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Thoroughly delightful respite from gloomy books I've been reading lately.

I've enjoyed Becky Chambers' work for years, and I feel she distilled it to perfection in this novella. Length-wise it is just enough to paint a picture of a beautiful solarpunk world, and to give us characterization of Dex, the main protagonist. There is nothing superfluous to it, and there is no rush either; the pace is contemplative and purposeful.

I loved the world building; the slow paced, hopeful world of Panga feels like a perfect place for me. On the other hand, it is a clever backdrop for Dex's angst and struggle to find their own purpose in life. Chambers pulls off a great feat with portrayal of Dex; they feel rich, complex and fully realized human being. Clever too is the contrast of the titular robot to Dex's monk, and the cute, often philosophical exchanges between them.

I also liked the book's ending. It might leave things seemingly unresolved, but the story climax presents convincing argument for the value of self discovery over finding the (unattainable) solutions. In its philosophy, its character and world building, and its beauty, this story felt true to me, and that's my favorite thing.

I'm primed to be skeptical of any claim which sounds like the core one in this book: that there's something pernicious about The New Communication Tool, and that it will erode our society and culture.

But. Postman published Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985, and has been specifically correct about several… let us say… arcs? of transformation in culture & communication; in the way we value wisdom, knowledge, information, and data; and in our approach to disagreement, debate, and argument; among others. Postman clearly isn't exactly right in the particulars — the cultural role of television has changed substantially, and even newer new media has further adapted down this path. He didn't specifically anticipate Twitter or Facebook or TikTok, but his heart is in the right place by extrapolation from television.

Still. Is society worse, or just different? Are the ways societ has improved supported by new media, and how does that compare with its support for the ways society has degraded? Did television & social media cause misinformation & polarization, or did they just happen simultaneously? I'm not going to come down on Postman's side here. But I also have unusually-easy access to unenshittified media, and I might be more tempted if I had to live through the way normal people experience the Web all day.

Regardless of valence, I don't think these changes are reversible. We can't go back, we can just adjust our paths forward. "Old man yells at TV." is a trite tale. "Dysfunctional society no longer able to coordinate changes needed to survive the changes causing dysfunction." is probably more distressing. And the problem with all questions about how to improve society somewhat is that so many of the levers of change are locked out for various reasons, so "What should we do about this?" ends up always having deeply radical answers because nothing is superficial. Or perhaps that's just because almost all simple problems have been solved, and we keep being left with more and more challenging ones.

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I read this novel by accident. I looked it up after hearing about the dark forest hypothesis and I somehow missed the fact that this is the second book in a trilogy. I read the Three-Body Problem few years ago but didn't particularly like it. I found the same faults repeated in this novel too.

This book reads like a story from the science fiction's golden age: it has an interesting sci-fi concept at it's core, and it logically extrapolates from there. Cixin Liu does a really good job at this; at times it feels like Asimov's Foundation. Unlike the previous book, this one takes the plot into the farther future, and Liu gets to flex his creative muscle. The depiction of future cities and spaceships is well thought out and realistic. As a whole this book felt like reading through a game of chess.

Which leads me to the first of my objections: characters seem robotic. Even when they cite emotion as a factor in their decision-making process, this citation itself appears as a line in a logical proof. The characters just don't read as emotional beings.

The same "logic first" approach is applied to societies at large. As plot progresses through time we see countries taking actions which would fill entire novels seemingly "by decree". This simplifications feels like something Clarke would do, to help him explore an idea without getting lost in minutia of every-day reality. Unfortunately, it is this reality that makes for a more convincing story.

While these things are excusable as valid stylistic choices, and even necessary for Liu to tell the kind of story that he wants, my final qualm does not. It relates to portrayal of female characters.

There are few of them in the novel, the most prominent one being positioned squarely as a love interest of a male protagonist. What's worse, more pages have been devoted to his fantasizing about a "perfect woman" than to her actual character. When she does eventually appear it's because she has been kidnapped and brought as a some sort of a gift for the protagonist. She has been picked for this honor predominately based on her appearance. She is there for a chapter or two, in which time she falls in love with the protagonist, and is then kidnapped yet again and held as a hostage to ensure his cooperation. He proceeds to lament this turn of events until the end of the novel, but reflects on his fantasy more often than on the actual woman.

There is one more notable female character, and she is admittedly inflicted by fewer tropes. Although she too gets manipulated by another male protagonist, begrudges him at first, but then realizes the superiority of his idea and goes along with it. She ends up thinking of him as a fatherly figure.

All this seems fine to the rest of the characters and the narrator, and that is what makes it objectionable. It's one thing for a book to critique this treatment, or to omit it entirely. But the way it is presented here just feels wrong to me.