u/LaMelonBallz

I just finished The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed and it is the most outstanding thing I've read this year. Sayed does so much so well and ties it into a gripping, uniquely structured narrative, that takes place in one of the most engrossing settings I've seen in a while.

Synopsis: Human's left a dying earth on gigantic colony ships packed with people on ice as well as crews of people left awake to run the ships who will do so across multiple generations. This was all controlled by a harsh government know as The Network, who installed an AI to oversee and govern each ship. Some time into the journey the crew revolted, ripped out all of the AI, and set up their own government. 200 years later, the book begins, and their is now significant friction between that new government and the people. Then rolling blackouts begin....

Sayed reminds me so much of Martine. The book practicly revolves around language and communication, with the ship being organized around language instead of race or ethnicity. Getting to explore each part of the ship and it's people and culture might be my favorite part. Like Martine, he also hits strong emotional notes. Sayed is from Egypt, and a lot of the book is based on or inspired by real stories from the Arab Spring.

He does not assign "good" or "bad" to charactees or even protagonists, which had me fuming at some points, but he really forces you to look at the gray areas of each person, and sort out what really drives their actions. The book almost demands you pick a side, but doesn't give you a color by numbers answer. And that leads to some incredibly emotional moments. The strangest things had me tearing up. This book is going to sit with me for a while particularly in the current global context.

In terms of writing, the prose is excellent, the descriptions are evocative and I just wanted to soak up every minute that I could on this ship as I winded my way through it's various mysteries.

Finally, I really dig the way he structures the narrative. It bugged me at first as he switches between lots of POVs, oftentimes for a single chapter, and there is no clear "Protagonist" POV. But it absolutely lands. I would suggest not even looking at the table of contents and just trusting him to take you on the ride. He lands the story perfectly and everything falls into place.

I don't want to over hype this but I'm absolutely blown away. If you like Arkady Martine and have been trying to fill that void, this is it.

​

GSW: Miles Bridges, 18th overall, maybe add in a second rounder

CHA 11th pick and absorb Tingus Pingus

Yes we all hate Miles but he's actually pretty solid when you look at it, and NBA players (especially Dray) apparently love him. He's solid at his position and is an iron man. Salaries match, GS gets off the Pingus Poison Pill, doesn't lose that much in draft value. They get someone who can score and take pressure off Curry.

Not sure we would actually do this as Miles is fucking unfortunately a big locker room guy, but if we want Mara or Yaxel bad I think GSW is our target. Also not sure GSW actually would drop Pingus for this level of value.

Thoughts or other trades? Ways to restructure?

I just finished 36 Streets and was completely blown away. If you were ever looking for something to fill the void left by Altered Carbon or George Alec Effinger, this is it.

Blurb from Richard Morgan: “36 Streets glows bright and hallucinatory as tropical neon, goes down smooth as warm sake, cuts deep as a nano-steel blade. Napper honours classic cyberpunk with fresh perspectives and hot genre recombinations, a nasty new-future gleam, the proverbial new coat of paint. But there are more austere echoes here too, of Graham Greene and Kazuo Ishiguro, of a whole post-colonial literary heritage banging to be let in. In a genre stuffed with facile hero narratives, 36 Streets consistently chooses something else – messy humanity, grey moral tones and choices, hard-edged geopolitical truth. Raw and raging and passionate, this is cyberpunk literature with a capital fucken L. Get it while it’s hot!”

This holds true for me.

Napper has the grit, nilhism and revenge of Altered Carbon while having the atypical setting (Vietnam during a future occupation by China) and a very lived in experience and sad tone of Effinger. Napper lived in Vietnam for years as an Attache and bases the neighborhood setting on that, similar to how Effinger used his experiences living in the French Quarter for his books.

This book has so much going on. The main character is a 25 year old Vietnamese woman wired up to the gills, she's a street enforcer for a gang and lost in a spiral of drugs and trauma around her family and identity. It's also a deep dive into the politics and history of the Vietnam war, previous occupations, and future Vietnamese-Sino relations. There's some really interesting tech, though I wouldn't say it dives too deep into the science of it.

On the surface there's lots of violence, drugs and sex, but it's so much deeper. Morgan's endorsement for capital L Literature held true for me. It's overloaded with deep, layered themes, introspection and extrospection.

I can't reccomend this enough if you liked Altered Carbon and Effinger. I inhaled 36 Streets in two days, and immediately bought his other books.

I just finished 36 Streets and was completely blown away. If you were ever looking for something to fill the void left by Altered Carbon or George Alec Effinger, this is it.

Blurb from Richard Morgan: “36 Streets glows bright and hallucinatory as tropical neon, goes down smooth as warm sake, cuts deep as a nano-steel blade. Napper honours classic cyberpunk with fresh perspectives and hot genre recombinations, a nasty new-future gleam, the proverbial new coat of paint. But there are more austere echoes here too, of Graham Greene and Kazuo Ishiguro, of a whole post-colonial literary heritage banging to be let in. In a genre stuffed with facile hero narratives, 36 Streets consistently chooses something else – messy humanity, grey moral tones and choices, hard-edged geopolitical truth. Raw and raging and passionate, this is cyberpunk literature with a capital fucken L. Get it while it’s hot!”

This holds true for me.

Napper has the grit, nilhism and revenge of Altered Carbon while having the atypical setting (Vietnam during a future occupation by China) and a very lived in experience combined with the same sad tone of Effinger. Napper lived in Vietnam for years as an Attache and bases the neighborhood setting on that, similar to how Effinger used his experiences living in the French Quarter for his books.

This book has so much going on. The main character is a 25 year old Vietnamese woman wire up to the gills, she's a street enforcer for a gang and lost in a spiral of drugs and trauma around her family and identity. It's also a deep dive into the politics and history of the Vietnam war, previous occupations, and future Vietnamese-Sino relations. There's some really interesting tech, though I wouldn't say it dives too deep into the science of it.

One the surface there's lots of violence, drugs and sex, but it's so much deeper. Morgan's endorsement for capital L Literature held true for me. It's overloaded with deep, layered themes, introspection and extrospection.

I can't reccomend this enough if you liked Altered Carbon and Effinger. I inhaled 36 Streets in two days, immediately bought his other books.