Book Review | The Verge

The Stars My Destination is classic proto-cyberpunk

2026-04-20T10:56:42-04:00

Gully Foyle is my name… | Image: Brick Tower Press

This might feel like a somewhat obvious recommendation to some, but it flew under my radar until now. Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination (originally published as Tiger! Tiger! in the UK) is a 1956 sci-fi novel that some have cited as a precursor to cyberpunk. It's a work I admit I have some conflicted feelings about, but one I think is well worth reading if you consider yourself a fan of sci-fi. It's also well worth seeking out a physical copy, something I wish I had known before I started reading it in the objectively inferior ebook form that can't capture the ergodic elements of the climax.

It's hard to explain the plot of The Stars …

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You need to read the subversive cosmic horror novella The Ballad of Black Tom

2025-12-29T10:33:56-05:00

Things that H.P. Lovecraft was good at: Creating a mythos. Building atmosphere.

Things that H.P. Lovecraft was bad at: Writing dialog. Creating compelling characters. Not being a racist.

As a fan of horror in general, I can't pretend that Lovecraft isn't an important touchstone. But the man's blatant racism is also impossible to ignore, especially since it often finds its way onto the pages of his stories. One of the most notorious is The Horror at Red Hook, which follows Detective Thomas Malone as he uncovers a sinister cult in the titular Brooklyn neighborhood.

The Ballad of Black Tom is a retelling of that story, but from the perspect …

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The new Metroid Prime art book offers rare insight into Nintendo’s design process

2025-10-21T16:03:10-04:00

Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective is a fabulous resource for learning more than I ever thought I'd be privy to about Nintendo and Retro Studios' ambitious first-person adventure series. The 210-page hardcover book launches on October 28th, weeks before the series makes its long-awaited return with Metroid Prime 4: Beyond on the Switch and Switch 2. It's the perfect $50 gift for someone who's pored over video essays about the trilogy's design, and who's always wanted to get a behind-the-scenes look at how the games were made. There's a 35-page free sample available through Nintendo if you want a hi-res taste.

Most of the book consist …

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What Spotify took from us by giving us everything

2026-01-01T12:07:58-05:00

Art and commerce are unholy bedfellows, and nowhere more so than in the music industry - never a savory business, not in the mob days and not now. Liz Pelly's Mood Machine, a dive into the history and workings of Spotify, is a useful guide to the way the streaming platform has altered the business of being an artist, but it's one that avoids the conflicts between being a consumer and a patron of the arts.

Mood Machine is a combination of reportage, history, and analysis. Its great strengths are its interviews with Spotify employees, use of internal Slack messages, and bringing into English for the first time details from a number of early S …

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The Verge’s 2023 in review

2023-12-27T08:39:34-05:00

What a year, huh?

As 2023 draws to a close, it’s time to look back on the year that was. It was a great year for entertainment and a not-so-great year for the people who actually made that entertainment. It was the year Twitter died, and the year Matter mostly failed to launch. Gadgets got gadgety-er, photos got what-is-a-photo-ier, and generative AI was suddenly everywhere.

Now through the end of the year, we’ll recap the highs and lows in gadgets, social media, and entertainment, and look ahead at how 2024 is shaping up (spoiler: even more AI). We’ll talk about our favorite movies and TV shows of the year, including the best stuff on Max, Apple TV Plus, Prime, and Disney Plus, and our favorite games on every platform, from PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch to PC and Apple Arcade.

The year in review

Great entertainment

Braun: Designed to Keep is a book worth holding onto

2023-11-21T04:16:51-05:00

The cover is adorned with the legendary clockface found on AB1 alarm clock (1987) designed by Dietrich Lubs.

Every object made by humans has a story to tell. There's the story of the people who made it, of the materials chosen, and the creative motivation. Only when you understand the story do you understand an object's meaning. Or so says Dieter Rams, who headed up product design at Braun from 1961 to 1995.

Braun: Designed to Keep is the story of Braun. It's billed as "the most comprehensive history" of the company to date. Telling it requires more than 400 pages and 500 images, including never-before-published archival materials and brand-new full-page photography of Braun's most iconic products, each instilled with Rams' "less, but better" appr …

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Low interest rates and loneliness: the origins of the pandemic crypto boom

2023-08-18T09:00:00-04:00

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Glauber Contessoto, also known as “Pro,” records a video about Dogecoin. | Image: This Is Not Financial Advice

Finance is often taught like math - as though it's a series of fixed and inexorable rules. But if that were true, bank runs wouldn't occur.

Psychology is at least as important to regular finance as balance sheets. The point of being able to transact in abstract tokens, whether dollars or Dogecoin, is to be able to engage in a relationship with a stranger with some degree of confidence. All money is about community. Money is also, to some degree, about correctly predicting the future; your dollars or Dogecoin will continue to be worth a predictable amount when you engage in future transactions. Investing in particular is about the future, n …

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Samsung Rising goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

2020-04-10T08:00:00-04:00

Samsung Rising is a new book from journalist and author Geoffrey Cain, and it's the best account of the colossal Korean conglomerate's ascent to power I've read. Deeply researched and reported, Cain's book details how Samsung turned from vegetable seller to global tech titan, with plenty of colorful anecdotes along the way.

If you've ever wondered how the infamous Galaxy S II "Dude, you're a barista" campaign came about, or what went on behind the scenes during the Galaxy Note 7 fire crisis, or how Samsung's leaders have managed to survive multiple fraud convictions, this is the book for you. Cain's writing is appropriately damning of Samsu …

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JY Yang’s Tensorate series is a sweeping, experimental blend of sci-fi and fantasy

2019-08-03T13:00:00-04:00

Genre is an odd thing. At times, it's merely a sales tactic, where similar books are grouped together in a bookstore to make them easier to find. But it can also be a codified canon of literature in which authors are engaged in a decades-long conversation, bouncing themes and tropes off one another. Every now and again, a book or author will come along that really breaks away from the conversation and ignores those tropes and conventions. One recent example is Singaporean author JY Yang, who published the final installment of their genre-blending Tensorate series last month.

The series is made up of four short novellas: The Red Threads of F …

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Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron is a thrilling examination of the cost of war

2019-07-13T10:00:00-04:00

When I was in high school, I read through the entire back catalog of Star Wars novels, one after the other, and finished with Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston's X-Wing series. I loved that nine-book sub-series. It presented a different angle on the Star Wars universe, following a new crop of non-film characters as they worked to take the galaxy back from the Empire.

Fast-forward a quarter of a century, and the finale of a new Star Wars trilogy is about to hit theaters. There's a standalone film that lines up perfectly with the spirit of the X-Wing series. And now, there's a new novel about another squadron of Rebel pilots taking the …

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