5
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On the topic of sci-fi’s I really like books written by scientists turned writers because I find the world building to be much more compelling, interesting and logically consistent. Recently I enjoyed [this].
— Andrej Karpathy
2016-11 on quorasessionwithandrejkarpathy.quora.com
Finished first Stanislaw Lem book "His Master's Voice"; unique, fun, like!
— Andrej Karpathy
2016-01-03 on twitter.com
https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/683474605319716864
This book was read by Carl Sagan, who later wrote a version of it for the general public with a happier ending.
— Andrej Karpathy
2016-01-03 on twitter.com
https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/683592037682171906
His Master's Voice is probably best described as a grown up version of Carl Sagan's Contact. This is a very unique sci-fi, in a good way. It is first and foremost an ambitious and humbling philosophical treatise on humanity and our place in the universe. This is then grounded in a short story about a team of scientists in a project similar to the Manhattan Project who are trying to decipher a discovered message encoded in a neutrino signal. The book raises several intriguing possibilities about the nature of the message and its content, but ultimately (and I like this part) the mystery remains unresolved. The book is not a silly story about establishing communications with aliens. It is a story about our failure to do so and especially about why such aspirations could in retrospect be considered naive. I did not agree with some of the specific arguments raised in the book and I think the story was not as fleshed out as it could have been, but I admire what Stanisław Lem tried to do with this book; It is unique, intelligent, I support it, I like it, and I want more. 4.5/5, but I'll round down this time. 4/5
— Andrej Karpathy
2016-01-03 on goodreads.com
Carl Sagan's Contact but for adults.
— Andrej Karpathy