Top all-time · #2422
W
Worm
Personal blog · parahumans.wordpress.comwritingculture
Worm is a personal blog at parahumans.wordpress.com about writing and culture. Since 2013, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 39 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
39mentions?
21recommend?
32HN people?
2013–2026first – last linked?
Often recommended · 21 of 38 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Worm, Wildbow's free online superhero web serial, as a very long, dark story that explains how powers work. Many recommend it to fans of HPMOR and rational fiction.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 38 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
If you don't want any spoilers at all, click here to start! Worm finished in November of 2013. A polished version is in the works for print/ebook release. Readers may also enjoy Wildbow's other stories Pact and Twig, both complete. The sequel is underway. The teaser (post-Worm-epilogue, semi-prol
Most-linked posts?
- /18 people · 23 mentions · first linked 2013-12-16
- /4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-07-01
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-04-09
- /table-of-contents/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-23
What Hacker News says?
I love online fiction. Each of the following is very good and will take you many days full-time to get through. Homestuck: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6 Worm: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ Freeman's Mind: http://www.accursedfarms.com/movies/fm/
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on “Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?”Submitted Worm is Getting a 2027 Comic Adaptation with IDW Publishing as a story · 1 points
HN discussion2. Is this what you mean? https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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on “Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?”I highly recommend Worm [1], available for free and it's some of the best fiction I've read in ages. It's only available online and not in any sort of (official) e-book format, although there are scrapers which can do that pretty seamlessly. It's a great story and I would gladly throw money at the author for an official e-book version. [1] https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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on “Why my book can be downloaded for free (2014)”Not purely rational you have parahumans where most protagonists' acts have some logic behind it. Not a lot of evil people just because they're evil, and not a lot of pure heroes either. https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ if you want something to read for next month(s).
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on “Burn the Programmer”I listened to all of Worm ( https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ ) with TTS and while it wasn’t ideal, it worked out well enough that I got a full understanding of the story. I’ll note that I did this before the fan podcast to read the whole story lol. That’s a much better option now.
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on “Blind people won the right to break eBook DRM, but they'll have to do it again”If you have not read it and don't mind reading, I'd like to direct you to Worm: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ People with powers have their behavior explained, the good guys are far from perfect. The world is a dark place, dead protagonists stay dead (and it's not the worse which can happen) and the cause of the powers is explained. This kind of take on superheroes make the Marvel and DC universes bland.
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on “Alan Moore on superhero culture”Adding to the suggestion of HPMOR, Worm ( https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/ ) is excellent and well worth a read.
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on “Ask HN: What are your recommended reads that are available for free?”"Worm": https://parahumans.wordpress.com
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on “Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?”Wow, I don't think I've ever seen someone cite fanfiction on HN before! But considering HPMOR introduced me to Worm [0] and Unsong [1], I really can't argue with doing so. Also a relatively good way to introduce college friends to rationalism, if for some reason recommending fanfiction to friends is easier than recommending lesswrong. [0] https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ [1] http://unsongbook.com/
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on “The Era of Quantum Computing Is Here. Outlook: Cloudy”> I fell into a phase of reading free e-books (I love amateur authors and fan-fiction generally) on my phone and that lasted about a year but the constant charging and eye strain was a pain. Have you read Worm? [1] There are tools available to convert the whole thing to an eReader format, and it was the best work of fiction I've read in a long time. 1. https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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on “I like e-readers now”Meditations - Marcus Aurelius -- A fine classic I enjoyed. Might count, might not, since it finished in March but was going on before. I loved Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - Eliezer Yudkowsky - http://hpmor.com/ Loved Masters of Doom - David Kushner I liked Worm - Wildbow - https://parahumans.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/ -- but it falls short of overall greatness and I don't think it's worth its 2…
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on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?”https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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on “The Superhero Industry Hates Children (2019)”http://parahumans.wordpress.com/f-a-q/ Q2: Will there be an ebook version? A2: I hope to self publish and sell some somewhere down the road. Going to finish the story first and edit things as thoroughly as possible first. Q2a: Can I have an ebook version for free? I’d like to read offline. A2a: I have some, but I’d rather not distribute them. There’s unethical sorts who are taking others’ work and claiming it as the…
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on “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”Worm by Wildbow is also very much worth a try: http://parahumans.wordpress.com/ Not a fan fiction, like HPMoR, but rather a lengthy novel about superheroes and supervillains that takes the subject seriously and with an incredible amount of inventiveness. It may sound lame, but just try it for a chapter or two.
