Beau

This is as close to an art/design bible as you can get. Empowering, emphatic, challenging, and brutally honest. I'll read this book once a year probably for the rest of my life. It gave clarity to thoughts that have been rattling around my head for years. It gave me hope for things I'd long since considered to be ‘the way things are'. And it spoke confidence into my being as it dwells in an industry and thought world which is often ambiguous and, at it's worst, perilous. I can't wait to dive deeper into some of the parts I underlined and give time to some thoughts I had along the way.

This book is big. It did my head in. It will require a second reading. Nonetheless, Rushkoff does that thing he tends to do best - observe society, ponder technology, consider implications, de-construct reality, and speak to great depths on fundamental parts of humanity's psyche that we often don't prod: time, morality, and everything in between. At it's fundamental best, this book is about technology and time. I particularly enjoyed the first section titled ‘Narrative Collapse' - where he looks at the current ethos of a post-Aristotelian narrative society; where the non-linear rules, and particular (and beautiful) depths of creativity, knowledge, and cognitive exploration are becoming old world attributes amongst humans.

If you're up for a long but absolutely fascinating read on technology, the philosophy of time, and current socio-tech matters, this is your book. It requires commitment, however. Simply skimming over this one is both an injustice to yourself, and hugely ironic once you reach certain areas of the book. You won't put it down and you'll more than likely pick it up for a second read to get your head around some of the huge areas Rushkoff explores. Bravo.

I know, 5-stars. That's how good I thought this freakin' book was. Gaiman never ceases to amaze me. Never have I seen such a seamless ability to fuse the real-world and the fantasy-world together. When you can write a 370-page book about the sewers of London, where a protagonist learns to communicate with rats and ultimately becomes a figurehead of ‘London Below' through a series of amazing mishaps; including instances with angels, two assassins who house similar traits to a fox and hound respectively, floating marketplaces, and an existential crisis where one is burdened by visions of people who are actually himself made manifest by the dark powers of the Blackfriars...well, there's something unique and imaginatively superb about it. This is the third Gaiman book I've read and for me this is up there with the prestigious American Gods. Perhaps not as complex in nature as American Gods but equally as magical, mysterious and flat-out bewildering - Neverwhere is a book I'll definitely pick up one day many years into the future. I'll flick the pages, I'll smile, and I'll remember why the world we see isn't the only world that's out there.