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The Chinese Time Machine
The first short story collection in seven years from multiple award-winning author Ian Watson, who worked with Stanley Kubrick for a year writing the screen story to the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and was the first novelist to write in the Warhammer 40K milieu. This volume gathers together ten stories previously published in Asimov's , Analog , and elsewhere, along with a brand new novella - one of four tales set in a near future shaped by the Chinese Time Machine.
The Chinese Time Machine 1st Brave New World, by Oscar Wilde 2nd The Kidnap of Fibonacci 3rd The Emperor's New Wallpaper 4th Sherlock Holmes and the Butterfly Effect (with Cristina Macía) Hot Gates Monkey Business When the Aliens Stop to Bottle Heinrich Himmler in the Barcelona Hallucination Cell Clickbeetle Journey to the Anomaly The Birth of Venus About the Author
"The brilliant Ian Watson remains the most stimulating and one of the least comfortable science fiction writers working today. Reading his short fiction reminds us why he is one of the genre's unassailable greats." - Adam Roberts
The Chinese Time Machine 1st Brave New World, by Oscar Wilde 2nd The Kidnap of Fibonacci 3rd The Emperor's New Wallpaper 4th Sherlock Holmes and the Butterfly Effect (with Cristina Macía) Hot Gates Monkey Business When the Aliens Stop to Bottle Heinrich Himmler in the Barcelona Hallucination Cell Clickbeetle Journey to the Anomaly The Birth of Venus About the Author
"The brilliant Ian Watson remains the most stimulating and one of the least comfortable science fiction writers working today. Reading his short fiction reminds us why he is one of the genre's unassailable greats." - Adam Roberts
- GenresScience Fiction
274 pages, Paperback
Published April 20, 2023
2 people are currently reading
7 people want to read
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Ian Watson
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There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 16, 2023
I anticipated The Chinese Time Machine checking all of my boxes. An intriguing and unexpected premise, witty repartee, a dash of history, science fact in addition to the fiction, and of course a time machine. I wanted to love it. It was, however, difficult to read. At quite a few points I was lost as to what was actually going on in the story and had to re-read the page several times. Even then, I was only hoping that I had the story right. Having read (and loved) all of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books, I am no stranger to convolutions, digressions and inane story lines. But this was as if the author wanted me to read his mind and know his shorthand without a primer. And, sorry to say, during some of the bits that flowed smoothly, it was a little slow and dull. A major point of irritation for me was the line, "Reality trembles like a child prostitute meeting their first client." Unnecessary. Really. I rolled my eyes and huffed at Ruby, in The Birth of Venus, referring to her vagina as a "cunt" but child prostitute similes? Really? Disgusting.
That being said, Maggie Mo and the future Chinese-run bureaucracy were new and interesting. And although being a tad pun heavy, I did genuinely laugh out loud during some exchanges. Outside of The Chinese Time Machine stories, The Birth of Venus was the most engaging and clear. For most of the short stories in this book the bones are most certainly there but the flesh is tenuous.
That being said, Maggie Mo and the future Chinese-run bureaucracy were new and interesting. And although being a tad pun heavy, I did genuinely laugh out loud during some exchanges. Outside of The Chinese Time Machine stories, The Birth of Venus was the most engaging and clear. For most of the short stories in this book the bones are most certainly there but the flesh is tenuous.
November 10, 2023
The new short story collection from Ian Watson is titled ‘The Chinese Time Machine’ and 160 of its 260 pages are taken up with four stories featuring that device. Broken by Brexit, England now relies on wealthy, velvet-gloved China, so Oxford scholars David Mason and Rajit Sharma work for the Time Institute of Beijing, though still based at home. On some missions they are accompanied by the beautiful Maggie Mo,a high ranking official in that organisation with a taste for adventure.
In ‘Brave New World, by Oscar Wilde’ the pair go back to fetch Oscar into a future where he is revered and can produce more great works. They return to 1897 to recover him from Berneval-le-Grand on the north coast of France, cleverly plotting his disappearance so it will pass without too many questions. In fiction, we can let dear old Oscar, Van Gogh, Lovecraft and others who died at a low point know how they came to be loved. Alas, in life, we can’t.
‘The Kidnap of Fibonacci’ involves them in a trip to 12th century Algeria to abduct the mathematician as part of a plot to prevent the growth of rapacious western capitalism which leads to habitat collapse and will cause the extinction of humanity. Finding Fibonacci is a complicated conundrum as he was never known by that name in his own era.
