Leszek Ciesielski

As an anthology, it's impossible to grade, really. Some of the stories are incredibly good, some, eh, not that much. It's a very good view back, to the beginnings of Cyberpunk.

Prescient. Hard to put it another way. Published in 2019, and not extrapolating that far, Radicalized hits hard. Even though the novellas each end somewhat optimistically, it is hard to not be moved by them. And they're really, really uncomfortably close to reality. Glimpses of the fall of the american empire.

It's a minor peeve, but it irks me every time I hear it: unlike in English, words in Latin are gendered. “Excidium” is neuter gender (not ungendered!) and it is jarring having it applied to a male dragon - the suffix -um applies to inanimate things. Not male dragons.

I could ignore this one for the sake of an English captain not knowing any better - but then there's “Eroica”! Named by a Prussian captain - when German also assigns gender to all words and such a mistake just could not happen. The word “eroica” is feminine-gendered and, again, is used as a name for a male dragon. Ugh.

I'm going to start with saying I've enjoyed the Mars Trilogy greatly. I've re-read it recently - it does show it age a bit, both by the underlying world moving on and by the narrative structure of a grand epic that feels a bit quaint in 2024.

The Ministry for the Future, though... it's not a book? I mean it's one in the physical sense, but it's not a proper novel. It's a bunch of happy magical thinking stories where everything works out. There's a lot of unconnected snapshot viewpoints, and then Central Banks deploy bitcoin and AI and everything is redeemed, and Russian aircraft carriers save the Antarctic. That's a rather disappointing investor spiel, not a proper sci-fi novel.

I should have known better, seeing as it carries “favourite book of Obama” on the cover. I'm struggling to believe he's read it, as near the middle it calls out the assassinations by drone that his presidency made such wide use of - and blames them on him by name.

Then again, it's nice to fantasize about oil execs getting tagged like that.

This isn't a history book - I've been familiar with prof. Snyder's other work and was expecting one, I guess.

It is an ethical treaty. A lament on the now unstoppable fall of the US imperial age. A look into how other empires fell and how countries can be - are - rebuilt afterwards, how actions and decisions shape the land and the people.

It is a book I needed to read, but which made me unbelievably sad every time I got to it.