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False Value by Ben Aaronovitch
Feb. 21st, 2020 08:18 pmFalse Value
4/5. Eighth Rivers of London book. Peter gets tangled in a complicated plot involving a techbro billionaire and the singularity. That part is simultaneously underbaked and overbaked. The rest of this book is about the exercise of power – the ability of the rivers to influence people, and how to exercise that ethically, mixing uncomfortably with Peter's power as a cop to change lives, not always for the better. It kind of feels like Aaronovitch is specifically responding to readers who called out the way the rivers behave and how their power seems to violate consent. It's partly successful, and yet I still winced through most of it and kind of wished he hadn't. When you're a goddess or a pop star (or, I would posit, when you are disabled) you make waves in the world for better or worse. People . . . react. Whether you want them to or not. So the question is how to live in that space where so many people's emotions converge on you without hurting yourself or them too much. Of course, Bev's underlying point is that in her case, there is an exchange – someone does her a service, and they are paid with a scrap of her kind of wild grace. Whereas I entirely reject the model that most able bodied people approach me with – that I must receive their help whether it is wanted or not and in return I owe them fulsome gratitude and a performance of helpless disability to satisfy their preconceptions (and boy do people get snotty when that doesn't happen). So I don't find that part of her argument all that satisfying, is what I'm saying.
4/5. Eighth Rivers of London book. Peter gets tangled in a complicated plot involving a techbro billionaire and the singularity. That part is simultaneously underbaked and overbaked. The rest of this book is about the exercise of power – the ability of the rivers to influence people, and how to exercise that ethically, mixing uncomfortably with Peter's power as a cop to change lives, not always for the better. It kind of feels like Aaronovitch is specifically responding to readers who called out the way the rivers behave and how their power seems to violate consent. It's partly successful, and yet I still winced through most of it and kind of wished he hadn't. When you're a goddess or a pop star (or, I would posit, when you are disabled) you make waves in the world for better or worse. People . . . react. Whether you want them to or not. So the question is how to live in that space where so many people's emotions converge on you without hurting yourself or them too much. Of course, Bev's underlying point is that in her case, there is an exchange – someone does her a service, and they are paid with a scrap of her kind of wild grace. Whereas I entirely reject the model that most able bodied people approach me with – that I must receive their help whether it is wanted or not and in return I owe them fulsome gratitude and a performance of helpless disability to satisfy their preconceptions (and boy do people get snotty when that doesn't happen). So I don't find that part of her argument all that satisfying, is what I'm saying.