Sci Fi – Terence Eden’s Blog

Book Review: Bobiverse Books 1-3 by Dennis E. Taylor ★★★☆☆

Terence Eden — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 11:34:52 +0000

Like sticky popcorn, this is a moreish but ultimately unsatisfying set of stories. After I flamed out of Dungeon Crawler Carl, someone suggested I try this series. I can see why! It's campy sci-fi fun, with enough tropes to keep you chuckling and enough tension to keep you turning the pages.

Bob's brain is uploaded to a computer post-mortem. Awoken in a dystopian future, he has to pilot a spaceship to strange new worlds, put right what once went wrong, and hoping The Force will be with him, always. Oh, and he repeatedly clones himself. Creating a universe populated with Bobs (a "Bobiverse" if you will)

It's your standard "only I, a slightly geeky guy with lots of pop-culture knowledge, can save the world" fare which is beloved by slightly geeky guys everywhere who think they're smarter than all those normies just because they can recite the list of Hugo winners alphabetically.

Like Ready Player One it throws in as many quips and catchphrases as the plot will bear. Unlike Cline's work, it never really commits to them, so you end up with a scattering of Monty Python, Star Wars, and the X-Files without an overall theme developing.

And, in keeping with Andy Weir's The Martian, it's all just one guy sciencing the shit out of the problem. Except that lots of the science is sort of hand-waved away with "and then I 3D printed a thing".

Similar to both those books is an almost total lack of female characters. The ones that are in the first two are either plot-points or harridans. By the third there's a love interest who is slightly more rounded, and a couple of other incidentals, but offset against yet another woman who just can't appreciate the "genius" of Bob.

It's all good page turning fun other than the fact that Bob is a total cretin. He begins a slow descent into fascist dictator and barely even comments on it. He spies, carries out extra-judicial killings, and meddles in politics to his own advantage. At no point does the text ever really engage with the fact that Bob is a monster.

The character rarely reflects on whether his behaviour meets the moral standard he expects of others. He bemoans the aliens who are destroying entire ecosystems while simultaneously wiping out whole species himself. At times he is a conniving bully and reacts badly to anyone who pushes back against the ineffable will of Bob.

The jumping back-and-forth between the different Bobs is a bit frustrating, a bit like flicking between TV channels. I wish each story strand were allowed some space to develop - but instead it's one chapter of this planet, then one chapter of another, before (eventually) circling back.

Annoyingly, the books are only available on Amazon Kindle. They're not on any other platform or library. I'm grateful to the friend who lent me their copies. I binged the first three but, without any indication that Bob will mature as a character or face a reckoning for his egregious actions, that's where I stopped.

Book Review: The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories by Ken Liu ★★★★☆

Terence Eden — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 11:34:47 +0000

This is a gorgeous set of short stories - and a good deal more accessible than some of the heavyweight prose Liu has previously been involved with. Some of the stories contain sentences which are complex jewels to be savoured.

What I particularly like is the way he moves between almost-prosaic Earth-bound stories to the the most extraordinary flights of fancy. One story might be set in a downtown art gallery, the next in the ice-rings of a far-off planet. The creeping feeling of senescence haunts the reader as they flit from story to story.

Much like his full-length novel All That We See or Seem, Liu has an incredible knack for tapping in to modern fears and weaving tall tales around them. There's a tenderness in all his character - even when a couple of the stories go nowhere, it is still pleasant to spend time in the worlds he has created.

It is, perhaps, missing a cohesive theme - the dragons come and go throughout the stories. Nevertheless, a compelling work chock full of fantastical ideas.

If you're in the mood for a wide and varied selection of stories, this is well worth picking up.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. Passing of the Dragon is available to buy now.

Book Review: The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon ★★★★☆

Terence Eden — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 11:34:48 +0000

This is a charming and zeitgeisty novel which has a strong start and fulfils the promise of its blurb. What if your autonomous vacuum cleaner was sentient and was very sad about your wife's death?

It pays obvious homage to the Brave Little Toaster, 100 Acre Woods, Beauty and The Beast, and hundred other what-if-your-toys-came-to-life stories. Along the way we discover what it is like to be a transfem robo-hacker in domestic peril, why clocks are so bossy, and whether art is a cure for grief.

The world-building is a little basic (The Algorithm™ is managing humanity's decline) but the characters are well constructed. A little derivative, it's true. Nevertheless, it is a touching tale, told well, and with a decent pace.

