{"id":33209,"date":"2025-06-28T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T08:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=33209"},"modified":"2025-06-27T17:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T17:01:10","slug":"second-shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/06\/28\/second-shift\/","title":{"rendered":"Second Shift"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Kit Anderson<\/strong> (Avery Hill Publishing)
\nISBN: 978-1-917355-20-9 (TPB)<\/p>\n

The world has gone to crap and work sucks. This is the eternal verity wherever and whenever you are. Not much can be done about the world – except maybe make or find another one – but here\u2019s a way to at least handle the work part of that equation…<\/p>\n

Grand Master of short form graphic narratives – you can just call them comics if you want – Kit Anderson (Safer Places<\/strong>) originated in Boulder, Colorado but now lives near Z\u00fcrich. Ceaselessly making graphic stories long before earning an MFA from The Center for Cartoon Studies in 2022 – Anderson\u2019s earlier stuff – can be seen at Parsifal Press and The Rumpus and for greater elucidation and edification you could get check out Comics \u2014 Kit Anderson<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

Here Anderson dives deep into the contemporary by employing a future setting, exploring our increasingly uncertain\/presumed\/predicted fate in terms of the proverbial Human Condition – especially our self-destructive, double edged sword capacity to simultaneously doubt and trust – in a tale also exploring memory, imagination, inner worlds, nature, secrets, self-help solutions and isolation…
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\nPensive, genteel and quietly suspenseful, with action reduced to the participants\u2019 downtime entertainment, Second Shift<\/strong> takes its emotional lead from contemplative classic science fiction movies like Silent Running<\/strong> and Soylent Green<\/strong> by tracing the revelations of live-in labourer Birdie Doran<\/em>. At a time where human beings are pragmatically honed into useful components for megacorporations, she – like a few \u201clucky\u201d others – toils for Terracorp, living on a hostile planet shepherding complex machines as they terraform the environment when not harvesting cometary material in mind-numbingly repetitive tasks that one day others will benefit from. It\u2019s a living…<\/p>\n

She spends her downtime in \u2018Dropout\u2019<\/em>, indulging in the rich fantasy life provided and recommended by Company Exclusive DreamSpace: an engaging VR\/AI environment replacing mundane travails with immersive escape routes (wizard\u2019s worlds, haunted houses, cyber-realities, Knights & Ladies, alien mindscapes, fresh starts). Even when not suspended in economically sensible life stasis, Birdie hardly ever interacts with her human workers, like her brother Heck<\/em> and standoffish Porter<\/em>. Most of her conversations are with avatars of monitoring AI algorithm Station<\/em>… and those are about work and her operating efficiency…<\/p>\n

Toil and rest don\u2019t leave much room for stimulating conversation and playing in the Station provided \u2018Ruined Castle\u2019 <\/em>leaves Heck and Birdie increasingly bored and anxious. So, when he picks up an inexplicable \u2018Signal\u2019<\/em> Station cannot convince Heck to ignore it, and soon Birdie must trek out into the ever-changing icy wilds to fetch him back…
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\nHer trudging trek eventually finds him staring at another – abandoned – station outpost, similar to but also utterly different to the cloying womb they live in. Unable to resist exploring, they discover wonders and eventually the VR menu of whoever worked there. What particularly grips then is something labelled \u201cWildlife\u201d…<\/p>\n

Torn over whether to report what they\u2019ve found, and almost killed on their return journey by an inexplicable and highly suspicious event, the Dorans\u2019 discovery increasingly divides whilst intellectually invigorating the siblings. Soon the shared secret is disrupting their efficiency and they clandestinely \u2018Return\u2019<\/em> to the lost outpost. It soon it becomes apparent that life for them has forever changed and nothing can stop what lies ahead…
\n\"\"
\nRevelations and realisations come quietly but inescapably as the mystery intensifies in \u2018Debris\u2019<\/em>, \u2018Drop-In\u2019<\/em> and \u2018Payload\u2019<\/em> before resolution arrives in \u2018Museum Hall\u2019<\/em>, but can even enhanced awareness and growing knowledge help change this world? Whatever the outcome, it\u2019s one only Birdie alone can achieve…<\/p>\n

Beguiling, subversive, intensely absorbing and asking all the right questions on where the world or work is taking us – how do you feel about trading up to guaranteed food, lodging and being coddled and coshed by VR babysitters in return for surrendering liberty and your own opinions and questions? – Second Shift<\/strong> is socially-charged speculative fiction in the grand manner and a sublime, layered read you\u2019ll return to over and again.
\n\u00a9 Kit Anderson 2025. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kit Anderson (Avery Hill Publishing) ISBN: 978-1-917355-20-9 (TPB) The world has gone to crap and work sucks. This is the eternal verity wherever and whenever you are. Not much can be done about the world – except maybe make or find another one – but here\u2019s a way to at least handle the work … <\/p>\n

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