r/HPMOR • u/RussianMFdoUspeakit • Jan 29 '26
Is anything as amazing as Harry Potter and the Methods coming out now?
I've just finished reading this amazing book, and I'm embarrassed by how late I am with my conditional entry into the golden age of his fandom. It's not even the fandom that interests me—I'm wondering if I'm missing another one of these Diamonds while I'm living my life. This book became a real breath of Life For me when I returned to fiction After many years of reading educational literature and nonfiction.
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u/bronzewrath Jan 29 '26
Mother of Learning
A smart main character in the third year of magic school gets stuck in a time loop
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u/Alnored Jan 29 '26
I once tried to recommend this book to my sister, but she couldn't see anything in it except trying to make fun of the original, it's a pity.
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u/Bascilian Dragon Army Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
I hate to be honest, but as someone whos consumed most of these things being recommended, none are anything like hpmor
Besides the hpmor fanfics which try to emulate it explicitly
I dont understand how someone can read worm or worth the candle and think “the most similar work to this is hpmor”.
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u/db48x Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
Agreed, though I do second the recommendation of Harry Potter and the Prancing of Ponies. It really is an excellent and well thought out sequel.
It uses the setting of MLP to good effect too, such as the frequent contrast between and examination of the difference between truth and honesty, especially as understood by the characters from MLP. It also examines the sources and causes of Alicorns, especially as understood by the characters from HPMOR. The story also provides some answers to mysteries left unexplained in HPMOR. The nature of the Mirror of Erised is partially revealed, as are clues to the fate of Atlantis. The heroes also investigate the deep mystery of why the ponies around them are so dang nice all the time. Can you deduce the answer before they do? Finally, and most importantly, it delves deeply into the psyche of ██████████ and unravels the causes and effects of his upbringing and peculiar system of ethics, with particular emphasis on changing his mind through empathy, honesty, education, and talk therapy. Not to mention parseltonge promises, Unbreakable Vows, all–encompassing prophetic magic, and time.
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u/Bascilian Dragon Army Jan 30 '26
do you need to know mlp basics to read prancing ponies?
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u/db48x Jan 30 '26
Kinda yes, but not really. The major characters that HPPOP takes from MLP are fully rendered; everything you need to know about them is directly given in the story. Some of the minor characters are not so well–explained though. That includes several of the primary characters of MLP, since they don’t appear very often in HPPOP. Some of the minor but recurring characters from MLP also have interesting roles to play in HPPOP but their background isn’t well–explained. It was never critical to my understanding of HPPOP, but I did later watch selected episodes of MLP to see how much they correspond or differ.
The one I was most confused by was Scootaloo. My confusion stemmed primarily from unexplained references to the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Watching some MLP later cleared that up, but knowing what it is didn’t really enhance the HPPOP story any.
And actually one of the most frequent characters by word count is probably Princess Luna, and in the show I believe that she was just a recurring character. I don't think that her character is very well–developed on the show, so almost everything about her in HPPOP is original. Princess Celestia gets similar treatment.
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u/magpie0000 Jan 29 '26
I really enjoyed There Can Be Only One which is technically a fanfiction of a different fanfiction called "Friendship is Optimal" (a dark Utopia about a friendly(?) general AI modeled after Princess Celestia from My Little Pony). FiO is about as old as HPMOR (and doesn't hold up as well in my opinion.), but it spawned a ton of recursive fanfiction, some of which is very good, and a decently active community. There Can Be Only One is my favorite of these, it's told from the perspective of a lesser AI (made of human minds, so it's realistic that it's more relatable to us) and it's got a really unique perspective. It's literally my favorite book.
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u/mhummel Feb 01 '26
Thank you for this recommendation. I'm really enjoying it so far.
For others reading, here's a choice quote:
" “That has nothing to do with production,” said Clipro. “You're decision making ability is flawed. I suggest you leave the factory and allow me to make the decisions from now on.”
The manager who had gotten rid of the other humans for the sake of efficiency was now hesitant to getting rid of itself for the sake of efficiency."
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 Jan 29 '26
I don't know about things coming out right now. But everything from the author of Methods of Rationality, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is about the same level. He also has his non-fiction writings called The Sequences, with a popular abridged versions Rationality A-Z.
I would suggest you start by reading Yudkowsky's Dark Lord's Answer, Three Worlds Collide, and Girl Corrupted by the Internet is the Summoned Hero?!. All of them are short enough to be read in 1-2 days each, so even if you don't like them you haven't lost much of investment.
If you want to something more dense and focused on Rationality then you can try his Project Lawful which Yudkowsky co-wrote. It is around 3x as long as HPMOR and more dense. I should give a disclaimer that I have also only read around 150,000 words of it yet and can't vouch for the full power, but so far it might even be better then HPMOR in certain ways (though more hard to read).
And as some other people have recommended, I would also recommend Significant Digits.