Book Review: The Husbands by Holly Gramazio ★★★★★

Terence Eden — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:34:55 +0000

Ooooh! This is a lovely treat of a book. Every time Lauren sends her husband into the loft, a different man comes down. Her past is rewritten and she has now been married to Dave/Gary/Bob/Whoever for a year, a month, a decade, a minute.

This isn't like how Groundhog Day became On The Calculation of Volume or Sliding Doors became The Names, instead this is a new and twisty concept rendered through the lens of a chick-lit comedy.

It's proper laugh-aloud funny, while playing with all the clichés of both sci-fi and romcoms.

The thing I liked most is that Lauren is an active and intelligent protagonist unlike, say, Carol Sturka from Pluribus. Sturka never engages with the premise of her odd situation, she doesn't try to discover the rules of the world she's living in and is content to let things happen to her. Lauren spends a good deal of time at least trying to get to grips with the (un)reality of her husband-dispensing portal. I found that made for a rather gratifying story and didn't leave me shouting at the pages "JUST TRY SOMETHING!"

It's also refreshing to follow the adventures of a (slight) antihero. Lauren mostly knows when she is being monstrous. She flings between feminism and self-directed misogyny - with a smattering of misandry. Her discrimination against those of us men who wear socks with individual toes is, of course, an unforgivable sin.

The pacing is excellent - with an perfectly timed plot twist just as things are settling down. The afterword talks briefly about the multiple possible endings that were considered. I'd love to know what ideas were rejected although, in retrospect, there's only one narratively satisfying conclusion.

I read a lot of science fiction - probably more than is healthy - and The Husbands is a welcome addition to my shelf. The practicalities of the plot-device are as unimportant as how Warp Drive works; science fiction is about exploring the possibilities of a fantastical situation. If you could instantly swap your spouse because they lost the TV remote again - would you? In a world of no consequences, what would you get away with? If you discovered a break in reality, what would you try in order to exploit or understand it?

The Husbands gets fairly dark. Never grim, exactly, but it gnaws away at the cosiness proffered by domestic bliss. Although Lauren can be a bit of a bitch, the story just about strays away from making her morally repugnant. An exemplary piece of storytelling.

Book Review: Terrible Worlds: Destinations by Adrian Tchaikovsky ★★★★★

Terence Eden — Tue, 19 May 2026 11:34:17 +0000

What's better than one Adrian Tchaikovsky novella? Three Adrian Tchaikovsky novellæ! Or is it "novellii"? Either way, a delightful triptych of stories on a common theme. On the surface, they're about travelling to a new destination (Space! The Future! For-Copyright-Reasons Not Narnia!)

Except, deep down, they're about loneliness. No matter how far or fast we run, no matter where or when we go, we can't outrun ourselves. When you enter the void, sometimes the void enters you.

There's also the constant theme about the hunter becoming the hunted. All three of the stories reminded me a bit of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - in that I was never quite sure if the characters were simply delusional and waging war on an enemy of their own making.

It brims with a pathos which I find rare in modern science fiction. That's offset with the perfectly placed British humour within it. Yes, there's a touch of the Weir/Scalzi "Only I, a nerdy guy, can save the universe in a self-knowing way" - but those authors aren't brave enough to mention Reading town centre or have their hero hail from Stevenage. Whereas Tchaikovsky knows what's up with the Furries.

An excellent collection of tales.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. The book is available to buy now.

Book Review: If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Choyeop ★★☆☆☆

Terence Eden — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 12:34:27 +0000

Short stories offer you the chance to dip briefly into a world and then skip out so there's not much time for development; just straight in to the plot and off we go. But this is all exposition and very little action. Rather than let the plots develop naturally, there are just vast passages of infodumping. I'm sad to say this is a rather dreary and insipid collection of stories.

Some of the stories start out with an interesting premise but then just fizzle out. There's a reasonably good idea in "The Materiality of Emotions" which describes people buying little trinkets which induce emotions in them. Again, emotions as drugs is well-worn stuff, but this builds up momentum nicely before suddenly ending.

The highlight is "Spectrum" which has some delightful world-building but, like the others, it's rather derivative of older stories. A woman's space ship crashes on a strange planet and she tries to befriend the local hominids. You've almost certainly read it before.

Overall I found it underwhelming.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.

