2025/176: Everything I Need I Get From You — Kaitlyn Tiffany

...fans are connecting based on affinity and instinct and participating in hyperconnected networks that they built for one purpose but can use for many others. [p. 270]

The subtitle, 'How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It', is somewhat misleading. The Archive of Our Own -- built by (mostly female) fans, currently hosting over 16 million fanworks, proudly cost-free and independent since 2007 -- gets a single sentence. In contrast Tumblr (owned by a succession of big tech companies) is repeatedly lauded as an archive as well as a medium for sharing and communicating. 

The book's focus is very much on One Direction (1D) fandom, and the author's personal experience is part of the story. She explores how fandom can be a coping mechanism, a creative outlet, a way of life: and she doesn't shy away from some of the more troubling aspects of fandom, such as outspoken fannish certainty that (for instance) two members of One Direction were in a committed relationship. The prevalence of this notion affected the band, as well as the multitude of believers.

Tiffany discusses 'affirmational' vs 'transformational' fandom (terms she attributes to a Dreamwidth post from 2008): affirmational fandom celebrates the source for what it is, transformational fandom transforms it. She describes how fans use and abuse the internet and associated technology to connect and communicate, to celebrate, but also to protest and organise. The Black Lives Matter activism on various high-profile blogs is one instance of the latter: Tiffany also cites the ways in which fans use technology to circumvent local restrictions, for example spoofing IP addresses to upvote a band's singles for the Billboard charts. (Guess which band?)

My vague sense of disconnection with this book clarified on page 126, when the author says 'My mother was born in 1965'. Aha! Tiffany is very much part of a younger generation of fandom than mine: digital natives, people who grew up with the internet and with internet fan communities.

And, the excesses of 1D fandom aside (there is a thorough exegesis of the Harry Styles Vomit Shrine), I think that quite a lot of the themes discussed in this book also apply to old-school SF fandom. At the start of the book, Tiffany says 'Before most people were using the internet for anything, fans were using it for everything' [p.7]. Like many of my readers, my initial reasons for getting online included the urge to connect with other people who liked the same books. And in those long-ago days of Yahoo Groups (closed, apparently, in 2020) and that newfangled thing called LiveJournal, I discovered my tribe.

Hello, tribe.

2025/175: Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

All that was needed was shrewd questioning, first of the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera. [loc. 1023]

Love in the Time of Cholera is the long and rambling love (or 'love') story of Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza. They fall for one another as teenagers, and have a romantic correspondence by letter and telegram -- but never a conversation. When Fermina sees Florentino again after an absence, she realises she feels nothing for him, and rejects him. Instead she marries Doctor Juvenal Urbino, a young doctor determined to eradicate cholera, and they make a life together.

Meanwhile Florentino embarks on a life of promiscuity. Six hundred and twenty two affairs, plus casual (and not always consensual) liaisons too numerous and nameless to count. His worst conquest is saved for last: his young ward América Vicuña, who's a teenager when Florentino is in his seventies. "...he won her confidence, he won her affection, he led her by the hand, with the gentle astuteness of a kind grandfather, toward his secret slaughterhouse". [loc. 4548]

Still, he has to pass the time somehow until Fermina's husband dies: then he will 'have' Fermina. (The thought that she won't 'have' him never seems to enter his daydreams.) Between affairs, he becomes President of the Caribbean Riverboat Company, which destroys the ecology of the local river system in its insatiable greed for firewood to stoke the boilers. A metaphor, you say?

Though this is not a long novel in terms of page count, it felt interminable. Fifty years of Fermina's marriage (culminating in Dr Urbino's death while trying to catch his pet parrot): fifty years of Florentino's sexual predation. It's a sweeping saga that explores love in its many forms, and how an individual's definition of and perception of love changes as they grow older. But it also 'explores' racism, promiscuity, paedophilia, murder and suicide, misogyny, illness... 

