Review: Better Living Through Algorithms

Story title: Better Living Through Algorithms
Author: Naomi Kritzer
Link to story: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_05_23/ 

(Spoiler-free) 

Our protagonist came across a new app whose aim is to make people happier by enabling them to achieve their dreams. Powered by some AI magic (that is in all fairness, not exactly magic with the new advancements some AI company is delivering every month), the all-knowing powerful app Abelique learns about user's daily habits and provides timely, efficient, and effective advice, sometimes even connecting users with larger communities. 

The last time I read something this boring was when I was 14: no I was not a fan of the novel "Wonder" back then. If this book was a spice, it would be flour. From the beginning till the end, events in the story just unfolded the way you imagined with no build-up of tension or attempt in enriching the plot, only to leave readers scratching their heads afterwards, wondering how high were the judges to consider the decision of nominating this story to both the Hugo and Nebula awards. This reads like a half-boiled essay written by some high-schooler, who still thinks exploring the impact of AI in well-being (which screams CLICHE in every direction you lay your eyes on) at the most upmost surface level is going to attract people's interests. The biggest abomination was that, it worked. 

But maybe it was not the plot that really made this story gleam? Perhaps, there is something to be said about the writing, about the prose, about the aesthetic behind the fabric of letters and words stringed together to form the seamless smooth tapestry? Well, because if there really was some special sauce behind this, I certainly missed it. Vocabulary of Donald Trump's Twitter posts easily exceeds the word quality of Naomi's writing by tenfold. It is just bad. Like expired-sardines bad. It could have been the product of some other story, only after Naomi replaced every word with the first simplest synonym she could come up. And hence, every sentence could be something a first-grader writes at school, something along the lines of "I am happy today".

Few things are harder than write a review for a story that has the vibrancy of a turd. If I have to lay my eyes on it once again in any desperate attempt to analyze whether there is anything, just ANYTHING, remotely interesting from this short story, I might get a seizure.

Rating: 1/10


Popular posts from this blog

Review: Answerless Journey

Story title: Answerless Journey (没有答案的航程) Author: Han Song (韩松) Link to story (Chinese only): https://www.99csw.com/article/9260.htm (Spoiler-free)  So a bit of context, this story was originally in Chinese. But since no one in the Hugo Award jury can read a single line of Chinese, they have to throw in a translator to do the work for them. I cannot seem to find the translated version anywhere online without having to sacrifice my hard-earned money, so oh well, I only get to read the original Chinese text.  Long story short, this story was the physical embodiment of the phrase "all fart but no shit". What this story achieved was that it constructed more questions than it provided answers, but instead of those good philosophical questions that make you sit back, ponder and question your existence, the reader only has the energy to ask, "huh? That's it?" Reading this felt more like a chore than a pleasurable activity, and the plot was advancing about as fast as a ...
Read more

Congratulations Eli and Asha

Eli. Unpredictable. Rebel. Wildcard. Firecracker of ideas. Agent of mischief. Impulsive. Eli. Eli and I were in the same cohort during my undergrads. Our first encounter was during freshers' week, at the midnight bop. The atmosphere was not great, and there was a thick air of awkwardness in the disco room, but no amount of embarrassment was sufficient to stop us from having a good time. Just the two of us, at the centre of the dance floor and no one else in a 10m periphery, spinning our limbs and heads to the rhythm of "Come On Eileen" like there's no tomorrow. Indeed a night to remember. He studied English, but that is not what he is known for. Make no mistake though, because he is no fool when it comes to the subject. Smart one he is. The notoriously stressful tripos exams of Cambridge posed zero threat to the man. Back when the world was plagued by the virus and the nature of exams was altered from the traditional closed-book format to that of the unconventional ta...
Read more