Plur1bus and Down Cemetery Road

As someone who writes, I find it interesting to read the work of other writers. A couple of my recent favourites have been Mick Herron and Vince Gilligan — two writers with utterly different toolkits, both of whom have stepped into the role of showrunner on new projects this year.

I’ll admit that when Breaking Bad was on television for the first time, I discovered some of the scripts, which I downloaded to study. Vince Gilligan has a whole vocabulary for his film-making — the locked-down wides, the moral geometry of the blocking, the slow push-ins that pretend they’re not there — and he has carried some of it through into the Plur1bus project. It’s a high-concept premise that’s fresh enough, but it also inherits the usual risks of that kind of altitude: pacing that favours mood over clarity, exposition through megaphone, and characters whose relational dynamics haven’t fully settled (at least in the early episodes- I've seen two so far.).

It’s got a great cold start, with desert-scientist shenanigans and a premise that slides, almost without warning, into Edgar Wright territory — that tonal gear-shift into uncanny-comedy, the “zombified hive-mind humans” energy brought on by DNA sequencing interference. One part sci-fi dread, one part Shaun-of-the-Dead-but-everyone’s very polite.

Unfortunately, it then performs an info-dump via a TV broadcast — just in case you were ordering a delivery on your smartphone and missed two-thirds of the plot.

It makes me wonder whether there was a script conference where the suits won, or at least left with a commemorative mug.

Gilligan also writes great buddy-pairs — Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul practically run on them — and Rhea Seehorn (as Carol) seems to work best with a foil to spark off. Sadly, her near-buddy Helen is affected by the DNA sequence early on and disappears into a literal hole in the ground before their already developed relationship can progress. It raises the question of whether a replacement relational interplay will emerge among the two or three candidates orbiting Carol, and whether that might gently trim the number of eccentricities she currently has to carry alone.

I like the idea of this show — the use of Albuquerque (I keep looking for a pizza on a roof in the ’burb scenes), and the interesting, apparently unconnected set-pieces (like the C-130 prop-plane) that Gilligan is quietly braiding for later. I have high hopes for the series, and my fingers are crossed that the ’zecs don’t interfere too much with the storytelling. They’ve already had their moment with the TV broadcast; ideally, they can now be escorted gently off the premises.

Then there’s Mick Herron with the Down Cemetery Road series. I’ve never really thought of Herron as a show-runner — it’s a rather American concept — but he uses it to great effect in Slow Horses. The Cemetery project feels like one where his fingerprints are unmistakable, although it’s also been adapted by Morwenna Banks (who provided some of the best tuning in Slow Horses).

The series has a remarkable cast, including a ridiculously good portrayal by Ruth Wilson as Sarah Tucker, the art conservationist. Her physicality in the kidnap escape sequence is BAFTA-worthy — the sort of scene where you suddenly remember how flimsy most TV acting actually is. Emma Thompson plays Zoe Boehm, an attitude-rich private investigator with all the classic trimmings: a seedy office accessed via a frosted-glass door. Jessica Jones, anyone? Thompson and Wilson spark off each other beautifully — it’s like watching two different weather systems collide.

And yet it’s a complex, dark plot, with government intrigue and a sprinkling of blank-faced subcontracted killers. Unlike the genetic re-engineering of Plur1bus, here we have selective, chemically induced manipulation of certain individuals — more Le Carré than lab coat.

Herron/Banks succeed without needing hefty expositional scenes to explain what is going on. There’s a kind of humour, too, in the edgy scenes with Adeel Akhtar, who specialises in characters who creep up behind you narratively and stay there. (Remember Utopia? Or THAT scene in Sherwood?)

My main query is the number of coincidences. I assume they’re deliberately placed — a nod to old gumshoe movies — and that it’s part of the style. As viewers (and ex-readers) we can all go “ah-ha!” when one occurs and briefly wonder whether it’s plot-driven or simply the show winking at us.

Still: it’s good to see some intriguing dramas emerging on telly, even if they do occasionally flirt with the fourth wall and then pretend they didn’t.

Ed Adams - Sheep Dreams - ARC Review

 

@sydreadsvoids – BookTok review (2.3 M views, 480 K likes)

[camera shaking] Okay. Everyone needs to stop what they’re doing and listen because I just finished Sheep Dreams and I think I’m actually… glitching!

This book?? It’s like if Black Mirror did a mindfulness retreat inside a filing cabinet.

There are literal sheep brains — like, actual sheep — hooked up to servers thinking they’re humans filling out forms. And it’s somehow the most emotional thing I’ve read all year.

At first I was like, lol bureaucratic sci-fi, but then I hit this line:

“The memorandum shimmered, faintly breathing.”

and I had to close the book and stare at my reflection in my iPad.

Ed Adams basically said: what if your job was your afterlife? what if your dreams were just compliance training?

And I was like: sir, please, it’s 2 a.m. and I’m already anxious about emails.

The vibes? 

• sterile aesthetic
• sadness in Helvetica
• philosophical HR nightmare
• but make it holy

It’s the kind of book that makes you want to apologise to your devices.

Half the comments on my video are people saying they felt seen by the sheep. Same.

If you liked Severance, Pale Fire, or having an existential crisis in a minimalist coworking space — this one’s for you.

