“Wonderful mind expanding stuff.”
I’ve been asked more than once why I read works like Permutation City or Neuropath, and it’s been hard giving a simple answer. I’ll usually say that I like to be challenged, that I like my mind to be pressured into seeing things it previously hadn’t seen, touching something beyond… It’s all very melodramatic and it doesn’t really get the point across. This, however, just might.
Reading is like working a jigsaw puzzle. When reading works that challenge you, you assemble pieces into a whole far greater than each piece on its own. The real message isn’t the pieces themselves, it’s the painting they display when the puzzle completes. Some pieces might elude you, some might be very key to the whole picture, but for each piece, there is something greater than its shape and its placement. The really important information happens on a different level than the pattern matching that’s being done to work the puzzle, it’s above it, raised somehow into a different realm. And in the end, that’s the realm that really makes it all worthwhile.
Any less obtuse? Maybe not, but a lot more accurate, at least for me. Anyway, onwards to another puzzle, “Blindsight” by Peter Watts!