The longest story in the book, ‘The Emperor’s New Wallpaper’, a novella, involves rescuing Napoleon Bonaparte from death by wallpaper poisoning in his second exile to the island of Saint Helena. This gets very involved with surprising twists. Watson has clearly researched history for these tales, or knows it well already. The future Chinese authorities are credited with benign aims that are rather at odds with their current behaviour but perhaps things will turn out that way. After all, it’s only 150 years since the height of the British Empire and all its evils.
The final time machine adventure ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Butterfly Effect’ is pure fun with the Great Detective. Watson has a surprising revelation about Watson. Maggie Mo seems surprisingly enchanted by powerful, intelligent men with the potential to change history. She had the hots for Napoleon, too.
Another story, ‘Heinrich Himmler in the Barcelona Hallucination Cell’ is set in the past but doesn’t involve the Chinese time machine. I can’t say much about it without giving away the plot but suffice to say it was smart and the historical background was accurate as far as I can tell, which is quite far as I’ve read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer twice and recommend it to you.
The rest of the collection features far out fiction on a variety of themes. ‘Monkey Business’ is set in ‘the city of Scribe where thirty-seven robot monkeys type in the Templum daily from dawn till dusk.’ An adventurous lass named Betty sets off to see the city, meeting a playful person called Orlando on the way. The entire economy of the surrounding area is dedicated to keeping those robot monkeys typing so that one day, perhaps, they will produce a copy of a play by the Bard. Hints about its true nature are dropped near the end.
‘When the Aliens Stop to Bottle’ is a dark tale of irresistible creatures from another world who have conquered humanity far too easily and sometimes collect sample specimens to study. Trapped on a train, Toby and Jen hope to avoid abduction.
‘Clickbeetle’ is a good idea. A clickbeetle, constantly clicking, is put into the ear of people who concentrate too much on their own consciousness, posting all about themselves on social media. Posting at least three times a day is obligatory to be part of society but Suzan nearly always used the word ‘I’ in posts. The clickbeetle, which soon becomes like the legendary Chinese water torture, is her punishment.
Isaac Asimov, not famous for his aliens, won the Hugo and Nebula awards in the early seventies with ‘The Gods Themselves’ for inventing the most alien aliens anyone could imagine. Bah! In ‘Journey to the Anomaly’ (translated from PanLang by Ian Watson) the author comes up with five of the weirdest lifeforms ever. Fluffle, Crusty, Wedgy, Boomboomba and our narrator, Ten-tacles, are journeying from their starclump to an odd planetary system where all the worlds appear to have almost circular orbits! This could not be natural! The trip isn’t easy and there may be mutiny on board.
I haven’t read any of Ian Watson’s novels but his philosophy with short stories, and it’s a good one, is clearly to have fun. Fun with characters, history, language, science and plot. He seems to ‘enjoy it as a lark, or as a fascinating adventure’ as Berenson wrote to Bradbury. ‘How different from the workers in the heavy industry that professional writing has become.’ That suits me fine. Mark you, there are serious considerations about economics, politics and history underpinning some stories, and Himmler isn’t anyone’s idea of a laugh, but in general this is meant to entertain, and does. At the risk of getting a clickbeetle for using yet another perpendicular pronoun, I recommend it.
In ‘Brave New World, by Oscar Wilde’ the pair go back to fetch Oscar into a future where he is revered and can produce more great works. They return to 1897 to recover him from Berneval-le-Grand on the north coast of France, cleverly plotting his disappearance so it will pass without too many questions. In fiction, we can let dear old Oscar, Van Gogh, Lovecraft and others who died at a low point know how they came to be loved. Alas, in life, we can’t.
‘The Kidnap of Fibonacci’ involves them in a trip to 12th century Algeria to abduct the mathematician as part of a plot to prevent the growth of rapacious western capitalism which leads to habitat collapse and will cause the extinction of humanity. Finding Fibonacci is a complicated conundrum as he was never known by that name in his own era.
The longest story in the book, ‘The Emperor’s New Wallpaper’, a novella, involves rescuing Napoleon Bonaparte from death by wallpaper poisoning in his second exile to the island of Saint Helena. This gets very involved with surprising twists. Watson has clearly researched history for these tales, or knows it well already. The future Chinese authorities are credited with benign aims that are rather at odds with their current behaviour but perhaps things will turn out that way. After all, it’s only 150 years since the height of the British Empire and all its evils.
