Not too long ago I read Peter Watts' Blindsight, and it has many thought-provoking ideas about conscience, the human brain, and alien life. Yet it is wrapped in a mediocre sci-fi action movie script that is difficult to follow and stops making sense toward the end. So I cannot say that I exactly liked or disliked it.

And just now, I finished Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series, and it feels like books 2 and 3 (Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy) are entirely separate story from book 1 (Ancillary Justice). The latter books are okay for what they are, but do not live up to the style, scale, and pace of the first book, and leave some of the concepts entirely unexplored. So once again, I cannot exactly say that I loved the series.

Any other books that left you with similar dual opinions?

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[–] Noit@feddit.uk 2 points 2 days ago

The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz. Makes me actively angry every time I think about it. The author throws out so many of these amazing sci-fi “what if” moral questions and then handles them in the most offhand, throwaway way, as if they’re annoyed that the question has been raised and want to get away from discussing it as soon as possible.

Examples include:

Q: is it ethical to give worms sentience, In secret and in defiance of a government that says giving creatures sentience should be discussed? A: yes, and you shouldn’t nark on the person secretly giving the worms sentience.

Q: is it ethical to genetically engineer an entire species to fulfil a role that might otherwise be done by unthinking machines? A: Yeah so long as you also genetically engineer them to enjoy that work and let them quit if they don’t like it.

Those aren’t loose interpretations of an ongoing plot. Each of those is thrown up and resolved within a few pages and then never mentioned again. Any of them could have been a great Star Trek episode. But instead they’re tossed away without discussion.