Authors just can't get a slack, can they? He writes an amazing physics sci-fi, and the reader (me) just goes "I don't know, the videogame sounds sus".

This book I tried to rush to finish last year, but didn't manage by about an hour, so I started anew. And it was worth it. I enjoy art so much more if I take my time with it, taking breaks when I start losing interest or need to take time to take something in.

Listening for the second time, the videogame still sounded sus, but it was a guy who doesn't play much games making guesses about how the game works and, I think, getting it wrong. Specifically, the protagonist guessed that some char was a player not an NPC, but if the game was multiplayer it wouldn't make any sense, so I assume it's a single player game. Even so, there's very little metagaming among players going on for such an involved game.

I kind of wish I knew the physics that were fantasized about to know how much it was actually fantasy, but at least it was novel fantasy and not wormholes or some such.

But all that is just backdrop to set up a unique "what if" for exploring people and the people aspect was great.