A History of What Comes Next
By Sylvain Neuvel
With A History of What Comes Next Quebec writer Sylvain Neuvel, author of the acclaimed Themis Files trilogy, launches a new series called Take Them to the Stars.
The genre is alternative or secret history, with lots of well-researched detail tightly woven into the plot. The main players are the Kibsu, whose origins are left murky, even to themselves, for now. The Kibsu descend in a female line of what are essentially clones going back some 3,000 years. They usually pair up in mother-daughter teams (Sara and Mia are the heroes here) since three generations is unlucky. Their mission is to get the human race off this planet and “to the stars,” which requires working behind-the-scenes with rocket scientists like Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev to nudge the space race along.
The Kibsu are driven, intelligent, and killing machines, but they’re opposed by a male line of blockers known as Trackers. There’s also a Cold War going on and global warming to deal with. Getting humanity to the stars won’t be easy.
Alex on SF 
Did you enjoy your time while reading it?
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I did enjoy it. I don’t think the reviews were all that great, but I thought the premise of mixing these superheroes in with real history (the rocket stuff) was interesting.
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On a related note, how do you find reviewing movies versus books? Since you have 2 different blogs I’m guessing HOW you write must be different?
I’m just curious 🙂
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I actually have four blogs. There are two book ones, this and Goodreports.
They started out as different sorts of writing. Goodreports is more regular book reviews, which I was writing for a newspaper starting in the ’90s. This site was born out of an SF column I was writing and the style of reviewing was limited to capsule-style reviews (around 150 words each). The movie reviews were meant to be very short too, and done in point form because I didn’t want to write full essays and I find that people tend to scan in their online reading anyway. But a lot of the movie reviews (or really notes, as I call them) ended up getting longer.
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So having different blogs is a carry over? I’m just so used to thinking of one blog with different categories that it takes some explanation for me for why actual different blogs.
I hear you about scanning. I do it myself when someone starts writing 6+ paragraphs for a book review and each paragraph is as long as one of my own posts 😀
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Yeah, I think I just kept them separate because the different subjects and styles of writing seemed so different in my own head I found it easier to do it this way. It keeps things clearer. But the one big blog format has its attractions.
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