Read that Rob Savage is directing an adaptation of this, then discovered the ebook was free to read on Kindle. It’s a solid graphic novel about a lostRead that Rob Savage is directing an adaptation of this, then discovered the ebook was free to read on Kindle. It’s a solid graphic novel about a lost film. Didn’t really do what I want a lost film narrative to do – it’s too fixed to a single location, the film itself doesn’t seem interesting enough to warrant the reputation it has in-story – but a decent way to pass half an hour. ...more
(2.5) Really wanted to like this a lot more than I did. The jacket copy on the edition I read (not the same as the blurb here on Goodreads) deserves a(2.5) Really wanted to like this a lot more than I did. The jacket copy on the edition I read (not the same as the blurb here on Goodreads) deserves a lot of the blame (or do I mean credit?) for this: it talks up The Trio as an ‘instant classic’, ‘a love letter to those fevered blue nights and lemon-pale dawns of youth’, ‘bittersweet and euphoric’. Unfortunately, it can’t live up to that. This is an elegant, aloof novel that’s also a hell of a slog.
In fact, I struggled with The Trio from the start: it throws a truly bewildering amount of stuff at the reader – so many characters and complications – before there’s a single reason to care about any of it. Yet I felt there was enough potential in the premise to hold my attention. The prose is crisp and stylish, in a strong translation by Kira Josefsson (also the translator of Hanna Johansson’s excellent Antiquity). The story is basically about the relationship between three students – Hugo, Thora and August – which, over the course of a few years, becomes a loose sort of throuple. There’s a flimsy framing device which involves Hugo, years later, living in New York and estranged from Thora and August, receiving a visit from their now-adult daughter. But mainly, it’s about these three young people loving and hating and envying each other.
We switch between Thora and Hugo’s perspectives, but their voices sound very similar (often, I could only tell them apart based on who else was mentioned), and they both lack interiority in the same specific way: they’re unsure of who they are, yet both extremely aware of this, constantly thinking about how ‘my thoughts had no more substance and weight than the smoke smudging the sunset’ (Thora), or ‘I thought of [my] childhood as a shapeless mass of time’ (Hugo). This struck me as peculiar for people in their older teens and early twenties, which seems to me an age when you’re constantly adapting yourself without even thinking about it, while at the same time pretty fixed in particular beliefs and interests. I can’t quite get my head around the idea of feeling your own personality is amorphous while constantly thinking about how your own personality is amorphous. Much less two people in a relationship being exactly alike in this way! Doesn’t the act of thinking about yourself so much imply a sense of identity that would preclude this amount of uncertainty... I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Regardless, the characters didn’t really work for me.
The Trio is a globetrotting story, moving from Stockholm to Berlin, London to New York, and occasionally there’s a lovely bit of description that captures something specific: a summer’s evening at the beach, a winter afternoon in a café. Yet the backdrops are largely flat, just as the ‘passion’ between Hugo, Thora and August lacks heat. It’s too tidy, there’s never anything unruly about any of it. It’s like looking at something trapped behind a thick layer of glass. This is by no means a bad or worthless book but it isn’t really one I can personally recommend....more
I just couldn’t put this down. I read the whole thing across a single evening. Like its predecessor London Gothic, this is a disorientating, animate bI just couldn’t put this down. I read the whole thing across a single evening. Like its predecessor London Gothic, this is a disorientating, animate book, full of stories that both unnerve and amuse. The opener, ‘Welcome Back’, is a perfect case in point: it delves into academic office politics, with the narrator getting tangled up in accusations of bias when a colleague resigns. But believe me when I say you will never guess the twist. In ‘Simister’, a man’s attempt to do good deeds turns into a macabre comedy of errors. There are also some cool narrative experiments here, like ‘Disorder’, made up entirely of Joy Division lyrics, and ‘Strange Times’, which (seemingly) collects messages highlighting the homogeneity of language used to address the Covid-19 pandemic, the way phrases spread like... a virus, I suppose.
