The ONLY reason I did not rate this higher was the ending. I was really on board for the whole journey. I recognized that this book was not going to end on a necessarily happy note, but it definitely went in a direction that left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied. Perhaps it was the mood I was in when I read it. I think there is poetry to the ending and I suppose, were I to more deeply consider it, I might find a deeper meaning, but it didn't really resolve anything. It feels as though it's meant to be a drop of hope in a fatalistic pool. The rest of the book was really interesting and terrifying considering our world right now. There's just so much technology happening around us and the political machinations that twist words out of their proper meanings in order to suit their purposes, meant to be satirical in this novel, are all too close to the reality.
3.5/5
Quotes:
- "When was free will a good thing, and when was it an irritant? How might people be free in a way that was generally advantageous to society, rather than in a way that threatened the equilibrium? What did it mean, in a free society, to have free people making free decisions? Should free people occasionally be enticed toward decisions that might make them ultimately more free than the original decision they might have taken, had they taken their decisions freely? And, if decisions that were made less freely made people more free in the end, was free will actually such a good thing after all?" (34)
- "Yet, the other day he had seen a piece of graffiti on a wall in London, an image of a unicorn with an inscription beneath: 'Even though I know you don't exist, I still miss you in my garden...'" (191)
- "Of course, we are influenced all the time - by advertising, by fashion, by the media, by a host of further influences including Althusserian interpellation, or conformity, or fundamental societal givens, or orthodoxies, and so on. Society is a vast tapestry of influence, we might say, and very few of us manage to resist all such influences. Indeed, how might we know we had resisted? Where is the control in this experiment?" (211)
- "The point was made across all the free media. Nothing you are told is real. Remember this, until we tell you something tyou are being told is real. Actually, the thing we are telling you, that nothing you are told is real, is actually real. That thing is real, about nothing being real. Just that thing though and nothing else. Is that clear?" (271)
- "There was great jeopardy in this sort of freedom, in being able to choose your path without being urged or inspired. It was terrifying and beautiful at the same time. It was inevitably impermanent. How could you let people exist, how would you permit them all this dangerous freedom to decide? What might they decide?" (287)
3.5/5
Quotes:
- "When was free will a good thing, and when was it an irritant? How might people be free in a way that was generally advantageous to society, rather than in a way that threatened the equilibrium? What did it mean, in a free society, to have free people making free decisions? Should free people occasionally be enticed toward decisions that might make them ultimately more free than the original decision they might have taken, had they taken their decisions freely? And, if decisions that were made less freely made people more free in the end, was free will actually such a good thing after all?" (34)
- "Yet, the other day he had seen a piece of graffiti on a wall in London, an image of a unicorn with an inscription beneath: 'Even though I know you don't exist, I still miss you in my garden...'" (191)
- "Of course, we are influenced all the time - by advertising, by fashion, by the media, by a host of further influences including Althusserian interpellation, or conformity, or fundamental societal givens, or orthodoxies, and so on. Society is a vast tapestry of influence, we might say, and very few of us manage to resist all such influences. Indeed, how might we know we had resisted? Where is the control in this experiment?" (211)
- "The point was made across all the free media. Nothing you are told is real. Remember this, until we tell you something tyou are being told is real. Actually, the thing we are telling you, that nothing you are told is real, is actually real. That thing is real, about nothing being real. Just that thing though and nothing else. Is that clear?" (271)
- "There was great jeopardy in this sort of freedom, in being able to choose your path without being urged or inspired. It was terrifying and beautiful at the same time. It was inevitably impermanent. How could you let people exist, how would you permit them all this dangerous freedom to decide? What might they decide?" (287)
RSS Feed