Thirty one ten
I read Counterweight by Djuna.
The premise of the novel was interesting. An unnamed, perhaps unreliable narrator (although nothing hinges on the narrator's reliability) finds out that the deceased head of a multinational that has built a space elevator has planted a copy of (some of) his memories into a working stiff's brain.
The slender book is why and some chasing around. Bish bash bosh. But the worldbuilding is really thin, so you have no good picture of the place the narrator is running around. Or even really why. There's some nonsense about AI but any insight is literally just put right in front of you and it amounted to "it's inevitable, yawn". The characters had no character, the action had no action and the denouement didn't make much if any sense.
It's the kind of book reviewers fawn over because they think cutting-edge Korean sf must be good because everyone says it is. But it isn't. It's supposed to be less is more. But it's just less is less. Didn't enjoy; don't recommend.
Eleven ten
Rereading Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, I was actually surprised at how different it is from the film (Arrival, if you don't know). The story is a reflection on free will and inevitability, although you may well not see it that way. It's chiefly a statement of existentialist philosophy: you cannot choose what you do but you can choose how you feel about it.
In Chiang's story -- and this isn't a spoiler -- the narrator's child will die. But we will all die. Should we not have children when we know they are doomed? How must you act when you are confronted with the inevitable? For Louise, the choice is maximum joy or maximum sorrow. There is no option to just not do it.
This is the Myth of Sisyphus retold. Louise cannot, and does not, choose for her child to exist. She must have her and lose her and take that as an occasion for joy or for sorrow.
The difference between the story and the film is that the aliens bring enlightenment to Louise in the story, while in the film they are the solution to the problem they themselves present. Which you find better is probably a question of taste, and I liked them both, but I much prefer the story, which made me cry.
