I must admit that getting through a 700+ page novel in little more than a week is a rare thing, even when it’s something I really enjoy. This time I think it was because I’ve been impatiently waiting to read the English version of Tow Ubukata’s Mardock Scramble ever since the first part of the animated adaptation formed the high point of my recent Leeds Film Festival experience.

Another reason is that cyberpunk is a ‘comfort food’ genre for me in that every now and then I feel the need to come back to the William Gibson- and Blade Runner-style neo-noir futuristic thrillers. With a few little quirks and cultural peculiarities aside, this is one of the most intelligent and gripping examples of the genre I’ve had the pleasure to read.

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Harrison Ford’s character explains to a class of students how the search for ‘facts’ is not the same thing as the search for ‘truth’. In the sense of studying archeology versus philosophy that’s certainly the case, but real-life documentation of history is also subjective so it’s often difficult to tell where fact ends and fiction begins. The Stories of Ibis is, among other wonderful things, a clever reminder that facts can be falsified or lost…which ironically makes the significance of fiction all the more significant.

This isn’t a family-friendly blockbuster adventure movie of course: as a piece of thought-provoking futuristic SF though, Ibis is one of the best books I’ve read in months. Part of its premise hinges on the nameless protagonist, a wandering storyteller and amateur historian, and his problematic search for the facts – or the truth? – behind historical events that chart humanity’s downfall at the hands of robots and A.I.. Enter Ibis, a beautiful android who wants to do nothing more than tell him stories.