arts // no. 8 | rs a | NWEUROMANCER my Crowded Bookshelf: Cyberpunk Central > A ‘Sprawl’ trilogy retrospective Duncan Fingarson Senior Columnist [: not often that a single series can be called genre-defining, but that’s William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy for you. Though not the first to use the name, these books best gave a face to cyberpunk, a brand of science fiction focused on the very dystopian near-future. Here, technology blazes ahead, access to data is endless, and cybernetic modification pushes the limits of human capability. The three Sprawl novels area trilogy in the loosest sort of sense; the plots are vaguely related to each other, and the same characters sometimes reappear, but for the most part each is self-contained. The first is Neuromancer. This is the most straightforward of the three novels, a pure heist story with only one protagonist. Case is a hacker, hired for one last job by aman called Armitage. The Straylight run takes him from the slums of Chiba to Istanbul to high Earth orbit, trying to get the job done and find some answers before time runs out. Count Zero is more complex. The book is s about Turner, a professional mercenary hired to help a scientist escape from his current company to go work for a different one. No wait, it’s about Marly, a disgraced Paris gallery owner hired by one of the world’s richest men to track down the artist responsible for a curious set of boxes. Actually, it’s about Bobby, a wannabe hacker from New Jersey who gets pulled in over his head after he’s caught with a stolen computer program. In reality, it’s about all three, and the way that their seemingly unrelated plot threads start weaving together. Mona Lisa Overdrive follows a similar structure to Count Zero. Characters who don’t appear to have anything to do with each other end up interacting, and unrelated events turn out to be related after all. Characters from both the first and second "| a B oF wavnomasncan | Photo via Partia yWindow via Imgur books return, alongside a couple of new faces. The ultimate ending leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but ties up just enough to feel complete. To me, these are unquestionably good books. The style is short and conversational; the action is rapid fire. There are a lot of things left unsaid, though, and a lot of questions that never get answered. If you like everything to end tied up ina neat little bow, you won't find that here. If you like happy endings, well, that’s debatable too. Of course, most of the important stuff gets dealt with, and problems tend to get solved, but you're likely to end with a head full of questions. If you’re okay with that, give these a shot. If you like speculative science fiction, that’s a good sign: give these a shot. If you’ve ever seen Blade Runner, or played Deus Ex, and thought to yourself “That was great, I want more stories like that,” well, you know what to do. An improv blockbuster >The Big Picture’ review Jerrison Oracion Senior Columnist OOOO ith all the summer films being shown in theaters right now, there are lots of options to choose from. Still, if there are no films that you want to see, how about a film that changes with every performance? The Vancouver TheatreSports League's The Big Picture recreates the experience of a summer blockbuster through a totally improvised film experience. Every performance is a different film, and if you enjoyed the show, you could see it again for a completely different performance. The first half of the show involves the current players of the league and special guests exploring the world of film. Throughout the show, the audience gives suggestions to the players and they use those suggestions to demonstrate something ina film. For example, an audience member suggested knitting and they used that idea to demonstrate a silent film. Other off-the-wall suggestions included a World War II propaganda film about a war with Jamaica, a 1940s musical called I Ate the Cheese, product placement for Bertie Botts Every Flavoured Beans, and an independent film about dusting. Next, they riffed on the five common types of summer films: sci-fi, action, western, romantic comedy, and horror. The improvised romantic comedy involved a date ina museum where the actors had to say lines from text messages in an audience member’s cellphone. For the horror theme, whenever one actor said something, the response had Chairman of the Board: theotherpress.ca Illustration by Ed Eldritch Horrors 101 > ‘The Big Book of Madness’ game review Ed Appleby Illustrator Sn things were just not meant to be toyed with by insignificant mortals. But what’s the harm in a little peek...? The Big Book of Madness is a cooperative deck building game for 2-5 players designed by Maxime Rambourg and published by IELLO in 2015. Players take the role of curious first-year students at a magical academy who have accidentally unleashed eldritch horrors onto the world by opening an ancient tome. Players harness the four elements and take turns casting spells in an attempt to defeat the horrors unleashed from the book before they can escape the school or drive the players mad. The game is won by getting to the sixth page of the book and defeating the final monster. Like many cooperative to make the situation worse or better. In the science fiction show, an audience member did sound effects for the actors. During the intermission, the audience gets to decide which of those five types of film the actors should focus on in the second half of the show. After the intermission at the show I attended, the actors incorporated things from the first half of the show, including the museum from the romantic comedy film and a tumbleweed from the western film. The final performance was a science fiction film called The games, this one is brutally hard but extremely fun. Strategy and teamwork factor in big time, forcing players to decide whether to assist one another by adding elements to the spells their teammates are casting, running the risk that they won't have any during their own turn to deal with whatever fresh hell the book spews next. The gameplay is moderately paced, with strategizing taking up the bulk of the time. The artwork and creature designs are very polished and creative. The game isn’t too hard to grasp, with some of the nuances of various spells becoming clear as the game progresses. I love co-op games, and this one does not disappoint. Fans of J.K. Rowling and H.P. Lovecraft will identify well with the theme. I would recommend this game to any group populated by Cthulhu cultists or students of Hogwarts. Aliens from Earth. In the film, a family’s son was captured by an alien, and two NASA agents disguised as meteorologists went to find him. In one scene, the agents find another NASA agent that they thought was dead; he tells a story about aliens roaming the wild and people trying to catch them with their cellphones—a topical Pokémon Go joke. If you like summer blockbusters and improv comedy, go see The Big Picture, now playing in The Improv Centre on Granville Island.