A Rant About Technology
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Short essay here: ursulakleguin[dot]com/a-rant-about-technology
Technology is the active human interface with the material world.
This seems like a good lens to look at something that felt very "fantasy" to me despite its high tech, [b:The Genesis of Misery|59808142|The Genesis of Misery|Neon Yang|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1642001222l/59808142.SY75.jpg|86542028]. - Do we get to know how they eat and cook? IIRC there was a mention of "food gets generated by the food machine": points against. On the other hand, there are starbathing lounges for saints to get their energy, and also a mention of a cultural norm that saints still have to attend meals whether or not they eat at them: points for. - The guts of a space station and the people who run them get a look in the first quarter (coincidentally, my favorite part of the book...?) - Some discussion of raw materials and where they come from - Misery's homeworld and other outer colonies like it; Misery's mother being a prospector and the dangers inherent in that labor.
The parts of the book that worked for me were when Neon Yang sticks closer to "what if a bunch of humans got into this weird situation with alien remnants, what kind of society would they make out of it?" What worked against was the chosen-one narrative, and the logic of "we have giant robots; there is obviously nothing else could we possibly use them for except for fighting other giant robots in space?!" (And unrelated to is-or-isn't-this-scifi, disliking Misery as a protagonist.) Although chosenness is justified by the fact that they are a Joan of Arc parallel; humans will indeed make those stories happen by the act of telling them and believing in them. Is storytelling a technology?