The Measure
The premise of The Measure is wonderfully simple. One morning, every adult in the world finds a small wooden box on their doorstep. Inside is a piece of string, and its length reveals how long your life will be. No […]
Cleave the Sparrow
Cleave the Sparrow feels a bit like somebody trapped a philosophy lecture, a political satire, a quantum physics rant, and a mushroom trip inside the same audiobook and then shook it violently before pressing record. The story starts around Wilder
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The God Complex
Seven billion people dropped into a last-person-standing competition, running for over 300 years. Day 112,000-ish, and M (our main protagonist’s full name is “M”) us about ready to tap out. The only thing that kept him going this long was
Windigo Soul
I read the original version of this years ago, but it has been long enough that I only remembered the broad strokes. For the most part, this felt like going in fresh. The setup is immediately grim. In this version
Operation Bounce House
Let’s get this out of the way first up. If you’re going to grab this expecting more off-the-wall dark absurdity like Dinniman’s best known work, Dungeon Crawler Carl, then you’re going to be disappointed. If you’re looking for an interesting
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The Crack in Space
Listening to The Crack in Space is a sharp reminder that classic science fiction doesn’t always age gracefully. Set in a speculative future but written in the mid-1960s, the book opens with racial ideas and terminology that feel confronting now,
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Spaced Out
Spaced Out opens with the kind of disorientation that feels unsettling without ever tipping into panic. Elen is twenty-six, lives in a small town in Washington State, and already considers herself a bit scattered thanks to her ADHD. Waking up
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
Sometimes a story finds you backwards. In this case, it started with a rewatch of Total Recall (the 1980s version) which led to a dive into Philip K. Dick’s original short story, and eventually to this free, two-part podcast adaptation
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The Pursuit of William Abbey
Some books hinge on a single bad decision. The Pursuit of William Abbey is very clear about which one it is, and it never lets its main character forget it. William Abbey is an English doctor in 1880s South Africa
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The 22 Murders of Madison May
I picked up The 22 Murders of Madison May mostly because the premise sounded intriguing and partly because it was very cheap during one of Audible’s site-wide sales. For the price (less than $2.50!), it felt like a low-risk gamble.
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Replay
Jeff Winston dies while on the phone with his wife in October 1988 and wakes to find he’s back in the body of his 18-year-old self in his college dorm room. The do-over idea in science fiction is one I
There Is No Antimemetics Division
Everyone knows what a meme is; those (usually) funny images that go viral. Antimemes on the other hand are ideas or things that are the exact opposite. You can’t remember them even if your life depended on it. They actively
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