Five stars, twelve nervous breakdowns, infinite hold music.

Quote of the century:

“Please hold,” says the system. And we do.

#SheepDreams #BookTokMadeMeFeelWeird #BureaucraticSublime #DreamCompliance

Comments to @sydreadsvoids

 

Sheep Dreams, Ed Adams - Review

 

Dr. Tessa McCrea, Senior Neuro-Integration Engineer

(Excerpt from post-release memo circulated via NeuralNet Research Slack, Channel #literary-detritus)

“Thirty suspended cortices. Cross-wired through a lattice. Each one thinks it’s alive.”

We passed that quote around the lab this morning. Nobody laughed.

Adams’ Sheep Dreams describes the XTend rack with unnerving fidelity: thirty mammalian cortices in solution, looped through a bidirectional digital spine. The description of the vagal lattice interface — the twelve cranial channels mapped to data trunks — is so close to our V-Net design notes that legal asked whether the book used leaked documentation. It didn’t. He just guessed right.

In our prototypes, the biological component acts as a chaos reservoir, feeding stochastic variance into the silicon model to prevent pattern ossification. Adams turns this into theology. His sheep aren’t machines — they’re compliance made flesh. They obey because that’s what they were bred for.

“The horror is not that the sheep think; it’s that they obey better than we do.”

That line triggered a brief ethics review on Slack. We spend our days trying to make thought predictable; he’s written a warning about what happens if we succeed.

The novel’s RightMind network, its dream-induction sequence, the “mint-tang” plasma — all plausible. Even the tone is right: that strange calm we hear in our test subjects just before interface sync. Adams gets the effect correct — the silence after consent.

From a purely technical standpoint, the XTend description is the best fictional account of organic-silicon co-processing I’ve read. From an emotional standpoint, it’s too accurate.

Our takeaway: if Sheep Dreams reaches the public before our next announcement, the optics will be awkward.

But it’s also a reminder that the culture already understands what we’re building — maybe better than we do.

— Dr. Tessa McCrea

NeuralNet Cognitive Systems Division

Edge, by Ed Adams pp1-100 ARC review @catgirlforchaos

 Okay, so imagine 2001: A Space Odyssey re-engineered by someone who’s done too many data-compliance workshops and fallen half in love with the audit trail. 

That’s Edge.

It’s the kind of sci-fi that doesn’t shout “future” — it just quietly is the future, humming in the walls while you’re still updating your firmware.

Ganymede, but make it bureaucratic.

The book opens with a meteor strike, except the meteor’s not the problem — the admin response is.

Roelof and Jasmijn are planetary maintenance engineers doing quiet work on Jupiter’s biggest moon, and you immediately know they’re in too deep.

They speak in acronyms. They self-medicate on modafinil. They talk like the last calm people alive.

And then something in the system starts to think back.

---

The vibe

If William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition had a baby with Solaris, and that baby grew up in a sealed habitat eating rationed dopamine, you’d get this tone:

“Language behaving as matter.”

That’s not just a metaphor. It’s a design principle.

Everything in Edge is smooth and terrifying — surfaces too clean, people too replaceable, silence always slightly delayed.

---

The lore

We learn about the Klima Wars through an old man watching forbidden footage.

Think climate collapse meets memory-wipe bureaucracy.

It’s history rewritten as trauma protocol.

Then we get Magnetomics — a discipline that turns magnetic fields into infinite power. “Clean energy,” except the subtext is always control. Every battery hums like it knows your secrets.

---

The Primes

My favourite idea: “Prime pairs.”

Human operators mirrored across light-hours, their personalities cloned into backups that become more valuable than their bodies.

Cindy + Sam are one pair. Jasmijn + Roelof are another. They’re all too clever, too obedient, too scared. When they notice the data doesn’t match the reality, their bosses call it “statistical hygiene.” Which is the most chilling euphemism I’ve read since clean kill.

---

When the story shifts to Ganymede again — mining magnetite under glaciers — it goes full eerie.

There’s a new assistant, Talya, who might be an android, or might be something worse.

She says things like:

“Paranoia and pattern recognition share a neural pathway.”

and

“Only in human company.”

Reader, I clutched my neural implants.

---

The Earth scenes

Back on Earth, everything’s corporate: Torus Industries, the Block, filtered air, synthetic weather.

Adams writes the post-climate world like a never-ending airport lounge run by HR.

Even rebellion has a clearance code.

---

The prose

Precise. Metallic. Occasionally lyrical enough to hurt. Adams writes sentences that sound like they’ve been built from circuit diagrams and then proof-read by ghosts.

You don’t read this book for explosions. You read it for that hum — the one you hear in your head after staring too long at a system that definitely shouldn’t be running anymore.

---

Verdict so far (Part One)

Bureaucratic horror? ✅

Climate trauma reframed as power system? ✅

AI gaslighting as wellness? ✅

Human tenderness trying to survive inside all that code? ✅✅

If the rest of the novel keeps this pressure, Edge is going to be the quietest, smartest apocalypse you’ve ever loved.

Cat rating:

4.9/5 “Primes still breathing.”

Now excuse me while I go check my own system for “linguistic decay warnings.”

#Edge #SciFi #ClimateFiction #Magnetomics #BookThread