Henk's Reviews > Terminal Boredom: Stories

Bleak and worlds full of ennui and numbness in the face of the world ending. The stories all have a narrative tone that is quite similar, making the transition between stories hardly distinctive
I want to slip quietly into oblivion, on my own

The endings are sudden and open ended in Terminal Boredom: Stories: I listened to the book and was sometimes really surprised when we moved into a new story.
Everything in this bundle is squarely written before the internet, making the sci-fi feel kind of strange for our current time. Izumi Suzuki her writing is effective enough, but quite sparse.
Maybe a full novel length book would have captivated me more.

Thoughts and rating per story below:

Woman and woman - 3 stars
To doubt this world is a crime
Lots of exposition on the demise of men, with a girl nonetheless building up a relation with a rare survivor.

You may dream - 2 stars
Cryo sleep to address population growth.
Walking around in other people their dreams, apocalyptic dreamscapes, very VR like.
Superficiality and numbness as a goal come back, which later in the bundle turns out to be one of the apparent main themes.
Imagining another universe to be outside of the grip of gender, quite progressive.
The ideas are fine, just the characters don't really come to life for me.

Night picnic - 2 stars
Don’t forget to act like earthlings
Like a weird Third Rock From The Sun, with people living in space trying their best to act as normal humans based on books and films, but then more vague and weird. I think there was a Star Trek Voyager episode quite like this.
Even time is an illusion, and gender is again fluid in these archetypes talking with each other.

The Old Seaside Club - 2.5 stars
I’m sorry, I’m all over the place at the moment.
Again a different planet and a leisure club with people that are not sure why or for how long they are there. This time coupled with an alcoholic mother.
VR escape of real life, and no friends, also recurring: a pervading sense of loneliness.
A talking chair that has the personality of your mother.

Smoke Gets into your Eyes - 3 stars
When I start thinking I don’t like myself
Like a bad trip, with a drug addict reflecting on a relationship with an androgynous person called Jane.
Life being frivolous and empty, mental problems, lack of connection and really feeling something, time as a subjective concept, fear of aging and body disassociation. These topics bind the whole bundle together.

Forgotten - 2.5 stars
No one could live in a world like this with a fully functional mind.
Drugs addiction, foreign planets, what does it matter attitudes.
World government and a chemical in the atmosphere that makes people forget, very The Buried Giant of Kazuo Ishiguro in feels.
Building a colonial empire in space.
Not admitting one loves each other for fear of future disappointment.

Psychic disengagement (He could have easily been a patient in a psychiatric ward), an immortal alien species who just dies because of suicide.
Is the narrator a teenager, with her “how long does it take” and “I want to go home” whining.

Terminal Boredom - 1.5 stars
How do I wrap this up
People voting for celebrities, who then end up voting for the government, popularity being a better indicator of competence than competence itself. Interesting concept.
Wiring up the brain to TV’s, like living in a dream, opioids for the brain, without the required physical stamina.
IQ requirements set by companies.
Pervading jealousy for earlier generations, interesting to see in a work that is quite ahead of the current climate crisis.

Violence and suicide recordings being the only respite from the numbness (very Oryx and Crake and a A Clockwork Orange like).
Think of it as a tv show (about trying to kill a pregnant women).