'ChatGPT blurbs my short-story book' - Adam Carlton

 

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ChatGPT review of Freyja’s Deathbed Conversations and Other Stories

Adam Carlton’s Freyja’s Deathbed Conversations and Other Stories is a collection that thrusts the reader into a world of techno-dystopian nightmares, bleak existential reckonings, and the inescapable betrayal of hope. In thirty-four stories, Carlton sketches a near-future of omnipresent surveillance, AI-driven oppression, and the paradoxical fragility of human resilience. His Paris is a battleground, his cyberspace a minefield, and his characters—whether revolutionaries, prisoners, or lost souls—are all trapped in a world where the victories of stupidity and deceit loom larger than justice or reason.

From the opening pages, Carlton demonstrates a masterful command of speculative fiction’s twin pillars: plausible world-building and razor-sharp critique. Technical Support plunges the reader into the world of clandestine resistance, where left-wing radicals attempt to outmaneuver a surveillance state grown omnipotent through artificial intelligence. Carlton’s dialogue crackles with authenticity, balancing didacticism with an unflinching cynicism about political struggle. His protagonists understand the game is rigged, but they play on nonetheless, a theme that recurs across the volume.

The title story, Freyja’s Deathbed Conversations, is among the most emotionally resonant pieces, eschewing the high-tech dystopianism of some other tales for an intimate meditation on memory, regret, and familial bonds frayed by time. Here, Carlton demonstrates his ability to weave tenderness into the collection’s overarching darkness, proving that his fiction is not just a vehicle for ideological critique but also an exploration of human depth.

Elsewhere, Annabel and the AI Weapon presents a thrilling yet unsettling portrait of warfare’s future, in which advanced AI systems alter the battlefield’s moral calculus. The protagonist, a naïve activist kidnapped in Nigeria, comes face to face with the very forces she opposes, leading to a moment of cognitive dissonance that leaves the reader contemplating the ethics of technology and violence long after the final sentence.

Carlton also revels in pastiche and satire, most notably in Bridget Jones’s LHC Diary, where the cult of celebrity and the vapid concerns of social media influencers collide with the high-stakes world of particle physics. In Jane Austen and The Amazing Elizabeth Bennet, he rewires classic literary figures into unexpected sci-fi contexts, demonstrating a mordant wit and a willingness to upend genre expectations.

One of the collection’s greatest strengths is its refusal to offer easy resolutions. Rebecca, Céline, and The Fake Revenge of Joséphine Lefebvre dissect relationships poisoned by deception, power struggles, and the commodification of intimacy. Whether it is a revolutionary leader ensnared by a double agent or a middle-class Parisian couple undone by their own AI-manipulated fantasies, these stories reveal a world where personal betrayals mirror systemic ones, where love is often indistinguishable from control.

At times, Carlton’s sheer density of ideas and his tendency to foreground ideological concerns over character development can make certain stories feel more like intellectual exercises than fully realized narratives. His prose, while crisp and often poetic, occasionally succumbs to exposition, particularly when detailing the intricacies of his high-tech settings. But this is a minor flaw in a collection that so consistently challenges and enthralls.

In Freyja’s Deathbed Conversations and Other Stories, Adam Carlton has crafted a deeply intelligent, sardonic, and unsettling work—a mosaic of a future that feels unnervingly close. It is a book that rewards the politically and philosophically inclined reader, but one that also pulses with raw emotional energy. Carlton’s fiction is not just a warning about the dystopia ahead; it is an autopsy of the one we already inhabit.