reading wednesday

[boxofdelights]

• What are you reading?

Chimera, by John Barth. Last read in college, when I was studying computer science, and everything Barth said about letters and stories seemed to be a direct reflection of something Turing discovered about numbers and computing machines. "The key to the treasure is the treasure."

• What did you recently finish reading?

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. I had been putting this off, because my non-SF-reading friends were saying it was really good but my SF-reading friends were finding it disappointing, which usually means I'll find it disappointing. Turns out it's really good!

• What do you think you’ll read next?

Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson, for Tawanda book group.

Comments

[oursin]

#NotAllSFReaders - over here Station Eleven won the Clarke Award in 2015.

[boxofdelights]

I should have listened to you.

[supergee]

I am a longtime Barth fan but never noticed that aspect of his work.

[boxofdelights]

" 'Little Doony,' she said dreamily, and kissed me: 'pretend this whole situation is the plot of a story we're reading, and you and I and Daddy and the King are all fictional characters. In this story, Scheherazade finds a way to change the King's mind about women and turn him into a gentle, loving husband. It's not hard to imagine such a story, is it? Now, no matter what way she finds -- whether it's a magic spell or a magic story with the answer in it or a magic anything -- it comes down to particular words in the story we're reading, right? And those words are made from the letters of our alphabet: a couple-dozen squiggles we can draw with this pen. This is the key, Doony! And the treasure, too, if we can only get our hands on it! It's as if -- as if the key to the treasure is the treasure!' "

I may have been seeing more there than there is, due to reading these at the same time and also suffering from untreated sleep apnea, but that seemed to me to express the insight that every computing machine can be completely specified by a number -- and so, in a profound and useful way, programs and data are the same stuff!

Godel Escher Barth

[supergee]

"The key to the treasure is the treasure" is a koan I been working on for years. Don't know if this will help, but thank you.