F. Craft

A decade out of date

Revisado: 08-30-23

I can say this is one of the worst books I've read since I started working in robotics almost 10 years ago. It's full of the most innovative ideas from 2010, with plenty of self help and business buzzwords randomly thrown in. He's literally quoting policies from the Obama administration and mentioning stock market events from 2010. I had to check because I really couldn't believe this was published in 2022. I can't figure out who this book is for, he oscillates between giving basic personal finance and college advice to reminding the reader that social media is useless, machines will never be able to innovate, and "word processors have grammar check now!" It was so disjointed and unfocused I found myself starting to get mad at the level of misinformation.

For as important as he says writing and storytelling are to him this book is not compelling, funny or clever. The narrator is also pretty dry and flat which doesn't help. It's the same useless out of date banal advice you might get asking your grandfather about robotics. I find it quite ironic he doesn't think jobs like his are possible to automate while a chatbot could have written a better book.

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Terrible, boring, sexist nonsense

Revisado: 08-28-22

I was worried from the start of this one, but the ideas kept me interested. I'm deeply disappointed I wasted the time to finish this book. The writing is horribly sexist with literal baby crazy sex objects instead of women. The author implores the main character to consider the women on the ship people, but gives them the flattest motivation possible. All the dialogue is painfully overwritten, as if the author just bought a thesaurus and wanted to show how many words he knows. Not one character feels like a real person, and their decisions make no sense. The science starts strong, but devolves into fantasy after the first issues that comes up. Even accounting for the cosmology of the time the author clearly doesn't actually understand relativity. The matter in the universe would have more and more incoming energy as they speed up, so their increased mass would make hitting any new objects much worse than the first collision. This whole book is frustrating nonsense.

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The second read was much worse

Revisado: 03-25-22

I read this book many years ago, and ended up dropping the series afterwards because I was bored. With newer books out now I wanted to catch up on the story, but reading this for the second time was actually terrible. I don't care for any of the tropes brought out in this book. From the literal damsels in distress to the psychopath antihero, all felt like writing that did not age well. I hated the main character from start to finish. He somehow managed to be truly terrible as a person and also had almost no impact on the main story the entire time other than just making the worst possible (out of character) choices at every point. Then things just work out for him perfectly. Anyway I'm hoping newer stories get better because the concepts introduced here really could create an interesting universe.

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Slow and boring

Revisado: 03-10-22

Couldn't get into this book, the characters are pretty stiff and don't really act like people. It didn't help that each got the same monotonous backstory telling that didn't progress the story. Also the random COVID references were clearly and afterthought and quite jarring. The ways they manifest feel like peak 2021 libertarian fever dream with magical tracking, but zero societal or health benefits. Got to about 40% and could not finish this book

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Dubious and overly dramatized

Revisado: 07-07-21

A lot of questionable cherry picking of scientific studies. Also a lot of over anthropomorphizing of animals in fungi with the over use of comparisons and similes. Narrator was absolutely unbearable and weirdly breathy. Put me to sleep every single time, had to listen at 1.2 speed.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas

Terrible service to a critical topic

Revisado: 05-23-20

I deeply care about climate change and the impact it will have on humanity and the biosphere, but this is one of the worst climate books I've read. It's nothing more than a deluged of cherry picked numbers with so many conflicting units they make his underlying point unintelligible. "It's 126 degrees outside as I write this" is the sort of self serving quasi-narrative he delivers with a terrible monotone, then suddenly puts an unnatural emphasis on things like "gigatons of carbon" to sound scary with no context. A professional nararator might have helped, but the writing is so overdone I can't be sure. Stay way from this book, you will be deeply disappointed. This is exactly the type of pop science fear mongering that pays fan service to the radical catastrophist with no attempt at persuading people to make changes that would progress the valuable cause of energy transition, and the author should be ashamed.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

out of date fantasy lost me

Revisado: 03-18-18

Not really compelling or interesting take on alien interaction. characters all fell flat and acted with almost not consistency

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Got a lot worse at about half way in

Revisado: 01-25-18

Was fine until about chapter 33. Then went really hard down hill. The relationship between characters felt awkward and forced. Such terrible writing. He also really dropped the science fiction for "character development." Don't recommended to anyone, just go read a random collection of science words on the internet for a more cohesive story.

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esto le resultó útil a 8 personas

overall predictiable and poorly thought out.

Revisado: 01-15-18

I found myself yelling at these terrible stories and characters. The amount of cliche in this book is nauseous.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona