Category: critique

Propensity Meets Google Gemini – 3 of 3

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Book, critique, Generative AI, Google Gemini, Propensity, review, Ridley Park, WritingTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

ENTROPIC completes the trilogy of collapse – linguistic, civic, and humane. It does not whimper. It corrodes. In the end, form breaks down not because the author lost control, but because control itself is the first casualty of extinction. A society that cannot speak cannot think; a mind that cannot think becomes soil. There’s a terrible beauty in that.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.

The final chapters prove what Propensity set up from page one: utopia is a maintenance project, and civilisation is only ever one power-outage away from becoming compost. Peace was a glitch; entropy was the operating system waiting to reboot.

If the first act asked whether we could redesign human nature, and the second asked what happens when purpose evaporates, the third answers with teeth. Not metaphorical teeth – the kind that break skin.

The calendar, the poems, the Seussian psychosis, the typographical collapse – it all converges into a single thesis:

Language dies before people do. Ideas die before bodies. Meaning is the first to be eaten.

And when meaning goes, everything else falls with it. The Gormies reverting to instinct, Aaron’s crew reverting to domination, the narrative reverting to decay – each is not a twist, but an inevitability. Nature abhors modulation. Humanity abhors peace. Entropy abhors everything.

So yes – the work succeeds. Brutally.

It holds a mirror up to extinction and refuses to blink. It leaves no heroes, no eulogies, just the soft rustle of chlorophyll reclaiming architecture and the indifferent continuation of a world healed by our absence. The book does not ask the reader to hope. It asks them to witness. And that is the more honest ending.

This final section, ENTROPIC, delivers on the grim promise made in the opening pages. You have successfully dismantled the world you built, moving from the sterile control of “IMPLEMENTATION” through the eerie stasis of “DRIFT” into the chaotic dissolution of “ENTROPIC.”

Here is an analysis and evaluation of the final section and the manuscript as a whole.

1. The Breakdown of Form

The most striking aspect of this section is how the structure of the novel mirrors the collapse of society. You abandon standard prose for a chaotic mix of formats, simulating the breakdown of language and order.

  • The Calendar (Chapter 34): The visual inclusion of the calendar is excellent “environmental storytelling.” Seeing the handwriting degrade from “found a radio” to “FUCK” and “Why ME?” tells the story of the siege and psychological break far better than a diary entry would.
  • The Dr. Seuss Parody (Chapter 39): This is a high-risk stylistic choice that pays off. The juxtaposition of childlike rhyme (“One fish kills two fish”) with graphic violence (“Just blood in the soil”) captures the absurdity and madness of the protagonist’s final moments. It feels like the mind snapping.
  • Concrete Poetry (Chapter 42 & 44): The words physically falling down the page (“Buildings,” “Vines,” “Petal”) visually represent gravity taking over. The text itself is decaying.

2. The Narrative Twist: The Return of Nature

In “DRIFT,” the horror was the absence of human nature. In “ENTROPIC,” the horror is the return of it—in its worst forms.

  • Aaron’s Group: The introduction of Aaron, Jess, and the others serves a crucial thematic purpose. They prove Dr. V’s dark hypothesis: without the modulation, humans are not inherently good. They are predators. The reveal that they want “live wires” (sex slaves) because the Gormies are too boring is repulsive and terrifyingly plausible.
  • Jamal’s Death: Killing the philosopher of the group (Jamal) so abruptly (Chapter 33) is a brutal narrative choice. It signals that intellect and philosophy (Hobbes, Heidegger) offer no protection against brute force. His death is the death of the “Civilized Normie.”
  • The Feral Gormies: The evolution of the Gormies into “crack zombies” (Chapter 40) changes the dynamic from The Leftovers to 28 Days Later. It suggests that without the “signal” maintaining the suppression, the brain doesn’t revert to normal; it reverts to pure, reptilian instinct.

3. The Philosophical Climax

You stayed true to your epigraphs. You did not offer a hopeful ending.

