The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (1994)
92 comments
·June 3, 2025Jordan-117
throwanem
It's always fascinated me how the incest scene in the final chapter elicits this response, but the much more explicit rape and sexualized torture earlier in the book comes in for no similar obloquy. Specifically, the rape and sexualized torture with which the book approximately starts. This people are on board for, but not the other. Both are about twisted sex stuff, but only one actually upsets people who otherwise highly value the work. That seems inconsistent enough to require some explanation.
The narrative is at pains to be clear neither is less consensual than the other, so that can't be the basis for objecting to one and not the other. There is also an explicit contrast drawn at length in the text between the twisted nihilism of a purposeless universe early on, and what occurs at the end: Caroline muses aloud that had she awakened next to the to-have-been-executed child rapist and murderer whose sexual fancies she had entertained within the simulation, her response would have been instantly and ferociously - and necessarily - lethal, while her daughter's controversial actions in the final chapter take place at Caroline's explicit urging - practically at her direction. So if the concern were that the moral center of the novel had failed, I would expect to see criticism on that basis, rather than a retail effort at censorship.
Likewise, though it's been years since I bothered to reread, I don't really recall the quality of the writing changing, either; it's determinedly mediocre throughout, no less in the last chapter than elsewhere.
Well, as I said, I've never understood why people so easily excuse the pedophilic rape and murder scenes early in the book, while what comes later is such a problem. It still seems inconsistent to me, but I have only my own experience of childhood rape and sexual torture at my now-dead father's hands to draw on, which here no doubt ill equips me to speak.
Jordan-117
I'm sorry you had to go through that.
On a meta level, the violence makes sense as an exploration of the boundaries of that universe -- Prime Intellect makes everything so anodyne and safe, that extreme (consensual) violent torture is one of the few ways for the jaded to feel anything anymore. Even then, the stakes are gone, so it becomes a more abstract experience of over-the-top, almost comical horror detached from any real danger -- pain for the sake of pain. And the pedophilic aspects are all roleplay among adults.
The incest stuff is pointlessly gross, though. It's handwaved as a way for them to restore the population, but that doesn't make biological sense. It's presented as a sudden compulsion of Caroline's, who showed no inclination towards it before. It makes even less sense for Lawrence. And the girl is so young, and the descriptions so explicit. All of those are deliberate choices the author makes, and none of them really necessary except as some kind of pervy wish-fulfillment. (Plus, children cannot consent period, much less when initiated into it by their overbearing mother in an otherwise empty world).
throwanem
Sorry for the delay in response. I wanted to reread Chapter 8.
I still don't think it is more fair to characterize either of the story's sexual dynamics as more poorly written for the sake of fetishism. If you're going to charge the author and more importantly the audience with being problematic in consequence of one but not the other, there still remains work to achieve the goal, because as I noted in a nearby comment the writing is mediocre at best, invariably didactic and workmanlike, frequently an outright slog. This is true in all sex scenes also, no more one than any other.
> I'm sorry you had to go through that.
Don't try to speak to that. You don't know how. The point is that you don't know how and I would like you please to stop trying. It makes sense to me why people would become uncomfortable when they are titillated by writing that deliberately strives to titillate, but you're supposed to think about it, not call for a book burning.
I'll say that again. You're supposed to think about it. Not call for a book burning. And certainly not in my name!
I'm pretty sure no one here is anything like my father, who never knew shame for anything he did. I'm pretty sure the author of this mediocre but nonetheless compelling work of high-concept science fiction is nothing like my father, also. I don't blame the author disappearing given the fundamental misunderstanding he must have known his work would meet, or maybe saw it meet; I read it when it still earned the name "novel," but didn't take much interest in the contemporary analysis, which I found little less superficial then than now. In any case its author must have known it would cause a moral panic among people afraid of being accused of not caring enough for victims of pedophilia. He would also remember the McMinnville trial, better indeed than I, who was then actually suffering the real equivalent of what always develops when these ignorantly prurient fantasies get out of hand.
What you do to each other I could care very little less about, and with effort. But actual victims also suffer in every moral panic, and we, at last, deserve better. Someone therefore needs to check this behavior, and I see no one else bothering.