It’s the longer stories I really enjoyed, though. In ‘The Child’, a man is led on a strange journey after he visits a mysterious video shop. I always adore a lost film story, and this one is so gripping, so rich, I was ready to read it for hundreds of pages more. ‘Someone Take These Dreams Away’ is also a film story of sorts, a more haunting one, framing the experiences of its characters through described visuals from if.... ‘Zulu Pond’ has the most unpromising start (man moves back to Manchester, dwells on the memory of a girl he met for one night years ago), yet it unfolds into a brilliant exploration of the city’s waterlogged edgelands. In ‘The Apartment’, perhaps the most uncanny of the stories, the narrator hears voices above his top-floor flat and finds himself between reality and the ‘people texture’ of an architect’s rendering.
As with Daniel Carpenter’s recent collection Hunting by the River, having lived in Manchester undeniably added to the appeal of the stories for me – but that’s just a nice extra; Royle’s visions of the uncanny are incredibly compelling. I’m looking forward to the final volume of his city-based trilogy, which will be about Paris....more
I’m surprised this book hasn’t had more attention, and a little frustrated to see it getting lumped in with mediocre ‘sad girl’ books. The Cellist folI’m surprised this book hasn’t had more attention, and a little frustrated to see it getting lumped in with mediocre ‘sad girl’ books. The Cellist follows a successful cello soloist, Luciana, as she looks back on a particular time of her life – a period of debilitating stage fright that happened to coincide with her only significant relationship. It’s a deeply introspective, mature story about the question of whether creative practice can coexist with romantic love and the big life changes that often follow it (marriage, children).
When Luciana meets Billy, she’s a rising star and he – an artist – is unknown. Then, after Luciana collapses during a performance, things start to shift. She struggles to find her way back to performing and to understand what effect falling in love has had on her as a musician. None of this happens in a straight line, though, and Luciana’s ability to logically assess her own feelings doesn’t make it any easier to work out the tangles.
Without regaining my certainty, I did not see a way back to the stage. I knew, then, that I had to consider the situation as an event that happened because I’d lost something. Yet I resisted considering it this way. I did not want to think of loss, which could, for all I knew, be permanent. I wanted that night to be an aberration, because I did not want to change any ideas of myself.
There’s a startling clarity of prose here, and Luciana’s narrative voice embodies a confidence that sits interestingly (and uneasily?) alongside the character’s uncertainty. It’s a story that carries a strong sense of emotional truth. I found it extremely moving at points, especially when Billy moves on and Luciana struggles, despite a deeply held conviction that they don’t want or need the same things. In devoting herself to art, has she made the right choice? The answer is always obvious, yet never fully fixed.
I would compare The Cellist to White on White by Aysegül Savas, another elegantly written novel about art and selfhood, and Arrangements in Blue by Amy Key; while Key’s book is non-fiction, it similarly explores the landscape of a life lived without romantic love. Though less of a psychological puzzle, it also reminded me of Delphine de Vigan’s Based on a True Story – the same sense of a a narrator working through the devastating effect of creative blockage, as well as the subsumption of their identity into another person....more
(See also my review of Issue #2.) Again, some great ideas in here, with my personal standout being Daniel Simonson’s ‘The House of Fitted Stones’, in (See also my review of Issue #2.) Again, some great ideas in here, with my personal standout being Daniel Simonson’s ‘The House of Fitted Stones’, in which ex-residents of a mysterious house reunite on an online messageboard, discussing their strange yet unforgettable experiences. With research as the theme, several contributions run along the same lines: they gradually reveal a portrait of a dystopian near-future society through the author’s chosen format. This could describe a few of the best stories – ‘The Securities & Exchange Commission v. The Undying Sea’ by Simo Srinivas (found documents), ‘The Comments Section’ by Andy Tytler (which plays out in the comments on an online advice column), and ‘Welcome’ by Alexis Ames and Kat Veldt (chats and emails within a marketing company, with a similar vibe to Several People Are Typing). I also liked the increasingly creepy letters in Barrie Darke’s ‘Goblin Universe’. A few other stories have good concepts but are lacking in execution. I assume things had been refined a bit by #2 because I found that to be a stronger, tighter collection, but this was still extremely fun....more
I’m both annoyed that I didn’t know about Archive of the Odd until now, and excited I’ve discovered it and still have a couple more of these zines to I’m both annoyed that I didn’t know about Archive of the Odd until now, and excited I’ve discovered it and still have a couple more of these zines to read. All the stories collected here are told in unusual formats – really unusual. I’ve so often been disappointed when something described as ‘mixed media’ turned out to be a conventional narrative with a few emails or tweets thrown in. But these are truly original, and beautifully illustrated too. In ‘Avoiding Yesterday Best Look’, M Maponi crafts a sly tale of horror and consumerism through the medium of a WikiHow article. ‘Community Posting Board’ by Ellen Edwards has to be one of the most innovative – you can guess the format from the title, but it’s impressive how well this is made to work. Kiya Nicoll’s ‘Seventh Page of the Heartwell Gazette’ uses one page of a local newspaper over several dates to show how a mysterious newcomer unsettles a small town.
