Going back to the well of great science-fiction novels I should have read long ago but didn’t, here’s one that I now believe is the single best depiction of the literal end of the world. This book is singularly focused on a slow and detailed description of exactly how the Earth is destroyed and has little else. Even the identity and motivations of the alien attackers are left as mere guesses. The aliens are simply so much more powerful than humans that they don’t even need to explain themselves and there is no question of fighting back. The downsides are that it’s very USA-centric so we have little idea of what is happening in the rest of the world and there are no women point of view characters. But I admire its audacity and like it a lot.
This book seems to be something of a sleeper hit that I’d only learned about from a forum. It’s the first novel by Scott Hawkins whose day job is a technical writer of computer-related books. His success feels like it came out of nowhere but of course it’s really the result of decades of hard work and innumerable failures. Many others have described this book to the work of Neil Gaiman but I also detect some similarities with Susanna Clarke. The genre is ostensibly horror or fantasy, yet this is such a strange book that it eventually morphs to something like science-fiction.
I added this to my list of books to read a while back, believing that it was a decent read about the modern economy. Kyla Scanlon made a name for herself by making financial education content on social media. She coined the term vibecession to capture the state of the economy that looks good in terms of conventional economic statistics but feels bad to ordinary people. I’d expected to know a lot about the basics of economics but this book still surprised me by how basic and watered-down it is. Worse, Scanlan places herself firmly as part of the Gen Z and so writes primarily for them. As such it espouses Gen Z values and ideals that I feel aren’t necessarily a part of economics proper.
I’ve been following the Forge of Destiny / Threads of Destiny forum game for many years now though these days I’m just a reader and rarely participate in voting. I still consider it the best xianxia story I know of. This book is set in that same fantasy world but features stories about other characters other than Ling Qi, the protagonist of the main series. Many of these are Ling Qi’s friends and associates but there are also plenty of those from other times and places. I’ve already read most of these stories before as almost all of them are available online for free but I bought this to support the author and it’s nice to have them in a single volume. I will note that many of the stories don’t really stand on their own but feel more like worldbuilding snippets. Those who aren’t already following the main story might not get much out of this book.
Something far different than the norm for me this month and it’s novella-length, yet published as a book. This particular work is I think significant not only for its text but also for who its author was, when it was published and its significance as a parable for the rise of the Nazis. Ernst Jünger was a highly decorated soldier, a militarist and a political figure of the conservative right. Yet he was also opposed to the Nazis and was indirectly implicated in the famous Operation Valkyrie plot against Adolf Hitler’s life. This of course made him a more polarizing and fascinating person. The book itself is set in an idyllic fictional land that is described in such a dreamlike way that it may well be considered fantasy. The story itself is short and simple but is rife with symbolism that can be interpreted in any number of ways.
I was leery about the premise behind this novel when I first heard about but hey if people like a genderbent version of the Chinese classic Water Margin, why not? Then it was a finalist for the Nebula Award and was recommended by a bunch of critics, so I thought I should give it a shot. Specifically I was curious about web fiction not being widely recognized and wondered how a properly published book lauded by mainstream critics would match up. My verdict is not well at all. It’s an entertaining action-adventure that can be sometimes quite amusing but I wouldn’t consider it a deep book or even good writing.
I’ve read plenty of short stories by Harlan Ellison though I don’t consider myself to be much of a fan. His novels are not considered notable and I suspect that a large part of his legacy comes from his contributions to television shows like the original Star Trek and Twilight Zone. His Dangerous Visions anthologies were hugely influential however and this final book was announced in 1973 and never came out. Ellison died in 2018 but his estate’s executor J. Michael Straczynski continued working on it and so now here it is.
