Reviews by Eloquence

4 stars
An evocative sci-fi story generator about the fate of humanity

“And when they knew the Earth was doomed, they built a ship.” In one opening sentence, John Ayliff’s text-based browser game Seedship evokes stories of the journey to another world, of efforts to settle a new planet while avoiding the mistakes of the past.

1,000 colonists are all that is left of the human race, and they are asleep in hibernation chambers. You control a shipboard Artificial Intelligence that is meant to find a new home for humanity—a mission that will take thousands of years to fulfill.

You travel from one planetary system to the next, and you use scanners and surface probes to determine the suitability of candidate planets for human settlement. Does the planet have a breathable atmosphere, Earth-like gravity, tolerable temperatures, sufficient water and other resources?

Planets may hold other surprises for the colonists, from poisonous plants to high-tech ruins of previous civilizations. Based on all available information, you can decide to found a colony, or to keep searching.

Risks and Rewards

Every part of the ship, including the hibernation chambers, may be damaged during interstellar travel. On the other hand, you also have opportunities to upgrade your ship, which may improve your odds of finding a suitable home.

Ultimately, the success of your mission comes down largely to luck. You may find a lush paradise planet early, or encounter one toxic wasteland after another.


Seedship features no graphics, but its text-based interface, such as the scan results shown here, manages to convey a lot with few words. (Credit: John Ayliff. Fair use.)

What makes the game so enjoyable is the quality of the storytelling. Ayliff has stocked Seedship with many random events, from encounters with alien spaceships to the discovery of a brutal dictator among the sleeping colonists. Your choices (eject the dictator or let him sleep?) almost always have consequences, but those are often unpredictable.

When you decide that you’ve found the perfect (or at least adequate) new home for humanity, Seedship tells you about the fate of the colony. Did humanity maintain its previous level of technological achievement, or regress to a medieval level? Is your new society an enlightened utopia, or a tyrannical police state?

A single run can take only a few minutes, but you may find yourself playing Seedship for well over an hour to discover the different possible futures for humanity. If you enjoy sci-fi stories, I highly recommend giving it a try.


5 stars
A poignant masterpiece of interactive storytelling

Finches are known for their short lifespans, and so are the Finches, the troubled family whose story is at the heart of What Remains of Edith Finch.

You play as the titular Edith Finch, a young woman visiting the family’s haphazardly built home on Orcas Island, which was abandoned years ago. Each sealed room holds the story of a family member’s demise—and you want to know all the stories.

As you experience these individual vignettes, your perspective often changes to that of the family member in question. Perspective should not be confused with control: the game inexorably pulls you towards each character’s final destination.


Barbara’s room, one of the many you explore as part of experiencing the stories of the Finch family. (Credit: Giant Sparrow. Fair use.)

In its wistful, surreal style, Edith Finch is reminiscent of a Tim Burton movie like Big Fish; in its portrayal of a beautifully dysfunctional family, it calls to mind the works of Wes Anderson. But the game never feels derivative; it feels inspired.

Like a movie, it is very much on rails—you may very occasionally wander around for a few minutes wondering how to advance the story, but you’re unlikely to need a walkthrough, and there are no meaningful choices for you to make. That never feels limiting: like Edith, you just want to find out what happened.

There’s so much more to praise here: art direction that reaches soaring heights during some chapters (Lewis’ stands out); excellent voice acting especially by Valerie Lohman (Edith); music that will give you chills; an ending that holds nothing back.

I played the game on Linux using Proton without issues. Steam claims that I played it for 3 hours. The Finches may be short-lived, but Edith Finch will remain with me for much longer than that.


2 stars
Suspend your disbelief before you join this manhunt

Nina Guerrera (whose name means “warrior girl”) escaped a serial killer’s clutches when she was a sixteen-year-old girl; now she’s an FBI agent hunting predators. Due to a name change after her emancipation from her abusive foster parents, Nina’s would-be murderer was unable to locate her again. Nina was “the one that got away”.

A viral video that shows Nina fighting off a rapist comes to the killer’s attention, and he sets out to finish what he started. But hunting Nina is not enough. The viral video gave Nina the attention he feels he deserves. Through a series of murders, he provokes the FBI into a public manhunt. Soon, he is “The Cipher”, a murderer who leaves behind cryptograms, much like the infamous Zodiac Killer.