The final time machine adventure ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Butterfly Effect’ is pure fun with the Great Detective. Watson has a surprising revelation about Watson. Maggie Mo seems surprisingly enchanted by powerful, intelligent men with the potential to change history. She had the hots for Napoleon, too.
Another story, ‘Heinrich Himmler in the Barcelona Hallucination Cell’ is set in the past but doesn’t involve the Chinese time machine. I can’t say much about it without giving away the plot but suffice to say it was smart and the historical background was accurate as far as I can tell, which is quite far as I’ve read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer twice and recommend it to you.
The rest of the collection features far out fiction on a variety of themes. ‘Monkey Business’ is set in ‘the city of Scribe where thirty-seven robot monkeys type in the Templum daily from dawn till dusk.’ An adventurous lass named Betty sets off to see the city, meeting a playful person called Orlando on the way. The entire economy of the surrounding area is dedicated to keeping those robot monkeys typing so that one day, perhaps, they will produce a copy of a play by the Bard. Hints about its true nature are dropped near the end.
‘When the Aliens Stop to Bottle’ is a dark tale of irresistible creatures from another world who have conquered humanity far too easily and sometimes collect sample specimens to study. Trapped on a train, Toby and Jen hope to avoid abduction.
‘Clickbeetle’ is a good idea. A clickbeetle, constantly clicking, is put into the ear of people who concentrate too much on their own consciousness, posting all about themselves on social media. Posting at least three times a day is obligatory to be part of society but Suzan nearly always used the word ‘I’ in posts. The clickbeetle, which soon becomes like the legendary Chinese water torture, is her punishment.
Isaac Asimov, not famous for his aliens, won the Hugo and Nebula awards in the early seventies with ‘The Gods Themselves’ for inventing the most alien aliens anyone could imagine. Bah! In ‘Journey to the Anomaly’ (translated from PanLang by Ian Watson) the author comes up with five of the weirdest lifeforms ever. Fluffle, Crusty, Wedgy, Boomboomba and our narrator, Ten-tacles, are journeying from their starclump to an odd planetary system where all the worlds appear to have almost circular orbits! This could not be natural! The trip isn’t easy and there may be mutiny on board.
I haven’t read any of Ian Watson’s novels but his philosophy with short stories, and it’s a good one, is clearly to have fun. Fun with characters, history, language, science and plot. He seems to ‘enjoy it as a lark, or as a fascinating adventure’ as Berenson wrote to Bradbury. ‘How different from the workers in the heavy industry that professional writing has become.’ That suits me fine. Mark you, there are serious considerations about economics, politics and history underpinning some stories, and Himmler isn’t anyone’s idea of a laugh, but in general this is meant to entertain, and does. At the risk of getting a clickbeetle for using yet another perpendicular pronoun, I recommend it.
June 21, 2024
There are certain authors who have such a distinctive 'voice' in their writing that you know immediately when you are reading work by them... and this is one such a work. Quintessentially Ian Watson, here he has a chance to demonstrate his erudition and indulge his lifelong love of history, a love which shines through every page of these stories. Not that they are in any way dry or academic... though his wit, on the other hand, is extremely dry, and had me chuckling at many points in the narrative. It is only the first four stories that are linked by the eponymous time machine (and the characters that operate it), the others in this collection being a far more eclectic bunch, but all allow the reader a backstage pass into the extraordinary mind and predilections of one of Britain's foremost SF writers.
February 21, 2024
This is the latest collection of stories from Ian Watson, who has been active in the SF field for over fifty years. These were all first published within the last seven.
We start with four stories under the rubric The Chinese Time Machine. Each describes an expedition into the byways of times past. Our travellers, David Mason and Rajit Sharma, set out from a basement lab in Oxford in 2050 on behalf of the Time Institute in Beijing in a Chinese dominated world whose kaleidoscopic and shifting background is elaborated over the four tales. It is obvious that Watson has had huge fun devising and writing these episodes exploring the paradoxes and confusions of timelines in tales where tenses have to be twisted in order to convey the contingencies of “times gone by yet to be.” They are also replete with allusions and jokes. In them there are echoes of John Brunner’s The Society of Time and Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel stories. Not the least of their pleasures is that the characters remain blissfully unaware of how their activities change history. Watson’s delight in word-play and allusion also permeates the rest of the collection.
