jj > Recent Status Updates

lol this is somehow both bonkers and meandering so far and apparently if just keeps going. A spy - rather than detective - story with great dollops of “I guess this is happening now, ok” and soapbox-level whinges.

‘The Pedestrian’ continues in the same vein of other stories in this anthology regarding a future where robotic and cookie-cutter belief of how everyone should act wins over individualism, imagination, and curiosity.

‘The Man’ was a short story about faith that I didn’t expect but was not bad. Though I’m reading this as an audiobook and the narrator has a forceful shout that can be off-putting and I don’t enjoy.

‘Time in Thy Flight’ is a very short story similar to the vampire/zombie story (‘Pillar of Fire’?) on nostalgia and things that may be lost in future culture (western-centric).

Chrysalis reads like a longer, inferior version of Fever Dream from a different, less interesting pov.

I enjoyed the movie 'The Martian' but went into this still skeptical over the Weir hype. After starting this book and almost immediately getting hooked and speed reading during a 4h flight, I'm happy to admit the hype is well-deserved.It's the little thing and this little detail made me stop and smile: "I wave to the Blip-A and close the hatch. They probably don’t know what a wave is, but I felt compelled to do it."

‘The Great Collision of Monday Last’ and ‘The Little Mice’ k so I read a come t somewhere about Bradbury being a racist and I just shrugged. I only read Fahrenheit 451 at that time (which I enjoyed). Reading these 2 short stories now… well, yeah I see it.

‘Time for Going Away’ certainly describes the feeling of melancholy and malaise

- Medicine for Melancholy was sweet
- Thoroughly enjoyed Fever Dream (slow body horror)
- The Town Where No One Gets Off had me on the edge of my seat

But chiefly I thought of the very strange look on all faces in that camp; an incomprehensible look, which a man will never see in England, though wars should be in England; nor can it be seen in any battle. But only in Étaples. It was not despair, or terror, it was more terrible than terror, for it was a blindfold look, and without expression, like a dead rabbit’s.

The Affair at the Bungalow was fun and surprising. My fave so far.

Can't access reference for clarification but this reads as race-blaming (read: racism) about a viral epidemic no one truly knows the source.

"In hindsight, virologists such as Dr Kennedy Shortridge of Hong Kong University have identified China as ‘the epicentre for influenza epidemics’,22 due to the ingrained Chinese habit of living at close quarters with their animals, keeping vulnerable piglets in their homes..."

NTS: Manage expectations. This book not a science book as evidenced by explanation that avian and human fly viruses can incubate and "combine" in pigs - as if they mix like an omelets rather than multiple mutations of viral genome

("...and that the pigs would subsequently incubate avian viruses and combine them with the human flu viruses acquired through contact with people...")