Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


A warning on what we could become – Told as a futuristic thriller

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

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GENE EDITING IS A FEDERAL CRIME #GPA ONE MISTAKE CAUSED THE GREAT STARVATION #GPA #NEVERFORGET These are billboards you would pass if you lived in Denver Colorado in the far enough future that gene editing technology is much further advanced, but not so far that hashtags aren’t still a thing. The benefits to this technology include clothes made with spider silk and improvements in medicine and agriculture. But there is also a darker side, where dolls can be wrapped in human muscle and skin and […]

“Maybe compassion and empathy are just squishy emotions. Illusions created by our mirror neurons. But does it really matter where they come from? They make us human. They might be what make us worth saving.”

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

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This hit the spot. Sometimes you just need a book you can zoom through. Short chapters, intriguing and freaky plot, simple prose, high stakes. Blake Crouch always delivers. I think I like this book less than Dark Matter but more than Recursion. It helped that for once there were zero nuclear bombs present. This takes place in the near future, when genetic research and technology has been banned almost completely, excepting a few highly regulated government sponsored programs, due to a disaster caused by genetic […]

Smart, scary, and intimate science fiction thriller

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

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Blake Crouch’s previous novel Recursion is one of the scariest time travel novels ever written. Crouch created a near-future ripped apart by the invention of time travel and the utter chaos it unleashes. Upgrade does not reach the same heights of invention as Recursion, but Crouch has more on his mind this time around. In a non-specific near future, the world is in serious trouble. Climate change is destroying urban areas and genetic experimentation has unleashed the worst catastrophe yet on humanity. In response, the […]



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