RELEASED 14 SEPTEMBER
304 pages | Hardback/ebook
Author James Kennedy
Publisher Quirk Books
Who’d want to know the exact date and time of their death? According to Dare To Know, plenty of people – and they’d be willing to pay for it too. The unnamed narrator is a mathematician and salesman, making the arcane and subjective calculations that produce expiry dates for the clients of a company called Dare To Know.
He’s also middle-aged, divorced and directionless; his performance at the company is on the slide and his commissions are shrinking. After a car crash, he takes the forbidden step of looking up his own time, only to discover that he was supposed to die 23 minutes ago. This is unheard of. The calculations are never wrong. He becomes desperate to find out what it means, and seeks the answers in his own past.
James Kennedy’s first novel for adults (he has a previous children’s book to his name) is audaciously clever and well-written. It’s set in a present day where this weird branch of physics, based around particles known as thanaton, has become a normal part of the world. It hasn’t actually changed the world that much, though it’s opened up philosophical quandaries around the nature of free will, and naturally it’s had an effect on those who have elected to find out their death date.
It makes sense that everyone else would just try to ignore it. A particularly striking and bleakly funny passage relates an incident where a man informed all the passengers on a plane that he’d just learned he was going to die on this flight, and therefore everyone else was surely going to die too.
この記事は SFX の October 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は SFX の October 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
ANCER MAHAGEMENT
WITH A NEW TRILOGY IN SIGHT, WE SPEAK TO THE DIRECTOR OF 28 WEEKS LATER THE ORIGINAL CHILLING SEQUEL TO DANNY BOYLE'S SEMINAL SURVIVAL HORROR
WHO YA CONNA CALL?
BEHIND THE SCENES AT HALLOWEEN HORROR NIGHTS FOR GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL
THE DEVIL'S HOUR STRIKES TWICE AS THE GENREDEFYING DRAMA RETURNS
SCARRY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK
FROM THE RETURN OF EC COMICS TO SCREAM!, THIS YEAR'S HALLOWEEN OFFERS UP HORROR COMICS FOR ALL THE AGES
UNDEADS REFLECTIONS
NEIL JORDAN ON BRINGING ANNE RICE'S MODERN VAMPIRE CLASSIC TO SCREEN, 30 YEARS ON
MUNSTER MASH!
PRODUCTION HELL, SHOCK RECASTING AND HOTLY CONTESTED AUTHORSHIP. AS THE MUNSTERS CELEBRATE THEIR 60TH ANNIVERSARY, WE UNCOVER HOW THE SPOOKY SITCOM WAS ALMOST DEAD ON ARRIVAL
COMING TO AMERICA
THE MOGWAI LIVE THE AMERICAN DREAM IN THEIR SECOND CHAPTER, GREMLINS: THE WILD BATCH
BEING HUMAN EVOLUTION
IT MAY HAVE BEEN AN INSTANT HIT, BUT BBC THREE'S DARKLY COMIC DRAMA ABOUT A HOUSE-SHARING VAMPIRE/WEREWOLF/GHOST TRIO HAD A STRANGE JOURNEY TO THE SCREEN, SERIES CREATOR TOBY WHITHOUSE TELLS SFX
THE MAINE EVENT
THE DARK IS RISING IN SALEM'S LOT AS STEPHEN KING'S DEATHLESS TALE RETURNS TO THE SCREEN
WHY DON'T YOU STAY FOR A BITE?
THE VAMPIRE COMES HOME AS DIRECTOR EUROS LYN WELCOMES SFX TO HIS NEW DARK COMEDY THE RADLEYS
