2023 #41: Landscape with Invisible Hand (Anderson)

 

Landscape with Invisible Hand by M.T. Anderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: I know the author.

If Salvador Dali and H.G. Wells birthed a novella together, this is what I imagine it might look like. It is a model of crafting dystopia, wherein humankind seemingly has welcomed our vuvv overlords, and "creativity" becomes the currency of survival--at least for a time. Seemingly very few stones are left unturned as the book takes aim at the climate crisis, capitalistic inequity, voyeurism of social media...just to name a few.

While marketed as a book for young adults, I think anyone who enjoys satirical dystopian fiction would enjoy this. My only issue was that it seemed too short--I didn't get to invest deeply in any of the characters, but as they are stand-ins for you, me, and possibility, I guess that makes sense.

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2023 #40:Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Zevin)

 

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Is this a book about gaming? Yes and no. Is it a book about love? Very much so. Love and life are a series of restarts, and this works better as a theme in Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow than a plot device. The characters are vibrant and take turns being exasperating and insufferable--in a good way should we choose to see it occasionally in ourselves. The character of Marx, in particular, is so well-crafted by Zevin that the reader is captured by him along with everyone else in his fictional world. But Marx can only really shine because of his contrast to Sam and Sadie, and his function as an anchor in the tempests constantly created by those two characters.

There's a lot here that isn't cliché. Sadie's family is wealthy. But they are just that. Her grandmother and her mother aren't stereotypes of the wealthy and privileged, as witnessed in Freda's counsel to Sadie about charity and friendship. Not that rich folks need defense or apologetics, but it was refreshingly humanizing to be able to like characters who happen to have money. There are other issues that get just a brief nod (appropriation), and others that seem to be in the background but are fairly central to the story (disability, race).

For the characters and the prose this book deserves every star. Marx encapsulates beautifully the underpinning of ludic existence: "It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever. (336)." Even if our play is not captured in pixels and bytes, we can see ourselves in these dreams of the infinite, and so this is a book for not only gamers, but anyone who dares to dream.

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