The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

 

(I know there could be some mistakes in this review. I’m trying to improve my English, thanks)

I assume there is little I can say about this book that has not already been told. My fault for not reading it earlier.

Anyway, a short comment. For me, the achievement of this book is to very cleverly mix a wonderful sense of humor with some tropes of science fiction (such as galactic empires from space opera stories or also artificial intelligence), in a way that may seem like a light reading but that actually contains some bold insights. For example, a resource that the author uses is to show our tiny human problems on a galactic scale, which helps to put everything (philosophically) in perspective. So, in this book, we, the humans, in our unconcerned planetary isolation, understand little of what goes on at the galactic level, including things that can affect us, let's say -ahem!- directly.

So Douglas Adams invites to ask ourselves: What if our beloved and also mistreated planet, often treated as the center of Creation, was just a minuscule curiosity in the galactic order?

I've been told not to bother reading the sequels so I'm keeping the good memories of this one.

The This by Adam Roberts.

(I know there could be some mistakes in this review. I’m trying to improve my English, thanks)

I think I can contribute little to this review. The book begins as one thing and ends as quite another... or not. This "becoming" of the plot is well thought out and if there is something that cannot be discussed about the author, it is his talent.

Along the way I suppose I have missed details, especially in the last part of the novel. A few perhaps? Not too many I hope. In one of these last chapters there is a rather daring twist that leaves me perplexed. A foreign object that apparently clashes with the rest of the novel and that I understand as a tribute to a great classic which fortunately I read very recently (a clue: it starts with 19 and ends with 84). I should also clarify that at the end of the novel everything makes (more) sense.

So what I can say about the book is that the most "tangible" aspect in itself is worth reading: a very incisive critique of how the social networks and their intrinsic perverse side affects us. This is not a book against social networks, far from it: the author enjoys a privileged perspective in terms of diagnosis of our age and at the same time provides us with a fascinating proposal for a possible future of our society: great the concept of Toycene. And of course there is more, but here we enter the realms of... Hegel.

I'm sorry if I've been unclear with this review. Do I recommend it? Yes, but bear in mind that it is an Adam Roberts book.