Book Reviews

Diversity over Diagnosis All members of my immediate family are neurodiverse, and I certainly never felt the same as those around me. Yet, much of the medical literature on neurodiversity either talks about those within one standard deviation of the norm, or deviants themselves. Such language is inherently belittling, and uninteresting. Rather than discussing traits, it focuses on disorders. I have been watched my mother diagnosed with a parade of DSM classifications, giving me firsthand experience of academia’s ineptitude in addressing neurodiversity. A far more insightful way to learn about this topic is through personal stories. ...

** Murder, Magic, Malaise ** If Romantasy is court intrigue with a swooning heartbeat, this is its jaded sibling: Mysterantasy—suspicious deaths, arcane trickery, and protagonists too tired to care. Din, a detective who’d rather not chase another corpse, moves through a world where power, like rot, is ambient. His weariness isn’t melodramatic. It’s the flat exhaustion of someone who’s seen too many patterns repeat. Solving murders feels increasingly pointless. The system remains: “And the drop of corruption that lies within every society shall always persist.” ...

** Money into Power, via Intelligence ** ‘The Thinkers’ traces the rise of modern think tanks as an unseen influence of American policy. The pivot point is 1973, when the Heritage Foundation was founded—not just another research shop, but the first to openly embrace ideological warfare. Heritage became the Fox News of think tanks: fast, partisan, and media-savvy. The others followed. What began as university-adjacent, data-driven analysis evolved into a partisan arms race. RAND begat Heritage begat the current ecosystem—ideological, nimble, and well-funded. ...

Our present moment might not be so unprecedented. *

** Hillbilly Elegi-ble for AI ** This was a read to prepare for a job interview with the author/legend himself. In Reprogramming the American Dream, Scott puts pen to paper around his thoughts on AI, technology, and what these two mean for trends in the US. Like my own grandfather, Scott remembers his grandfather who could fix anything, forming the base of American productivity from the age of machinery that provided the launch-pad for both of our educations. He then looks forward, focusing on the effects of technology outside of urban centers, and the promise that future innovation holds. ...

This is not a book, it is a screen saver. Sure, manipulating causality could be clever, but in the end every world visited is intentionally left so vague as to be useless towards my understanding of either events or characters. Our protagonist’s lives of memories, of (presumed) love and loss, are discarded to keep the focus on anachronistically 21st century love letters. If these letters are the through-line, what is a line that connects no points? I don’t understand who these characters are their relationships outside of one another, their true worlds or experiences or memories. Each experience is just a disjointed dream. ...

Echos Underground I’ve been on a Russian sci-fi kick this year, so Metro 2033 is a natural stop on this subway line. If this is Lovecraftian horror, sign me up—sensory deprivation and phenomena beyond human understanding create an experience that literature seems best to exploit. Much like Silo, the claustrophobic and dark environment feels both alien and familiar at the same time. The tunnels of the metro system become an oppressive force, heightening the tension and paranoia that define the experience. I experienced at least one sleep deprived night because of the adrenaline brought on by supernatural horrors, and that’s rare. ...

**Hello Profits My Old Friend ** Mood Machine is a critique of capitalism masquerading as a book on Spotify. Rather than engage the author, I will explore the post smartphone music industry, fed by facts uncovered between Mood Machine’s soliloquies. First, music operates within the attention economy. This economy is distinct from the now-defunct entertainment industry, where entertainment was a growing share of humanity’s time and consumers could paid ever-increasing prices for top content. With smartphones, entertainment addresses the entire, finite market of human attention. Music must share that attention with everything else, from class to TikTok to calls with Grandma. As it happens, music is not dominant medium in this arena. Video content is worth roughly $500 billion annually, video games $250 billion, and even books command a $150 billion annual market. Music has shrunk from $33 billion in 1999 to $30 billion today, with only newspapers faring worse. ...

** Aliens don’t care ** The Zone is neither good nor evil, it just is. * Roadside Picnic, like much of the Russian scifi I’ve read recently, is a refreshing contrast to the romanticized view of the unknown often seen in Western canon. We celebrate exploration as a bold extension of manifest destiny, Russian science fiction, as exemplified by the Strugatsky brothers, presents the unknown as either indifferent to human desires or outright malevolent. ...

Postmodern Xenofiction A book inspired a movie. The movie inspired remakes. One remake inspired a notable soundtrack. The soundtrack I’ve listened to 10,000 times. Even through a 50 year game of artistic telephone, the moods match precisely. Music aside, Solaris fits in with Rendezvous with Rama, Southern Reach, and Roadside Picnic as explorative xenofiction. Like Roadside Picnic, Lem falls on the side of cosmic pessimism, with quotes such as * The time of cruel wonders was not yet over. * Yet the thinking colossus in Solaris only mildly interacts with our society, it is humanity’s struggle and inability to understand that is the focus. * The mere existence of the thinking colossus would not let people abide in peace again. * I couldn’t help but wonder if this is a critique of all science fictions, or even fiction itself, stories we invent to make sense out of the incomprehensible. Our very attempts and thought experiments are absurd, why should the universe make sense? ...