Welcome to the Escape Velocity Collection!
We are an opinionated group of friends reviewing all sorts of fantasy and science fiction media. Don’t forget to get to know the curators and visit our curated Collection, where we discuss the stories that never cease to transport us to another world.
Will you escape with us?
LATEST POSTS:
- Audio drama created by created by Ian Coss & Sam Jay Gold
- Produced by PRX & The Truth
- Released in 2022
- Starring Lindsay Nicole Chambers, Rachael Grace Holmes, Joseph Medeiros and Jon-Michael Reese
Newts! is a fast-paced, musical comedy based on the book of the same name written by Karel Čapek. In an alternate early 20th century, a lone sea captain discovers highly intelligent newts. When he tries to find them a place to survive, the ‘economic possibilities’ of the species are quickly seen by a wealthy investor. The story is told by a bystander, who can’t help feeling a little responsible for everything that has happened since she opened the door of the investor for the discoverer of the newts.
Newts! is a fun, 6-episode musical that shows the evil, good and tragic nature of human kind through the rise of a new sentient species as a lucrative business opportunity. Despite the playful tone and melodramatic characters, the main story felt realistic, as it could have happened and could happen today. While human traits like greed and the indifference to suffering of others are certainly part of the story, the message is more nuanced. Also good people with good intentions can cause great tragedy or are just not capable to keep up with developments that propel history to a seemingly inescapable outcome.
The story is mainly told by a narrator who leads the listener from event to event, where dialogue takes main stage. I really like the parts where audio design was used to evoke old-timey film reels or news clippings – here the line between reality and fiction became a little thinner. I also appreciated the introduction of each episode by a little information about the author of the original book, the Czech science fiction writer Karel Čapek.
Despite the praise above, it was just not fully my cup of tea. It was well executed, but not really surprising, laughing-out-loud funny or emotionally moving. I liked it, but did not love it. Therefore: 3,5 stars.
Tagged:
See also:
- Movie directed by John Hillcoat
- Starring Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, and others
- Released 2009
- Runtime: 111 minutes
This faithful adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy book tells the story of a man and his son, trying to survive like normal humans in a post-apocalyptic world that is broken beyond all normalcy. It follows the trials of the man and the boy and their shopping cart full (and empty…) of food and as they try to survive the hardships of the Road, both physically and mentally, as the walls of the world seem to slowly close in…
John Hillcoat’s movie The Road is a very faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s book of the same name, both in the scene-to-scene plot progression (such as it is) and the overall mood. I liked the book for it’s atmosphere and more thoughtful (and therefore, frightening) portrayal of the violent, post-apocalyptic world that we have seen many times before. Hillcoat’s movie does the same, choosing to show the post-apocalyptic world as dreary, empty, desperate and frightening as opposed to action-packed and filled with opportunity.
In my review of the book, I (perhaps a bit respectlessly…) warned the reader that at times it felt a bit more like a stylistic exercise than a proper story. The movie is much the same, with slow scenes and flashbacks establishing the characters’ past, but never really looking to the future (which, of course, is the point). The lack of story progression bothered me a lot less on screen than on paper though – you spend a lot less time with a movie than a book, and that means that the movie’s heavy mood keeps you in it’s clutches all the way through, without giving you time to wonder where it is all going.
The movie is hardly enjoyable – it’s really dark and frightening – but it is very good at what it wants to do, and worth watching if only for its grim take on a genre that has at times become so derivative and trope-filled that we’ve stopped thinking about the day-to-day horrors of what life after the apocalypse could really be like.
- Audio drama written by Rob Norman
- Produced by CBC
- Released in 2021-2022
- Starring Eric Peterson, Rahkee Morzaria, Cal Dodd and more
Limited Capacity is a Black Mirror-esque anthology series of six short stories about the strange and twisted ways we interact with the internet, and with each other. The episodes span different genres and blur the line between reality and fiction.
I am a big fan of stories that create a thought experiment on the ways current technology impacts our world or could impact our world when set on steroids. Each episode of Limited Capacity does exactly that. It keeps the technology close to home and uses different genres to keep the stories fresh. The quality is very consistently good, although in an anthology series you always have favourites. A short roundup:
- We all hate Greg, right? A funny story about a Zoom call with magical powers and with a nice twist in the end. Great when you’re fed up with your collagues at the office – to remind you you don’t have to be nostalgic about the pandemic online period either…
- The Blue Checkmark. A mock interview with someone who takes over the social media account of an influencer on holiday. How real do you have to be?
