Currently reading Ellis'
Supergod (scroll down past the sample pages and read his little introductory essay) It's now up to issue #3 of 5 and shows no signs of having a happy ending for anyone. Plot point: India builds a superhuman who they call Krishna, whose programming instructs him to "save India"; which he chooses to do by first wiping out 90% of the population...
This is the 3rd of a thematic trilogy about superhumans, which started with the excellent
Black Summer and continued with the imo slightly disappointing
No Hero. It's structured more as an historical essay, the story is being told in series of flashbacks from the ruins of post-apocalypse London, and details the history and eventual results of a worldwide superhuman arms race. Philosophically it's about mankind's psychological need to believe in and, if necessary,
create something greater than itself (which may, given certain pieces of real-world research, be hardwired into our brains) and how superhuman beings are so different from us that they would seem to be, for all intents and purposes, entirely alien.
Issue 3 has a very nice (and seriously creepy) Fourth Wall breaking moment where one of the superhumans speaks directly to the reader, from within a narrated flashback, simply because his way of experiencing time means that he knows his part of the story is being told to the reader at that point.
I do suspect that this won't be everyone's cup of tea as it's short on character work but very long on concept and does come across as a bit dry and detached. But it's working for me at the moment. We already know how it ends, but how it gets there is the interesting bit.
This post has been edited by stone monkey: 03 April 2010 - 12:01 PM
If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. … So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants. Bertrand Russell