If we knew nothing of Florentino's story -- only that he reappears after Dr Urbino's death, and helps the widowed Fermina come to terms with her grief -- it would be a glorious romance. Sadly, I can't stop trying and failing to balance that romance with América Vicuña's fate.

I have never quite got around to reading Marquez, and I wonder if I would have appreciated this book more in the 1980s, when it was published. But surely even then I would have found the behaviour toxic? I will read One Hundred Years of Solitude at some point: I'm told there's more magical realism and less sleaze. Not yet, though. It'll wait.

“Love is the only thing that interests me,” he said.
“The trouble,” his uncle said to him, “is that without river navigation there is no love.” [loc. 2768]

2025/174: My Name Isn't Paul — Drew Huff

I don't want to be a sentient empathy-filament-abomination, so I only eat human food. [loc. 65]

Paul Cattaneo is dead: to begin with. He's been replaced by a Mirror Person who wears a 'skinsuit' replica of Paul Cattaneo's body. His friend 'John O'Malley' (formerly Noonie) is another Mirror Person. 'We are forty-something blue-collar human men. We aren't fuckin' bugs.' Unfortunately, (a) they are bugs and (b) they will soon go into heat, which involves fornicating with another Mirror Person, finding a human in whom to deposit the eggs, and watch the larvae feed. So, yes, fuckin' bugs.

This is the story of 'Paul', a.k.a. Uxon, who's consumed by self-loathing, mourning a friend's suicide, and trying to deny his own nature. It's about being a person as well as being an eldritch abomination: about Paul's relationship with Paul Cattaneo's wife (who spotted the change in the man who was pretending to be her husband, because he no longer beat her) and about how the other Mirror People -- refugees from another dimension, probably -- rally round to support him when he goes off the rails. It's about living in the 'wrong' body and rejecting the biology of that body.

It's a neat idea, but perhaps would have worked better as a novel than a novella. Some truly icky scenes (there are content warnings at the start of the book, hurrah!) and multiple viewpoints. For me, this was interesting rather than engaging, but your mileage may vary.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 18th November 2025.

2025/173: Slow Gods — Claire North

They like to make sure I am observed. When no one is looking, that's when I forget to be ... acceptable. Normal. Part of this world. [loc. 1116]

This is the first-person account of Mawukana Respected na-Vdnaze ('Maw'), who's born into poverty and debt in an uber-capitalist civilisation known as the Shine. When the Slow -- a huge, ancient construct that is something like a god -- sends a message warning of a future supernova that will destroy all life within a radius 100 light years, the Shine suppresses the warning. People are afraid, and furious: there is civil unrest: Maw is imprisoned, sentenced to what's effectively slave labour, and then forced to become a Pilot.

Pilots are necessary to interface with machine navigation in order for spaceships to travel through 'arc-space', where the darkness seems alive and aware, where people are haunted by hallucinations and the sense of presence. ('Various words are ascribed to the 'otherness', the unknowable 'thing' waiting in the dark. Common ones are: uncanny, malign, sinister, slippery, clawing, cruel, malevolent, mischievous...' [loc. 1686]) Most Pilots go mad or die after a few trips. Maw dies, it seems, on his first trip: but it isn't permanent. The darkness has somehow got inside him.

But he is useful. Other worlds are taking the supernova warning seriously: organising the mass evacuation of hundreds of worlds; reacting to the certain deaths of the billions who can't be saved; racing to preserve cultural treasures. Maw, the Pilot who's lasted longer than any other, is at the heart of it all.

I read Maw as being on the autism spectrum even before his first death: he talks about 'always doing something a little bit wrong', about not really having emotions but picking up on the feelings of others, about not getting the hang of smalltalk. Whatever happens to him in the dark changes a great deal about him, but at heart he is still an imperfect person -- or an imperfect copy of one.

