Lucas

Ok 2.5 was probably a bit harsh. I was just pissed at the writing style. The first half of the book leans heavily on magical realism, but the time-jumping narrative makes it incredibly hard to follow what's actually happening, which I found very frustrating.

But the second half of the book is really interesting, and surprisingly relevant to modern times for a book written in 1940. The eponymous invention is a machine that projects "images" of humans which are life-like to every sense, which raised some interesting "Turing test" questions about consciousness.

I especially liked the line, when referring to the machine, "It will know only what it has already thought or felt, or the possible transpositions of those thoughts or feelings"

So cool when writing can span almost a century like that

I think I just really like books about a bunch of people making a lil society and how they survive together. So much so that I kinda wished that this book was longer, that it'd give more details about the world they created. But I guess that's kinda the point of the book - that over a timescale of 700 billion years, nothing is interesting or relevant or special

Pretty tricky to read book, not just because of the sometimes pretty graphic descriptions, but also for the short, staccato nature of the writing. I think it did serve a purpose though - it does help put you in the mind of the main character, someone who is broken and desensitised. But this was kind of shattered towards the end of the book, because all his actions suggest someone who is changing, then the final chapter completely undoes that, making it feel entirely out of character. Like I get plot twist or whatever, but this just felt unsatisfying.

Also, I thought the set-up was a bit unrealistic - like everyone just went along with breeding humans for food? And its alluded to that the whole 'animal meat virus' thing was actually a hoax, but this seems like something that would be hard to cover up. The parallels to the real-world meat industry I also thought were a bit ham fisted, like I know the industry's not great, but its certainly not normalised to, for example, keep a cow in your house and slowly vivisect it for pieces of meat.

Still, I thought the narrative and writing were great, especially with the portrayal of the main character (until right at the end)

Probably the most voraciously I've read a book in ages. The first half of the book is fantastic, great world building with a growing sense of unease laced throughout. I thought the mid to later parts of the book faltered a bit, the pacing was much faster, leaving things feeling rushed, and some subplots/story lines just felt unecessary. Also, not to get too much into spoilers, but one character definitely suffered from season 8 danaerys "character struck with grief makes very out of character choices" syndrome. The final few chapters were a return to form - the pacing slowed back down and characters felt more thought out and deliberate and more in-line with how they had been built up.

Really enjoyed it though, I read basically two thirds of it despite trying to study yesterday

Very cool I wish Oxford was real 💔