Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Wow, I can't believe it ever got finished. 1900 pages of Harry's first year at Hogwarts, in a rationalist AU where he was raised by an Oxford professor. Imagine Ender Wiggins dropped into Hogwarts and you'll have most of the idea. I like the rationalism. I like the world of HP. I love the loving

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snark about the Potterverse, which is very clever and sharp in places. I love the (slightly up itself) 'we will destroy Death and make the world a better place'. And actually, it was remarkably well plotted, for an episodically released fan fic - things learnt earlier in the book turn out to be important and useful and everything comes together in a coherent whole. Even if I'm a _little_ bit sad that Spoiler really was an unredeemed bad guy, because he was So Cool. A bit cliched in places, a bit flabby in places (I never really got on with the endless battles), but clever and fun and page turning.

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Epic Harry Potter fanfic.
The New Yorker described it as "a thousand-page online 'fanfic' text called 'Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality', which recasts the original story in an attempt to explain Harry's wizardry through the scientific method"
"Read it and laugh. Read it and learn. Eliezer

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re-invents Harry Potter as a skeptic genius who sets himself the task of figuring out just how all this “magic” stuff works". Eric Steven Raymond
"This is a book whose title still makes me laugh and yet it may just turn out to be one of the greatest books ever written". Aaron Swartz

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Preface with: I haven't read any of Rowlings' books.

This is the 'version' of Harry Potter where...

... His adoptive father was a professor of biochemistry, and hence Harry wound up spending a lot of his time getting tutored in science by his father's grad students.

... Harry is about as "ferociously

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scientific" as Ender Wiggins was militarily ferocious.

... Harry has, surprising for an 11 year old, a basic understanding of calculus, decision theory, game theory, and such like. The sort of understanding you would expect from someone who did an undergraduate degree in mathematics, with a minor in computer science.

... Harry was an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy literature, and hence frequently draws analogies between things he sees at Hogwarts and other sorts of "fan service."

I was a bit disappointed at his attempt to solve the P=NP question; while using a time machine might help, I don't believe it helps *enough*, not with the limited iterations offered by his time machine. I would think that his time machine would merely cover the difference between a DFA and a NDFA.

I found the running gag of extracting bits of the "Rules of the Evil Overlord" as operating rules to be to my taste of hilarity.

The later portions of the tale (and I have seen up to Chapter 78 thus far; I gather there is a BIT more available now) get more "storyful", and are less about connecting to some particular scientific principle. I can't quite decide if that's better.

Pretty fun.

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Fucker snags us on his fish hook, drags us through, I kid you not, NINETY SEVEN of the most heavenly chapters known to man, and then just leaves us to DANGLE IN AGONY.
How much more suspense are we capable of bearing?
Aug 27 is too far away, you sadistic douchebag. What, you can violate the law of

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Conservation of Energy, but you can't give a girl some peace of mind and just write sooner?

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This is almost perfect so I'm going to point out a few flaws: Yes, it does get boring for a while towards the end. I really don't know what Harry's casual racism was supposed to do for the story. And that weird transphobic r*pe joke in the omake files 3. Yes, I know it's supposed to be funny, haha,

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haha.
...yet somehow all that didn't influence my opinion enough to give less than 4 stars. Yes, most of the story is REALLY good.

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I've read fanfic before, and am typically entertained/amused by the twists and turns that people come up with. However, I simply found it impossible to finish reading this. I got halfway through (and btw, 1000 pages? Really?) .. and have now deleted this from my nook.

I started reading this book very quickly and for a bit I couldn't put it down. I slowed down a bit in parts in the middle, but quickly finished the last several chapters. I appreciate and enjoy reading about critical thinking and logic, which this book is full of. Also, the alternative story line

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of Harry Potter is so great. The writing is very fluid and enjoyable to me - I am interested to see original fiction by the author (not that this isn't original, but I mean his own story). That said, this story stands on its own in my mind (due to the popularity of Harry Potter, it will almost never be read without comparison to the original work).

I recommend this if you like mystery, detective work, and logic.

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This is the only long piece of internet fan-fiction that I’ve ever read. I sort-of liked it? I was drawn along enough to finish it, but my overall feelings are ambivalent. The author leans heavily on the readers’ familiarity with and understanding of the characters established in the original

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material, but in many cases he changes the characters in significant ways without sufficiently justifying those changes. Mostly what I didn’t like was the choice to tell a dark, gritty, morally ambivalent story by twisting up a perfectly nice children’s book.

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Clever and funny. I enjoyed all the shout-outs to different authors' works.

Definitely worth your while.