Status Updates From Peter Watts Is An Angry Sen...

I’ve finally found the self-respect necessary to disagree with some of the fundamental potshots Watts takes in these later essays. Why cite D&D in your video games essay when it’s clear you’ve never played before? Why is the pro-sociopaths post so subtly demeaning towards autistics?

Yeah, I’m actually with him on the YA critiques. We agree a lot, honestly, which makes me wonder how someone whose worldview isn’t aligned with Watts’s would react to this collection.

The jumps between tender mourning and the vicious ripping into sci-fi movies is jarring, and in a perfect world these essays were organized in a way where similar stories and ideas flowed into one another, but it keeps the content fresh across reading sessions.

Borderline offensive at its worst, but genuinely compelling and interesting at its best; the sections about the precognition studies and breakdown of “fuck” in Blindsight (and other profane words) were highlights.

"foreshadowing a larger emergent pattern in which I sell disproportionately well in countries with a history of Soviet occupation—better than in countries occupied by the US, anyway" yeah i can see why