jack

Founding engineer at REN

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Reviews of Books I Read in 2025

A collection of short stories by Ted Chiang, who before becoming an author trained as an engineer.
Arrival is one of my favourite scifi films and it is based on stories of your life.
Each one of these little stories is wonderful, clean prose, clever concepts, and a lot of fun. He does in a few pages what many authors use whole books for.
What more is there to say?

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang

A fun read, introduced many scifi ideas that have become a part of the collective consciousness. From the ringworld itself to its humans coming from space as starseeds. I was expecting it to be somewhat more conservative than it was, especially as several ideas in it have become associated with modern (fringe, but still) fascist ideology. I didn't see much of that, even it's depiction of eugenics is of it being a horror inflicted on victims. The breeding selectively for good luck aspect of the book is probably the most interesting thing about it. I liked the characters overall. I guess I didn't feel particularly strongly about the book beyond it being an enjoyable read.

Ringworld - Larry Niven

Too much like reading a scientific paper at times. Overall very good, though I do wish it spent more time exploring the alien planet. A parody of scientific institutions dressed up as a psychological thriller. It is full of breathtaking - beautifully described - visuals punctuating a touching story about a man who regrets losing his wife when they were young. Strong all around, apart from where it leans too deeply into satire. Written in poland back when it was a part of the eastern block, an interesting look into the science fiction popular in a communist country, especially when compared to scifi from the west at the same time. The author, Lem, once described pkd as a visionary in a sea of grifters, those grifters being the likes of Heinlein, possibly Vonnegut, too. It feels much more interested in the human, emotional element, the science fiction, whilst interesting and clever, is only ever a narrative device, unlike say Slaughterhouse 5 which is also about the human element and uses clever well thought out scifi as a narrative device, when I read it I never feel a strong connection to the characters, the characters are more like tools for the story or the message than the other way around. I think this is the crucial difference and I think it's what makes Solaris good.

Solaris - Stanisław Lem

Anarchist story about anarchists and their ideals coming up against capitalism and communism. Even though the character would feel preachy when criticising communism, he was always kept in check by reality. I wish it spent more time with the theory the main character has of being able to communicate instantaneously over any distance using something to do with harmonics. Apparently the main character, was based on Oppenheimer, who was a friend of the author's parents. It was a nice read, felt very gentle in the way it depicts ideals that overcomes the limitations of political theory. Felt like a very human story. Another one that has humans as aliens that ended up on earth for whatever reason.

The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin

Obviously a huge inspiration for Inception. I love Inception, never once heard it compared to this even though they are very similar. Read this if you like Inception. I really liked how it depicts its mundane future, having to pay a robot door just to make it open, getting in debt to your fridge. Your kettle calling you broke. Another of pkd's that feels oddly precient and relatable. I do wonder if the powers that be read his stuff and used it as a blueprint.

Ubik - Philip K. Dick

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The Crying Of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

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Sirens Of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

Best book I've ever read. It has everything. It has what you'd expect from a 70s postmodern epic and more. There's seemingly no end to the scope and gravity of the ideas on display. The characters, although often criticised for being vehicles for ideas, still feel larger than life, to the extent that as I write this, nearly a year since I finished the book, I can still remember many characters' names. My favourite was easily Roger Mexico, each of his portions of the book blew me away. The book is hilarious, I've never laughed so much in my life. It's soul crushing and pessimistic. But somehow optimistic. It's everything and anything and also nothing. The book contains over 400 characters. Not all of them human or even alive. Several are lightbulbs, and the story of Byron The Bulb really encapsulates the out there and dreamlike nature of the book. Not all of it is fiction, some of it is metaphor for the countercultural movement from 1960s California, some of it is a literal depiction of some horror or clandestine operation during WW2, some is metaphor for industrial processes and advanced mathematics. Much of it blurs the lines between, which is what makes this more than just a well written emotional rollercoaster and makes it something that feel like a psychedelic experience, a peeling back of the veil.
Highly educational on topics of a whole range of things from organic chemistry, to American history, to Calvinism, to WW2, to calculus, to the physical mechanisms that guide rockets, to German imperialism and other ways of existing in this universe than what we're accustomed to.
There's this fantastic part where Slothrop, the main character, sees a friend of his that had recently died, he talks to him, everything feels normal, until he realises that it isn't normal and then the apparition of his friend fades away, did the friend fade away because Slothrop was dreaming, or did he fade away because Slothrop wouldn't let himself accept that there's stuff on the other side that we can interface with, if we just accept that we can't understand it through rationality?
The prose often gets criticism for being annoying or too convoluted or for the sentences being too long or the words too arcane. I didn't get that feeling at all. At times it does feel like Pynchon is trying to punish you for trying to read it, but it isn't punishment it's a challenge. It's as if he's saying "prove you're not stuck in your ways of thinking, open your mind or get left behind". One part of the book opens with a passage, something like, "You will want cause and effect, you won't find it". I never got the feeling that he was showing off with the prose, it felt like I was reading the words themselves having fun playing around with eachother.
My only criticisms are 1. that it ends, and 2. Slothrop is always saying "a-and", I get that he's supposed to have a stutter and an accent but it never feels quite right on the mind-tongue. Weird book though, not for the faint of heart, definitely not for anyone that thinks depiction is equivalent to endorsement. He writes about everything and he will challenge you on everything.

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

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Valis - Philip K. Dick

Excellent book. Fantastic prose, until it goes to the hardboiled part. Idk maybe some authors struggle with that style? Best book I read this year in terms of how much of a page turner it is. Great characters. Fantastic horror. Not much of anything political. Interesting scifi. I loved the story structure, which was lifted from The Canterbury Tales. The prose is, the same as the author, and many of the characters, obsessed with the romantic poets, especially Keats. And you can tell, it's such a lively and well thought out read.

Hyperion - Dan Simmons

Not sure how to feel about this one overall. Interesting concept, clever and well read use of postmodern philosophy to create a kind of "real" magic. - I couldn't stand the prose. Too much use of sentence structure that seemed to do nothing but slow you down. It'd be one thing if it felt like the author was being creative, but he uses the same tricks over and over again, and I never seemed to get used to it. The characters were rather thin, although it definitely pulled off the "hard boiled detective" thing it was going for. I did like the mystery, but I found the conclusion and the reveal of the "magic" to be kind of disappointing. I found some of the characters to feel off. It's a feeling I find in my own writing, when I come back to it I often feel like certain characters just sort of flow, no resistance, not against the story, the reader, the author, or anything. Things are defined primarily by what they are not, so when a character is written as only what they are it feels like a facade. They don't feel real in a very real and in your face kind of a way. Then again, maybe it's realistic, police officers are police officers. So a story with a bunch of police officers that don't get too much time in the spotlight are only ever that.

The City And The City - China Mieville