Upgrade

C'est dans le titre ! Upgrade est un très bon Marvel. Tout y est : - Le gentil et la méchante, que tout rapproche, mais que tout oppose, tous deux dotés de super-pouvoirs. - Le monde est sauvé par le gentil face aux intentions de la méchante. - Une technologie nouvelle, source des super-pouvoirs, mais dont l'usage est détourné par la méchante (inconsciente qu'elle est !). - Le happy-end. - Et même la séquence post-générique, pour faire réfléchir.

Même sentiment ambivalent, donc, que devant un bon Marvel. La portée philosophie de l'œuvre n'est clairement pas le but. Ce n'est pas de la science-fiction non plus, tant la science est maltraitée. Ce n'est pas vraiment du fantastique. En résumé : c'est une histoire de supers-héros, comme on les aime ! Car oui, Upgrade fait passer un excellent moment, et se laisse difficilement mettre de côté.

Et si l'on veut trouver une morale à cette histoire (sans révélations malencontreuses), il suffit d'écouter Spiderman : un grand pouvoir implique de grandes responsabilités.

On one hand, I ripped through this book in literally less than 24 hours. (Guessing it was 5 or so hours of reading.) On the other, this is a deeply flawed book in so many ways.

If I were rating this on sheer readability, and my own compulsion to finish the novel, it'd be 5 stars. If I were rating it on concept and impressiveness of its ideas, it might get 0.5.

Just, please remind me to never, EVER, write a story where the premise is the character is smarter than everyone else. I just think, it's likely that it's an impossible task. Because, as an author, you have to think of every possibility that your readers might think of, and (somehow!?) believe that your ideas, the ones you write your supergenius having, are going to be believably smarter than all of them. There's just so much arrogance there. So much hubris. Imagine thinking you wrote a character whose actions telegraph an intelligence greater than all of your readers! Imagine!

So yeah, there were several points where I felt like the main character, who supposedly now has an IQ over 200, just didn't take any time at all to consider any alternatives to their actions. Even giving the author the benefit of the doubt, assuming the character did the equivalent to planning for months in the blink of an eye, I still think there were several painfully dumb decisions depicted.

And one of the dumbest is in the very end of the novel, revealed in the epilogue. A thing that it's revealed the character does that is possibly one of the my least favorite conclusions to a novel that I've ever read. It's just painful to me how bad I think it is.

On one hand, I ripped through this book in literally less than 24 hours. (Guessing it was 5 or so hours of reading.) On the other, this is a deeply flawed book in so many ways.

If I were rating this on sheer readability, and my own compulsion to finish the novel, it'd be 5 stars. If I were rating it on concept and impressiveness of its ideas, it might get 0.5.

Just, please remind me to never, EVER, write a story where the premise is the character is smarter than everyone else. I just think, it's likely that it's an impossible task. Because, as an author, you have to think of every possibility that your readers might think of, and (somehow!?) believe that your ideas, the ones you write your supergenius having, are going to be believably smarter than all of them. There's just so much arrogance there. So much hubris. Imagine thinking you wrote a character whose actions telegraph an intelligence greater than all of your readers! Imagine!

So yeah, there were several points where I felt like the main character, who supposedly now has an IQ over 200, just didn't take any time at all to consider any alternatives to their actions. Even giving the author the benefit of the doubt, assuming the character did the equivalent to planning for months in the blink of an eye, I still think there were several painfully dumb decisions depicted.

And one of the dumbest is in the very end of the novel, revealed in the epilogue. A thing that it's revealed the character does that is possibly one of the my least favorite conclusions to a novel that I've ever read. It's just painful to me how bad I think it is.