edited by Daniel H. Wilson ; John Joseph Adams ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 2014
Philip K. Dick would be proud, in any event. You’ll never look at your Roomba the same way again.
Fun fact: According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, as of 2010 there were 8.6 million robots in the world. Fun scenario: They’re all out to kill us.
Forget Asimov’s laws of robotics; think of Schwarzenegger’s Terminator instead, or maybe that friendly-voiced if unblinking fellow in 2001. As editors Wilson and Adams observe, robots are scary because they're real, and the possibility of them rising up against us is—well, highly likely, since “[w]e live in a world teeming with monsters made real.” This anthology neatly explores that possibility, its contributors offering widely varying takes that share only the perspective that things don’t end well for Homo sapiens. The longest story, at a little more than 50 pages, is by Cory Doctorow, who matter-of-factly sets up a terrifying future: “Two hundred and fifteen years after Mary Shelley first started humanity’s hands wringing over the possibility that we would create a machine as smart as us but out of our control, Dr. Shannon did it, and it turned out to be incredibly, utterly boring.” Not so the story that follows. Julianna Baggott, fresh from her latest post-apocalyptic fantasy, turns in a vision of a golden hour to come, “called the Golden Hour because the revolt was so massive and well-orchestrated that it is said that the humans fell within an hour.” (Interestingly, she offers the thought that robots can have parents.) The late John McCarthy—who died in 2011 of natural causes, not of robot agency, and who is considered the father of artificial intelligence—spins a tale that helps explain why robots should be ticked at us: “[R]obots were made somewhat fragile on the outside, so that if you kicked one, some parts would fall off.” The concept of the anthology is just right, and each of the 17 pieces addresses it well; extra points for greater diversity of all kinds than is evidenced by many other sci-fi collections, though it wouldn’t hurt to have a few better-known, more battle-tested authors (Eileen Gunn, say, or Samuel R. Delany) in the mix.
Philip K. Dick would be proud, in any event. You’ll never look at your Roomba the same way again.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-80363-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by TJ Klune ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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