Blindsight by Peter Watts (Tor Books, 2006)
★★★☆☆
Yay, a fiction book that deals with thought-provoking questions around consciousness and biology, and couches it in a well-plotted structure with an interesting set of characters! I enjoyed seeing the mission unfold from Siri's special perspective, and continued to be enthused when that perspective became integral to the plot (perhaps a little too neatly). I am not so hot on Chelsea being fridged—even though you know it's coming from the beginning, it felt clumsily done—and, despite Siri's stated aversion to sex, his use of gratuitous sexual imagery throughout. Those places felt like injections of Peter Watts, and I probably don't need to hear more of people like Peter Watts.
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Big Mushy Happy Lump by Sarah Andersen (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2017)
★★★★☆
Cute, and pushed my humor button consistently. Felt a bit like a mix between Hyperbole and a Half and Cat Person.
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City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett (Broadway Books, 2016)
★★★☆☆
Infuriating number of exposition dumps, kind of predictable, but came together nicely in the end. Barely avoids 2 stars.
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City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett (Broadway Books, 2014)
★★★★☆
Worth reading just for "Okay, when?" and "I don't fucking believe it": 100% comedic gold.
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Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel (Crown Business, 2014)
★★★★☆
An interesting foundation for thought leadership centered on the premise "what valuable company is nobody building?" The case study of cleantech 1.0's demise / Tesla's ascendance is convincing. His arrogance and self-aggrandizement leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, though. So being contrarian and relentless about capturing value is great for capitalism; I'm not sure it's good for people or planet.
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The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Oxford University Press, 2006)
★★★★☆
Mostly an impenetrable slog, though peppered with interesting biological anecdotes -- like reading a smug, long-winded textbook -- this finally started to pick up after the 70% mark. My takeaways:
In the primeval soup, certain replicators "discovered" how to break up molecules of rival varieties, obtain food, protect themselves by building a wall of protein, etc., and this is probably how the first living cells appeared. (The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell)
More and more elaborate ways of being a good replicator were discovered, including the building of survival machines (bodies): "a battleground of replicators, jostling, jockeying, fighting for a future in the genetic hereafter. The weapons in the fight are phenotypic effects, initially direct chemical effects in cells but eventually feathers and fangs and even more remote effects."
"Remote effects" includes an overview of a fascinating variety of parasitic species and how, in cases where the parasite's gene transmission method does not match the host's (e.g. host egg/sperm), the effects are deleterious to the host, but when the transmission method matches, cooperation and a diminishing of the boundary between host/parasite can be expected to arise. Made me think of gut flora and Toxoplasma gondii.
The coining of the word "meme" as a replicator unit in the "pool" of human culture. If Dawkins had more foresight, he would have coined "shitpost," too.
I expected Dawkins's militant atheism to have a stronger showing in this book, but outside of the whole book being about evolution, he doesn't go into it except for musing "What is it about the idea of a god that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment?" He attributes it to "great psychological appeal" and mutually-assisting memes (organized church and its component parts, blind faith and stories like Doubting Thomas, the threat of hell fire).
Long digression into game theory, with a far more in-depth analysis of Prisoner's Dilemma than I ever spent in any social science class, including a breakdown of the Tit-for-Tat strategy and under what conditions related "nice" strategies will succeed in the gene pool. The example of opposing divorce lawyers submitting unfeasible conciliation proposals while taking in massive fees, forcing clients into a zero sum game, when it's a nonzero sum for the lawyers. "What about other games in human life? Which are zero sum and which nonzero sum? And -- because this is not the same thing -- which aspects of life do we perceive as zero or nonzero sum? Which aspects of human life foster 'envy,' and which foster cooperation against a 'banker'? Think, for instance, about wage-bargaining and 'differentials.' When we negotiate our pay-rises, are we motivated by 'envy,' or do we cooperate to maximize our real income? Do we assume, in real life as well as in psychological experiments, that we are playing a zero sum game when we are not?"
