88 Names by Matt Ruff 📚

I read the author’s Lovecraft Country some time ago (and the HBO series based on that novel starts next week), so I was interested to see this take on online gaming culture in a society only slightly more technologically advanced than our own. The stakes are much lower (beating an online dungeon raid rather overcoming the combined forces of racism and eldritch horror), and even when the action spills over into real life gunplay the characters don’t really seem to have their hearts in the game; it seems like just another raid. I found the protagonist too self centered, a privileged gamer who makes a living by violating terms of service for profit and doesn’t always treat his fellow “sherpas” with the respect they deserve; because the entire story is told from his first person viewpoint I felt that the secondary characters were not given enough screen time, making them feel more like stereotype NPC’s rather than real people.

I also felt shortchanged by the plot’s meandering path to semi-resolution; I never did figure out the significance of the title (perhaps if I was a gamer myself it would be obvious?) and I have never liked an almost literal deus ex machina ending. On the other hand the action sequences kept me turning the pages, and although the style echoes William Gibson slightly it does so with a different voice. Despite having mixed feelings about this particular outing I will be adding more the author’s books to my reading list.

88 Names

Network Effect by Martha Wells 📚

If you are a follower of the Murderbot Diaries then you have already read the latest addition to the canon. If not, I suggest that you sample the original novella length installments, beginning with All Systems Red et cetera. Those bagatelles are comfort reading for the jaded SF aficionado, abounding with self referential genre tropes, and this newest entry is more of the same, the novel length allowing more of what makes Murderbot so endearing: the humans are ciphers, the artificial intelligences are heroes, and there is a great deal of action, gunplay, and binging on interstellar telenovelas.

Along the way we reflect on what it means to be human, the importance of found families, and how an artificial person (and Murderbot is most certainly people) who lacks the basic social skills of a toddler can still be so profoundly connected to basic anthropomorphic emotions. And yet I have to wonder if the longer format really adds to the mythos more than another novella would have done, and I wonder if we could perhaps have been just as satisfied, if not more, with a shorter format. And perhaps Ms. Wells would agree, as a prequel novella is planned for next year.

I still recommend the book, but then you’ve already read it, haven’t you?

Network Effect

This article by Ed Yong in The Atlantic is a hard look at the many unforced errors in the US response to the pandemic. Among the most important: the lack of universal health care is an egregious example of institutional racism, reserving quality health care for the privileged and denying it to those most vulnerable to the virus.