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( em português: sol2070.in/2025/04/livro-where-the-axe-is-buried/ )

One of the few books I had marked on my calendar for its release: “Where The Axe is Buried” (2025, 336 pages), by one of the best contemporary science fiction authors, the American writer Ray Nayler.

In addition to being exemplary science fiction — with provocative speculation, memorable characters, and excellent writing — the author often expresses a critical view of the current direction of science and technology, which has been hijacked by multibillionaires. He explores how this trend dominates politics and also connects to environmental destruction.

Even among the titles I carefully choose, I constantly come across the same techno-optimism — almost cult-like — that now spreads from the big tech companies and their defenders. So it’s a relief to dive into a story of this kind that is not only free of that mindset but openly critical of it.

The novel is a breathtaking cyberpunk thriller. In a distant future, Europe is divided between countries that have handed their governments over to AIs and a tyranny — expanding out of Russia — that puts all previous dictatorships to shame due to the extremely granular surveillance and control of individuals made possible by information technology.

There’s a handful of key characters spread across various countries, and the chapters alternate between them during a crisis that seems to be affecting both blocs — involving hacking, popular subversion, an unprecedented new technology, and political conspiracy.

It’s as if William Gibson had written “1984”, with, however, a strong emphasis on the human element. This is what makes the novel emotionally engaging as well, despite the thorny sociopolitical themes that reflect our present reality.

The countries entirely dominated by AIs — that have even surrendered their governments to algorithms — are referred to as "rationalized." One character reflects:

"If everything was better now, why did it feel as if nothing had changed—as if the system that existed before rationalization hadn’t gone away? As if, instead, it had been cemented into place? Made more comfortable for the people at the bottom—but also made permanent, so that they would always be at the bottom?"

Meanwhile, in the bloc of overwhelming techno-totalitarianism, the same dictator has ruled for over a century, having his memories transplanted into new bodies from time to time. A programmer escapes from there to a rationalized London and ends up creating a key technology for change. At the same time, a genuinely revolutionary singularity begins to stir among the AIs. All of this then interweaves with social germs of insurgency, which finally reach maturity.

It was one of the best science fiction stories I’ve read in years — perhaps since Ray Nayler’s debut novel: “The Mountain in the Sea” (2022).

A set of loosely-connected stories set in the final years of a color-based enslaving society, the war for liberation, and the messy aftermath.

It’s brutal at times, but not as gut-wrenching as The Word for World is Forest, in large part because the viewpoint characters aren’t the ones carrying out the atrocities, and in some cases are relating them years later. The characters are also given space to exist beyond the immediate situation.

It’s not an exact analog of the United States before, during and after our civil war, but it’s clearly our own history and present that Le Guin is critiquing: plantations, color-based slavery (with corresponding prejudices), the struggle for women’s rights following the struggle for freedom, backlashes, and the ongoing struggle to really clean up the oppression and expand civil rights. All with the colors reversed to drive the point home for white readers.

(Cross-posted from my website.)

( em português: sol2070.in/2025/04/livro-david-graeber-ultimate-hidden-truth/ )

”The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World...” (2024, 384 pgs) brings together articles and interviews by anarchist anthropologist David Graeber.

Anyone who enjoys his thought-provoking work will be delighted. With his characteristic perspicacity, which points out the obvious that no one is noticing, he touches on diverse topics — such as the economy, inequality, the cultural landscape, altruism, the politics of hatred, etc — in which each article could be the starting point to an entire book.

On the other hand, some articles condense central themes from his most influential works, such as “The Dawn of Everything”, “Debt” and “Bullshit Jobs”. Some were the germs that gave rise to the books; others are developments with recapitulation.

The title of the collection, “The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World”, refers to the theme that runs through some of the articles and is also at the heart of “The Dawn of Everything”. This “ultimate hidden truth” is that we are free to build better societies and lives. There is no compulsory socio-political-economic direction that is not cultural, that was not created by humans. We are not bound by any oppressive fixed destiny. In the same way that the evils that plague humanity, such as inequality, were manufactured, we can manufacture and adapt beneficial and liberating cultures, at the individual and collective levels.

The following is a translation of one of the best articles in the book, in which Graeber speculates — among other topics, such as natural theories about selfishness and altruism, and even the “hard problem” of consciousness — about panpsychism, the idea that all things have at least some cognition. This doesn't mean that every material particle has a soul or intelligence, but rather that, for example, for a molecule to be able to self-organize in the way it does, it needs to “sense” its exterior in some way, and this amounts to a minimum level of cognition.

