Tweet
The hero of Christopher Brookmyre's latest novel is a lethal, jittery cyborg called Ross, but it can seem like the author himself is the real machine. The former journalist has written 15 books since his debut novel Quite Ugly One Morning was published in 1996, chainsawing out a best-selling niche for his blackly comic crime fiction.Brookmyre's gallery of anti-heroes crack wise and get cracked on the head for their trouble, and his villains - usually immoral business folk or corrupt officials of church and state - attest to an upbringing in a Scottish household where socialism wasn't a dirty word.
But for Bedlam, his 16th novel, Brookmyre has zigzagged into speculative fiction, taking the premise of Tron and dozens of other escapist techno-fantasies - "What would it be like to actually live inside a videogame?" - and rebooting it in his own distinctively dark way. In a world where our buying decisions hinge on being able to herd creators into clearly defined categories that are easy to browse online, gatecrashing a completely different genre might seem risky. In Brookmyre's case, though, it seems more like a logical progression. Levelling up, if you like.
Read more…
More...