Reviews and Comments

Okay, while it WASN'T The Doors of Stone, it was utterly enjoyable. I would even say one of my favourites.

I mean... It's still not The Doors of Stone...

This was good, but I was expecting it to be much better.

That being said, I quite enjoyed Beagle's writing style, and his quirky mundane interjections amidst lofty overtones 😊

I don't understand how it's considered "seminal fantasy" though, I don't think it deserves that status...

This was a fascinating read. Essentially Varoufakis argues that capitalism is actually over, and that we are now in an era where rent derived from "digital fiefs" is dominant (e.g.: Amazon doesn't produce goods or acquire capital in the tratitional sense, but because no seller can survive without selling on Amazon, it operates like a fief extracting rent from the vassals (sellers) who have no option but to use their site). It's pretty heavy economic theory, but he frames it as a conversation with his late father, and does a good job at simplifying and explaining what he talks about.

Very interesting, and very convincing.

This free collection of futurism/dystopian fiction was pretty much excellent from start to finish. For the most part, each author/story takes a current issue, idea, or topic (e.g.: copyright law, patent trolls, crowd sourcing, etc.) and extrapolates it into a possible future whereby it was left to go unchecked and how that would possibly look, giving you a Wellesian warning of why these seemingly innocuous issues are important to consider and/or deal with in our present here-and-now. The stories are excellent, and the list of included authors are top-quality!

...and then there's the final story... which has nothing to do with any of the aforementioned issues at all, and is mostly a fantasy erotic romp. It has no futurism, dystopian, or tech themes at all, except that one of the two main characters is a hacker, apparently, and it's mentioned (twice, in a completely unconnected fashion) that he has a server room in his house. It honestly feels like it's the author equivalent of "I'm a bunny, duh!":

Editor: Hey! Yeah, thanks for your submission. Umm... We're not quite sure it aligns with the theme of the collection though... Author: He's a hacker, duh!

I know this is nothing revelatory to say of the first book in a 50-something volume series, but it felt like it was just the start of a bigger story, without a lot of resolution. Which is fine, and I guess I expected.

Having NO prior knowledge of the Warhammer 40k universe, I felt like a lot was going over my head. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't like the story, I just felt that a lot of it was referencing things the significance of which I wasn't aware of.

I've read that the first 3-5 stories should be read together as one arc. They're cheap and short enough that I will probably get the second one at some point soon.

Okay, that was excellent (as usual) but now I'm so unsure as to what's going to happen! What I thought was going to be the end/final climax of the entire series happened about two-thirds of the way through this compendium... And there's still two more to go! Where are we going with this!? So much unknown! So exciting!

I might regret this... Friends of mine rave about this series. But even they caution against starting it, given that it's over 50 books long, not including the expanded stories...