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nigellicus's review
adventurous
dark
5.0
This is a perfecrtly packaged piece of entertainment. A dystopia of grotesque economic inequality and exploitation, a cast of endearing and plucky misfiits out to better themselves and their families and escape their urban prisons, a film industry obscenely bloated with funding and profits, movies of action and spectacle where the exras are filmed fighing for survival against artifical alien monstrosities for rich financial rewards if they survive, a secret resistance within the industry helping the extras, unlikely alliances formed in the thick of battle, deeply moving connections with family and community. Honestly it's rare for a 'people fighting and dying for entertainment' story have so much defiantly uncynical-in-the-face-of-societal-horror heart. The build-up, the setting, the frenetic action, the self-regarding genius of the director behind it all are all absolutely pitch-perfect, and it all comes in just over five hours of listening time.
pwbalto's review against another edition
5.0
Rip-roaring sort-of-dystopian near-future sci-fi that 1) made sense and 2) was a great story. Shea is a screenwriter as well as a sci-fi writer, and you can see that in his meticulously blocked action. It's a lot like Hunger Games for an older audience - in it, reality shows have morphed into "live action" movies, in which human extras battle animatronic monsters to the death in city-size sets that are designed something like video game environments, with caches of weapons and safe hiding places, but also with dummy weapons and hidden portals for monsters to enter.
An older teen might go for this entirely, and, while there's plenty of cusswords, there's no graphic sex, and most of the violence is monster vs. human, not human-on-human.
An older teen might go for this entirely, and, while there's plenty of cusswords, there's no graphic sex, and most of the violence is monster vs. human, not human-on-human.
davybaby's review against another edition
2.0
I heard of Shea on the podcast, Supercontext, where the hosts effectively sold him as a hidden gem of genre fiction. That may be true for his more horrific works like The Autopsy ([b:The Autopsy and Other Tales|3326839|The Autopsy and Other Tales|Michael Shea|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1354903243s/3326839.jpg|3364825]), but that's not what The Extra is. It falls firmly in the well-worn tracks of other "death of the proletariat as entertainment" fiction, without bringing much new to the table.
The Extra is a near-ish future science fiction dystopian novel where action movies have come to include essentially blood sport. Advanced AI monsters are developed for each new movie, and the carnage that surrounds the primary story is made up of thousands of extras who volunteer to try to survive actual death for the length of the movie for the chance of a sweet payout.
It's a fast-moving and fun novel, but there's not much of the sense of wonder that brings me to sci-fi. There's also no clear protagonist (just a single POV character whose sections are told in 1st, rather than 3rd, person), which makes the singular title a bit strange. With that said, there are a few sections from the perspective of the creative genius behind the "live action" genre, which presents an interesting sociopathic view of art.
It was a reasonably fun read, and I may seek out a few of his horror tales, but I won't be continuing this series or breaking my back to track his work down.
The Extra is a near-ish future science fiction dystopian novel where action movies have come to include essentially blood sport. Advanced AI monsters are developed for each new movie, and the carnage that surrounds the primary story is made up of thousands of extras who volunteer to try to survive actual death for the length of the movie for the chance of a sweet payout.
It's a fast-moving and fun novel, but there's not much of the sense of wonder that brings me to sci-fi. There's also no clear protagonist (just a single POV character whose sections are told in 1st, rather than 3rd, person), which makes the singular title a bit strange. With that said, there are a few sections from the perspective of the creative genius behind the "live action" genre, which presents an interesting sociopathic view of art.
It was a reasonably fun read, and I may seek out a few of his horror tales, but I won't be continuing this series or breaking my back to track his work down.
fablejack's review against another edition
2.0
I wanted to like this based on the concept, which is sort of Running Man meets Starship Troopers. Too much jargon too soon made me work too hard to get into the story, and once the action started, it never let up. That could be exciting, but in this case, the characters and story suffered for it.
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