My favourite, though, was ‘Channelsea’ by Sarah Jackson, which uses the (relatively) conventional approach of found documents to tell the eerie story of an abandoned, potentially toxic island. I would happily read a whole book of this. Gabrielle Bleu’s ‘Birdwatching Notebook Found on a Colorado Trailhead’ builds tension and dread masterfully through nothing but bullet-pointed journal entries about which birds the narrator has spotted. Another standout is ‘The Recovered Files of Threnody Lane Elementary’ by Daniel Simonson, which vividly portrays a unique world via children’s art and other schoolwork.
They’re not all entirely successful: a couple of stories don’t quite manage to pull format and plot together, and while it looked great, I really struggled to read the handwriting in Nik Sylvan’s ‘Notes on a New Cephalopod by Ephraim T. Foxxe-Grace, Naturalist’. Overall, though, the standard is so high for something from such a tiny press; I just love the idea so much, I’m going to savour the other two (so far) issues and it’s a must-read if you love mixed-media fiction....more
Esc&Ctrl is a multilayered, metafictional book-within-a-book. This is the setup: the author, Steve Hollyman, wrote a novella called He Knows His Name,Esc&Ctrl is a multilayered, metafictional book-within-a-book. This is the setup: the author, Steve Hollyman, wrote a novella called He Knows His Name, a second-person narrative about an angry and lonely man who creates an alternate identity online. The sole manuscript was stolen. Some time later he’s contacted by an academic who claims to have found the missing manuscript – but now it's had a whole additional plotline added to it by an anonymous contributor. This, known as VOID, is a cod-noir episode featuring the amnesiac Vincent, who’s searching for his girlfriend’s killer in New York City. Esc&Ctrl consists of both books spliced together with commentary from both Hollyman and the academic, complete with discussions in the footnotes.
It’s reminiscent of S., The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas and especially theMystery.doc, as well as Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy (which is clearly an influence). Reviewing such a self-aware narrative always presents challenges. It’s difficult to tell how seriously you’re meant to take the poorly written women, or the pompousness of various personas; when artificiality is literally built into the story, any such bugs might actually be features. Somehow, I found Esc&Ctrl to be more than the sum of its parts. He Knows His Name could be a striking short story on its own, but VOID is simultaneously flimsy and pretentious – it’s the bringing together of both, plus all the postmodern flourishes, that makes the whole thing more interesting.
After writing the above, I found out the text of Esc&Ctrl formed part of the author’s PhD thesis. This makes more sense of various references in the footnotes, which sometimes feel out of place as well as being a bit ‘Critical Theory 101’. I also learned it was originally meant to be read in conjunction with a series of Facebook pages set up for the characters, which are referenced in the novel (I don’t use Facebook so hadn’t tried to access these). Knowing all this shifted my perception of Esc&Ctrl: in fact, it’s not just metafictional but transmedia, in debt to hypertext fiction to an extent that isn’t fully evident from reading it as a book. (A weird irony: although the foreword extols the virtues of the print novel, I was unwittingly getting closer to the intended experience by reading my copy in ebook form, navigating through the footnotes by clicking back and forth.) I think it also helps to know that Hollyman was writing it between the late 2000s and early 2010s, when novels about online identity were much thinner on the ground. If what’s being said here – every social media profile is a work of fiction, etc – doesn’t exactly seem mindblowing today, it would have been a fresher observation at the time.
