Reader's Room pulls the most fascinating writing from speculative fiction, science, and technology. In this edition we talk about experience on a Japanese leisure island, the unhelpfulness of book blurbs, and Nick Harkaway’s The Gone Away World.

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• Odaiba fortresses turned leisure island in Tokyo bay.
• Palette Town giant, eclectic collection of amusements.
• Mega Web. What happens when Toyota builds a theme park.
• The origin of the book blurb.
• Nick Harkaway's The Gone Away World.
• Linkdump:
  • How writers mess with our brains.
  • Facial recognition software finds 3000 lost kids in four days.
  • Injecting memories into sea slugs. (Full original paper here.)

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