Please keep doing these…I don’t have mental energy to comment intelligently these days but I really enjoy these and look forward to them. I also get many great reading recommendations. Thank you.
When you spoke of Wilson's The Philosopher's Stone, which I'd not heard of, and inserting a piece of metal into the forebrain, it put me in mind of The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa. I read this back in the 1960s. Rampa said he was a Tibetan monk and he tells of a procedure where a hole is bored in the forehead and a sliver of a certain wood is inserted into the brain. This gives the person psychic abilities aligned with Tibetan Buddhism. He speaks of astro traveling and other psychic power. After a few more books he was exposed to be a plumber from Devon in the UK. Something of a letdown for all those people who took him seriously.
I rarely give up on a book once I've started reading it. The Philosopher's Stone is one of the few exceptions, and judging by your review, I didn't even get to the worst part before bailing.
Though it'd been settled that Shakespeare's oeuvre was written by a committee? "Shakespeare knew little Greek and no Latin" ~ Ben Jonson (his contemporary)
Inverted world is one of the best books I’ve read in ages . Christopher priest is the man ! Along with silverberg he rarely seems to put a foot wrong .
If you like Hard to Be a God's movie adaptation (the one by Aleksey German), I also wholeheartedly recommend his other movie "Khrustalyov, my car!". the aforementioned is both one of my favorite books and movies :D!
What an awesome selection - isn't it wild to still be finding out and reading so many sci-fi novels even after being in the hobby for a long time? Great stuff.
I appreciated the way "The Philosopher's Stone" attempted to use the scientific method to explore the occult. It reminded me of a literary version of the TV show "In Search Of." Although I typically don't enjoy science fiction that incorporates mystical and supernatural elements, this book's clear philosophical logic had some basic appeal for me. Enjoyable but ultimately absurd in the way it centralized "force of will and intellect" as some sort of catalyst for releasing supernatural power.
I’ve read all but a couple of C. Priest’s books. My favorites are, in no particular order, A Dream of Wessex, The Glamour, The Affirmation (this one blew me away), The Prestige, and The Adjacent (another headf*ck).
Loved Inverted World and The Philosophers Stone. Try The Space Vampires or The Mind Parasites some time. And Wilson's icky sex mystery novels are pretty effective, I think.
Does he actually do it with them or was that in his imagination? If so it might make me reevaluate the whole book because that resulting drama with his wife really annoyed me when I read it.
Hard to be a god is a great book! Out of all Strugatsky books I struggled with this one the most, so my advice - just keep reading! You will be rewarded
Thankfully I can scratch Colin Wilson off my TBR list, BP. I am relieved that your perspective on Inverted World by the recently (and sadly) departed Christopher Priest was in line with my own impression. One of your SF YT channel genre brethren turned me onto it in one of his episodes. That Outlaw in the UK. Regardless, it's always a good day when you post, at least, it is in my world. Cheers.
I enjoyed Inverted World, haven't yet read the other two. @8:03 Some authors don't need an operation to have 'the power of exposition'. thanks for the video
The movie adaptation of Hard to Be a God is focused on experience and feeling, closer to soft story telling, perhaps. If you didn't know at least the novel synopsis, you probably wouldn't even know what is going on with it haha.
I've always been interested in Boris and Arkady Strugatsky books, especially 'Roadside Picnic' but thought I'd initially go for something different of theirs before it. I have to say that the 'Hard to be a God' is a wonderful read
I always find your book descriptions to be very eloquent - but you struggled on that first one - I would have added 'get out and enjoy some fresh air and come back and try again' yet there you are in out at a lovely outdoor spot :-) Best wishes!
I was glad to see a review on Colin Wilson's Philosopher's Stone, as that has been a favorite of mine for most of my life, especially the first half of the book. I read it every few years. I find it fascinating that Wilson anticipates some of the work being done this century on deep brain stimulation. You might be expecting a negative review on this video because we disagree on the book, but actually I found your review to be quite insightful. Your summary of his philosophy/psychology from the first half was well done, showing that you were paying attention. I agree with you about the Shakespeare section and the Lovecraft section. The only reason I read through those sections is to see the gradual unfoldment of his ideas on quasi-psychic powers. In fact, I would not recommend this book to others simply on the basis of literature or science fiction. It is primarily for fans of Colin Wilson, along with such works as Mind Parasites and the Spiderworld series, or for people who are interested in the subject of consciousness.
I got the same feeling from The Mind Parasites when I finished it. Great first half, but I was disappointed with the "power-of-the-mind" twist in the second half of the book. It was still an effective piece of "what if" fiction, & a good book overall, IMO. & despite it's negative review here, I'm still planning on reading The Philosopher's Stone, & The Space Vampires, by Wilson, at some point....
