Category Archives: Book Review – Fiction

the cyborg moths are finally here!

Well, they’re finally here – the cyborg moth slaves. First it was cockroaches and I didn’t say much because, well, they’re cockroaches. But moths – they’re just one step from butterflies, and it just doesn’t seem like you should do this to butterflies. From butterflies the obvious next step is Paul Mcauley’s cyborg baboon-human hybrids. If you read his book of short stories The Invisible Country, it is not until about the second page that you start to think this sort of technology could raise some ethical issues.

 

California by Edan Lepucki

California: A Novel

Here’s a new entry in the apocalyptic fiction genre: California by Edan Lepucki. I haven’t read the book yet, only a review in the New York Times. Anyway here is what the NYT has to say:

…characters traverse a cross-section of mid-collapse landscape, framed by the gradual decline of civilization. This approach may seem too optimistic given dire news about melting icecaps and acidic oceans, but it does allow for a reading of the novel as satire, skewering the elements of modern life that have brought us to this tipping point…

Perhaps the world as we know it will indeed end this way for many Americans: terrified of porcupines, longing for the sound of S.U.V.s, unable to ­distinguish between an artifact and a keepsake, helped to find temporary sanctuary by the last black man on earth. If it does, we won’t be able to say that “California” didn’t warn us.

There’s also something about a turkey baster. Hmm…I’m not sure this will immediately float to the top of my reading list.