Granskningar och kommentarer

Late work, written after AIDS epidemic, ecological disasters and fall of the wall. Burroughs isn't optimistic about the state of the world ruled by the emboldened fascist viruses known as Homo Sap and has an 18th century pirate captain call down plagues upon them. Certainly no less readable and quotable right now, but also often hard to distinguish from a loose collection of rants by an angry old man.

3.5/5. The worldbuilding and narration are still far and away the high points of Murderbot; the actual plot, and the human characters, eh. The first two novellas feel very much like the first three-or-so episodes of a TV series that's going to get really good rather than strong works in their own right.

What a pity Adams never wrote a fifth novel in the series. I'm sure it wouldn't have turned this plot-slight but uplifting coda into something hopelessly depressing and nihilistic.

Approx. 15th reread. It's a warm blanket towel in trying times.

Even if right now it feels like it's about shitty public procurement and spectacular failures in requirements specification. Which I guess it is.

(Ljudbok, Toves uppläsning)

Trollkarlens hatt är väl den mest episodiska av Muminböckerna; utöver just hatten, som genomgående dyker upp i handlingen för att slänga in överraskningar och vrida till handlingen, är det helt enkelt en enda lång barndomssommar med massor av äventyr av olika slag som syftar mer till att låta persongalleriet (som är rejält vasst, med gott om plats för alla) studsa mot varandra. Jag slås också av hur barnsliga alla karaktärerna är här; varken Mumin eller hans vänner är riktigt i puberteten här, det kommer i nästa bok. Om man vill vara lite mer vuxen i sitt läsande finns här en genomgående röd tråd om ägande och mening; som den medelklassbohem Jansson var måste hon både driva med samlandet av föremål som sådant (Hemulen och Sniff, förstås), men också slå fast att vi kan hänga upp betydelser och mening på ting. Mest uppenbart då genom parporträttet i Tofslan och Vifslan och deras hemliga kärlek som de helst vill visa öppet men måste gömma i en rubin. Inget av det Trollkarlens hatt ger dem varar; men minnena av det gör det.

Men en härlig bok att lyssna på under en långcykeltur genom ett trots allt vårlikt Stockholm.

Murderbot, like its protagonist, and like all Frankenstein takeoffs (inasmuch as all AI stories are those these days), is a bit of a hodgepodge. Equal parts The Thing, Alien and Robocop planted on a planet straight out of golden-age sci-fi. Wells doesn't do anything wildly innovative with it - especially not in a modern SFF field full of welcome gender and POV fuckery - but Murderbot itself (themself?) is such a likeable narrator that it feels fresh. Will probably pick up the sequels at some point.

Didn't love this as much as I'd expected after P&P. Austen shines when it comes to character and dialogue, and her witty satire on class and gender works very well... but over 400 pages, there's just not enough that actually happens; no real conflict, no real villains, no real danger. Endless dialogue to keep a situation from resolving itself like a Shakespeare comedy the second you pull on the thread just gets old after a while, no matter how sharp the dialogue is.

Yeah, so Goscinny was always the ideas man and Uderzo's stories will never live up to that, but even with that in mind, this is dire.

It's not that Asterix facing aliens and comic book heroes couldn't work. There have certainly been weird crossovers in the franchise before. But Uderzo seems to have absolutely NO idea what to do with it. He plops a few aliens into the Gaul village and ... that's it. There's nothing else to it. No story, no good gags, no worthwhile character beats, not even any good drawings we haven't seen before. (Except possibly the slightly Franquin-like battle between the spaceships.) It's to the point where the punny names are (at least in the Swedish translation) explained by the characters in dialogue. Uderzo claims it's a tribute to Disney and superhero comics (and a pretty damn racist rant against manga), and comes across as never having seen or read any of the things he's nodding to.

The best thing about this is that it makes the old albums look even better by comparison.

The image of an angel becomes itself an angel.

Of course Winterson's Frankenstein rewrite, like every other rewrite recently, becomes itself a Frankenstein; cobbled together from parts, part rewrite, part biography of the Shelleys and Byrons, of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage and Jack Good and Alan Turing, part summary of Bostrom and Tegmark and Hayles et al and her Facebook feed of current events. At least it's aware of it.

This is the dilemma, he replied. I do not know if I am the teller or the tale.

And yes, as Frankissstein acknowledges, there is really very little point to differentiating between the scientist and the creature anymore. Shelley became herself a creator, Victor Frankenstein himself a monster, the creature himself a concept.

I really really want to like Frankissstein more than I do. At its best it's brilliant; Winterson's fantastic prose straddling the line between high concept and intimate physicality, flitting back and forth in time between Villa Diodati in 1816 and the future (and both further back and further on). But somewhere around the fourth very long discussion on posthumanity and artificial intelligence that doesn't really lead anywhere, she starts to lose me. As if she wanted to write this story but, not unlike a certain mad scientist, hadn't prepared for what would happen when it came alive and she'd have to raise it until it could stand on its own. As with many "proper" writers writing science fiction (not that she's new to that, and she certainly manages better than many), she struggles to actually let the concepts lead anywhere new, leaves depths unplumbed; compared to, say, Louisa Hall's Speak, Frankissstein feels incomplete. And surprisingly, she fails to give some of her characters life beyond parody, her jabs at society's backwards slide more than sharply formulated tweets.

What is there to love is still very loveable. The Shelleys (all three of them), the prose, the questions, the never-ending gyre of love and creation and rebellion and mutuality and synthesis, and I'll gladly follow Winterson down that labyrinth even if I'm a bit disappointed in where I come out. I'd just been hopeing for a little more than

There's something Melvillian to Svensson's hunt for the small yellow eel; through history, mythology, zoology, gastronomy, philosophy, paleontology, oceanology, biology, ecology, literature and his own memories of eel-fishing with his father, he tries to if not uncover, then at least map out the mysteries surrounding the common eel; a fish everyone has always known about, but nobody really understands. Maybe his writing occasionally gets a little too fond of itself, but the sheer totality of the project is so personal and so appealing.