Reviews and Comments

A non-revolutionary non-authoritarian non-technocratic vision for computer-facilitated democratic socialist economic feedback and simulation in Allende's Chile. Follows threads (through archived correspondence and interviews with many key people) of Chilean officials enthusiasm for non-Soviet non-capitalist forms of state control, making do with limited computing and communication capacity, and the socialist shift in UK consultant Stafford Beer's flavor of Cybernetics - organisms adapting to changing environment, structural relational change not internal behavioral change, revolution though devolution of power. Within the narrow and dry subject, the author does an excellent job connecting and contextualizing relations to global power dynamics, gender dynamics, and the waxing and waning of technological solutions in political turmoil.

Small town teenage summer before the internet, feeling like an outsider in a place that is the same as everywhere else and always a half-beat in the past, making something weird and making something out of nothing, and holding on to that for feeling alive. At half-way I wondered, and the story pulled on ahead where it needed to go.

A promising opening of mysterious object and dry elder academic panel bickering.... oh don't let this be just a cool exploration of the physical properties of this space... in space... with bonus tangential misogyny... oh, the physical properties and some cold-war-commentary at least accelerate... pity for the futuristic anachronisms, 1973 feels closer to Jules Verne than to us.

Combines several collections chronologically, fitting to see the constancies - place, death, seasons, working the land - and tease out the shifting tones of anger, protest, acceptance, and close attention in the raindrops: "We have all / been here before."

Adventurously broad and inventive part one of a middle grade epic - solidly action-packed sci-fi, featuring school-age protagonists struggling to save the day with mysterious baddies and aliens battling over the solar system and galaxy.

On the one hand, this is fictive academic non-fiction, with the conceit of oral histories to make it direct and also obviate even a latent plot or characterization. On the other hand, it is communal utopia spun from our current set of dystopias, centering imagined voices young and old across a range of questions of care and process and identity and standing up together as our world came apart and we needed each other.

Ref from Cybernetic Revolutionaries in distinguishing Beer's British psychiatric and embodied adaptation slant of cybernetics from the US military driven top-down numeric control approach.

Clear and illustrative use of language shines through this (and is immediately recognizable from Limits to Growth). Really outstanding short introduction to systems thinking, why systems surprise us, and why systems thinking is also no silver bullet for control of the complex systems that make up our world. The best (and final) chapters of this book are available online www.donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ and www.donellameadows.org/dancing-with-systems/

Incredible pace and a depth of painful experiences that beautifully if implausibly bend towards light and attempting to right wrongs when our characters break loose and are able to reflect. Despite some structural misgivings, I loved everywhere this went.

Smart cozy skewering of English class and respectability, old Europe's wonder and modern sensibility, flipping effortlessly between interior mental changes and a range of characters observations with the author's judgement right alongside.

Solid YA adventure, kinda a whole lot of things in here by the end though, spinning out from a well-storied premise of bodily teleportation and trust.

Touching biography, first half in Japan second in California - the life of balancing between conservative hierarchy in service and childlike wonder in welcoming mistakes. Either of these paths could be selfless or ego-driven, and either might require a deep bravery to see through.

breathtaking reflection on love and betrayal in a lightly imagined world of set against an impossible mountain, lyrical and at some distance, the characters storied pasts are at times sharply filled with notoriety, at others intimately obscured in a chill fog.

Organized around several individuals' stories of intractable conflict (in local politics in California, in gang violence in Chicago, in post-rebel Colombia, in cultural exchange between US political factions) to relate to larger and smaller familiar scenes of us-vs-them in-group out-group binary simplification goaded by those who benefit from the conflict. For those looking for an answer to the larger problems, it is the same as for the smaller: active listening and complicating the narrative to give space and time for new perspectives. Yep.

Good dark YA climate fiction with a lot of danger and exploration into a recognizably collapsed society. Does not quite rise out of the rounded-off ease of YA, and the hope it offers in a future the author hopes we don't bring about is meager.