- Kill the Chicken. A mockumentary about a youtube series for kids that becomes a political meme. Through the workings of social media two opposing sides only radicalise, without ever really talking with one another.
- Better Fitter Roger-er. Roger uses a self-help app, because he needs to be more assertive in setting his boundaries. But there might be a thing like ‘too-self-helped’.
- He Who Boils Rivers With a Look. An app for social interaction in real neighbourhoods is used for an imaginary neighbourhood and family roleplay for people wanting to escape their ‘real’ families. It starts as an idyllic town, but soon the problems begin…
- Slow Burn. Lizzie succeeds in getting an invitation to an elite dating app and finds someone there. But sometimes he acts a bit strange. What is his ulterior motive?
Tagged:
See also:
Feisty heroine Feyre (Pronounced Fey-ruh) kills a wolf in the woods, and is whisked away to a Faery kingdom to pay for her crime.
As the hatred for her captor slowly turns to steamy passion, she discovers the wonders of the Faeries. Their parties, wine, and magnificent world, but also what lurks beneath: danger, a blight that may forever destroy the beauty she has found.
Man, I had a hard time thinking of the right star rating for this book.
I’ve been sort of meaning to read this book for a year or so. It’s on a lot of “lists” of YA fantasy, and while I somewhat anticipated that it would be awful (sorry), it also did sound like the kind of dramatic Fantasy Romance that I might enjoy.
I found this novel at the thriftstore and started reading it pretty much immediately when I got home. It’s a page turner, I’ll say that.
But – is it good? I suppose that depends on your definition of “good”. There’s a lot of elements in this book that are clearly set-up for something that’s to come. It’s slightly clunky in this, I could always spot when Feyre mentioned some backstory that would later become relevant. Her family isn’t very well developed, but just enough to help us understand why she might be happy to be away from them. And, when Feyre mentions a promise she’d made to her dying mother to look after her father and sisters, you immediately know that this line is only in the book to explain why Feyre would ever even want to return to them when the Fey-world is much nicer.
There’s a lot of tiny things like this in A Court of Thorns And Roses. When reading a book, I don’t want to be thinking about the mechanics of the story. It pulls me right out. So, no. I wouldn’t say this book is “good” by that standard.
But what if you were to ask me: “could you put this book down?”. I would probably have to admit that I stayed up late reading a couple of times, and finished it in about four days.
A lot of this ACOTAR is vey cliché in a very unsubtle and slightly clunky way, but if I can’t put a book down, I kind of have to conclude that it is indeed good.
Will I be reading the sequels? No. Unless I find them at the thriftstore, maybe.
Tagged:
Similar to:
- Book written by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling
- Published in 1990
- Standalone
Set in a masterfully crafted alternative 1855 in which Great Britain is run by radical industrial reformers and mechanical computers, The Difference Engine follows a set of diverse characters each chasing a mysterious set of punch cards: a working girl getting mixed up with American revolutionaries, an esteemed paleontological savant who just returned to Londen after an expedition to far-off Wyoming, and a secret agent with Japanese ties.
The Difference Engine was recommended to me on Reddit after I uploaded my review of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and remarked how fundamental that book was to the cyberpunk genre. The Difference Engine, I was told, was supposedly the same, except for steampunk, which (obviously) made me curious straight away. I was not disappointed. After some googling, I don’t think The Difference Engine stands at the cradle of the steampunk genre the same way Neuromancer does with cyberpunk, but the book certainly captures the spirit of the steampunk genre in a way that I haven’t before encountered in print – though admittedly I haven’t found a lot of steampunk novels, so feel free to recommend your favourites.
The Difference Engine is a collection of interconnected novellas set in an alternative history version of the London of 1855, in which Britain is ruled by a coalition of Radical reformers who have pushed the Conservative government out of power and installed a regime that has pushed for rapid industrialisation. Scientists and inventors of all different disciplines called ‘savants’ are installed as lords. The bureaucracy of this new Britain runs on difference engines, room- or even building-sized whirling mechanical computers that record data on punch cards.
