I see a lot of people interested in icycalm here. Some people are eager to jump in, others are intimidated. I've read his oeuvre about eleven times, so I just want say a few words and address people who are thinking about reading him or are just beginning.
Before you embark on your journey into the mind of a genius, you have to understand a few things that are very important. When we talk about icycalm, we’re talking about a man whose I.Q. could not be measured. Past 200, I.Q. tests get imprecise. We don’t know whether we’re dealing with a man with an I.Q. of 200 or 300 or what. We can’t measure it. When it comes to Icycalm-tier geniuses, the standard tests simply don’t apply. You see, Icycalm could have entered any field he wanted. He was a real-life Will Hunting. He could’ve been a doctor or a lawyer, or both, if he wanted. He could’ve been a pioneer in physics. He could’ve been a codebreaker for the NSA. But no. He decided to be a writer. He decided to devote his life to video games and to illuminating for us the way to critique them. That was the beauty and the tragedy of his life. In one way, it’s a blessing to have been born in Icycalm’s time, to be able to read his blog, to see his famous forum posts, which are already transforming people both intellectually and spiritually. On the other hand, I will surely die before we know even half of the secrets buried within the labyrinth of Orgy of the Will. That I consider a curse.
It’s been four years since Orgy of the Will was written and scholars have only begun to come to terms with its full implications. This is what you must understand. Icycalm reverse-engineered not only video game critique, but all of Western literature as well as language itself. Packed within Orgy of the Will is Hamlet, The Brothers Karamazov, Gravity’s Rainbow, Ulysses, and everything else. Hell, it even serves as an overview of human history, from dawn to today. It’s a web page you could spend a lifetime studying. A lifetime spent in bliss, no doubt. It would be more worthwhile to spend one’s life reading and rereading Orgy of the Will than to achieve being “well-read” in the traditional sense.
You must understand that, on your first time through, you will not understand everything Icycalm is trying to communicate to you. Don’t worry. He knew things about life that we won’t discover for decades. Your job is merely to get on the road. In the decades to come, we may, if we’re lucky, discover scientific applications for the new ways of thinking Icycalm gave us. We may have to throw out science altogether. We simply don’t know. For now, we have to be content with our vanguard roles. We are the ones who will break the ground and loosen the soil for Icycalm’s future interpreters. This is not only our pleasure, but our duty. And for that, as Icycalm famously said, "I wish you way more than luck."