SpaceSjut2026! It has Things!
previous years for reference:
https://mastodon.social/@spacesjut/113820849476131430
A Thing I've Read 01/2026
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
Technically a re-read, but also the first time I've read this fundamental, genre-building piece of cyberpunk in the english version.
Contrasting it to the before-finished Fortunate Fall, it does become painfully obvious why the latter was rec'd as "non-tech bro-y" - Neuromancer is very tech, and sometimes painfully bro-y.
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
Technically a re-read, but also the first time I've read this fundamental, genre-building piece of cyberpunk in the english version.
Contrasting it to the before-finished Fortunate Fall, it does become painfully obvious why the latter was rec'd as "non-tech bro-y" - Neuromancer is very tech, and sometimes painfully bro-y.
Still, it is A Ride, and a damn good one at that, if you're willing to deal with it.
Also, I completely forgot how much of this book is the actual Straylight run, but then in terms of misremembering plot points that's by far not the biggest whoops I've made xD
And now: deeper into the Sprawl! There's two more books in the trilogy, after all.
Also, I completely forgot how much of this book is the actual Straylight run, but then in terms of misremembering plot points that's by far not the biggest whoops I've made xD
And now: deeper into the Sprawl! There's two more books in the trilogy, after all.
A Thing I've (re-)Read 02/2026
Count Zero, by William Gibson
Where the first book of the Sprawl-trilogy was very narrowly focused on Case, the band of runners he got pressed into, and the Straylight-run, the second book takes a vastly different approach: it follows the stories of Turner, a, uhm, freelance career-change agent, Bobby, the titular Count Zero and a wannabe-decker, and Marly, a former gallerist finding herself exceedingly gainfully employed.
Their stories do converge in the end, but it takes quite a while for the connections to become apparent.
What connects them all is that they have to deal, one way or the other, with the fall-out from the Straylight-run and the new entities hounding the Matrix.
It can be read on its own, especially since it is only very loosely connected to Neuromancer, but it would give context.
A Thing I've (re-)Read 03/2026
Mona Lisa Overdrive, by William Gibson
The third book of the Sprawl-Trilogy... I don't want to say "wraps up", because that's not what's happening, but it finishes telling the events set in motion with the Straylight-run.
It brings back characters from the other two, mostly as companions for the POV-characters of this one, and gives closure on some others, ...
...and a bunch of context on how the events at Straylight and the Matrix-entities of the second book connect to each other. The ending is a lot of "everyone riding into their own sunset" and the book is mostly the ways there, but as the closing title of a trilogy it works pretty well. It also would not work well standing alone, so... go read the Sprawl books. They sure are Something, and I think they hold up pretty well.
A Thing I've played 01/2026
Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye (DLC)
This one is... difficult. I love the story, and how it broadens and contextualizes the story of the main game. I adore the location, which as a singular place works well to integrate it in the setting, but leads to a lot of "same way backtracking". I hate the spatial puzzles, but all of them can be cheesed into nonexistence (even without looking anything up, the things you need to add up are there but not obvious).
What still bugs me most is that one very important information was conveyed so convoluted that I did not catch it, and that massively derailed my playthrough.
Is it a good DLC? Yes.
Is it as great as the base game? No, but your mileage may vary.
Since then I've done some achievement hunting, and there's mostly only those left that require actual piloting skills xD
A Thing I've (re-)Read 04/2026
Burning Chrome, by William Gibson
The short story collection that, well, collects Gibson's stories that built the foundation for the Sprawl-trilogy. It contains ten stories, of which I remembered the grand total of three - re-read books, people, you're in for surprises.
The probably most widely recognized of these stories will be Johnny Mnemonic, given the movie of the same name; the titular Burning Chrome around the Blue Lights-Run and the Gernsback Continuum about glimpses in another past's future were the others stuck in my head.
Most of the stories fall under the cyberpunk-umbrella, with a few that are more -adjacent scifi, and without fail they are good ones.
If you want to pick up on genre history, pick this up.
Most of the stories fall under the cyberpunk-umbrella, with a few that are more -adjacent scifi, and without fail they are good ones.
If you want to pick up on genre history, pick this up.
A Thing I've Watched 01/2026
Tron: Ares
It's been a long while since I've watched something this irrelevant.
There's a skeleton of an interesting story somewhere in there, and it sure looks vaguely like Tron-movie 🤷‍♂️
Tron: Ares
It's been a long while since I've watched something this irrelevant.
There's a skeleton of an interesting story somewhere in there, and it sure looks vaguely like Tron-movie 🤷‍♂️
A Thing I've (re-)Watched 02/2026
Repo! The Genetic Opera
This absolutly wild ride of a self-styled goth rock opera was even more wild than I had remembered.
A world where you better stay on top the payments for your replacement organs, otherwise the repo man will come to take it back, where people are addicted to both cosmetic surgery and the extracted-from-the-dead painkiller drug commonly used in it, ...
