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A review by zea_d_writing
Randomize by Andy Weir
informative
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
I read this story sixth and last in my read through of the Forward collection.
When I read ‘Project Hail Mary’ earlier this year I had two complaints: one was a legitimate issue with the book and the other was just something that annoyed me but was ultimately harmless. The one legitimate issue was that all of the non-MC characters were essentially nothing more than caricatures of their races/nationalities. The Chinese astronauts was stoic and terse. The Russian astronaut was constantly drinking vodka and oversharing about her sex life.
But it was a smaller detail and Weir is such a loved author that I was pretty excited to get to his story in this collection.
Why was the billionaire the victim/good guy (ish) of this story? Why did the tech security have to be coded as Asian? Why was the stealing criminal/the bad guy (I guess) a brown woman? Why was the Indian woman, who was apparently a genius with multiple PhDs to her name in things like mathematics and astrophysics, working so hard to…scam a Las Vegas casino?
I can understand the desire to show an incredibly smart and capable woman in a story. I can also understand the desire to not have that woman be the usual white woman who lives in a very western context that is so often used in stories such as this. But having this woman’s introduction focus so heavily on the fact that she’s making her husband his lunch and serving him, that she’s happily in an arranged marriage while living in the US, that she prefers to wear saris instead of the clothing western women wear…it all felt less like a well written, complex, fully fleshed out Indian woman and more like the author jumping up and down being like “see? See?! I wrote A Woman and she’s A Brown Woman! See?! Give me kudos while ignoring the fact that I promptly make her the criminal antagonist”.
Also…the way he wrote her playing up her Indian accent and wearing even more traditional clothing and everything while trying to pull off the scam just felt…icky.
But beyond all the highly questionable character decisions made in this story…
The entire premise of the Forward collection is to look at the future of technology and where that technology might take the human race moving forward. The other stories are about humans surviving the end of the world, sometimes even thriving afterwards. We have stories about how advanced technologies can be used and abused and complicated our lives. All of the stories before this one felt like they had a point to them. They were far reaching and yet very much grounded in our present reality.
And then there is this story…which essentially boils down to: we may get quantum computers but we’ll still just use them to support capitalism, billionaires, and try to get rich.
It felt both icky and also short sighted. Especially in comparison to the rest of the series.
I’ll be reading The Martian by Weir because it’s already on my shelves. But I don’t think I’ll be buying anything more from him beyond that. Unfortunate.
When I read ‘Project Hail Mary’ earlier this year I had two complaints: one was a legitimate issue with the book and the other was just something that annoyed me but was ultimately harmless. The one legitimate issue was that all of the non-MC characters were essentially nothing more than caricatures of their races/nationalities. The Chinese astronauts was stoic and terse. The Russian astronaut was constantly drinking vodka and oversharing about her sex life.
But it was a smaller detail and Weir is such a loved author that I was pretty excited to get to his story in this collection.
Why was the billionaire the victim/good guy (ish) of this story? Why did the tech security have to be coded as Asian? Why was the stealing criminal/the bad guy (I guess) a brown woman? Why was the Indian woman, who was apparently a genius with multiple PhDs to her name in things like mathematics and astrophysics, working so hard to…scam a Las Vegas casino?
I can understand the desire to show an incredibly smart and capable woman in a story. I can also understand the desire to not have that woman be the usual white woman who lives in a very western context that is so often used in stories such as this. But having this woman’s introduction focus so heavily on the fact that she’s making her husband his lunch and serving him, that she’s happily in an arranged marriage while living in the US, that she prefers to wear saris instead of the clothing western women wear…it all felt less like a well written, complex, fully fleshed out Indian woman and more like the author jumping up and down being like “see? See?! I wrote A Woman and she’s A Brown Woman! See?! Give me kudos while ignoring the fact that I promptly make her the criminal antagonist”.
Also…the way he wrote her playing up her Indian accent and wearing even more traditional clothing and everything while trying to pull off the scam just felt…icky.
But beyond all the highly questionable character decisions made in this story…
The entire premise of the Forward collection is to look at the future of technology and where that technology might take the human race moving forward. The other stories are about humans surviving the end of the world, sometimes even thriving afterwards. We have stories about how advanced technologies can be used and abused and complicated our lives. All of the stories before this one felt like they had a point to them. They were far reaching and yet very much grounded in our present reality.
And then there is this story…which essentially boils down to: we may get quantum computers but we’ll still just use them to support capitalism, billionaires, and try to get rich.
It felt both icky and also short sighted. Especially in comparison to the rest of the series.
I’ll be reading The Martian by Weir because it’s already on my shelves. But I don’t think I’ll be buying anything more from him beyond that. Unfortunate.