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Soft Reboot
Can we go from bad to…better? Can there be joy once an ocean turns to a dead soup? Can we find love as we're irradiated and on death's door? Can we learn to see a suffering people as more than background players on a livestream of our vacation?
Writer and artist Joachim Heijndermans hopes to find these answers and more throughout his second short story collection as he tries to center himself with a personal Soft Reboot.
From the writer of 'All Through the House and Other Tales from a Random Place' comes this collection of eighteen stories, accompanied by art pieces and one brand new tale exclusive only to this book. Face the grim bleakness, but also find the joy.
Writer and artist Joachim Heijndermans hopes to find these answers and more throughout his second short story collection as he tries to center himself with a personal Soft Reboot.
From the writer of 'All Through the House and Other Tales from a Random Place' comes this collection of eighteen stories, accompanied by art pieces and one brand new tale exclusive only to this book. Face the grim bleakness, but also find the joy.
270 pages, ebook
Published December 24, 2022
1 person want to read
About the author
Joachim Heijndermans
60 books49 followersJoachim Heijndermans writes, draws, and paints nearly every waking hour. Originally from the Netherlands, he’s been all over the world, boring people by spouting random trivia about toys, movies and comics. His work has been featured in a number of publications, websites and podcasts. His short story 'All Through the House' was adapted as an episode of the Netflix animated series Love, Death & Robots.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 9, 2023
8- I'm not as enthousiastic about this collection as I was about the first by this author, 'All Through The House', that managed to impress by its wide range of subjects, tones, and styles, and that had a lot of well composed stories that ranged from cosmic horror to comic vignettes. The stories in this second collection are certainly well written - maybe even better written than those in the first collection. Here I almost never found myself conscious of these stories being written by a Dutchman writing in English. They mostly felt very natural. Also great care has been taken with the final corrections, as there were no strange mistakes in formatting and no spelling errors or typographical mistakes that took me out from the stories. I also have to commend the author on the breadth of his imagination, as even though to me there's more unity in tone and genre here (no true cosmic horror for instance - however, there's a fantasy in here!), these stories are still pretty diverse. They also convey the humanist mindset of the author - both in their sad look at what human beings are able to do to their planet, their fellow humans and other animals (with those stories I really felt as if the author let out a deep sigh) and in the few more hopeful stories at the end - and what impressed me even more was how the author doesn't point only to others when laying the blame, but is conscious of his own failings and failures and the cynicism and pure apathy that makes us slow to take action, eager to look away. No easy answers here, but the sense that we -individually and collectively- could do better. If only our systems were not cluttered. Maybe it's time for a 'soft reboot'?
My main reason for not rewarding this collection five stars as I did with the first one, is that there were fewer real stories in here. A lot of these stories were very short, only four or five pages, and mainly described a situation, without having a real throughline, or choices leading to (surprising) consequences. Even if the situations they described were interesting, as in 'On the Tuo River' or in 'Rookies', they did feel more like anecdotes than like stories. And where in the first collection all situations were interesting, here some were not that fascinating, like 'The once blue horizon' or 'To the max' (mainly because these types of futures are (sadly) not very surprising any more). Of the shorter stories I liked the title story, hidden in the introduction, the most. Oh, and 'I, Orca', where the author tried (pretty well) to write from a non-human point of view.
Luckily there were a few longer stories in here as well, and they rivalled their equals in 'All Through the House', I thought. 'Your Guide to the Jungles of Kraan with Lou and Gerry' finds Heijndermans experimenting with story structure, telling his story in the form of a transcription of a podcast. And also trying to tell his story through what is kept out, instead of what is described outright.
'The War of the Infinite Tigers' is another of his stories about people watching things unfold, documenting it even, and having to decide if they can remain outsiders, or bystanders, or need to get involved (a recurring theme in this collection). In this case a tourist documenting a war on another planet is getting in too deep. A touching tale, that worked very well!
'Then came the Puffins' put a big grin on my face. As an author myself I had to feel for the protagonist here ...
'When The Sky Bleeds' on the other hand channels the anger of the author seeing the apaty of so called civilised countries in dealing with fugitives. A powerful story, well written.
The collection ends with another showcase of both the author's humour and his ability to inhabit other people, and especially young people. His description of a young vlogger felt spot on, and I had to grin at the ending of this story.
All in all, despite my reservations, still worth your time if you love short speculative fiction, and like your collections diverse.
My main reason for not rewarding this collection five stars as I did with the first one, is that there were fewer real stories in here. A lot of these stories were very short, only four or five pages, and mainly described a situation, without having a real throughline, or choices leading to (surprising) consequences. Even if the situations they described were interesting, as in 'On the Tuo River' or in 'Rookies', they did feel more like anecdotes than like stories. And where in the first collection all situations were interesting, here some were not that fascinating, like 'The once blue horizon' or 'To the max' (mainly because these types of futures are (sadly) not very surprising any more). Of the shorter stories I liked the title story, hidden in the introduction, the most. Oh, and 'I, Orca', where the author tried (pretty well) to write from a non-human point of view.
Luckily there were a few longer stories in here as well, and they rivalled their equals in 'All Through the House', I thought. 'Your Guide to the Jungles of Kraan with Lou and Gerry' finds Heijndermans experimenting with story structure, telling his story in the form of a transcription of a podcast. And also trying to tell his story through what is kept out, instead of what is described outright.
'The War of the Infinite Tigers' is another of his stories about people watching things unfold, documenting it even, and having to decide if they can remain outsiders, or bystanders, or need to get involved (a recurring theme in this collection). In this case a tourist documenting a war on another planet is getting in too deep. A touching tale, that worked very well!
'Then came the Puffins' put a big grin on my face. As an author myself I had to feel for the protagonist here ...
'When The Sky Bleeds' on the other hand channels the anger of the author seeing the apaty of so called civilised countries in dealing with fugitives. A powerful story, well written.
The collection ends with another showcase of both the author's humour and his ability to inhabit other people, and especially young people. His description of a young vlogger felt spot on, and I had to grin at the ending of this story.
All in all, despite my reservations, still worth your time if you love short speculative fiction, and like your collections diverse.
April 8, 2023
Great read on the multiple stories created by an upcoming author.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews