I suppose I need to give no summary for this one; unless you are brand new on this earth, anyway.

It’s a fairly contentious book these days, and I can see why.

Three things I think people seem to disregard that feels abundantly clear, but is worth saying: this is young adult written in the 60s and this is fiction. Some reviews seem to hold this to adult nonfiction standards. Which is a weird thing to do. And finally, it’s from the point of view of a child.

As I see it, I think where this book falls down is in its characterization of black characters and it’s overly simplistic, solipsistic, after-school-special conveyance of anti-racism and values.

I don’t actually think that means it’s got nothing to say, though. Because it’s situated as The anti-racist text of America and a part of their identity, it’s still a valuable text for understanding the cultural consciousness of eurocentrism. Both at the time of publication and now. Rather than an ideal to live by though, but something quintessential in white thinking, the white saviour trope, and a propagandist view of what racism is and how it should be dealt with or approached.

That’s why this is only three stars. I still think it has something to communicate as a classic. Just not what it’s usually lauded for. Fundamentally, I don’t think it succeeds it’s handling of primary themes. But it was written in the 60s and is from the first person perspective of a child, meaning the understanding about these things in the general intellect was poor, and some of its simplicity is because of the perspective - and it is unreliable, as every first person narration is. But most especially when the narrative is the recounting of a child.

Where I think it’s undeniably strong is the voice, prose, and coming-of-age plot beats and interactions therein. When it’s not overly preachy it’s actually pretty decent at forming a compelling narrative. It’s a pleasure to engage with the prose and I liked that Scout has no qualms kicking peoples’ asses as needed while also behaving in a believable way in conflicts. It only feels like an after school special when trying to convey very specific ‘lessons’. But again, some latitude should be given for the perspective and the fact that it’s young adult fiction.

I actually quite liked that the diction assumes more than average comprehension from young adult readers. I wish more did that. It’s undermined by the handling of themes and imparting of its preachy puritanical-esk values. But it’s not nothing that it has one of the most compelling and distinct voices in fiction. And I find it very weird that some negative reviews think the prose are bad. What are they reading, if this bad? Wild.

I rate things based on expectations and, more-or-less, with the pleasant surprise of an exceptional style and voice, it’s exactly as I expected it to be, based on how it’s situated in the general intellect these days. An after school special read in school? Shocking.

Kobo, down on his luck, scout for the Yankees baseball team—a mega corporation in competition with every other team—is having A Day. While scouting a talented scientist, a pair of Neanderthals working for the Mets, spike his drink, nab his mark, and to top it all off, he’s just seen his brother die live on television. He stuck a homer for the Mets, collapsed, and leaks grey matter, blood, and biotechnological juice on the field. To top it off, a pair of women working as muscle for the corporation that handles his medical loan to continue his addiction in upgrading his cybernetics and are also his landlord, pay him a very physical visit. And, oh yeah, he’s fired because he lost his mark.

It’s pretty noir. Kobo isn’t exceptional or competent. He’s an Everyman, once a cyber boy ball player, before “oilers” like him—cybernetically enhanced people—were thrown off of teams in a move to biochemical enhancement. A return to a “natural” state of play again. He’s a middling scout. But he’s alone, trapped in nostalgia. Probably forever in debt until he’s dead.

Then the Mets come calling, via the Neanderthal’s who robbed him of his prize, with an offer of essential becoming a P.I for them focusing on how and why his brother was ostensibly murdered.

Neanderthals, by the way, is a biotechnology byproduct of scientists who used DNA located in fossils (ala Jurassic Park) to recreate pseudo Neanderthals, as they’re still born paired from a sapien egg and are completely outside of the time where they actually existed.

He rekindles an old flame, Dolores, a scout for a completely different team, the Sphinxes, for help locating a lead, a ball player in that teams stable. He is also being tailed by a mysterious girl child, who looks familiar, but can’t figure out how or why.

It’s a mystery that takes him all over the setting, interacting with a lot of different factions. Dolling out bite-sized worldbuilding as it becomes available. We also learn about Kobo’s past, both with Delores and his cyborg pitching days, his childhood with his brother, and more.

Craft-wise, this is a bit above commercial fiction, and I think that’s on purpose. It’s accessible prose, not as much jargon as you’d typically find in a cyberpunk-biopunk affair, more inclusive, and subversive of genre. Rather than using orientalist aesthetics, it evokes a distinctly western lens with baseball as a game, but also as a brand and ethos of American culture. Its relevant to post-capitalistic concerns and a launching pad to discuss class stratification and loss of agency via advertising and the inevitability of new technologies being co-opted by capitalistic forces that colonize the body. Often without consideration of long term effects at any level. It’s also got a noir cadence but vacillated often between pretty gonzo plot beats and the more serious. Dialogue wise, it’s always learning toward natural and less serious, as Kobo is just not a serious person, usually.

There’s some twists and turns, but if you go in expecting an (updated) cyberpunk book with noir trappings, you’re going to get those tropes and plot beats. It’s not unpredictable and it doesn’t imagine a solarpunk intersection with technology or the agency of a small group of individuals against post-capitalism and corporations. But it does have a lot to communicate otherwise, and it does what it wants to do, even when it’s pretty odd, quite well.

This feels impossible to talk about without spoilers because absolutely everything that interests me pretty much unravels the respective story. You have been warned! This has changed my mind about flash fiction. I have not consumed something that fit the form well previously and was put off of it in other cases—until now.

This collection rightly and smartly begins with The Road to Nowhere, apparently emerging from a confluence of listening to the Talking Heads and Nash’s grey matter. What I love about this, especially as an opening to a collection, is that it signals so many things to the reader.

For one, Nash has an interest in the perception of constructs, interrogating the most mundane object: the road. What actual purpose does it or did it have. What is its importance? But also, many people have the same or similar thoughts when they go hiking, do they not? There is always an offshoot that seems like it goes nowhere productive and yet is so tramped down it’s almost frustrating because what are these people doing? It’s those tourists who go to Banff and pose with bears or cougars in the background. Roads have been around much longer than for the mere conveyance of cars or wagons. They are the detritus of the smart and imbecilic alike, delineating safety from danger and the expectation of reaching a place you presumably know of, as it’s probably a guide posted in some way.

For me, it begged the question: Are we within the expectations a reader would have? Speaking of genre or a theme that might bundle these all together. Or are we off the beaten path here and in for something else?

What follows is something like jazz, I think, so a bit of both.

Yet, there is usually a fluency regarding perception, especially. Aliens, rather than thinking cars are the primary life forms, examine juicy couture. A warlord, crippled with an emotion I don’t even think he’s properly able to understand what’s happening and so regurgitates a war truism while his men do not have the tools to interact with a man not performing his gender in the way he taught them. Ostensible agency embodied in a man who wakes up able to speak in the language of Ur, but no discernible lever in society can be deployed to make any use whatever of such a discovery. It is commodified and co-opted so foolishly it may remove the primary means of agency of everyone everywhere.

Tonally and thematically and subject matter wise, Nash reminds me of Douglas Adams, actually. Though Nash seems less interested in-jokes, when he wishes to be playful or funny, it’s in an erudite way. Other times he pens horror just as well. But Adams doesn’t command as many chewy words from what I recall. Nash knows how to make language work for him economically, but also in telegraphing character, motion, and tone.

“…While his wife’s face alternated between puce rage and puffy cerise when the tears absconded and burnished the skin channels they ploughed.”

Loved this collection and will certainly pick up another Nash book. Immensely enjoyable.

I liked a lot of the themes worked into this. The narrative jumps, though sometimes uneven, facilitated a lot of satisfying correlations between past and present. The nature of stories and what they can, potentially, do. Who has agency and why. While the idea that you are required to violate aspects of your identity to participate in the rat race is not new but does feel like one of the keenest things this works to convey.

For the most part, this did meet my expectations. It did not exceed them though, for several reasons.

The narration was not great, possessing a cadence I did not like. I am not positive whether this is a byproduct of the prose or the delivery or a sort of perfect storm on that front. I didn't quite care about any of the characters and was more interested in the meta-story, which was what became the only satisfying part of the book for me because the granular plot beats, for the most part, felt overwritten. I did not consider the time investment to be significantly returned but was still a worthwhile story to consume, overall.