The Cipher is a an FBI procedural by Isabella Maldonado, a retired police captain turned crime writer. To make it a story of our times, Maldonado has her killer use social media to turn his crimes into a spectacle. The FBI and the social media sites collaborate to keep the killer online, in hopes of tracking him down.

What if Zodiac Killer, but on Facebook?

This leads to wildly implausible plot developments, where “The Cipher” maintains a public leaderboard on his Facebook page, ranking the amateur investigators around the country who try to break his (often very simple) codes. Similarly, he is permitted to repeatedly post videos of horrific crimes to an audience of millions.

If you can believe that, you will probably not have an issue with the book’s more conventional tropes, such as the idea that an FBI agent would be allowed to lead an investigation while being very publicly threatened with rape and murder by its target, who previously raped and almost killed her.

Maldonado moves the plot forward at a steady clip, and The Cipher is certainly an easy read—I read most of the book on a transcontinental flight, and downloaded it for free through Amazon’s “First Reads” program. Maldonado deserves credit for writing in a very accessible manner, e.g., about investigatory procedures; she also sometime subtly repeats important plot points to help the reader along.

These are the kinds of writing techniques that make this book a page-turner. The positive reviews the book has received suggest that many readers found it thrilling. Maldonado has already written one additional novel featuring Guerrera, and there are plans for a Netflix adaptation of The Cipher.

For me, the many plausibility issues make it difficult to recommend the book, in spite of a likable heroine.


3 stars
An alien encounter that only works on the small scale

A spider-like extraterrestrial emerges from a spaceship parked in front of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, enters the museum, and requests to speak with a paleontologist. It’s a great opening for Robert J. Sawyer’s Calculating God, a story mostly told in the first person from the point of view of said paleontologist, a man with the ominously biblical name Thomas Jericho.

The alien, who is named Hollus, reveals quickly that their species, the Forhilnor, believes the existence of God to be a scientific fact. Hollus wants to learn more about extinction events in Earth’s history.

Mild spoilers (click to reveal)

The Forhilnor have found evidence that mass extinction events have occurred at approximately the same time on multiple planets now inhabited by intelligent life—apparently including the extinction events in Earth’s history. In addition, they believe that the evidence for a universe fine-tuned to support life cannot be explained except by an intelligent designer.

Thomas Jericho is a staunch atheist, but Hollus is not religious in the conventional sense. The two scientists become friends as they study the fossil record of Earth and other planets. Will Doubting Thomas come around to see the evidence of the designer? And what are two American anti-abortion terrorists planning to do in Toronto?


Like Saint Thomas (depicted in this painting by Caravaggio), Tom Jericho demands strong evidence before accepting extraordinary claims.

Intelligence by Design

In exploring the evidence for God, Sawyer stacks the deck in favor of a designed universe. In addition to made-up discoveries by the extraterrestrials, he revisits creationist canards like the idea of irreducible complexity, of “missing links” in the fossil record, and of lack of evidence for speciation.

The book was published in 2000, and as Sawyer has stated, he was influenced by neo-creationist literature such as Michael Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box”. This was before Kitzmiller v. Dover, a key lawsuit in 2005 which set back the so-called Wedge Strategy to use the pseudoscience of “intelligent design” as a backdoor to introduce creationism into schools.

But even in 2000, plenty of scientists and skeptics had extensively debunked the arguments Sawyer has his characters regurgitate (see, for example, the talk.origins FAQs). It’s one thing to invent evidence for an intelligent designer that serves the story; it’s another to rely on pseudoscience. In Calculating God, Sawyer does both.

The Verdict

In spite of this, I found the book more engaging than The Terminal Experiment (review), and less dated. Parts of Calculating God feel like a theater play, a big story told on the small stage of a Canadian museum, with charming characters and a sense of humor and self-awareness.

Hollus, the extraterrestrial visitor, is very memorable: truly alien in appearance but, at the same time, witty and relatable. Their human counterpart, Tom Jericho, comes to life in small details such as his political disagreements with the museum’s administration. The friendship between Jericho and Hollus is believable and carries much of the book forward.

Ultimately, however, Calculating God takes itself too seriously. In the last third of the book, increasingly implausible events lead towards an ending that is only a poor imitation of works that have surely inspired it, such as Carl Sagan’s Contact and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.


