Beowulf: A Bloody Calculus
-
-
4.8 • 4 Ratings
-
-
- $4.99
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
GRAND PRIZE WINNER! Book Pipeline.
WINNER! IPPY Gold Medal for BEST SCI-FI/FANTASY/HORROR.
WINNER! Independent Author Network SCI-FI BOOK OF THE YEAR.
WINNER! London Book Festival BEST SCI-FI.
WINNER! Beverly Hills Book Awards BEST SCI-FI.
"The genius is apparent from page one. . . . A seamless fusion of virtuosity and insight. . . . If William Wordsworth were alive today and writing cyberpunk, this is what he might write."
—David Farland
NYTimes Best Seller
Lead judge for the world's largest
genre writing competition
"Like all great works, it manages to be great without trying to be brilliant. It just is, and effortlessly so. . . . [Has a] rhythm that's sophisticated in its subdivisions of time and its impeccable sense of proportion and pace."
—James Guymon
Film Composer
VP, Composers Guild of America
Welcome, he says, to the “fabulous fabulous” Lawrence Booth show. His flamboyance is well-practiced. They all know him, he’s world-renowned (he reminds them). Then he calls them the faceless masses, says he doesn’t care who they are. It’s a familiar deadpan, his particular brand of sensationalism through effrontery. Then he gets more personal, but it isn’t sincere—how could it be? I’ll be your guide, he says, your mentor, your guru, your spiritual advisor, leading you along the “sordid paths of the sublime, the seedy, and the sensational.” And it’s true, he will be.
This is Lawrence Booth, host of a 22nd-century variety show; an ultimate evolution of vaudeville; a tangible expression of social media and a venue for the people’s justice. And his favorite toy is a superhero—a popular bounty hunter called Beowulf.
When New York’s paragons turn to violent crime, it falls to Booth and Beowulf to restore order (and, more importantly, to make a good show of it). Is this an unraveling of the social fabric? Have our leaders turned, as parasites on a host? Or are they victims themselves of a society dependent on the wonders—and the dangers—of high technology?
BEOWULF: A BLOODY CALCULUS, is a frenetic exploration of logical extremes. It’s about superheroes as the products of marketing machines, social media as a fundamental and frightening social adhesive, summary justice as a Utilitarian exigency. It’s part mystery, part thriller, all in the plugged-in context of a cyberpunk future.
And it’s one a helluva ride.
Customer Reviews
Cyberpunk Perfection
As I said in my Amazon review of Beowulf: A Bloody Calculus, I think it's deserving of a place in the Cyberpunk canon, next to entries by such luminaries as Stephenson and Gibson, but the most exciting thing to me is that Milo Behr is just getting started. I can't wait to see what's in store next.
Bloody Calculus is a bloody good read!
Much like J.K. Rowling did with fantasy, Behr seems to come out of no where as a master of the scifi genre. Not since Blade Runner have I been so completely transported to an awesomely constructed future. And unlike Blade Runner, Behr has the advantage of having seen into the future a few more years, creating an even more intriguing Blade Runneresque future by mixing in believable, and highly thought provoking, social media and hard core science elements. Think Blade Runner meets The Hunger Games. And yet as legitimate as the future science is, the prose doesn't go too Neil Stephenson - Behr manages to keep it light and highly entertaining with his comic book action sequences. (Before you send me a hate comment, Cryptonomicon is one of my all time favorite books.) This is a novelette I highly recommend equally to the casual once in a blue-moon scifi reader, as well as to those that, like me, grew up reading Asimov and Card.