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Closing out his book of career-long encounters with Shakespeare, Brook identifies key words and phrases, not the usual grab-bag of supposedly invented neologisms but the familiar “quality” and “mercy” variety that reveal deeper meaning. It is not to say that Shakespeare himself or Brook has the rare genius to create such words or theatre but both of them, and such notables like Gielgud, spoke at the speed of thought.

It is almost becoming a distraction, not knowing why Fforde’s wintery world became so radically different centuries ago and yet vaguely familiar popular culture from the reader’s reality (Carmen Miranda, Reduced Shakespeare) has remained pretty much the same. The holographic plate of reality has cracked, so that dreams come first, and yet by the midpoint of the novel all pieces are strangely starting to fit together.

One may wonder what Suzuki is up to, writing so much about the ineffable and frankly oxymoronic qualities of a monk’s life, when he concludes with how studying koans or the history of Buddhism does not get one closer to understanding it all. Mountains are mountains until they are not, and Suzuki’s essay on the Meditation Hall, like his other essays, presents the reader with a virtual tour of the mystery to undertake.

The implied ‘no’s to many questions the author imposed on the reader regarding AI and smart robots become ‘unknown’s in the chapters regarding conscious computers, leaving a few possibilities open. One of the most exciting is that conscious computers, us, have existed for aeons, and the secret to building one is simply being really good (or really bad) at the oldest profession. Other, less sexy options are mentioned.

The month-long dream of a Buick and disembodied hands makes this post-apocalyptic yarn a bit more Inception-y, and Charlie discovers how reality is broken and these visions are precursors to actual events. Perhaps it is the long winters of hibernation with zombie-like nightwalkers that are virtual dreamstates?

Working his way towards the mid-point of his celebrated career, the famous Dream, Brook reveals his attention to the craft of playmaking that differs widely from the psychological realism imposed upon the plays by de facto Shakespearean showman Olivier. Almost like a scientific inquiry of the words and themes in Measure for Measure, King Lear and Hamlet puts trust back in the text.

Taking a page from this part of the book, the practicalities and ethical choices that go into the creation of artificial general intelligence, is to make the debate over whether season eleven or nineteen of The Love Boat was better. Simply put, AGI hasn’t happened yet, and there is little chance of what some believe as inevitable would ever be possible. Too easy to fall into the trap that it spells our doom.

Brook takes aim at a traditional or essentially conservative view of Shakespeare’s plays, firstly by dismissing the strange notion that a Stratfordian schoolboy would become the greatest poet/playwright in England. Next Brook marks his career in this sleepy hometown by challenging the Victorian taste for romantic overproduction by touring a lewd Romeo and Juliet and a twisted Titus starring Olivier!

Reese makes some broad associative leaps of logic, bending facts and figures more than my current dissertation draft! From narrow AI, the robots that will embody such intelligence to a seemingly age-old question of whether these machines will replace us, he considers a number of possibilities (three main ones, actually) that can be summed up as: smart robots already are taking away our jobs and we should be grateful.

While raising more questions about what else could possibly go wrong for Charlie, these next couple of chapters at least partially answer why the dust jacket image has two people at the beach under a parasol inside what looks like a snow globe. The artist Brigitta lives in the dormitorium where he was placed temporarily, but much like his first dream in years, as well as spooky Clytemnestra, all images have meanings.

More than a couple quantum theory authors have written about Dirac’s eloquence when solving the incalculable but his first lecture on Hamiltonian (who?) equations is a bit too direct. One can picture him pounding out the formulae onto the chalkboard, almost as if the colloquial expression ‘mind your p’s and q’s’ was dedicated to him. He’d probably point out that it’s q’s and p’s, moving on to Greek.

A couple of chapters for the oddly-ominously named characters to reassert their dominance over the long-suffering ones: Guppy over Richard, Tulkinghorn over Lady Dedlock, Snagsby over France and other foreigners. So much of these characters are motivated by the illusion of one's proper place in society rather than any tangible gain that even a non-entity like Sir Leicester gets vaulted up as if he's the novel's hero.

Reese covers a very broad swathe of human history, essentially all of recorded history plus a couple of invention pre-dating the written word that made us what we are, all of it to demonstrate how such tools and processes are key elements in the human sense of being over hundreds of aeons. His three philosophical questions closing out the section point to how many nanoseconds AI will need to become basically like us.

The women of Wales may provide safe havens or siren’s rocks for Charlie’s tempest-tossed boat (having missed the last train): Toccata, Aurora and Laura may each be his salvation or ruin in Sector Twelve. The as-yet unseen Toccata promises to be the most turbulent working relationship, yet somehow his naïveté about her ensures he will at least survive until the last chapter. More talk about the Gronk who is a she too.

One gets the sense that Bohm would have gazed, for hours and hours, on the glass cylinders that pulled apart and brought back the ink droplets in viscous gelatine to formulate his holomovement, perhaps inspired by Pribram (also Piaget and Freud!). Being able to sense through this repeated experiment that the entire universe is a projection of a grounded reality out there and within neurons of the mind is pure genius.