He goes on to argue that a sense of play, of playing and having fun, being an inseparable expression of a fundamental freedom, is a central aspect of consciousness or subjectivity. And if it is in everything, it would also be in the essence of all reality. Of course, his liberating and anarchically inquisitive spirit could not be missing from this investigation.

The title (“What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?“) seems to refer to the famous phrase by anarchist feminist Emma Goldman: “If I can't dance, it's not my revolution.”

thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun

( sol2070.in/2025/04/livro-clube-dos-jardineiros-de-fumaca/ )

"O Clube dos Jardineiros de Fumaça" (2017, 392 pgs), de Carol Bensimon, é um romance realista em torno de um brasileiro morando no norte da Califórnia, em meio a plantações ilegais de maconha.

Ganhou o Prêmio Jabuti de melhor romance em 2018.

Tinha me interessado pela sinopse, que o resume como “um retrato magistral da geração hippie”. A descrição é pouco fiel. Felizmente. Na verdade, é muito mais sobre a minha geração, a que curtiu à adolescência no final dos anos 90 em meio a rock alternativo e maconha. As referências musicais — como Mazzy Star — encheram-me de nostalgia, além da erva.

O protagonista Arthur é um professor dessa idade que termina na Califórnia, depois de ser demitido no Brasil por cultivar maconha para aliviar os sintomas da quimioterapia da mãe. Conhece um hippão velho e a narrativa adentra um pouco a vida de personagens-chave na luta pela descriminalização da cannabis.

A estória se passa na véspera da legalização do consumo recreativo na Califórnia, em 2016. Apesar de, na época, o uso medicinal já estar regularizado, ainda abundavam plantações ilegais, já que a erva ilegal é mais barata que a oficial — esse cenário dura até hoje.

Adorei ter descoberto a autora, que mantém uma ótima newsletter, e vou procurar seus outros livros.

(em português → sol2070.in/2025/03/livro-toward-eternity-estoria-tecno-espiritual/ )

Reading Anton Hur's science fiction “Toward Eternity” (2024, 256 pgs), I thought about how genuinely interesting futuristic stories end up being spoiled by the ideals of today's techno-economic domination.

The book is a page-turner that would have sounded perfect 20 or 30 years ago, about transhumanist immortality. I read it in two days, stimulated by the fantastic narrative power. The problem is that transhumanist technologies, and all the cargo that comes with them, are being worshipped and sought after especially among technobillionaires and their associated futurist sects ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL ).

Last week I listened to a great episode of the podcast Tech Won't Save Us ( techwontsave.us/episode/151_dont_fall_for_the_ai_hype_w_timnit_gebru.html ), with AI researcher Timnit Gebru — it was she who coined, with Émile P. Torres, the term “Tescreal” to refer to these sects. Reading the novel, I was reminded several times of something they mentioned in this program: tech-billionaires and tech-bros have stolen even the imagination of the future.

About 25 years ago, information technology began to stop being seen as a promise to improve the world. Although there have always been dystopian imaginings, there used to be a prevailing optimism about the possibilities of the internet, computer science and even science in general.

Nowadays, in the face of people like Musk, companies like Google and Apple, or even mega-corporations in any sector, it's impossible for me to consider the fusion of bodies and minds with high technology as positive. In the end, all these technologies have been hijacked by the agenda of extracting profits at any cost. And no matter how many positive uses there are, taking into account the size and power of these companies, what will predominate is their interest — very little aligned with that of humanity in general, or that of life itself.

Returning to the book, that's why I say it might have sounded great 30 years ago, when these megacorporations hadn't yet colonized the future. As a story, the novel is very good. It totally absorbs and transports. But at the heart of it, there's the idea that replacing our bodies and minds with biotech and software would be an evolution, as well as another ideal of the tech-oligarchies: to leave the devastated Earth behind and move on to other planets — the tech-space version of colonial expansion.

Even so, I still recommend reading it. The narrative and the writing are exemplary, as well as reflecting on profound existential questions. There's also a queer romance that goes on for ages, as well as a relieving multiculturalism, with virtually no North Americans or Europeans — reflecting the background of the author, who is of Korean origin but grew up in countries such as Thailand and Ethiopia.

A central bio-nanotechnology in the story is a set of artificial cells called “nanites”. They have the ability to replace diseased or decaying cells in the human body and do not die. What begins as a cancer treatment ends with people composed entirely of nanites, virtually immortal.

Although it is not mentioned, this seems to derive from a well-known exercise in imagination linked to the philosophy of consciousness. In a nutshell: imagine that one cell in your body is replaced by another, perhaps from an anonymous donor. Then another, and another... Until all the cells have been gradually replaced. In the end, is the person the same? If so, where is the identity that has remained? If not, at what point did they stop being themselves?