@@kufujitsu I agree with you on Mind Parasites. The mental powers increase exponentially until they have almost god-like powers at the end. I think you will find that Philosopher's Stone improves on this if only because the mind powers are more believable, and increase in power at a more reasonable pace. I also like the characters in Philosopher's Stone a lot more. It comes closer to being a "normal" coming-of-age novel than most of Wilson's work.
Colin Wilson always comes across to me as a classic 98-pound scrawny guy telling me about how he’s an ubermensch, in between bouts of wheezing and coughing, as he heats about his burritos at 7-11.
I enjoyed Inverted World as well, though I’m not sure it’s his “most popular” book (wouldn’t that be The Prestige?). Agree that Hard to be a God is an entertaining if minor work by the Strugats.
Ah so that's how to do a review of Inverted World! I did a truly terrible one early in my yoo-toob days. Terrible in terms of badly done. I enjoyed the book. I now want to read it again....👍📚🚀
Just curious, when you travel and get new books, do you just ship them home after reading and continue traveling? Or just carry a ton of books around? lol Whatever it is, keep doing it my dude i'm jealous!
Def will check out Inverted World. I agree with everything you said about the Philosopher's Stone but I still enjoyed it. Just a peaceful ex acid-head here, not many critical faculties...
Phew, thank God you loved Inverted World. It's one of my all-time favorites. The sequence when our hero leaves the tracks and discovers the "true" nature of the world is mind-bending beyond belief. I'd highly recommend The Affirmation too-it's a Mobius strip of a novel and a great intro to Priest's Dream Archipelago; and The Prestige which is so much richer and more metaphysical than Nolan's adaptation.
Hard to be a God - Terribly boring to the point of being nearly nonsensical. Haven't read The Philosopher's Stone by Colin Wilson, but read Ritual in the Dark last year and it was a phenomenal 5-star read. And haven't read The Inverted World by Christopher Priest yet, but The Prestige and Expect Me Tomorrow were both 4-stars or above with The Evidence being less than good. I won't spoil anything. Read what you'd like by these authors and make up your own mind.
I'm a fan of Colin Wilson--for his work as a philosopher, biographer (I recommend his bios of Jung and especially Wilhelm Reich) and, for lack of a better term, a non-fiction explorer of the unknown (his various histories of psychos or the supernatural)--but I feel his novels only exist to put his philosophical ideas into a more "digestible," semi-pulpy form--I love the *ideas* in the Mind Parasites (a sort of Lovecraftian collective unconscious entity) but the prose and plotting? Awful. Read the Philosopher's Stone once and that was enough. Also, his writing 's kind of dated... [Wilson does have a chip on his shoulder about "establishment" writers and types, and tries to mimic pulp stylings, but not too well, IMHO--pulps are pageturners, and Wilson's novels aren't that...]
The Philosopher's Stone is better than The Mind Parasites as far as Wilson's books go, I'll give it that much (you will probably hate the latter if you didn't like this one). I had quite a Wilson phase about 25 years ago which I now look back at with mixed feelings.
So…what if Childhood’s End went a different way as told by Russians? Hell yeah, I’m in! Tell me who doesn’t enjoy bickering gay couples? That’s probably why he didn’t live to 300 🙄 And that Christopher Priest book is S tier, made me get several of his other works, all of them great so far.
Colin Wilson started out (in THE OUTSIDER) warning about the kind of individual Colin Wilson became. Agree with you about THE INVERTED WORLD. Great novel. Will put The Strugatskys (sp.?) on my reading list.
Just got the Hard to Be a God SF masterworks. Stone has been on the TBR for a minute now staring at me from my shelf. . . it may remain as not to disturb anything at rest
wait i thought they were about to boot you out of thigh land? so i highly rec watching the annunaki connection, a half hour doc made by midjourney AI in the style of the 1970s ancient aliens docs. ballz trippin.
OFFICERS. Starfleet OFFICERS. Also, as I watched young woman wandering in the background, I wanted to yell, "Turn around, Matt, for God's sake! Great opportunity for a 'meet cute' here!"
The Inverted World and Tau Zero are my two best SciFi reads this year and , joy of joys, iv just realised that I have Hard to be a God waiting on my shelf. Sorted. Thanks for your honest reviews.
@thescrewfly Cool username. The Screwfly Solution is one of my favourite Triptree stories. I own all of her short story collections - or at least most of them...
@@kufujitsu I have several of her collections too. That particular story was indeed my user name before Gurgle decided to shorten it and make it more offensive- looking against my express wishes!
@@donaldb1he barely touched it and failed, for once, to understand the book and themes. It is extremely great sci fi. You do need to read all three. It opens during the Chinese Great Leap Forward so starts for ages as a historical novel. I loved it. Then it literally does first contact and multiple human apocalypses. You can argue the end offers hope of a kind but it is a top five all time sci fi trilogy.
@@HuplesCatActually I thought the historical setting of the early part was the best bit. After that I found it very boring. Big ideas, sure, but very poorly written, imo. I am aware, though, that a lot of people feel differently.