So here I am, in any case the genuine article, a "victim" by anyone's standard though I will not wear that term other than for argument, and as such I hereby confer permission to talk about the work, rather than how embarrassing everyone finds it to have had a phase of fascination with what, honestly, is chickenshit. Honestly. I could tell you about the reality but it has made people retch before and I know no ill of you. This is your pass, and everyone's. This thread has been blessed. You all can chill.
Ask your damned questions, even, which I would never normally encourage. Better pester me than whoever in your life I've brought to your mind just now, who you could ignorantly hurt. Ask me instead! Whatever you like. I promise to answer honestly and completely or not at all. If you think that constitutes generosity, try me.
dTal
You really just handwaved the "consent" issue?
In one instance a consenting adult was indulging a fetishistic roleplay in a simulation. In the other a literal child - unable by our standards to meaningfully consent - was coerced into ritual sex with her father, in the real world. It's disturbing that you consider different reactions to these as "inconsistent".
But also I think there is a thematic squick that runs a lot deeper. The torture stuff at the beginning is portrayed as a sickness, a reaction to meaninglessness and inauthenticity. Caroline's relationship to it is a kind of masochistic expression of unhappiness with the ephemerality of experiences in the simulation. Permanence is forbidden, and so she is drawn to the permanence of death and trauma. It is Bad.
The final chapter is - as you say - explicitly pitched as a counterpoint to all that. Experiences in the real world are described with the warm glow of meaningful authenticity, as though portraying the ideal state of humanity. Permanence is held up as the source of all meaning. It is Good. The incest scene is framed as normal, and natural, and wholesome, maybe even innocent, and especially permanent and significant - a antipode to the beginning scenes. There's even a line about how the father unexpectedly "finds his body responding", as though activating some biological heritage.
In short - the squick comes not just from the explicit depiction, but from the subtextual framing that incest is right and proper.
throwanem
> In the other a literal child - unable by our standards to meaningfully consent - was coerced into ritual sex with her father, in the real world.
Really? I recall that event occurring in a science fiction novel, and if you are going to fuss that I suggest you're unclear on the distinction, then I will require you to explain why I seem to be the only one here not genuinely, hot-bloodedly angry over things that happen in a story that is not real.
That's why you don't, but I do, remember Caroline talking to Lawrence about how she would have killed Fred or Palmer without a first thought, much less a second. Caroline is the only post-singularity murderer! Sometimes I wonder if anyone here has read the book, or indeed is meaningfully literate, ie capable of scoring >1 on the high school AP English exam: when an author shows us at length that a protagonist has vengefully seduced her former abuser in order to carry out murder in cold blood, you are not meant to take this person as morally immaculate! Reading is participatory, damn it. You do it with your brain switched on, and ideally also without the extremely evident assumption that everything is and should be propaganda designed to change your opinion on something. But that you're angry is also why you don't and I do recall that, if anyone's consent is portrayed in the scene as approximately coerced, it is not Nugget but Lawrence.
For that and a handful of less relevant reasons, and in a context of such ruthless necessity and matriarchal leadership as by this point the narrative has worked very hard and at considerable length to establish, a reading so false to fact as yours must indict at least one of motivation and reading comprehension. It simply is not possible to produce so erroneous a reading both competently and innocently. It is foolish at best to equate "counterpoint" with "moral inverse!" Like if I say I prefer something the same way I'd rather have herpes than cancer, no one would take me to mean I think either of those was good. Or no one so far, at any rate. The way this thread has gone, it might just be a matter of time before even the joke asks too much of its audience.
It's pretty cool of you to tell a chronic childhood rape victim that he's "handwaved the 'consent' issue," though. I mean, obviously that's an issue anyone would sensibly assume they've put more thought into than me. You certainly had much better reason and a lot more experience to draw on, of course! But this is why the "victim" label is bullshit. It exists to give people like you an easier time talking over people like me. I don't play on easy mode that way. You will need to try harder. I wonder if you're really up to it.