In the 1st Trip: Brave New World by Oscar Wilde, our brave time adventurers, complete with wrist computers and translators worn as necklaces, pluck that author from France in 1897 so that, instead of dying in 1910, he can write his work that will change literature, Brave New World.
The 2nd Trip: The Kidnap of Fibonnaci is made in an attempt to stop that mathematician’s influence inflicting capitalism on the world and makes much of the fact that little is known of Fibonnaci’s life.
3rd Trip: The Emperor’s New Wallpaper is the longest story in the book. Mason and Sharma are accompanied to St Helena by Colonel Maggie Mo, ostensibly to replace the wallpaper made with arsenic dye said to have contributed to Napoleon’s early death so that he will survive for a time. Maggie has ulterior motives and takes them all, Napoleon included, back to the construction of the Terracotta Army as she wishes to establish a world-wide Chinese hegemony well before its time. The tale is somewhat sprawling and even strays to a Lakota Sioux - and Cheyenne - inhabited Mars (which they call Barsoom) before its resolution. Watson’s jocular narration here finds room to comment on the alliteration heavy prose style of these stories.
4th Trip: Sherlock Holmes and the Butterfly Effect (written with Cristina Macía) sees Mason and Sharma travel back to abduct Sherlock Holmes (who claims Dr Watson was an invention by Conan Doyle) so that the United Kingdom of Europe - headquartered in Brussels of course and this future China’s great rival - will not come about. They fail but persuade Maggie Mo to travel back to become Holmes’s chronicler.
The premise of Hot Gates (a literal translation of Thermopylae) is that a process called melting, which erases landscape features - and consequentially kills the people living there - is happening to disputed border regions. Our narrator is a vulcanologist surveying Jerusalem hoping to observe its destruction, which of course occurs - and during which he constructs a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon.
Monkey Business riffs on the monkeys typing Shakespeare trope. Watson makes the most of this chance to include multiple allusions to the bard’s work. The city of Scribe is where thirty-seven robot monkeys (which are more like baboons) are carrying out their task. From the outset it is clear that this world is artificial, or at least not ours. Mixed in with all this is a tale of a pilgrim to the city and a swain she meets on the way, giving the title monkey business added resonance.
When the Aliens Stop to Bottle is an invasion story. Octopus-like aliens calling themselves the Oktagon have appeared on Earth and nullified all the nuclear weapons launched at them. Narrator Jen is on an overcrowded train trying to get home when an alien enters the carriage and asks for her Eye-dentity before displaying an interest in philosophers.
Heinrich Himmler in the Barcelona Hallucination Cell has Himmler on a visit to Spain demand to see the hallucination cell which, to prevent sleep, has a tilted bench and bricks jutting from the floor plus “degenerate art” on its walls when he starts to hear voices from the future in his head. But are they communicating with the real Himmler or one from a different reality?
Clickbeetle is a story regarding an unusual punishment using that tiny insect placed into the ear as an irritant. Its irregular clicks are akin to tinnitus and compared to Chinese water torture (a torment said here to be apocryphal.) The story manages to range widely across the history of such tortures and of Dr Mengele’s experiments.
Journey to the Anomaly explores the differences among the crew of a ship sent out from a star clump containing various sentient races to said anomaly, a solar system whose planets’ orbits are arranged too regularly, in other words our sun’s. Its twenty-one pages contain a plethora of SF ideas.
The Birth of Venus features the coming to awareness of a set of posthuman AIs and their subsequent adventures. It speculates on a universe where Beryllium 8 isn’t unstable and carbon atoms could have formed earlier than they did in ours.
On its own, each one of the above stories is amusing, informative and thought-provoking. Read immediately after each other, with only slight pauses to reflect (as is required for review,) and their cumulative effect can be a touch intense. Take your time, though, and you’ll be fine.
