{"id":9021,"date":"2023-12-10T14:25:31","date_gmt":"2023-12-10T20:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=9021"},"modified":"2023-12-10T14:26:58","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T20:26:58","slug":"if-this-book-exists-youre-in-the-wrong-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=9021","title":{"rendered":"If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I just really like these John and David books, okay?<\/p>\n

That said, I think this is the best one. First book<\/a>: suffered from first book syndrome, and especially from being written episodically on the internet before it was bundled into a book. Second book<\/a>: too many spiders. Third book<\/a>: a little too much depression therapy, though if it helped anybody, that’s really great news.<\/p>\n

If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe<\/a> covers multiversal time travel, tamagotchis, questions of determinism, and more, all through the lens(es?) of the losers who are all that stand between us and fourth wall-breaking, world-ending dangers. It also serves as a different kind of therapy than the prior book, I think, and it incrementally advances our knowledge of the narrator[1], in new and troubling ways.<\/p>\n

There are definitely things[2] about the book that make it appear, impossibly, as though the whole series has been planned out from front to eventual back, from which I can glean both appreciation of the writing craft involved and also make some shrewd guesses about as yet unwritten events to come.<\/p>\n

But then again, questions of determinism, I believe I mentioned? Recommended, would read for the first time again.<\/p>\n

[1] Complete tangent, but I think my favorite thing about David Wong is that he thinks John is the main character.
\n[2] and by things I mean retcons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just really like these John and David books, okay? That said, I think this is the best one. First book: suffered from first book syndrome, and especially from being written episodically on the internet before it was bundled into a book. Second book: too many spiders. Third book: a little too much depression therapy, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30,947],"class_list":["post-9021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-horror","tag-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9021"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9028,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions\/9028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}