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juushikaTitle: Autonomous
Author: Annalee Newitz
Narrator: Jennifer Ikeda
Published: MacMillan Audio, 2017
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 310
Total Page Count: 296,330
Text Number: 979
Read Because: recommended byglorious_spoon (in a phenomenal conversation about robots-as-queer!), audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After a pharmaceutical pirate distributes a new drug with devastating consequences, she sets out to fix her mistake while fleeing corporate agents. This is engaging near-future hard sci-fi, making logical leaps in both technology and social systems, creating a vibrant and punishing world of corporate-controlled advanced drugs and indentured servitude and artificial intelligence. It's chewy stuff which rides that line between speculative fiction as an elaborate metaphor for/exploration of identifiable real-world issues and speculative narratives as self-contained, lived experiences for the characters within the world.
A solid 4.5 star book, bumped up because the subplot about a non-autonomous corporate robot spoke directly to my id. This is one of the more thorough examinations of identity, gender, autonomy, and social role that I've ever seen in an AI story; it's intimately told and persistently ambivalent. I would have read for and loved the book for that alone (and did!); that it comes as part of a larger, thought-provoking work is an unlooked-for bonus.
Title: The Book of Joan
Author: Lidia Yuknavitch
Narrator: Xe Sands
Published: HarperAudio, 2017
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 297,360
Text Number: 985
Read Because: mentioned here, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After an apocalypse has left Earth barren and radically accelerated human evolution, a survivor chronicles the life of the destroyer/savoir. I saw this recommended as "like VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy," and it is—it relies on intuitive logic more than concrete worldbuilding to explore a biological apocalypse and its effect on human society. Yuknavitch's primary focus is sex and gender, and the relationship between body, identity, social interaction, and nature. The language is a barrage of imagery and bombastic thesis statements; hypnotic, in its way, but it also makes characters sound samey and identical to the narrative voice. The elements of the grotesque work for me—they're overwrought but delightful, and do most of the heavy lifting in the book's study of biological, embodied apocalypse. But the body is also where things fall apart. The final reveal that the antagonist is a trans man who transitioned as a result of and in order to perpetuate internalized misogyny is top-tier bullshit that I'd expect from a TERF, not from a text and author trying to expand our concept of bodies and gender. It's indicative of the text's limitations, of the allosexim and gender essentialism that undermine its efforts. I'm inclined to consider that a fatal flaw.
Title: Laid Waste
Author: Julia Gfrörer
Published: Fantagraphics, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 80
Total Page Count: 297,590
Text Number: 987
Read Because: personal enjoyment
Review: A woman struggles to find purpose during a medieval plague. This reads like a short story and behaves thematically just as I'd expect from the premise: a sorrowful, nihilistic loss of hope followed by a reaffirmation of life's value, and that first half works for me, particularly given the sparse line art and somber tone—the hopelessness is cathartic, honest. The hopefulness is more trite, unsubstantiated and predictably paced. But there's potential in the overall effect; I'm under the impression than most of the author's work has supernatural/fantastic elements, and I'd be interested to see if those make for more original narratives.
Author: Annalee Newitz
Narrator: Jennifer Ikeda
Published: MacMillan Audio, 2017
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 310
Total Page Count: 296,330
Text Number: 979
Read Because: recommended by
glorious_spoon (in a phenomenal conversation about robots-as-queer!), audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: After a pharmaceutical pirate distributes a new drug with devastating consequences, she sets out to fix her mistake while fleeing corporate agents. This is engaging near-future hard sci-fi, making logical leaps in both technology and social systems, creating a vibrant and punishing world of corporate-controlled advanced drugs and indentured servitude and artificial intelligence. It's chewy stuff which rides that line between speculative fiction as an elaborate metaphor for/exploration of identifiable real-world issues and speculative narratives as self-contained, lived experiences for the characters within the world.
A solid 4.5 star book, bumped up because the subplot about a non-autonomous corporate robot spoke directly to my id. This is one of the more thorough examinations of identity, gender, autonomy, and social role that I've ever seen in an AI story; it's intimately told and persistently ambivalent. I would have read for and loved the book for that alone (and did!); that it comes as part of a larger, thought-provoking work is an unlooked-for bonus.
Title: The Book of Joan
Author: Lidia Yuknavitch
Narrator: Xe Sands
Published: HarperAudio, 2017
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 297,360
Text Number: 985
Read Because: mentioned here, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After an apocalypse has left Earth barren and radically accelerated human evolution, a survivor chronicles the life of the destroyer/savoir. I saw this recommended as "like VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy," and it is—it relies on intuitive logic more than concrete worldbuilding to explore a biological apocalypse and its effect on human society. Yuknavitch's primary focus is sex and gender, and the relationship between body, identity, social interaction, and nature. The language is a barrage of imagery and bombastic thesis statements; hypnotic, in its way, but it also makes characters sound samey and identical to the narrative voice. The elements of the grotesque work for me—they're overwrought but delightful, and do most of the heavy lifting in the book's study of biological, embodied apocalypse. But the body is also where things fall apart. The final reveal that the antagonist is a trans man who transitioned as a result of and in order to perpetuate internalized misogyny is top-tier bullshit that I'd expect from a TERF, not from a text and author trying to expand our concept of bodies and gender. It's indicative of the text's limitations, of the allosexim and gender essentialism that undermine its efforts. I'm inclined to consider that a fatal flaw.
Title: Laid Waste
Author: Julia Gfrörer
Published: Fantagraphics, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 80
Total Page Count: 297,590
Text Number: 987
Read Because: personal enjoyment
Review: A woman struggles to find purpose during a medieval plague. This reads like a short story and behaves thematically just as I'd expect from the premise: a sorrowful, nihilistic loss of hope followed by a reaffirmation of life's value, and that first half works for me, particularly given the sparse line art and somber tone—the hopelessness is cathartic, honest. The hopefulness is more trite, unsubstantiated and predictably paced. But there's potential in the overall effect; I'm under the impression than most of the author's work has supernatural/fantastic elements, and I'd be interested to see if those make for more original narratives.
