Empty promises

There's something strange and unsettling about empty shopping centres and big-box retail units, and about the general air of vacancy (cultural, architectural, spiritual) of these bleak, identikit nowheresvilles they create. By contrast, in Up All Night, Imogen Willetts sees such spaces more positively, as a blank canvas and an exciting opportunity, endorsing their colonisation for cultural purposes.

In this fascinating piece for the Oakland Review Of Books that touches on the literal and metaphorical toxicity of Silicon Valley and AI, Colin Dickey suggests that they can be both, arguing that with Us and Backrooms the strip malls of the Bay Area have become "the preeminent setting for underground labyrinth horror".