The Braintrust: A Harmony of Enemies

How do you mix hard science, radical feelings extrapolation, and yet stay neutral? Answer: You point to the idiocy of all sides. A wonderful and constant page turning story of three women who make their new home on the Braintrust. Once I had to deal with tears, and multiple times I read with a wicked s......more

An interesting libertarian seastead story. Very short; enough time to describe the seastead and the “dirt world” elsewhere, then one big incident. Overall, more like a 4.5, but generally a good book. I didn’t love the characters (mostly seemed like parodies/caricatures), but the world itself was cut......more

The Braintrust is a quick read and very relevant to the time we're living in. It's a fantastic satire of how the current administration and common attitudes in America may affect the progress of technology and research in the near future. I appreciate that women take center stage in this novel. The t......more

I read this for our local science fiction book club, and was looking forward to it. I enjoyed one of the author's earlier books, Brainweb, which was a fun exploration of using prediction markets in a civilizational crisis. Alas, Harmony of Enemies was nowhere near that good. The conceit is that in th......more

I had never heard of the author before, though he supposedly had won some awards. As the postscript makes clear, Stiegler wrote this in direct reaction to the 2016 US elections, and it shows. I'm firmly in his camp as far as politics go, but this book is just a jumble of political threats attacking......more