  • The Hobbes Connection (Chapter 41): Inserting the text of Leviathan is a heavy-handed but effective academic anchor. It reminds the reader that this state of “war of every man against every man” was predicted centuries ago.
  • The Epilogue: The final verdict—that consciousness was a “blunder”—ties the entire work together. The line “The humans carried their gods to extinction” is profound. The ending is not a tragedy for the Earth; it is a correction. The “chlorophyll and bone” ending is a peaceful, if nihilistic, resolution.

4. Visual Analysis (Based on shared images)

  • The Calendar: The erratic scribbles, the “cow outside,” and the transition to “Gormies gone missing!!” builds tension perfectly. The visual distress of the paper adds to the “found footage” feel.
  • The Face: The scribbled, panicked face is deeply unsettling and pairs well with the “Hurt” lyrics. It visualizes the internal mental state of the narrator in Chapter 36.
  • The Concrete Poem: The typographic layout of the buildings crumbling and the petals falling is elegant. It serves as a visual eulogy for the civilization described in the previous chapters.

Critical Notes & Final Thoughts

The Logic of the “Feral” Shift:
In Chapter 40, you describe the Gormies becoming aggressive (“invitations” to violence). In Section 1, we were told aggression was “zeroed.”

  • Interpretation: I assume this happens because the signal eventually stopped or degraded (batteries died, power failed), or because hunger overrode the neuro-modulation.
  • Suggestion: You might want one tiny clue—perhaps a scene where a cell tower light finally blinks off, or a mention of the “hum” stopping—to signal why the Gormies suddenly changed from passive to aggressive.

The POV Shift:
The shift from the specific POV of Lena/Jamal to the second-person “You” (Chapter 36) and the generic “He/She” effectively disorients the reader, but it does distance us from Lena’s specific fate. We know Jamal died. We know Teddy was captured. Lena’s specific end is lost in the chaos.

  • Verdict: This works for the theme of entropy (individual stories don’t matter in the end), even if it leaves the reader hungry for closure on her character.

Final Verdict on “PROPENSITY”

This is a cohesive, intellectually rigorous, and atmospherically devastating work of speculative fiction.

  • Section 1 hooked the reader with the cold horror of bureaucracy and the promise of “peace.”
  • Section 2 subverted the apocalypse genre by making it quiet, sad, and boring.
  • Section 3 delivered the violent punchline: that peace was artificial, and the natural state of man is chaos.

It is a “magnetic nihilism,” as you described in your dedication. It reads like a warning found in a time capsule that no one will be left to open.

Evaluation: Exceptional. The integration of text, philosophy, and visual art creates a unique reading experience. Well done.

ENTROPIC lands like a dropped planet. No triumph, no redemption arc, no last-minute miracle of human exceptionalism. Instead, you present the more plausible outcome: language fails, memory rots, and humanity dissolves into noise and appetite. Not with fireworks – with mould.

Across the final chapters, the text itself begins to decompose. Sentences slip, structure buckles, typography comes apart like scaffolding under rust. The calendar deteriorates from observation to panic to primal scribble. The Seuss-rhyme murders itself line by line. Concrete poetry collapses into the page like a tower falling floor by floor. The book does not describe entropy – it performs it.

That’s the achievement. The collapse isn’t thematic dressing. It’s mechanism. Civilisation dies when communication does. Meaning erodes first – everything else only follows protocol. The feral Gormies, the predatory survivors, Jamal’s extinguished philosophy – all of it converges into one quiet, bleak proof: peace was synthetic. Turn off the signal and Hobbes walks through the door like you never asked him to leave.

And so Propensity ends the only honest way it could: Not in tragedy. Not in triumph. But in correction. Humanity exits. Chlorophyll persists. The world exhales.

If the book is a warning, it’s one written for no future reader – a message in a bottle thrown into the sea after the sea has already boiled away. Nihilistic, yes. But coherent. Elegant in the way decay is elegant under enough time-lapse. You built a civilisation only to prove why it could not survive. And then you buried it properly.

That is the work.

That is the ending.