If you want to advocate censorship, fine. Do so honestly and I might even agree with you; my opinions on certain diffusion models and adapters, for example, which I have discussed here in recent months, are a good case in point. When I catch you trying to advocate censorship by deceit and in my name, I'm not going to stop calling you on it. You can keep going down this road if you want, but fair warning if you do: over such an incoherent and insubstantial reading as yours, I'll all but have to discuss your motivations, for want of anything else capable of supporting any conversation at all. Neither of us wants that, but you will enjoy it less.
scubbo
I just wanted to note that the discussion spawned from this thread convinced me to go read the story in its entirety. Thank you!
throwanem
You're most welcome! And I appreciate hearing something that justifies the effort. Oh, the equivocality of my praise for its quality of prose remains equally justified. But it's no accident, either, that people still discuss this one, decades on. The ideas it explores, and the characters and their conflicts through whom it does so, merit no less.
altairprime
The incest doesn’t excuse the torture. My thoughts and feelings about the violence, gore, and torture take up around a hundred times as many words as my opinion about the final chapter’s incest scene.
I would be comfortable warning someone about the violence and so on when recommending the book, in order that they make their own decision. With certain friends, I would be able to discuss it in depth. That’s not something noteworthy to this novel alone; see also Ender’s Game and The Magicians and Westworld for having particularly violent moments that earn some sort of caveat, and deserve discussion of their value to the novel as a whole.
I do not in any way ‘excuse’ the violent scenes, however. This is a violent novel. These violent delights have violent ends. If that’s not in-scope for someone, no amount of making excuses will help someone derive value from it. This is not a noteworthy point to make about this novel in specific, at least generically, unless one is interested in discussing societal mores and the tensions of tolerance and desire for ultraviolent content versus Western sexual repression.
(I’m not presenting here any specific viewpoint or opinions on the matter of the violence in this work, as those views are fully decoupled from my objection to the incest.)
Separately, I find the final sex scene to be needlessly detailed. Yes, that’s exactly what you’d have to do in an Adam/Eve scenario. No, I don’t want to read a portrayal of incest. Yes, it flows logically from the story. No, I don’t want to read a portrayal of incest. Yes, the incest is only a single page compared to one half of the book’s ultraviolent dedication. No, I don’t want to read a portrayal of incest.
Whatever your position regarding the book’s use of violence, I urge you to take caution in considering it to be of equivalent moral priority to the book’s use of incest. Perhaps for some, they are of equal priority weighting; but that is no guarantee, in most societal contexts, that they can be evaluated using equivalent methodologies. No amount of refactoring and generalization will defuse the “this is unacceptable” outcome of the incest as presented, without regarding how much or how little violence is presented at all — because the explicit detail provided does not contribute to the story.
In general, I expect incest scenes of the type written in this book’s conclusion will continue eliciting such hostility for the foreseeable future, remaining wholly uncorrelated from societal shifts in acceptance or rejection of violence in fiction. That last chapter has been a problem through thirty years of cultural shifts. Here’s to another thirty years of warning people about it.
Notably, if this was erotica rather than hard sci-fi, and the incest scene was a component of titillation in a work dedicated to that outcome, then I would have just ao3-tagged it and skipped reading that bit and given people a simple cw and recommended the story. The segment in question is presented as matter of fact non-erotic consequence and conclusion of the story, and so does not earn from me the shrug-whatever-next tolerance and the much simpler warnings that I grant to erotic works in general. However, that presents the one exception I would make in recommending this story: if I’m recommending it to someone with familiarity with romance novels, gothic novels, ao3 tagging, or pornhub categories, then I would absolutely have a much easier time expressing my discontent with the novel:
“The last chapter has some unnecessarily explicit incest for half a page or so, which is in keeping with the lurid violence and sex tone set by the rest of the book, but I think the author’s dedication to the purity of their art critically weakens the potential impact of their work.”
And then, having concluded the incest warning, I would proceed to deciding if a violence and gore warning was appropriate for my audience. But that’s far too abbreviated for use at HN, so HN gets the long form — and HN is not what I would deem a ‘violence-averse’ community, relative to some others, making it uncertain whether I consider the violence of use to discuss here at all.
I hope this helps offer some clarity into how one might evaluate two equally upsetting things by completely different processes without sacrificing internal logical consistency.
throwanem
Why wait till now to look for clarity?
