Reviews and Comments

( em português, com trecho traduzido → sol2070.in/2025/05/livro-disaster-naionalism-teorias-conspiracao/ )

The term “disaster nationalism” refers to one of the faces of the current global rise of the far right, in which Brazil stands out — along with India, Hungary, the Philippines, and, of course, the US, Brazil and Bolsonarism are regular features in the book.

I came across the book through recommendations from people like Cory Doctorow, China Miéville, and Naomi Klein — the latter, in turn, has a very similar concept for the new far right, which she has dubbed “end-of-times fascism.”

What is striking about Seymour's analysis is its fluid, engaging, and eloquent quality — it is not an academic book — while at the same time overflowing with references and quotations. But that does not make it easy to read. Vivid descriptions of the violence of this extremism around the world often made me stop reading.

Among the topics are class conflict, disinformation, conspiracy theories, pornopolitics, the role of the internet, mass shooters, pogroms, and genocide. All in all, it is the terrain of the “downfall of liberal civilization,” as in the book's subtitle.

The author prefers to use the common denominator of the fanatical “nationalism” of these movements as a stage that precedes fascism itself. The “disasters,” on the other hand, refer to the fabrication of demons and enemies, based on very real crises and catastrophes, such as the climate emergency and multiple economic and social crises.

It is common for this fabrication of narratives not to be centrally orchestrated, but rather something more socially and psychologically organic, as the following excerpt explores.

( em português: sol2070.in/2025/04/livro-where-the-axe-is-buried/ )

One of the few books I had marked on my calendar for its release: “Where The Axe is Buried” (2025, 336 pages), by one of the best contemporary science fiction authors, the American writer Ray Nayler.

In addition to being exemplary science fiction — with provocative speculation, memorable characters, and excellent writing — the author often expresses a critical view of the current direction of science and technology, which has been hijacked by multibillionaires. He explores how this trend dominates politics and also connects to environmental destruction.

Even among the titles I carefully choose, I constantly come across the same techno-optimism — almost cult-like — that now spreads from the big tech companies and their defenders. So it’s a relief to dive into a story of this kind that is not only free of that mindset but openly critical of it.

The novel is a breathtaking cyberpunk thriller. In a distant future, Europe is divided between countries that have handed their governments over to AIs and a tyranny — expanding out of Russia — that puts all previous dictatorships to shame due to the extremely granular surveillance and control of individuals made possible by information technology.

There’s a handful of key characters spread across various countries, and the chapters alternate between them during a crisis that seems to be affecting both blocs — involving hacking, popular subversion, an unprecedented new technology, and political conspiracy.

It’s as if William Gibson had written “1984”, with, however, a strong emphasis on the human element. This is what makes the novel emotionally engaging as well, despite the thorny sociopolitical themes that reflect our present reality.

The countries entirely dominated by AIs — that have even surrendered their governments to algorithms — are referred to as "rationalized." One character reflects:

"If everything was better now, why did it feel as if nothing had changed—as if the system that existed before rationalization hadn’t gone away? As if, instead, it had been cemented into place? Made more comfortable for the people at the bottom—but also made permanent, so that they would always be at the bottom?"

Meanwhile, in the bloc of overwhelming techno-totalitarianism, the same dictator has ruled for over a century, having his memories transplanted into new bodies from time to time. A programmer escapes from there to a rationalized London and ends up creating a key technology for change. At the same time, a genuinely revolutionary singularity begins to stir among the AIs. All of this then interweaves with social germs of insurgency, which finally reach maturity.

It was one of the best science fiction stories I’ve read in years — perhaps since Ray Nayler’s debut novel: “The Mountain in the Sea” (2022).

( em português: sol2070.in/2025/04/livro-david-graeber-ultimate-hidden-truth/ )

”The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World...” (2024, 384 pgs) brings together articles and interviews by anarchist anthropologist David Graeber.

Anyone who enjoys his thought-provoking work will be delighted. With his characteristic perspicacity, which points out the obvious that no one is noticing, he touches on diverse topics — such as the economy, inequality, the cultural landscape, altruism, the politics of hatred, etc — in which each article could be the starting point to an entire book.

On the other hand, some articles condense central themes from his most influential works, such as “The Dawn of Everything”, “Debt” and “Bullshit Jobs”. Some were the germs that gave rise to the books; others are developments with recapitulation.