Book Review: There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm ★★★★★

Terence Eden — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:34:47 +0000

Apparently I reviewed the previous version of this book four years ago but have no real memory of it. Did you ever have a dream which was vividly realistic yet somehow slightly askew from reality? Obviously there is no antimemetics division, nor could anyone write a book about it. If they did, their mind would instantly be liquefied and their mere existence would be purged.

So, why is there a new version of the book out and is it worth reading again?

As the copyright page says:

Earlier versions of this material were previously published in serial form on the scp wiki under Creative Commons 3.0, and subsequently self-published by the author in ebook and paperback format. The work has been substantively revised and updated since.

As the FAQ makes clear, getting a "proper" publisher to put money into a CC project is unlikely. So many of the original elements have been rewritten and reworked. The writing, plotting, and characters have all been substantially improved. The ending, in particular, has become something quite special.

The story itself is still recursively memetic and a metacommentary on itself. The bug-eyed-monsters are mindbending and the good guys are all morally compromised. The concepts are gorgeously impossible and the pacing is exciting.

There's simply nothing like it.

The eBook is mostly well formatted. Excellent use of monospace fonts for reports, there are accessible redactions where suitable, and the images all have alt text. Weirdly, one "monster" is named వ - a character which failed to render correctly on my eBook. That gave it a rather sinister appearance! The ghosting of eInk made it look like there were faint words behind the various redactions which was delightfully spooky. An excellent book and a satisfying update.

However, it is worth noting that ███████ this book will ██████████ ██████████ ██████████████ and could lead to ████ █████████████ ██████████████. Although the retailer won't accept refunds on any book stained with █████████ █████████████████ ████ or ████ ██████████, it is possible to summon ██████ ████████████████████ ████████████ ███ ████ ███████████ in an emergency.

Book Review: Of Monsters and Mainframes - Barbara Truelove ★★★⯪☆

Terence Eden — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 12:34:02 +0000

This is fun, silly, charming, and much better than The Murderbot Diaries despite being superficially similar.

Imagine you are an interstellar ship and, of course, your AI is conscious. What would you do if your passengers were killed - not by a terrifying alien, but by Count Dracula???

What if, on the return journey, another set of your passengers were similarly slaughtered. Except, this time, by a Werewolf? How would that make you feel? Would it drive you mad? Could you cope with the bullying from other starships? Or would you feel the need… the need for REVENGE!

As I said, silly and campy fun. It is episodic adventure with just the right amount of Hammer-style horror and not too much technobabble. All the classic monsters are here - depression, intrusive thoughts, envy, fear.

Oh, and Frankenstein’s spider.

As an ebook, it makes great use of fonts - which give it a delightfully retrofuturistic feel. There are some fun binary Easter-Eggs as well.

Book Review: All Systems Red - The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells ★★⯪☆☆

Terence Eden — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 12:34:05 +0000

Everyone raves about this series, so I thought I'd grab the first book. It's basically fine, I guess.

It is moderately amusing having the Muderbot be an awkward teenage boy who just wants to watch videos and cringes when people stare at him. But it is a bit one-note. Similarly, evil corporations hiding details from exo-planet surveyors is a trope which has been a thousand times before.

This is a novella, serving to introduce the protagonist and fill us with a little too much exposition. The trouble is that nothing much happens. There's a bit of world building and a light smattering of action - although I found it rather plodding.

Essentially, a lot of telling and not much showing. Rather underwhelming given the hype. I might give one of the many (many!) sequels a go once I reach the end of my reading list.

Book Review: The Voyage of the Space Beagle by Alfred Elton Van Vogt ★★☆☆☆

Terence Eden — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:34:39 +0000

This is Star Trek before Star Trek. It is Alien long before Alien. It is the template for so much modern science fiction. What it is not is particularly good.

I don't intend to dump on the classics (and this is undoubtedly a classic) but 1950s sci-fi takes place in an almost alien media environment. Even if you ignore the anachronisms (like having to develop film in order to see photographs) and the archaic language (lots of vibrators being used against a big pussy) it is hard to get over how unconvincing it all is.

In the first story, the crew of the Space Beagle find an alien monster. It probably killed one of them. They bring it aboard and just let it lounge about in the library! Yes, all the science is fun, and the "competency porn" of the professional crew is suitably heroic, but the characters and their motivations are frequently bizarre. It is only through the complete absence of girls (urgh!) that there's no interstellar sexism.

