Easily read sextet of largely cautionary SF tales in the old-fashioned manner.
Williams’ compact short stories occur in landscapes devastated by war and pollution. An exception (maybe) is the title piece, but “A Clockmaker’s Tale” too carries the author’s mixed view of technology’s consequences. In a society of flying cars and other breakthroughs, George Sebastian Phillips, an artisan, still laboriously services, maintains, and builds mechanical clocks by hand. A salesman convinces him to try the “Work Buddy,” an AI skull attachment that allows users to drowse and sleep while their bodies continue to do skilled labor. No harm in that, right? George’s efficiency improves, but, predictably, at a horrible cost. More benign are the intelligent robots in “10,000”; a pair of AIs on the moon attempt to revive the human race after a fiendish biological weapon erases humans from the Earth. A specimen pool of 10,000 cryogenically frozen human volunteers are available for the robots’ research, but failure and frustration bring grief even to the automatons. Two tales, “Post-Truth Tours” and “Law and Disorder,” may well unfold in the same bleak world, a place where stern AI judgments face anyone who defies social norms. “Waste Not,” perhaps the most thought-provoking entry, envisions a hellish, garbage-choked dystopian society and a poor family man taking a desperate chance to escape it. “Last Bus to Freedom,” the tale with the least obvious SF trappings—mainly war drones and mythical place names—is mostly action, describing a POW uprising and harrowing attempted escape through enemy lines. Like his horror-oriented compatriot Charles Birkin, Williams tells his material matter-of-factly and doesn’t shy away from pain and doom, though his attitude is not as pessimistic as Birkin’s. Genre readers may note the absence of space aliens in the assortment. Homo sapiens (and their silicon-chip cohorts) provide more than enough trouble, mayhem, and solutions-that-are-worse-than-the-problems, thank you.
Easily read sextet of largely cautionary SF tales in the old-fashioned manner. (science fiction)Pub Date: June 20, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.
Over 50 years after an extraterrestrial microbe wiped out a small Arizona town, something very strange has appeared in the Amazon jungle in Wilson’s follow-up to Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.
The microparticle's introduction to Earth in 1967 was the disastrous result of an American weapons research program. Before it could be contained, Andromeda killed all but two people in tiny Piedmont, Arizona; during testing after the disaster, AS-1 evolved and escaped into the atmosphere. Project Eternal Vigilance was quickly set up to scan for any possible new outbreaks of Andromeda. Now, an anomaly with “signature peaks” closely resembling the original Andromeda Strain has been spotted in the heart of the Amazon, and a Wildfire Alert is issued. A diverse team is assembled: Nidhi Vedala, an MIT nanotechnology expert born in a Mumbai slum; Harold Odhiambo, a Kenyan xenogeologist; Peng Wu, a Chinese doctor and taikonaut; Sophie Kline, a paraplegic astronaut and nanorobotics expert based on the International Space Station; and, a last-minute addition, roboticist James Stone, son of Dr. Jeremy Stone from The Andromeda Strain. They must journey into the deepest part of the jungle to study and hopefully contain the dire threat that the anomaly seemingly poses to humanity. But the jungle has its own dangers, and it’s not long before distrust and suspicion grip the team. They’ll need to come together to take on what waits for them inside a mysterious structure that may not be of this world. Setting the story over the course of five days, Wilson (Robopocalypse, 2011, etc.) combines the best elements of hard SF novels and techno-thrillers, using recovered video, audio, and interview transcripts to shape the narrative, with his own robotics expertise adding flavor and heft. Despite a bit of acronym overload, this is an atmospheric and often terrifying roller-coaster ride with (literally) sky-high stakes that pays plenty of homage to The Andromeda Strain while also echoing the spirit and mood of Crichton’s other works, such as Jurassic Park and Congo. Add more than a few twists and exciting set pieces (especially in the finale) to the mix, and you’ve got a winner.
A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247327-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In 10 eerie stories, Valencia leans into the horror and grit under a shiny world.
Women get lost in deserts and caves and find strange creatures waiting—including their new selves.
Wellness retreats, guerrilla marketing campaigns, literary blogs, remote Airbnbs in Joshua Tree: Where there is glamour, there is terror in this self-assured debut collection. Although all Valencia’s stories are engaging, those that follow gangs of easily influenced women are the highlights of this set, such as "Mystery Lights," about a marketing campaign in Marfa hijacked by an angry bewigged influencer and her followers, or the Black Mirror-esque “The Reclamation,” about a desert wellness retreat with a cultlike leader. The gendered nature of the horror genre comes through in these stories’ looming threats of sexual violence, such as in the opener, “Dogs,” in which a woman’s escape from a pack of dogs lands her in a strange man’s locked SUV; “You Can Never Be Too Sure,” in which a myth about a predator prowling around a college campus collides with the truth; or “Bright Lights, Big Deal,” about working in the literary world pre-#MeToo. Girls disappear; some reemerge acting more animal. Some are lost forever to the forest. Aliens and ghosts hover close or fall away. In “Clean Hunters,” a ghost-hunting couple’s honeymoon is called into question when the wife can’t feel spirits anymore. In “The White Place,” a mysterious white orb hovers over a famous painter, her cook’s pregnant daughter, and the man they both are involved with. Valencia investigates the threats lurking behind our wellness brands and cave tours, viral literary aspirations and ski bum college friend groups. Self-actualization, she says, is sometimes not a desert meditation retreat—it may be a cave-dwelling flesh-eating creature. These stories show us there’s not all that much in the way between them.
In 10 eerie stories, Valencia leans into the horror and grit under a shiny world.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781959030621
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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