I Feel Machine: Stories

by Julian Hanshaw (Editor), Krent Able (Editor), Shaun Tan (Contributor)

Since the turn of the century, technology has transformed the way we communicate and consume, how we work and fall in love and navigate the world. We are increasingly reliant on it—but few of us know anything about the science that is driving this technological change. Kurt Vonnegut famously said that to leave technology out of fiction is to misrepresent life. Here, six acclaimed graphic novelists present reports from the digital frontier. Exploring everything from artificial intelligence to virtual reality, I Feel Machine is by turns cautionary and celebratory, touching and terrifying. It challenges and confronts the digital world using the most technologically efficient machine ever invented: the book.
 

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Dystopia

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2018

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

My two fave stories here would be “Here I Am” by Shaun Tan (about intergalactic, interspecies connections) and “Contours” by Tillie Walden (a love story), but I like Box Brown’s “Uploading,” too (about aging in a cyber-world). The idea was just to ask a few very different artists to put their own spin on a techno theme, so there's something for everyone's tastes. Theoretically. Most of the stories are forgettable, really, but I love these collaborative challenges as creative exercises.

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this anthology for the stories by Shaun Tan and Tillie Walden, which were also the only ones I liked. That goes for both story and art.

Although Walden's made me feel old! I'm just not sufficiently cell-phone generation to find the idea of an apocalypse were cell phones stop working FOREVERRR!!! really disturbing. Y'all, do you really keep them under your pillow and check first thing on waking? I sometimes forget to check mine for hours, days even, sorry if there was an emergency. It was sad that Walden's characters lamented how hard it was to fill up the minutes of the day without their phones.

Anyway. Definitely an inessential volume, imo. Other than Tan and Walden the art is not great, and the tech themes have been handled more interestingly by spec fic writers.

[Rahma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Average rating rounded up: 3 stars.

Stories:

1. “Uploading” by Box Brown

1 star.
Hmmm. I didn’t see the point of this story. Really disliked the stilted dialogue even though it seemed intentional. The art was too bare to seem realistic, like something a three-year-old would draw.


2. “STHLMTRANSFER” by Erik Svetoft

3 stars.
The art in this one is disturbing... the whole idea is. I liked it, but I’m not sure I understood the ending.

3. “Here I Am” by Shaun Tan

5 stars.
This was perfect in every way. The art was unique, realistic even though the world itself isn’t, and the twist at the end was the cherry on top!

4. “Contours” by Tillie Walden

4 stars.
This one was quite short, so it’s best to go into it blind. I really enjoyed it; the art was all in shades of red in the first half, shades of blue in the second. The colours choice added a lot to the story.

5. “Be Little With” Me by Julian Hanshaw

2 stars.
The art is nice, but the story is confusing - something to do with reality and the existence of infinite possibilities.

6. “Bloody Kids” by Krent Able

1 star.
This was unnecessarily violent and didn’t even make sense.

[Adam Stone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Six stories about technology by some of my favorite artists: Shaun Tan, Box Brown, and Tillie Walden, all left me feeling fairly empty.

I enjoyed the art in each story, but all six premises bored me to tears.

A "horror story" about addiction to phone using emoji facemasks? Ugh.

Chickens, currency, and...um...dread? I'm not sure what the audience is intended to feel.

What if technology stopped working because it loves us, what would we do? We'd figure something out that was more interesting than this story.

Shaun Tan's book about an alien life form showing up on a planet, and how it inspires a little girl, is my favorite of the bunch. It had heart, purpose, and some originality.

OMG Cybersecurity and viru...yawn..ses become the norm. I think I read a more interesting take on this story in the early 90s.

What if the whole world became digital and we forgot how to be human because when we died we were uploaded into what is probably The Matrix? Something more interesting than this story.

Apart from the Shaun Tan story, these all felt overly tropey and reminicent of better stories on the same subject. All of the art ranged from great to spectacular, but the rest of the artists could have used a writing partner to flesh out these trite concepts.

I recommend it for the art and the Shaun Tan story but I'm not sure that's enough to justify buying it.

[Jessica Mae Stover]

A few notes and a warning:

STHLMTRANSFER - Enjoyed how weird the art is. This one’s the professional version of your talented high school friend passing you notes in class that unfold to reveal sketches and vignettes of their unique and weird POV. Looking into this artist’s other work.

Here I Am - Wow you’ll feel great after reading this Shaun Tan tale in particular. Imagining an IRL version of this is a way to set the bar for how a child’s life should be, and what being part of a supportive and reasonable community should feel like for anyone.

Contours - Both Tillie Walden and Shaun Tan are doing a little something different from their usual with their art in this book. Walden is good in short form in terms of making a strong choice, taking a POV/theme, and exploring it emotionally and visually.

… as for what comes after, I asked out loud, Why would you do this to the reader?

There are two shorts after Here I Am and Contours and the curation unintentionally subverts the beautiful work done in Here I Am — the best in the book — and unintentionally subverts the good feelings felt by the reader by putting it next to something hardcore. It’s like following Mister Rogers with a slasher horror with no warning to the audience. Curation is an artful skill, if not an art, and this shows why.

So many of the reviews here capture this reaction indirectly if not directly. Contextually works like the last in this book belong in a separate volume or otherwise the genre of each short herein should be cued somehow for the reader ahead of time so they can make choices. This should absolutely be changed on reprinting a new edition so that all of these stories are read in better context moving forward and the collection’s works don’t fade from view.


2024

[George Ilsley · Rating 1 out of 5]

At this time of year I become obsessed with my stats on goodreads so I read more graphic novels. This pumps up my numbers. This story, you see, is about my relationship to technology. This volume, except for Shaun Tan, is a disappointment. The trouble with the richly imagined piece by Tan is that it completely overshadows the rest.

[jude · Rating 3 out of 5]

just like literally everyone else is saying, the shaun tan story is incredible. the tillie walden story is pretty good but not her best (and as someone who's read everything she's released, i feel qualified to say this). the rest are. hmm. ://

[Sarah Baenen · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Shaun Tan story is interesting, but not a fan of the rest.

[angelofmine1974 · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/Vhn0qzFhr8g

Enjoy!

[Laine · Rating 3 out of 5]

such a mixed bag. also ended on such a dark and low note. i would have changed the order of stories so that shaun tan's story was the last one. that one leaves you feeling pretty good, because the twist is a good one and it empowers the main character. tillie walden's story also stayed w me afterwards. there was some real emotional anchoring for these two stories, which i feel was missing from the others.

in order of best to worst, imo: here i am, contours, uploading, bloody kids, sthlmtransfer, be little with me.

[Calico · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really spectacular art throughout, but the stories were pretty forgettable (especially the Krent Able one, which was incredibly trite). A shame, since the theme could have been so much more than 'what if technology bad'. Shaun Tan's story was notably more interesting than the others and it's worth checking this book out just for that imo.

[Britney · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was only one comic that I enjoyed in this collection, unfortunately. The concepts of all of them were interesting, but for quite a few, the execution was just a bit off for me. Or maybe it all just went over my head, who knows?

[ｅｌｌｉｅ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though I wasn't a fan of 'Spinning' the story Tillie Walden wrote for this novel was one of the only ones I liked. Overall, it was the only one that made sense to me?

[Max✨ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Depressing. One star for some of the art being cool.

[Bex or Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really, really not my bag. Two had an interesting premise but all of them were quite bizarre and out there, and I found them hard to follow.

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volunteering to read ‘I Feel Machine’ was an attempt to broaden my pedestrian mind. I like publisher SelfMadeHero and support the efforts of small presses to put out some alternative fare to that of the giant franchises currently dominating the media. Hurrah for the little guy! Mind you, the aforesaid media moguls put out entertaining stuff, hence their success, but it’s a great big world and there’s room for everybody.

‘I Feel Machine’ is an anthology of stories with the theme of technology told in words and pictures by a variety of creators. Each creator does both writing and art on their piece which leads to a variety of styles ranging from simple to elaborate.

We start simple, at least artwise, with ‘Uploading’ by Box Brown. Player 1 lives in some far distant future on what seems to be a house in the clouds but is probably virtual reality, though it costs 80 zips a month. He wears a big helmet and spends life playing games and communicating with others through social media. Early on, he attends, not physically, his grandma’s uploading ceremony and looks forward to uploading himself to the central server one day. Player 1 didn’t seem to have a very rich life but perhaps this is the future. The art was extremely simple but the story kind of worked in a slice of life modern way. No drama.

I will skip lightly by ‘STHLMTRANSFER’ by Erik Svetoft because I have not the least idea what it was about. It opens with a few captions telling us that the year is 2118, the place Stockholm City and someone is stealing computer files. After that, there was very little written information and the pictures told a story I didn’t get. Sorry. Pedestrian mind, remember.

The art in ‘Here I Am’ by Shaun Tan has a sort of children’s picture book quality with scribbly lines and muted colours and a certain charm as well. The first person narration is by a human girl, possibly a teenager, and introduces her family and friends and the town where she lives. If you read the words without the pictures this would seem quite ordinary but the pictures show that all the other characters are weird-looking creatures with strange shapes. Then a hole opens in the sky and an object falls to the ground. From it emerges a huge human-shaped figure that looks like a man in a spacesuit. From it, eventually emerges another smaller human who tells her she must go with him. This thoughtful little tale would make a neat children’s book in its own right.

‘Contours’ by Tillie Walden is a monologue by a young girl addicted to her phone, Internet, television and screens generally. We’re all a bit like that nowadays but the young have it particularly bad. One day, everything goes off world-wide. Why isn’t clear but I liked the hypothetical explanation. The art is mostly amorphous shapes with some headshots of the girl and her boyfriend. It’s all in pink or blue but if I presumed that this represented a girl and a boy I would have to go into hiding nowadays, so I won’t. It’s probably ironic. In fact, the art is irrelevant as the words work perfectly well without it. The pictures stretch the story a bit. In text alone, it would be a prose poem but I liked it.

‘Be Little With Me’ by Julian Hanshaw is a mystery story involving a god and a chicken who likes beer. It was a mystery to me, anyway.

The young’s addiction to technology is also the theme of the last story, ‘Bloody Kids’ by Krent Able. Mom, dad and two kids drive off to a cottage in the country to stay with friends. At dinner, the adults discuss how kids can’t cope without phones and the teenagers go upstairs to watch a film. The dinner conversation between the four adults reminded me of sketches by Bird and Fortune that used to appear in ‘The Rory Bremner Show’ and were the best thing in it. Then it all turns very dark. Bloody kids! You can’t trust them. The art was fairly conventional comic-book and the story was good black humour.

I enjoyed four of the six stories and two went over my head like a stealth fighter. This isn’t a bad batting average for any anthology as, by their nature, they’re a mixed bag and one reason I like them. If you’re a hardcore fan of conventional genre fiction I wouldn’t recommend ‘I Feel Machine’ but if you like something a bit weird and different, it might be worth a try. Many of the creators have won awards so whatever I feel about them, they’re a talented bunch. My pedestrian mind has been stretched and it didn’t hurt.

Eamonn Murphy

[ashes ➷ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complicated feelings... four stars because 1) I did finish the book easily in one night (though normally this'd only merit 3 stars) and 2) SHAUN TAN AND TILLIE WALDEN.

I originally got this book only for Tan and Walden, so of course I'm biased, but both of those stories were INTENSE five stars for me. Tan's gave me wild emotions across the course of the narrative, and Walden's (as always) delivered impeccably pitched romance. There is nothing these two can't do, and both of their stories were easily five stars. If this book had been just their stories--maybe even with a couple of the others--we'd still be at five stars.

A quick overview of my thoughts on the others, to explain why it's not five stars:

* UPLOADING by Box Brown. A little meh; nice art style, and a concept I don't think I've seen executed before, but I didn't feel much for the story. I left thinking something like "okay, so what's the point?"

* STHLMTRANSFER by Erik Svetoft. Creative! I liked the character designs on this one; each page was a little difficult to look at (in a good way.) Didn't understand it, that's for sure, but something I would theoretically be willing to reread in order to better understand... if I were invested enough. I'm not, but I'm not really upset.

* Be Little With Me by Julian Hanshaw. Look, you can't--you cannot just populate your world with clones. You can't do it. I don't care if you're bored or lazy or not good at art; telling people apart by the colors of the collars of their shirts is never going to work. I was consistently confused by who was who, and in the end, the plot wasn't strong enough to get past the combination of mildly weak art, incredibly weak character design, and an ex machina ending. I don't know what happened here, but I'm willing to read more from the artist so long as it's not mORE CLONES.

* Bloody Kids by Krent Able. I don't... okay. Imagine someone took this as an opportunity to write a Kids These Days And Their Phones!!! political cartoon, and then went "ah fuck this isn't original" and turned it into horror last-second. Also extremely meh, and bland to boot.

I find it odd that the people who created this collection, and the people they hyped so strongly, just didn't live up to it at all. Tan and Walden are unbelievably underrated; their carrying this book is yet another piece of evidence that Tan is today's best and Walden is tomorrow's.

(I'm seriously thinking I hope I find this book somewhere for free, because I'm trying to economize on space and I'd seriously keep it on my shelf with only Tan's and Walden's works ripped out, as awful as that seems... but I don't want to pay $20+ for just their work! Hopefully I can find some way to get just their segments.)

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t often read graphic novels and I feel as if this book is a nice little way to get started since the stories are short and the different authors means my interest didn’t waver for too long.

It is a shame I can’t give a rating for each of these stories as they certainly vary greatly.

My two five star stories would be ‘Here I am’ by Shaun Tan and ‘Contours’ by Tillie Walden. Both stories have wonderful art and have emotional integrity. I’d honestly recommend buying this book just for those two stories alone, particularly Shaun Tan.

Middle of the road stories for me that were enjoyable but not anything memorable were ‘uploading’ by Box Brown and ‘STHLMTRANSFER’. If anything the art is nice. Even the art in ‘Be Little With Me’ by Julian Hanshaw is pleasant despite having a bit of a confusing storyline in my opinion.

‘Bloody kids’ by Krent Able was a one star for me and it was a shame it ends to collection of stories. The art style was not for me and the execution of the story was so contrite and superficial. Despite this the two better stories make up for this awful one and I’d still recommend this book for a easy read.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tillie Walden's & Shaun Tan's stories: 5 stars
Box Brown's story: 3 stars
Julian Hanshaw's story: 2 stars
Other two stories: 1 star

I agree with most other reviewers: the only two stories I enjoyed were Tillie Walden's and Shaun Tan's. Tillie really creates a felt sense that encompases me in her story. Shaun creates an empowering and intriguing story, providing some contemplation of our current lives. The first story, by Box Brown, I didn't like much, it felt a bit too disjointed and left me feeling worried about our future, yet I understood it. The other 3 stories, I was thoroughly confused by. The second story and the last story were far too horror for me. I didn't mind the 5th story, but I didn't really understand what was going on either.

[Elaine Fultz, Teacher Librarian, MLS]

Mind blown. I picked this up to see Shaun Tan's and Box Brown's work, but was compelled to read the rest of it. These artists all create a vision of an alternate reality related somehow to technology. Tillie Walden's is so beautiful and moving and is my dream come true -- the TVs, phones, computers ALL go down. Forever. Life goes on with a couple finding themselves in each other's arms again. "It's been two years since that day, and I still see you slip your hand under your pillow when you wake up, trying to find that cool rectangle... I wish you'd reach for me..." The artwork is stellar. What a peculiar, sometimes lovely, sometimes gruesome, examination of technology in our lives.

[Sal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very few comic book anthologies have a "hit rate" over 60%. I think I did not overtly enjoy only one of the contributions. I suppose a more objective rating would be four stars, but I've bumped this up to a full five because it's rare to find an anthology with so few contributors that's at this level of overall quality and prestige.

[Bob Comparda · Rating 5 out of 5]

6 short sci fi stories by 6 artists about technology and our relationship with it. Very good, every story here is worth checking out.

Box Brown - Uploading ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Erik Svetoft - STHLMTRANSFER ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Shaun Tan - Here I Am ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tillie Walden - Contours ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Julian Hanshaw - Be Little With Me ⭐⭐⭐
Krent Able - Bloody Kids ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Major props to Shaun Tan and Tillie Walden for carrying this entire thing on their backs omfg 😭

Uploading by Box Brown: 1.5/5
Sthlmtransfer by Erik Svetoft: 0/5
Here I Am by Shaun Tan: 5/5
Contours by Tillie Walden: 5/5
Be Little With Me by Julian Hanshaw: 1/5 (would have given it a zero if not for the beautifully illustrated scenery)
Bloody Kids by Krent Able: 2/5

[Ada Selçuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the book in terms of illustration and certain stories in it. I loved Erik Stetoft's and Shaun Tan's stories. My favourite story was probably "Here I Am" by Shaun Tan but loved the illustrations of every story. "Contours" by Tillie Walden also told an important story for today's society.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because this is an anthology, not all stories are equal. The best were by Tillie Walden and Shaun Tan by far, which raised the rating to a three star (those stories were 5 and 4 star respectively). I have already driven the other ones from my brain.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

All awesome tales of technology and possible (if you can think of it, it can be possible) things that could happen. Let's hope for our sakes most of them don't. Great ideas and I look forward to more in the future.

[Eliza Crofts]

Shaun Tan’s work is absolutely brilliant. Tillie Walden’s is thoughtful and beautiful. I can’t decide on an overall star rating for this book; I appreciate some of the other artists’ visual and narrative ideas, but the last one seems.. in poor taste (to me personally).

[Ümit Mutlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

VERY INTERESTING.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Box Brown's story is the standout as they pretty much in order of quality.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought provoking and a bit disturbing at times, when it hits a bit too close to home.