_Early Adopters_, Sienna Eggler

I ran across descriptions of this before it came out, pre-ordered it and have now finally read it. It is comparatively short for a novel (I read it on kindle, with a page count on the detail page of 127), has compelling worldbuilding (2055, significant climate issues, tech-heavy / live online details) and lots of representation (race, body mods have gone in a very furry direction which I found charming, autism, nonbinary main character). This is another in a very, very long line of efforts to reboot noir, and so that aspect of it is of particular interest, because in my experience of it, it never actually works well, because the whole schtick is the world-weary cynicism of someone who under their crusty shell really _wants_ the lies they spend all their time exposing, and their lack of self-insight is basically annoying.

The protagonist of this entry has more self-insight than is typical of this kind of novel, and watching that play out was really interesting. I may try another book by this author, altho I probably won’t read more in this series (this is the first entry but more are promised). I would characterize the writing quality as the good end of fan fic, maybe a little better, so if that is the kind of thing you like, you might really jam on this, but if you’ve never read fan fic and freak out whenever you encounter a clunky sentence that you think an editor should have caught and fixed, this is your warning.

I’m glad I read it and with the author all the best in their career and in finding their audience.

_The Future of Future Planning_ Nicky Drayden vol 9 of Delightfully Twisted Tales

A collection of very short fiction, about 10 years old, kind of adverts / first person protagonist reader audience in which some reprehensible feature of the future is being sold to the reader in a very late night infomercial sort of way. There’s the reproduction of the future (artificial wombs). There’s cloning. There’s a solution to the housing problem involving parallel universes. Etc.

It’s okay. It’s cheap and it’s short and it’s moderately clever. I do not feel compelled to read any more but I do not regret reading these.