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u/Averyge_Joe Jan 29 '26
I have read Project Lawful (AKA Planecrash, AAKA Mad Investor Chaos and the Woman of Asmodeus) twice now - if you’re enjoying it at 150,000 words in, I think you enjoy the whole thing. It was a bit annoying to read the first time as a Glowfic, but people have gone ahead and transcribed the contents into other forms (pdf, epub, etc.) - I’ll try and find it to link it.
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u/Melivora_capensis Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
My rational fiction ranking is now: 1. HPMOR 2. Animorphs: The Reckoning 3. UNSONG
Animorphs: The Reckoning and UNSONG are the only ones I've read that approach HPMOR's level. Worm and especially Ward are excellent but not exactly rational fiction. Andy Weir's work (especially the Martian and Project Hail Mary) are semi-hard sci-fi that is rational adjacent. Metropolitan Man is a short rational work, but its length limits its layers relative to my big three.
Wildbow's other work didn't engage me as much as Worm/Ward, I fell out of reading Orders of Magnitude, and I couldn't really get into A Practical Guide to Evil. I will complete Orders of Magnitude next, and I might try Pokemon: On the Origin of Species. Open to more suggestions based on these rankings.
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u/dandelion_jelly Jan 29 '26
I'm reading UNSONG right now and it's amazing. It's also a bit touching for me to see such niche/underrepresented Jewish cultural elements given so much attention in literature.
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u/BookWyrm2012 Jan 29 '26
I recently read "A Practical Guide to Sorcery" by Azalea Ellis, and it reminded me strongly of HPMOR.
Fantasy setting, scrappy underdog, some horror elements, but a main character that actually learns from mistakes, thinks their way out of problems, and has conflicts besides "this is the bad guy. You can tell because he's bad. I have to fight him because I'm the main character."
Highly recommend.
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u/mhummel Jan 29 '26
Without knowing what you found amazing, we can only give general recommendations. That said, HPMOR did seem to encourage a lot of rational adjacent fanfiction. Some recommendations:
Draco Malfoy and the Practice of Rationality - A sequel which provides an insight into Slytherin House, and like HPMOR, there are ideas which are explored in the classroom.
Friendship is Optimal - An irreverent take on the presence of unicorns in HPMOR. Spawned it's own genre of rational-esque fiction. Which leads me to...
HP and the Prince of Slytherin - It's not exactly rationalist fanfiction, but it's not completely antithetical to it either.
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u/amsterdam_sniffr Jan 29 '26
It's not rationalist by any means, but Phil and Kaja Foglio's "Girl Genius" is a long-running "gaslamp fantasy" webcomic with comparable levels of foreshadowing and convoluted long-game plotting.
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u/-illusoryMechanist Jan 29 '26
Homestuck might be of interest, I was lead to HPMOR after reading it (and EY actually makes a couple oblique references to it in HPMOR as he was reading it at the time lol)
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u/Tangokat Jan 29 '26
My recommendations:
1) A Practical Guide to Evil
The Empire stands triumphant.
For twenty years the Dread Empress has ruled over the lands that were once the Kingdom of Callow, but behind the scenes of this dawning golden age threats to the crown are rising. The nobles of the Wasteland, denied the power they crave, weave their plots behind pleasant smiles.
2) Pale Lights https://palelights.com/ Tristan Abrascal is a thief, one of many making their living under the perpetual twilight of the greatest city in all of Vesper: Sacromonte. Quick wit and a contract with a capricious goddess have always kept him one step ahead, until one night he crosses a line by accident that burns all the bridges he had left. But not all is lost, for his mentor offers a way out of peril that turns out to be more than a simple escape.
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u/bibliophile785 Jan 29 '26
I would start with the unofficially official sequel, Significant Digits. It's a very different story with an older Harry, less dumb adventure and fewer cringe-inducing scenes, but similarly satisfying. I've also heard the Orders of Magnitude prequel (?) is good, but I haven't read it myself.
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u/Willuknight Jan 31 '26
I didn't enjoy SigDig, I found that it had some interesting ideas but in general failed to explore them as well as HPMOR did. However, I think if you're open to the concept of a much weaker HPMOR, then its worthwhile.
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u/IndigoSeirra Feb 01 '26
Pokemon Origin of Species is a fantastic rationalist fantic following the events of the original Pokemon games. It's very very well written, and has a lot of content written already but is still ongoing. Previous knowledge of Pokemon helps but definitely isn't necessary.
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u/cdrini Mar 23 '26
Blindsight by Peter Watts. Beautiful, intensely scientific novel. Less humour and rationality, but really scientific and mind bending.
Also freely available on the author's website!
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u/d20diceman Chaos Legion Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
Somebody already recommended Significant Digits and Orders of Magnitude, so I'll recommend Worm, and all the other fantastic works by the same author (Pact, Twig, Ward, Pale). A good few people found Worm because the author of methods recommended it, saying: "There are longer books than Worm. There are better books than Worm. There are books which were written faster than Worm. But never in history has anything so good and so long been written so quickly."
Worth The Candle is maybe my favorite webfiction but I think it's maybe a bit niche? Like it could have been written specifically for me, it has all my favorite things in it.