I am having a very good time reading Ted Chiang’s newest collection of short stories Exhalation. Such a good time in fact, that I wish I had a forgetting pill.
That way, after I finish the book, I would be able to jump right in and read it again for the very first time. In fact, I would then be able to read it every day for the very first time, and each time I would feel the same delighted sense of discovery.
There is probably a downside to my plan that I’m not thinking of. Come to think of it, this could be the premise for a story by Ted Chiang.
This is, sort of, a plot point (one of very few) of Jonathan Blow’s game The Witness. And it’s appropriate, you can only have a given revelation once, and the revelation of that game is its strongest feature that can never be forgotten.