Dune is a colossal book, not just by its influence on science fiction as a genre, but also its rich detail and underlying themes of survival, evolution, ecology, religion, politics, and power. For this it deserves credit, but as a story itself it failed to grip me. A minor obstacle was its pacing, often slow yet sometimes so fast across plot twist that I wondered if I accidentally skipped a page. But the biggest hurdle is that Dune feels highly cliche, which is ungrateful to say because I do realise this is the spaceship that launched all these science fiction typicalities, influencing the likes of Ender’s Game and Star Wars.
“We walk down the path in Xikeng.” Three years ago, I started a note with that sentence. We visited a row of villages in the south of Zhejiang, and Xikeng (西坑) was at the end of the day — the least touristified town of them all. The village had dozens of old buildings, sliced by […]
Today, I’m visiting Zhengyi Old Street (正仪老街) in Kunshan — a city wedged in between Suzhou and Shanghai. This old street is a leftover slice in between other parts properly planned by the city. On the horizon, I can see construction cranes, as if they are threatening the area; ‘we are coming to you next’. […]
It’s 06:30 in the morning and I’m driving to the San Gabriel Mountains, north of Los Angeles. I’ve been trying to sleep after an exhausting week at CES, but I’m too excited for this hike and can’t wait to depart the Airbnb we’re in. Every visit to the United States is an adventure. The most […]
If George Orwell, one of the best essayists, were alive today, he’d be firmly against AI. Not because of 1984 or ‘Big Brother’, but because in ‘Why I Write’, he listed four motives for writing; Historical impulse Political purpose Aesthetic enthusiasm Egoism Neither of these motives survives if you let AI do the writing […]
