Antolius rated Remote Control: 4 stars

Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa--a name …
I mostly read sci-fi and fantasy in all shapes and sizes; paper, e-books and audiobooks.
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24% complete! Antolius has read 6 of 25 books.
The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa--a name …
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It was a bit weird for me to read Gibson outside of Sci-Fi genre. For example, while his brand heavy descriptions give credence & lived-in texture to a more fantastical cyberpunk setting, here they can be a bit cumbersome. Even in Pattern Recognition they were thematically appropriate, but here they felt kinda out of place.
In light of recent 2020s tech trends It was also funny to see a purportedly "non-fictional" 2000s world in which high fidelity AR goggles are commonplace, but everyone looses their minds about GPS.
Otherwise, the novel is perfectly serviceable. Pace is good, character motivations mostly check out. There's some "eccentric billionaire with goldfish-like attention span" reasoning, but that too seems plausible. In the end mystery is revealed, plot points solved, good guys win & bad guys lose.
In the end it left me craving for a more traditional Sci-Fi read.
Content warning Discussing some plot and world building details
Unfortunately this book failed to resonate with me. Its themes all sound interesting: AI gods, mad scientists, cosmic horrors. But its delivery made it all too unbelievable for me.
For example, AI gods depicted here are obviously sadistic, bordering on comic book villainy. Yet the general populous regards them as loving and worships them with honest devotion. Now, this by itself would not be a problem: I'd gladly read a book that explored this dichotomy. However, this book kinda glosses over it at first, and then it makes revealing gods' true nature to people a key part of the plan to resolve the plot. At no point does it explore or reflect on why everyone kept ignoring the obvious signs before. It is content to ignore this aspect of human condition. Which again would be fine, had it not been critical for the plot itself.
Science receives a similar treatment. Both the main protagonist and the main antagonist are supposed to be brilliant scientists. However whenever it comes to them doing anything scientific the depiction of it devolves into mysticism and stereotypical "the energy did it" wordage. Which would not be a problem in a more soft sci-fi story, but this book in particular keeps insisting on the scientific angle. Without delivering it.
In the end the story is interesting, and some of the concepts it plays around are worth exploring. But it fails to deliver on its full potential.
I really appreciate how time travel is envisioned and portrayed in this book. It has no logic holes and it avoids paradoxes, e.g. the future is predetermined here. It doesn't make up too much technical details to explain how it works, because techno babble is not what this story is about.
It is, as the name suggest, about impact of time travel on human psychology, but also sociology. It envisions a culture emerging inside the organization of time travelers. It explores what taboos it develops, what language, how it operates considering the foresight available to it, etc.
On a backdrop of this thoughtful world building Mascarenhas explores inter-personal relationships of her characters. There's a revenge subplot, a romance subplot, a power struggle subplot. They all intertwine wonderfully between time periods and characters; often the same character coming from different time periods. It does take a little bit of concentration to …
I really appreciate how time travel is envisioned and portrayed in this book. It has no logic holes and it avoids paradoxes, e.g. the future is predetermined here. It doesn't make up too much technical details to explain how it works, because techno babble is not what this story is about.
It is, as the name suggest, about impact of time travel on human psychology, but also sociology. It envisions a culture emerging inside the organization of time travelers. It explores what taboos it develops, what language, how it operates considering the foresight available to it, etc.
On a backdrop of this thoughtful world building Mascarenhas explores inter-personal relationships of her characters. There's a revenge subplot, a romance subplot, a power struggle subplot. They all intertwine wonderfully between time periods and characters; often the same character coming from different time periods. It does take a little bit of concentration to track it all, but doing so is super rewarding.
The characters are endearing. The plot is riddled with puzzles and mysteries. The concept and world building are thoroughly thought through. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in Sci-Fi more broadly, and specifically soft science fiction.