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Floornight
In the near future, science has discovered and investigated the reality of the soul, a top-secret facility on the ocean floor monitors the depths for creatures beyond human comprehension, and its eccentric inhabitants balance the familiar challenges of life, love and fulfillment with the surreal challenges of a continually shifting, mind-bending new reality.
Words: 69,882, online conversion: 156
Words: 69,882, online conversion: 156
156 pages, ebook
First published March 31, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 20, 2015
There's a rule of science fiction writing that the stranger the content, the more straightforward should be the prose. Floornight does not follow this rule. In prose and content that both fly off as far as they want to go, is indulgent, it it weird, it is positively masturbatory. The thing about masturbation, though, is that while it is not reputable, it is a great deal of fun. So is Floornight.
Floornight's indulgence and freedom to disappear up its own beautiful asshole are hardly unconnected to the format in which it was published, or, more precisely, not: it was self-published, with no presumption of remuneration, on fanfiction/weird porn site Archive Of Our Own. The potential bad side of this is well known and the source of much mean-spirited humor directed at easy targets, but Floornight demonstrates how this can be good and glorious as well.
Having said that, I suspect it is very possible that - with some lengthening, some cleaning up of the prose, some of the polish that a skilled editor can provide - that this could be published one day as well. It recalls the speculative heights of Egan as well as the whimsical heroics of Stross; I would say that there is a market for it. At any rate I enjoyed it much more than I have much fiction that has been published.
Floornight's indulgence and freedom to disappear up its own beautiful asshole are hardly unconnected to the format in which it was published, or, more precisely, not: it was self-published, with no presumption of remuneration, on fanfiction/weird porn site Archive Of Our Own. The potential bad side of this is well known and the source of much mean-spirited humor directed at easy targets, but Floornight demonstrates how this can be good and glorious as well.
Having said that, I suspect it is very possible that - with some lengthening, some cleaning up of the prose, some of the polish that a skilled editor can provide - that this could be published one day as well. It recalls the speculative heights of Egan as well as the whimsical heroics of Stross; I would say that there is a market for it. At any rate I enjoyed it much more than I have much fiction that has been published.
November 14, 2015
Weird in the manner of classic hard SF; weird in the manner of metaphysical anime; weird in the manner of philosophers who run free, far from the assumptions they were brought up in, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the multifaceted, ever-spinning crystal that is reality. Despite heavy emotional weight and voluminous strangeness, pretty lighthearted and fun! Recommended.
May 7, 2021
Nostalgebraist is really quite excellent at what they do. Recommended for Evangelion fans or anyone interested in somewhat bizarre web serials. The New City scenes in this are very impressive literary innovation.
October 27, 2016
This is a pretty bizarre story that shifts scope quite a bit. I had a lot of what the hell is going on moments as the story shifted dramatically each time. I like being thrown around for a ride like this and the ending was pretty dam amazing.
There are grammar errors and unless I misread, I didn't catch the whole point of Lah. There is no resolution for something apparently insanely powerful.
There are grammar errors and unless I misread, I didn't catch the whole point of Lah. There is no resolution for something apparently insanely powerful.
April 11, 2025
Jeez, I don't even know how to review this. It's one of the trippiest things I've ever read, and a the prose is world apart from anything you'd ever find in a more conventional book (especially anything written by a MFA!!). It's a lot like microtonal music, in that way - overlooked by the establishment, but supremely refreshing and exciting in a way I'd forgotten this medium could be.
This is the third Nost book I've actually read (I gave it a once-over a couple years ago, but didn't understand anything), and it cements his place in my mind as one of the most exciting, underrated authors of the past decade. It bears a lot of similarities to the later Almost Nowhere, including some of the imagery (among other familiar things, the idea of a branching timeline being integrated Github-style into the alpha timeline seems to have been reused in its entirety), but it's snappier, less sprawling, a lot more concise. It's no surprise the author works in cybersecurity - only a STEM brain could find this stuff exciting (I mean this as a compliment...)
Influences are taken from other mediums (I recognized a few scenes with Kyle that seemed to be lifted straight out of Neon Genesis Evangelion), but integrated so smoothly into prose. From the opening lines to the eye-popping final scene (which I can only compare to the last song on Unwound's "Leaves Turn Inside You"), everything fits into a surreal yet philosophically cohesive framework.
