5 ms·

This reminds me of a scene in "A Fire Upon the Deep" (1992) where they're on a video call with someone on another spaceship; but something seems a bit "off". T

by gwd 2y ago

This reminds me of a scene in "A Fire Upon the Deep" (1992) where they're on a video call with someone on another spaceship; but something seems a bit "off". Then someone notices that the actual bitrate they're getting from the other vessel is tiny -- far lower than they should be getting given the conditions -- and so most of what they're seeing on their own screens isn't actual video feed, but their local computer's reconstruction.

miohtama 2y ago
And also it was a deep fake. BTW This is the best sci-fi book ever.
- Retric 2y ago
  Might be better if you like space opera style really soft science fiction. I really didn’t enjoy it.
  - lern_too_spel 2y ago
    The softness is deceptive. Hard concepts about communication and different types of brains are essential to the plot.
  - gwd 2y ago
    A friend of mine and I both read it about the same time and discussed it afterwards. I thought it was pretty good, he thought it was not that great. What we agreed on was that in spite of there being many fantastic aspects to the book, on the whole it failed to be an awesome novel. Definitely worth giving it a try if you're a programmer, just for the fact that it's written by another programmer: the opening scene where they find a bunch of rules written down and just follow them reminds me of ACPI; the discussion of public-key cryptography and shipping drives full of one-time-pad around the galaxy; the "compression scheme" with the video.
    - Boxxed 2y ago
      I agree that it was good but not particularly great. A Deepness in the Sky, however, is fantastic -- similar in many aspects but just flat out better all around.
  - mercutio2 2y ago
    Fascinating. Vinge is about the furthest from “soft” sci-fi I can think of. We must have very different definitions of what makes something soft. It’s certainly true that Vinge doesn’t spend much time on the engineering details, but I find him unusually clear on “imagine if we had this kind of impossible-now technology, but the rest of what we know about physics remained, how would people behave?” He was, after all, a physics professor. Rainbow’s End is much clearer on this than his distant future stuff, of course.
    - opo 2y ago
      >He was, after all, a physics professor. Actually, he was a mathematics and computer science teacher at San Diego State University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
      - mercutio2 2y ago
        You’re right, I was wrong!
    - Retric 2y ago
      Soft vs hard is based on how closely the world tracks with modern physics/science. As such even just FTL is soft, let alone everything else that doesn’t fit.
      - jrussino 2y ago
        > Soft vs hard is based on how closely the world tracks with modern physics/science Maybe it's not productive to quibble about definitions like this, but FWIW I don't agree with this criteria. I would argue Greg Egan's work, for example, is just about the "hardest" sci-fi there is, and yet much of that work takes place in universes that are entirely unlike our own. Personally, I think what makes for "hard" sci-fi is that the rules of the universe are well-laid-out and consistent, and that the story springs (at least in some significant part) out of the consequences of those rules. That may mean a story set in the "future", where we have new technology or discover new physics, or "alternate universe" sci-fi like Egan's.
  - aaronblohowiak 2y ago
    It uses technological differences as key plot and setting components not just space as sea, so it is sci fi but it is improbable in many ways so yea “soft” sci fi or more speculative fiction
- jf 2y ago
  I beg to differ. A Deepness In The Sky is the best sci-fi book ever.
  - space_fountain 2y ago
    I think I agree both books were good and "A Deepness In The Sky" was better, but I would warn everyone that I thought both books used dramatic irony (showing us that characters were evil while hiding this from main characters) to hold attention to a degree that I kind of hated. And in "A Deepness In The Sky" sexual violence was used repeatedly to illustrate how evil the main characters were. I found it unnecessarily and a bit in poor taste. On the other hand I think both books developed ideas wonderfully and there are bits of them I keep coming back to, even if I'll probably never reread them
janandonly 2y ago
I came here to reply just this exactly and found a fellow geek beat me to it. Indeed a brilliant book.
Rebelgecko 2y ago
Was that the same book that had the concept of (paraphrasing using modern terminology) doing interstellar communications by sending back and forth LLMs trained on the people who wanted to talk, prompted to try and get a good business deal or whatever?
- alex-robbins 2y ago
  That happened in Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds (2002), though of course the idea may also have been used before or since.
- DoneWithAllThat 2y ago
  This idea was also used in The Algebraist.
_kb 2y ago
At least for audio, that dystopia is already shipping in end-user product: https://blog.webex.com/collaboration/hybrid-work/next-level-audio-with-webex-ai-codec/ https://blog.webex.com/collaboration/hybrid-work/next-level-...

by gwd 2y ago

miohtama 2y ago

And also it was a deep fake. BTW This is the best sci-fi book ever.