The title of the collection, “The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World”, refers to the theme that runs through some of the articles and is also at the heart of “The Dawn of Everything”. This “ultimate hidden truth” is that we are free to build better societies and lives. There is no compulsory socio-political-economic direction that is not cultural, that was not created by humans. We are not bound by any oppressive fixed destiny. In the same way that the evils that plague humanity, such as inequality, were manufactured, we can manufacture and adapt beneficial and liberating cultures, at the individual and collective levels.

The following is a translation of one of the best articles in the book, in which Graeber speculates — among other topics, such as natural theories about selfishness and altruism, and even the “hard problem” of consciousness — about panpsychism, the idea that all things have at least some cognition. This doesn't mean that every material particle has a soul or intelligence, but rather that, for example, for a molecule to be able to self-organize in the way it does, it needs to “sense” its exterior in some way, and this amounts to a minimum level of cognition.

He goes on to argue that a sense of play, of playing and having fun, being an inseparable expression of a fundamental freedom, is a central aspect of consciousness or subjectivity. And if it is in everything, it would also be in the essence of all reality. Of course, his liberating and anarchically inquisitive spirit could not be missing from this investigation.

The title (“What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?“) seems to refer to the famous phrase by anarchist feminist Emma Goldman: “If I can't dance, it's not my revolution.”

thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun

( em português → sol2070.in/2025/02/livro-everyday-utopia-kristen-ghodsee/ )

In “Everyday Utopia” (2024, 352 pages), the north-american feminist anthropologist Kristen R. Ghodsee explores utopian ways of organizing family, relationships, and property in various intentional alternative communities, both historical and still existing today. Definitely one of the most interesting non-fiction books I’ve picked up in recent years.

The book analyzes everything from contemporary initiatives for shared housing and household items to reduce costs and foster support networks, to religious communities where everything is collective, as well as the political, cultural, and biological origins of both dominant and alternative family models, among many other topics.

For example, we commonly imagine the traditional family as something natural rather than as a structure with origins that are less biological and more cultural. The author discusses the Mosuo, a Tibetan community where authority is centered around grandmothers, and women own and inherit property through the maternal lineage. Relationships are open and free for both parties. The concept of “father” barely exists. For men, who live in their grandmothers’ homes, being a good uncle is what truly matters, as they help raise their sisters’ children. Since there is no formal marriage, couples form solely based on attraction. When they separate, there are no negative consequences financially, socially, or for the children.

As Ghodsee states:

"How very radical the Mosuo family structure seems to many of us today highlights just how deeply ingrained our own patrilocal and patrilineal traditions remain."

Alternative ways of thinking about and organizing family and child-rearing are a central theme of the book, especially considering the oppressive and unjust burdens the current model places on mothers and women. The communal upbringing of children is a common feature among many of the communities analyzed, an idea that was even formulated as ideal by Plato 24 centuries ago.

One of the reasons the author became interested in this topic is that, coming from a Puerto Rican-Persian background, she experienced financial and family hardships during her childhood and adolescence. A teacher helped her as if she were family, even providing her with housing and sponsoring her college admission — an act to which she credits her entire career. Personal stories like this make the book even more compelling. For instance, she also shares the professional challenges she faced when she became a mother.

A frequently referenced book is “The Dawn of Everything”, in which David Graeber and David Wengrow attempt to retell the history of human societies, debunking myths about inequality and progress. One of their conclusions is that ancestral communities and societies were limited only by their creativity in exploring different ways of organizing themselves. There was equality, inequality, accumulation, sharing, agriculture interwoven with foraging, and so on. Similarly, we are not trapped in today’s inequality and oppression — these are not a “natural progression” but merely another human invention.

I felt “Everyday Utopia” was a rich sibling book to “The Dawn of Everything” because it is filled with practical examples of intentional innovation and improvement in the ways humans organize socially.

Excerpts Below is a selection of highlighted passages, culminating in a fascinating subchapter on why Martin Luther King Jr. loved the TV series Star Trek.

“…we must understand that this kind of utopian thinking provides an invaluable intellectual tool. Even if dreams don’t come true, they do expand our imagination of what is possible and thereby reshape the landscape of what we can practically achieve (the so-called Overton window).”

