#seek web serial

[thepariahcontinuum]

Okay so Wildbow has gone in reverse order with the protagonists in Seek hasn't he?

Winnie's stuff is clearly happening first: There's still overcrowding and scarcity, the planet mining is at an earlier stage with actual people involved in the hard work and the cybernetics are full-on surgical procedures and irreversible

Basil's stuff is after, at the high point of human civilization: All needs are apparently met, other planets can be brought to earth to mine for resources and discarded at will, the actual mining and other labor is done by robots so there's no need for heavy duty mods like Winnie and her family. At the same time the Onboards are now much more than a souped up Siri, they're effectively a symbiote and mods can be done seemingly at will (Gender can be altered at will and things like horns/blue skin are an "Ask mum" deal) on the other hand privacy is a thing of the past, even thoughts are subject to scrutiny and humanity is stagnating and without purpose.

Orion's stuff is set after everything's gone wrong: We don't have as much detail here, but there's something sensible about starting at the end and working back in certain kinds of sci-fi. A stagnant humanity, literally sharing their minds and bodies with AI from birth and becoming decadent seems like a recipe for disaster (It's giving Aeldari in Warhammer 40k) and now we're at a point where the machines are hostile, things that should have been built are left damaged/incomplete and, I think most tellingly; Orion does have something that's doing the work of an onboard but it isn't talking to him like the others do.....In fact, and this might be an out there theory far too early in the game but, I think there's a chance that Orion is the onboard and the human is dead/suppressed.

Also....."Subvocalized" is his new word of the day isn't it? Do we think he's gonna use it more or less than "Copacetic"

[eddathegreat]

Oh this is gonna get fucky

[blogishdaj]

Seek 0.1.0 spoilers

> guy with full arm tattoos

> thrown blind into a situation where he's in way in over his head

> dark, possibly traumatic, troublesome past

> surprisingly chill in the face of the horrors

> trusted people who betrayed him

> cannot look directly at the enemy

> amnesia and altered/false memories

> handyman-ish skills

> implied to have mad rizz

Close enough, welcome back Blake Thorburn

[estavionpira]

Wildbow serial settings

Worm:

Pact:

Twig:

Ward:

Pale:

Claw:

Seek:

[radhamspiderexperiment]

friend and I made a seek bingo...

[sincerelynotserious]

An ai(?) called basilisk, surely this will not go awry

[ronthedunedain]

Something about cognitohazards in space, waking up disoriented from hibernation, and banishment as carceral justice, speaks to me in perfect tones.

I think Seek is going to be pretty goddam awesome.

[tiffany-loves-broadway]

what if Wildbow names his next book "Help"

[butchseiya]

decided to try and follow wildbow's latest novel, Seek! intriguing setting so far! lmk if you're reading it too!

[thepariahcontinuum]

Thoughts on the first chapter of Seek?

[eddathegreat]

Seek's second chapter honestly blew my mind, and I have gone from hopeful to terribly excited about this story.

It's such a great choice to have a PoV character who is distinctly inhuman yet intrinsically tethered to a human perspective. I love Basil already.

The world also seems fascinating, a genuine utopia with such incredible freedom of experience and pleasure. Instead of depicting it as truly perfect and straining belief, it goes ahead and says yeah crime still exists and corporations hold a lot of sway, but hey this is still such an obvious improvement over real life. Gay rights, trans rights, universal basic income, you only need to work for luxury.

But there's just enough of a terrible undercurrent in the aimlessness and the excess to see plainly how in this paradise people could absolutely lose their minds.

[blogishdaj]

I guess Seek is going to force me to learn how to draw mecha now 😩

[estavionpira]

Reading Seek 0.2.b and it's somewhat concerning that A isn't anywhere in the list of people for Basil to listen to. AI that has control over your entire body and only does what you say because it's what your parents want.

[vindemiatrice]

It's really cool to see Sign come back as part of Seek. But I'm wondering if it won't be the only short story to get expanded like this. It's been a while since I read it, but there's another one wb wrote that takes place in the nearer future. In it, a bunch of people have retreated into permanent full-dive VR to escape the world crumbling, with a skeleton crew outside to take care of their bodies and handle whenever someone decides to come out. What if this is one of the other perspectives?

I don't think it's likely. But it would be a hell of a twist on the post-scarcity era teased first in the announcement. "'Everything humanity needs, it has" except that's not even remotely true, but if you have the means then you can certainly pretend it is.

From what little there is so far, it seems like finding purpose in the world and a reason to continue will be a big theme. Someone trying to find it here, where everything is collapsing and it's more tempting than ever to detach from the world and wall yourself off, having to find who they are after years of lonely unreality, could form nice symmetry with Orion trying to remember and stay himself while surviving this horrifying alien techno-wilderness centuries later. not to mention all the parallels they could do between the vr world and the robot megastructure, perhaps even drawing a direct link between it and the builders' ai.

[wre7ch]

really love seek. i feel like chapter 2 makes chapter 1 so much more sinister. what a scary concept. its like the veldt came to life