The protagonist, Grosvenor, is a cipher for every geeky kid who ever felt he was smarter than everyone else. He is a sneering, taciturn, and deeply unpleasant character. When given the opportunity, he relishes the chance to become dictator.

Because the book started life as a set of short stories, it works reasonably well as a "monster of the week" show. It is episodic, with well-placed cliffhangers. The science is very sciency with some excellent speculative elements. You've got aliens planting eggs in people (like Alien) and a ship's engineer who says "Nooo! The walls couldn't stand it. They'd melt." (like Scotty) and any number of concepts you'll recognise from your favourite TV shows.

The obsession with hypnotism and mind-control feels a bit icky, especially when understood in association with the author's dalliance with the pseudoscience of Dianetics.

The language (when not steeped in 1950's idiomatic phrasing) can verge on the poetic. Every story includes a chapter or two from the alien's viewpoint. They are deliciously weird and elevate this book beyond what might be a slightly forgettable slice of sci-fi.

It is absolutely worth reading - if only to see how influential it has been - but it can be a bit of a weird slog at times.

Book Review: Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim ★★★★★

Terence Eden — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 12:34:45 +0000

This is an astounding bit of high-concept sci-fi. Imagine a world where crossing a border literally split your body in two. A young woman emigrates from South Korea - one version of her stays in Seoul, another version goes off to live in New York. This is the way humanity has always existed. People bifurcating and dealing with the consequences.

It is heady stuff. The book spans life, love, politics, religion, and folklore. It layers on narrative and meta-narrative. Like any debut novel, there are too many ideas to be contained and the plot seems to spill beyond its pages. What would the fascist ICE do with immigrants who were mere clones of the people they left behind?

The dizzying implications of the story are matched only by the gorgeously intricate plot. Does the tale need to occasionally be told in the second-person? You don't think so, but you also can't think of a better way to illustrate how strange it is to argue with your other-self. You enjoy all the literary and scholarly references and find they add poetic texture to balance out the increasing tension.

Unlike other hard sci-fi, it doesn't spend too much time on exposition; it gets drip fed to the reader. But it is happy to dive into the practicalities of a world where refugees might leave behind more than just memories. There's a small but necessary amount of technobabble, and a large but necessary amount of moral philosophising. Tuvix did not die in vain.

Sublimation lives up to the hype. It is dramatic, powerful, intriguing, and - above all - fun.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. Sublimation is available to pre-order now for delivery in July. I recommend reading it twice.

Book Review: Rabbit Test and Other Stories by Samantha Mills ★★★★☆

Terence Eden — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:34:41 +0000

This is an an interesting and varied set of sci-fi/fantasy stories. Some barely a couple of pages, others cutting short at just the right time. They are all on a similar theme - the strife between parents and children. Whether it is a twisted take on classic fairy tales, or a dive into the far future - there's always something interesting going on.

Samantha Mills has a excellent eye for neologisms and isn't afraid to deploy humour with sometimes devastating effect.

The titular "Rabbit Test" is excellent but - like most of the others - it is a riff on some genre classics. That's not a bad thing; it's always fun to explore tropes from a different angle. Each story is entertaining, but most left me thinking "now where have I heard that before?"

One of the lovely things is the story notes at the end. Like a little behind-the-scenes feature on a DVD extra. More books should give the reader a glimpse behind the writing process.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. Rabbit Test is available to pre-order now.

Book Review: Under the Eye of the Big Bird - Hiromi Kawakami ★★★★☆

Terence Eden — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 12:34:49 +0000

This is an intriguing and mostly satisfying sci-fi tale. It has shades of Oryx Crake mixed in with A Canticle for Leibowitz - we are mere observers of the tattered remains of humanity. Watchers guide scattered settlements as they strive to evolve and understand their place on a corrupted Earth.

The writing is dreamy and hazy - reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. It isn't immediately clear what's happening; the story is drip-fed to us. Unfortunately it is rather undone by the penultimate chapter which is a great-big data-dump of exposition.

If you've ever seen the show Don't Hug Me I'm Scared you'll be well at home with the surreal and oblique nature of the storytelling presented here. The language is obtuse and confusing, reflecting the confusion these new humans feel.

I think part of the story is a rejection of the hierarchy and artificial inter-personal structures often seen in societies like Japan. Everyone is simultaneously desperate to escape their confines while rigidly enforcing the status quo - with predictably disastrous results.

