robertrivasplata's Reviews (631)

I think I liked the stuff collected in the first book better, maybe because the earlier stuff was less directly ripped from the headlines allegory. Trying to allegorize the Iraq War with a fictional U.S. Civil War won't always work, because the moral terrain of the Iraq War doesn't really map onto that of the Civil War portrayed in DMZ. The U.S. soldiers in DMZ can't really cleanly match up to the real U.S. soldiers in Iraq, because the DMZ soldiers are not in Iraq, they're in the U.S. The setting of the war at home instead of somewhere we invaded on the flimsiest of pretexts changes everything. 

I also didn't really like how the Kelly comic unceremoniously killed her off in the first panel, then tried to fill out more of her story through flashbacks. Maybe I would have liked a “final day in the life of” story better. I'll probably still read the next one. 

Mostly about a fictionalized Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme, but also hit a lot of the same themes and ideas as Station Eleven; people fleeing a collapsing world, itinerant survivors rebuilding after catastrophe, forgotten art pieces connecting seemingly unrelated strangers, fleets of immobilized cargo vessels, Canada and British Columbia, and told in a non-linear style. The Glass Hotel is also about all the whys and ways that people compromise on their ethics and ideals. In many ways, The Glass Hotel is a sadder book than Station Eleven, even though it doesn't have a pandemic killing most of the people of the world. It goes back to what I said about the earlier book: it's easier to imagine a happy ending in a world catastrophically transformed than in one resembling our own. You can really tell that Mandell became really obsessed with the Bernie Madoff story and with the shipping industry. I could totally tell that Mandel read 90% of Everything before or during writing this book, even before the acknowledgements page. I could definitely re-read this book. 

Silly and fun romantic comedy which pokes gentle fun at its obscenely wealthy cast of characters, told mostly through the perspective of a likable normie protagonist. I feel like designated normie protagonist Eden is a little too likable and normal, perhaps even a Mary Sue. Her greatest weakness is that she cares too much! And is too forgiving! I wonder what the point is of having such a character to interact with such a group of dissolutes. Maybe Kwan thought that was the most believable way to insert a relatable kind of character into the world of the billionaires? Most of the rich characters are pretty much like children. Some are more spoiled than others, but even the more likable ones are like big kids. Which then makes me wonder why so many of them have a parent who died during their childhood. It kinds of adds to the disney-fantasy feeling. The level of ostentatious wealth depicted is so outrageous as to be almost Moorcockian. I almost expected one of the Lords of Chaos to make an appearance alongside Kitty Pong. I hope that Kwan's next book follows someone like Hemsworth the butler. I'd bet  he could do an amazing Jeeves and Wooster takeoff.

What if He-Man/She-Ra was cyberpunk, on acid, and also included Sun-Ra? What if the weird time travelers who ride pterodactyls from Paper Girls were the most basic characters in the book? Brutal space-myth-soap-opera featuring various mythical beasts and races and Robots that fuuuuuck. This and Paper Girls make me want to read more by Vaughan. Can't wait to read the next one and figure out what everyone's deal is. 

Comics adaptation of the classic space Vietnam War novel does away with most of the weird sex stuff. Makes me want to re-read the original novel. Even though this adaptation cut a lot of parts that I liked from the novel, It's still a really good adaptation. Mandella and Marygay's romance kind of comes out of nowhere, but it kind of did in the original novel too. I feel like the 90s would have been the perfect time to adapt The Forever War into a movie (culturally, technologically, zeitgeistly), and that the Starship Troopers adaptation pretty much preempted any chance of that happening then. I find it funny that in this adaptation, all of the human landing craft throughout the 900 years of the Forever War look like Space Shuttles. I was also amused by the scene in the part with Mandella's officer training simulations of a Fokker Triplane shooting down a Fairey Swordfish. It's a small thing, considering that that the span of 16 years between the Swordfish and the Fokker's introductions is puny compared to the timescales in The Forever War. On the other hand, the Swordfish was considered a dinosaur at the time of its introduction, but was still a technological leap ahead of any aircraft of the Fokker's vintage. 