“‘Utopia’ derives from the Greek roots for “not” and “place,” which means that “Utopia” references a “no place” or nowhere, although it is also a homonym for the word “Eutopia,” which means “good place.” This ambiguity was intentional.”

“As the French economist Thomas Piketty explains, “Every human society must justify its inequalities: unless reasons for them are found, the whole political and social edifice stands in danger of collapse.”

“… a general outline comes into view. Our ancestors were by no means always monogamous. Where monogamy did evolve, it may have done so for darker reasons than you’d expect. The nuclear family is not evolutionarily inevitable. Our contemporary mating practices are not “natural” or “unnatural,” “right” or “wrong.” Instead, the diversity, flexibility, and creativity around how we love, lust, marry, and raise our young has allowed humans to adapt and change over our evolutionary history. Family forms can respond to different demographic, environmental, or economic contexts, leading researchers on the evolution of human family forms to conclude that: “The cross-cultural empirical record supports that the family is a highly flexible social organization that is transiently, culturally and ecologically adaptable, a dynamic less transparent from traditional positions on patrilocality, patrilineality, and male parental care.”

“In a similar way to how we collectively believe in paper money, many of us also embrace the fiction that the way we organize our private lives is the only way available to us. Even if we understand in the abstract about the pressures parents face, the strain that child-rearing places on romantic relationships, the high divorce rate, the prevalence of child abuse and intimate partner violence, and the very real possibilities of our own or our partner’s long-term unemployment, disability, or death, we replicate the domestic form that makes us the most vulnerable to these problems because it is convenient and because that’s what everyone expects of us. Just as our entire economy rests on the fiction of what economists call a fiat currency, it also rests on a particular notion of the family, one that is often viewed as either natural or divinely mandated, but which acts to uphold a specific set of social and economic relations.”

Why Martin Luther King Jr. Loved Star Trek “I was born in 1970, a moment of sudden and unexpected challenges to the prevailing status quo. Wonder Woman’s creator introduced the Princess of Paradise Island during World War II, but it’s no coincidence that the image of the Amazon warrior also appeared on the very first issue of the explicitly feminist Ms. magazine in 1972 under the headline: “Wonder Woman for President.” Eleven years later, I watched my other screen heroine, forced to wear a now-iconic metal bikini, free herself from the tongue-waggling and blubbery Jabba the Hutt by strangling him with the very chain he had used to bind her to him. The University of Pennsylvania only fully integrated female undergraduate students into its School of Arts and Sciences in 1974, and yet today I teach there as a full professor and serve as the chair of my department. In some ways, both Wonder Woman and Princess Leia helped me to deal with the sexism I often encountered in my own life because I could imagine worlds where sexism didn’t hold women back. They were just fictional characters, but they made a difference. Although I am too young to have seen the original series while it was airing, another science fiction show has the distinction of being the longest lasting and most influential utopian vision that ever entered popular culture. When Star Trek began broadcasting in 1966, its creator, Gene Roddenberry, crafted a positive view of the future where humanity had overcome all of its conflicts and lived in a sort of galactic Pax Romana within something called the United Federation of Planets, “an interstellar union of different worlds and species with shared principles of universal liberty, rights, and equality.”44 In a 2011 interview, the late actress Nichelle Nichols (who played the African communications officer, Uhura, on the original starship Enterprise) recounted a story of her first meeting with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. at a banquet. King told Nichols that he was a huge fan of the show and that it was the only thing he and his wife allowed their children to stay up late to watch. At the time, Nichols intended to leave the show to pursue a career in the theater, but King insisted she had to stay. Nichols recalled: “He said I had the first nonstereotypical role, I had a role with honor, dignity and intelligence. He said, ‘You simply cannot abdicate, this is an important role. This is why we are marching. We never thought we’d see this on TV.’ ”45 For the first generation of Black Trekkies, Nichols’s portrayal as an officer on the bridge of the interracial starship Enterprise helped them envision the possibility of equality. “When I was a little girl,” explained the actress Whoopi Goldberg in 2014, “it was like, ‘Oh, we Black people are in the future.’ Uhura did that for me.”46 “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” said Albert Einstein in 1931. “For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”47 We stand on the cusp of a new age, with many of us striving toward a more positive vision of the future like the one Roddenberry once provided, where human beings find a way to build a better world for subsequent generations of humanity. Our old ideas about patrilineality and patrilocality are no longer fit for that purpose. We need new ideas, new dreams, and the courage to imagine alternative futures. Now is the moment to “think different.” If we can imagine them first in a galaxy far, far away, it’s only a matter of time before we boldly go and begin figuring out how to translate these inspired visions into our own everyday utopias.”

