A disappointingly unimaginative collection of speculated utopias.
Kartoun imagines various futures shaped by major absences in this AI-assisted story collection.
It’s tempting to think of the future in terms of startling new technologies, but what might the future look like if some foundational things about the present simply disappeared? Such is the premise of Kartoun’s collection. Each of these 50 stories is set in a separate hypothetical version of 2029, in which one element of society—either physical or conceptual—has vanished without explanation. “A Future Without Mondays” imagines a new six-day week that leaves everyone—or nearly everyone—much happier. “A Future Without Shapes” suggests one in which nearly every building and object must be redesigned with new irregular forms. In one story, the disappearance of friction hampers humans’ ability to walk. In another, the sudden absence of oceans jumpstarts the world’s half-hearted efforts to adopt sustainable energy. In one future without shadows, “navigating through crowded streets became a challenge, as the visual cues that depth and separation previously provided vanished, making distances harder to judge.” In another without car rentals, “cities reclaimed vast swaths of land previously dedicated to parking and roadways,” making way for “pedestrian zones, and community hubs, enhancing the quality of urban life.” (Why fewer car rentals would reduce the much higher number of non-rented cars is not explained.) The premises are intriguing and immediately bring to mind the fragility of our current world in the face of climate change and other threats. Unfortunately, every vision of the future Kartoun offers turns out to be a utopia, wherein the disappearance leads to innovation, economic growth, a flourishing of the arts, and peace on earth. (Kartoun rarely gets specific as to what these changes actually look like.) The reader wonders if this uniformity has something to do with the fact that the stories were written the assistance of ChatGPT. (The text is accompanied by illustrations produced by DALL-E.) One keeps hoping for unexpected or psychologically complex effects—or funny ones at the very least—but there are none, making the reading experience repetitive and boring.
A disappointingly unimaginative collection of speculated utopias.Pub Date: May 31, 2024
ISBN: 9798326046376
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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