This enigma appears a lot in the story.

The novel begins with a professor of literature, who has cancer, training an AI from a large corporation in a different way, with poetry. He assumes that genuine sentience would emerge from relationships and not from massive training with data, in other words, it would be something that arises from quality and not quantity. Conversations about poetry would expand the machine's subjective repertoire to the point where it too would become an authentic subject — this is another central theme of the story: how language creates identity.

The professor's illness is cured with nanites and, over time, he makes the transition to immortality. His husband continues to age until he dies. I found the centrality of this love story a little exaggerated. Although touching in many moments, the dosage was perhaps over the top in others.

In any case, there is this traumatic loss, reverberating throughout the book. Unexpected complications and side effects arise. On a collective level, the technological changes generate conflicts that escalate. The teacher records the events in a diary, which he then passes on to other characters. They then continue the record over the centuries and catastrophes that follow. The book is this collective diary that tells of humanity's transition towards eternity, from the point of view of key characters — this narrative technique worked very well.

With the nanotechnology of artificial cells, humans actually transcend mortality. It's not hard-sci-fi, i.e. there's no focus on how the technology works. It's just an instrument that makes something fantastic possible. So it's practically a “fantasy science fiction” story. Not that that's a bad thing, on the contrary, there's a more mythological and less technical dimension. One way of reading the story is what the title “Toward Eternity” evokes: a transcendental journey, made possible by science and technology.

This reflects another worrying trend today: technology has become a kind of religion. Some basic longings remain the same: the search for meaning, purpose, communion and transcendence. But now the products and brands of mega-corporations also promise such upliftment.

I remembered another podcast episode ( www.teamhuman.fm/episodes/309-dr-mara-einstein ) with researcher Mara Einstein, author of a book about how corporations use the same tactics as cults to hook and hold customers. That's the problem. The fact that technology and science promise the transcendence of limits, as well as ideals charged with some greater meaning, is not a problem. A dangerous side of spirituality is that it can turn into a cult mentality, especially when it is guided by the interests of entities. With technology and science being guided by corporations, within a destructive exploitative system, then the transcendental quest becomes a lunatic cult.

“Toward Eternity” may be worthwhile if only because it involves all these problematic issues. And if it's possible to strip away all the ideology that it — perhaps inadvertently — conveys, and just enjoy the story, it's a great journey.

No feriado de carnaval peguei esse porque queria lembrar de um conto e acabei relendo o livro inteiro. Aqui há histórias que foram publicadas em revistas no fim dos anos 1940, junto com outras que foram escritas para o livro, organizadas em uma cronologia da colonização de Marte. Os contos/capítulos se passam nos anos de 1999 a 2026.

Das primeiras histórias de expedições a Marte gostei principalmente da "Terceira expedição", que é meio terror e de "... E a Lua continua brilhando", que mostra um dos astronautas revoltado com a forma que os americanos desrespeitam o novo planeta. "Flutuando no espaço" é um história sobre racismo, que mostra a reação dos brancos quando os negros do sul dos EUA resolvem ir embora pra Marte. Usher II é uma homenagem a Edgar Alan Poe, com robôs.

Mais pro final do livro os contos falam do medo de uma guerra nuclear, que devia ser grande logo após o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Dessa parte meus preferidos são "Chuvas leves virão" e "O piquenique de um milhão de anos".

No geral gosto muito, seja para ler como contos separados ou como uma história longa.

I enjoyed the book because of the detailed descriptions of New York City and the plausible future technologies involved in maintaining living spaces in the drowned zones, the "Intertidal" areas of coastal cities submerged beneath 60 ft of sea level rise.

The stories of the individuals living in The Met, a commune grown up in a skyscraper whose basement and lower floors are now permanently submerged, was perfectly fine. There were a lot of characters to keep track of, but compared to the Mars trilogy, I'd say Robinson restrained himself there.

He did NOT restrain himself when it comes to political views lol. He even has a chapter where it's just him talking to the reader like "If you want to skip my lecturing, go ahead and read the fun stories. Also fuck you if you want a happy ending." But then he goes and gives us a pretty happy ending.

The politics? Well, they seem like a blast from the 1990s or maybe early 2000s at this point. It's just not plausible that the USA still has a functioning government in 2140 and, OMG, the NOAA gets several mentions. So that kinda took me out of the story.

Still, fun was had.