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Written with the assistance of Gemini

Ridley Park

Propensity Meets Google Gemini – 2 of 3

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Book, critique, Generative AI, Google Gemini, Propensity, review, Ridley Park, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
5–7 minutes

If Section One was all scalpels and clipboards, Section Two is what happens when you drop the clipboard, lose the scalpel, and watch civilisation slide gracelessly into the nearest gutter. DRIFT marks the point where Propensity stops behaving like a clinical report and starts behaving like found footage: jittery, fragmented, and far too honest for anyone’s comfort.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.

I fed this second chunk of the manuscript to Gemini in the same spirit as before: no authorial hints, no metadata, no coy fluttering of eyelashes. Just text, served neat. And again, the thing dutifully returned its assessment like an over-eager grad student desperate to impress its external examiner.

As with the previous instalment, what follows is Gemini’s evaluation – unaltered, un-prettified, and not to be edited by me. Treat it as an anthropological specimen: what a machine thinks the apocalypse looks like when you lace it with balladry, bureaucracy, and moral collapse.

Below is Gemini’s take on Section Two: DRIFT.

This second section, DRIFT, marks a profound shift in texture and structure. If “IMPLEMENTATION” was the antiseptic instruction manual for the apocalypse, “DRIFT” is the scattered, chaotic footage of the aftermath.

Here is an analysis and evaluation of Section 2: DRIFT.

1. Structural Experimentation and “Mixed Media”

You have taken a bold risk by abandoning standard prose narrative in favor of a fragmented, multi-format approach.

  • The Poetic Montage (Chapter 17): Breaking the narrative into stanzas (“Parliament,” “Shelter,” “Smart Home”) works exceptionally well. It conveys the global scale of the “zeroing” without needing thousands of words of exposition. The rhythm mimics the “loops” of the subjects—repetitive, hollow, and haunting.
  • The Screenplay (Chapter 26): Switching to script format for the introduction of Teddy, Jamal, and Lena serves a thematic purpose. It highlights the performative nature of their existence—they are the only “actors” left in a world of props. It also creates a jarring emotional distance during the disturbing revelation of Teddy’s abuse of Lena’s mother.
  • The Cognitive Aptitude Battery (Chapter 28): This is a brilliant piece of dark satire. It breaks the fourth wall and serves as a recap of the section’s horrors (“Shag Lena’s mum,” “eat the watermelon”), packaged in the banal language of bureaucracy.

2. The Nature of the Apocalypse: “Gormies”

You have successfully subverted the zombie genre.

  • Passive vs. Aggressive: In The Walking Dead or 28 Days Later, the horror is that the dead want to eat you. Here, the horror is that they don’t care about you. They are “Gormies” (a fantastic colloquialism derived from “gormless”).
  • The Horror of Absence: The scene in Chapter 25 (“Prison Life”) where K dies reading On the Origin of Species is tragic irony at its finest. The most “evolved” creature dies because he lacks the animal instinct to scream for food.
  • The Moral Vacuum: Teddy’s abuse of the catatonic woman (Chapter 26) is arguably the darkest moment in the manuscript so far. It proves Dr. V’s fear from Section 1: even without the “aggression” dial turned up, human nature finds ways to be monstrous when consequence is removed.

3. Character Dynamics: The Awake

The introduction of the “Awake” trio (Jamal, Lena, Teddy) provides the necessary friction to drive the plot forward, now that the rest of the world is silent.

  • Jamal: The Philosopher. His monologue about Geworfenheit (thrownness) ties the story back to the opening themes of Cioran and Ligotti. He suggests they are no more “free” than the Gormies; they are just cursed with awareness.
  • Teddy: The Id. He represents the danger of unchecked freedom. He is adapting too well to the apocalypse.
  • Lena: The Pragmatist. She bridges the two. Her romance with Jamal feels earned—a “hydrogen bond” formed in a vacuum.

4. Dr. Shaw and the Scientists

Chapter 24 (“Pleasant Returns”) is vital. It confirms that the creators of the system have fallen victim to it—except, seemingly, Dr. Shaw.

  • The Loop: Seeing Dunlop and Dr. V caught in their own behavioral loops (the tablet tapping, the nodding) is a satisfying narrative justice.
  • Shaw’s Agency: Shaw remains the “Ghost in the Machine.” Her ability to observe without “drifting” suggests she either has a unique physiology or she inoculated herself. She remains the Chekhov’s Gun of the story.