Retric 2y ago
Might be better if you like space opera style really soft science fiction. I really didn’t enjoy it.
- lern_too_spel 2y ago
  The softness is deceptive. Hard concepts about communication and different types of brains are essential to the plot.
- gwd 2y ago
  A friend of mine and I both read it about the same time and discussed it afterwards. I thought it was pretty good, he thought it was not that great. What we agreed on was that in spite of there being many fantastic aspects to the book, on the whole it failed to be an awesome novel. Definitely worth giving it a try if you're a programmer, just for the fact that it's written by another programmer: the opening scene where they find a bunch of rules written down and just follow them reminds me of ACPI; the discussion of public-key cryptography and shipping drives full of one-time-pad around the galaxy; the "compression scheme" with the video.
  - Boxxed 2y ago
    I agree that it was good but not particularly great. A Deepness in the Sky, however, is fantastic -- similar in many aspects but just flat out better all around.
- mercutio2 2y ago
  Fascinating. Vinge is about the furthest from “soft” sci-fi I can think of. We must have very different definitions of what makes something soft. It’s certainly true that Vinge doesn’t spend much time on the engineering details, but I find him unusually clear on “imagine if we had this kind of impossible-now technology, but the rest of what we know about physics remained, how would people behave?” He was, after all, a physics professor. Rainbow’s End is much clearer on this than his distant future stuff, of course.
  - opo 2y ago
    >He was, after all, a physics professor. Actually, he was a mathematics and computer science teacher at San Diego State University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
    - mercutio2 2y ago
      You’re right, I was wrong!
  - Retric 2y ago
    Soft vs hard is based on how closely the world tracks with modern physics/science. As such even just FTL is soft, let alone everything else that doesn’t fit.
    - jrussino 2y ago
      > Soft vs hard is based on how closely the world tracks with modern physics/science Maybe it's not productive to quibble about definitions like this, but FWIW I don't agree with this criteria. I would argue Greg Egan's work, for example, is just about the "hardest" sci-fi there is, and yet much of that work takes place in universes that are entirely unlike our own. Personally, I think what makes for "hard" sci-fi is that the rules of the universe are well-laid-out and consistent, and that the story springs (at least in some significant part) out of the consequences of those rules. That may mean a story set in the "future", where we have new technology or discover new physics, or "alternate universe" sci-fi like Egan's.
- aaronblohowiak 2y ago
  It uses technological differences as key plot and setting components not just space as sea, so it is sci fi but it is improbable in many ways so yea “soft” sci fi or more speculative fiction
jf 2y ago
I beg to differ. A Deepness In The Sky is the best sci-fi book ever.
- space_fountain 2y ago
  I think I agree both books were good and "A Deepness In The Sky" was better, but I would warn everyone that I thought both books used dramatic irony (showing us that characters were evil while hiding this from main characters) to hold attention to a degree that I kind of hated. And in "A Deepness In The Sky" sexual violence was used repeatedly to illustrate how evil the main characters were. I found it unnecessarily and a bit in poor taste. On the other hand I think both books developed ideas wonderfully and there are bits of them I keep coming back to, even if I'll probably never reread them

janandonly 2y ago

I came here to reply just this exactly and found a fellow geek beat me to it. Indeed a brilliant book.

Rebelgecko 2y ago

Was that the same book that had the concept of (paraphrasing using modern terminology) doing interstellar communications by sending back and forth LLMs trained on the people who wanted to talk, prompted to try and get a good business deal or whatever?

alex-robbins 2y ago
That happened in Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds (2002), though of course the idea may also have been used before or since.
DoneWithAllThat 2y ago
This idea was also used in The Algebraist.

_kb 2y ago

At least for audio, that dystopia is already shipping in end-user product: https://blog.webex.com/collaboration/hybrid-work/next-level-audio-with-webex-ai-codec/ https://blog.webex.com/collaboration/hybrid-work/next-level-...