( em português → sol2070.in/2025/01/livro-a-country-of-ghosts/ )

"A Country of Ghosts" (2014), by Margaret Killjoy, is a delightful dystopian/utopian novel, especially appealing to anti-authoritarians readers.

It’s a political fantasy set in an alternate world approximately at the beginning of its industrial revolution. A colonial, expansionist military power invades a mountainous region to exploit its resources, knowing little about its inhabitants. They are deemed primitive, simplistic, and violently resistant to the incursion — people to be exterminated or enslaved.

We follow a journalist assigned to cover the conflict. Embedded with the troops, they soon discover that the local people are far more politically, culturally, and combatively sophisticated than presumed. The region is a free, autonomous confederation — a living anarchist utopia.

While it’s not so uncommon to find anarchist elements in dystopian or utopian fiction, when the author herself is an anarchist, the portrayal becomes much more vivid. Great examples include "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin and "The Fifth Sacred Thing" by Starhawk.

Described as a story in the tradition of Le Guin (and Sherri S. Tepper), the work is also an epic about war — the destructive oppression against freedom in its purest form.

Killjoy writes the best anarchist newsletter/blog ( margaretkilljoy.substack.com/ ) I know and is an exemplary storyteller, especially in queer libertarian fantasy. I’m eager to read her acclaimed latest novel: "The Sapling Cage" (2024).

(em português: sol2070.in/2024/12/livro-hum-helen-phillips/ )

“Hum” (2024, 272 pages), by Helen Phillips, is a dystopian fiction that is both suffocating and sensitive, about the difficulties of a woman and her family in a techno-surveillance society in ecological collapse.

Despite the futuristic setting, it could just as well be set today, with our current dependence on screens, corporate domination, ubiquitous digital ads, non-existent privacy, disastrous politics and the horror of environmental collapse. The difference is the absurd intensification of these factors, which includes the presence of advertising androids, called “Hum”.

But anyone expecting traditional science fiction may be disappointed, this is more like a backdrop for the drama — of marked internalization — of the protagonist May. Not that this is a flaw, I especially liked the psychological side, without seeing anything too special in the techno-dystopian part.

After losing her job to an AI, May undergoes facial microsurgery, in search of money, for an experiment on methods of obscuring surveillance cameras. Because of her longing for the lost natural world she experienced in childhood, she spends what she can't to take the two children and her husband for a few days in a kind of ecological dome. Unforeseen events, including a well-known internet phenomenon, exacerbate the protagonist's crisis.

It's not an easy read. There is a Kafkaesque tone, of a powerless person massacred by a vast automated system. This is compensated for by the tender moments of warm subtlety, and the character's feelings, without being cheesy. It's also worth it for the impressive ending.

I had read the author's previous acclaimed book, “The Need” (2020). A psychological horror similar to “Hum” in the internalization of a threatening crisis. Another point in common is that the genre of the story is just a backdrop for a powerful inner journey.

(em português → sol2070.in/2024/11/livro-absolution-jeff-vandermeer-comando-sul-4/ )

"Absolution" (2024) is the fourth installment in Jeff Vandermeer's "Southern Reach" series, a book whose release date I had even marked on my calendar.

It's a prequel to the other three books, which mix surreal horror with science and ecological fiction. The first of them, "Annihilation" (2014), is the most famous, since it became a cult movie by Alex Garland.

The story revolves around a phenomenon in a vast swampy area of the USA, Area X, which causes nature to behave in a bizarre and potentially annihilating way for humans. Southern Reach is the government task force that has been covering up what is happening for decades, investigating and ultimately influencing the whole process.

