I've read the latest Weir book (Project Hail Mary) and the two prominent Watts books (Blindsight and Echopraxia) recently and they were all memorable but frustrating.
Weir writes like a blogger who also writes script treatments but doesn't actually read novels. He throws plot at you every page ("ok so this happened so I need to do this next") which makes his books readable, but he has zero character development. His characters appear, react to external stimuli and solve problems, but don't change over time.
Watts's books, on the other hand, could use some of Weir's plot juice. Very cool ideas and interesting scenes, but the plots were hard to discern. I had no idea what needed to happen to resolve conflict most of the time. Echopraxia was particularly confusing. Watts did a Reddit AMA shortly after Echopraxia came out where he was put on the spot to explain fundamental plot elements.
Agreed. Also, look who they're learning from. Growing up in the 90s, I had my everyday IRL friends but also some BBS friends. In that latter peer group--pseudo anonymous and extremely online--edgelord morality prevailed.
For any Sergio Aragones fans out there, the Cartoonist Kayfabe interview he did where he told the story of how he first got hired at MAD is amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm5jk2RadxU
I like this. And there's a time and place for everything. If I were inclined to try this boiled chicken, hell yeah I'm going to appreciate that I'm getting served the real chicken I saw earlier AND I believe in developing that kind of kitchen culture about caring for what you make. But I also still eat pizza from the shop down the street when hungry and impatient.
Other long, hard, stupid things I like to do: read novels, take walks, invest my time to learn fundamentals of a practice
Short, easy, stupid things I like to do: skip the occasional long post on hackernews and just read the comments, automate and simplify my work, watch short videos on how to fix broken things, send one-line emails instead of sit through meetings
I'm a big sci-fi reader as well, and I'm on a tear this year after neglecting the genre for about a decade. I find Stephenson's books to take a lot of headspace, and I don't always have that. But I do like giving books another shot at my time after a few years. I finally gave Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl another attempt and I'm enjoying it much more than I thought I would.
Her Lucky in Love blog post (1) includes this premise:
> Even after all her years of research, she’s still excited by love. “You’re trying to win life’s greatest prize — which is a life partner and a chance to send your DNA to the future..."
How novel! I met my now-partner a long time ago and we quickly agreed neither of us wants kids. 16 years later, we're pretty happy with each other. I guess you could call this a powerful extinctive adaptation.
I just finished Cahokia Jazz. Best novel I've read in the last few years. The prose, plot, and characters were all exceptionally excellent. And I was surprised to learn the author is British!
> The results reveal that it is possible (around a 5% chance) for a single chimp to type the word "bananas" in its own lifetime.
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-monkey-unable-hamlet-lifetime-...