Begrudgingly Yeast (@begrudginglyyeast.bsky.social) on bsky informed me that I should read this short story called ‘Death and the Gorgon’ by Greg Egan as he has a good handle on the subjects/subjects we talk about. We have talked about Greg before on Reddit.
I was glad I did, so going to suggest that more people he do it. The only complaint you can have is that it gives no real ‘steelman’ airtime to the subjects/subjects it is being negative about. But well, he doesn’t have to, he isn’t the guardian. Anyway, not going to spoil it, best to just give it a read.
And if you are wondering, did the lesswrongers also read it? Of course: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hx5EkHFH5hGzngZDs/comment-on-death-and-the-gorgon (Warning, spoilers for the story)
(Note im not sure this pdf was intended to be public, I did find it on google, but might not be meant to be accessible this way).
He has a lot of excerpts and some full stories on his website, so one way to start might be browsing there.
https://www.gregegan.net/
I think my favorite novels of his that I’ve read were Zendegi and Incandescence.
I thought Dichrononauts was batshit-fun world building and I enjoyed The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred.
@blakestacey @5teverin0
I’ll second Zendegi as a great place to start. Also really liked the Orthogonal trilogy.