Today, we're going to tackle a special sub-genre in sci-fi - the Metaphysical Sci-Fi, and dive into 5 books you need to read.
Thanks for watching and don't forget to check out my sci-fi books below.
#scifi #metaphysics #books
0:00 - Intro
0:31 - What is "metaphysical sci-fi"?
1:27 - "Blindsight" by Peter Watts
3:32 - "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem
5:32 - "The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi
7:15 - "VALIS" by Philip K. Dick
9:21 - "Excession" by Iain M. Banks
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MY STUFF
linktr.ee/scifiodyssey
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vvv MORE vvv
MY SCI-FI NOVELS
www.amazon.co.uk/Darrel-Willi...
DELPHINE DESCENDS
After her family is killed and her homeworld occupied, young Kathreen Martin is sent to the distant world of Furoris for re-education. She will live the rest of her life as a serf - to be bought and sold as a commodity of the Imperial Network.
When her only chance of escape is ruined, a chance mistaken identity offers her a new life as the orphaned daughter of a First-Citizen Senator and heiress to a vast fortune.
She vows to claw her way into power to sit among the worlds’ elite. Then, with her own hands, she will reap bloody vengeance on them all.
But to beat them, she must play their game. And she must play it better than them all.
BLACK MILK
Prometheus has the chance to bring his wife back from the dead, but doing so will mean the destruction of Earth.
Spanning time, planets and dimensions, Black Milk draws to a climactic point in a post-apocalyptic future, where humanity, stranded with no planet to call home, fights to survive against a post-human digital entity that pursues them through the depths of space.
Five lives separated by aeons are inextricably linked by Prometheus’s actions:
Ystil.3 is an AI unit sent back in time from the distant future to investigate Prometheus’s discovery...
The mysterious Lydia has devoted her life to finding a planet that the last remaining humans can call home…
Tom Jones (he’s a HUGE fan!) is an AI trapped inside a digital subspace, lost and desperate to find his way back to his beloved in real-time…
Dr Norma Stanwyck is a neuroscientist from 24th Century Earth whose personal choices ripple throughout time...
Prometheus must learn the necessity of death or the entire universe will be swallowed by his grief.
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GOODREADS
You can stalk me on Goodreads to see what I'm currently reading. bit.ly/3rrcByD
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IMAGE USE
The images in my videos are mostly licensed stock photos. However, occasionally I will use images found online. I always seek to properly credit artists and offer a link back to their amazing work but sometimes it's hard to find the original source of the work. If I've used an image you own and I haven't credited you, please feel free to get in touch as I am always more than happy to do so.
Pre-dating all of these is David Lindsay's A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS you need to read. Olaf Stapleton's writings also signal us to venture within to grasp the "without". THE SHRINKING MAN is a more intimate, less "showy" metaphysical journey that hits home with more immediacy than most of the titles discussed.
4:00 - Limitations of communication is Lem's recurring theme - "The invincible", "Fiasco", "His Master's Voice"...
Like always, you never disappoint. Of all the books you mentioned, I've only read Blindsight and I was blown away by how good it was. Peter Watts is on a whole different level. Great video, brother. Keep up the good work. 💙
I loved the ideas presented in Blindsight, but I found the prose horrendous. Very frustrating. Love all of the other books in the list! Well done.
exactly the topics I am dealing with right now: consciousness, reality, existence. Thank you for that inspiration!
Excellent visual images in your video. Great job!
Excession is probably one of my favorite books of all time… incredible!
I took notes, Darrel! Just downloaded Blindsight on my kindle, because of you. They should pay you for this, my friend! Kind regards, Jasper
The Hyperion Cantos is the 'godfather of metaphysical SF' .It has it all.
This!
Thanks for the list. Some of the books are already on my shelf. I will definitely concentrate on those you mentioned. Sounds really interesting.
Not a book, but a short story - I would add Ellison's "The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World". I have never read anything like it.
Excellent choices. VALIS is one of my favourite novels of all time. Blindsight is a more recent read for me and it profoundly affected me and is now right up there amongst my favourites too. I'm reading The Outside trilogy by Ada Hoffmann right now. It delves into the nature of reality, and its intersection with neurodivergence and mental illness, but it's also a really engaging sci-fi story with powerful AI gods and even post-human angels and even a dash of the Lovecraftian unknowable.
