Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. 👍👍👍👍🧐

Bruno and Guy meet on a train. Bruno interrogates Guy about his live but Guy isn't interested. Bruno insists and Guy tells him about his divorce. Bruno in turn tells Guy about the money his father doesn't want to give him. Everything is fine until Bruno proposes a murder swap. A brilliant psychological thriller with two excellent characters.

The Horla by Guy de Maupassant. 😱😱😱😱

I could finally read The Horla. Been meaning to read Maupassant for years and then I got this Canterbury Classics edition three years ago. I had to wait until page 324 because I'm reading the stories in order. 😬 I enjoyed the atmosphere but what I enjoyed the most was the journey into the protagonist's mind, into his decline into madness. Loved Maupassant's prose so I'll probably be reading more of his work.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick.

An interesting and weird read. The synopsis reads: “In the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late 21st century, tedium can be endured through the use of the drug Can-D, which enables the user to inhabit a shared illusory world. When industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z, which is far more potent than Can-D, but threatens to plunge the world into a permanent state of drugged illusion controlled by the mysterious Eldritch.” Palmer Eldritch is the centre of attention of the story but in fact he is not the protagonist. He is a mystery because of his motivations and his nature. The book follows the life and tribulations of Barney Mayerson, a pre-fash consultant or a precog (someone who can see the future) and his boss Leo Bulero. Bulero owns a company which distributes virtual landscapes and in the background distributes Can-D. When Eldritch arrives with Chew-Z they try to eliminate the competition. 

 The book is divided in 2 parts. The first part introduces Mayerson, Bulero and Roni Fugate (Mayerson’s assistant), the legal product they sell and the Can-D problematic around the space colonies. This part reads like a normal novel. The second part starts when one of the characters consumes Chew-Z. Then life turns into a mixture of delusions and reality. From then on the reader doesn’t know what is happening under the influence of the drug and what not. What takes place under a simulation and what is real. It is under these circumstances that Eldritch comes to the surface. We don’t know if he is human, an alien or a god. Towards the end, the topics of religion and gods gain prominence with some characters questioning their existence in a world where there is no hope without a drug.

I first learned about this novel when I read How We Became Posthuman… by Katherine Hayles. Hayles writes about Dick’s novel (p178) in connection with the concept of the Schizoid Android (an unfeeling female) a kind of prototype for a posthuman and compares Roni Fugate to Rachel the android in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The schizoid android appears in several of Dick's books as a woman with black hair. Apparently Dick based his schizoid creations on his emotionally cold, detached mother.

Sapiens. A Brief History of Human Kind by Yuval Noah Harari. 🌟🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

Mindblowing. Very well written. Dense with information and theories but light to read. Sapiens is history but is not filled only with information like dates, place and names. I loved Sapiens for the way it uses a theoretical framework based on the idea that Sapiens rule the world because they believe in things that don't exist (such as money, states, religions and human rights) to explain How and Why humans have developed (and evolved) the way we are. It doesn't read like an academic book though. Instead it tells stories. It uses tools from biology, anthropology, economics, and others areas of knowledge to draw a ginormous picture of what we were, what we are now and guess (more than a guess, Informed Estimations of Possibilities?) what is coming next for us. Totally recommend it!!