It might not have benefited from coming after some phenomenal reads as well. I would consider re-reading it sometime with a physical product because I really do think a lot of the annoyance of this came from the narration. And it may simply be stylistically more geared toward not being read aloud as well. Who knows.

In a series of statements given to a liaison between employees doing their work as designed by a programme on the Six-Thousand Ship in space—and their employers, governed by a board of directors. The story is told via witness statements compiled into a report and reviewed and filed by a committee. Some statements appear to be missing. When the crew land on a planet and retrieve various objects, each begin to change, reacting to the changes in their environment the objects elicit.

But there’s a lot more going on than just the cause and effect the objects have on the crew. And the liaison through which we get all the information—as the reader becomes a part of the committee themselves—seems to fulfill many roles to the crew, who are human or humanoid alike, a distinction made by the crew, but each member irregardless is held ostensibly in equal esteem. Human Resources is the best definition of the liaison’s job, but it is constantly blurred. Acting as a mental health professional sometimes or a friend. Which immediately gives the entire story dark undertones because HR is never there for the crew. They always serve the mandate of the employer.

Wrapped within this well written, intimate story are really effective and scathing critiques on capitalism and corporations and the nature—as we have defined it—of work. It’s also one of the first books I’ve consumed that get close to why Star Trek simply wouldn’t work. The hubris of the idea that many species, or even just humans in general, could construct a ship, and a space within said ship, that would provide the same relationship humanity and others need to function in a healthy, organic way, is honestly astounding. And then to be also governed by an institutional hierarchy and socialized to place a programme and “work” as paramount in this space, it’s pathological.

This makes the introduction of the objects so brilliant. It’s an easy shorthand for displaying how our relationship to our surroundings are complex and unquantifiable, possibly even observable. If we accept that somehow a space where this met the needs of made people and birthed people alike, the introduction of the other will always precipitate change. In this case leading to “the incident”.

It is deft at illustrating a myriad of ways in which a company or institutional organization as we have envisioned presently would be incapable of providing nourishment to people, nor could it serve anything remotely altruistic. An inhumane construct cannot function humanely.

It also very cleverly interrogates the notion of programming. People enjoy using this term to apply to technology, as if our societal constructions and socialization is different than a set of parameters given to a computer or an android or whatever man made construct the humanoid crew members are. Arbitrary distinctions between the various groups grow to be destabilizing and catalyzing. And so we also have to confront the notion that humanity, as we have constructed ourselves, is not fit for such endeavours either.

In such a short book so much is conveyed. The craft work displayed here is excellent, in my opinion. From structure to prose to the premise, everything is the all to sought after form meeting function. It’s surprising how moving this arrangement is when really, it’s something so disaffected as a folder of transcripts existing nebulously. The sole purpose of which is to extract a different kind of meaning than the reason for which is was compiled. Utterly brilliant.

It is what it says it is: a commercial fiction Cold War romp with the specificity of hard science fiction. It does the thing. It’s a fun thing to consume. You need to be invested in either of those things to get much more out of it, I think.

It’s far too granular on the details and intricacies of the technology for my tastes. I suppose I discovered that hard sci-fi and maybe astronaut fiction (is that a thing) is not something I care about all that much.

It’s an entertaining book despite that though, which is a feat in of itself. And, tbh, any book that razes a Chad I’m behind. At an ideological level, you know?

The director of an ultra clandestine agency which is in charge of battling antimemes attempts to solve a puzzle which, by its nature is something she cannot remember. We jump around in time at various points in her life as small pieces are made known.

If you’ve played the video game Control there are some aspects of this that are familiar. Objects that are usually innocuous have other properties that relate to these creatures that are not just in the peripheral, they cannot be perceived at all, without assistance. The agents of The Foundation have a drug that allows them to perceive some of these forces and therefor interact and combat them in various ways. But there are things far more complex than that at play that threaten the world.

It’s frenetic in pacing for the first half and then almost meandering in the second. It retreads ground sometimes, annoyingly. And the quality of the prose is often uneven. There’s show-don’t-tell problems and a lack of a cohesive structure due to the framing device and, probably, the serialization of the content to begin with on the SCP Foundation Wiki page.

