#having read the southern reach trilogy

[tenrose]

Time to read about lovecraftian viscous little mass being adopted by a scavenger living off stuff found on a massive giant bear in a dystopian city.

Yes that's how Jeff Vandermeer's book Borne has been sold to me.

I'm sure it's gonna be clear and concise like mister Vandermeer's works always seems to be 🤭

I'm sure I'm not gonna end up irrationally attached to the eldritch horror and have an existential crisis...

[notquiteaghost]

southern reach trilogy is making me so so insane as a sci fi fan who loves when stories are puzzles And as a writer who has thought a lot about craft & the intersection of these two is smth i may never be able to articulate properly. like every piece of speculative fiction is actually also about the real world & what sets apart truly good speculative fiction is when it Knows that. this story IS about climate change. and also this story is about aliens. and the inherent horror of existing in a world you do not understand and cannot understand. i want to have all the information i want to finish the puzzle but also i don't because not being able to see the completed picture is the point. i think the words on the tower wall are in iambic fucking meter.

[100-percent-actual-puppy]

movie rant

goddamn i fuckin hate annihilation (2018). i was so hype for it because the book was really good and the trailers showed things looking exactly how i pictured them, but then it left out, like, at LEAST 75% of the book, including the most interesting location. they also made the title drop lame. and like, i know movie adaptations aren't always great, i get that, and sometimes things have to be changed for certain reasons, but it was just so disappointing.

and it was even worse because a couple of the scenes they added were good! the recording they find with her husband cutting into the guy to reveal that SOMETHING isn't right inside him? pretty good, despite the camera existing being a more minor issue i have. the bear thing? hella creepy, absolutely fits the vibe of the book, love it.

it may be a fine movie, it got generally good reviews, that's fine. it's just that it's not what i expected at all. i wanted the "tower" that goes down into the ground with a bizarre string of words repeated on top of each other countless times, all written in some sort of luminescent fungus. i wanted the implication that the government sending these people into area x (fuck off with that "shimmer" bullshit, "area x" sounds dumb, sure, but what else would you expect when a government agency named it) did NOT see them as people, not just because it's dangerous, but because no one has names, they have a little alarm box that changes color when it's dangerous but it has no actual working components, and there's apparently a need to have a self-termination command for everyone involved. i wanted the pile of journals that FAR exceeds the supposed amount of expeditions.

it's just really infuriating to hear it get praised so much when it only vaguely resembles the book. makes me feel like i'm going crazy.

[beaft]

speaking of fantasy authors, have you ever read any of Robin Hobb's work? Can highly recommend if not!

i have wanted to get into robin hobb for YEARS but have no idea where to begin. also, they're all trilogies, which scares me. i don't normally read books that are in a series because once you've read one you have to go out and buy the rest and i am frightened of commitment

[ghostxbird]

i am also obsessed with ghost bird's opinion of the biologist so far. she said girl why did you get married you don't want that !!!

[genspiel]

"We live in a universe driven by chance," his father had said once, "but the bullshit artists all want causality." Bullshit artist in this context meant his mother, but the statement had wide applications.

[turtledactyl]

at work, not actually working just thinking about the southern reach trilogy

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

back on my "maybe reading weird, fucked up book will fix me" bullshit with THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY and honestly i'm having a gr8 time

[essektheylyss]

I'm currently reading The Ministry for the Future, and it's really pinpointing some of my issues with contemporary fiction and why I struggle to solve them. It's essentially a near-future speculative fiction concept about climate change, which I think is difficult for me whether optimistic or fatalistic. I am suspicious of escapism where some miraculous solution is found, because I do not enjoy being placated and I find that I have no patience for those who want to be (in this genre of fiction anyway—I personally don't like escapism in general but I acknowledge its necessity otherwise), but I also get frustrated with defeatism because it tends to fall dangerously close to, if not outright within the bounds of, ecofascism, and if a middle ground between the two within a semi-realistic story exists, I haven't found it yet.

Granted, I am only about 20% of the way into this book, so it remains to be seen if Robinson has found that, but... it is making me think I should stick primarily to second-world speculative fiction.

[memeoryalpha]

Bought my first star trek novel on impulse at a book store.

[tenrose]

Finished The Southern Reach trilogy at last, and I'm gonna cry about Saul now.

[silhouettecrow]

365 Days of Writing Prompts: Day 223

Adjective: Living

Noun: Infection

Definitions for those who need/want them:

Living: alive; (of a place) used for living rather than working in; (of a language) still spoken and used; (literary) (of water) perennially flowing

Infection: the process of infecting or the state of being infected; an infectious disease; (computing) the presence of a virus in, or its introduction into, a computer system

[punkwixes]

also. lmao. sometimes these people just act like you CAN’T make ~meaningful memories~ with an ebook. like, you’re only reading ebooks at your desk in your bedroom at 11:30pm or whatever

and it’s like. sorry! i have really nice memories with my ebooks actually!

i LOVE being able to take my books with me on my phone. when i started working at my last job, five years ago, we had JUST enough downtime we were allowed to read if all the cleaning was done, so people would bring books to work, and it was like. when we had a free minute they would have to trudge over to their tiny mailboxes where they’d have wedged a book into the slot, if they were lucky, because there was no other storage space. and then find somewhere to sit and read it for 5-10 minutes.

but meanwhile i wasn’t allowed to read the books i had on my phone, but also at the time i literally didn’t have like, a backpack/bag to carry a physical book in as i rode the bus lmao. it was fine, i didn’t super mind, i just wound up doing extra tasks because the managers would get snotty about me Being On That Damn Phone as if i did not have an ebook on there.

anyways when i worked in the assisted living building i was the only person from my department down there, so i could use my phone as much as i wanted! my most Vivid memory of anything from fall 2021 is that i read harrow the ninth in bits and pieces while i was working, which was perhaps not the ideal way to read it. or maybe it was, i don’t know! i know that i enjoyed the experience as like, bits and pieces of chapters parsed between making coffee or whatever.

it took me over a month, which is a LONG time for me to read a book, it was just like — it was my Work Book. i associated going to work so strongly with getting to read more of ht9 lmao.

anyways i finished the book (minus the epilogue) on this like… really Nice fall day. the sky was cloudy & a storm was coming in but it was still like mildly warm/breezy out so they’d opened the back doors to the dining room. and i had all my work done so i just sat on the back porch and read as the clouds got darker & the wind got stronger until it started raining & i realized that i almost fucked up and missed dinner prep.

like! that’s the kind of memory i couldn’t have made without ebooks lmao… even if i had lugged a book to work & had somewhere to store it, i was only able to sit out there and read because at Any second i could get up, pocket my phone, and get to work if smth came up!

[tiktaaliker]

running VERY low on my to-listen queue for audiobooks..... i am once again fishing for any recommendations.......

[possessable]

i do not reemember when or why i drew this

[closetdbisexual]

i want to draw but my carpal tunnel is so bad rn. i should keep reading american psycho