Plastic / The Storm is Upon Us (QAnon)
Jul. 5th, 2024 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
essentialsaltes Plastic, by Scott Guild is a pretty wild idea.
Both a crypto-comedic dystopian fantasy [definitely that] and a deadly serious dissection of our own farcical pre-apocalypse [not sure it's quite that], Scott Guild’s debut novel is an achingly beautiful, disarmingly welcoming, and fabulously inventive look at the hollow core of modern American society—and a guide to how we might reanimate all its broken plastic pieces.
Hard to summarize, but in this universe, people are essentially animate Barbie dolls -- hollow and plastic. Rather than living in a Barbie world, theirs is a bit darker, with eco-terrorists carrying out deadly attacks to draw attention to the "heat leap", the analogue of global warming caused in this case by using chicken bones as fuel (as we might use plastic doll oil feedstocks in our own self-created problem). Another odd point of the world is our doll-people speak in a simple caveman-esque diction. Fortunately, our heroine Erin has a rich internal monologue that fleshes (or plastics) out her thoughts in more compelling prose. Enjoyable characters, gonzo presentation. And while I appreciate the farcical/satirical elements, I didn't care for the ending, which just kind of rammed the dial into 11 and crashed the plane rather than trying to attempt a landing.
The Storm is Upon Us, How QAnon became a movement, cult, and conspiracy theory of everything by Mike Rothschild
I picked this up from a Little Free Library. It was published in May 2021, so it tells the story, in journalistic fashion, of the rise of QAnon from its origins to its role in January 6th. Obviously, we've had almost another 4 years of history after that. QAnon has gotten a bit quieter, but in some ways, as soon as it became the theory of everything, now some pieces of that (say election denial) have practically become GOP orthodoxy now. Really useful as a history of the origins and original threads of the movement, but (hey, not it's fault, I'm reading it 3 years too late) not that applicable to the situation now. Has some nice sections with how 'cult' experts think of QAnon, and some material from Mick West about how to pull your friends and loved ones out of the rabbit hole (and how not to).
Both a crypto-comedic dystopian fantasy [definitely that] and a deadly serious dissection of our own farcical pre-apocalypse [not sure it's quite that], Scott Guild’s debut novel is an achingly beautiful, disarmingly welcoming, and fabulously inventive look at the hollow core of modern American society—and a guide to how we might reanimate all its broken plastic pieces.
Hard to summarize, but in this universe, people are essentially animate Barbie dolls -- hollow and plastic. Rather than living in a Barbie world, theirs is a bit darker, with eco-terrorists carrying out deadly attacks to draw attention to the "heat leap", the analogue of global warming caused in this case by using chicken bones as fuel (as we might use plastic doll oil feedstocks in our own self-created problem). Another odd point of the world is our doll-people speak in a simple caveman-esque diction. Fortunately, our heroine Erin has a rich internal monologue that fleshes (or plastics) out her thoughts in more compelling prose. Enjoyable characters, gonzo presentation. And while I appreciate the farcical/satirical elements, I didn't care for the ending, which just kind of rammed the dial into 11 and crashed the plane rather than trying to attempt a landing.
The Storm is Upon Us, How QAnon became a movement, cult, and conspiracy theory of everything by Mike Rothschild
I picked this up from a Little Free Library. It was published in May 2021, so it tells the story, in journalistic fashion, of the rise of QAnon from its origins to its role in January 6th. Obviously, we've had almost another 4 years of history after that. QAnon has gotten a bit quieter, but in some ways, as soon as it became the theory of everything, now some pieces of that (say election denial) have practically become GOP orthodoxy now. Really useful as a history of the origins and original threads of the movement, but (hey, not it's fault, I'm reading it 3 years too late) not that applicable to the situation now. Has some nice sections with how 'cult' experts think of QAnon, and some material from Mick West about how to pull your friends and loved ones out of the rabbit hole (and how not to).