Blindsight has a 'sequel' - Echopraxia, not that good thou, but imho still worth the time
Great list! Blindsight and Solaris are 2 of my favourites. I own The Quantum Thief and Excession and plan to read them this year. I’ve read 4 PKD books so far and I’m looking forward to getting to VALIS!
_Excellent_ selection!
Just to note, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, although thematically linked to the unfinished trilogy, it is not part of it. Dick died before finishing the final novel in the trilogy The Owl in Daylight. Great list though! Blindsight is on my TBR pile, as is Solaris.
Blindsight And echopraxia By peter watts one ship is going to the outer system and the other go's to the inner system (closer to the sun to check on the array). there both exploring the same problem and are loosely connected to each other being that the timeline sync up. I like the audible versions of both books and they paint the picture. they both poke at the idea of awareness conscious thought and the like being a lesser evolutionary trait. There might be a third on the same timeline a under water mining crew but haven't read it yet.
Blindsight is a phenomenal book that I read back in 2007 or so. I just read it again recently and it's only become more relevant. Excession is also wonderful and this makes me want to read it again. Those two books feel like they should be higher profile today than ever. AI is racing down on us, and discussions about what things like GPT4 represent (Chinese room etc) are rife. If I had the power to greenlight TV or movies I'd be looking at blindsight and banks' books and getting adaptations moving.
Personally I couldn't get over the fact I was reading vampires in space
@@MightyKingYoungThat's fair. And how they seize at a right angle... Wonderful ideas, but you can feel the stitches keeping them together.
Blindsight and Solaris are two of my absolute favorite books
These sound awesome! Any ideas on what your next video will be on? Everything you make is good!
Would probably add 'Dying Inside" by Robert Silverberg, and 'Understand' by Ted Chiang, which both deal with the nature of consciousness... the former from the POV of a man born with the gift/curse of telepathy, and what that might actually be like, including facing the gradual fading of his 'gift' with age. While Chiang's is a novella exploring the reality of two men suddenly vaulted to god-like IQ's, but set on a collision course in which there ultimately can be only 'One'... and it's perhaps one of the most convincing explorations of super-intelligence I've ever read.
Bit of a spoiler there.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Anathem by Neal Stephenson, Magister Ludi or The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse, The Last Men and the First Men by Olaf Stapleton, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge and A Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky.
Which part of ''5 '' did you not understand?
Thanks for the additional recommendations.
The glass bead game? Seriously? The only time in my long, book-filled life that I got to the end of a book and thought to myself: well, wasn't that just a complete waste of time! I would really like to know what you got out of it.
Why don't you make a video so you can name drop all the books you've read... Or you could have simply made that comment some further recommendations, instead of the subtle sledge you wrote. Jerk
@skarphld the journey i guess... thought i definitely was extremely disappointed by the end
I had my pitchfork ready if you didn't mention VALIS. Blindsight keeps getting recommended to me. Now on the list
Great choices. Thanks for the recommendations! I think you know Strugatsky brothers already?
Solaris, man, that book is something else! Also have read the Quantum Thief and love it, although I haven't and will read the remaining mentioned in this video, if you have further recommendations I would love to hear them, it is very hard to serch for sub-genres of scifi books to read.
I absolutly love Dick (Philip K. Dick) but I haven't read Valis - so that will be my next purchase! Talking of Dick, though, Ubik and Do Androids... are exceptional books exploring such themes as time, consciousness and the nature of reality. And then there's A Scanner Darkly, which, though not about the metphysical, is also a great read if you want to explore state of mind.
I am excited to dive into The Culture series. I just picked up a copy of Consider Phlebas two days ago. Had to have it ordered for me. I was told that is a good place to start with The Culture.
I love that series more than any other... get ready to fall in love with AI!
And when you get to Excession you will be blown away by the "minds" I have read all Banks and he is outstanding - RIP - and Excession several times. Enjoy the journey!
It's ok to not love Consider Phlebas upon first read. The Player of Games and Use of Weapons though.....wow. Really can't wait to read Excession.