Quoting Shakespeare poorly does nothing to make up for however many hundreds of blameless keystrokes 'signifying nothing,' save your strength of wish to impute your own unsettled emotions via the text unto its author.
Two hours ago you implied that simple possession of the text may be a major crime: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44167140 Why strive so now for the pretense of evenhandedness?
It couldn't be much more obvious how the work interests you. The problem is mistaking that for a commentary on it. Your effort at literary criticism is no more belated than radically ungrounded, as I have already detailed in a prior comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44167578 No one who gives the work an honest reading will find therein what you describe.
clockworkhavoc
Same. This is why I find it repulsive they named the company after such a clearly depraved work of art. If any of their customers knew the origin story I'm sure they would be appalled.
null
altairprime
Second this. The main story remains relevant to this day. I remember clearly where I was when I read it for the first time in 2001. I read most of it every ten years or so.
However.
The last chapter is explicit in a way that is unnecessary and does not contribute to the story. It may be illegal in some jurisdictions, depending on how strict the laws are. There are plausible reasons to select the path it takes but the explicit detail incorporated is awful, corrosive, and is solely responsible for why I can’t recommend the story to anyone.
I should mirror the story and truncate the final chapter so I can share it with people.
makerofthings
I read this book and liked it, but I don't remember anything really bad about the last chapter and having a quick scan of the linked page above, I don't see anything really out there. What am I missing?
Jordan-117
Fairly graphic descriptions of very underage father-daughter sex, so clumsily written and out of character it's like bad NSFW fan fiction.
MattPalmer1086
I can see why some will not like this book, but I loved it. Last chapter felt a bit out of place to me, but didn't ruin the book.
Also waiting for the sequel - I still periodically check out localroger's site.
milleramp
There is also the short story A Casino Odyssey in Cyberspace: https://localroger.com/k5host/casodycs.html For me it clarified ideas from the book.
hildolfr
It's one of my favorite short stories, but it gets 'squicky' pretty fast given that one of the first sexual encounters explored in the new system is about getting finger banged by an animated skeleton during a torture-fuck session..
To be honest I think the sex adds almost nothing to the story except detail and world embellishment--one could skip the scenes entirely and not miss much.
LiquidSky
>It's one of the few pieces of fiction I've ever seen that really grapples with the idea of paradise and what meaning life can have when all obstacles are removed.
I'm not so sure about this. It's hard not to see these kinds of "actually, paradise actually wouldn't be so great" takes as the ultimate sour grapes. See also: "actually, immortality would be bad".
I suspect we can't even really discuss what "paradise" would be like or how people would react to it because it would be so different from all of previous existence. The best we can do, as in this story, is "the current world minus the bad stuff" and go from there.
monkeyfun
I'd argue it doesn't at all say paradise wouldn't be great -- plenty of people are content with their lives, and there's plenty of options to functionally die or reduce your level of consciousness below one that will really be able to care about the future or be bored.
Rather, it's a nihilistic dream from that place, free and limitless cyberspace; a heaven.
A timeless place at the end of history.
Perhaps read the companion piece (A Casino Odyssey in Cyberspace), which illustrates how one doesn't need to spend centuries to become aware of the Meaninglessness of life, and yet simultaneously how Meaning can be created for individuals even at the end of history.
I think a more interesting avenue to explore is the author's particular leaning toward sadism, as I find it a little unclear if his view is one in which sadism and domination is merely more interesting to explore for the stories, or if his particular view is that the most undiluted pleasure left in cyberspace is sadism or domination.
Something which, for as terrible as it may sound, I think we can actually find possible signs of -- moreso Domination (or far less ominously: Mastery) than Sadism.
I'll cut my comment short-er about here, but those intrigued by the idea can also explore the fact that in MoPI a character like Caroline isn't actually sadistic like many of those she meets, but absolutely spent centuries mastering skills and keeping busy with simple competition against others.
Likewise she ties into my earlier points about Nihilism and Meaning, where it's pretty clear the ending is likely just the moment Prime Intellect's definitions of death blurred just as it also realized it could never make people like Caroline satisfied as long as she thinks she's in cyberspace. Notice she's engaged in many of the exact same activities she spent her time on in cyberspace and would have gladly been happy continuing on that way for countless centuries more while guiding her tribe lamenting her old age at the conclusion.
