Best portrayal of mind-uploading I've ever read

From the POV of the uploaded, to those left behind, to digital natives. Just, perfect.

26 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

3.5 parts Genius 1.5 parts bleh

A lot of this book is pure genius. It took great imagination write this and to put this together in such a creative way. And the narrators are awesome! The universes created are great! There is some "bleh" though. One particular story is great until you figure out what the author is setting you up for and know the emotional tricks he's pulling. Sure enough, there he goes ruining something by making it sad and it felt very forced. There are other stories in here that are appropriately devestating without feeling forced. There's a good bit of hope as well. In fact, most of it is spectacular and spans a ton of different sci-fi and even fantasy to a degree. Certain individual stories WILL go down as favorites for me. I kinda hated the divisions in the audiobook as it is very hard to just go back and listen to some of my favorites because more than one story is in some of the chapters. Also, I kinda think if he would have swapped around the last 2 longer stories he would've ended it better. I like to end feeling fulfilled not depressed. Unless it's that quality of depression that Orwell, Philip K. Dick, and Daniel Keyes were able to create. Mind blown sadness is great. Thinking oh I see what this author is doing...not so much. Otherwise a good book. Definitely worth a listen.

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masterful

Some of the stories were strange, some over my head with conversations on coding and digital "singularity", but ultimately thought provoking and vastly interesting.

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Dystopia for everybody non-Chinese mainland

Ingenious stories. Well-written. Well-performed. A certain Black Mirror-vibe, which I like. A lot of criticism of US/Western history and politics and society, which I largely may agree with.

Here’s my gripe. I know the author is, after having grown up in the US, studying and working and writing in the US, an American and nothing else.

Then WHY is every, but really every little detail 99.99% attuned to mainland Chinese censor requirements? There are stories where he criticizes the US and Japan in the context of the Second World War - great, he can criticize both at the same time (let’s abstract from the fact that without the US, China might today still be a colony of the Japanese Empire). He literally lists a long list of past historical horrors... even an Asian one which was terrible for China... but never ever ever anything bad about mainland China. Not bad thing ever happened there. None. Abstracting from millions dead or suppressed... It’s really bordering on the comical - destroyed Moscow, Boston, but not a word about mainland China - so maybe the Chinese readers or censors can imagine mainland China was spared.

I am not sure whether this is also a prerequirement for his work as a translator of Chinese works, or whether it is just a warped perspective, but it is grating and disconcerting. It takes away from an otherwise good book and leaves me with having read propaganda.

What an interesting collection of science fiction stories

This book was a really good surprise and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The stories are well plotted, full of imagination. They’re at the same time fantastic and believable and each one told in a way that one appears to be watching a movie they are very well read and brought to life by their readers and they are filled with reflection and of thoughtful life experiences. Congratulations to all that created and made them available to us

Gems amongst the dross

There are enough really interesting stories to make it worth the listen. All are nicely written and some are quite lovely. There is a fragment of a longer story that is really intriguing. Why was it included with no indication of where to continue? Overall? A grim vision of our future but poignant.