Review: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

 

Prequels are a popular genre, especially in Hollywood. They build on an established IP and bring the coveted "brand recognition" and thus a guaranteed audience. Nevertheless, especially critics view these products with great reservations: all too often, they are unable to contribute anything relevant to the original story and suffer under the burden of the original narrative. How exciting can it really be to follow the origin story of the antagonist of the "Hunger Games" series, President Snow? The answer to the question "Why did the antagonist turn evil?" has driven countless more or less successful projects by now but all too often leads to excessively banal results. Did Darth Vader really become a more interesting character since we know he feared the death of his beloved? The subdued reactions to J.K. Rowling's origin story of Dumbledore also speak volumes. Accordingly, I was skeptical about Collins' new work, which - almost immediately with a film deal - sets out to explain why the villain of the series turned evil.

An obituary on Steven Attewell

 My friend Marcus Roberts wrote this obituary, and I wholeheartedly agree with everything he says here. 

My friend Stefan Sasse sent me the news that Steven had died and I just started crying and couldn’t stop.

It’s been 24 hours now and I’m able to think a little about why that is.

For me, his loss to the community of Ice & Fire is obvious - ours is a world founded and defined by GRRM but explored and understood politically, historically and strategically with genius by Steven. And his coup chapters in ‘Race for the Iron Throne’ inspired an insane multi-day, real time, 24 player simulation of Ned vs Cersei that was wild fun!*

Less obvious to the world is the loss his death represents politically. Steven was that most rare of people: a man with fully worked out politics. He knew what he believed and why he believed it and could tell you where the ideas came from and where they could take us.

This manifested in his epic work, ‘People Must Live By Work: Direct Job Creation in America from FDR to Reagan’. I had told him how much I was looking forward to its sequel covering our current era of more activist government involvement in the economy.

That’s a serious point. Because the Left is still too weak on political economy right now and the Right is still too strong. Steven was one of the best minds we had at thinking through a coherent next chapter in the Left’s political economic thinking. I think his intellectual and policy legacy will be greater than even he perhaps realised.

The last reason why his death hit me so hard is a personal one: I can’t think of being in New York without seeing Steven. We’d meet in a West Side dive bar, have a beer than get a cab to ‘Nick’s Pizza’ on 94th and 2nd. All the time I’d be asking him questions, all the time he’d be talking, all the time I’d be learning - and then marvelling at this brain that represented for me the very best of geekery and nerdery alike.

I miss you Steven. I’m so sorry you’re gone. Thank you for your brilliance and friendship.

"Wool" review - The book "Silo" was based on

 

One of the big surprises of the TV year 2023 was the Apple series "Silo". As I discussed in detail with Sean T. Collins on the podcast, the series impresses with great worldbuilding, strong characters, and great acting performances. The structure of the story and its pacing are also great, in short: highly recommended. I only learned after watching the series that it is based on a book (I should have paid more attention to the credits). This book had a similar story to "The Martian": it originally started its career as an online novel, was then discovered by a publisher, and turned into a bestseller. In Howey's case, it was the first chapter, initially intended only as a short story (and which forms the first episode of the series), that was published online and from which the rest of the book was developed. How it compares to the series and whether it can convince as an independent work will be shown in the following review. Warning: I spoil the story and thus also large parts of the series.