“XX by Rian Hughes: Pretentious Bullshit” by Yair Halberstadt
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SPOILER WARNING: Extensive spoilers for XX. XX was recommended by one of the comments on my Sci-Fi micro-reviews, so I read it. I can't seem to find any critical reviews of the book online so I'm going to while away a few hours of my life in a misguided attempt to reveal that the emperor has no clothes.

** Typography** First let's dispense with XX's most distinguishing feature, then we'll get down to brass tacks. Rian Hughes plays around a huge amount with typography and tries to push the edges of text as a medium. This is an interesting quirk, and is sometimes appreciated, but sometimes makes the novel actively hostile to the reader. Reading through twenty pages of this quickly gets tiring: Overall, I don't think it added that much to the story, but I guess some people would like it 🤷.

** Length And Pacing** This book is long [...]

Outline:

(00:45) Typography

(01:28) Length And Pacing

(01:49) Ideas

(02:34) The Oxbow:

(04:44) Signal Compression

(06:44) Moving the grid

(07:49) Sentient Galaxies

(08:27) The signal as a virus

(09:12) Alternative physics

(09:45) Conclusion

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 4 images which were described by AI.

First published: January 8th, 2025

Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/htivBwW2ym7pxri3Q/xx-by-rian-hughes-pretentious-bullshit)

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