johnny dangerously. reviewed The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts
Review of 'The Thing Itself' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I am constantly bemoaning the lack of literary SFF, any speculative fiction, horror especially, that tries to grapple with bigger questions than 'cool magic system' and 'but what if the hero was actually... a bad guy'. I only ask for a crumb, really, just tiny evidence of forethought.
Adam Roberts has provided me with a philosophical feast, replete with complex and nuanced ideas about the nature of human love, God, indifference, and how we approach the universe. The solution to the Fermi paradox was not the friends we made along the way; perhaps the answer is that we are the aliens, because we make painful, artificial divisions between each other, and so we will never truly be able to reach farther than our own front gardens.
No review will do this book justice. The esteem I feel for it, like our limited perception of the universe, is limitless.
