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3.0 

Rosebud

By Paul Cornell
Rosebud by Paul Cornell digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

“An elegant, elegiac examination of identity, fictionality, God and humanity itself”—Tamsyn Muir

A multilayered, locked-room science fiction novella from Paul Cornell in which five digital beings unravel their existences to discover the truth of their humanity.


“The crew of the Rosebud are, currently, and by force of law, a balloon, a goth with a swagger stick, some sort of science aristocrat possibly, a ball of hands, and a swarm of insects.”

When five sentient digital beings—condemned for over three hundred years to crew the small survey ship by the all-powerful Company—encounter a mysterious black sphere, their course of action is clear: obtain the object, inform the Company, earn lots of praise.

But the ship malfunctions, and the crew has no choice but to approach the sphere and survey it themselves. They have no idea that this object—and the transcendent truth hidden within—will change the fate of all existence, the Company, and themselves.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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39 Reviews

3.0
“I struggled with this novella. Everything happening and even the characters were difficult to imagine. The ideas were interesting but I felt they didn’t come together in a satisfying way. The story seemed full of itself and its concepts and worried more about that than a digestible plot. Our five main characters are “a balloon, a goth with a swagger stick, some sort of science aristocrat possibly, a ball of hands, and a swarm of insects.” So straight from the beginning, with this as the descriptor for the characters, I was a bit put off. And not only are these characters not normal beings, they’re also AI trapped in a digital space on a broken down space ship. While they’re contemplating existence and the meaning of life for each of them, they run across a matte black sphere hovering in space. With their ship malfunctioning, the crew has no choice but to board the sphere themselves. They are each put into their own imagining of a physical body. Once inside, they encounter an over the top, God like sentience that could change the universe as we know it. I’m not sure who would enjoy this one. As an avid reader and lover of sci fi, I feel I’m the dream audience for a book like this but it fell flat. At only 107 pages, it was a slog to get through and I wasn’t excited picking it up each time I sat down to read. If you do read, or have read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Trigger warning: violence against trans folks”
“1.5 ⭐️… wtf did I just read”

About Paul Cornell

Paul Cornell has written episodes of Elementary, Doctor Who, Primeval, Robin Hood, and many other TV series, including his own children’s show, Wavelength. He’s worked for every major comics company, including his creator-owned series I Walk With Monsters for The Vault, The Modern Frankenstein for Magma, Saucer State for IDW, and This Damned Band for Dark Horse, and runs for Marvel and DC on Batman and Robin, Wolverine, and Young Avengers. He’s the writer of the Lychford rural fantasy novellas from Tordotcom Publishing. He’s won the BSFA Award for his short fiction, an Eagle Award for his comics, a Hugo Award for his podcast, and shares in a Writer’s Guild Award for his Doctor Who. He’s the co-host of Hammer House of Podcast.

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