Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

Re:Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World by metadaemon on Monday September 26, 2022 @10:12AM (#32983345)

You've got to love Roadside Picnic as it can be seen as the predecessor to other stories and games, like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Escape from Tarkov. It's core trope is unique enough to have spawned an entire generation of content.

I'd say the same about Blindsight, but it hasn't spawned much. Although, it's core trope is arguably the most unique I've ever read before.

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Re:Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World by thriftwy on Monday September 26, 2022 @01:44PM (#32985981)

I'm not sure how Blindsight is different in its essense from Arthur Clarke's Rama I. Even the social commentary layer in both books is very similar.

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Re:Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World by yamtaddle on Monday September 26, 2022 @12:11PM (#32984903)

> I'd say the same about Blindsight, but it hasn't spawned much. Although, it's core trope is arguably the most unique I've ever read before.

I don't want to go into too much for fear of spoilers, but the video game Prey is at least playing in the same ballpark as Blindsight.

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Re:Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World by thesz on Monday September 26, 2022 @01:51PM (#32986064)

I think you are talking about second Prey game, not the first. First Prey game was unusual first person shooter, very interesting one. I haven't played second game.

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Re:Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World by yamtaddle on Monday September 26, 2022 @01:57PM (#32986134)

Right, the basically entirely-unrelated game under the exact same name, from 2017, not the one from 2006.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2017_video_game)

(tons of spoilers there, I'm sure)

[EDIT] It'd also have been pretty weird if the '06 Prey had seemed like it had some Blindsight DNA, since that novel was released a few months after the '06 Prey. And I don't want to overstate the connection, but it's enough that I'm reasonably sure that someone involved in writing '17 Prey had read Blindsight.

[EDIT AGAIN] In fact, I'd literally bet money someone involved had also read a certain Watts short story in addition to Blindsight, which story I hesitate to even name for super-spoilery reasons.

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Re:Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World by thesz on Sunday October 02, 2022 @07:12PM (#33061363)

I was not able to finish Blindsight. It is too pretentious for me, it ignores what state of art was at the time. Let me quote an old comment [1] of mine:

Do you know that current 1sqkm radio telescopes produce data that can't be processed at real time in any cluster environment in use at 2015-2016? They scan skies at precision I just cannot express in words, let's try math.

https://www.skatelescope.org/uploaded/2950_31734_2007_IAU_Ta...

"...with a resolution of few micro-angular-seconds..."

sin(5/57/60/60/1000000) equals to 2.4366472e-11. It is sine of roughly 5 micro angular seconds (1 radian is about 57 degrees). 1/sin(5/57/60/60/1000000) is roughly equal to distance where current SKA can distinguish 1 meter radio-emitting object and it equals to about 41 million kilometers - a fourth of the distance between Sun and Earth.

These Firefall objects just won't be "unnoticeable until their entry to the atmosphere" in the state of the art sky scaling systems of Blindsight's time.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381870

Despite me being very unrespectful to Watts works, I recognize his influence. So, what is this Blindsight-related-story you are talking about? I read many of them and I cannot remember any that resembles your description.

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