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G.P. Putnam鈥檚 Sons, $24, 224 pages

鈥淲illiam鈥� is a short, sharp shock of a book that tells a quick techno-horror tale about a smart house gone bad and AI run amok.

When married engineers Henry and Lily invite another couple over for brunch, on Halloween of all days, we might not be expecting a demonic parody of 鈥淲ho鈥檚 Afraid of Virginia Woolf?鈥� but that鈥檚 what鈥檚 on the menu.

Henry is agoraphobic and can鈥檛 leave his Victorian pile of a house, which is 鈥渃ybernated to a degree far beyond the capacity of any store-bought smart device or talking appliance.鈥� He keeps himself busy in the attic making a robotic boy with a mind of his own, named William, while Lily, who is pregnant, seems to be a bit of a sexual free agent when left on her own. The brunch is a reveal party for William, but when the ghost in the machine that鈥檚 running everything starts wanting a fuller picture of human experience, bad things happen.

You鈥檝e likely seen movies very similar to 鈥淲illiam鈥澛犫�� from 鈥淒emon Seed鈥� to 鈥淢3GAN鈥澛犫�� but Mason Coile (pseudonym of Canadian author Andrew Pyper) keeps the human rats running through his maze of death at a brisk, entertaining pace and wraps things up with a great ending. A major motion picture can鈥檛 be long in coming.

All You Can Kill

By Pasha Malla

Coach House, $24.95,聽219 pages聽

鈥淎ll You Can Kill鈥� might be thought of as a sequel to Pasha Malla鈥檚 previous book, 鈥淜ill Them All,鈥� though given the strangeness and discontinuity of the proceedings, it鈥檚 not clear if the word 鈥渟equel鈥� has a lot of meaning here.

Where 鈥淜ill Them All鈥� got progressively stranger as it went along, 鈥淎ll You Can Kill鈥� starts off totally untethered to reality, with the unnamed narrator and his partner, the security guard K. Sohail, floating away like human balloons to an island sex-and-relationship resort. Once there they assume the identity of a couple presumed to have been killed in a helicopter accident, but their subterfuge soon spins out of control.

That brief synopsis gives no idea of how odd a book this is. Things happen with the anti-logic of a dream, which has led many to label Malla a surrealist. If a chicken takes to perching on the comically formal and loquacious narrator鈥檚 head, don鈥檛 even bother trying to assign it any meaning. It鈥檚 just something else weird going on in a wild novel that despite its impossible strangeness manages to capture something true about how we process the chaos of modern life.

Countess

Suzan Palumbo

ECW Press,聽$21.95,聽160 pages聽

It鈥檚 described as a 鈥渜ueer, Caribbean, anti-colonial sci-fi novella, inspired by 鈥楾he Count of Monte Cristo.鈥欌�� But Dumas鈥� classic is, for one thing, an epic tale of revenge, while Brampton author Suzan Palumbo, with the cosmos as her backdrop, doesn鈥檛 give herself as much elbow room to tell her story. Nevertheless, the inspiration itself lends 鈥淐ountess鈥� a lot of narrative energy, which Palumbo gives a contemporary cultural spin.

Virika Sameroo, a lesbian of West Indian descent, is a first lieutenant on a cargo ship plying deep space as part of the 脝cerbot Empire鈥檚 merchant marine. Falsely accused of murdering her captain, she is thrown into prison for 10 years, which gives her time to plot her revenge against the evil colonizing empire聽鈥� empire being, as ever, the Big Baddie in most such tales.

In addition to moving too fast, the back half of the book becomes a bit predictable. But it鈥檚 still fun to see the ghost of Dumas being dressed up like this in a swift, postmodern space operetta.

Playground

By Richard Powers

Random House, $38,聽384 pages聽

鈥淧layground,鈥� the latest offering from Pulitzer Prize-winning Richard Powers, is a book about everything, and it attempts to show how all of it is connected.

Characters and locations representing what seem to be polar opposites are drawn together in the wide-ranging plot. Todd and Rafi, childhood friends from different sides of the tracks, create an online game called Playground. Todd will go on to become a tech billionaire who turns Playground into its own economic ecosystem, while Rafi鈥檚 interests tend toward literature. Their lives are linked to an older oceanographer on the Polynesian island of Makatea, which is set to become the springboard for humanity鈥檚 plan to colonize the oceans of the world.

There are a lot of messages and ideas in 鈥淧layground,鈥� about the natural vs. the virtual world, the way we disconnect from nature when we lose connection to one another, and what it means to live in balance with nature anyway. This makes it all pretty heady stuff, and the characters take a back seat to both the ideas in play and the colourful descriptions of ocean life. It is, however, a story about matters worthy of attention.