I started to find Esc&Ctrl more interesting once I knew more about its origins, but this information isn’t referenced in the book itself, it’s something I had to go looking for. So should I allow it to affect my opinion? Or should I simply review the words on the page? These questions are strangely pertinent to the book’s project – perhaps it did exactly what it was supposed to after all. Ultimately, the formal experimentation kept me interested in the story even when I found it lacking as... well, a story. It’s a quick, easy read and certainly a page-turner, so well worth a look if you’re into books that play with format and narrative....more
A curious little book (literally – it’s a pocket-sized paperback). Every time I picked it up and read a couple of chapters, I enjoyed it. But every tiA curious little book (literally – it’s a pocket-sized paperback). Every time I picked it up and read a couple of chapters, I enjoyed it. But every time I put it down, its details slid off my brain, as if I too was enveloped in the same chemical haze as Yoder’s characters.
Hannah lives in Lumena, a town dominated by a vast pharmaceutical factory. Is this the near future, or an alternate version of our world? It’s never entirely clear. Every aspect of life – school, work, socialising – revolves around a vast spectrum of (legal) drugs, most prominently Valedictorian or ‘V’; it’s supposed to make students perform better academically, but its awful side effects are swept under the carpet. There’s a lot of talk of ‘devices’ and ‘streaming’ etc – basically, contemporary references written about in such a way that they sound vaguely futuristic. I was also slightly thrown off by the characters’ use of slang, much of which already sounds dated just two years after the book was published (honestly, I never want to see ‘obvi’ again in my life). The overall effect of Lumena is one of distracted surrealism, retro futurism, like a film set in the 22nd century but shot on burned celluloid.
It all goes a bit ‘cli-fi’ in the final third as a disaster shakes everyone loose of Lumena’s grip. With Hannah’s friend Celia hospitalised, she’s led to wonder: ‘who was Celia without supplements? I mean who were any of us, really?’ This section pivots away from the smooth whimsy of the earlier chapters; the characters explore their relationships to one another amid post-Lumena life, a return to something more primordial (with added visions of chimps). It reminded me of some other slightly frustrating, difficult-to-pin-down novels about strange situations and ideas: Lamb by Matt Hill, Girls Against God by Jenny Hval, The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada. I’d definitely recommend it if you loved any of those....more
Just when you think the first-person novel of disaster/breakdown/mental unravelling has had its day, something comes along that reinvents the whole idJust when you think the first-person novel of disaster/breakdown/mental unravelling has had its day, something comes along that reinvents the whole idea. Hydra feels entirely fresh, though it’s difficult to pinpoint why exactly. Maybe it’s protagonist Anja’s job at an auction house. Maybe it’s the story’s main setting: a derelict cottage on the wild fringes of a naval base with a dark history. Maybe it’s the extracts that appear throughout: taken from an investigative report written thirty years earlier, they chronicle strange incidents – with a supernatural cause? – on the same naval base. But most of all, I think, it’s the distinct voice Howell creates for Anja. Her narration, liberally sprinkled with exclamation marks, is delightfully idiosyncratic; her wry tone rings out from the page.
There are whole swathes of the book where I could just quote everything Anja says. Her professional rival, Fran, is ‘a girl who’d forgotten she was a woman’; she bemoans her boss with his ‘orderly procession of pretty fuckboys’, and the ‘decaying boyish smile’ of a toadying colleague. Anja on Queen Anne furniture: ‘a design period so feminine one could imagine menstrual blood seeping from the furniture’s joints.’ Anja on the increasing coldness between her and erstwhile best friend Beth: ‘growing apart from me also meant growing apart from herself – best to let me be the whore.’
At first, our antiheroine seems to be on the up: she’s well on her way to securing the coveted position of ‘specialist’. (Anja on the prospect of Fran beating her to it: ‘If I didn’t make specialist before her, I’d die.’) But then, in quick succession, comes a series of disastrous events: the death of Anja’s mother, the breakdown of her marriage, and – most ruinously – a dramatic incident at an open house. Anja is rendered jobless and disgraced in one fell swoop. Desperate for an escape, she buys the aforementioned derelict cottage on impulse. Which is when things get weird – and we start to understand the connection between Anja’s narrative and the investigative report.