The things I like most about the series are:

• Ecology. The predominant symbol is environmental catastrophe and our relationship with the natural world, revealing an inconceivable dimension of nature.
• Ambiguity. At first glance, the disaster seems horrific. But... is it really?
• Psychedelic cosmic horror. Jeff writes in the “new weird” subgenre, a revitalization of the “weird” enshrined by H.P. Lovecraft, who mixed horror, science fiction and fantasy to contrast human smallness in the face of unimaginable cosmic forces. New weird is also a pun on “new wave”, the lysergic science fiction of the 60s.
• Exquisitely well-constructed and fascinating characters. The extremely human perspective is never lost or eclipsed by the fantastic, on the contrary, it is a magnifying glass.
• Exemplary writing. For me, Vandermeer is the best writer of speculative fiction today.

"Absolution" takes up some characters from the story who seemed secondary, showing their key role. There are three parts that mimic the three previous books. In the first, a group of scientists come into contact with the first transformations, 20 years earlier, which were already quite disturbing. The second focuses on the beginning of the investigation into the secret agency and its behind-the-scenes work with double agents, manipulation, betrayals, brainwashing, etc. The third part is the first entry into Area X, already completely deflagrated, from the point of view of a practically demented agent.

In this fourth book, there are huge doses of cosmic horror, something that in the others is more measured. It takes a while to get going, as the connections aren't obvious at first. But all the smallest details fall into place.

As much of the story is open to interpretation, this series is one that invites the most diverse theories. "Absolution" brings more raw material for us to speculate about.

It was a good hook for me to re-read the other books, for the third time.

(em português: sol2070.in/2024/05/livro-the-eye-of-the-heron-ursula-le-guin/ )

Ursula K. Le Guin often writes some of the best science fiction books on specific themes: “The Dispossessed”, about anarchism; “The Left Hand of Darkness”, about gender fluidity; and “The Eye of The Heron” (1978), about non-violence.

In the latter, two groups are exiled from Earth as a kind of scum: people convicted of crimes and pacifist activists who refused to participate in society in nations at war. The convicts arrived a few generations earlier. They had been expelled from a self-destructing Earth with no more prison capacity, on a one-way trip to the prison planet. So they recreate an authoritarian and hierarchical society.

The activists, on the other hand, were adherents of non-violent direct action and gave rise to an essentially anarchist community. I'm not going to comment any further because the revelation about their history and how their exile came about are among the greatest moments.

The plot revolves around the social tension between the groups, the clash between brutality and non-violence as the basic ethical principle of a culture.

It will especially delight those who loved The Dispossessed.

Em português → sol2070.in/2023/07/O-lado-escuro-da-era-da-informa%C3%A7%C3%A3o-em-cinco-hacks-extraordin%C3%A1rios

That is the subtitle of the non-fiction book "Fancy Bear Goes Phishing" (2023) by Scott J. Shapiro. It's a fairly accurate description of the content. This "dark side" refers more to the fragility and vulnerabilities of information systems, which end up allowing the most varied types of hacking, but the dark world of varied types of hackers is also well portrayed, even in the most internal aspects, such as motivations and resentments, with a lot of dialogue with the work of researchers who studied this in depth.

The author is a professor of law and philosophy, but also shows himself to be a genuine computer geek. In addition to his familiarity with the subject since his youth, he has delved deeper into the topic of digital security in preparation for this book. So there is no shortage of technical details of the intrusions portrayed and, due to his teaching experience, Shapiro manages to keep it interesting and, at the same time, didactic.

I just didn't like the forays into the intricacies of law as much, but they don't compromise the book.

The author's thesis is that the most fundamental vulnerability of computer networks is not in the technologies themselves, but in what he calls the "upcode", which is the dominant culture in a given institution (for example, the idea that digital security is something secondary), as opposed to the "downcode", the code or technology used.

He demonstrates this by analyzing the entire context of these major intrusions, starting with the first network virus, which exploited Unix sendmail in 1988, to botnet attacks with the power to break a country's internet, which appeared less than ten years ago.

For anyone interested in digital security, hacking or would just like to know more about it, it's worth it. And not only as an introduction, there are several tasty stories and technical details also for those with more experience.

É o meu tipo de livro preferido. Ficção científica vira-páginas com elementos existenciaiss, psicológicos e psicodélicos. Tem uma pegada de "Aniquilação", do Jeff Vandermeer. E foi por essa chamada (e a recomendação do Stephen King) que comecei a ler. Dei três estrelas porque, apesar de não ter muito do que reclamar, ele é relativamente "esquecível". Não será algo que lembrarei como muito memorável.