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on “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”Why are you typesetting them if it’s a hobby? Why not just write? I commend you for your dedication to your craft but I presume some readers would please you so have you considered self-publishing, writing short stories or serial publishing, like Scott Alexander did for Unsong with http://unsongbook.com/ or Wildbow did with Worm? https://parahumans.wordpress.com
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on “Lessons learned: writing really long fiction”The two books I usually recommend for HPMOR fans are Worm ( https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ ) and The Mother Of Learning ( https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning ) Both considered to be a part of "rational fiction" sub-genre the same as HPMoR.
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on “Unsong, a fantasy novel where the universe is programmable with Hebrew (2015)”Some evangelism in case someone else happens to have a thing for ridiculously long, ridiculously well-written works of fiction: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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on “In the Future, We’ll All Wear Spider Silk”Here are some links for you, if you like long sequences. http://parahumans.wordpress.com/ http://qntm.org/ra Last, but not least (very short story): http://galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
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on “Entitlement issues (2009)”Here's a web-serial that is complete; parts of it could definitely use some editing, but it's enjoyable, and at 3.7M words will take a while to get through: http://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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on “Entitlement issues (2009)”Another example is "Worm", which I learned of from the author's notes for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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on “Number of Self-Published Titles Jumped 40% in 2018”Wait, HPMOR was lighthearted? That's not quite how I'd describe it. But in the same vein, try Worm [0]: A take on superpowers that tries to include changes to the world it's set in. Highly recommended by the author of HPMOR - "The characters in Worm use their powers so intelligently I didn’t even notice until something like the 10th volume that the alleged geniuses were behaving like actual geniuses". Also now has a…
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on “Ask HN: What are the best Sci-Fi books you've ever read?”As a side-note, I can highly recommend Wildbow's books. I've read both Worm and Pact. The books are available to read online in full. E.g. Worm: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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on “The Very Rich Indie Writer (2011)”Has anyone written "rationalist fiction" about a zombie setting? Something like what Worm [0] was for superheroes. Something that isn't just a genre-savvy parody of the flaws of characters in zombie films, but a serious exploration of a band of survivors working to build a community/society to survive and thrive against the zombies. It's probably hard to make it entertaining if one is in the mindset of mainstream tr…
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on “How a Medieval Society Withstood Nearly 60 Years of Drought”Thanks for sharing the feedback! Glad my post was helpful :) A few web serials that are very good and self-hosted via blog that I can think of off the top of my head are: The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba [0] This is a story about a college student who randomly gets teleported into a fantasy world one day when going to the restroom. She stumbles upon an inn and takes over as the innkeeper. It's a fun story with great w…
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on “Ask HN: What Books Do You Recommend Reading for 2022?”Many stories feel flat if the antagonist has simplistic or one-dimensional desires. In basically all of the James Bond movies, the villains want revenge and/or world domination. In contrast, in Worm [1] you spend some time with the antagonists (and a lot of side characters), and get a much better appreciation of their feelings and motivations. Sometimes you even feel sympathy for very messed-up characters to the deg…
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on “What makes a character memorable?”Worm Web Serial is pretty good. A couple of 'down' spots but I devoured it in a couple weeks. "It totals roughly 1,680,000 words" https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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on “Books Are Getting Longer”Web serials: Worm ( https://parahumans.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/ ) A Practical Guide to Evil ( https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/ ) Both of these have active communities on Reddit also. I really think web serials are underrated compared to "real" books.
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on “Ask HN: What is the best book you read on 2017?”Just got a major literary hangover from finishing http://parahumans.wordpress.com/ .. not really a book, more an online series. Be warned - it is long, addictive (and sometimes a grind/confusing/difficult to suspend belief [only occasionally though]), but the world building & range of characters is astounding. Thinking about doing a mind flush with either a short Kurt Vongegut or Terry Pratchett then on to tackle Th…
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on “Ask HN: What Books Are You Reading?”The author very carefully avoids mentioning what web serial this was precisely, but from context I am pretty confident he is talking about Worm [1], for anyone who is interested. [1] https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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on “A Practical Exercise in Web Scraping”