I know a lot of people are fed up of ‘unhinged woman’ novels, and I have been losing my patience with them too, but Hydra really is a cut above. The style definitely has shades of Ottessa Moshfegh, but it’s wittier – at times, Anja’s one-liners are reminiscent of Emma Jane Unsworth’s Animals – and Hydra also feels like a book twin to the film Tár. When the history of the cottage is revealed in full, and when Anja makes her triumphant, deranged and utterly career-crippling return to the auction house, the message is the same: wildness and violence are never as far away as you think....more
Australia, circa 2080: life is increasingly lived inside the virtual world Gaia, but our protagonist, Tao-Yi, is a little more reluctant than most of Australia, circa 2080: life is increasingly lived inside the virtual world Gaia, but our protagonist, Tao-Yi, is a little more reluctant than most of her peers. When the concept of ‘Uploading’ – transferring a person’s consciousness to Gaia in its entirety – is launched, things get more complicated, especially as Tao-Yi’s boyfriend Navin is immediately enchanted by the idea. Every Version of You reminded me of books like Chosen Spirits and Moxyland, which colourfully depict future worlds, but with a much more focused plot and strong emotional core. It pulls off something rare for this type of story: the tech is thoughtfully written and Tao-Yi feels like a real person whose relationships (with her friends and her mother as well as Navin) actually mean something. I loved the closing chapters’ account of the post-Gaia real world, full of desolation, glimmering with hope....more
Why did I wait so long to read this? A book called Municipal Gothic is, based on the title alone, right in my wheelhouse. And in fact, I loved it evenWhy did I wait so long to read this? A book called Municipal Gothic is, based on the title alone, right in my wheelhouse. And in fact, I loved it even more than I’d imagined I would.
For me, a ‘good opening story’ for a collection isn't just about the story actually being good: it should tell you something about both the writer’s preoccupations and the collection’s; the whole project of the book. By all measures, ‘The Curse Follows the Seed’ is a perfect opening story. A woman is approached (in a supermarket car park) by a spectral black dog who tells her she’s doomed to die because of her bloodline. She greets this portentous encounter with incredulity and a no-nonsense attitude, and immediately sets about researching the curse. It’s funny and touching, a great portrait of its protagonist Sally’s life as well as an excellent ghost story. It’s clear from this story that Newman values occupations and places (and lives) thought of as ‘ordinary’; that the stories will have humour threaded through them; and that this is a very British – to be more specific, very English – book.
These concerns are carried through the next story, ‘Modern Buildings in Wessex’, a travelogue that focuses on the work of a fictitious architect, Hälmar Pölzig. As the narrator (an architectural critic) describes the buildings, his observations become more disturbing and abstract. Again, this works in more than one way. It’s not only a compelling and inventive way of telling a story; the descriptions of buildings are fantastic in themselves, and made me want to see them.
Another standout is ‘Protected by Occupation’, in which our down-on-his-luck narrator agrees to help out his dodgy uncle by acting as caretaker to a derelict building. The place has a unique quirk: it’s full of elaborate (and legally protected) murals. Investigating the place’s history, he learns of a haunting that took place there. Sense of place is a major strength of Municipal Gothic throughout, and is at its most effective here. Such an original setting, and I loved the insertion of a historical account.
The book is so strong that it’s difficult to choose a personal highlight, but if pressed, I might go for ‘Director’s Cut’. (My notes say both ‘LOVED THIS’ and ‘loved it, loved it’.) A film buff (and self-styled expert on British cinema) gets talking to a pub regular who claims he starred in a host of unreleased British films. At first sure it’s a lie, the writer is then confronted with irrefutable evidence, but terrible accidents seem to follow the films around. I adore a lost film story, and this is a brilliant one – wonderful idea, great characters.
