Summary
Wrapping stories within stories, Rian Hughes’ XX unleashes the full narrative potential of graphic design. It uses the visual culture of the twenty-first century to ask us who we think we are - and where we may be headed next.
At Jodrell Bank Observatory a mysterious signal of extraterrestrial origin has been detected. Jack Fenwick, artificial intelligence expert and on the autistic spectrum, thinks he can decode it. But when he and his associates at tech startup Intelligencia find a …
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781529020588 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1529020581 |
| Author: | Rian Hughes |
| Publisher: | Pan Macmillan |
| Imprint: | Picador |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 1008 |
| Release Date: | 25 January 2022 |
| Weight: | 1.12kg |
| Dimensions: | 58mm x 154mm x 234mm |
| Audience Age: | 18 |
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Critics Review
Genuinely unlike anything else I have ever read … The confidence and style with which Hughes juggles all his material is only matched by his extraordinary imagination and vision, and as the book races towards a mindboggling climax it leads the reader to some remarkable ideas about the nature of life, the universe and everything. Simply stunning. * The Big Issue *
Vastly ambitious, XX is the most astonishing blend of narrative, meta-narratives and visuals. Real ‘wow’ moments and big ideas combine with brilliant typographical flourishes to create the Moby Dick of sci-fi. * Daily Mail *
XX keeps you turning the pages, engages with big ideas and delivers an authentic jolt of awe as it takes its galaxy-spanning conceit to the limit, and then some. * Financial Times *
The look is every bit as vital as its plot and its prose. Compulsively readable. Its ideas are grand, and it moves like a thriller. Come for the lush design, stay for the Clarkeian ideas and sly sense of humour. * SFX *
Rian Hughes’ stunning visual spectacle of a novel … this staggering book! * SciFi Now *
Brilliant, exciting, absorbing, and mind-blowing … It’s one of those towering achievements we keep hearing about. XX is truly modernist in every way. Whatever Goethe’s Faust was, whatever Melville’s Moby Dick was, whatever Joyce’s Ulysses or Kubrick’s 2001 was, XX is its latest expression - a perfect work of art about what it means to be human in a world of gigantic ideas. – Grant Morrison
This is a book which only Rian Hughes could have created, which should make us all eternally grateful that he did. – Kieron Gillen
A novel that is novel is so many ways. A brilliant co-mix of text and graphic design in which sign, symbol and word are linguistically intertwined and reinvented. – Steven Heller
Rian Hughes is a luminescent pop culture demon. – David Quantick
Rian Hughes
Rian Hughes is an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator, comic artist, writer, and typographer who has worked extensively for the British and American advertising, music, and comic book industries. He has written and drawn comics for 2000AD and Batman: Black and White, and designed logos for James Bond, The X-Men, Superman, Hedkandi, and The Avengers.
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