Tag Archives: Michael Crichton

Blake Crouch’s Upgrade and the Recursion of Pandora’s Box

I have a love/hate relationship with Blake Crouch’s books. He has fantastic premises about cutting-edge science and writes fast-paced thrillers that keep you eagerly turning the pages to the end. Crouch has been compared to Michael Crichton, in that they both write grounded techno-thrillers about plausible future technology with high-concept books that are ripe for adaptation to the screen (TV and movies). But despite me loving the premises of Crouch’s two previous books, Upgrade and Recursion, ultimately I didn’t like the books as a whole—or more precisely I was let down by their endings.

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Best Fiction Books I Read in 2024

They Had No Deepness of Earth (2021) by Zero HP Lovecraft

Zero HP Lovecraft (@0x49fa98) is an anonymous internet poster I originally discovered around 2016 when I was looking at the accounts Naval Ravikant (@naval) followed on Twitter. His name and bio (horrorist) intrigued me, so I read his short story, “The Gig Economy,” which was like a modern cyberpunk take on “The Call of Cthulhu.”

I instantly became a fan and read all of Zero’s stories as they originally came out on his WordPress site (now on Substack), and later assembled in this collection. I had been meaning to re-visit the stories because they deserve (and often require) re-reading. His fiction is like a combination of the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft with the dense philosophical speculation of Jorge Luis Borges and the mind-bending science fiction of Ted Chiang.

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Top 10 Movies (at Least 10 Years Old) I Saw in 2020

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Finding older movies is surprisingly difficult in the age of online streaming. Netflix has severely cut down on their movie catalogue, focusing on their own original television series, and most other streaming services do the same. Amazon has a decent collection of movies, as does the new HBO Max, and I’ve also found some rare gems on Vudu and Tubi, streaming services that are free with ads. JustWatch has become essential in figuring out where and how to watch any given movie. I wish the streaming services would focus more on making original movies rather than television series, but it’s in their economic interest to create addictive TV series that will keep you watching longer. Just as it is in the Hollywood movie studios’ interest to make $100+ million tentpole blockbusters based on pre-existing material.

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