I'll get you into GEB if it's the last thing I do!

Generally speaking, my favorite type of book is weird fiction (a term that I use to mean the overarching classification of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and whatever other novels contain bizarre elements that don't quite fit into any of those). In the recent years, I have gained an interest in ergodic literature and other progressive forms of weirdness. It's obvious that I enjoy philosophy as well, and the persistence of the American Right in calling me a "fucking commie" has led me to actually investigate Marxist theory in order to see if this is a suitable characterization.

Currently reading:

Umberto Eco - Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language; The Name of the Rose
Mark Z. Danielewski - House of Leaves
Albert Camus - Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
Frederick Engels - various
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

To read:

Michael Moorcock - The Eternal Champion
Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Marx - various
Camus - various (I have the complete Heritage collection of his works)
John Saeed - Semantics
Brent Weeks - Shadow's Edge (The Night Angel Trilogy, Book 2)
Various - whatever Cthulhu Mythos stories I can find conveniently
Various - a handful of one-volume world histories that I have lying about
Stephen R. Donaldson - The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
Robert Anton Wilson - The Illuminatus Trilogy
Dan Simmons - The Rise of Endymion
Brian Catling - The Vorrh
Scott Hawkins - The Library at Mount Char

To re-read:

Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
H.P. Lovecraft - complete Cthulhu Mythos

My jam is Science Fiction and fantasy, but there're other genres like dark humor, for example Darkly Dreaming Dexter.

¤LðŗРУŋįd@¤

I need/want to respond, but I have other obligations.
Maybe I’ll quit procrastinating and do some of them.

I prefer hard SF, then soft SF, then logically-internally-consistent fantasy, then alternate history. I guess.

I see the House of Leaves thing is still happening.

Me personally, I'm big into horror, mystery, suspense, thriller, but of those, horror is my favorite. I write horror fiction as a hobby as well, and I read and take great inspiration from Stephen King. He's been my favorite author since I was in middle school; before that, it was R.L. Stine with his Goosebumps and Fear Street books, which still rank among my favorites. I've read a bit of Dean Koontz as well, and Betty Ren Wright, and Bruce Coville, and a few others who write ghost stories for a living. That, and Agatha Christie for a good mystery. Other than that, I'll read a bit of science fiction here and there; my high school band director is a writer of science-fiction novels which discuss and defend the Christian faith, and they are incredible reads, all of them. His latest trilogy, of which the last book is still in progress, delves into a world he created, a world wherein music literally has the power to physically shape the world around you.

A little bit of everything and almost anything.

For actual narrative reading I tend to prefer high fantasy; I'm not above low fantasy or fantastic SF or even a good adventure tale. I've started a seasonal reread of Harry Potter.

I engage in a lot of "browse reading" as a matter of worldbuilding research. So books may range from the Universal Self Instructor or Kelly's Handbook or a hundred year old Sears Catalog or an old home recipe book, atlases, prayer books, grammars of old languages, most recently Aramaic, the Organon of Medicine, Things Not Generally Known, the Complete Hoyle, Encyclopedia of Classified Dates, Keightly's Fairy Mythology, Mao's Red Book, some horrible thing by Marx.

Recently I've been working on the Nature of Middle Earth, the Initiatory Path in Fairy Tales and Burpee's Farm Annual for 1888. Also I've been working on a Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor and the Cambridge Star Atlas.

I was going to remark about the probability of apologia making for decent narrative, but then I remember that I quite enjoy the Sword of Truth series (and only partially ironically), so I suppose that it doesn't really matter.

I also like lots of nonfiction.
My favorites are mostly mathematical, or computing, or linguistic, or other scientific, or historical.

….

To pick out a series I’d guess the “Counterexamples In …” series, probably.

Also “… for Dummies” and “Complete Idiots’ Guide to …”

I do not have a copy of the Communist Manifesto, and it has not been particularly recommended to me. From what I understand, it has limited value in developing a sophisticated grasp of the theory, as it is more a pamphlet than a book, and was written over a few weeks in response to the demands of the impending revolutions.

I do have, as was recommended to me, Wage-Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit in a single volume, being moderately more substantial than the Manifesto. It will be the next thing that I tackle along the Marxist thread, after I am comfortably apprised of Engels.

I find Marx soporific.

Hmg. While I find it enjoyable, I wouldn't say I do it "for fun". It's something that simply has to be done. It's like with music - it has to be written out. So it is with a world. It has to be experienced and described.

I do, and have, written a number of stories set in my world. I also write books about the world itself, from the in-world perspective.

Does it?

I worldbuild for fun. I didn’t originally intend to just build the world.
I try to write stories in my builtworlds but I never like the way they read.
I have story-ideas and game-ideas, and I can get really excited about them up to the point of actually creating them.

Yes!

No, I don't think so. It's just in there and it has to be written out.

I just wish I could write out the music I hear.




Well, yes, it is a creative endeavour, and I'd still work on the world even I didn't write stories.

But to clarify, yes I do write stories set in this world!

Writing stories isn't the primary impetus for worldbuilding, and I dare say much of the worldbuilding will never make it into a story. Happily, I've also written books about the world, which are made as in-world artifacts. Kind of double-dip worldbuilding, because I have to have enough material to make the book and then have to write the book from a native perspective!





[[ chiarizio ]]

chiarizio, I'd like to see some of your stories too, if you'd like to share!

It does indeed take all kinds! Mind you, for me it's as much a matter of time as it is of knack. I'm the sort who's only ever worked in one universe, so over the course of I think about 40 years, I have managed to amass a pretty good amount of information!

It does indeed take all kinds! Mind you, for me it's as much a matter of time as it is of knack. I'm the sort who's only ever worked in one universe, so over the course of I think about 40 years, I have managed to amass a pretty good amount of information!

Yeah. I've always found the "little things", the tiny details that probably wouldn't even make it into a nursery rhyme, let alone a folktale, to be quite fun.


There is, for example, a tiny creature called the inverse earthworm. It's only an inch or so long and lives so deep in the earth that only the deep chthonic miners have come across it. For it reviles the Sun and gnaws ever deeper into the rock of the planet. It's probably been a hundred million years or more since anyone saw its distant ancestors anywhere near the surface.





All of these are terribly fun to explore! I've done quite a bit of work on several different religions, have written out some scriptures and even assayed a sort of "scholarly" study of one particular set of related scriptures.


The law is always fun. I've worked out what a capital trial looks like in the big empire of Auntimoany, and what the results look like. Pretty nasty affairs.


Here are a couple examples of laws from the little country of Angera, just to the west of Auntimoany:

Woe betide the man that harm himself, lest further harm befall him! For His High Majesty has said this: i. the penalty for such a man as the one who has been the cause of a self mutilation by the left hand is for the other hand to be removed in a manner liable to cause much grinding of bones and great howls of pain. ii. however, the penalty for such a man as the one who has been the cause of a self mutilation by the right hand is for the other hand to be immersed in oil which shall be heated until that hand is right crispy, and then it shall be severed, and then the man shall be compelled to devour his own left hand.

Ye Doctors of Physick All do quake who do harm to any Man, lest harm be done to thee! For His High Majesty has said this: i. When a Doctor of Physic shall kill his patient while his patient shall be in his care, the Doctor which killed the patient shall have the joints of his hands impaled with fine spikes. ii. When a Doctor of Physic shall kill a man his wife, the Doctor shall excuse himself and at least feign sorrow.

Woe betide the man that consumes the flesh of Man, lest he bring upon him this doom! For His High Majesty has said this: Whenever a man shall consume the flesh of Man, let him with haste invite his kin to the Feast! For in as much as he enjoys the taste of the flesh of Man, let them all join him at table; then set before him the State pewter & bronze, and bring forth refreshing drinks in brass ewers; and lo, it shall be made so that he shall consume his own flesh, morsel by morsel, from the soles of his feet and upwards, taking no rest nor respite from the labour! And when the Lady Death consume him at last, let his kinfolk finish his meal in his place!


Rituals are fun, too! There is an ancient practice among the Pagan Werres of Auntimoany called the Sun Chair. It's your bog standard spring equinox sacrifice a likely lad and lift his still beating heart up to the New Sun kind of thing. It's been suppressed for centuries as being just a little too folkloric in nature.


Recently, however, the Empress lifted all sanctions against the ancient practice, and so the Pagans have welcomed her edict with open arms and sharpened knives. Only this time, they prefer to abduct one of the local Denê, one of the winged races, rather than waste Werreish blood. The chair and the blood are the same, but anymore it's turned into a bit of a neighbourhood barbecue, with the victim as the guest of honour. State sanctioned allophagy. It's as the lawyers say: What crime? It's not cannibalism if dinner's got wings!

@Weird Occurance:
You wrote:


Earlier tonight I alerted you to a post of mine on a 12-year-old CWBB thread that was started by Phelix.
Other posts on that thread might also interest you, but since I didn’t post them I couldn’t edit them to alert you.

If you like those ideas, or some of them, and feel like starting something, I’d want to see.

….

I got the impression from some post of yours on some thread I also posted on, that you might be interested in something like this.
Maybe the quote I started this post with wasn’t it! But I hope you’ll have time to look over some of that thread, and I hope some of the ideas please you.