User Profile

Kalle Kniivilä

kallekn@kirja.casa

Joined 2 years, 7 months ago

Journalist på Sydsvenskan. Finns mest på Mastodon: mastodonsweden.se/@kallekn Ruotsinsuomalainen toimittaja. Lueskelen kaikenlaista monella kielellä, ja kirjoitankin. www.kniivila.net

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Kalle Kniivilä's books

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reviewed Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

Nicola Griffith: Ammonite (EBook, 2002, Del Rey)

Change or die: the only options available on the Durallium Company-owned planet GP. The planet's …

Dystopia more credible than utopia

For some reason is seems easier to come up with a credible dystopia than a credible utopia. The Company which seems to be running a lot of planets in this universe is all too similar to a lot of companies in the existing world, and the first half of the book would easily get four stars from me. But the people of Jeep are just too much fantasy for me to digest. Mysticism thinly veiled as "science". Could have bought the societal part, but genetic memory and healing with psychic fields or whatever was just too much. Oh well, probably I'm just too boring for this book.

Richard Powers: Bewilderment (Hardcover, 2021, W. W. Norton & Company)

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual …

Accurate and troubling

We are in the USA with a president very similar to Trump 2 and the world is going down the drain. It's a Ponzi scheme planet, as the protagonist describes it. A very accurate and plausible near future, well written and thought provoking. Greta Thunberg is in the book though, Swiss in this iteration of the universe. I would give the book a strong 5, but for one thing: the underlying premise that medication for mental problems is a Bad Thing and should be avoided at all costs, while other ways of altering brain chemistry could save the world. Maybe this is needed to make the story work, but I still find it troubling.