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Chip's propensity for unreliable/unlikeable narrators makes his books a bit of a slog sometimes, but he's still one of my favourites cause there's always layers of intent going on under the writing and he's so fucking smart and funny. Love imagining an occupied solar system with queer cooperative living and on-demand informed consent gender- and sexuality-affirming health tech, but! Theres a lot of dodging and ducking in and around the question of utopia here and the almost-campy idealized aspects of the society and tech play into these explorations. Loved it.

I found this interview/seminar with Chip from 1986 which shed a lot of light on his ideas around this book, specifically around the question of utopia/heterotopia and SciFi and how this book is in dialogue with LeGuin's The Disposessed. www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/delany52interview.htm

@neveralways are you talking about loading in books from other catalogues (i think openlibrary in particular has been buggy with loading in listings in the past), or creating one from scratch? I just created a test listing and it did work for me, but let me know if you're still having a problem!

Finished this series during a multi-day power outage, and being in resource-management mode def made the cozy solarpunk world these books built feel closer at hand. It was kinda impressively fleshed out for being only 2 short novellas, but i think any more than that and the utopic vibes woulda been totally saccharine. I don't particularly care about solarpunk but I am a total sucker for robot-human friendship exploration stories so definitely enjoyed that aspect.

@astralstreeting oh shit! I've been thinking about rereading the earthsea books.

Unfortunately I think I fizzled out on this one even though I had been enjoying it.