This book has a plethora of pronouns: he and him, she and her -- but also, in the Shine, hé and hím, shé and hér, for individuals who exemplify the current concept of 'man' or 'woman' (the Shine does not accept other gender identities); qe and qim for AI individuals; xe and xer, te and ter, and more. There's an amusing interlude about pronouns and about how different cultures assign them differently and for differing periods. "So... the important thing is your genitals?" blurts one character when this is explained.

There are, to be fair, a lot of infodumps, signposted as Interludes: this is a huge and cosmopolitan universe, with many civilisations and many inhabited planets. Most of the non-AI characters are more or less humanoid, but there are aquatic and avian sentient species too. There are also sentient, organic, plant-based spaceships, like the splendid Pride of Emni. The universe-building is a delight: each culture, each society, distinct and idiosyncratic. I was reminded, at times, of Iain M. Banks' Culture: at other times, of Ursula Le Guin's gift for depicting a society.

I loved Slow Gods, even through the misery and cruelty of the first few chapters. I like Maw as a character, though I can see why he needs constant supervision so as not to become 'dysregulated'. I like his quan (AI) companions, especially Rencki, and his gentle let's-not-call-it-love affair with a curator (whose gender is never specified, because irrelevant). I like that Maw gardens, and that he learns to accept himself. I love Claire North's writing: every new project of hers is a surprise, with a different flavour and a different focus. (See Ithaca and the rest of the 'Songs of Penelope' trilogy; The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Touch, The Sudden Appearance of Hope.) And I am quietly joyful that, amid the genocide and murder, the slavery and war, this is a novel about life as a miracle and love as its guiding principle.

I don't know how you're meant to be this small in a universe this big, this insignificant in a galaxy where every decision matters, where every life is precious. I don't know how to feel so huge and so loud inside, and so small and quiet before the dark. [loc. 4061]

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 18th November 2025.

2025/170-172: Whiskeyjack, Blackcurrant Fool, Love-in-a-Mist — Victoria Goddard

Perhaps it was not the blind malignancy of fate making my life so complicated. Perhaps it was me. [Whiskeyjack, loc. 4159]

Rereads to sustain me through a bad cold and the aftermath of my birthday celebrations: I can think of few better remedies.

Whiskeyjack (original review here) introduces layers of complication, curses, several people who are not who they say they are, and Mr Dart's magic becoming more obvious to those around him. After reading Olive and the Dragon, Jemis' mother's letter has new poignancy.

Blackcurrant Fool (original review here) is the one where they all go to Tara: there are highwaymen, kittens, dens of iniquity, and Jemis' toxic ex-girlfriend. Also a devastating denouement, and some healthy post-colonialism. In some respects this is my least favourite of the novels, though it can't be because of the setting...

Love-in-a-Mist (original review here) is a country-house murder mystery, with a unicorn, the revelation of the Hunter in Green's identity, coded messages in the personal ads, and a missing heiress. I think this might be my favourite so far.

Even just rereading my old reviews is making me want to plunge on to the currently-final novel, and the novellas... but I will save those for especially awful days between now and Bubble and Squeak.

2025/169: Careless People — Sarah Wynn-Williams

...the board gets into a conversation about what other companies or industries have navigated similar challenges, where they have to change a narrative that says that they’re a danger to society, extracting large profits, pushing all the negative externalities onto society and not giving back. ... Elliot finally says out loud the one I think everyone’s already thinking about (but not saying): tobacco. That shuts down the conversation. [loc. 3242]

The subtitle is 'A Story of Where I Used to Work', but it's being sold under the strapline 'The explosive memoir that Meta doesn't want you to read' -- with good reason, as this article indicates: "Meta has served a gagging order on Sarah and is attempting to fine her $50,000 for every breach of that order.". I quit Facebook a while back (though I did miss it in the first year of the pandemic, when so much of everyone's social life was online) but if I hadn't, I would have deleted my account well before I'd finished reading this book.

Wynn-Williams survived a shark attack when she was a teenager: there's probably a metaphor about working for Facebook here, but instead it made her want to do something with her life, to make a difference. After working for the New Zealand government's diplomatic service, she identified Facebook as a powerful political force, pitched a global policy role, and was hired. Six years later, she was fired for toxicity and poor performance. Or so say Facebook. The book says something rather different, about a company with a toxic culture, a lack of accountability and a determination to grow at any cost.

I engaged with Careless People on two levels: firstly, as someone who's worked in an environment where unreasonable demands were a daily occurence; secondly, as someone who had suspected Facebook of unethical behaviour, but hadn't realised its extent. I recognise that desire to change things from the inside, the desperate hope that things will improve. I recognise a culture where the employee's personal life is regarded as something less important than work. One horrific passage about the birth of the author's first child:

Dr. Veca reaches over and gently closes my laptop. She says, “It’s a very special thing to give birth to your first child. I don’t think you should be working through it. Sheryl will understand.”
“She won’t,” I say. “Please let me push Send.” [loc. 1457]

To make it worse, 'Sheryl' is COO Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which encourages women to assert themselves at home and at work -- though apparently not to any extent that might inconvenience Sandberg personally. Sandberg strikes me as a hellish boss, and Wynn-William's other superiors aren't much better. After the author's second pregnancy, there's a surreally negative performance review on her return from maternity leave, where she's told that colleagues found her 'challenging to engage with': “I mean, you know, I was in hospital, in a coma and near death, but I accept that this did make it hard to engage with me at times.” [loc. 3540].

It may sound as though I care more about the author's personal experiences than about the incredible damage Facebook has done to global culture and politics. Yes and no. I found Wynn-Williams' narrative easy to relate to, though magnitudes worse than anything I have experienced myself. And Facebook's crimes have been documented extensively: supporting the junta in Myanmar (while having one (1) employee -- actually a contractor in Ireland -- who was fluent in Burmese); funding and supporting Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election; supporting the Leave vote in the Brexit referendum; providing data allowing cosmetics advertisers to target girls between 13 and 17 who've posted and then deleted a selfie; misleading Congress about the extent of its (illegal) operations in China; supporting right-wing governments, viewed as less likely to impose restrictions on Facebook's operations in their countries...

Careless People is a gripping read about a company whose actions affect billions of people. It provides an insider's view of Mark Zuckerberg and his singleminded (blinkered?) drive to make his company more and more powerful. That it's also an engaging and often humorous account of one woman's loss of faith in her employer is a bonus. (And yes, she could have left: there's only so long you can keep telling yourself that you have more power to change things from the inside. But given her medical issues and the cost of US healthcare, her desire to keep her health insurance is relateable.) I suspect Wynn-Williams will not be called for interview at any tech company any time soon: but I look forward to the biopic.

...working on policy at Facebook was way less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli and way more like watching a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money... [loc. 131]

2025/168: Stargazy Pie — Victoria Goddard

“—- This is all very civilized and delightful,” Mrs. Etaris burst in, rushing back at us like a dark blue sheepdog herding her flock, “but I’m afraid we really should be going inside if we don’t want our friends and neighbours to be sacrificed to the Dark Kings." [p. 345]

First in the Greenwing and Dart series: reread, to remind myself just how miserable, unwell and generally detached Jemis was when he first returned to Ragnor Bella (the dullest town in Northwest Oriole) after the debacle of his final term at Morrowlea. Original review here... 

This time around I appreciate Mrs Etaris much more (and wonder whatever became of her previous assistant, 'a quite lovely young man'). I'm also fascinated by the offhand mentions of life before the Fall. ('Whistle a few notes and anyone could call light into a dark room, mage or no, before the Empire fell' (p. 144)).

Anyway! A fish pie (and the Honourable Rag eating herring eyes); aphrodisiacs and a Decadent dinner party; the mysterious Miss 'Redshank'; Jemis as apprentice bookseller; and all manner of delicious references to life in Ragnor Bella.

I may now need to read another one...