The stories I’ve mentioned above are not just my favourites from Municipal Gothic, but among the very best short stories I’ve read in the past few years. It’s a remarkably coherent piece of work: a book full of excellent ghost stories that is also so clear in its aims and thesis. My comparison points would be Gareth E. Rees’ Terminal Zones, Daniel Carpenter’s Hunting by the River and Glen James Brown’s Ironopolis. I could point to other things I loved here – the eerie atmosphere of ‘Alice Li is Snowed Under’, the lived-in texture of ‘Who Took Mary Cook?’, the way ‘An Oral History of the Greater London Exorcism Authority’ feels like it contains enough material for a whole novel. But instead of rambling too much, best just to say: I absolutely adored Municipal Gothic, and can’t recommend it enough....more
Asylum is a novel based on real people: the 19th-century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his patient/muse, the so-called ‘hysteric’ known aAsylum is a novel based on real people: the 19th-century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his patient/muse, the so-called ‘hysteric’ known as Augustine. It imagines an obsessive, erotic, albeit exploitative relationship between the two in which Augustine is in thrall to her ‘Maître’, he haunted by her. This is impressed on the reader through a narrative so repetitive that it is somnolent. Medical demonstrations; twisted desire; repeat, again and again. It might have been more effective as a short story, but the whole thing is so slight, I can’t see any real reason it needed to be padded out to novel length....more
Appliance has a killer concept: through a series of interconnected short stories, it charts the introduction and development of an invention that chanAppliance has a killer concept: through a series of interconnected short stories, it charts the introduction and development of an invention that changes society. In the first story, the ‘appliance’ is a fridge-sized unit that can move a small object a short distance; by the end of the book, it’s a widely-used teleportation system, so prevalent that humans have all but abandoned other modes of transport. I enjoyed how the stories moved through time without pinning down where or when we are, so the context is the reader’s only key to how much the invention has advanced. Yet, despite the innovative approach, it’s all a bit dry and curiously old-fashioned. I couldn’t warm to any of the characters or summon up much interest in their circumstances (and one story that graphically depicts rape is jarring among the generally sterile scenes)....more
There are more stories about trauma than, perhaps, there ever have been – particularly within the horror genre – but I don’t think anyone is doing it There are more stories about trauma than, perhaps, there ever have been – particularly within the horror genre – but I don’t think anyone is doing it quite like Simon Avery. Sorrowmouth, partly inspired by the William Blake painting ‘The Ghost of a Flea’, is about William Underhill, a man who seeks out the grief-stricken. His motivation is a need to appease the appetite of Sorrowmouth, the mute, otherwise invisible figure who accompanies him everywhere. When he comes into contact with Kate, a failed suicide who has a similar companion, Underhill finally sees a chance for a way out of this isolating pattern, including an opportunity to escape the lifelong shadow of his abusive father.
Underhill and Kate (and Varley and Mary) are middle-aged and worn down by the drudgery of daily life; there’s no deus ex machina moment here, no wealthy family waiting to swoop in and save the characters from themselves. This is a story about the type of loneliness that is deeply ingrained, and how difficult it is to break a cycle – but it is also a story about hope....more
(First read November 2021; reread December 2022.) This is a book that is perfect to me. Not a book I am trying to claim is objectively perfect, but a (First read November 2021; reread December 2022.) This is a book that is perfect to me. Not a book I am trying to claim is objectively perfect, but a book that is perfect to me, that feels precisely calibrated for me. Everything about the story, how it’s told, how it’s written, the strength of the voice, the momentum of the plot... the slow unfolding, the macabre details, the setting, the beautiful writing about landscape, the expression of both freedom and isolation, the ways in which the ending is delicious and unsettling at once. There are moments in this book that comfort and console me, and others that leave me chilled to the bone – not in a ‘spooky’ way, but existentially. Honestly, probably top 10 of all time for me. I am so glad I have it to reread forever.
Fellowship Point was persuasively recommended by the peerless Brandon Taylor in his newsletter; it’s likely not a book I would have picked up, or evenFellowship Point was persuasively recommended by the peerless Brandon Taylor in his newsletter; it’s likely not a book I would have picked up, or even heard of, otherwise. This is a long, sprawling story whose central figure is 80-year-old writer Agnes, successful author of a series of bestselling children’s books and a set of pseudonymous adult novels, both based on people from her real life. The story surveys Agnes’s past as well as the life of her best friend, Polly, and several of their relatives and neighbours. The writing about old age is fantastic, devoid of cliché, and Agnes is a staggeringly good character. Polly and Dick’s marriage is brilliantly drawn, in all its wonder and banality. There were points at which I felt Alice Elliott Dark had pinned down something essential about human existence in a few breathtaking lines... but then there were pages and pages, even full chapters, I could happily have skipped. The character of Maud, an ambitious young publishing exec who persuades Agnes to write a memoir, feels from the start like she exists solely to move the plot along, a suspicion that is borne out repeatedly by events later in the book. I also found some of the dialogue a bit stilted.
