Akiva Reads

by Sesshu Foster, Arturo Ernesto Romo

I FINISHED IT. I didn't think that was going to happen but then my puzzle-solving brain kicked in and I couldn't leave it alone.

I am a huge fan of epistolary/documentary stories, stuff where you have to make the connections, etc. The biggest problem here is that this isn't one. It doesn't respect the premise or play fair. The short stories don't actually make sense as documents, mayyyybe the first one at a stretch, but it (like a few other pieces) is a dozen pages of dialogue with no speaker markings and also the voices (of a young female communist learning to pilot and an older male anarchist teaching her) are totally indistinguishable, and also wtf this is not how any human has ever talked to any other human. The repetitive writing style, complete with frequent long poetic lists, are deeply annoying and pad the book out to a length it doesn't need or deserve. The graphics pages (photos, drawings, notes) are pretty but add nothing to the story. The appendixes are more like it! Too bad you're already at the end of the book at that point.

On a political level, the idea that ELADATL is a utopian project in a dystopian post-apocalyptic landscape is badly undercut by the fact that almost everyone associated with ELADATL is depicted as utterly incompetent grandstanders who spend most of their energy on violent infighting. There are maybe two scenes where the government/oppressive powers do anything oppressive. I came around to it a bit eventually, maybe that's meant to be an accurate picture of what it looks like when the government has completely given up and left its people at the mercy of the environment (less active oppression and more absence), and goodness knows that activist groups can be dysfunctional.

The story is 0% interested in science or speculation, so it fails as sci fi or spec fic. The interest seems to be in how one can communicate scientific vibes without any substance, which I guess could be a stab at social criticism?

Biggest complaint, on top of all that: the back copy says it's hilarious. It is not, I cannot remember a single time I cracked a smile. Maybe the fact that one of the main figures is named Swirling Wheelnuts is supposed to make me laugh? IDK, I was too busy trying to figure out if that was an epithet, and then the moment was past.

If you're interested, you will probably get more out of this fantastic essay on the real and fictional Oscar Zeta Acosta that I found while googling character names to see which is a clever reference and which I need to pay attention to: evergreenreview.com/read/the-marginalization-of-oscar-zeta-acosta/

Will consider uploading my index of character names later, in case it helps anyone.