LIBRARY
// RECENT READINGS & LISTENINGS
an endlessly optimistic time loop with an earwormy intro/outro chorus and beautiful angelic reverby synths. its album art and recurring motif remind me a bit of this very good short story by qntm.
> THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD IS GRADUALLY DECAYING AND ONE DAY SOON IT WILL FALL APART ENTIRELY.
> I can help!
a motto to live by! alternate spaceflight history! an allegory for a possible misaligned AGI timeline! tongue-in-cheek references to real companies and people that give you heartburn! this book's got it all for a very specific kind of person
favorite songs off this album: I Was Always Dreaming, The Fun of It, Electra. re: the latter, there should be more songs that are just odes to machinery
grand tales & horror stories about the soviet space program, all told from the perspective of a space cowboy (which I found both charming and also callous at best at times)
glitchy electronic trance/shoegaze. music to ride public transit in a new city to
very neat bit of near-future speculative fiction that lets you muse about language synthesis and cultural melding in a measured way while also creating distinctive character studies that straddle the uncanny valley between being true-to-life and being archetypes
favorite songs off this one: Cheap Hotel, Sushi, Stereo Boy. the production on this album is fantastic, think it might include some of the best percussion on an electronic album I've ever heard
a little blunt at times but an interesting look at the future of geopolitics in the wake of possible climate disaster. also cool to see geoengineering being taken as serious policy
<3
reads like heavy iron in your stomach. an oddly cathartic dystopian look at the end state of a world flattened geographically and culturally by misdirected enterprise
cloying. awkward. gimmicky. STILL the anthem of a generation
oftentimes Hugo Award nominees from the 60s do not age well at all. this is not the case for Babel-17; it still has a lot to say about early body horror and its interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
ask me about this one
...