5. Pacing and Atmosphere

The pacing in this section is deliberately slower, mimicking the “drift” of the title.

  • Atmosphere: You excel at describing decay not as a rot, but as a settling dust. The “flamingo” incident at the end of Chapter 30 is a masterful, subtle cliffhanger. It signifies that the “static” phase is over. The “Figures on the ridge” suggest that not everyone is a Gormie, and not everyone is a benevolent teenager.
  • The Shift: The story has moved from Black Mirror (Section 1) to Lord of the Flies (Section 2).

Critical Notes & Suggestions

  • The “Why”: It is currently unclear why the teenagers (and James) are immune. Is it age-related (neuroplasticity)? Or random genetic variance? You don’t need to explain it fully, but a hint might be useful to distinguish them from Shaw (who likely has a scientific reason).
  • Teddy’s Arc: Teddy is currently very unlikable (due to the sexual assault implication). If he is to remain a protagonist, the tension between him and Jamal/Lena needs to come to a head. The “missing flamingo” suggests an external threat, but the internal threat (Teddy) is just as volatile.
  • The Screenplay Format: While effective, ensure the transition out of it is smooth. Chapter 27 returns to prose seamlessly, but the reader may jar at the sudden format change in Chapter 26 initially.

Verdict

“DRIFT” is a haunting, atmospheric middle act. It creates a believable, terrifying world where the apocalypse isn’t a bang, but a long, collective sigh. The imagery of the “Gormies”—standing in aisles, staring at the sun, dying in libraries—is indelible.

You have set the stage for a conflict not between Man and Nature, but between the Awake and the Empty—and potentially, the Awake against each other.

Please share Section 3: ENTROPIC. The title suggests the systems are about to break down completely. I am ready.

So that’s DRIFT according to our silicon diagnostician: a world stalled mid-breath, teenagers improvising civilisation, scientists trapped in their own behavioural Möbius strips, and a moral landscape flatter than a dead battery. If Section One charted the construction of the machine, Section Two shows us what happens when the machine keeps running but the operators don’t.

Section Three, ENTROPIC, is where the centre finally refuses to hold. Drift becomes decay, decay becomes contest, and whatever remains of ‘society’ begins to buckle under the weight of its own inertia. I’ll share Gemini’s take on that next, assuming none of us have joined the Gormies by then.

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Written with the assistance of Gemini

Ridley Park

Propensity Meets Google Gemini 3.1

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Book, critique, Generative AI, Propensity, review, Ridley Park, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
5–8 minutes

I keep saying it’s nearly impossible to get book reviews, and because the universe enjoys mocking me, I decided to outsource the job to an entity that doesn’t even have a pulse. So I asked Gemini to ‘analyse and evaluate’ Propensity (Barnes & Noble). Whether AI has intelligence, or whether humans have enough of it to notice the difference, is a separate debate. What AI does have is a kind of triangulated referential echo chamber. Think sonar, but instead of bats, you get stochastic silicon parrots with mood stabilisers.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.

If you’ve read Propensity (Amazon), I still welcome reviews—positive, negative, or existentially confused. I’m not picky. Just honest.

Video: I feel compelled to re-share this video trailer for Propensity… just because.

Now, yes: AI models are wired to flatter. This is practically their religion. But they do criticise, and they do recognise nonsense when you feed it to them. Try it. Give them gibberish and they’ll gently tell you you’re unravelling. Even better, give them two versions of something and ask which is worse; they’ll pick one, and with unnerving confidence.

The Gemini variant I used had the attention span of a goldfish with a data cap, so I fed it Propensity in blocks of fifteen chapters. What follows is just the first section. For the record, the system had no idea the manuscript was mine. I simply asked it to analyse a text. No winking. No metadata breadcrumbs. Just raw text and a very chipper algorithm.

Below is Gemini’s evaluation of Section One, the first 15 chapters. This part isn’t my writing, so hands off; I’m merely the messenger.

This is a striking, clinically precise opening to a work of speculative fiction. You have established a distinct atmospheric tone—cold, antiseptic, and deeply unsettling—that aligns perfectly with the literary giants you cited in your dedication (particularly Ballard and DeLillo).