I cried twice during the final stretch of Fellowship Point – once at a moment of revelation that is devastating for Agnes (with her devastation portrayed so powerfully), and again at the very last line. But within the same stretch there is also a cheap, silly plot twist that feels more like something from a soap opera than a serious novel. I find it difficult to say whether I think the book is worth reading, especially as it’s almost 600 pages, a significant investment of time for any reader. There are certain moments I will carry with me. Yet I’m no more than lukewarm about the thing as a whole....more
Lambda is the most beautifully crafted, interesting sci-fi I’ve read in a while – this thing is absolutely bursting with ideas. The central idea is thLambda is the most beautifully crafted, interesting sci-fi I’ve read in a while – this thing is absolutely bursting with ideas. The central idea is that ‘lambdas’, aquatic aliens who are genetically human, have become part of human society, albeit controversially. But the plot also encompasses AI assassins, sentient objects and future policing. Our (main) guide to this world is officer Cara Gray, who works first in surveillance, then – when her role is superseded by a quantum processor – as a ‘lambda liaison officer’. (And there are additional layers here too, as we’re aware her narrative has been generated by a program, leading to some very particular turns of phrase and details that reverberate throughout her story.) I could have carried on reading about all this forever: it’s so well-written and comes together so satisfyingly, and every perspective is cleverly developed. With that said, don’t read this book if you’re looking for questions to be answered and loose threads neatly tied up. There’s not much in the way of resolution: this is more a portrait of one idea of a future-world. It’s sometimes funny, sometimes chilling and always feels true.
An anthology of found footage horror stories is a fantastic idea – a dream concept for me, really. But an anthology lives and dies by its curation, anAn anthology of found footage horror stories is a fantastic idea – a dream concept for me, really. But an anthology lives and dies by its curation, and unfortunately, the quality of stories here varies wildly. Pick of the bunch is Ally Wilkes’ wonderfully atmospheric and sinister ‘Summons’, a masterclass in building tension. It’s closely followed by Robert Levy’s ‘This Video is Unavailable’, an oral history of a maybe-haunted YouTuber and fandom gone sour, which is smart, entertaining and made me want to read more of the author’s work. The best stories in Found make use of ‘found footage’ as a format as well as a theme: the plausible forum discussions in ‘A Grave Issue’ by Bev Vincent; the effective video descriptions in ‘Ghost Town Adventures’ by Joe Butler; the mixed-media approach of ‘Disappearances at Coal Hill’ by Nick Kolakowski; co-editor Andrew Cull’s clever faux-intro ‘11/7/19’. I enjoyed some of the unsettling details in ‘The Novak Roadhouse Massacre’ by Alan Baxter and ‘Face Down Death Volume VIII’ by Josh Rountree, too. It’s just a shame that the genuinely good entries have to sit side by side with stories that feel like a teenager’s first attempt to write a creepypasta....more
(3.5) Thoughtful sci-fi about a scientist and an android investigating octopus communities (and the legend of a sea monster) around a privatised archi(3.5) Thoughtful sci-fi about a scientist and an android investigating octopus communities (and the legend of a sea monster) around a privatised archipelago. Lots of discussion of consciousness, communication, intelligence, how they ought to be defined and what they mean. How do we decide whether a robot is conscious? How might humans communicate with an intelligent non-human race? Can technology ever solve the problem of loneliness? I have to admit that nothing here, for me, quite matched up to the thrilling opening chapter, and two subplots – one about a hacker, one about an enslaved worker on an automated fishing vessel – never quite seem to reach their full potential. Still, I really enjoyed the main story, which unfolds slowly, with plenty of room for reflection. I also loved the extracts from two pop-science books ostensibly written by characters within the book.