4.5* for premise, 3* for execution? one of the rare times i thought a book should’ve been longer!
no one reads ken liu short stories and expects them to be realistic, to build a complete and coherent world, or to outline a path from the present day to the utopia/dystopia portrayed.
likewise, you have to understand what this book is before reading it. this book is not a blueprint, a deep dive, or an analysis of modern capitalism. instead, it’s a brief thought exercise about four post-capitalist futures. it’s more sci-fi than not, though the academic/analytical language can leave you expecting something else.
the introduction clarifies this purpose: frase embraces weber’s extreme “ideal types” approach and assumes away major variables like the automation of most labor. frase instead manipulates two variables: (1) the level of resource scarcity and (2) the level of social hierarchy.
despite having my expectations set, i wish frase spent just a while longer elaborating each possibility. each of the four scenarios is sketched out in less than 50 pages. a sci-fi short of that length focuses on one element of a future society; this book‘s scenarios sketch out the entirety of social/economic/technological/environmental relations. as a result, sections felt insufficiently explained or rushed (“wait, we’re only spending a page there?”).
what i did gain was:
potential futures to compare and orient my efforts either toward or against
sparks for new lines of inquiry
reading recommendations (theory, fiction, etc) in related genres
i also thought frase made a strong case for why activists and theorists should spend more time thinking about utopias - reminded me of kathy weeks’ “utopian demand.”
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