Mr Handler operating under his own name, here, rather than his Snicket nom de plume. As such, this is a novel for adults, rather than children. Though in fact, is it even a novel at all? It is in fact more of series of short stories, or even vignettes. They are linked, or at least [...]
I came upon these when I was digging out some old comics for my son. These are not for eleven-year-olds, but I realised I hadn’t read them in years, and I thought I’d see how they had aged (plus, I remembered next to nothing about the story). The story is not bad, but not that [...]
By Martin McCallion
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Posted in books, books 2008, comics, sf
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Also tagged american flagg, android, comics, government, howard chaykin, police, talking cat, underwear
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Posted out of sequence, for reasons unknown even to me. Writing about this novel is kind of embarassing for me, because I had the chance to make it better than it is, and I, er, blew it because I read too slowly. See, I was on quite a large list of people who saw a [...]
Hmmm, once again I try a Warren Ellis, and find that it’s not as good as I expected, or hoped. ‘Good’, that is, in the sense of ‘exciting, dramatic, interesting’. I didn’t dislike it, and the story was OK; but it never really caught fire, you know? Still, it was his debut, so maybe the [...]
I bought this in a second-hand bookshop, and tucked into the back there was a cutting from The Guardian of this review by Michael Moorcock. So go and look there if you want a plot summary: he does it much better then I could. It’s an interesting, dark story, and I’m not totally sure how [...]
This is, in effect, a Singularity story, though a rather gentle, slightly comic one. The AIs that gain self-awareness and seek to achieve independence and change the world, start out as part of an educational project called the Museum of the Mind. In this construct there are a number of simulations of figures from history [...]
This is actually thirteen books, not just one. I’ve been reading it with my son over a period of several months. He, of course, had already read it, but we like reading together, and I was keen to know the rest of the story, after seeing the film (which is based on the events of [...]
This is the motherlode of all brains-in-jars/life-is-a-computer-simulation-type stories. Gibson’s and the Wachowski’s Matrixes can both trace their origins back to here – or at least, they should be able to. I’m not aware of anything older than this that quite deals with this idea. At Maiden Castle in Dorchester in the near future (of the [...]
A scorching, searing cyberpunk space opera. It has everything in it: FTL starships, uploaded minds, nanotech, the Singularity, wormhole gateways… Absolutely stunning stuff. Though on the downside, I did find it bit hard to follow some of the plot twists and turns. Specifically, it wasn’t always immediately obvious to me why some of the alliances [...]
Eric Sanderson wakes without his memories. In short order he starts receiving messages apparently sent by his former self, is told by his psychiatrist not to read any such messages, and starts reading them – in the wrong order, which leaves him unready for the trouble that is about to assail him. He is attacked [...]
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