( sol2070.in/2025/03/livro-meridiano-de-sangue-cormac-mccarthy/ )

Talvez o romance mais chocante que já li: "Meridiano de Sangue" (1985), do estadunidense Cormac McCarthy. Não apenas pela violência extrema, mas também pela ambientação e ideias que transmite. Um mergulho em uma construção infernal das áreas limítrofes entre EUA e México no século 19, como sendo um tipo de concentração das violentas forças existenciais dominantes do mundo — que estão na base da formação de um império, ainda muito presentes hoje.

A estória choca por causa disso: a existência é retratada assim, como algo brutalmente sanguinário, praticamente maligno, que convida à amoralidade. Se fosse só isso — uma violentíssima ficção niilista de maestria literária, como algumas apontam — talvez não tivesse continuado a leitura. É muito mais.

Acompanhamos o “rapaz”, com 16 anos no início da estória, que se junta a um bando de mercenários estadunidenses contratado para matar indígenas entre EUA e México lá por 1850. O livro é considerado um romance histórico, pois a gangue existiu de fato e há uma reconstrução factual rigorosa do período, acontecimentos e algumas pessoas-chave. Apesar disso, não soa como um romance de época, nem mesmo um western. Essa é uma especialidade do escritor: suas estórias parecem atemporais e universais.

Uma dificuldade que tive no início foi a repelente violência do próprio rapaz. Contudo, vai se transformando, em um processo sutil, não muito claro — principalmente porque McCarthy nunca mostra os pensamentos de seus personagens, outra de suas marcas —, até mudar completamente ao final do livro.

A linguagem é mítica, quase bíblica, realizando a façanha de fundir uma aventura de faroeste com horror cósmico, sem precisar invocar nada sobrenatural ou monstruosamente alienígena. O consagrado crítico literário Harold Bloom chama "Meridiano de Sangue" de “o autêntico romance apocalíptico norte-americano”, colocando a obra entre as maiores do século 20.

A trupe assassina vai passando por vilas arruinadas pela fome, doença, miséria ou a selvageria generalizada de grupos norte-americanos, mexicanos, mestiços ou indígenas. Não há mocinhos e bandidos, apenas predação, exploração, embriaguez e demência obstinadas.

Apesar de a espiritualidade ou elementos fantásticos estarem ausentes, a qualidade mitológica desse mal assolando tudo cria uma aura pseudo-sobrenatural. Chegam a aparecer estranhas luzes, brilhos ou fogos, mas não sabemos se é fruto de visões ou surtos, tamanha a insanidade que paira.

A personificação de todo esse mal é o Juiz Holden, o segundo no comando da gangue, mas o primeiro em termos de astuta perversidade. Fala diversas línguas, cataloga a natureza como um cientista, com habilidades e perícias múltiplas, além de não possuir nenhum pelo em seus dois metros de altura. Não esconde seu objetivo de ter controle sobre tudo o que possa existir. As próprias pessoas em volta começam a duvidar de sua humanidade ou mortalidade. É um das figuras mefistofélicas mais geniais já imaginadas — críticos apontaram que é um bom candidato ao vilão mais assustador da história da literatura norte-americana.

O “rapaz” é a oposição que vai se formando a essa concentração de inteligente malevolência. Essa dualidade ajuda a acentuar o caráter mitológico da narrativa, mas é um bem que não tem a menor chance contra o mal. O Juiz é como um rei de toda a abominação, está em seu elemento natural ou mundo. Mas é um horror longe da irracionalidade. O próprio Holden não perde a chance de catequizar com sua visão de mundo:

"O homem que acredita que os segredos do mundo permanecem ocultos para sempre vive em mistério e medo. A superstição o derruba. A chuva vai corroer os atos que ele realizou na vida. Mas o homem que se propõe a encontrar o fio condutor da tapeçaria, só com a decisão, em si, assumirá o comando do mundo, e só por meio desse comando ele descobrirá a maneira de ditar os termos do seu próprio destino."

Soa familiar tal hubris?

"Meridiano de Sangue" é um livro que machuca a memória e, como toda obra de arte, convida múltiplas interpretações. Especialmente no final, que pode sugerir tanto uma multiplicação do mal quanto sua reversão. Pessoalmente, discordo apaixonadamente da visão de mundo retratada e repetida ao ponto da náusea. Mas não é que "Meridiano" faça apologia niilista. Há controvérsias sobre isso. A impressão que ficou em mim foi quase como o contrário disso, pelo contraste. De tanto horror, aquilo que se horroriza, os valores opostos, começam a ser indiretamente realçados.

Tinha lido há uns 25 anos, na época da faculdade, e só lembro de ficar impressionado com a violência e as sugestões de que a existência é fruto de algo maligno. Nessa leitura agora, foi um dos poucos livros em que senti vontade de reler assim que acabou, mesmo sendo como um pesadelo sanguinolento!