New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our consideration.
Putnam Pub Group
An agoraphobic engineer named Henry spends his days locked away in his extraordinarily sensible house constructing freaky little robots, together with one that appears like a magician and rides round on a tiny bike. His spouse, Lily, is the one individual he actually ever sees, however issues have grown tense between them — a state of affairs solely worsened by the truth that he’s normally holed up alone within the attic engaged on a secret challenge. Sooner or later, Lily invitations some former coworkers over to encourage Henry to socialize, and Henry takes the chance to lastly showcase his best creation: William, a sophisticated AI system housed in a crude robotic physique. Horror ensues.
Mason Coile’s William (stylized W1LL1AM) takes the well-worn trope of a naive creator confronted with their out-of-control creation and provides haunted smart-house creepiness, with a twist ending. Naturally, it’s drawn comparisons to Frankenstein and even The Shining, however I’d dare to say there’s a touch of Demon Seed in there, too. That is one other brief learn, coming in at below 250 pages, and it’s simply the best factor to get you into the spooky season temper. It takes place, appropriately, on Halloween.
Penguin Press
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and its subsequent transformation into X as we now comprehend it dominated headlines for months, so that you couldn’t be blamed for feeling such as you’ve heard all there’s to find out about the entire saga. However for many who do desire a deeper look into the way it all transpired, journalists Kate Conger and Ryan Mac have dredged up a ton of beforehand unreported data of their guide Character Limit, which pulls from interviews with insiders and inside recordings from the rooms the place all of it went down to provide us the complete story of Twitter’s takeover. And it’s a messy one.
Picture Comics
I can’t consider one other new sequence in latest reminiscence that’s left me so hungry for the following difficulty as The Tin Can Society #1. Earlier than I get into it, although, I ought to word that this primary difficulty opens with a content material warning about violence and discussions of ableism and racism. It’s intense from the bounce. The Tin Can Society begins with against the law scene: tech mogul turned superhero Johnny Moore has been murdered.
Moore, born with spina bifida, rose to fame because the genius creator of superior exoskeleton-style mobility aids, and he wore a full-body armored model of considered one of these fits whereas working because the vigilante hero, Caliburn. When he’s discovered useless, the swimsuit is gone. The Tin Can Society follows Moore’s childhood mates, who come collectively after years aside to unravel his homicide. There’s a variety of coronary heart within the first difficulty because it bounces between their present-day setting and the previous, constructing out the backstory of Moore’s formative years and the tight-knit pal group that when was. I’m excited to see the place this one goes. The Tin Can Society might be a nine-part mini sequence, and the following difficulty drops in late October.
