
Ask HN: Books that altered your view of reality - chrisconley
Any recommendations on books that changed how you think about VR&#x2F;AR&#x2F;reality?<p>I&#x27;ve been enjoying Ready Player One and Snow Crash lately and am wondering what I should pick up next. Thanks!
======
mindcrime
_Neuromancer_ \- William Gibson

 _REAMDE_ \- Neal Stephenson

 _Pattern Recognition_ / _Zero History_ / _Spook Country_ \- William Gibson

 _The Peripheral_ \- William Gibson

Not exactly the same thing, but I'll also throw in _Glasshouse_ by Charles
Stross. And since we're talking Charles Stross, also add _Halting State_ to
the list.

Oh, and _VALIS_ by Philip K. Dick. Definitely worth a read.

~~~
V-2
I agree, but it's not just VALIS. Probably most of his prose dealt with this
theme. Personally I liked "Ubik" better.

~~~
mindcrime
You're probably right, but as of now, _VALIS_ is the only thing I've read by
PKD, so it's the only one I can recommend.

I have a big pile of his other works here, waiting to be read, but just
haven't gotten to the rest yet. :-(

~~~
V-2
I know the pain. Well, it would be worth your while once you get to it - as I
said, "Ubik" is pretty awesome. "The Man in the High Castle" too, although
it's different, not that much of "pure" s-f element, it's political fiction,
but still very Dickesque (it depicts a world where nazis won the war - where
certain writer gains fame for his alternative history novel in which they
actually lost :) ).

~~~
mindcrime
Sounds good. I'm on book 12 of the "Wheel of Time" series by Jordan now, plus
all the non-fiction I'm reading. But maybe after I finish WoT I'll binge on
PKD for a while. I did enjoy _VALIS_ quite a lot, even though it was pretty
f'in weird. :-)

------
aaron695
Given what you've just read and a VR/AR requirement I'd suggest either -

Rainbows End - Vernor Vinge

Daemon - Daniel Suarez

They are both more AR, which I suspect will be the next step rather than VR,
AR novels have if anything proven to me it's more relevant than VR, for now.

Daemon relies a bit more on AI to make the story.

------
mm-typer
The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins... this book starts at human-bonobo-
chimpanzee split and goes backward into a LOT of evolutionary history,
including scientific discoveries and different branches of the evolutionary
tree.

------
mmonihan
Believe it or not: Slaughterhouse V by Kurt Vonnegut and No. 44 The Mysterious
Stranger by Mark Twain. The first for the idea of being "unstuck" in time, and
the second for introducing the concept of nihilism.

------
jeo1234
The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson. AR plays a heavy role in it (and it is my
favorite Stephenson novel).

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami. I can't say
much about it without ruining it.

------
zachrose
The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker

A man goes out to buy shoelaces and a cookie during his lunch break, but the
story is packed with insane levels of detail about the objects around us and
the narrator's imagination about how those details came to be.

One such detail: the way a plastic straw will float in a can of soda until
it's horizontal, but sometimes the microscopic burrs in the pull-tab opening
will dig into the straw and keep it from doing that.

(Baker is a much more entertaining writer than I am.)

------
solipsism
_Diaspora_ by Greg Egan will twist the way you think of perception

~~~
stuxnet79
Boom! Another Greg Egan fan, here. Reading through Axiomatic right now and
loving it.

One thing I've noticed (& which I'm sure a lot of people have stated) is that
his fictional works are mostly just a platform for him to explore ideas.
Whether or not they entertain is a side effect. A few stories on Axiomatic for
instance end rather abruptly. It is as if Egan just couldn't be bothered with
tying everything in a neat little package once he'd already finished exploring
the implications of a particular philosophical idea.

~~~
sohkamyung
For more mind altering fiction from Egan, tackle his "Orthogonal" books, which
posits a universe where the speed of light is not a constant and builds on
that (and Riemannian Geometry).

If you just want the physics behind the books, see his website [
[http://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/ORTHOGONAL.html](http://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/ORTHOGONAL.html)
]

------
wj
Most recently Accelerando by Charles Stross has been occupying an outsized
portion of my contemplations.

~~~
anon987
Everyone on HN should read this book - 11/10

~~~
walterbell
Same for 1930's _Last and First Men_ , by Olaf Stapledon, which spans 2
billion years and eighteen species of variously augmented humans,
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men)

------
partisan
The Egg, a short story:
[http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html](http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html)

Too short for a TLDR, but it changed the way I look at other people, for the
better.

------
oldsj
Diaspora was pretty amazing
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28novel%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28novel%29)

------
bakztfuture
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman

------
V-2
Obviously not s-f as such, but - quite a few novels by Nabokov. "The Luzhin
Defence" (aka "The Defense"), "The Eye", "Bend Sinister", "Transparent Things"
\- all very immersing, and posing the question of what's the _true_ reality,
its underpinnings and seams. Challenging reads for sure, every detail matters.

Some might recommend Pynchon as well, personally I'm not convinced but to each
his own.

------
tonyedgecombe
Walden, not because I want to go and live in the woods, but because it helped
me question many of the "truths" I had come to believe.

------
manidoraisamy
Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline. The chapters on mental models and learning
disabilities definitely change the way you look at the world.

------
m_alexgr
_The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_ \- Julian
Jaynes

 _Wholeness and the Implicate Order_ \- David Bohm

------
stuxnet79
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by Dr.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Read it around three years ago and I was never the same since. It is non-
fiction, and I think VR is only mentioned in passing, but if you see it
anywhere, be sure to pick it up. It was a fun and informative read.

------
9ScoskEbci
Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez.

------
rumcajz
Stanislaw Lem: Futurological congress

------
loqi
Greg Egan's _Permutation City_ plays some novel games with reality.

------
ekr
The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary
Psychology - Robert Wright.

After reading this, you will understand (and be able to predict) a lot of
patterns of human behavior.

------
mannimow
Taleb - Black Swan

------
brudgers
Carlos Castenada's _The Teachings of Don Jaun: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge_.

~~~
brudgers
Julian Jaynes _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the BiCameral
Mind_

~~~
brudgers
Kant, _Critique of Pure Reason_.

------
olivierntk
Any books from Thich Nhat Hanh.

The miracle of mindfulness, No mud/No Lotus, How to Love ...

------
kamphey
House of leaves

------
Synaesthesia
The books of Noam Chomsky altered my political and historical perception very
drastically.