I started with Player of Games and I'm very glad I did. I hope Phlebas is a great launching board!!
same
Out of these i've only read Blindsight, which was fantastic. Got to stock up on these for my summer break 😎
Heinlein, number of the beast, future history universe with emphasis on practically everything after 1960
Hello. Nice video. 1. I just recently heard about Blindsight--maybe a few months ago or so. It was randomly in an online discussion or maybe another sci-fi video. But it sounded interesting. I've since bought the book but haven't read it yet. 2. I usually avoid/dislike older sci-fi but Valis sounds like something I'd like. I'll have to give it a try. 3. As soon as your video started, I scoured your shelves for Iain M. Banks... And was happy to see the books there. **Spoilers ahead** 4. Excession is, in my opinion, of the stand out novels of the series--and one of my favorites. I read all the books a thousand years ago, but, if I recall, the very beginning of the book was kind of nightmarish-like-- as everything is mysteriously and ruthlessly killed off/consumed. At least that's how it read to me. Almost like a sub-horror story to set the table. Even the small sub-mind couldn't hide. Anyway. As much as I loved the Culture and the Minds-- the idea of something much bigger and more powerful than them was kind of satisfying--or more like intriguing. The other thing that imprinted itself on me from that novel was the Sleeper Service and the idea/fantasy of having my own continent sized starship--complete with an entire ocean and lighthouse inside. And on top of that--being the only/solitary occupant of the ship. I absolutely loved it and still fantasize about such a setup. As an extreme introvert it was quite appealing (and maaayybe I might have one or two handsome male android companions---maybe.) 5. However, the Culture novel I immediately had in mind when I first started watching your video and listening to what dictates "metaphysical space opera" was Surface Detail. Again, I read these a thousand years ago but Surface Detail still haunts me. A super/mega advanced interstellar society that no longer has death--but still believes in an eternal Hell-- and would actually send millions of it's citizens there. That was quite mind-blowing. Terrifying. I cannot recall the one race that was in the book--they were the race that I don't think had ever been mentioned in a Culture novel before--not that I can recall. But I believe they had either sublimed or gone dormant-- but their ships and AI were still intact running their Hell virtualities. The images of all those substrates in those empty haunting ships ships full of tortured souls. Just chills. It really gave me the creeps. And the one character (Parvel? Pervaul?) getting trapped in her race's Hell was devastating-- and also very nightmarish. It was so hard to read that book--and her journey. But it prompted, at leas tone of the things it prompted for me, was that whole discussion of how civilizations can vary vastly in belief and societal systems and how that is tolerated or not tolerated by other equally advanced civilizations--ones, like in the Culture's case, are highly aware of what they deem repulsive and barbaric behavior by others. I believe they were disgusted enough to send secret agents to try to disable these Hells. Ugh. I don't know if I can read that one again. Sorry for the long post. I've always wanted to start my own Culture Club here in Chicago. It seems to be rare that I meet anyone who has read The Culture novels though. I think if done correctly, they'd make for some really good dark tv (Netflix series, etc). Anyway. Good night. RIP Iain M. Banks.
Great list. I'd also add: * Samuel Delany's "Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand" (or for a shorter read, "Babel-17"). Does language construct our identity and reality? * Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men" and "Starmaker" - the prose can be a bit much at times but it's really far-reaching stuff * Greg Bear's "Blood Music" and a few of his other works really explore the idea that the universe is just an information matrix, and can be "programmed" or manipulated through will. Definitely inheriting some ideas from Dick. * Dan Simmons "Hyperion" cantos.
Blindsight and its sequel Echopraxia are difficult to get into but truly worth gold to the last page, including the ~100 references.
I wasn't convinced that the aliens in Blindsight lacked consciousness.
I’ve just finished Blindsight. Difficult first 50 pages, but absolutely loved it. Amazing ideas.
Excellent presentation, thank you for that. How about Moorcock’s “The Dancers at the End of Time” trilogy?
I read a great deal of all of them, only finished two, and the Banks is the only one I would recommend.
great list =]
Reading recommendations!! Woohoo!!!!!
I believe Ian Watson‘s „The Embedding“ might have been a good contender for your list; a novel about the reality shaping effect of communication.
Solaris is one of my favorite books - sometimes bogs down in tedium of theories behind what exactly solaris is? The ending I thought was astounding. The first film takes a different path than the book, but I found the ending profound and fascinating. The more recent film with George Clooney was okay. It had its moments but the ending left me - meh. Valis was the first PKD book I read, I was studying Gnosticism, Buddhism, Taoism, the IChing at the time I picked the book up...I felt as if I had been hit by a pink light, lol! I later read all of PKD's novels and probably most of his short stories. The only thing I haven't read is the unabridged edition of the Exegesis at the library of congress: 10,000 pgs long! Two others I think are worth reading: Ubik and the Maze of Death (kind of depressing). I would like to suggest another author I found very intriguing: Clifford D Simak who describes worlds very different than our own. Full of sentient robots, religious questions and dogs.
My first thought was ‘The lathe of heaven’ by Ursula LeGuin, which is also beautifully written.
Thank you - was looking for some intelligent choices - I have been reading Sci-Fi for almost 60 years and the "new" finds are few and far between,
I'd like to recommend two by China Mieville, Perdido Street Station and Embassytown. Both deal with morality, consciousness, clashes of cultures.
I've read three of these books. Solaris, I read a long time ago and the book was OK but did not make a big impression on me. The George Clooney film of Solaris is also OK but a bit mediocre. The original Russian film version is awesome. While not speaking Russian and having to read subtitles is a pain the film made a huge impact on me. It captures the creepiness of the hidden parts of the human mind very well and is pretty terrifying. Watch the Russian version of Solaris if you want a shock. I also read Valis and tried to make sense of it. I am still trying to make sense of it. I notice the Phosgenes that appear when the sun rises a couple of times a week and I understand what Dick was getting at. He was right about them. Excession is my favourite book of Ian Banks and I have read it several times. I have read all his sci-fi books and this one stands out above the others in my opinion. Good selection.
I love these recommendations. Thanks! I'd also like to bring up some of the work of Greg Egan. QUARANTINE (1992) starts as a private eye story, with a missing girl, but develops into an exploration of brain vs. mind, with pills which can rewrite parts of your personality--temporarily or permanently--and explores the connection between consciousness and quantum reality itself. Oh, and maybe he'll discover why all of the stars have disappeared. PERMUTATION CITY (1994) asks whether there is any difference between a human mind, and a sufficiently detailed computer model of such a mind. It, too, starts small, with a series of lab experiments, but quickly builds into an exploration of human and machine consciousness, and the relation between reality and the mathematics underpinning it. Both books are fascinating studies of how advances in science and technology influence metaphysics.
I am a big fan of Dick, Banks and Lem. I've read all three books, Solaris and Callis- way back in the 1980s, Excession, my favourite Banks book, i read in 2001 i think. All wonderful reads, must re read!!
"Big fan of dick" Hehehe
Thanks so much
07:18 lmao. great list! all of these are going into my read list
I would add Ariya Kai the Secret of Colony L.I.F.E. by F. Z. Zach
I just finished the first book in the revelations space Trilogy, by Alastair Reynolds, where he introduces the concept of hyper Advanced aliens who also lack consciousness. A seeming paradox.
Is there any evidence for that outside of fiction?
I'd have to add "Permutation City" by Greg Egan to this
If you read "Blindsight" (which I absolutely recommend), you should consider also reading the sequel (or "sidequell" as it takes places more or less simultaneously) "Echopraxia"
also The Freeze-Frame Revolution with small easter egg
You should read Lord of Light which examines Buddhism and Hinduism on a planet in the future
You should read Alien Pirates from another Planet!
Am I smart enough to read this list? Well I am determined to try!
Childhood's End by Arthur C Clark would fit this category I guess
Thanks!
Thanks again Tatiana. I appreciate your support 😊
R.a.wilson ,illuminate trilogy also Schroedingers cat trilogy ✨
I've read Blindsight, VALIS, and Excession. In my humble opinion they were hard to read because of the clunky prose. VALIS at least had metaphysical concepts that I felt transcended the clunkiness (that might have been because I knew in advance about the semi-autobiographical nature). The other two might have been more accessible with a different flow. Solaris and The Quantum Thief sound interesting. Are they difficult reads due to prose or concepts?
Sounds to me like a subjective issue. A textbook on advanced mathematics is a "difficult" read ...unless you are an advanced mathematician. Not denying the clunkiness of the prose or anything. Just sayin', is all. Btw, I believe the transcendence of the mundane is built into the concept of metaphysics, is it not? I may have missed class that day, but I've been operating on the general assumption that metaphysical concepts, by their very nature, are transcendental. Otherwise they would just be physical concepts, wouldn't they?
Land of the Headless is also a great read
I finished Blindsight and I understood nothing. I think I need more scifi under my belt. I felt pretty confident coming off Malazan and finishing the main 10 book series. I kinda get the gist of Blindsight but man I don't know whats going on most times.
peter watts isn't he the one who wrote 'the things'? you know that story that was from the things pov?
I wish i could Sublime and leave this all behind.
The Worlds of Null-A by AE van Vogt is maybe a thing...