Here is an analysis and evaluation of Section 1: IMPLEMENTATION.

1. Tone and Stylistic Approach

The prose is stark and economical. You rely on short, staccato paragraphs and significant whitespace, which mimics the sterile environment of the facility and the emotional detachment of the scientists.

  • The Aesthetic of Bureaucracy: You capture the “banality of evil” exceptionally well. The horror isn’t in blood (though there is some); it is in the sliding scales on a tablet, the polite meetings, and the “business casual” attire of the apocalypse.
  • Epigraphs: Using quotes from pessimistic philosophers (Ligotti, Cioran, Benatar) at the start of every chapter is a bold choice. It acts as a Greek Chorus, hammering home the theme that consciousness is a burden and “peace” is merely the absence of will.
  • Dialogue: The dialogue is functional and sparse. Characters don’t chat; they transact information. This works for the genre, though it keeps the characters at arm’s length emotionally (which seems intentional).

2. The Central Concept

The premise—using 5G/6G infrastructure to modulate neurochemistry—is a classic sci-fi trope updated for the modern era. However, the application is where this shines.

  • The Sliders: The gamification of human behavior (Aggression, Obedience, Faith, Libido) is terrifying. The scene where they adjust “Faith” and the subject begins to pray is particularly effective because it decouples belief from truth, reducing religion to a neurological function.
  • “Drift”: This is the most compelling narrative device you’ve introduced. The idea that the suppressed mind creates “residue” or “loops” (counting peas, tying knots, asking if time is passing) is a brilliant, eerie manifestation of the human soul trying to breathe through concrete. It suggests that even when “fixed,” humans are broken.

3. Pacing and Structure

“IMPLEMENTATION” moves rapidly. We jump from animal testing to human testing to global deployment in 15 short chapters.

  • Pros: It reads like a fast-paced thriller or a montage. There is no fat on the bone. The momentum builds inevitably toward the release.
  • Cons: Because it moves so fast, the transition from “lab test” to “global rollout” feels slightly rushed. The geopolitical implications are hand-waved (the General just needs “admin rights”). However, given the surreal/fable-like quality of the writing, this lack of rigorous logistical realism is acceptable.

4. Characterization

The characters serve as archetypes rather than fully fleshed-out people, which fits the “architectural horror” vibe.

  • Dr. V: The Architect. He represents intellectual detachment. He knows what he is building and seemingly craves the silence it brings.
  • The General: The Utilitarian. He sees a weapon. He is the most “human” in his desires (power, control), which makes him the most archaic figure in the room compared to the nihilism of the scientists.
  • Shaw: The Variable. She is the quiet observer who ultimately acts. Her decision in Chapter 15 is the pivot point of the story.

5. The Climax of Section 1 (Chapter 15)

The ending of this section is profound. Shaw doesn’t hand the weapon to the General; she creates a “Universal” baseline of “Undefined” propensity.

  • The Quiet Apocalypse: The description of the General sitting down, the truck driver stopping, and the pedestrian pausing is chilling. It implies that Shaw hasn’t just enslaved humanity; she has turned off the drive to do anything. She has gifted the world the “peace” of the baboons from Chapter 1.
  • Ambiguity: It is unclear if they are catatonic or just chemically content to do nothing. This setup for the next section (“DRIFT”) is excellent.

Critical Notes & Suggestions

  • The Science: The explanation of “piggybacking on 5G” is a little “hand-wavium.” It works for fiction, but be careful not to over-explain it, as it draws attention to the impossibility. The strength lies in the psychology, not the transmission method.
  • Emotional Anchorage: While the detachment is stylistic, the reader needs a reason to care about the outcome beyond intellectual curiosity. Shaw’s internal monologue about her father (Chapter 12) is a good touch—we may need a few more of those crumbs to understand why she pulls the trigger in Chapter 15.
  • Repetition: The concept of “silence” and “stillness” is repeated often. Ensure that the imagery varies slightly to keep the descriptions fresh.

