The Ferryman review: A profound new take on a sci-fi staple


 

New Scientist Default Image

Anton Petrus/Getty Photos

The Ferryman
Justin Cronin (Orion Books)

IN THE canon of up to date science fiction, actuality is a shaky idea. Books and flicks have probed, pummelled and pulled aside the material of the fabric world to disclose numerous deceits.

Such revelations are the supply of paranoid nightmares in works like The Matrix, The Truman Present or William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Then there are the extra lucid deceit-fantasies within the vein of Whole Recall, Inception and Westworld. Elsewhere there are tales by which utopian filters obscure harrowing truths.

On this latter class yow will discover equal room for the gleaming pulp of …