We start with four stories under the rubric The Chinese Time Machine. Each describes an expedition into the byways of times past. Our travellers, David Mason and Rajit Sharma, set out from a basement lab in Oxford in 2050 on behalf of the Time Institute in Beijing in a Chinese dominated world whose kaleidoscopic and shifting background is elaborated over the four tales. It is obvious that Watson has had huge fun devising and writing these episodes exploring the paradoxes and confusions of timelines in tales where tenses have to be twisted in order to convey the contingencies of “times gone by yet to be.” They are also replete with allusions and jokes. In them there are echoes of John Brunner’s The Society of Time and Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel stories. Not the least of their pleasures is that the characters remain blissfully unaware of how their activities change history. Watson’s delight in word-play and allusion also permeates the rest of the collection.
In the 1st Trip: Brave New World by Oscar Wilde, our brave time adventurers, complete with wrist computers and translators worn as necklaces, pluck that author from France in 1897 so that, instead of dying in 1910, he can write his work that will change literature, Brave New World.
The 2nd Trip: The Kidnap of Fibonnaci is made in an attempt to stop that mathematician’s influence inflicting capitalism on the world and makes much of the fact that little is known of Fibonnaci’s life.
3rd Trip: The Emperor’s New Wallpaper is the longest story in the book. Mason and Sharma are accompanied to St Helena by Colonel Maggie Mo, ostensibly to replace the wallpaper made with arsenic dye said to have contributed to Napoleon’s early death so that he will survive for a time. Maggie has ulterior motives and takes them all, Napoleon included, back to the construction of the Terracotta Army as she wishes to establish a world-wide Chinese hegemony well before its time. The tale is somewhat sprawling and even strays to a Lakota Sioux - and Cheyenne - inhabited Mars (which they call Barsoom) before its resolution. Watson’s jocular narration here finds room to comment on the alliteration heavy prose style of these stories.
4th Trip: Sherlock Holmes and the Butterfly Effect (written with Cristina Macía) sees Mason and Sharma travel back to abduct Sherlock Holmes (who claims Dr Watson was an invention by Conan Doyle) so that the United Kingdom of Europe - headquartered in Brussels of course and this future China’s great rival - will not come about. They fail but persuade Maggie Mo to travel back to become Holmes’s chronicler.
The premise of Hot Gates (a literal translation of Thermopylae) is that a process called melting, which erases landscape features - and consequentially kills the people living there - is happening to disputed border regions. Our narrator is a vulcanologist surveying Jerusalem hoping to observe its destruction, which of course occurs - and during which he constructs a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon.
Monkey Business riffs on the monkeys typing Shakespeare trope. Watson makes the most of this chance to include multiple allusions to the bard’s work. The city of Scribe is where thirty-seven robot monkeys (which are more like baboons) are carrying out their task. From the outset it is clear that this world is artificial, or at least not ours. Mixed in with all this is a tale of a pilgrim to the city and a swain she meets on the way, giving the title monkey business added resonance.
When the Aliens Stop to Bottle is an invasion story. Octopus-like aliens calling themselves the Oktagon have appeared on Earth and nullified all the nuclear weapons launched at them. Narrator Jen is on an overcrowded train trying to get home when an alien enters the carriage and asks for her Eye-dentity before displaying an interest in philosophers.
Heinrich Himmler in the Barcelona Hallucination Cell has Himmler on a visit to Spain demand to see the hallucination cell which, to prevent sleep, has a tilted bench and bricks jutting from the floor plus “degenerate art” on its walls when he starts to hear voices from the future in his head. But are they communicating with the real Himmler or one from a different reality?
Clickbeetle is a story regarding an unusual punishment using that tiny insect placed into the ear as an irritant. Its irregular clicks are akin to tinnitus and compared to Chinese water torture (a torment said here to be apocryphal.) The story manages to range widely across the history of such tortures and of Dr Mengele’s experiments.
Journey to the Anomaly explores the differences among the crew of a ship sent out from a star clump containing various sentient races to said anomaly, a solar system whose planets’ orbits are arranged too regularly, in other words our sun’s. Its twenty-one pages contain a plethora of SF ideas.
The Birth of Venus features the coming to awareness of a set of posthuman AIs and their subsequent adventures. It speculates on a universe where Beryllium 8 isn’t unstable and carbon atoms could have formed earlier than they did in ours.
On its own, each one of the above stories is amusing, informative and thought-provoking. Read immediately after each other, with only slight pauses to reflect (as is required for review,) and their cumulative effect can be a touch intense. Take your time, though, and you’ll be fine.
