I disagree. It seems to me that it's equivocating and saying that all of these groups are equally bad and at fault, and are just pointing fingers at each other. I am trying to make it very clear that there is a hierarchy of blame, and it's the same one as the hierarchy of wealth.
Though let us consider the ch-ch-ch-ch-changes that would actually be necessary for each of these to exercise real choice in the matter at hand:
The Public: Die, because that is the only thing that doesn't actively destroy the biosphere, because you have no actual meaningful control over anything
Farmers: Change professions, likely losing everything (at which point they become "The Public"), because you can't even control what seeds you buy (See: Agricorps), let alone anything else you do with the land, and it's all a monopsony, anyway (See: Agricorps) so you can't even choose who buys your crops or for how much you sell them.
Government: Literally the only thing required here is to take a long view and invest in infrastructure that also has huge short-term benefits. Realistically, the actual reason is because the politicians get money from the corpocrats (See: Agricorps), and don't want to not get money from the corpocrats.
Agricorps: It is explicitly against their fiduciary duty to tank the value of long-term investment in their own business by making the planet uninhabitable. The only change required is to actually hold to fiduciary duty, rather than "number go up, STONKS".
Huh, it's almost as if there are very specific problems that can be traced to a single, specific spiderman here... interesting.
Fun little tidbit to tighten your trolling knickers: The finance minister of Israel said they intend to "entirely destroy" Gaza. They are doing this by raining fire upon it, from the White Phosphorus attacks going years before October 7th, to bombing hospitals and schools, and burning aid convoys and covering the ashes with sand so they don't have to look at their crimes.
Did you know that we have a word in the English language (and most others with Greek roots) that means, literally, "to entirely destroy by fire"?
Oh, no, the only ones I haven't read yet are ghostwritten and number9dream.
And I agree with the order notes. My very out-of-order sequence was Cloud Atlas (the movie introduced me to the book), then Slade House, Black Swan Green, Bone Clocks, Thousand Autumns, Utopia Avenue.
And I agree that reading the bone clocks before thousand autumns didn't actually make Marinus and the Anchorites make less sense without Enomoto and Dejima for context.
However, if I had read Utopia Avenue without any of the others (except Slade House and Black Swan Green), I think I would have had no idea what was going on. As it stands, the main reason I want to read ghostwritten is because I feel like I'm missing out on the context of "the Mongolian" from Utopia Avenue. I think that, in the same way that Cloud Atlas acted as a bridge into his world, Utopia Avenue was almost a culmination of his works thus far. I think that, without them, Jasper de Zoet's character and, for that matter, the whole story, would have been nigh-incomprehensible to me.
Absolutely. Since I'm not really into the music scene, I thought I wouldn't enjoy Utopia avenue, but I honestly think it's my second-favorite of his works. I am about to start Ghostwritten, though will probably stop there, because I really don't think number9dream is for me. I'm really not a fan of unsatisfying stories or bildungsroman, and I've read that n9d is both. What's your take?
I enjoyed Black Swan Green, in spite of its bildungsroman plot, but It wasn't my favourite (though it wasn't my least-favourite, because that dubious honour has to go to Slade House, which I read before the Bone Clocks, and which I expected to have a MUCH better puzzlebox feel. I felt betrayed when I realized that the alchemical symbology and map of the house on the inside cover of my first-edition copy was all meaningless, especially when the climax was just a deus-ex-horologia before I knew who Marinus was)
You forgot to defend the conservative ideal of the Roman empire as the supreme fascist state! You need to talk about how the romans allowed the free market (with the guiding hand of daddy imperator) to determine where the money should go! Tell them that the money was used to build roads, not for trade, but to march their very manly soldiers on against the commies and the libs!
I hear there's a well-known company that started taking tourists down to it a few years back! They were all over the press! Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
Yes! We should all wholeheartedly support this GREAT INNOVATION! There is NOTHING THAT COULD GO WRONG, so this will be an excellent step to PERMANENTLY PERFECT this WONDERFUL AI.
I disagree. It seems to me that it's equivocating and saying that all of these groups are equally bad and at fault, and are just pointing fingers at each other. I am trying to make it very clear that there is a hierarchy of blame, and it's the same one as the hierarchy of wealth.