Bookworm asks! Curious about #3 (favorite fantasy sub-genre) and #43 (a book you own that's in the worst condition!)
Thank you for the asks!
3. Favourite fantasy sub-genre?
I quite enjoy high fantasy, different worlds and different people's and different cultures are some of my favourite things to learn and read about. And good secondary world fantasy will nearly always draw me on!
43. A book I own that's in the worst condition?
Um....hold please while I search!
So, I have 3 books, but will only talk about 2 of them.
The first is Destination: Void by Frank Herbert. I had found it in a Half Price Books last year, after having finished reading the Dune series and curious about other books Frank Herbert has written.
The second book is The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. My hubby was getting into this series and wanted this set of covers specifically so I scoured second bookshops and eBay and ThriftBooks to find these books. And The Eye of the World needed repairs, it's front cover fell off so I took it to work and used the book tape there to put it back together.
Thank you again for the asks! Anyone is welcome to ask me more bookish questions as well!
Alright, TTO:U is great, and over, and now I wanna write an essay contrasting its themes with another story that rhymes so very well with it, Frank Herbert's Destination: Void (1965/1978).
If I wanna do a proper analysis, though, I have to go back and read Herbert's book again. I haven't since 2008. Below the cut is my first pass based on what I remember.
The setup is almost exactly backwards (spoilers for Destination: Void after this): a colony ship is launched at a distant star, crewed by clones of volunteers. The ship is managed by 3 human brains taken from convicts, but they're woefully inadequate. Seeing their brains struggle and start to die, knowing that turning back isn't an option as everyone on board is a clone and therefor expendable, the crew decide their only chances for survival is to develop a general artificial intelligence right there on the ship.
Unknown to everyone on the crew except one, the ship's psychologist-chaplain, this is the whole plan and the whole point. AI development on Earth has progressed to the point where it's dangerous: the last one developed on the moon went insane and somehow caused a nuclear explosion. Only in the safety of a colony ship headed for a far star can AI research be continued in earnest. The psychologist-chaplain was informed of this plan, and his job is to manipulate the crew into choosing that plan of action, as well as to keep the crew functioning. There isn't even a habitable planet at their destination.
Eventually, they succeed, and the AI immediately: 1) declares that it is omnipotent, 2) teleport the colony ship to its destination and create a planet for them to colonize, and 3) demands that humanity now figure out how to worship it as God.
So yeah, there's going to be a lot to play with here. Both involve colony ships using convict labor being the staging ground for AI experiments. But one involves a colony ship initially run by an AI that ultimately gets replaced by a human brain, and Destination: Void goes the other way. The tones of the two stories, as much as I remember, are totally different too: the crew of Destination: Void are intentionally manipulated, their isolation and crisis engineered to make them choose what Earth wants them to choose.
Meanwhile TTO:U is filled with people properly abandoned by Earth, forced to come together as a community to become stronger and succeed.
Destination: Void was the last Herbert book on my list before I’ll eventually reread the Dune saga. I wanted to get to know Herbert better before I start such a reread, and at this point I feel I have a firm enough grip on his writing persona.
I’d read 4 non-Dune books up unto Destination: The Santaroga Barrier, Whipping Star, Soul Catcher and The Dosadi Experiment – of which Soul Catcheris the…