It is a meandering tale, spanning eons, which ultimately feels a bit depressing.

Book Review: All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu ★★★★★

Terence Eden — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 11:34:34 +0000

This book is ridiculously zeitgeisty. It's all brain-rotting AI, social-media meltdowns, mixed with some cracking technobabble.

She thinks about erasing more: all the practice session recordings; her own encrypted cephaloscripts; the dream-guide neuromesh of her personal AI; the interviews, fan messages, reviews—food for her vanity, training data for her egolets.

Fab! But, for all that, it's pretty realistic. Sure, it's set five-minutes into the future, but all the tech is plausible and all the hacks somewhere in the ballpark of reality. It is much better than The Ministry for the Future simply because all the technowizardry passes the smell test.

The plot is, charitably, basic. A woman has been kidnapped and her husband (who is a suspect) enlists a ~~Private Eye~~ hacker to solve the mystery. But you're not reading to discover whodunnit; you're there to revel in the pitch-perfect future-gazing and cower before the (hopefully not too accurate) predictions around how technology will be subverted to protect the powerful while leaving everyone else helpless.

The neologisms are off the chart - "Darcybots" to help you date, a "Fiscjinn" to interrogate your finances, and an "Oneirofex" to… well, I'll let you discover that! You'll need to have a good grasp of what's going on with modern technology in order to get more than half the references. I've no idea if the book will be intelligible half-a-decade from now. Perhaps we'll have our self-hosted AIs translate it for us?

At times, it feels less like a book and more like a series of parables woven into one story. The ending feels a little rushed - but it fits in with the fast-paced nature of the plot. A great slab of sci-fi to chew on.

Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy. The book is released in October 2025 - and will probably remain relevant for at least half-a-dozen weeks.

Book Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks, Vol. 1: Second Contact by Ryan North ★★★★★

Terence Eden — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 11:34:52 +0000

I can confidently declare that Lower Decks is the second best Star Trek series after The Orville. Lower Decks has always been bags of fun with a good emotional core. Now your favourite sci-fi capers are available in handy comic book form!

Second Contact is a compilation of Lower Decks issues #1–6. You get a bunch of stories spread out over 145 pages. The great thing about a comic of a cartoon is that all the characters look identical to their TV counterparts. There's no pesky rights issues to get in the way.

The stories are exactly what you'd expect from Lower Decks. The gang have to deal with aliens, not-too-strange new worlds, and some heavy meta-textual crises. And, yes, it is delightfully meta. There are plenty of call-backs to the show, TNG, and the original animated series. Perfect for nerds like me.

It also introduces some new lore:

Kirk sometimes liked to unwind in his quarters by making a fanvid of his own day. This is canon.

There's also the first(?) appearance of the "Starfleet Corps of Rhetoric Engineers" who, as their name suggests, help provide some much needed exposition for the technobabble.

Oh, and we find out that the noise the transporters make is "SVRRRRRMMMMMM". Which seems about right.

The episodic pacing is nice and there is a genuine laugh-out-loud moment every few pages. It doesn't try to do anything new or innovative with the comic book format - it's pretty much small panels, the occasional bigger art piece, and one double-pager.

On a technical note, the speech bubbles are in text, rather than raster, format - so your TTS should be able to read them aloud.

Second Contact is the sort of comic book which will keep you giggling with glee at the misadventures of lovable misfits.

Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy. The book is available to pre-order now - with delivery mid-September 2025.

Book Review: The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi (Old Man's War Book 7) ★★★⯪☆

Terence Eden — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 11:34:46 +0000

I'm reasonably sure I've read all the "Old Man's War" books. As the last one was published a decade ago, you'll forgive me if I don't remember all the intricacies of galactic politics and interpersonal intrigue. Thankfully, Scalzi has carved off a side character from a previous book and given them a brand-new adventure. There's enough exposition to tickle the parts of your brain that go "Ah, yes, that sounds familiar" but the story is just about separate enough that a new (or lapsed) reader can dive straight in.

An off-the-books colony has vanished. Only one woman has the martial and intellectual skills to save the day. With her trusty alien companion she's in a race against time to save the galaxy!

The plot is a little thin, and has a slightly annoying habit of jumping forward and then giving retroexposition in "flashback". Some of the prose is gorgeous - "All you need for an avalanche of chaos is one inebriated snowball." - but it is used sparingly. That gives it a rather cold and utilitarian feel - which matches the alien surroundings our protagonist finds herself in.

