Central Station, by Lavie Tidhar
Nov. 12th, 2019 12:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThis one took a while to read, because I kept stopping at the end of every chapter.
Most chapters are short stories previously published elsewhere. I'd read a bunch, and wanted to see how they fit together.
I don't really know what to make of it.
I can't quite decide if it's saying big profound things about human nature and mind and self and so forth, or if it's just a whole bunch of things in a row.
And that's frustrating, like I might have missed the point somewhere.
But it's odd. It's humans on the edge of Becoming, already changed enough that approaching life without 24/7 high bandwidth internet access direct in your brain is a lifestyle for 'cripples' and the super religious. There are ways of becoming cyborg, and they're all varying degrees of weird. There are AI, but they're so different they mostly just don't interact. And there's some really weird kids who are as strange to the people around them as this highly networked world would be to us.
Except I'm never quite sure how weird it is, or how weird it should be. It explicitly mentions communication through the networked Conversation mostly when the bookseller doesn't have access to it. So what is it they experience that we don't? I'm sure it said but it made it seem normal.
Sometimes I thought the point of it was humans would still seem normal, to them, and for many generations in many ways to us.
There's people who spend their work day in full immersion VR game worlds, earning money by playing. ... I wasn't sure why they'd ever unplug. Some people there do not. The story is not about them.
Some people earn a living selling alcohol, still, like always.
It's just an odd way of making the future seem very old and very rooted in... fantasy and mysticism and religion and stories and the ways people always have been.
It's like it's a lot to chew on, so I stop every chapter, but when I have chewed I am, in the end, uncertain if what I just digested was a meal or a biscuit.
I might have to have another go at this later.
But it's not a very appealing idea.
I think this book is probably good but probably not really my speed.
So it goes.
Most chapters are short stories previously published elsewhere. I'd read a bunch, and wanted to see how they fit together.
I don't really know what to make of it.
I can't quite decide if it's saying big profound things about human nature and mind and self and so forth, or if it's just a whole bunch of things in a row.
And that's frustrating, like I might have missed the point somewhere.
But it's odd. It's humans on the edge of Becoming, already changed enough that approaching life without 24/7 high bandwidth internet access direct in your brain is a lifestyle for 'cripples' and the super religious. There are ways of becoming cyborg, and they're all varying degrees of weird. There are AI, but they're so different they mostly just don't interact. And there's some really weird kids who are as strange to the people around them as this highly networked world would be to us.
Except I'm never quite sure how weird it is, or how weird it should be. It explicitly mentions communication through the networked Conversation mostly when the bookseller doesn't have access to it. So what is it they experience that we don't? I'm sure it said but it made it seem normal.
Sometimes I thought the point of it was humans would still seem normal, to them, and for many generations in many ways to us.
There's people who spend their work day in full immersion VR game worlds, earning money by playing. ... I wasn't sure why they'd ever unplug. Some people there do not. The story is not about them.
Some people earn a living selling alcohol, still, like always.
It's just an odd way of making the future seem very old and very rooted in... fantasy and mysticism and religion and stories and the ways people always have been.
It's like it's a lot to chew on, so I stop every chapter, but when I have chewed I am, in the end, uncertain if what I just digested was a meal or a biscuit.
I might have to have another go at this later.
But it's not a very appealing idea.
I think this book is probably good but probably not really my speed.
So it goes.
also TW suicide
Date: 2019-11-12 01:08 pm (UTC)basically suicide in response to dementia
this world has a knack for making problems but nobody comes up with any answers
and nothing gets resolved. someone dying isnt the end of the book at all. the end of the book isn't even someone being born, though that happens in the last chapter. it's just people going on holiday together.
which suits the sort of book it is, but feels... like the sort of book I'd give a lit teacher to show them SF can Do Things, not like somewhere I'll want to go back to and hang out.