...and where the worlds leading megacorp is on the verge of collapse following the imminent death of its founder, and those are only three of many beats crammed into this thing.
The visuals are peak 2000s goth, backstory gets told in graphic-novel-interludes, the songs are mostly bangers... go watch this thing.
(cn: it is very b-movie-bloody.)
A Thing I've Watched 03/2026
Pacific Rim
del Toro's take on a Kaiju-vs-Jaeger-movie (read: "del Toro's take on Evangelion") was an absolute insane joy to watch.
It has giant monsters, giant mechas piloted by pairs of pilots, giant monsters fistfighting with giant mechas, a properly weird couple of scientists, and so much excellence in filmmaking. It has also a whole bunch of Personal Drama(tm) fitting neatly into everything else, because balance is important.
A Thing I've Watched 04/2026
KPop Demon Hunters
A well animated movie with almost disturbingly catchy songs, and despite some moments of "wait what" a pretty decent story about, well, a group of demon hunters who in this day and age work their magic as k-pop band needing to face their opponents on their own turf.
Unless the virability of Golden completely put you off of this one forever, consider giving it a go. It's enjoyable cinema.
A Thing I've (re-)Read 04/2026
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
Okay, bear with me, this is a WILD one.
Snow Crash begins with the story of how our hero and protagonist Hiroaki Protagonist loses his job as a deliverator for the Nova Sicilia franchulate when he misjudges a shortcut through another franchulate (a franchised nation-state within the now-gone US) and only does not have to Very Finally Answer to Uncle Enzo, ...
...head of the Mafia franchising both Nova Silicia and *the* pizza delivery service in the country, because the other protagonist, a teenaged skateboard kourier by the nom-de-guerre of Y.T., takes over the last leg of the delivery, earning her A Certain Standing within the Mafia.
The worldbuilding only goes harder from thereon in, including a full-blown goggle-accessible Metaverse and a plot that moves into literally infectious thoughts and (presumably) heavily fictionalized Sumerian Cosmology.
It certainly is one of the Most novels I've ever read.
It certainly is one of the Most novels I've ever read.
A Thing I've Read 07/26: Virtual Light (Bridge I), by William Gibson
This is not a Sprawl-tale. I am both happy and sad about that.
This is, as per the cover-quote, a tech-thriller, and it is very much set in a cyberpunk-ian dystopia, where it plays out very much on the punk-side and very little on the cyber-side.
The book follows an ex-cop and a bike courier, who stumble into a plot to [redacted] San Francisco, and who are mostly trying to stay alive through the whole ordeal.
It was a good read, and I am very curious what other shenanigans the Bridge-Trilogy will hold.
Some more thoughts on the blog:
https://blog.spacesjut.de/2026/03/04/virtual-light-bridge-i-by-william-gibson/
Eine Sache die ich gehört habe 08/2026
Die Känguru-Rebellion, von Marc-Uwe Kling.
Viel schönes dabei.
Okay ne ernsthaft:
Neues vom Känguru, in erfrischend wenig Kontinuität zur Trilogie, gewohnt bissig und sehr aktuell (und stellenweise auch schon wieder von der Realität überholt).
Wer bisherige Känguru-Produkte mochte wird an diesem wohl auch gefallen finden, wer das nicht tat braucht es hier aber auch nicht neu zu versuchen.
Ich zumindest bin die letzten Tage meist irre grinsend bis laut lachend durch die Stadt gegangen.
Neues vom Känguru, in erfrischend wenig Kontinuität zur Trilogie, gewohnt bissig und sehr aktuell (und stellenweise auch schon wieder von der Realität überholt).
Wer bisherige Känguru-Produkte mochte wird an diesem wohl auch gefallen finden, wer das nicht tat braucht es hier aber auch nicht neu zu versuchen.
Ich zumindest bin die letzten Tage meist irre grinsend bis laut lachend durch die Stadt gegangen.
A Thing I've Read 09/26
The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
I have *no* idea how to properly talk about this one.
It sure is a Jasper Fforde-book.
Okay. It is set in an alternative (and somewhat phantastical) Britain, and it follows the Literary Detective Thursday Next on her quest to secure both the Prose Portal, an invention that lets people enter books and other works of literature, and the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, ...
...which is in danger of being changed, and with it all subsequent prints, due to meddling by one Archeron Hades, the books antagonist. This sentence does not do any justice to what's going on in this book.
One day I'd like to spend a day in Fforde's brain, just to see how it looks in there, given the absolute phantastical stuff he puts to paper.
One day I'd like to spend a day in Fforde's brain, just to see how it looks in there, given the absolute phantastical stuff he puts to paper.
A Thing I've Read 11/2026: Idoru (Bridge II), by William Gibson
This is the story about a rockstar wanting to marry a virtual Idol. More specifically, it's the story of Chia, a member of the Lo/Rez-fanclub, and Colin, a data analyst with pattern recognition superpowers hired by the Lo/Rez security team, both (persons and groups) attempting to figure out what the hell is going on about those rumours.
