Eleven Twelve

 Blindsight

I've always enjoyed science fiction. I don't know why. Perhaps it's just the autistic feeling that I don't belong in this world, translated into readership. Anyway. I particularly like harder science fiction -- the less "fantastic" it is, the more I like it. So Blindsight should be right up my alley. It's hard, or at least pseudo hard -- it has a fair bit of made-up science but it's credible and based in the real stuff.

But actually, to some extent, that's the problem and it's a common one in hard scifi, at least in my acquaintance with it. It gets lost in ideas. I recently read Permutation City and that was hard as fuck or pretending to be, but it meandered into a wilderness of idea porn. Blindsight is similar. It's constantly explaining. 

I liked the aliens, which were/was satisfyingly different, and credibly built on a pattern very dissimilar to our own. The idea of intelligence without self-awareness worked well, and even more so in today's world of ChatGPT. Chat will quite happily tell you it's enjoying working on the thorny problem you've put in front of it, and you have to remind yourself it doesn't have any sense of enjoyment whatsoever. It also doesn't have any intelligence but you can see how it could look like it did in future while still having no real awareness of itself or the world around it.

But for all that, I wasn't always sure what was going on. Maybe that was down to my own inattention but I still blame you if my mind wanders when I read your book. You're supposed to nail me to the page, bro. Still, a solid three I'd say, and you might go higher if you like that kind of thing.

Eternity

Less hard as far as scifi goes is romcom Eternity. But it was a lot more fun than Blindsight. I enjoyed it although it was never really any more than mildly amusing and fell foul of poor pacing towards the end, where the plot went a tiny bit astray. It never pretended that its concept wasn't silly and it unashamedly leant on the charm and rizz of its stars. If you're a fan of Elizabeth Olsen, then you know she packs both charm and rizz to burn, so that was a wise choice, and although Miles Teller is not really my cup of tea, he was at least watchable. The other guy is British as far as I know, and consequently had no excuse at all for the grating New York accent he bunged on. 

It was fun though, although I wouldn't say Olsen had any real chemistry with either of her costars, which given that the other guy was super hot was a bit weird but maybe they didn't get on. Anyway, three stars, watch it if you like that kind of thing.

Solaris

So I reread this and it matched my memory. Lem is feted as a scifi writer but he's in the Ursula LeGuin class to me: everyone rates them except for me. I found it really boring and static. I had to grit my teeth not to bin it long before halfway through. It wasn't even interesting in its meditativeness. Thematically, it worked, I suppose: it has the same idea of contact that cannot include communication. But it doesn't deliver. Thumbs down and trust me, you'll hate it too so stick to pretending you've read it and proclaiming it a work of genius.

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:31 am