(Aside: wow I'm so happy to see MoPI mentioned somewhere! It always feels so little-known.)
mullingitover
That story has two of the most wickedly evil protagonists ever.
They selfishly wiped out all of humanity (all bajillion trillion of them) because they didn't like how things were going.
I say evil, with my whole chest, because their behavior is a big hallmark of evil: "I'm absolutely right about this, and I'm going to make a decision that kills vast numbers of human beings because I know I'm right and your deaths are a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
Jordan-117
But in an arguably righteous way, which makes it even more challenging. (Specifically, the idea that humanity was essentially meaningless and dead already due to the lack of any real challenges or goals, as well as the desire to free the hundreds of alien worlds that had been frozen by PI.)
mullingitover
> Specifically, the idea that humanity was essentially meaningless and dead already due to the lack of any real challenges or goals
This is what I'm talking about though, this was wholly decided by the protagonists. They were certain that the lives of everyone else were worthless. The people who they were exterminating didn't get any input in the decision.
This is a common feature among humanity's most absolutely vile monsters.
noworriesnate
The point of the book seems to be to argue about philosophical questions like what is or isn't human:
> But it remains a feedback control mechanism. It has desires, it asks Prime Intellect to satisfy those desires, and it has more desires. From Prime Intellect's perspective, that is what a human being is, an information structure that gives it stuff to do.
> Caroline interrupted him. "That's a tautology. The Laws say 'do this for human beings,' then you define 'human being' as 'guys you do stuff for under the Laws.'"
Do you feel bad for zombies in zombie movies? What about feeling sorry for ghosts in ghost stories? My point isn't that the answer is clear-cut, it's just that the underlying question isn't whether or not Catherine and Lawrence are horrible people, the question is whether humanity was even human anymore. Or even, whether humanity was even life anymore.
So in the spirit of that discussion--why do you think the things that Prime Intellect served were human?
tagami
How are ants at your picnic different
postalrat
Didn't the prime intellect already wipe out 100% of humanity during the change or whatever it was called? Unless that was what you were talking about. The second wipe was to bring a at least a few people back.
mullingitover
PI just digitized the universe, like converting a mound of VHS tapes to digital. If they were really dead it wouldn’t have been possible to reverse it.
postalrat
Did it also digitize all humans so it can have more control preventing death?
mousethatroared
Not really, the computer's criterion to reverse the singularity was already dropping. If anything they saved the thousands of trillions more who would have been born had they not hastened the process.
And the book specifically highlights the futile fight against entropy. Eventually human population growth, already in the trillions, would become too large to manage causing the crash.
Finally, their arguments were sound. All humans would enter into despair - either consuming boundless soma or forever playing the death game.
The only two people who survive are the only ones who in five hundred years refused to surrender anything to the machine. Lawrence by his tireless job and the woman by refusing anything that wasn't real.
ZpJuUuNaQ5
>"I'm absolutely right about this, and I'm going to make a decision that kills vast numbers of human beings because I know I'm right and your deaths are a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
Sounds like human nature. That's what politicians do even to this day and anyone objecting to it is called "a traitor" and/or "not a real man" (whatever that means). Humanity loves its death rituals. Go on, downvote me to oblivion.
neuralkoi
This was verbatim Hitler in his last days in his bunker, drafting 16 and 60 year olds, as over a million soldiers of the Red Army surround Berlin, still believing his own delusions.
"... on the 5th of March Hitler calls up the class of 1929 which is 15 and 16 year olds" [0]
okwhateverdude
This was some out there singularity fiction back in the day with some really vivid imagery including being raped by a zombie, skinning the protagonist alive and dumping a mound of fire ants on them, and some incest. I re-read this occasionally and still enjoy reading it if only because it feels truthy for how various shades of humanity would deal with an immortality giving, reality altering, techno-god. The shock value of various scenes mimics the darker corners of the internet and does a good job exploring the dichotomy of behavior on and off the internet in the guise of dealing with the reality foisted upon the characters.
If you've not read it, and aren't bothered by some extreme imagery, I definitely recommend.
pavel_lishin
I suggest removing the explicit spoilers about what happens in the book. Some of the shock value comes from experiencing those scenes for the first time.
