Welcome to the chaos machine – Bibliofiles August 2024

Murderous monks, creepy suburbia, giant brains, social media chaos machines — this month’s Bibliofiles of my latest reads is as weird and fantastic as it gets! Let me know if you have any tips about what I should read next.

(Previous Bibliofiles)

Literary fiction

Satellite Image by Michelle Berry

A city couple move to a small town after one of them is assaulted, hoping for a quieter and safer life. But small towns have their own secrets, and the couple is soon haunted by a satellite image of a potential body in their yard and strange incidents happening within the home, to say nothing of a cast of curious neighbours. It’s a psychological thriller that cranks up the tension with each chapter. You’ll be checking the locks over and over on your own home during your sleepless nights after finishing this book.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214982605-satellite-image?ref=nav_sb_ss_3_15

Genre Fiction

Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead by K.J. Parker

Saevus Corax makes a living scavenging the dead of battlefields with a band of not-so-merry men and business is good. As it turns out, Corax is using his job to hide the fact he killed off his former self, but his past just won’t stay dead and soon he is forced to leave the battlefields for even more dangerous realms. It’s classic Parker, with smart and double-crossing antiheroes and enough twists and turns to throw out your back. Better buy the full series so you have something to read while you rest.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61030541-saevus-corax-deals-with-the-dead

Crucible of Chaos by Sebastien de Castell

The clever and wisecracking Greatcoat Estevar Borros arrives at an ancient abbey where the monks have gone mad, demons run amok and the dead gods may not be as dead as everyone thinks. This may be my favourite Greatcoats novel yet by de Castell.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197664774-crucible-of-chaos?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_17

Across the Street by Greg Van Eekhout

An office drone decides to try a new route on his lunch excursions and finds himself in a strange version of our reality – a pet shop with a dragon, a meat shop with human corpses, a manhole with a mysterious creature, a church with actual angels and more. A wonderfully bizarre daydream that will speak to all of us who spend in our days in cube farms.

Link: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/across-the-street/

Median by Kelly Robson

A care aide provider in a broken-down car on the highway starts getting emergency calls from people who need help – but she doesn’t know any of them. When she stumbles upon a different and fatal accident, as well as a three-headed dog, things get weird. Another delightfully strange story from Kelly Robson.

Link: https://reactormag.com/median-kelly-robson/

“Gold, Glory, and the McCorry Boys” by Christopher O’Halloran

The best lyrical weird western heist father-son zombie story I’ve read this year.

Link: https://kaleidotrope.net/summer-2024/gold-glory-and-the-mccorry-boys-by-christopher-ohalloran/

“How to Kill the Giant Living Brain You Found in Your Mother’s Basement After She Died: An Interactive Guide” by Alex Sobel

A fun little story about mother-daughter relationships, emotional baggage, and of course giant living brains in basements.

Link: https://www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-111b-how-to-kill-the-giant-living-brain-you-found-in-your-mothers-basement-after-she-died-an-interactive-guide-by-alex-sobel/

Nine Recordings of Grief by by Zachariah Claypole White

When the world ends, it probably won’t be with zombies or supernovas or alien invasions or something we understand. It’ll likely end with something weird and incomprehensible, something we simply can’t fathom. If an enigmatic apocalypse appeals to you, then I think you’ll like “Nine Recordings of Grief.”

Link: https://www.bourbonpenn.com/issue/33/nine-recordings-of-grief-by-zachariah-claypole-white

Non-fiction

The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher

Why did Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms transform over time from hubs of connection to engines of radicalization and misinformation? The easy answer, as always, is to blame it on the algorithm. But how does code lead to conflict? The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher is an informative but chilling look inside the social media networks to reveal how they turn user feeds into echo chambers of infectious content designed to outrage and mobilize — but most of all to increase clicks/views. Nothing drives engagement like ragebait, after all.

But the algorithm is just code created by workers in shiny tech campuses, so it should be easy to correct this problem, right?

This is where Fisher reveals the more disturbing issue underlying the problem with the social media networks: there’s money to be made in chaos. The Chaos Machine provides example after example of Facebook and YouTube insiders coming up with ways to stop their platforms from encouraging murder, genocide and civil war, only to be overruled by leaders who would rather maximize profits than minimize the death and destruction caused by their products. The end result of this is the world we now live in.

The Chaos Machine should be required reading for anyone who uses social media, no matter what your political ideology, for it reveals how we’re all being manipulated to enrich the lives of a handful of tech barons. We’re not just the audience in the attention economy or even the product. We’re also the victims.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58950736-the-chaos-machine

Why are debut novels failing to launch?

There was a time when a young writer could publish their first book and have a chance at success on the writing alone. Do you have to be a social media influencer to have a shot at a writing career now?

Link: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a60924704/debut-fiction-challenges/