You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.


I should have known that dispositionally I am not well suited to near-future speculative fiction but I am trying to be open-minded! Small things annoyed me, like the fucking elevator to space or the fact that anyone could get a womb. I'd rather read science fiction about that than speculative fiction about literally 30 years from now. Also disliked how they included unconvincing attempts at future slang (family as a verb, cert, fec) while still making the interviewees sound like very specific 30-something internet users (a teen in the year 2070 is saying the word fuckwad?? I hope not). But bigger political things annoyed me too:

  • The books was pretty accelerationist from the beginning. ("why would you care if you're getting arrested for protesting when you can't feed yourself or your family anymore? For so long, these fuckwads (VOMIT) had everyone convinced that if they just put their heads down, they could get by on whatever meager shit there was. But eventually that was obviously not the case anymore.") Maybe they wanted to avoid food fights by not naming organizing that was foundational to future transformation, but we know that extreme precarity and unlivable conditions alone do not spell revolution! If they wanted to avoid a food fight, then maybe don't write a speculation about the origins of a global revolution;  write about what that future looks like instead of how it began. I also don't think total societal collapse is where we're headed, more like smaller and smaller fortresses of hoarded wealth and climate adaptation, with more and more of us become refugee labor forces of some sort. 
  • I didn't like that those who were armed were people who had "given up property and power." Why not communized or collectivized their power? I don't know, it was a little too "let's avoid a situation wherein our revolution begins with the slaughter of the ruling class." Let's hear a little more about how power was taken! Too much relied on collapse; there were fronts against the military and fascist militias but I think if we're going to speculate we have to acknowledge that those are not the only people we'd need to take power from. 
  • The book was so so so woo woo, but then sometimes in its recollections of our present (~2022, when the book was published) it steps out of that? For example, multiple times either an interviewer (alive in the 2020s) or an interviewee (born after the 2020s) says that in this era only cis women could get pregnant? Weird to be doing an interview that imagines gender futures but misremembers or ignores past? 
medium-paced

That rarest of unicorns: sci fi epistolary alternate “history” 
challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: N/A
Strong character development: N/A
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
hopeful reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
emotional hopeful inspiring fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: N/A
Strong character development: N/A
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
hopeful informative reflective
emotional reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: N/A
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: N/A
hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: N/A
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: N/A