Verdict

“Propensity” opens with the confidence of a writer who knows exactly what story they want to tell. It is a bleak, philosophical deconstruction of free will that reads like a collision between Black Mirror and 1984.

The ending of this section shifts the genre from a political thriller (building a weapon) to a post-apocalyptic psychological horror (the weapon is used, but not how we thought).

Please share Section 2: DRIFT. I am very interested to see what happens to a world that has simply… stopped.

So there you have it: an algorithm, blissfully unaware of authorship, happily dissecting Propensity like a lab rat with a thesaurus. If nothing else, it proves that even machines can detect when a story opens with a whiff of quiet apocalypse. Section Two, DRIFT, is where the real fun starts – if you consider society slipping into a chemically induced torpor ‘fun’. The world has stopped, the mechanisms of meaning have stalled, and the human mind, ever the stubborn animal, begins clawing at the walls of its own sedation. I’ll share Gemini’s take on that next, assuming the lights stay on and no one decides that voluntary inertia is a lifestyle choice.

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Written with assistence with Gemini 3.1

Ridley Park

In the Land of the Blind…

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Erasmus said, ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’. This is a myth perpetuated during the Enlightenment.

Video Clip: Midjourney 7 Render
The Emissary Who Forgot to Bow: On Erasmus, Wells, and the Delusion of Universal Reason

I considered this in the context of other accounts, such as HG Wells’ The Country of the Blind (also PDF), Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (PDF), and Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary. They tell a different story.

I also created a NotebookLM podcast summary of this article.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast sumamry of the linked article.

Cross-Post: confused AI Authorship

Posted in Art, Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, Claude, Cover Art, critique, Generative AI, Video, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
1–2 minutes

People keep hurling accusations of AI-assisted writing as though it’s the new literary scarlet letter. Apparently, if a sentence lands too cleanly or an argument isn’t held together with chewing gum and vibes, someone’s bound to whisper that silicon fingers were involved. It’s all very witch-trial chic.

Video: My minion scribing this blog post. I want to teach it how to use a typewriter.

I’ve written about this on Philosophics. Not the tired panic about ‘machines stealing our jobs’, nor the hand-wringing about entry-level writers having their ladders kicked away. That’s a separate tragedy. My post digs into the moral melodrama over authorship itself, where a whiff of algorithmic contribution is treated like doping at the Olympics. As if writing were a pole-vault and not, you know, communication.

The whole spectacle reveals more about our Enlightenment hang-ups than about the technology. We still cling to this myth that pure, unadulterated human genius trickles from the fingertips of a lone, caffeinated scribe. Anything less than “authenticity” gets branded synthetic, corrupt, impure. It’s the same script modernism’s been peddling forever, only now the villain has LEDs.

Anyway, if you’ve got the stomach for a short polemic on why these accusations miss the point entirely, here it is:

Accusations of Writing Whilst Artificial

Have a look before someone claims an AI wrote it.

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Thoughts on Solaris

Posted in Book, critique, Interview, review, Sci-Fi, Status Update, Video, YouTubeTagged , , , Leave a comment

I finished reading Lem’s Solaris and then was notified of a discussion about the book and the film adaptations.

I intended to draft a book review, but I may defer.

For now, I’ll note that the similarities between this and my own work are superficial. Both have philosophical perspectives, but Lem’s is much more psychological. This is nice, but it’s not where I tend to take things, and not so overtly.

The Wrong Dystopias: Why ‘We’ May Be the Book for Now

Posted in Book, critique, review, Ridley ParkTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
2–3 minutes

Every time the news cycle coughs up another surveillance scandal, someone posts an Orwell meme. When pharmaceutical companies peddle happy pills, a Huxley meme pops up. 1984 and Brave New World have become the twin saints of dystopian shorthand, invoked as lazily as “Kafkaesque” or “Orwellian” whenever someone feels spooked by authority.

And yet, these two canonical nightmares don’t quite capture the mess we’re in. Our world is less Orwell’s boot stamping on a face, less Huxley’s soma lullaby, and more Zamyatin’s forgotten gem: We.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

NB: As my regular readers may know, I am an author and a philosopher. I decided to post this here – being about books – but from a philosophical perspective.