Eclectic and fascinating. Worth the awful read. Four stars and a shitpost.
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Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2014)
★★★☆☆
Enjoyed #2 (Days of Blood & Starlight)—less about romance, more about disaster, intrigue, and deception, plus big questions about why we fight. #3 was a return to romance (gag), but was also an enjoyable conclusion to the series. I like that the answer to "how would humanity react if angels appeared" is pretty different than "how would humanity react if aliens appeared." Yay for a decent popcorn trilogy.
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Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2011)
★★★☆☆
A fantastical Romeo and Juliet story, which would be fun, except the romance felt forced, and mostly oriented around how beautiful the two lead characters are. Not very deep, but I was entertained.
Sidenote: Pretty hilarious to read this immediately before The Library at Mount Char. Both books feature competent female protagonists bearing godlike powers who set off national-security-level hijinks, except in the latter we get to see the fully militarized (read: non-YA) reaction.
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The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins (Crown, 2015)
★★★★☆
Great characters, including non-human ones. Impressive command of voice. Compelling plot with great payoff. Got this rather obscure recommendation randomly and am glad I pursued.
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Perdido Street Station by China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey, 2003)
★★☆☆☆
Being hype on Miéville, New Weird, fantastical urbanism, and steampunk, I really wanted to like this book. But the main character is pretty unlikeable, the main conflict is not particularly absorbing, there's dei ex machina all over the place, and the only developed female basically gets fridged... again (see: The City & the City). Seriously, China, stop that! Also, if I read the words "lascivious" or "pugnacious" again, I'm gonna puke.
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The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications, 2012)
★★★★★
Read in one sitting on the plane. Thought this was better than Stormlight 1-2 and Mistborn 1-3. Maybe I just like Sanderson in small and digestible doses?
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The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (Harper Voyager, 1994)
★★☆☆☆
Interesting portrayal of an "ambiguously utopic" anarchist society. Sadly, it's excruciating to get through and feels very dated. If it had been more colloquially written, perhaps I would have found it more accessible.
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The Blue Chip Store: How Bank Robbery Changed My Life by Clay Tumey (Lucid Books, 2015)
★★★☆☆
I backed this book on Kickstarter after reading an AMA with the author. Fascinating exploration into how a self-described narcissist and class clown who never believed the rules applied to him decided to rob banks at the bottom of his downward spiral into depression. Should probably be required reading for POTUS45 resistance.
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The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery (Atria Books, 2015)
★☆☆☆☆
Unfortunately, even though some of the author's observations are poetic, even profound (including about the other humans who orbit her octopus world), there's a stunning lack of science and overabundance of conjecture and rhapsody that is irresponsible. In one chapter she basically says "Descartes said, 'I think therefore I am,' and scientists generally warn against anthropomorphizing animals, but... guys, the octopus really looked like she was thinking. So, doesn't she have a soul?"
Quotes:
"I was disappointed at first that she didn’t present her head or look at me. Was she less curious about me now? Had she glimpsed me coyly, like a woman behind a veil, peeking over the webbing between her arms, when I hadn’t noticed? Did she rely on her suckers to tell her, even before she had touched me, who I was? If she did recognize me, though, why did she not approach me in the same way as before? Why was she hanging before me like an opened umbrella, upside down? And then I realized what she wanted. She was asking me for food."
"I have known no natural state more like a dream than this. I feel elation cresting into ecstasy and experience bizarre sensations: my own breath resonates in my skull, faraway sounds thump in my chest, objects appear closer and larger than they really are. Like in a dream, the impossible unfolds before me, and yet I accept it unquestioningly. Beneath the water, I find myself in an altered state of consciousness, where the focus, range, and clarity of perception are dramatically changed. Is this what Kali and Octavia feel like all the time?"
One star for immense disappointment. Like Tom Stoppard's The Hard Problem, this feels about 20 years out of date. (But at least Stoppard confessed as such.) Going to stick with Westworld for interesting inquiries into consciousness.