jeremy snyder’s meta|remix

i just finished about 30 hours of audio of “the complete robot” by isaac asmiov.

i’ll have a nicer analogy over in the jeromecast, but here are some thoughts:

• wow. this was long.
• this was also a trailblazing work, opening up tons of thoughts about robots. i bet literally every sci-fi writer who’s written about robots was influenced at least in some way by a story in this collection.
• i found the experience of bunches of short stories, featuring consistent themes and some common characters, to be really enjoyable. i also like writing short stories, so maybe that’s why.
• i didn’t enjoy every story, but i did enjoy that the exploration of the themes was pretty exhaustive. for almost every area you might have wanted to consider, from robot psychology to human/robot relations, there was at least some discussion.
• i’ve never been a huge asimov fan, but i think this may have changed my mind. i’ll consider trying a few more of his works and see if that changes.

this was also an “>audiobook of war of the worlds, kind of a dramatization. and i’m really glad i did it that way, because that allowed me to get a sense of what the panic was like back in 1938. Continue reading »

this one was also an audiobook. i actually enjoyed it a lot, partly because it was recorded by someone talking as though he were from the era when this was first published. Continue reading »

i just finished listening to the audiobook of superfreakanomics. Continue reading »

i’ve been doing a bit of writing myself, and one of the things that i really wanted to do was to get more exposure to different styles of writing. so i picked up slaughterhouse five. Continue reading »

yes, somehow i hadn’t read this yet, so i went out and got the audiobook of it. i’m really psyched with the audiobook, because i end up having time either over lunch or while on public transport to listen to things. so i just finished reading/listening to the tipping point:
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probably a lot of readers of my blog have also read neal stephenson’s “snow crash”

of course, working in virtual worlds, this is basically mandatory for us. but what’s interesting to me is that the concept i see from it more and more is not so much the metaverse, but the ability to buy citizenship in different countries.

consider this – as a citizen, you are automatically a customer of your country’s government. you pay for government services via your taxes. and more and more, with countries having more liberal, or even aggressive immigration policies, you can feel like a consumer. for instance, i saw ads saying “hey singaporean, immigrate to new zealand”. that’s openly soliciting business. mind you, i don’t feel that bad about that. i certainly don’t always feel that i get the value-for-money that i’m looking for. anyway, just an interesting thought for me…

i finished overclocked by cory doctorow last weekend. here’s sme thoughts on it:
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so i just finished inkdeath, and here are my assorted thoughts on it. Continue reading »

so i just finished reading “sounding smart at parties”, just for fun. Continue reading »