Somewhere out there is a secret society of people that have been able to archive their memories and personalities and transfer them to a new body, leaving them “immortal” and unbroken for 40,000 years. In theory, this is exciting and new, though it’s been done before with the Trill in Star Trek, the difference being that sometimes the old personality is dominant, and sometimes the new host takes over, so it’s a total crap shoot for the host. The garden of collective unconscious, where they […]
Countdown City
If you knew the world was going to end, that you and everyone else had only 74 days left to live, what would you do? Would you hunker down, hoard what you could and hope for the best? Abandon everything you knew and run for the nearest beach? Or perhaps set up residence at a library and read as fast and furiously as possible, pausing only to sleep on the floor next to the pile of books you’d never got around to reading? For Hank […]
Rivers of Sorrow
A series of escalating hurricanes and non-stop rain have left the south east US devastated and abandoned. A line has been drawn, and anything south of that is now lawless no-man’s land. This is a soggy, chilled read where one man’s solitude and hopelessness is reflected in the land around him. His underlying decency first bring him to the edge of ruin, then give him a reason to live. As he finds a suffering group of people that he needs to save, he ultimately saves […]
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel exactly the same
What is identity? What makes you a person? What makes you you? There are two stories that start the novel, first that of Ian, a stereotypical emo 20-something. He’s trying to find his place in the world but mostly wandering through the same patterns day after day. Until he realizes that it really is the same day, over and over, and he’s stuck in a dome that is protecting Seattle from … something. The second story is of Kylie, survivor of the apocalypse and life […]
The Circle, by David Eggers
When Mae arrives on her first day of work at The Circle, the world’s largest internet company, she is immediately engulfed and welcomed on campus, dazzled by the constant events and built-in social life. As the reader and a geek, I too was dazzled. All the perks of working for the mega-rich people-friendly companies were trotted out: the concerts and groups, encouraged individuality, free lunches and malleable schedules, all wrapped in a shiny high-tech bow. The gloss quickly loses it’s glamour when the social opportunities […]
Life After Life
“What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Life After Life is a story about living. Born in a snow storm in 1910, Ursula is a normal girl living a normal life. Over and over she lives, dies and lives again, rebooting her world, rewriting her story. This novel weaves a tapestry of existence. Through all her paths and choices, what could have been becoming what is, we see her […]