Review: She who became the Sun

Cover, She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

The style of how Parker-Chan writes all of this is vivid, immersive and striking. She uses a variety of imagery and metaphors that describe individuals, gestures, actions and maneuvers that bring the writing to life. Everywhere, the text is rich in detail.

S1m0ne, or another predictive movie about AI

S1M0NE movie poster shows a large manifestations of a computer-generated woman looking down at Al Pacino.

Niccol’s films, almost universally, are obsessed with the idea of artificial realities. This can be a mundane sort of affair … Or it can be something like S1m0ne, where an actress and her whole career and presence, are digital creations. It is notable that Niccol is a cautionary tale sort of director. In each of these, the artificial realities break or are broken, showing the cogs and the gears of what is behind them.

Book Review: Son of the Storm/Warrior of the Wind, by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

Cover of Warrior of the Wind, by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

The two books really feel like to me a study and critique of decaying imperial power, and what happens when that eroding power slips to the point where the imperium is visibly decaying, and starts to overcorrect and do truly shortsighted and ill-advised things in the quest to not only maintain the decaying status quo, but to reach back to a mythical golden era before that never really existed in the first place.