In describing the very elusive and often contradictory Zen practices, Suzuki reveals that Shakespeare was a Buddhist rather than a Buddhist scholar like Suzuki occasionally mentioning much ado about nothing. From Kate and Petruchio’s argument over what is and is not the moon to the broken mirror scene in Richard II, not to forget the famous “to be or not to be” speech, all have a precedent in Suzuki’s study.

A couple more telltale signs you are reading a Fforde novel are paranormal side stories, in this case the phantom-like Wintervolk, and a satire on bureaucratic corporations, such as Early Riser’s HiberTech. The brilliance of such books is figuring out how these incongruous pieces fit together, usually simultaneously when the unassuming hero begins to notice something strange within the already askew reality.

The nearly-literal scraps of paper left over from Brecht’s globetrotting career are a somber reflection on an almost perfect art form. My reading of this collection ends however with A Short Organum and his amazingly adept way of telescoping all of human history with theatre looking into the eyepiece and modern science at the wider end. Wonder if during his time in Zurich he crossed paths with Jung or Pauli?

Along comes the girl, or femme if we want to get all noir about it (and it will most likely go that way anyhow!) and she has a very fitting name for the titular character: Aurora. Charlie will most likely fall in love, and she may prove to be as fatale as his connection to his most recent mentor Jack. Also, I kind of suspect that the absurdly Dickensian-named Foulnap still has an important role to play in this story.

Many early-days books on VR are obliged to explore the more fanciful and exotic corners of simulated reality, from the pornography industry hopefully cleaned up, to augmented reality leaping ahead of current VR devices and the eventual blending of the two in a not-too-distant future utopia where work and play are essentially the same. It is comforting to read that Ewalt thinks life will go on undisturbed, yet unreal.

Attempting a grab-bag of academic proof that a holomovement is the result of a new quantum order, I am surprised but not alarmed to see Jean Piaget mentioned in the construction of mind. Other arguments in this chapter range from linguistic to algebraic, hopeful for an audience of like-minded implic-atives who understand where is varied ideas are going. Trusting in the wholeness of this book so far, I think I get it.

What exactly makes half-hearted hero Case a protagonist, asides from his scrappy attitude and fickle friends-with-benefits relationships? His last-ditch white knight routine to save his distressed damsel Molly, the same babe who killed off his previous bae Linda, rings a bit hollow as he acts like a pawn for creepy corporations and their awfully intrusive AI. At least we kinda learn who Neuromancer is, once and only.

Like many important innovators who develop ideas that reach beyond the grasp of a majority of one’s peers, Brecht sees the end of the line for his epic theatre and alienation effect as it has been modelled countlessly with earlier innovations from the classical era onward. Even writing the extra parts of a Short Organum is evidence that he never meant for his ideas to be the last word on playmaking and theatre-going.

Thankfully the book is not all about peeking inside Luckey’s pre-MAGA mind; the next few chapters switch from hardware developers to content creators, with a range of 360° footage to immersive entertainment. Most of these 2016-made experiences are old hat by now: Owlchemy’s Job Simulator, Milk’s Evolution and Fox Searchlight’s Wild. And once again a purpose is revealed: our new View-Master!

A tidy flashback to explain how Charlie got his job as a novice caretaker, under the guidance of Winter Consul Jack Logan, explains how the dormatoria are maintained, who is inside them, and what the few people not hibernating need to do in order to keep humanity alive for another year. The nuclear reactor that killed Mr. Tiffen and sent his dead wife off on a train trip positions us back to the end of the beginning.

The long-awaited stand-alone novel has all the earmarks of Fforde’s other alternative timelines: mammoths, nuns with strange sister names, a fascination with delicacies, that readers might be tempted to find some connection to a sorcerer or BookWorld character. Yet the Winter world has firmly established its own set of rules gleamed from dialogue and the occasional discursive footnotes to make it a multi-Wales-verse.

In proposing his new order based upon quantum theories, with a multitude of paradoxical similar difference opening up before him, Bohm lays out a geometric example of order as part of our fragmentary nature. The ratios and world tubes involved add to the complexity of his argument, which at this point have to be accepted as possible views of one wholeness although I am at a loss to come up with any counter arguments.

More might-have-been magnificence for Brecht and the Berliners, a lengthy discussion about the opening scene from their adaptation of Coriolanus, this play being the first-ever script I read that Brecht had a hand in shaping. And to find out later in the editor’s notes that it wasn’t fully staged in Brecht’s lifetime makes all his talk of DDR and faux-stoicism on stage that much sadder; history he won’t see.

This neo-noir story is becoming more and more like a futuristic version of Murder on the Orient Express or African Queen, except set partially in space and this made-up cyber- construct. Wintermute is playing everyone off each other, for reasons the AI itself cannot even fathom or be bothered to explain. So it seems like Case’s story will eventually end up being: stuff happened, some of it in space.

Cribbing quotes from Lanier’s Dawn of the New... and press material surrounding Luckey’s glorious Kickstarter campaign doesn’t seem like Ewalt is reporting anything new, and perhaps this is his sly point: two billion Facebook bucks may be noteworthy, but the voices of dissent from kicked off developers may spell out VR’s second demise. Luckey’s full-length rant on McD’s healthy food speaks volumes about him.