This probably doesn’t interest many of you, but I’d be curious to know if I’d hear here any suggestions to inspiring works of fiction with hypercompetent characters in them. Watched the Bourne trilogy in the middle of reading this post, now I want more! :)
My own ideas
Live:
-James Bond Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace/Skyfall
-House MD
-Sherlock
The following all happen to be about hypercompetent thinkers. How inspirational they are varies.
Limitless. If you like the Bourne
movies you’ll like this. My favorite scene is when Eddie, the main character,
is on the phone with his girlfriend while she is being pursued by a bad guy.
It is a fun little dramatization of brains being mightier than brawn. (For me
the main defect of the movie was that despite his chemically enhanced
hyperintelligence Eddie does some stupid things in order to keep the plot
wheels turning.)
Understand by Ted
Chiang—available in its
entirety online! This novelette is kind of a takeoff on Flowers for
Algernon. Unlike in
Limitless, the protagonist doesn’t do anything stupid, yet the story
manages to be interesting.
R. Scott Bakker’s Prince of Nothing
trilogy. I started this on
Yvain’s
recommendation
but somewhere in the second book my interest flagged or I got distracted by
other books or whatever. I’d still like to finish it sometime. From what I’ve
read of it, Kellhus (a super-smart rationalist who is also basically a ninja)
is kind of an antihero, or at least morally ambiguous. He’s very good at
achieving his goals, but I don’t know whether his goals are worth achieving.
A bit different from the above stuff, but Wodehouse’s Jeeves
stories are laugh-out-loud funny and
feature a hypercompetent valet.
(I know these from the stories rather than the TV adaptations, but the latter
feature Hugh Laurie and Stephen
Fry.)
While being a bit anti-thetical to the point of the post, I recall a Slytherin motto that we become ourselves by following our desires wherever they lead us. In my own history, it was my desires to become super focused and productive that lead me to a lot of stuff I really value now. Was kind of a goal that defeated itself, in that to best achieve it I gave up the goal, but even so.
But a datum you might find useful is that most of these were some of my favorite media for years, I absorbed myself in them, and they mostly made me ignore everything except for self-improvement. In particular I was extremely fond of The Prince of Nothing series (it was primarily this series to which I compared LOTR). Understand is one of the few stories I have on my computer, House was an inspiration to me even before I found x-risk, I loved the Sherlock movies and owned the two most recent Bond movies.
These days I’m much more the person I wanted to be, but no longer care about being that kind of person. (I do value the results of being like that, but it’s only the results I care about).
This probably doesn’t interest many of you, but I’d be curious to know if I’d hear here any suggestions to inspiring works of fiction with hypercompetent characters in them. Watched the Bourne trilogy in the middle of reading this post, now I want more! :)
My own ideas
Live: -James Bond Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace/Skyfall -House MD -Sherlock
Anime: Death Note Golden Boy
The following all happen to be about hypercompetent thinkers. How inspirational they are varies.
Limitless. If you like the Bourne movies you’ll like this. My favorite scene is when Eddie, the main character, is on the phone with his girlfriend while she is being pursued by a bad guy. It is a fun little dramatization of brains being mightier than brawn. (For me the main defect of the movie was that despite his chemically enhanced hyperintelligence Eddie does some stupid things in order to keep the plot wheels turning.)
Understand by Ted Chiang—available in its entirety online! This novelette is kind of a takeoff on Flowers for Algernon. Unlike in Limitless, the protagonist doesn’t do anything stupid, yet the story manages to be interesting.
R. Scott Bakker’s Prince of Nothing trilogy. I started this on Yvain’s recommendation but somewhere in the second book my interest flagged or I got distracted by other books or whatever. I’d still like to finish it sometime. From what I’ve read of it, Kellhus (a super-smart rationalist who is also basically a ninja) is kind of an antihero, or at least morally ambiguous. He’s very good at achieving his goals, but I don’t know whether his goals are worth achieving.
Edit—here a couple other things:
The main character in Frank Conroy’s Body and Soul is a musician with a lot of native talent (who also puts in the hours). I recently typed out a favorite passage.
A bit different from the above stuff, but Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories are laugh-out-loud funny and feature a hypercompetent valet. (I know these from the stories rather than the TV adaptations, but the latter feature Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.)
While being a bit anti-thetical to the point of the post, I recall a Slytherin motto that we become ourselves by following our desires wherever they lead us. In my own history, it was my desires to become super focused and productive that lead me to a lot of stuff I really value now. Was kind of a goal that defeated itself, in that to best achieve it I gave up the goal, but even so.
But a datum you might find useful is that most of these were some of my favorite media for years, I absorbed myself in them, and they mostly made me ignore everything except for self-improvement. In particular I was extremely fond of The Prince of Nothing series (it was primarily this series to which I compared LOTR). Understand is one of the few stories I have on my computer, House was an inspiration to me even before I found x-risk, I loved the Sherlock movies and owned the two most recent Bond movies.
These days I’m much more the person I wanted to be, but no longer care about being that kind of person. (I do value the results of being like that, but it’s only the results I care about).