5 stars
If you subscribe to one fiction podcast, make it this one

In his podcast, LeVar Burton (Reading Rainbow, Star Trek: The Next Generation) reads one short story per episode. Burton’s masterful narration is enhanced by music and sound effects. He features stories by well-known writers (e.g., Neil Gaiman, Octavia Butler), but he and his team also seem to be constantly on the lookout for fresh and diverse new voices.

Burton is incredibly talented, and he manages to bring across a sense of excitement and wonder for every story. He invests himself deeply in making the characters come alive, drawing on his decades of acting experience.

While many of the stories could be described as “speculative fiction”, there’s no single unifying theme other than LeVar Burton’s love of story. There are ads at the beginning and in the middle, read by Burton. I typically skip through those, but they are not especially obnoxious. LeVar Burton Reads is one of the shows under the Stitcher umbrella, and you can listen ad-free with a Stitcher subscription.

At the end of each episode, LeVar Burton reflects on the story and relates it to his own life or to what’s going on in the world. Sometimes he’s clearly just riffing, sometimes he has a larger point he wants to make. Either way, it’s often a nice way to close out the episode.

If you like fiction and podcasts, you’ve probably already subscribed to LeVar Burton Reads. If you haven’t, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Some of my favorite stories include:

You’re likely to discover your own favorites in the large back catalog of episodes. While the show is still going strong as of this writing, LeVar Burton Reads is also a timeless, wonderful library that you’ll keep coming back to.


3 stars
Mediocre sci-fi adventure with exceptional visuals

Trüberbrook is a 2019 point and click adventure game set in a fictional eponymous small town in late 1960s Germany. You play as Hans Tannhauser, an American quantum physics student with German ancestry, who has won a vacation to Trüberbrook (without entering any contest!).

During the first night in his hostel, Tannhauser’s notes on quantum physics are stolen. As he starts tracking down the thief, the evidence points to an abandoned mine, and he soon pairs up with a visiting paleoanthropologist named Gretchen Lemke who is also seeking to explore it. What is the connection between the mine and Hans’ work in quantum physics?

What stands out the most about Trüberbrook is its unique visual style. All backgrounds are based on digitized miniatures, enhanced by in-game lighting and shadow effects. The 3D character models aren’t photorealistic; they look more like clay figures, which works well enough in this setting.


Trüberbrook’s unique aesthetic is the result of the digitization of painstakingly hand-crafted miniatures (Credit: btf. Fair use.)

The gameplay is classic point-and-click adventure fare (walk around, pick up stuff, talk to other characters, combine items), with a simplified inventory system. For example, if you have a screwdriver in your inventory, and you want to unscrew a TV set, you click on the TV set, and the screwdriver becomes available as a possible interaction.

This reduces the “combine everything with everything” aspect of many adventure games, but it would have been nice to at least be able to explore your inventory (it’s only optionally displayed as an icon bar, without descriptions).

The game’s lovingly created visuals can’t help Trüberbrook to overcome mediocrity in most other areas: storytelling, character development and puzzle design. To name an example in each category:

  • Storytelling: In an early chapter, Hans must escape from a medical facility. But the game never fully resolves why he was kept there in the first place.

  • Character development: While Trüberbrook has its share of quirky characters, the game’s protagonist is almost entirely without personality, and the motivations of its villain are poorly explained.

  • Puzzle design: In one puzzle, you obtain an important item by ordering a beer at the hostel reception. But the option to order a drink only becomes available after you exhaust all other (unrelated) dialog options.

There are exceptions, of course—the game has a few truly delightful, clever and funny moments. With more time spent on everything other than its visuals, it could have been a great game. As it is, if you find the visuals and setting appealing, you may wish to pick it up on sale and keep a walkthrough handy to keep frustrations to a minimum.


3 stars
You say mind uploading and I say AI, let's call the whole thing off

I was 16 years old when The Terminal Experiment by Robert Sawyer was published in 1995. This was the time when the Internet was starting to break into the mainstream, and everyone was trying their hands at predicting its impact. In Newsweek that year, Clifford Stoll famously wrote:

The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

How does a Nebula-winning sci-fi novel from 1995 about mind uploading, artificial intelligence, and morality hold up in 2021? In the case of The Terminal Experiment: not too well.

