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Comment by stevendhansen | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of a book I recently finished (Death's End by Cixin Liu). A major plot element is sending a human brain to intercept an alien civilization that is en-route to Earth with the hope that the aliens will resurrect the person and use his knowledge establish a better dialog with humanity.

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I recall reading another novel where one of the protagonists was resurrected far, far in the future by a seemingly incomprehensible race. (Little spiders, of sorts.) Unfortunately, due to unfamiliarity with humanity, they did a bad job, and his body only lasted a few minutes before dying again.

I wish I could remember what the book was.

At the very least, "poorly reassembled by incomprehensible aliens" is a plot element in the Star Trek TOS pilot. Granted, that character lasted more than a few minutes. And costumes for incomprehensible aliens are expensive, so big veiny heads will do.

FYI, these is Star Trek's episode "The Managerie" [0], and was original the pilot episode "The Cage" [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menagerie_(Star_Trek:_The_...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cage_(Star_Trek:_The_Origi...

Sounds like a real life version of hell.

Rautavarra's Case by PKD is similar. After an accident, an alien race resuscitates one of the [EDIT: human] victims, leading to some interesting consequences related to differing conceptions of the afterlife.

Text: http://www.philipkdickfans.com/literary-criticism/rautaavara...

Synopsis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rautavaara%27s_Case

Probably not the one you're thinking of, but somewhat related.

Dennis potter wrote an intriguing take on this.

When Potter was dying he wrote Karaoke (which was about a dying writer writing a play entitled Karaoke who discovers his characters actually exist)

This is followed by Cold Lazarus which is set in a dystopian future in a lab working on the cryogenically frozen head of the author from Karaoke.

There is a fairly open question as to how much of Karaoke is a prequel and how much of it is a concurrent experience of the mind being experimented upon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaoke_(TV_series)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Lazarus

My best guess that kinda, sorta matches your description: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

(I liked that one)

I think I read this in a short story collection, but totally can't remember which one.

Your description sounds similar in some ways to The Last Legends of Earth, by A. A. Attanasio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Legends_of_Earth

I don't think that's it - the spidercritters play a very small role in the story I'm thinking of - but this sounds fascinating. Thanks!

Reminds me of the opening of the movie Prometheus.

Spoiler alert, dude!

Seriously. I'm at the very beginning of the second book right now.

Yes, that was ridiculous. I wish mods would just delete spoiler posts.

The book is 6 years old, what's the spoiler limit?

Did you know Darth Vader was Luke Skywalkers father?

The metric is percentage of the population already having seen the movie or read the book. Not how long it's been out.

Not a lot of people read Plato but pointing out the horse was filled with troops isn't a spoiler.

I'm not a classicist but I'm guessing you meant Homer? Though Plato used the reference to said horse I think he did it on the basis that his audience knew the story already.

Ack, maybe I'm missing something here?

Your right, I was well on my way to Friday night drunkenness when I wrote that.

Death's End (the english version) was released only very recently. The original publication date of 2010 is Chinese.

Well if they really cared they would have learned Cantonese

Well if you were worried about a spoiler, perhaps you should have stopped reading when he mentioned the book name and that he had finished it. Or maybe immediately after that when he said "major plot point"

Creepy yet interesting.

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