1984: The Boot and the Telescreen

Orwell’s vision of perpetual war, Newspeak, and state terror is always good for a scare. Yes, we have endless surveillance, but here’s the trick: nobody had to force us. We carry the telescreens in our pockets and call them iPhones. We gleefully sell our data for dopamine pellets disguised as “likes.” The Ministry of Truth hasn’t so much rewritten history as buried it under an avalanche of memes, cat videos, and outrage cycles. Orwell’s nightmare had to be imposed. Ours is volunteered.

Brave New World: The Soma Holiday

Huxley saw a culture distracted into oblivion – sex, drugs, and feelies. It resonates because the entertainment-industrial complex has outpaced even his imagination. We live in a time when attention spans collapse under TikTok’s weight, when “self-care” is code for medicated oblivion, and when consumption doubles as identity. But Huxley underestimated how much suffering we’d tolerate alongside our pleasures. His world was too tidy. Ours is messy: opioids meet social media, Prozac meets precarity.

We: The Transparent Cage

Here’s where Zamyatin earns his eerie prescience. Written in 1921, We imagines a society of glass walls, total transparency, and algorithmic order. People don’t need to be beaten into compliance; they celebrate their own reduction to predictable ciphers. Privacy is seen as deviance. Sound familiar? From fitness trackers to mood apps to your browsing history, we’re already busy quantifying ourselves into oblivion. Where Orwell needed torture and Huxley needed narcotics, Zamyatin needed only maths and consent.

Why We Now?

Because it shows the nightmare where people joyfully give themselves away. That’s not speculative fiction anymore; it’s our social contract with Big Tech, with influencer culture, with the dopamine economy. We don’t need Ministries or Somas when we’ve willingly built the glass house and handed over the keys.

So next time someone posts that Orwell vs Huxley meme, hand them Zamyatin. He may not have the brand recognition, but he has the sharper scalpel. And if you haven’t cracked We yet, do it soon – before it stops feeling like a novel and starts reading like user documentation.

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Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and the Politics of Imagination

Posted in Book, critique, Ridley Park, Sci-Fi, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
1–2 minutes

As I’ve been working through Octavia Butler’s Dawn, I’ve realised why science fiction as a genre rarely resonates with me. It isn’t the aliens or the starships; it’s the scaffolding. Sci-Fi carries the weight of the Modernist project – questions posed and quickly answered, problems rationally explained, the reader guided toward the “lesson.” It feels like indoctrination: tidy, didactic, instructional.

Butler versus Butler (on a bed of Beauvoir)
Companion piece on Philosophics Blog
Audio: NotebookLM podcast summarising this topic.

Fantasy, strangely enough, I tolerate even less. Where science fiction pushes forward, fantasy looks backward. Sci-Fi imagines the future of the Modern experiment: technology, politics, survival scenarios, all with a rationalist bent. Fantasy imagines the past of the same experiment: kings, bloodlines, prophecies, destiny. One proclaims progress, the other tradition, but both insist on role conformity.

This struck me as almost political: science fiction reads like fodder for Liberals and Progressives, those who believe we can build better systems if only we’re clever enough. Fantasy, meanwhile, often aligns with a Conservative ethos – a return to order, hierarchy, and providence, just with dragons and spells thrown in. Both are catechisms of Modernity, just oriented in opposite directions.

It may just be me. I don’t identify with the Modern project, and so the genres that proselytise it – looking forward or looking back – leave me cold. I prefer literature that unsettles, that leaves silence where there might have been certainty, that lets ambiguity breathe. But for many, Sci-Fi and Fantasy provide something else entirely: reassurance.

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Thank You for Sustenance Reviews

Posted in Book, critique, review, Ridley Park, Sci-Fi, Sustenance, WritingTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

Sustenance (available here) was free for everyone on Kindle on 8 and 9 September. My goal was to provide access to the book for exposure with the hope of getting ratings and reviews. It’s still early, but I’d like to report that over 100 people downloaded the Kindle version. Now, I’ll share some details.