Sawyer’s vision of the 2000s and 2010s is, unavoidably, a mix of correct predictions (e-readers are commonplace), false extrapolations (CompuServe seems as important as the Internet) and unlucky guesses (instead of buying a newspaper, print it on demand!). But more than its future past, the book’s story will challenge any reader’s suspension of disbelief.

Soul search

The protagonist, Peter Hobson, is a Canadian biomedical engineer who has devised highly sensitive brain scanning equipment (a “superEEG”) to determine the exact moment of a person’s death. But the superEEG picks up something else: a pattern of brain activity—an electrical field—that leaves the human body after its death.

Has Hobson found evidence for life after death, and if so, what’s the nature of this afterlife? If given a choice between physical immortality or the hereafter, which should we prefer? It’s a timely question in Hobson’s world, as a California firm called “Life Unlimited” has begun marketing nanotech life extension techniques that promise practical immortality for all intents and purposes.

Luckily, Hobson’s best friend Sarkar Muhammed is an AI expert who has also tried his hand at mind uploading using Hobson’s brain scanning equipment. It’s still an experimental technique, of course, but Hobson volunteers to have three copies (simulations or “sims”) of his mind created:

  • an unmodified copy (the control);

  • a mind that perceives itself to be immortal but still human;

  • a mind that perceives itself to be a disembodied spirit, with no worldly concerns.

The friends’ scientific inquiry is disrupted when one of the sims appears to commit a grisly murder. Hobson and Muhammed find themselves in a race with the police to find out what happened, and which of the sims (if any) is responsible. Can the two plucky Canadians solve the mystery and prevent further killings?

Philosophy first

I’ll spare you any spoilers, but honestly, it would be hard to spoil the book—the major plot points are fairly predictable, and I say that as someone who is probably more oblivious to such things than the average reader.

The Terminal Experiment puts its philosophical premise above everything else (plot, characters, worldbuilding). Even its protagonist, Peter Hobson, is named for Hobson’s Choice, which relates to the book’s central premise. (In case you didn’t guess that, the book helpfully tells you so, repeatedly.)

The conversations Hobson and Muhammed have with the three copies of Hobson’s mind are the most engaging part of The Terminal Experiment. I found Spirit in particular (the copy that imagines itself to be in a kind of afterlife) to be the book’s most interesting character.

Because it explores some interesting philosophical questions, Sawyer’s book is not without merits, but if you had it in your backlog for a while, I wouldn’t recommend it for anything other than a lazy afternoon or a long plane trip.


4 stars
A thriller about a "hitman with a heart", engaging despite the tropes

As a constant reader of Stephen King’s many works, I continue to be impressed by his ability to put a fresh spin on familiar tropes. Billy Summers is the hitman with a heart who only kills “bad guys”, and who is hired for “one last job” that quickly goes off the rails.

Summers is an Iraq vet, who has since turned his sniper skills towards more profitable ends while maintaining a personal moral code. For his last job, he has to blend in with the locals in Red Bluff, a small town east of the Mississippi, awaiting the extradition of his mark from out of state, for a hit at the local court house. That could be months away, but the job promises a payday to make it worth it.

The details make the story work. Summers cultivates a “dumb self” towards his employers, slowing his speech and pretending to have a reading level barely sufficient for Archie comics while secretly stashing away a book by Émile Zola. In Red Bluff, he gets to know his neighbors and the people in his office building, owing to his ability to become quick friends with almost anybody.

The cover story for Summers’ stay is that he is a writer working on a novel, which is an excuse for him to actually write the story of his own life. This “book within the book” focuses on Summers’ childhood and his time in Iraq. (Billy Summers only includes short excerpts of Summers’ biography, and the timelines of both books eventually meet.)

Of course, the story doesn’t end after Summers takes his shot. A series of confrontations follows, and a young woman enters the story, who plays a crucial role towards the end. While the book doesn’t break any new ground, Stephen King incorporates both world events and references to his own works into the story to keep things interesting.

If you’re looking for a recent King novel that heavily tilts towards the supernatural, I would recommend Later (2021), The Institute (2019), or The Outsider (2018) instead. But if a more conventional thriller with King’s touch sounds interesting, you’re unlikely to be disappointed by Billy Summers.