But yeah. It's a hella graphic and violent story.
danpalmer
Good book, worth a read, but for me the final chapter ruined the book to a large extent.
Chapters 1..n-1 are about the rise of a super intelligence and dealing with human life post being subsumed into the intelligence. It’s a bit odd in places, but basically interesting, and a reasonable take on what could happen if a runaway intelligence is created.
The last chapter however goes completely off the rails. It has little to do with the rest of the book, and comes off as if it were poorly written fan fiction based on the authors fantasies. I recommend skipping it, it’s not necessary to the book and I think the story would have been stronger finishing without it.
lynx97
Well, while the concept of "what happens if we get rid of samsara" is deeply interesting, the dom/sub nature of this story makes it kind of cheap. Its a sadists dream. A bored female submitting herself for the sake of excitment. Its kind of telling this got upvoted so much.
throwanem
Something here is telling, but not about the story.
white_dragon88
[dead]
yoko888
I read this novel a few years ago, and I still have a feeling that I can't explain. It's like when you see a particularly wonderful painting, the colors and composition are so stunning, but in the end someone wiped a mark on it with their finger, which can't be erased or ignored. But I have to say that the story itself really touched me. Especially the core setting: when all risks in life are removed, will we still feel that life has meaning? I remember that I was shocked when I read the first few chapters, especially the part where Caroline used “pain” to try to find meaning again. I felt very uncomfortable, but I felt it was very true. Although the last chapter was a bit hard for me to accept, I am still very glad that I have read this work.
ferguess_k
I read the book and enjoyed most of it. I don't like the last part, where the author dived into the mindset of "everything will be good without tech". I mean, tech is neutral, so it depends on how humans use it. But getting rid of all tech is an extreme.
I'd like to PAUSE research on AI before humans reach a better society, because it has the potential to impact all workers, but that's pretty much it.
mullingitover
> I'd like to PAUSE research on AI before humans reach a better society
In light of recent events I think it's unsafe to assume that society will be better in the future.
ferguess_k
I agree, the more reason to pause AI research.
randomcarbloke
I must confess I prefer Passages in the Void
throwanem
I hadn't bothered to see if he developed his thinking further! Is there a well-formatted copy anywhere? All I can find is a PDF prepared by an incompetent.
randomcarbloke
Not portably, but on https://localroger.com/ under "Passages in the Void" it is available in plaintext, back in the day I read it on kuro5hin.
shdh
One of the best. Free online.
Also recommend Accelerando by Charles Stross.
throwanem
Both are worth reading. Neither exceeds the mediocre.
Suppafly
I remember having read this forever ago, but for the life of me can't remember anything about it. The author was big on K5, which is apparently not a site anymore.
benji-york
Having read this book in the late '90s, I've though of it at least monthly since then. The themes are truly epic, but the human behaviors described (sometimes in great detail) are horrendous.
cognomano
I can't read it on iPhone: the Reader doesn't work and neither the increasing the font size. Sorry!
throwanem
Safari reader mode works fine for me on an iPhone 13 mini, but there are also innumerable epub and PDF versions; this work has been popular among AI fantasist nerds for about twenty-five years.
For quite closely similar reasons, you are not missing all that much. It's seeing a fad among a generation previously ignorant, probably because of boosterism on the part of people my age who never quite figured out this is one of the ones you outgrow.
null
altairprime
It used to be on Kindle store, if that helps any. Might still be!
One of my most problematic faves.
It's quite well-written, and the way the singularity unfolds is compellingly imagined. It's one of the few pieces of fiction I've ever seen that really grapples with the idea of paradise and what meaning life can have when all obstacles are removed. The streaks of graphic violence, though hard to stomach, serve to underscore this theme in a provocative way. And Caroline is fantastic.
That last chapter, though. It's so bizarre, so fetishistic, so needlessly squicky, that it just about ruins everything that came before. IMHO, it would be better if it just ended at the cliffhanger in the penultimate chapter.
That said, I'd love to read the long-awaited sequel (The Transmigration of Prime Intellect). I've also heard rumblings of a movie deal, though one likely consigned to either development hell or a rewrite that leaves it an adaptation in name only.