I read this over a year ago and didn't give it a rating, but I noted that it remined me of the Whispering Earring and the app Wakie. Even back in May of 2023 I said "The future is coming and this is very barely science fiction at this point."
How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub
There were bits of the world building that I could get excited about, but it seems like Clark has gone a little off the deep end. The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington and his writing in The Dead Djinn Universe were good, but everything else of his I have read has been a disappointment.
The Mausoleum's Children
This one didn't do much of anything for me, but that may just be because I have yet to get sucked in by the WarHammer 40K aesthetic.
The Sound of Children Screaming
I am just going to post my full braindump from when I listened to this one. It certainly made me have a reaction.
.............
Well, right off the bat, I take umbrage with the presentation of the gun as being agentic or anthropomorphized. Even if that is being done as part of the fantastical/horrific twists of the story, I automatically parse that as a sign of deep hoplophobia and a lack of an internal locus of control. I have difficulty taking seriously what is said by people who are slaves to those conditions.
Putting that aside for a moment (which is hard to do as it is the instigating, framing, and concluding element of the story as well as being woven throughout it), the idea of a "dark Narnia" where the children may be the salvation of the natives, but not in so uplifting and precious a way as you might expect, is well worth an investigation. It seems trivially true that this could have been explored without the need for the framing device, but that is the load-bearing portion in the author's mind (if not so structurally).
I am struggling to overcome my hard internal pushback based on the gun-centric rant that drives this story, and I do believe that there is a robust and fascinating skeleton of a story/world there, but it is really difficult to analyze it without having to deal with the toxic frame it was portrayed in. I am giving it a very generous 3.75 because I want to recognize the potential for greatness here, but I may be over-correcting to counterweight my gut reaction.
I agree that Children Screaming is written by someone absolutely dying of anti-gun brainworms, and its detectable in the writing. But if I blur my vision a bit and ignore the few lines were that really jumps out, the rest of the story of a child-eating deity works really well, and tying it to modern school shootings gives it a strong emotional grip. I, too, am maybe over-correcting, but I think there's a core of great writing that's worth appreciating.
Interesting where we agree and disagree.
Better Living Through Algorithms
I read this over a year ago and didn't give it a rating, but I noted that it remined me of the Whispering Earring and the app Wakie. Even back in May of 2023 I said "The future is coming and this is very barely science fiction at this point."
How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub
There were bits of the world building that I could get excited about, but it seems like Clark has gone a little off the deep end. The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington and his writing in The Dead Djinn Universe were good, but everything else of his I have read has been a disappointment.
The Mausoleum's Children
This one didn't do much of anything for me, but that may just be because I have yet to get sucked in by the WarHammer 40K aesthetic.
The Sound of Children Screaming
I am just going to post my full braindump from when I listened to this one. It certainly made me have a reaction.
.............
Well, right off the bat, I take umbrage with the presentation of the gun as being agentic or anthropomorphized. Even if that is being done as part of the fantastical/horrific twists of the story, I automatically parse that as a sign of deep hoplophobia and a lack of an internal locus of control. I have difficulty taking seriously what is said by people who are slaves to those conditions.
Putting that aside for a moment (which is hard to do as it is the instigating, framing, and concluding element of the story as well as being woven throughout it), the idea of a "dark Narnia" where the children may be the salvation of the natives, but not in so uplifting and precious a way as you might expect, is well worth an investigation. It seems trivially true that this could have been explored without the need for the framing device, but that is the load-bearing portion in the author's mind (if not so structurally).
I am struggling to overcome my hard internal pushback based on the gun-centric rant that drives this story, and I do believe that there is a robust and fascinating skeleton of a story/world there, but it is really difficult to analyze it without having to deal with the toxic frame it was portrayed in. I am giving it a very generous 3.75 because I want to recognize the potential for greatness here, but I may be over-correcting to counterweight my gut reaction.
I agree that Children Screaming is written by someone absolutely dying of anti-gun brainworms, and its detectable in the writing. But if I blur my vision a bit and ignore the few lines were that really jumps out, the rest of the story of a child-eating deity works really well, and tying it to modern school shootings gives it a strong emotional grip. I, too, am maybe over-correcting, but I think there's a core of great writing that's worth appreciating.