The steampunk alternative history worldbuilding in this novel is absolutely phenomenal. I love that the novel makes an actual effort to have its steampunk setting fit into our real world, and has worked out a more or less believable timeline to get to the world it wants to present (as opposed to just ‘sticking a gear on it’ and calling it a day). I recognised a lot of real world names (and I probably missed a lot more), and every time the authors mention a poet as a proto-cinema director or prime minister, you can’t suppress a smile.
The actual stories set in this amazing world are enjoyable, though some more so than others; I have to admit that I didn’t really stick with the novel for the central mystery (which forms the red thread connecting the separate stories), but rather for the world, and for discovering tidbits about its (alternative) history. I really liked the variety of characters that the authors picked, giving you a number of different perspectives on the novel society it presents, though the limited time spent with each means that none of them attain the depth I know some of our other curators particularly like.
As a result, I really enjoyed The Difference Engine, but I am recommending it mostly to people interested in reading a novel set in a fascinating steampunk alternative universe, and maybe not so much to people looking for an absolutely thrilling plot or characters to fall head over heels in love with.
- TV-show created by the Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski for Netflix
- Starring Starring Aml Ameen, Doona Bae, Jamie Clayton, Tina Desai, Tuppence Middleton, Max Riemelt, Miguel Ángel Silvestre, Brian J. Smith, Freema Agyeman with Terrence Mann, Naveen Andrews and Daryl Hannah
- First Aired on June 5th 2015
- Two Seasons with 12 Episodes
Eight strangers from different parts of the world, all with their very own challenges in life, gradually discover they are mentally and emotionally linked to one another. Although this unique bond comes with its own difficulties, these eight strangers soon discover they can build on each other’s strengths and compassion.
Meanwhile, a man named Whispers, under the employ of a mysterious organization, tries to capture them for nefarious purposes…
I absolutely love this series. Where to start?
Sense8 is an ambitious celebration of diversity in all of its forms. This is not only apparent in the fact that it was filmed on multiple continents, but also in the way in which the accompanying cultures are portrayed respectfully, both their beautiful and less beautiful sides. Not only that, the cast of characters consists of a variety of walks of life, each with their own unique story lines besides the bigger plot. This ranges from a German criminal to an Indian woman who doubts her upcoming wedding, and from a white American policeman to a South-Korean businesswoman who pushes aside her own needs for the family business.
As one might imagine, it takes some time to bring eight different storylines together, especially when the eight main characters are physically divided by continents. Some might find that the first few episodes are complicated and slow of pace. However, this was not how I experienced it. Although the initial mysteries may seem overwhelming, the individual characters – each of them played by talentful actors – are captivating enough to guide you through them. Indeed, soon enough you’ll find you’ve fallen in love with them. Even years after I’ve watched this series, my thoughts still regularly drift away to think of them. The character-driven plots of Sense8 are amongst the most intricate and well-written I’ve ever seen on television.
Besides the wonderful characters, the stories of Sense8 contain some powerful themes, relating to issues such as identity, gender and sexuality and the nature of family. Empathy is the common thread throughout all of the story. Are we as humanity defined by our differences or our similarities? Can we find love and beauty in people that are almost nothing like us? What could we learn from others, if we only dared to leave our comfort zone? When I’m about to lose faith in humanity, Sense8 somehow manages to restore my hope for a brighter future.
What more can I say? I could still mention the beautiful cinematography, but I already find myself eager to rewatch the series. I think I’ll leave it at this.
Tagged:
See also:
No posts found!
Review: Newts! – PRX & The Truth
In an alternate early 20th century, a lone sea captain discovers highly intelligent newts. When he tries to find them a place to survive, the ‘economic possibilities’ of the species are quickly seen by a wealthy investor.
Review: The Road – John Hillcoat
This faithful adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy book tells the story of a man and his son, trying to survive like normal humans in a post-apocalyptic world that is broken beyond all normalcy.
Review: Limited Capacity – CBC
Limited Capacity is a Black Mirror-esque anthology series of six short stories about the strange and twisted ways we interact with the internet, and with each other.
Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses
Feisty Heroine Feyre kills a wolf in the woods and is summoned to the Faerie world to atone for her crime. Here, she finds magic, love and a darkness spreading across the land…
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: Sense8 – The Wachowski Sisters
Eight strangers from different parts of the world, all with their very own challenges in life, gradually discover they are mentally and emotionally linked to one another.
