Oddly twinned masterpieces by one of the greatest fabulists of any age past, present, or 40,000 years in the future In Festival, the genius postmodern sci-fi filmmaker Alec Steryx is the star guest of a film festival in an unnamed country. But he s brought a surprise his nonagenarian mother. Everyone is baffled Why? Half-blind and terminally cranky, she does nothing but complain, despite insisting on attending every screening and reception. As Steryx s mother gums up the works for the festival organizers, larger problems are in store A delightfully baroque comedy of errors, Festival, is, all at once, a loving parody of the institutions that support artists, a meditation on postmodern art, and a propulsive, lyrical, surreal adventure. In the far, far, future, a middle-aged father has fallen behind the times. Bemused and disturbed, he watches his children play the eponymous Game of the Worlds, a Total Reality war game that involves the annihilation of countless alien civilizations which are at least as real as the narrator s own. As he debates the ethics of the game, struggles with his home s intelligent system, and fumblingly manipulates his Discourse Corrector (a dead ringer for ChatGPT) on virtual beachside dates, an errant thought threatens to set a world-ending chain of logic into motion the return of the Idea of God Epic and domestic,…