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posted by martyb on Thursday December 06 2018, @01:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the read-and-discuss dept.

December: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

The next poll will pick two books. I'd like to do it that way to keep a strong second place contender from being overlooked, and so I don't have to update the poll so often.

Discuss The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin in the comments below.

Snow Crash was written by Neal Stephenson in 1992. The novel features a bit of a Calexit scenario, and is known for popularizing the term "avatar" (paving the way for James Cameron's true magnum opus). These days, Neal moonlights as Magic Leap's "Chief Futurist". Seems appropriate.

Previously: Announcement postMars, Ho!Foundation


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  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday December 06 2018, @07:30PM (1 child)

    by Sulla (5173) on Thursday December 06 2018, @07:30PM (#770797) Journal

    I think their tech advancement is explainable. If I recall the cycles could last a couple years or thousands of years and although that which was constructed and built might be lost there was retention of information across the cycles. If we had continuous information retention and growth since the time of our greats we would be much further along. In the West's cycles of expansion and destruction we tended to lose a lot that we had to make up for regarding scientific development. The Trisolarsn society seems to me that they had a leader like Augustus and thinkers like Plato/Aristotle/Leonardo/Tesla who never died and just continued to exist and think. Regardless of physical progress, the progress of the mind could still be great.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
  • (Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday December 06 2018, @11:02PM

    by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 06 2018, @11:02PM (#770922) Journal

    Well, in my mind, explainable is kind of thin. Suppose everything is wiped out. Need iron? Start by rebuilding the roads, the foundries, the forges and so on. Now think particle colliders, computers, spaceship factories and other more sophisticated enterprises and every start sets the civilization back hundreds or thousands of years, even if the knowledge is retained.

    More, in the case of iron and other minerals, the easily extracted ores have already been used and while you can recycle them, they are now dispersed all over. I’m not saying impossible but it seemed a weak point. It would have been more credible to say that the extra influx of ultraviolet radiation, for example, forced them to dehydrate and wait for better times, without destroying everything in the surface.