship trying to stop the ship's AI, but being hampered by the fact that the AI is both near-omniscient and that they only work in short shifts before being put back in hibernation. He also wrote a handful of short stories set before and after the novel.
There's something very refreshingly direct, unvarnished, no-nonsense, and clear-eyed (some would say cynical) about Watts' style of writing. His prose tends to be tough (quite like early Gibson's noir style, with the punk attitude intact), but also beautifully cinematic. The only other write that I think comes close, aside from Gibson, is Dan Simmons with his Hyperion Cantos, but he's not nearly as darkly cynical.
- You might enjoy reading the Hyperion Cantos which delves into this idea :)
- > Watching the biggest pirates I've known suddenly talk about "defending artists" and strengthening copyright is amusing, but it points to a bigger problem.
Millenial here, hello. Yes, we were the biggest pirates, because we had no means to buy the music we liked, period. CDs were kidney-money (if the album we liked available at all), digital distribution was non-existent and cassettes were sounding worse than first generation shellac records in some cases.
I personally bought most of the music I used to pirate. I buy the eBooks I like, and keep a backup copy for myself. Heck I even hounded a CD from a disbanded group for a couple of years and ordered it online because the music was good and they deserved another sale.
Because for us, piracy was about the service at first. We went to concerts, bought merch, etc. to support them.
Also this brings me to the second point: You miss the point entirely about datacenters & AI datacenters. Second, you miss the point between AI, the tech and the building of AI the tech.
First, datacenters are nothing new, and nobody is opposed to "normal" datacenters. The difference between a standard datacenter and AI datacenter is almost night and day (power density, compute load, hardware portfolio, etc.). I always talk about AI datacenters, because I work at a datacenter. I know how these things can be made more environmentally friendly, but no, everybody has to move fast and break things. In this case, we're mostly breaking down our planet, accelerating water stress and global warming related side effects while destroying livelihoods of communities as a whole.
Second is AI as a tech vs. how it's built as a tech. Heck, I'm not even opposed to copyrighted works used as training data, many of us want consent. Control over whether their works are used for training or not. Not compensation, not money, but consent. Not to be seen as slave of these AI providers to feed them.
For artists, compensation is their right. Have you ever composed music, or performed even? Do you know how much effort goes into doing this (hint: We used to rehearse for 10 hours/week for 14 weeks to give a 90 minute concert)? Watch this [0] if you want some insight how a single song is assembled over ideas, takes, tries with blood, sweat and tears. Same for writing. Did you read Hyperion Cantos, Lord of the Rings, Neuromancer, Zones of Thought, etc.? I mean, even the fact checking in Ready Player One could easily take a year. These books created worlds, changed minds and the authors of these books and others deserve some fair compensation for this.
You may find graphic design, art and photography mundane, but when you're not taking selfies and shooting stories or taking videos of a concert which you won't be able to enjoy because of the video-grabbing session for likes, these can be very powerful mediums for storytelling or getting your message across.
Not everyone is against AI as the tech. I am not. I have developed agent-based systems with emergent intelligence before people knew the term autonomous agent.
Yes, we need better laws to protect property rights in the space of ideas, but not to solely protect the jobs, but TO PROTECT THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMANS AND THEIR FREEDOM TO CREATE AND OWN THE THINGS THEY HAVE CREATED.
"You'll own nothing and be happy" is a drug to make masses comply, and unfortunately, you're apparently one of the flag carriers of that crowd.
This post is written with a real brain, approximately 10 fingers, at 1x by a physical human you can talk with.
- Looks like you have some reading to do. Let me start with two:
These are short stories. If you want to get into more stuff, you can go through Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons.- The Machine Stops - Pump SixFor anyone wondering, yes, a good Sci-Fi novel(la) is also a great philosophical piece. It's not only robots vs. humans, all the time.
- At book 2 of Hyperion Cantos and enjoying it.. Gets weird at times but keeps you hooked for sure
- The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons is great. It may also be nice to recommend books that have movie or streaming series to them. Books are most of the time better than the movie as your own fantasy and imagination just makes it so. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan is a good example.