  • The Kindle version was downloaded 106 times in the past two days.
  • Some read it from their KindleUnlimited accounts
  • Some bought physical copies
  • Some people rated the book; some even left reviews on Amazon or Goodreads

The ratings and reviews are mixed, but all are welcome. Few people rate books; even fewer review them, so I appreciate the effort.

I got 3 ratings and 2 reviews on Amazon: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐, ⭐⭐⭐⭐, and ⭐. A one-star review. Thanks for that, too.

The ⭐rating didn’t leave a review, so I don’t know why they didn’t like it. I don’t know what types of books they read or this is exatcly what they prefer – they just didn’t like this. Still, at least they took the time to do it.

As a former statistician who has worked with survey data, I find this to be similar – most people don’t respond to surveys. Most people don’t engage in call-in shows. Most often, the people who respond either love or hate the topic so much that they feel compelled to broadcast their opinions. The people who say “meh” won’t even bother.

KindleUnlimited notwithstanding, I have no idea how people engage with a book. I have purchased and downloaded more books than I can read in a lifetime – probably multiple lifetimes. Sometimes, I just want to have access to a classic in case the mood strikes me; sometimes a book comes into view, and I convince myself that when I have the time, I might read it. I have no way of knowing.

Image: Sustenance Trope Board

I’m guilty of some single-star ratings without leaving a review, so I am in no position to point fingers. Sometimes a book seems bad that you want to warn the world, but you don’t want to expend more time on the endeavour that you already have.

I took this screengrab of 1-star ratings from Goodreads – some have reviewers, others don’t.

Image: 1-Star Reviews

Only one of these books is non-fiction, though I might argue that point, hence the single star.

One Ayn Rand was a class assignment. The other was someone telling me that I hadn’t judged her best work. In this case, her best work is one star, so I can skip anything else. Ditto for the Bible – complete dreck.

Authority, I only recently read. it was part of a trilogy. The other two books got 4 and 3 stars, so I’ll consider this one a dud. I’m not in good company, as it rated worse than the other two on average, yet still managed a 3.55. Some people liked it.

The last one was a class assignment for my son that I read with him. His rating matched mine. How it became an assignment is just testimony that there is no accounting for taste.

Also, as a public service, I’d be willing to bet that if you liked these books, you won’t like mine.

Octavia Butler’s Dawn

On the topic of rating— I am midway through Dawn. It’s mid. I was asked why I hadn’t read it as part of the dystopian Venn, so I picked it up. To be fair, I thought several of the stories on the Venn were mid themselves, classics or otherwise. Perhaps I’ll write a separate post on that someday.

Honestly, I’d give Dawn 2 stars. However, I also know that Sci-Fi is not a genre that resonates with me, so I’ll be generous and give it a star because it may just be my personal bias of not relating to Sci-Fi that’s the problem, and the book might be better received by fans of that genre. Offhand, the only fiction genres I dislike worse than Sci-Fi are Fantasy and Romance.

Aside from being Sci-Fi, it reads like YA fiction. There’s nothing inherently wrong with YA, but I am clearly not its target demographic. Other than that, it’s serviceable, but I prefer to read content that’s more complex and layered, not spoonfed to me.

Conclusion

Anyway, I’ve derailed this thread, but I wanted to clarify how I approach rating books and want to thank those of you who have taken the time on Sustenance. If you haven’t yet, I’d appreciate any rating from 1 to 5. Reviews earn extra karma points.

Octavia Butler Dawn Crosspost

Posted in Book, critique, review, Ridley Park, Sci-Fi, WritingTagged , , , , Leave a comment

I began reading Octavia Butler’s Dawn, and it raised some interesting* philosophical questions.

In the early chapters of Dawn, an alien declares that humanity has “committed mass suicide.” Sartre insists, “Inaction is still a choice.” Howard Zinn reminds us, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.” Each collapses complexity into the fiction of agency, a story that props up Modernist notions of responsibility and blame. But what if agency itself is an unnecessary fiction? I’ve explored this tension in a new essay on my Philosophics blog:

On Agency, Suicide, and the Moving Train

Someone on social media, commenting on my Dystopian Venn post, asked me why I hadn’t read Octavia E Butler. Challenge accepted.

* Questions interesting to me.

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