The Immanent World: 404 - A Horror Anthology Series:

by Clive Reznor

He's Watching You ... It's the fear we all have using the Who is watching? What have I left out there? David Clegg ignored that fear, posted his musings on the Dark Web, and paid the price. When a mysterious hacker hijacks his computer, Clegg is shown a series of real-time videos, each one a story of mankind's dark dealings with technology and the paranormal. As a voyeur, he is given one chance -- and only one chance -- to help those he's watching, unknowingly sealing his own fate in the process. Told in six twisted stories, The Immanent 404 is a wickedly imaginative collection of dark sci fi and the paranormal. For fans of horror anthologies like Stephen King's Night Shift or Clive Barker's Books Of Blood, movies like V/H/S or The ABC's Of Death, or TV shows like Black Mirror or Supernatural, weaving the familiar with the disturbingly dark. "It's like Black Mirror with a Paranormal edge." Immanent - remaining within; indwelling; inherent. Horror fans will enjoy this journey into the dark corners of the immanent world - a reality where the divine and demonic are not outside our natural world, but very much a part of it. Your Lying A domestic dispute between his next door neighbors puts Kendrick, a bachelor who loves gaming and tech, in a dangerous situation when the wife hides out in his house. She has a codex tattoo — an implant that records all five sense and can play those experiences back through specific devices, which shows Kendrick the difference between what his neighbors want him to see and who they really are. The Politics of Flesh and When two friends go on a road trip to interview the head of a cutting edge tech company who claims to have the key to quantum communication, they find the consequences of gaining that technology are more costly than they could imagine. Hamir Can Do Hamir is an average Indian American. Hamir is also bullied at his office job, under-appreciated by his wife and her Auntie, and ridiculed for his accent by the general public. All he wants is respect. Today, through an unexpected gift in the mail, he gets everything he wants, including revenge. The Viral “LIke It Or Lose It” is a popular television game show where contestant have one week to gain 5,000 likes on their LIOLI profile, a task that’s harder than it seems. Needing the money for his daughter’s surgery, Chip Tittle tries to subvert the system by exposing the truth about the State, putting much more at risk than he realizes. An android named Astraea, who has been passed down generation after generation by the Thornsmith family as either an experiment or sex slave, attempts one last time to free herself. Can she convince the only surviving descendant of the family, a teenage boy, to help her become a Super AI, or will a mob of anti-technology zealots destroy her, the last of her kind? *** SPOILER ****

246 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 26, 2018

Reviews

[Crystal Steele · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love the Black Mirror series, then you will love this book. David Clegg is a conspiracy theorist who spends hours getting lost in the Dark Web reading other's theories and chatting. He spends so much time in fact, his steady girlfriend is starting to loose patience waiting for her chance at his attention. One night while online, he's hacked by someone who claims he can prove to him that there are other realities out there and that science has discovered a way to reveal those dimensions through computer code. Clegg decides to entertain the idea and proceeds to watch. Each video he watches is presented as a short story and each one contains an awesome twist or two. From tattoos that contain a person's memories to a game show where 'likes' on social media could literally mean life or death for the contestant. Each story contains some sort of artificial intelligence gone wrong and makes you ask when is it enough. The author points out in his intro how rockets were originally designed for research, not weapons of mass destruction and how even the internet has become a place for hate and discord instead of a place to gain and share information with others. I was left contemplating the question of when is enough, enough? It seems the more intelligence we gain as a species, the more vulnerable we become to those machines and gadgets we rely on so much.

Mr. Reznor has created a collection of stories both thought provoking and entertaining. I highly recommend this book.

[Leo Winters · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Immanent World: 404 was a fun collection of creative short stories that all tied together through the point-of-view of an outside observer. It greatly reminded me of the V/H/S films and Black Mirror. I just received my copy of The Immanent World: Cluichi and am excited to read through it as well!

[Anna Dalvi · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, this book is a huge improvement over the Apollyon Game. Most of the stories are pretty decent. The first one (about the neighbours) was probably the best one.

As a general comment, I’m not particularly fond of limbs flying just for the sake of goriness. I think the entire book would be much better if it wasn’t so graphically gory. The events could stay generally the same, just with less gore, and the book would be better for it.

Aside from that, I thought that the last story about the Android didn’t really fit with the other ones, as it was so futuristic (and set in year 2300-something).

[Derek BP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow and boring

I feel the book was dragging. Stories started interesting end up being overstretched and not interesting enough, I find myself scrolling through the book