I decided this year to read something that entered the public domain for fun. I chose The Maltese Falcon. It's a bit of a hard book to judge. It was a story and style that was revolutionary but of course was fated to be reduced to the tropes it created.
The writing was terse, cinematic, and easy to read. The pacing was fairly balanced and went quickly throughout. The morals are unsurprisingly a mirror of its time. So... for me parts of it were kinda gross. There was not a female shoulder Detective Spade did not feel entitled enough to not touch.
The characters were not always the brightest because they were trapped into rigid archetypes (the femme fatale who can only be sexy or coy, the brash young henchman, etc.) But I did feel something simmering beneath the surface... especially of how Spade's power was also a cage of sorts. So every victory he won due to his privilege and self-imposed rules felt hollow and pyrrhic by the last sentence.
That being said, one can acknowledge that a work is important without liking it and that was the case for me. As I read the book I kept joking to myself that the story was a "safe space for the misogynistically inclined" (I made up the word :p), and that's why I couldn't enjoy it very much and rated it one star.
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Goodbye, Eri is a one-shot manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, of Chainsaw Man fame. It was a lovely story, with quiet spaces allowing important questions about creativity, grief, love, and remembrance to breathe. It has a layered meta quality to it that for me would merit a re-read later.
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The Walking Man was a calming manga I read over a weekend. I liked the introspective vibe and the intricate artwork. There was not much to read really in this one because the premise is going on this path with the main character as he sees life unfold as he strolls around town.
I preferred the main part of my edition though. I have an expanded version which tacks on some extra one-offs and the tonal shift of those were a bit jarring because they flow at the end of the main narrative with no transition. Imagine 90% being all fluffy and wholesome and then suddenly the introspective lens is turned more on melancholy of losing a lover after starting an office affair. Which isn't bad, just weirdly out of place with the rest.
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I finally read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep! I've been meaning to for a few years. I enjoyed the atmospheric noir vibe. There is a lot of food for thought about the value of intelligence, empathy, and what it means to be alive. Though written in 1968, it didn't feel dated in most respects which was a pleasant surprise. The writing style was terse, the pacing was pretty solid and the exposition felt natural and easy to frame as I read the story. It was interesting reading this so quickly after The Maltese Falcon because it was like seeing an author play with the genre's DNA to get something wholly fresh while keeping the stoic atmosphere. I feel that this brought the more philosophical aspects to the spotlight.
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The Machine Stops is a short story from 1909 speculating a dystopian world where humans outsource their entire lives to the little buttons in the hives they inhabit within the titular Machine. I wouldn't be surprised if Wall-E was inspired by it to an extent, because it reminds me of the people living away from Earth in the film.
It's short, but dense with oddly prescient speculation about our relationship with technology. About how it makes our connections to each other erode and how time compresses as we lean more into modern conveniences. The prose was excellent. Poetic at times but without frills to take away from the story.
The Machine makes me think of Harlan Ellison's AM. They are not similar, but they serve as symbols to show different facets of our relationship with intelligent tech.
The last thing that stood out was how the people in the Machine kept going on about the concept of "having an idea." At first blush, one thinks they incentivize creative thinking. But no. The word ideas is more about disseminating accepted pre-existing thoughts. They punish experience and anything that cannot fit their catalog of ideas. In a very subtle way, this reminds me of algorithmic content. A social media creator who wants to put their voice out there soon realizes that they reward virality and the repetition of an idea. Not terrible, but perhaps a dangerous step toward homogeny.
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Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.
– E.M. Forster (The Machine Stops)