4 stars
An engrossing family mystery with underdeveloped player choices

When they are 11 years old, tragedy strikes the lives of twins Tyler and Alyson Ronan. Their mother Mary-Ann threatens Tyler with a shotgun after Alyson cut his hair short. Tyler stabs their mother with a pair of scissors, and she falls into the lake near their house and drowns. That, at least, is what the twins tell the police.

Tyler is admitted to a residential treatment facility, and doesn’t see his sister for the next 10 years. During that time, Tyler, who identified as a boy from a young age, completes his transition as a trans man. At age 21, Tyler and Alyson finally reunite to sell their mother’s old house—and to unravel their family story.

Mystery in beautiful environments

In three episodes, Tell Me Why by Dontnod Entertainment (Life is Strange) puts the player in control of both Alyson and Tyler as they explore their childhood home, question old family friends, and relive the past. Was their mother unable to accept Tyler as a trans child, or did she suffer a mental breakdown for other reasons?

The game is set in a fictional small town in Alaska, giving it a backdrop of snowy mountains, forests, and the lake near the family home. Indoor environments, too, are rendered in rich detail, from the Ronan residence to the local police station and the town’s grocery store.

Alyson surveying her old childhood home
Even indoor environments like the Ronan residence are rendered in exquisite detail, with beautiful lighting and gorgeous views of the outside scenery. (Credit: Dontnod Entertainment. Fair use.)

With choices on top

The gameplay follows the pattern established in the Life is Strange games: you walk around, talk to people, look at and for objects, and sometimes complete (typically very easy) mini-games or puzzles. Occasionally, you make choices that will influence your relationship with other characters for the rest of the game.

There’s a supernatural element to story and gameplay, as well. Without spoiling anything, suffice it to say that Tyler and Alyson share a deep bond that may help them in their quest to learn the truth.

I almost immediately fell in love with the game’s characters and was captivated by the story and graphics. On the other hand, I found the choice mechanic and its relationship with the story underdeveloped.

After important choices, the game indicates whether the bond between Tyler and Alyson has increased or not. But it’s rarely clear how this relates to the progression of the story, or why the player would want to weaken the bond between the two, who clearly love each other. The choices felt layered on top of the story, not like an integral part of the game.

The Verdict

Tell Me Why is not a masterpiece, but it is a beautiful narrative adventure, and I enjoyed the time I spent with it. The developers deserve kudos for a good faith (and, it seemed to me, largely successful) effort at representation of trans and queer characters and of indigenous (Tlingit) culture.

I played the game in Proton on Linux without issues (aside from a tiny bit of stuttering during cut scenes, which may be due the limitations of my hardware). It takes about 5-10 hours to complete, more if you want to explore all sides of the story and find all collectibles hidden in the game’s different environments.

The first chapter is free and gives you a good feel for the game. I paid the full price of $20; you may be able to get it at a steep discount if you wait a few months (in June 2021, the full game was given away for free to celebrate Pride Month).


5 stars
A beautiful, short and free game set in the world of Life is Strange

The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit by Dontnod Entertainment is a free promo game—its purpose is to get players interested in Life is Strange 2 (reviews). But it’s a standalone game that only has a small hook into the franchise at the very end.

You play as Chris Eriksen, a young kid living in a town in Oregon with his father Charles. It becomes clear quickly that Charles is an alcoholic whose behavior sometimes becomes abusive.

Chris, meanwhile, has his own fantasy world to escape into. He dons a cape and becomes Captain Spirit, a hero with telekinetic powers. Captain Spirit fights alongside an Avengers-style team against a team of supervillains led by a mysterious figure called Mantroid.


Chris in his Captain Spirit gear. (Credit: Dontnod Entertainment. Fair use.)

As you explore the house and the snowy outdoors, you can play out Chris’ fantasies, complete some chores for his dad, and learn more about his family, including his mom.

The game is rendered in beautiful 3D graphics; the outdoors environments are especially gorgeous. You walk around and look at objects or talk to people (mostly of the imaginary variety); occasionally the game switches to mini-game sequences, such as aiming snowballs at a beer can pyramid.

Captain Spirit offers only a brief window into Chris’ life, projecting a short narrative arc. In 1-2 hours of playtime, it manages to be engaging and charming while tackling difficult subjects. I would recommend the free download without reservations to anyone who enjoys exploratory games like Firewatch (reviews) or Gone Home (reviews). I played it on Linux using Proton without issues.