Enjoyed the part on Annihilation, which I'm looking forward to reading. I think what makes Houellebecq special has usually been the predictive power of his novels: his ability to spot social trends and map these sweeping cultural movements to his narratives (e.g. predicting the modern incel in 'Whatever,' predicting the yellow jacket movement in 'Serotonin,' etc.). Probably, you can only do that sort of thing for so long, and it gets harder with age, particularly as each new epoch becomes increasingly contingent on disruptive technological breakthroughs like AI.
I’m so glad that someone else was disappointed in Annihilation, I really thought I was the only one that hated it
Enjoyed the part on Annihilation, which I'm looking forward to reading. I think what makes Houellebecq special has usually been the predictive power of his novels: his ability to spot social trends and map these sweeping cultural movements to his narratives (e.g. predicting the modern incel in 'Whatever,' predicting the yellow jacket movement in 'Serotonin,' etc.). Probably, you can only do that sort of thing for so long, and it gets harder with age, particularly as each new epoch becomes increasingly contingent on disruptive technological breakthroughs like AI.
If you're a fan of Houellebecq, you might enjoy my novel which was reviewed in the Mars Review of Books earlier in the year: https://marsreview.org/p/where-have-all-the-rude-boys-gone