Cloud Atlas: You're Better Off Reading the Book

"First I need to talk about the book, because it's not as if Cloud Atlas the movie came from nowhere — and if you think it's only the movie you want to know about, I think you need a context for what's onscreen."

"Author David Mitchell writes exquisite pastiches, and Cloud Atlas is in the form of six distinct and enthralling novellas set in six different eras with six different literary styles."

"First comes the journal of a 19th century lawyer for a slave-trading company, then a series of early 20th century letters from a down-and-out composer who apprentices himself to an elderly musical giant. We jump to a 1970s paranoid conspiracy thriller; then a 2012 tale of a debt-ridden publisher tricked into signing himself into an old age home. In a totalitarian future, a South Korean restaurant is staffed by female robots called "fabricants," a couple of which are beginning to think for themselves with tumultuous social consequences. The last story is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which some denizens are hunter-gatherers, others cannibals."