Category: Books

Fear is the mind killer, so burn brass

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I recently read two books back-to-back and ended up comparing them the way you do when things are sort of similar and still fresh in your mind.

I first read Frank Herbert’s Dune. Somehow — or rather, intentionally to make it easier to sell posthumous related-media — the brand of the author has gotten ingrained in the culture enough that it takes quite a lot of effort to state the title or franchise any other way.

It is an amazing work of science fiction, but shares as many elements and tropes with fantasy that when I next read Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire, I kept drawing parallels.

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‘Panzram: A Journal of Murder’ & light in the darkness

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‘There is nothing to history. No progress, no justice. There is nothing but random horror.’
–The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

Carl Panzram is one of the worst human beings ever to have lived.

If I were asked to name the face of evil, probably I’d say something like Adolf Hitler or if I were feeling more clever, Joseph Stalin or someone else universally considered a despicable human being who was responsible for the deaths of millions or tens of millions of people.

Stalin seemed to have been deeply, genuinely in love with his first wife. Hitler seemed to have a place of sincere kindness in him for dogs and secretaries.

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‘Seveneves’ by Neal Stephenson is two-thirds of a really good book

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The other day I finished the latest Neal Stephenson novel Seveneves, and the amazing thing about it is how consistent he is with everything he writes, at least that I’ve read.

Maybe 15 years ago I read Snow Crash, and my impression with that book have been the same as The Diamond Age, which is still my favorite thing he’s done, as well as Cryptonomicon, Anathem, and now Seveneves. Stephenson is a really good writer and researcher. He takes ideas from all kinds of disparate areas and puts them together in a way that is easily understandable and doesn’t feel slapped together, even if paragraphs or pages of info will be dumped on you throughout. The plot is going to get going quickly and give you a reason to keep turning pages to find out the next thing that’s going to happen, but ultimately, it won’t culminate so much as have a bunch of stuff just happen all at once.

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