That dick joke was so unexpected I almost choked with a strawberry, wtf Darrel! 🍓
Sorry bout that 🤭
@@Sci-FiOdyssey No worries, although I'd rather choke on something else 😘
BLINDSIGHT IS NUMBER 1
I recommend 'Sephirot' - a fantasy novel with a deep meaning of life
author?
@@smilingbudha7414 Gordon Bonnet
You are too neat!
Bro, you look just like professional skateboarder Erik Ellington
Solaris is an absolute masterpiece. Not just it is Greta writing, but it's depth is poetically depressing, it's ideas mind shattering.
Arthur C Clarke?
Hannu Rajaniemi is not pronounce like some Indian guy Hanu Rajinima! HaN-Nu (emphasis in double n). Raia-nie-mi.
Funny how you can pronounce Jean Le Flambeur right, but the name of the author Rajaniemi ...
Do you know what this list needs? 😂😂😂
You've neglected "A Voyage to Arcturus" by David Lindsay. But then again this book was way before your time and the watchers of your videos.
I tried to read VALIS once but could not get past the main character referring to himself in the third person. I tried to apply the proper pronoun in it's place but I just couldn't make it work when I kept seeing that awful name. To read it once or twice throughout would be ok but every damn time? Too much for me. I wanted to enjoy it. I liked the concept behind it but that one choice keeps me from it. I like other writings from him though. I don't have to like everything.
7:16 Yes, that's what many of us need right now. Happy Pride everyone 😂
vast active LISTENING, not vast active living
Blindsight is horrible transhumanism. Deconstruction of the greatness of human consciousness.. if someone smashed a violin in pieces now try describe the physical and audible beauty and qualia it can produce,,
Useless ! I watch your videos to find new books: I've read all of these. I don't rate the Quantum Thief, the rest are all MUST reads. The only thing I would say with Valis, is read some other P K Dick beforehand, especially A Scanner Darkly. I think I would suggest Michael Moorcock's Behold The Man. It's ponders the meaning and nature of Christ; so not one of his speed fuelled sword and sorcery hack jobs then.
You spent 1:16 minutes pontificating like an art critic without mentioning a book. Very off-putting. Too arty-farty. Are you paid by the word? Are you on piece work?
I am really tired of the "diverse" images. Are you woke, Derrell? You sound British and you're, what, a millennial? so likely yes. What is it with you people? It's getting old... I suspect it has also affected your opinions about Sci-Fi. Watching... we'll see.
Solaris is crap. Typical Russian literature trying to make religious talk seem reasonable. Blindsight sounds interesting (and was already on my list). Dick is... Dick (not the worst writer out there). Player of Games was pretty good, and I want more of The Culture. Do I have recommendations in metaphysics? Nope. Or, wait, do I? Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell. The reason it's probably the funniest book I've ever read is precisely because it ... uhh uses "metaphysics".
Lem was polish...and has no similarity with russian literature except maybe slavic syntax...& he was hardcore atheist I heard EFR was funny...thanks for recc My funniest SF ( so far ) is John Sladek 's Roderick books.
@@holydissolution85 I stand corrected! And that's a kinda bad one. I assumed that he was Russian because the first movie was made by Tarkovsky. And I suppose that Tarkovsky's persistent religious themes may have tainted my reading of the book (though I can't remember if I read the book before or after watching Tarkovsky's movies). I can't assess literature from an actually literary perspective, but simply from having read several of Dostoevsky's rather annoying assemblages of verbiage purporting deepness, Solaris seems to me to be in a similar vein. But maybe Lem was trying to parody religious language games and did so so well that he came to sound to me as if he was supporting it. EFR is not a MODERN writer, and his is not HARD scifi, but from my experience of having "grown up" among the kind of "metaphysics" he employs (though the ideas are actually based on some quite different real-world history), I found it personally very gratifying.
@@stephannaro2113 I had a hunch it had to do with Tarkowsky. 😁 Just a few weeks ago I got EFR complete SF ( & fantasy ) works in e- book format...I just found " Next of Kin " there, so I'll read it soon... Lem is one of my top five authors, but I can understand someone not liking him...his early works Star Diaries & Cyberiad is also some of the funniest SF ever... 😎
@@holydissolution85 I'll have to add Sladek to my todo list. He looks clever - and gave us part of the Stargate universe.
English translations of Eastern bloc sci-fi in my experience are hit-and-miss (mostly miss). Someone above mentioned Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The English translation? Sorta bland. But the German translation, probably closer to the original Russian, is a tight, inspired, cruel dystopian work that seizes you by the throat.