Posts Tagged: Fiction

Apple TV+ is on a roll. Its content strategy seems to be the opposite of Netflix’s; whereas Netflix produces a ton of shows and movies and gives directors and writers essentially free rein, hoping something popular will happen, Apple TV+ is going for a much smaller, much more carefully curated selection. It seems to have paid off, with the first Best Picture Academy Award for a streaming service going to CODA and the universally beloved Ted Lasso.

I loved this book. It’s a really fun, fast-paced novel about a guy in a seemingly utopian future with an uhappy family who accidentally destroys the future utopia by using his father’s time machine to derail the technological developments that made it possible. But in the much-less-utopian present, our present, he finds that he’s a lot happier, his family’s a lot happier, and he has a shot at a life with the woman he loves.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a science fiction novel by Becky Chambers. It borrows some tropes of the genre that’ll be familiar to fans of Firefly and The Expanse. However, Angry Planet is light on world-building and plot; it’s almost entirely character-driven. I liked the first half of the book, when getting to know the characters—many of whom are alien species—and, for the most part, the characterization is well done. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to drive an entire novel.