Very New York war graphic novel from the 2000s. Has a lot of similarities to Joe Sacco's nonfiction Palestine comics (which are better). Premises “what if Iraq, but in NYC”? Or maybe, “what if The Warriors, but in 1979 Beirut”? I'd be here for a “what if post-Gothic War Rome, but NYC” book. Captures some of the Bush era paranoia and cynicism, as well as some other less tangible pieces of the zeitgeist. Successfully predicts that the U.S. would be divided into factions, and the “middle ground” between them is nothing but a destroyed wasteland. The FSA's success in the face of government forces defecting or deserting kind of reminds me of the Free Syrians' final toppling of Assad. I feel like the wheels would come off the American war machine pretty fast in the event of any sort of civil conflict. The short-range use of long-range weapons systems (e.g. submarine launching missiles at lower Manhattan from off Breezy Point , missile artillery firing across the East River) made me roll my eyes a little bit. World conflicts of the 2010s-2020s make the lack of drone activity seem a little incongruous as well. Not sure what to say about the protagonist Matty. He's there, I guess. I want to know more about Wilson or Zee or the sniper guy and his sniper girlfriend. 

Horror/supernatural short story collection edited by Jordan Peele. Most of these stories feel very much like they're out of a Jordan Peele movie, or at least one of his Twilight Zone episodes. I'd be surprised if some of these stories don't end up adapted in some sort of Jordan Peele's Night Gallery type anthology. “Your Happy Place” by Terence Taylor is more like a Black Mirror episode. Has some big names such as Nnedi Okorafor, Tananarive Due, and N.K. Jemisin, but most of the other writers have a much lower profile. It's hard to pick out favorites out of these 19 stories, but I'd say the top four are “Eye & Tooth” by Rebecca Roanhorse, “Wandering Devil” by Cadwell Turnbull, “Dark Home” by Nnedi Okorafor, and “A Grief of the Dead” by Rion Amilcar Scott. “Grief of the Dead” and “Hide and Seek” by P. Djeli Clark are probably the most emotionally intense ones of the collection. “Grief of the Dead” combines the undead, mass shooters, the Roc, and toxic online spaces, with slavery and its aftermath. I like how “Dark Home” shows the ways the old country and the new country meet in the minds of Nigerian immigrants. No clunkers in this collection. 

Maybe the purest sequel of the Murderbot series. Although it doesn't have the largest cast of characters of the series, since it's picking up right where Network Effect leaves off, with Murderbot integrated into two different social groups, we still have to keep track of everyone and remember who they are and what they're doing. Features scheming corporate types, big mysterious derelict spaces, other artificial intelligences, battles, and of course robot anxiety. System Collapse makes the hypercapitalist political-economic system of the Corporate Rim universe seem unstable, even before a character comes out and suggests just that in the last chapter. The ease with which various artificial intelligences pass the Turing Test suggests that the Corporate Rim is ripe for takeover at the hands of a Mycroft-type supercomputer.  Definitely sets up some potential sequels, which I am here for. I think I'd most like to see another Murderbot espionage book, or maybe a Murderbot First contact story. Of course with Murderbot now being a streaming series, other IP crossovers (e.g. Murderbot vs Predator, Murderbot and the Guardians of the Galaxy, etc) seem increasingly likely.

William Gibson supposedly said that “The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.” Planet of Slums makes me ask if the future in question is represented by the glittering cities of the developed world, or by the slums we associate with the global south. Of course the future will be both Dubai and Kinshasa, probably side by side. Planet of Slums is kind of a “State of the Slums” report from 2006. Reading this almost 20 years later, I wish knew where to find an updated “state of the slums”. I can't imagine the recession years did much for the state of state investment in the developing world's cities, but what do I know. I was a little surprised to learn that the urban growth in much of the world in the later 20th century has not been driven by economic growth, but by disruptions to rural life. Also interesting is the discussion of the hot hot rental market in slums throughout the world. I have often wondered whether the constant rousting and moving of the unhoused population in my city is a means to prevent the development of unsanctioned, semi-permanent shantytowns, and if that would even be a worse outcome than people currently sleeping rough on the sidewalks and in the floodways. Mike Davis would probably say that the City would have to at the very least provide sanitation. Planet of Slums makes going to the bathroom in a slum sound like an incredible ordeal. Lack of a pot to piss in seems to be one of the defining features of a slum. 

Novel about the collision of the ideas and realities of Asian Americanness. Imagines life in America as a TV show, which a lot of us already do, consciously or subconsciously. Of course a lot of people suffer from main character syndrome, while Willis seems to be suffering from a form of bit player syndrome, exacerbated by the parts he is given and other real forms of marginalization. While it's in the form of a screenplay, to me, Interior Chinatown feels more like a stage play. Oddly, I can't really imagine how Interior Chinatown would work on screen (not having seen the Disney adaptation), but I can totally imagine it on stage. I can just see how the characters would be setting up and breaking down the sets or changing costumes and attitudes while Willis gives a bit of narration. Makes me want to read more about Taiwan under the Guomindang.