Borne
In a ruined city, Rachel, a scavenger, finds a small creature named "Borne" tangled in the fur of Mord, a gigantic bear made by a biotech firm. She knows her lover, Wick, is keeping secrets about working there, so she searches his stuff and finds a journal titled "Mord." What is he hiding?
Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
3people
2022–2023years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Last year Annihilation and the rest of the trilogy rekindled my passion for reading after almost a decade. Vandemeer really has a way with words but specifically in this novel he manages to describe what I though was indescribable.
It was only fair that I tried another one of his trilogies, Borne, The Strange Bird and Dead Astronauts.
With Borne being pretty normal (for Vandermeer standards) and the other two reading like pretty ramblings at times if you lack the context. I still loved them but they may not be for everyone. You should read them in the order above so that you have as many pieces of the prose puzzle when you reach Dead Astronauts. But even if you end up not liking the writing of the last two books, Borne can still be enjoyed independently.
As for this year. "Blood music" by Greg Bear. Biology scify with a pretty weird concept.
"Firefall" trilogy by Peter Watts Usually a scify story revolvs around one core idea, this one does too, but it kept surprising me with new secondary but interesting ones until the end. Read The Colonel between the two main books.
"Rifters" trilogy by Peter Watts Exploring sexual abuse, empathy
"Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang Short story about a linguist learning the recently arrived aliens language. Liked the humor depicting the different perspectives between scientists and military. Pretty emotional.
I'm not sure what it tells about me but all of these are bittersweet scify with good prose.
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino, a great companion to the movie and expands on characters in really unique ways that make me think about them.
Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson, a near future book about climate change and trying to fix it with an interesting geopolitical look of China acting like the US. I also liked Ministry of the Future but it was less fun of a read.
Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt, a reasoned look at how social media and devices are negatively impacting society and children.
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer, a weird near future declinepunk with bioengineering and evil corporations.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, very short book with a glimpse into post colonial colonialism in remote locations. Wanted to read a book about Congo.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, a portrait of a character in a time I didn’t experience.
- > Borne by Jeff VanderMeer, a weird near future declinepunk with bioengineering and evil corporations.
I loved Shriek: An Afterword, and have wanted to read more VanderMeer for a while. Did you just coin the term 'declinepunk'? I've never heard it before.
