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There is more than enough coverage of US imperialism in contemporary media to fill days of airwaves, but not that much material that speaks through the words of the imperial management itself. This collection of documents showing views on the rest of the world by American policy leaders, strategists and special service heads mirrors the glasses through which other global powers in history saw countries and people subjected - or to be subjected - to their rule. Reading this documentary material leaves nobody with enough space to claim we live in a post-imperial era.

K-Punk's inimitable talent in connecting the most crucial junctions of our socio-economic being with the most acute experiences of our cultural creation and consumption is displayed in Ghosts of My Life as vividly as in Capitalist Realism, if from a different angle. It is a reminder of how much we miss his ability of capturing and raising traces of material reality on artistic work, in references to a "failure of the future" in works of music and cinema.

No society survives effects of its material existence on social, economic, political, cultural and personal lives. K-Punk knows like nobody else how to describe the burden of the consumerist society on its every member, from the moment of their waking up to the second of their going to sleep. The ubiquitous presence of market demands, propaganda of individualist existence, and economic hardship which, for most people, leaves no space and time for analysis and introspection, is conveyed in his usual, rare eloquence, and even rarer emotional intelligence.

Unlike The Empyrean Age, this work is a much more compatible style of storytelling for the New Eden universe. I don't know if the difference in physical formats of the two books - the other one an almost-pocket-size print, this one a proper one - should've been a giveaway from the start, but Gonzales offers an enjoyable path of more elaborate stories, and less cheap exchanges between the personalities detailed.

A series of conversations about the internet, privacy, digital surveillance, the militarisation of cyberspace and more, from the people whose vision of digital freedoms has been under siege by both state power and corporations the world over for many years now. And it is not only specific topics on technology but also occasional philosophical forays into questions of types of freedoms and their fundamental nature.

The typical Hollywood-esque narrative of a protagonist embarking on a journey of personal quest is often hollow to the point of irritation, however when placed in the realm of the universe of New Eden, the place where life in EVE Online unfolds, it regains some of the credibility. Following the diverse faces of the novel throughout the vast expanses of space in their goals and struggles was enjoyable.

What is collected here is a testament to how a digital universe can enable people to create stories of a far future world now, and, at the same time, a reminder of how creators of the said digital realm went so wrong in their design after 2013. This is how magical New Eden used to be, and this is the evidence of what that world lost with CCP's marketing decision to transform it from a unique open-world science fiction reality to just another microtransaction-fuelled PVE pastime.

An example of contrasts in storytelling - detailings of high-level political and corporate dealings and backstabbing is well-presented, but then there are the scenes with regrettable levels of shallowness in them. Drones speaking with human tendency of unscripted investigation, action-packed sequences that have no deeper origins or consequences, and more cases of overly Americanised narration of an entirely non-Hollywood-esque universe.