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Review: The Peripheral – William Gibson
In near future rural US, Flynne’s brother, a retired marine, makes a little money helping rich folks beat video games. One day, Flynne subs for him, dropping into a surprisingly real game world where she witnesses the gruesome death of one of the game characters.
In a not quite as near future London, Wilf Netherton drops out of contact with his former boss after an attempt to make a documentary on the inhabitants of the great pacific garbage patch goes south spectacularly. A new opportunity to use his skills as a publicist soon presents itself.
Review: The Difference Engine – William Gibson & Bruce Sterling
The Difference Engine is a collection of steampunk stories set in an alternative 1855 in which Great Britain is run by radical industrial reformers and mechanical computers.
Review: Neuromancer – William Gibson
Part one of the Sprawl Trilogy – Henry Case, a hacker wasting his life away in the underworld of Japanese Chiba, gets picked up by a mercenary in the service of an ex-special forces agent who needs his hacking skills for a unique job.
Review: Mortal Engines – Philip Reeve
Tom Natsworthy is an apprentice historian in the traction city of London – a mobile metropolis chasing other traction settlements across the hunting grounds to devour their resources and enslave their people. Tom’s life is turned upside down when he meets heroic explorer and head historian Thaddeus Valentine – and witnesses a failed attempt to assassinate Valentine.
Review: The Peripheral – Amazon Prime
Flynne’s brother is hired by a shady company out of Columbia to beta-test the most real sim videogame ever played. Flynne subs for him, and can hardly believe what she is playing. As her suspicion towards the simulation grows and she pushes to speak to their ostensibly Colombian employers, she learns that this is no mere simulation. This starts a process that will rock Flynne’s perception of the world she lives in to her core.
Review: BioShock: Rapture – John Shirley
In this prequel to the BioShock video game series, ultra-wealthy tycoon and passionate libertarian Andrew Ryan sets out to build a city at the bottom of the sea, to escape the looming threat of atomic war and the constant interference of parasitic governments and petty morality. As the project advances, however, others try to take advantage of Rapture’s ‘freedom’. As art, scientific experimentation and exploitation of the working classes run rampant and the city itself starts to spring its first leaks, will Ryan and those loyal to him be able to maintain their ideological positions?
Review: Ghost in the Shell – Mamoru Oshii
An almost completely prosthetic cyborg, is an agent in a shady police/intelligence unit tasked with counter-terrorism and cybersecurity in a near future Japan. When she finds the trail of a cybercriminal best known for hacking a person’s cerebral implants, she is pulled into a dangerous manhunt infused with questions of identity and humanness.
Yearly Wrap-up: 2022 in Review
At the start of 2022, our curators chose some resolutions for themselves? Which media on their to be read/watch/listen/play piles did get their attention? And what else did the year bring?
Review: Leviathan Wakes – James S.A. Corey
Jim Holden serves on an interplanetary ice hauler when disaster strikes. He and a handful of his crewmates are thrust into the center of an encroaching conflict between the superpowers of the solar system: Earth and Mars. Joe Miller works security on the most populous space station in the Kuyper Belt until his investigations lead him to a mysterious connection with the cause of the looming war.
Review: Exhalation – Ted Chiang
A merchant in ancient Baghdad discovers a time portal which allows him to revisit his past mistakes. A former zookeeper takes a job raising digital lifeforms. A new technology enables people to communicate with alternate versions of themselves, and to see how their life would have turned out if they had made different choices.
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