this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Science Fiction
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December book club canceled.
Short stories instead!
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Lemmy World Rules
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SOMA by frictional games.
It explores some of the usual questions about what exactly the human mind might be, if it ever becomes possible to scan, simulate, copy and transfer consciousness.
But it does so in video game form, in a way that makes you face those questions from a visceral, personal, first hand experience perspective.
It's a science fiction masterpiece.
Omg this game is so good. Right after I beat it I went to Reddit and the discussions there helped me answer even more questions and think about it even more deeply. I wish we could copy those communities over to here.
This is one that i bought but never got around to.
Do eet. Just go in dark, that's the best way to experience it.
It's existential terror. The good kind.
Is it spooky I won’t be able to sleep at night type of scary? It looks really interesting but I’m really not a fan of horror.
It's very atmospheric. There is a "story mode" difficulty setting that disables all the monster encounters, leaving only scripted scares, the soundscape, and the plot.
On the wishlist it goes! Thanks for the fantastic recommendation.
I didn't play it, but watched the playthrough, and it was absolutely fantastic.
This one annoyed the piss out of me. The protag is dumb as rocks
::: spoiler He's an average dude, the games message wouldn't exactly hit the way it does if both central characters had Catherine's level of understanding of the situation. If you can't deal with stupid, that's fine, but having the two lead characters contrast each other in this way is how the game makes its point. They each represent one possible perspective. Catherine accepts that peoples minds can be reduced to data-files on a computer, copied, whatever. She knows that in tech, there is no "moving" data, only copying and then deleting.
To Simon this is an idea so foreign he can't even understand it when told point-blank. Hell, he only barely gets it the first time it actually happens to him. He's like the people who killed themselves after their brain-scans, in his understanding of reality, there can only be one instance of a person, because there is only one soul per person to go around. To him, the real Simon is dead, and he refuses to consider the thought further, because the conclusion he'd come to is that he is a "fake".
In contrast Catherine is content with being a copy. To her a copy is just as valid and real as the original, but Simon doesn't feel that way. They are the embodiments of the two sides of the speculative philosophical debate that is central to the game's plot. Simon isn't supposed to have intelligent things to say. He is the emotional response to the events of the Pathos facility, while Catherine is the intellectual one. :::