December 23, 2023
Troppi brutti giochi di parole
[Disclaimer: Ho ricevuto il libro grazie al programma Early Reviewer di LibraryThing]
Avevo già letto il primo racconto della collezione: non era un capolavoro, ma aveva delle potenzialità. Dato che il libro conteneva altri tre racconti nel mondo della macchina del tempo cinese, speravo in bene, ma sono stato deluso. Watson, almeno per quanto mi riguarda, è spesso troppo oscuro, e quando non lo è riempie il testo di pessimi giochi di parole - e io amo i giochi di parole! I racconti in breve:
▪ 1st Trip: Brave New World, by Oscar Wilde: senza infamia e senza lode, 3/5
▪ 2nd Trip: The Kidnap of Fibonacci: C'è qualcosa di strano nel testo di cui non sono riuscito a capire il senso. 3/5
▪ 3rd Trip: The Emperor’s New Wallpaper: Il più lungo, quasi un romanzo breve, ma impossibile da capire: troppi salti logici. L'unica parte divertente è quando fuggono dall'antica Cina per finire in Barsoom. 2/5
▪ 4th Trip: Sherlock Holmes and the Butterfly Effect: un po' meglio, ma comunque pieno di giochi di parole che non mi dicono nulla. 3/5
▪ Hot Gates: l'idea dello scioglimento è bella, ma non mi è piaciuta la sua prosa. 2/5
▪ Monkey Business: Ambientazione interessante: purtroppo temo di aver perso - ma la colpa è mia - molte citazioni scespiriane, a parte quella italiana ovvia :-) 4/5
▪ When the Aliens Stop to Bottle: strano, cupo, e secondo me lasciato a mezzo. 3/5
▪ Heinrich Himmler in the Barcelona Hallucination Cell: idea carina: ci ho perso un po' a capire di cosa stava parlando: Watson sicuramente è un esperto di quel periodo storico. Termina però in tono minore. 2/5
▪ Clickbeetle: Non ci ho capito un'acca. 1/5
▪ Journey to the Anomaly: Interessante il tratteggio delle specie aliene, ma come sempre troppi giochi di parole e un finale moscio. 3/5
▪ The Birth of Venus: Direi il migliore racconto della raccolta. 4/5
[Disclaimer: Ho ricevuto il libro grazie al programma Early Reviewer di LibraryThing]
Avevo già letto il primo racconto della collezione: non era un capolavoro, ma aveva delle potenzialità. Dato che il libro conteneva altri tre racconti nel mondo della macchina del tempo cinese, speravo in bene, ma sono stato deluso. Watson, almeno per quanto mi riguarda, è spesso troppo oscuro, e quando non lo è riempie il testo di pessimi giochi di parole - e io amo i giochi di parole! I racconti in breve:
▪ 1st Trip: Brave New World, by Oscar Wilde: senza infamia e senza lode, 3/5
▪ 2nd Trip: The Kidnap of Fibonacci: C'è qualcosa di strano nel testo di cui non sono riuscito a capire il senso. 3/5
▪ 3rd Trip: The Emperor’s New Wallpaper: Il più lungo, quasi un romanzo breve, ma impossibile da capire: troppi salti logici. L'unica parte divertente è quando fuggono dall'antica Cina per finire in Barsoom. 2/5
▪ 4th Trip: Sherlock Holmes and the Butterfly Effect: un po' meglio, ma comunque pieno di giochi di parole che non mi dicono nulla. 3/5
▪ Hot Gates: l'idea dello scioglimento è bella, ma non mi è piaciuta la sua prosa. 2/5
▪ Monkey Business: Ambientazione interessante: purtroppo temo di aver perso - ma la colpa è mia - molte citazioni scespiriane, a parte quella italiana ovvia :-) 4/5
▪ When the Aliens Stop to Bottle: strano, cupo, e secondo me lasciato a mezzo. 3/5
▪ Heinrich Himmler in the Barcelona Hallucination Cell: idea carina: ci ho perso un po' a capire di cosa stava parlando: Watson sicuramente è un esperto di quel periodo storico. Termina però in tono minore. 2/5
▪ Clickbeetle: Non ci ho capito un'acca. 1/5
▪ Journey to the Anomaly: Interessante il tratteggio delle specie aliene, ma come sempre troppi giochi di parole e un finale moscio. 3/5
▪ The Birth of Venus: Direi il migliore racconto della raccolta. 4/5
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews