There Is No Algorithm

2026-08-23 BOOK-REVIEW

“Leave this puddle immediately. You are thin pictures. You’re fragile. If you stay in the puddle, you’ll turn into tombs in no time…”

— Cíxīn Liú, Death’s End

Death’s End is the grand conclusion to Cíxīn Liú’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. At over 700 pages in length, it’s the heftiest volume in the series, and the reason is clear the moment one opens the book. On the second page, the reader is greeted with “Table of Eras” outlining a timeline extending from the present day to several million years in the future, foreshadowing the vast ambition of the story.

2026-08-02 BOOK-REVIEW

“The Wallfacers are undertaking the most difficult mission in human history. They will truly be on their own, their souls closed off to the world, to the entire universe. Their only communication partner and soul spiritual support will be themselves. Shouldering this great responsibility, they will pass through the long years alone, so let me speak for all humanity and offer them our deepest respect.”

— Cíxīn Liú, The Dark Forest

Fresh off of finishing The Three Body Problem, I dived straight into reading its sequel, The Dark Forest. The first novel was enjoyable, but gave me little that I hadn’t already experienced in season 01 of the Netflix series, and I was eager to experience the rest of the story.

2026-07-20 BOOK-REVIEW

“All the evidence points to a single conclusion: Physics has never existed, and will never exist.”

— Cíxīn Liú, The Three-Body Problem

A couple of years after the Netflix show, with no word about the second season, I decided that it’s time to tackle the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series by Cíxīn Liú. These books have received universal acclaim—this one specifically won a Hugo award for best novel—and I’ve been going through a bit of a sci-fi phase, so I was quite excited to dive in.

2026-07-16 BOOK-REVIEW

“She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”

— Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

I’m not sure exactly what put Their Eyes Were Watching God on my radar. It’s definitely outside of my usual fare, but I enjoy a dip into the classics now and then. While I initially struggled to get into it, it was ultimately a rewarding read.

2026-04-05 BOOK-REVIEW

OK, so this one’s a bit complicated. I picked the book up on a whim in 2025, after having been a long-time fan of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s music—in particular, I’m most familiar with her album Coincidence and Likely Stories. Although I didn’t know much about her, her music and activism always seemed very much like my kind of jam, and so I was keen to learn more. I checked the book out, and had an excited exchange with the cashier, who was surprised and delighted to meet another Buffy fan.

A few pages in, and the book had kicked off with some very heavy details regarding abuse she suffered during childhood, interspersing them with bubbling praise for her natural musical talent. I felt the need to look up some details on this, so headed to her Wikipedia page. That’s when I found out: in 2023, a CBC investigation revealed Buffy’s claims to indigenous American heritage to be false. The fall-out from that was on-going, as one by one, her awards and honours were being stripped from her. Heading to a YouTube music video of hers, I found comment after mocking comment praising the “beautiful Native Italian music”.

2026-03-24 BOOK-REVIEW

This book was written in 1931—95 years ago! I'm pretty sure that people have been commenting on how this book is "so relevant, especially now!" for the past 95 years, and I get the feeling that they'll be doing so for many more years to come. It's hard to tell if Brave New World taps into deep fears that we have with modern society, or if it is actually the template from which those fears were formed. As I read this book, I feel like it so neatly slotted itself into the context of all the other science fiction that I've read over the years: books, movies, and games, from Cloud Atlas to We Happy Few and back to Wall-E. I finally understand why it's always compared to Nineteen Eighty Four; these books seem to have provided the two moulds that all of our dystopias have been stamped from.

2026-02-25 BOOK-REVIEW

I imagine everyone will come to this book with a different perspective, depending on their relationship with Blizzard Entertainment. For my part, I was a fan of their work though most of my teen years, from downloading (cough cough) Warcraft 1 from my dad's work PC, to buying StarCraft II on release. After that, none of their releases appealed to me much, and I lost interest. This book helped me understand why that happened, and besides that, it was a fun chance to revisit some old memories, and hear the back-stories behind them.

2026-01-25 BOOK-REVIEW

I picked this up after my boss, an avid sci-fi geek, enthusiastically recommended it. A pacifist himself, he praised the book's presentation of the horrors of war, based on the author's own experiences in Vietnam.

The start of the book felt very familiar: a young, educated man gets drafted into a futuristic army, to fight in a war against a murky alien enemy. He and his fellow conscripts get taken through a brutal training programme by a series of tough-as-nails drill sergeants, and complete sometimes-lethal exercises they learn to use futuristic power armour. So far, so Starship Troopers. Once I got past that, though, the story picked up and came into its own.