I also found the humour to be a bit repetitive - the alien doesn't quite get that you shouldn't talk aloud about human's sexual habits - but the story is well-paced and keeps the intrigue high without delving too deeply into convoluted political machinations.

It doesn't really add much to the science fiction pantheon in terms of Big Ideas, but it is rather good fun.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan for the advance copy, the book is out in September this year and can be pre-ordered now.

Book Review: Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman ★★★★★

Terence Eden — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 11:34:56 +0000

No book has the right to be this good. It's the sort of howling sci-fi satire that Ben Elton used to excel at - a novel set five minutes in the future with a eye firmly on today's problems.

The plot is delightful - what if ~~carbon credits~~ extinction credits were the new capitalist plaything? What second, third, and forth order effects would that have on the world? The worldbuilding is sublime - with an prescient look at the evolution of DRM, Smart Contracts, AI assistants, and targetted assassinations.

The characters are perfectly fleshed out and gradually reveal their motivations and insecurities:

one big thing about the socially normal was that they loved their social norms. Whereas Resaint couldn’t stand the politics, the niceties, the meetings where she had to spangle her expression and tone of voice with false enthusiasm just so people didn’t think she was a bitch.

There is a slight tendency towards Socratic dialogue as a means of exposition. The satire itself isn't exactly subtle - but when it has this many twists and turns I can forgive it for laying it on a bit thick.

The ending(s) genuinely shocked me.

Book Review: Great Robots of History by Tim Major ★★★⯪☆

Terence Eden — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 11:34:51 +0000

This is a lovely and twisted anthology of stories. Each presents a "historic" robot - be they an automaton, a puppet given life by the gods, or a resurrected villager. Some, like the Mechanical Turk, are historical fact but others are invented just for us to gawk at.

The stories are mostly dark and brooding, with the macabre turn. They're fun - but the constant theme is "what if I, an intelligent person, got trapped in the brain of a dullard?" Robots who are self-aware of their limitations reveal to us how terrifying dementia must be.

We meet robots who are reassured that they are without sin, and those which long to sin. Perhaps malicious dæmons reside in their programming just as bugs reside in our souls?

A fine collection.

Book Review: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu ★★★★☆

Terence Eden — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 11:34:04 +0000

There's a fine line between genius and madness - and I'm not sure where this book lies. It dives right in with some splendid technobabble:

The base model TM-31 runs on state-of-the-art chronodiegetical technology: a six-cylinder grammar drive built on a quad-core physics engine, which features an applied temporalinguistics architecture allowing for free-form navigation within a rendered environment, such as, for instance, a story space and, in particular, a science fictional universe.

Come on! That's great, isn't it? Very reminiscent of Jasper Fforde; using the power of science to dive into fiction. But, unlike Fforde, Yu never really commits to the conceit. There's some lovely stuff in the start about being a child and pretending to be in Star Wars, only to grow up fixing time-machines for the real/fictional Skywalker family. But it doesn't get developed much past that.

The writing is beautiful, with some lovely phrasing and heartbreaking prose mixed in with hilarious observations on the near-future.

Phil is an old copy of Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0. His passive-aggressive is set to low. Whoever configured him did me a solid.

Is it really a science-fiction novel? I think it was the author Debra Shostak who pointed out that most contemporary American fiction was about disappointing one's father. It's easy to read this book as an allegory for a child having a traumatic breakdown and retreating into fiction rather than facing up to the strained relationship they had with their dad.

Or, maybe, their dad did invent a time machine and now their child is cursed to travel "chronogrammatically" in search of meaning; both literal and figurative.

A fine brain-bender of a book.

Book Review: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh ★★★★☆

Terence Eden — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 12:34:12 +0000

This is a fun bit of sci-fi. A bit tropey in places, but an excellent sense of world-building and a vicious cast of double-crossers.

The protagonist is best described by one of the character's off-hand remarks about her being “The very best space fascist girl scout of them all.”

Can you feel sympathy for someone who has been manipulated into being evil? What about if given every chance to change, they turn back to their abusers? Is it OK to use sexism to your own advantage? If you had the chance to rewrite your history, would you?

The pacing is perfect - with a big reveal at exactly halfway through. It is fairly imaginative but I found it a bit too hand-wavey and, dare I say, a little generic. The prose is spectacular, though, and some of the difficult subjects are handled with appropriate sensitivity.