It can be messy, confusing, directionless, but thrillingly so - more of a "what's happening now??👀👀" than a "what's going on😕". Being a paper book I could physically hold in my hands and flip around in (not to mention getting a tiny bit of copy-editing to make it more readable) would make this five stars.
I guess I have to go completionist and read the Herschel Schoen "christmas story" now...
This is the third Nost book I've actually read (I gave it a once-over a couple years ago, but didn't understand anything), and it cements his place in my mind as one of the most exciting, underrated authors of the past decade. It bears a lot of similarities to the later Almost Nowhere, including some of the imagery (among other familiar things, the idea of a branching timeline being integrated Github-style into the alpha timeline seems to have been reused in its entirety), but it's snappier, less sprawling, a lot more concise. It's no surprise the author works in cybersecurity - only a STEM brain could find this stuff exciting (I mean this as a compliment...)
Influences are taken from other mediums (I recognized a few scenes with Kyle that seemed to be lifted straight out of Neon Genesis Evangelion), but integrated so smoothly into prose. From the opening lines to the eye-popping final scene (which I can only compare to the last song on Unwound's "Leaves Turn Inside You"), everything fits into a surreal yet philosophically cohesive framework.
It can be messy, confusing, directionless, but thrillingly so - more of a "what's happening now??👀👀" than a "what's going on😕". Being a paper book I could physically hold in my hands and flip around in (not to mention getting a tiny bit of copy-editing to make it more readable) would make this five stars.
I guess I have to go completionist and read the Herschel Schoen "christmas story" now...
December 12, 2022
An undersea research station uses soul-splitting technology to fight a war against alien consciousness. I dig the big worldbuilding concepts at play here, both for themselves (iterated consciousness is one of my favorite speculative concepts, and I'm especially intrigued by its functions in the New City) and for the balls-to-the-wall willingness to take them to ever-weirder, ever-further extremes. The almost-fantastic conceptualization of the tech reminds me a little of Yoon Ha Lee and is suitability evocative and weird.
But my investment waned as this went on. Partially that's the consequence of a kitchen sink approach that means, inevitably, not all the elements will land (I'm particularly bored by the Wild Children society). But the core fault is that I don't care about the cast, which in turn ungrounds the way that branching/parallel lives direct the ending. They're too caricatured, too ironic for me to form an investment. So this is fun and fine, but I mostly appreciate for how it adds to my mental map of narratives playing with similar concepts.
But my investment waned as this went on. Partially that's the consequence of a kitchen sink approach that means, inevitably, not all the elements will land (I'm particularly bored by the Wild Children society). But the core fault is that I don't care about the cast, which in turn ungrounds the way that branching/parallel lives direct the ending. They're too caricatured, too ironic for me to form an investment. So this is fun and fine, but I mostly appreciate for how it adds to my mental map of narratives playing with similar concepts.
March 9, 2021
incredibly clever concept and writing. really original mix of sci-fi and religious/mythological themes. i binged it in a few hours, totally unable to put it down. i imagine that the maximalist, self-indulgent writing style might be polarizing for its distinctly homebrewed quality - but i personally found it refreshing.
the copious use of suspense, in everything from character development to exposition of world mechanics, made the writing actually feel too clever/confusing for its own good at times - but the constant mind-bending is part of the unique fun of the story. (having finished it now, i'm about 70% sure that it all adds up and makes sense?)
reminded me of Unsong, another cosmically-proportioned and wit-soaked internet serial fiction. i would recommend that fans of either one check out the other.
the copious use of suspense, in everything from character development to exposition of world mechanics, made the writing actually feel too clever/confusing for its own good at times - but the constant mind-bending is part of the unique fun of the story. (having finished it now, i'm about 70% sure that it all adds up and makes sense?)
reminded me of Unsong, another cosmically-proportioned and wit-soaked internet serial fiction. i would recommend that fans of either one check out the other.
August 9, 2019
Cool and weird (weirder than TNC). I should reread it sometime now that I know what's going on. (there was some amount of confusion on my part, and idk how much was due to my inattentive reading, how much was intentional, and how much was just due to Floornight's "draft" status.)
October 6, 2019
Well that was... an Experience.