It can be extremely fun to read at times because of the conceptual ideas and their role in the plot. Everything, essentially, is resolved via deus ex machina. Little to no foreshadowing used allows for any real kind of pleasure in the resolutions though, aside from the ending, which wove together some seemingly disparate threads. Most of the time the reaction I had was that it was an interesting idea and often pretty cinematic. And it kind of has to be because none of the unique content can actually be explained. This allows for a lot of latitude with the author with plot beats and devices, but also gives it a fan fiction feel sometimes and becomes very repetitive.

Had the end chapter not brought together some of the threads from previous chapters, especially after instituting vastly different pacing and a reframing of point of view midway through, this would have been a 2 star read. Ultimately, while sophomoric and solipsistic—especially with thin characterization—I do feel like it had original ideas and that the macro ones were executed well.

A young and happy, though stressed, black man working at a Starbucks has an encounter with a start-up bro who seduces him with promises of affluences and money if he joins the company he founded. Starting at the sales floor, from the ground up, we see the ways in which the cult of sales literally breaks Darren, literally breaking him like a buck, co-opting his identity and forcing him into a constant performance, rather than passing when needed as a way of navigating white culture.

Narrated from Darren’s perspective and framed as a kind of self-help manual for success in life we, the readers, learn from Darren himself just how much he has to sacrifice and alter himself to conform and “thrive” under capitalism.

This is when the book is at its best. Confident in its direction and it’s critique of white, corporate culture, cult of personality, parasocial relationships, and gender performance. The framing is very effective. Horrific from our perspective, narrator swept up in the come up.

But…then it takes a turn. As Buck now finds his prior identity inaccessible and the fall out ensues. It slowly turns into a much less interesting story that involves Bucks ostensibly using his learned knowledge and skills to uplift other people of colour, which rapidly devolves and undermines the themes in the first half of the book.

It lays everything previous aside, for the most part, and begins illustrating how the intersections of racism and pop culture and technology make it hard to impossible to organize and perform direct action. Not as interesting as the first half, but it does start to get interesting again. And then it is, again, stymied, just like the first half.

Not only is any real critique removed from the plot and character arcs, the reader has to connect circuitously with concepts that were, at one time, becoming salient in the respective parts of the novel.

In the end, Buck himself wonders at the point of it all. And while it is (arguably) fitting Buck wonders this in a satire retrospective perhaps, the reader must live with no real reckoning, only a punishment that is shoe horned in for satirical value, but feels contrived and convoluted. Why make any kind of reckoning, at times gestured at, especially when an entire identity is coopted and inexorably, it seems, altered, the real joke?

Punishment being synonymous with growth in a satire feels poignant—until, like all the other themes touched on and discarded, it too proves to be vapid.

Tropey but quite fun. Basically as you might expect from a YA 90s fantasy commercial fiction series. Comparisons to LOTR are a bit baffling, as that is literary fiction and this is commercial fiction decades later. Of course the progenitor of this kind of fantasy has tropes recycled into the genre. This is meant to be accessible and fun and easy reading. It is not trying to do the same things whatsoever.

The first book has the most noticeable tropes popularized in the genre, but it actually diverges quite a bit as it goes on and with each book it does deviate. Though it also becomes of formulaic, which is not all that fun to read. But that is addressed in the ending of the trilogy. The Wheel of Time is turning. It would be funny if Robert Jordan read this and was like Wheel of Time, wait a f*n second. But, of course, this is also a mainstay trope. It’s just funny to hear the exact phrase here.

All-in-all this is dated, but perfectly serviceable and fun as a light read, if you take it for what it IS and you don’t project what you’d like it to be onto the text. Like I said, apples to oranges. Sure, they’re both fruit, but they are also distinct.

When yo daddy has special stones you develop a song, apparently.

And, I mean, more of the same really. This is completely fine YA 90s commercial fiction with tropes from the progenitor. Being angry that it isn’t literary fiction like LOTR is wild. Know what you’re picking up and your opinion may have more weight, imo.