What do you think?
Rate this book
Key Performance Indicators
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 17, 2025
The low rating I have given to this story might just be a consequences of having seen essentially everything presented here before, in reference or in entire key sci-fi conceit, in the authors' other works.
This author has about... 3 ideas, which he repeats ad nauseam thoughout all of his texts.
I suppose this makes Zero in line with his key inspirations: Lovecraft and Borges, both authors which I love. I would hazard that the reason those two produced wonderful and transcendental and pleasant, philsophical reading, while Zero has not, is because:
a) The ideas of Lovecraft and Borges are perennial, of increasing relevance and timeliness (as Zero has keenly pointed out), as opposed to being stuck in 2016-era tiring SJW-bashing discourse, ignoring recent developments and abandoned talking points, misunderstanding, and refusing dialogue with those he criticises (sometimes with proud ignorance, as in other works). If I have to read one more goddamn reference to bug eating, I will eat a wasp nest, whole, by myself.
b) Those two authors are deeply atmospheric, visceral, tactile both mentally and physically, and with genuine weight, aspects which Zero fails to manifest no matter how hard he hammers his ideas. His characters, instead of being sensitive or erudite, are just improbable vague passives in their worlds, which serves his points but fails to give the emotions grafted onto them any weight. Our man is seemingly content with having his inner thoughts constantly criticised, and when he has to actually emote, he comes across as dishonest or forced not to his own Neuralink, but to the very reader. Not to mention that the moments of shock are mostly just groan-worthy, as they come from very obvious failures of the author to parse the arguments he is criticising.
c) The horrors of Zero are man-made - an important departure from his inspirations, which is quite welcome. They are, however, dumb, dumb, and dumb (all-encompassing inescapable brain-computer interfaces which take over your body and police your thoughts would not be adopted by sane people over any relevant period of time, and the society described is not even totalitarian, not to mention schizophrenic in its goals in a way which is not believable etc.). This makes the satire fail, and the construction sillier than the tentacle monsters of Lovecraft or fictional fictional universes of Borges, as well as reinforcing the point above.
You can find the authors ideas, in naked form, awful, and with breathless arrogance in the face of empirical fact (which he proudly refuses to hear), on his Twitter. Weighty pseudophilosophy, bereft of real-world contact, which bubbles to the surface in these texts as well, if you are into that sort of thing.
I have little hope for his future endeavours, and from what I still have to read from him, but the sentence-to-sentence writing is poetic enough, and the inspirations to liked authors obvious enough, to make me want to keep going, at least.
This author has about... 3 ideas, which he repeats ad nauseam thoughout all of his texts.
I suppose this makes Zero in line with his key inspirations: Lovecraft and Borges, both authors which I love. I would hazard that the reason those two produced wonderful and transcendental and pleasant, philsophical reading, while Zero has not, is because:
a) The ideas of Lovecraft and Borges are perennial, of increasing relevance and timeliness (as Zero has keenly pointed out), as opposed to being stuck in 2016-era tiring SJW-bashing discourse, ignoring recent developments and abandoned talking points, misunderstanding, and refusing dialogue with those he criticises (sometimes with proud ignorance, as in other works). If I have to read one more goddamn reference to bug eating, I will eat a wasp nest, whole, by myself.
b) Those two authors are deeply atmospheric, visceral, tactile both mentally and physically, and with genuine weight, aspects which Zero fails to manifest no matter how hard he hammers his ideas. His characters, instead of being sensitive or erudite, are just improbable vague passives in their worlds, which serves his points but fails to give the emotions grafted onto them any weight. Our man is seemingly content with having his inner thoughts constantly criticised, and when he has to actually emote, he comes across as dishonest or forced not to his own Neuralink, but to the very reader. Not to mention that the moments of shock are mostly just groan-worthy, as they come from very obvious failures of the author to parse the arguments he is criticising.
c) The horrors of Zero are man-made - an important departure from his inspirations, which is quite welcome. They are, however, dumb, dumb, and dumb (all-encompassing inescapable brain-computer interfaces which take over your body and police your thoughts would not be adopted by sane people over any relevant period of time, and the society described is not even totalitarian, not to mention schizophrenic in its goals in a way which is not believable etc.). This makes the satire fail, and the construction sillier than the tentacle monsters of Lovecraft or fictional fictional universes of Borges, as well as reinforcing the point above.
You can find the authors ideas, in naked form, awful, and with breathless arrogance in the face of empirical fact (which he proudly refuses to hear), on his Twitter. Weighty pseudophilosophy, bereft of real-world contact, which bubbles to the surface in these texts as well, if you are into that sort of thing.
I have little hope for his future endeavours, and from what I still have to read from him, but the sentence-to-sentence writing is poetic enough, and the inspirations to liked authors obvious enough, to make me want to keep going, at least.
March 17, 2021
Another depressing sci fi. This one definitely hits harder than green new deal. If at all interested in QS read
October 31, 2021
Too real.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews