{"id":4329,"date":"2026-01-28T21:36:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T02:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=4329"},"modified":"2026-01-28T21:36:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T02:36:21","slug":"the-subtle-art-of-folding-space-by-john-chu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=4329","title":{"rendered":"The Subtle Art of Folding Space, by John Chu"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a dear friend, and I read an earlier draft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m so glad we&#8217;re finally closing in on the day when the rest of you can talk about this delightful weird book with me. If you&#8217;ve been reading John&#8217;s short stories for all these years, rest assured that this book has the same heart and the same absolutely fresh take on the world and its structures. If you haven&#8217;t, what a treat you have ahead of you! Go forth and read!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This book, though. Okay. Ellie looks after the structure of the universe far more than most of us with physics training. She regularly visits the skunkworks, an extra-universe space that allows for tweaking and re-coding the laws of this and other universes. John puts the physics in metaphysics here&#8211;there&#8217;s a whole community of people dedicated to this work in a way that&#8217;s a lot more like a branch of engineering, architecture, or software design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unfortunately, most of that community has been poisoned against her by her self-righteous, violent, and gaslighting-prone sister Chris. And when their mother dies, Ellie is left scrambling against changes in the laws of physics themselves. She&#8217;s not sure who she can trust. Thank goodness for her hulking cousin Daniel, the most food-focused metaphysician you&#8217;ll ever meet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So yeah, you&#8217;ll be intrigued, you&#8217;ll be hooked, but you will also be <em>hungry<\/em>. Maybe it&#8217;s that John and I have similar taste in food (the bao! the brussels sprouts! WHAT DID YOU DO TO THAT EGG TART, CHU), but I was on the edge of my seat mostly to find out how Ellie and Daniel would beat Chris&#8217;s machinations but also a tiny bit to see what food item Daniel would come up with next. I always knew that cooking was crucial to the maintenance of space-time. Soon the rest of you can see why. Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a dear friend, and I read an earlier draft. I&#8217;m so glad we&#8217;re finally closing in on the day when the rest of you can talk about this delightful weird book with me. If you&#8217;ve been reading John&#8217;s short stories for all these years, rest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-4329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bookses-precious"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4330,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329\/revisions\/4330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}