I'm fairly certain Nostalgebraist *aims* for a reader to have no idea what's going on by the end of a story. That's not a bad thing, by any means. Floornight was, well, imagine if a rationalist wrote a Pacific Rim novel while doing [insert hallucinogen here. I know jack shit about the kind of hallucination you take drugs to *induce*—call me back when you can generate hallucinations without lazy cheats].
Anyway it was great.
I'm fairly certain Nostalgebraist *aims* for a reader to have no idea what's going on by the end of a story. That's not a bad thing, by any means. Floornight was, well, imagine if a rationalist wrote a Pacific Rim novel while doing [insert hallucinogen here. I know jack shit about the kind of hallucination you take drugs to *induce*—call me back when you can generate hallucinations without lazy cheats].
Anyway it was great.
August 12, 2023
Of all the science fiction I've read, this was the most simultaneously sciency and fictional.
The ending was a major letdown, almost disgustingly flat, but the execution of the pneuma theory throughout the story and some really entertaining and/or true-to-life characters make this a book I may not remember forever, but whenever I do remember it, it will be in admiration.
The ending was a major letdown, almost disgustingly flat, but the execution of the pneuma theory throughout the story and some really entertaining and/or true-to-life characters make this a book I may not remember forever, but whenever I do remember it, it will be in admiration.
July 18, 2024
It was a really promising start, but I felt like it fizzled out right at the end! Definitely an entirely novel premise tho!
January 3, 2023
this shit makes "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect" look like Elmo's World
November 11, 2023
Leonard Cohen does Stanislaw Lem. Floornight is so blatantly steeped in Evangelion's free association and helplessness and internal paroxysms that I initially took it for an unflagged satire of it. (The LCL is NGE if you know what I mean.) But it's more than its sources. Simultaneously more playful and less nonsensical than them.
Among other things it's about two kinds of barbarism: superstitious primitivism and high-modern brutality. It is hard to empathise with the characters who blithely torment obviously sensitive and sentient people - it feels like a narrative trick to make such people. But our factory farms are the obvious current counterpoint.
One way in which it surpasses almost all science fiction is the attempt to make the new physics consistent and to write technical characters who actually approach it as a technical problem, with unreliable data, excessively strong assumptions, projection of the true theory into a low dimensional effective theory for the benefit of the manager character and us. For once its technical jargon is not just sciencey adornment.
It is easy to misread. For instance, consider the holy poverty of the Iah cult triumphant, the fideist primitives who destroy the decadent technological society. Is their victory a political statement? Aficionados of the man know that the holy warrior children are instead inspired by Henry Darger's dark dreams.
One thing which does seem clear to me, on the other hand, is its critique of moral ambition / monomania. Martin is at various times either the creator or liberator of the dark city: his grandiosity and abstraction and will to power are equally suited to work great good or great evil.
One of the few web-serial tropes it would be better without is the daffy / abrupt making out. (But the book needs silly joy quite badly, so never mind.)
It's a very ambiguous ending, as in its forebears.
Free here
Among other things it's about two kinds of barbarism: superstitious primitivism and high-modern brutality. It is hard to empathise with the characters who blithely torment obviously sensitive and sentient people - it feels like a narrative trick to make such people. But our factory farms are the obvious current counterpoint.
One way in which it surpasses almost all science fiction is the attempt to make the new physics consistent and to write technical characters who actually approach it as a technical problem, with unreliable data, excessively strong assumptions, projection of the true theory into a low dimensional effective theory for the benefit of the manager character and us. For once its technical jargon is not just sciencey adornment.
It is easy to misread. For instance, consider the holy poverty of the Iah cult triumphant, the fideist primitives who destroy the decadent technological society. Is their victory a political statement? Aficionados of the man know that the holy warrior children are instead inspired by Henry Darger's dark dreams.
One thing which does seem clear to me, on the other hand, is its critique of moral ambition / monomania. Martin is at various times either the creator or liberator of the dark city: his grandiosity and abstraction and will to power are equally suited to work great good or great evil.
One of the few web-serial tropes it would be better without is the daffy / abrupt making out. (But the book needs silly joy quite badly, so never mind.)
It's a very ambiguous ending, as in its forebears.
Free here
November 16, 2023
Surprisingly good for the micro-genre of "talented GR reviewers who also write fiction," certainly better than most sci-fi out there. In terms of comparisons with other authors, probably closest in style/content to Qntm. (Incidentally, the pneuma/soul field described in Floornight does in fact exist, oddly enough.)
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews