this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
31 points (100.0% liked)

Science Fiction

18637 readers
1 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

  1. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
  2. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
  4. Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
  5. Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Every short description I come up with for this book sounds horrible, so that will have to be: The book follows Marty Hench, a 67-year-old forensic accountant. Add to that that it barely qualifies as SF, taking place ever so slightly in the future from when it was written, and not dealing with any technologies that don't actually exist. All that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's kind of a technological thriller. The characters in it, even the minor ones, all seem very three dimensional, and even though some of them are very bad, overall it's full of compassion and integrity. One thing that feels worthy of mention: Doctorow takes the time at the end to sew up all the loose ends and give all the significant characters a visit, unlike so many books I've read recently that end somewhat abruptly with unanswered questions. Big thumbs up.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Here's a link to his blog version of the same thread I referenced. Seems like a hop issue among other stuff.

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/14/compartment/

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

That was interesting to read (as are most things Doctorow writes). I'm still not sure what the core chronic pain issue is; it sounds neuropathic, maybe CRPS, but with some musculoskeletal issues thrown in.

Poor guy.