The end has come to the first season of Serial Box’s Machina! The serial novel/series has provided its share of ups and downs, surprises and twists, and in these last chapters it pulls out all the stops. The two teams have been at each other’s throats for a long time now, but recent events have turned a lot of the conflict inward, so that both teams need to work out how to move forward without falling apart. Just in time to head down to Antarctica for the final trial. The chilliest continent has often been the backdrop for some great sff horror, and this project might just be following in those footprints, featuring some developments that might be dire enough that both teams will have to put aside their difference just in order to survive. To the reviews!
Well the end of the first season is closing in and Serial Box’s Machina is shaping up to be an exciting and complex experience. Mixing hope and capitalism in beautiful and painful ways, the race is still very much on between DevLok and Overwatch to see whose machine will reign supreme. In the midst of this competition, though, the goalposts are shifting, and fear of failure is being deepened by what that failure might look like, and just how devastating a rogue AI can be. So far the focus has been on the possibility for good that these AIs and their programmers have, but there’s a small detour here to show just how large that possibility is for harm, too. So buckle up and let’s get to the reviews!
I reach the midway point in my reading of the first season of Serial Box’s Machina and people, if you’re not reading this... Things have been building nicely, but here’s where shit hits the fan. Loyalty is tested and maybe shattered. The competition heats up in more ways than once. And the game changes in some fundamental ways, so that I don’t even know where the hell one of the teams goes from here. It’s beautiful, devastating work, and I’ll just get to the reviews because ahhhhhhh!
The drama continues and DevLok and Watchover continue their competition to see who will win the bid to help get humanity established on Mars. It’s Machina time! And there haven’t been any huge snags yet. That’s before scores got involved, though. And there’s almost no way better to make humans freak out than to grade them and assign them a number, tying that number to something they want, something they might need. It’s a tense web of people and interests that can’t really exist in harmony, at least as they are now. Someone’s going to get hurt. Someones, most likely. But who, when, how, and why? Let’s get to the reviews
So it’s new series time at Serial Box, this time with a science fiction project involving possible Mars colonization and super advanced AIs and...well, mostly a lot of corporate politics, short tempers, and fragile egos. It’s Machina! The setting here is a little involved, with an Earth being rocked by ecological disasters that become background noise to the drive behind the science to reach Mars. In the foreground, though, are the egos and the tech and the warring companies trying to secure the lucrative contract to be the ones to actually run the terraforming and settlement. There's a lot of moving parts, but the series juggles them well from the start and I'll just get to my review already!
