[ExI] Fall, or Dodge in Hell

[Omar Rahman]

	The whole ‘digital genesis’ where Dodge was in  some sort of formless void until he started defining the creation which would eventually become a shared reality was a nice nod to various creation myths. But, it sort of ruined some enjoyment for me. The villain of the book, while morally reprehensible, at least tried to carry out some sort of sys admin functions even though he didn’t even have root! (Maybe that is the definition of a villain for a sys admin?)

	The elements of the book which took place outside the shared digital reality were quite well done. Especially the extrapolations of current trends, for example; various religious extremists clinging to ever more absurd dogmas, atavistic libertarians forming ever shrinking and devolving little tribes, social media and human knowledge being so manipulated that there is no clear common view of reality.

	Apart from that, the title of the book is wonderful; "Fall, or Dodge in Hell”. It evokes, obviously, the ancient Summerian myths where people ate the forbidden fruit of the cassia tree to try to  gain immortality, and again obviously, Sartre’s ’No Exit’ in which he concludes that ‘hell is other people’, which then obviously implies, by its complete absence of reference, Satre’s “Being and Nothingness” in which we encounter the idea ‘mit sein’, or ‘being with’ which is the only escape from the ever decreasing trust circles of extremist religion/libertarianism. Socialism for the win, yay!

	When I started reading I seriously wondered who/how many/how is the author referencing people on this list. Does anyone here know him? 

> On 20 Sep 2019, at 03:28, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote:
> 
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2019 11:04:20 -0400
> From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com <mailto:johnkclark at gmail.com>>
> To: Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Fall, or Dodge in Hell
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAJPayv3TVAU2T4L2W+Ji8-_zAAbdtXx2E73Pjw7ipVvm9F-gnw at mail.gmail.com <mailto:CAJPayv3TVAU2T4L2W+Ji8-_zAAbdtXx2E73Pjw7ipVvm9F-gnw at mail.gmail.com>>
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> 
> I thought the first 2/3 of the book was pretty good but then it went into
> Lord of the Rings mode and I'm not a big Tolkien fan. It introduced many
> interesting plot ideas and I kept hoping it would return to them but it
> never did.
> 
> John K Clark

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