Your review actually makes me more curious about the book.
Looks like I did a bad job then š. Iām interested as to why? If itās the physics bit, itās 2 pages out of a thousand pages book and then basically not mentioned again.
I never heard of the book before, so Iām starting from a baseline of zero curiosity prior to this review. :-)
But also, Iām curious about how all the pieces fit together, and what else might be banging around in those almost 1000 pages. Iām wondering if āthe signalā is a callback to the metavirus from Neal Stephensonās Snow Crash, and to William Burroughsās ālanguage is a virus from outer spaceā (which Stephenson was undoubtedly referencing too). I donāt quite trust your grounds for dismissing various concepts mentioned as impossible, and (as you say) concepts in SF can have other kinds of value even if they are literally impossible. Finally, whatever else it is, it is clearly a work of imagination, and such works can say something about their zeitgeist, or can be weird untimely works that stand alone.
Looks like I did a bad job then š. Iām interested as to why? If itās the physics bit, itās 2 pages out of a thousand pages book and then basically not mentioned again.
I never heard of the book before, so Iām starting from a baseline of zero curiosity prior to this review. :-)
But also, Iām curious about how all the pieces fit together, and what else might be banging around in those almost 1000 pages. Iām wondering if āthe signalā is a callback to the metavirus from Neal Stephensonās Snow Crash, and to William Burroughsās ālanguage is a virus from outer spaceā (which Stephenson was undoubtedly referencing too). I donāt quite trust your grounds for dismissing various concepts mentioned as impossible, and (as you say) concepts in SF can have other kinds of value even if they are literally impossible. Finally, whatever else it is, it is clearly a work of imagination, and such works can say something about their zeitgeist, or can be weird untimely works that stand alone.