1993 / Audiobook / 487 pages / UK
***
It's been a few years since I dropped Banks sci-fi, but I'd hoped this unCultured standalone might make a fresh start. With an atheist god and a weapon with a sense of humour, there's a vein of sci-fi comedy running through this cyberpunk grail quest that I wish he'd embraced more fully, but it comes across more like an action cartoon for adults.
2002 / Audiobook / 416 pages / UK
**
I keep persevering with cyberpunk, since I enjoy the synthwave background mixes. With thought-provoking transhuman concepts demonstrated through a rote hardboiled plot, this is like an updated Philip K. Dick novel, but longer and less knowingly funny.
Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation
*****
The first original work I've read from the well-read subgenre curator, this has the atmosphere, pacing and unreliability of classic cosmic horror combined with the attention to characterisation today's picky readers demand. It gets the length just right, skipping the setup and filling in the background we need to know along the way as we join one of many doomed X-peditions incrementally scratching away at what's allowed to remain a mystery, before getting X-panded or ruined with sequels.
Jeff VanderMeer, Authority2014 / Audiobook / 352 pages / USA
***
The Cube Zero of the trilogy shows the behind-the-scenes workings that might have been better left to our imaginations and takes a long time to rekindle what was good about the first one. This different approach was no doubt better than a rehash, if there had to be a sequel at all, but its X-Files-esque tone is a lot less fun.
Jeff VanderMeer, Acceptance2014 / Audiobook / 341 pages / USA
****
With time jumps filling in notable backstories and solving dangling mysteries, we're doing late-period Lost this time around. That's okay, I miss Lost.
