Review: "BAE-I" and "Room E-36" by Douglas Corleone

 

Ghost Signal: Dark Frequencies BAE-I and Room E-36 by Douglas Corleone Ghost Signal Press, 2025     One of my recent reading discoveries and new favorites, Douglas Corleone, has written a pair of novelettes—BAE-I and Room E-36—in a new series of dark technology sci-fi tales that read like a television anthology series. Both are standalone stories, but they are thematically linked and have disturbingly believable near-future settings. Their shared theme: artificial intelligence is coming for us. The first, BAE-I, which was released in May, is about a concerned mother, LynAnn Duft, and her adult son, Howie. The place: LynAnn’s home in “a small Missouri town forgotten by time.” Howie resides in the basement with his computer, no friends, and no hope of ever meeting that right girl. But everything changes when LynAnn responds to a television ad for a company called Bae-i. A company that will— I’ll let you discover exactly what Bae-i does because it’ll be more fun that way. The other, Room E-36, which was released in June, finds Jack Alden, a travel writer carrying a lifetime of disappointment and demons, wrapping up an assignment in Waikiki. His article is due in two days and Jack knows the best place to write it is on-island. So when an invitation for a free room at a new resort called Echo at Ko Olina—on Oahu’s leeward side—reaches Jack, he grabs it. The hotel is unique because it is fully autonomous; which means it is operated by artificial intelligence without the aid of human employees. A set-up that makes Jack cringe, but… he goes anyway. Because what could possibly go wrong?

These novelettes are scary, thought-provoking, and entertaining as hell. A trifecta of sorts for any reader with a hankering for a good and satisfying tale. Their lengths—somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 words—along with Corleone’s cinematic prose, make them as much fun to read as a television series like The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror are to watch. As usual for Corleone, the settings are vivid and compelling; adding both atmosphere and tension to the narrative. Howie’s basement lair is confining and dark, while the Echo at Ko Olina is obscenely antiseptic. But the real punch is the almost noir-like downfall of the primary characters as they make one bad decision after another. Do yourself a favor and read BAE-I and Room E-36 because we all need a good reality-based scare from time to time.

You can read BAE-I and Room E-36 on Kindle—each is a mere 99-cents or included with you Kindle Unlimited subscription. Click here to go to the Ghost Signal: Dark Frequencies page at Amazon.