User Profile

lown

lown@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 7 months ago

doing tiny goods.

i build open source software, write about anti-capitalist utopias, and am working on a video game called teen witch tactics.

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lown's books

Currently Reading

2025 Reading Goal

80% complete! lown has read 12 of 15 books.

reviewed Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos) by Dan Simmons (Hyperion Cantos)

Dan Simmons: Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos) (2017, Del Rey)

Stunning

The style is probably my favourite aspect of this excellent book. Each of the six stories on which it is built could be a novella in its own right. Each is different, beautifully written, captivating, horrible, funny, deeply weird. It's the Canterbury Tales in space, yes, but also it's heartbreaking, sexy, political. It's aged really well. It's very hetero, but honestly it's also a tiny bit camp. The only thing I have to say against this book is the cliffhanger ending, but Simmons clearly has so much more time to spend in this incredible world, so I can't really hold that against him.

Annalee Newitz: The Future of Another Timeline (Hardcover, 2019, Tor Books)

The Future of Another Timeline is a 2019 science-fiction novel by Annalee Newitz. The feminist …

A Hot, Hot Mess

This book combined some passionate, fascinating research into 1890s Chicago, womens' liberation and feminist movements; a horrible, deeply affecting, deeply real story about growing up a 90s suburban punk in an abusive family; the realities of being a minority scientist in a poorly-respected field in the 2020s; and a surprising amount of truly gruesome murder.

These streams all have very different vibes, and yet they are - sort of successfully - held together in a somewhat uneven sf plot where time machines are anchored into the Earth's rock, have been familiar to us for thousands of years, and are firmly woven into human history.

I was frequently left feeling a bit frustrated because Newitz's enthusiasm for particular historical subjects made the plot jump around wildly, leaving big holes where I felt a sense of realism, of grounding, of human connection was really missing. The sections about Beth, the 90s suburban …