In science fiction, it’s easy to get lost in the unfamiliar, but what struck me in reading this novel was how much that was not the case. The story was completely set within our solar system, not venturing to other galaxies. Fine art and political superpowers were largely recognizable and not invented. The threat was AI and robotics, not some fantastical alien race. Even the mystery was being investigated by an inspector. The actual science fiction was engaging but not too dense. If we really are in the twilight of humanity (mostly kidding?) this was an excellent book to read for the end times.
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
The Prestige (2006)
For whatever reason, this was always the last Christopher Nolan film I hadn’t seen (until, now, The Odyssey), so I decided on a whim to change that. As his last film pre-Dark Knight, I was curious what kind of spectacle this would present. While I used to enjoy him a lot more, I am fairly hit-or-miss on Nolan these days. As a result, I will always sort of wonder how this would have affected me if I saw it as an impressionable teenager. Seeing it today, after two decades of Nolan twists and turns, this didn’t engage me as much as I suspect it would have then. I didn’t guess the twist—mostly for lack of trying, which is my default mode for mysteries—but I wasn’t all that impressed even when it all came together. Credit where it’s due, I am a sucker for asynchronous storytelling, and this film had that in spades. Also, my goodness, even having now seen this, I (like most people, if the internet is to be believed) will never be able to separate it in my head from the other magician mystery movie from the same year, Edward Norton’s vehicle The Illusionist. I had hoped seeing at least one of the two would clear that up in my mind but apparently not. That probably does a disservice in some direction, but I can’t tell which.
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