5 comments about Thirteen.

1. THIRTEEN(2007) is Richard K. Morgan's fifth SciFi novel, and the 2nd book outside the Takeshi Kovacs universe. I've read all five, and this is the best of the bunch.
   
   It is a SciFi Thriller set 100 years in the future. "Thirteens" are genetrically-enhanced and specially-trained humans, designed to help outnumbered but cash-rich countries win the wars of the future. But Thirteens turn out to be Social Frankensteins, once they have helped win the wars they were created to help win... and the bulk of them end up getting shipped off to the new Mars Colony (or get internned in prison like colonies in out of the way locations)... but, strange things happen when thirteens get "loose" on Earth.
   
   This book is very exciting most of the time; but, there were a few dull moments (how couldn't there be in such a long buok - 544 Hardcover pages), and events leading up to the ending get a little far-fetched. Having said that - this book is really pretty close to being the perfect type of SciFi stories that I'm interested in reading these days (Near Future High-Tech Military/Action SciFi)... I give it 4-1/2 stars, rounded up to 5.



2. If you start this book thinking you are going to get more of the story from the Altered Carbon line, then you will be disappointed.
   
   The book is well written, the future setting (if a bit melodramatic in its portrayal of the future US) is well realized and eloquently depicted. It has all the essential elements.
   
   The only two problems: The reader isn't let in on enough back-story early enough and the protagonist doesn't earn your sympathy (he is a bit of a chump).
   
   All said, it was still an enjoyable read.



3. This book is way too long for what it is. And figuring out what it is is a bigger mystery than the book itself.
   
   Morgan spent a great deal of time setting up his world and preaching about the evils of "Jesusland" which contributed to the length of the book without contributing to the story.



4. Thirteen, by Richard K. Morgan, is an extremely well crafted novel about life in the near future. Humans have colonized Mars, though by all reports it's not a very pleasant place to live. Humans have also toyed with genetic alteration of themselves, producing several variants, one of which is the thirteen. By the time this book takes place, the variants have fallen out of favor. The thirteens, in particular, are considered dangerous, and are required to either live in camps or go to Mars. Many thirteens, who obviously dislike these options, try to live in secret. Enter the protagonist, Carl, a thirteen hired by a big, faceless government agency to track down the rogue thirteens and bring them in if possible. Against this backdrop is set a murder mystery on a grand scale. Enjoy.
   
   This book is available in ebook format both for the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle.



5. I had high hopes for this book after reading a review of it on an online science fiction website. Unfortunately the story is dragged down by several factors.
   
   
   
   First, the author sets up this whole Feminization of civilization, then shows us no indication that it has actually ocurred. Most of the positions of power are held by men, and the men in the book speak and act like 20th century men. It's a sign an author skills are weak when they set up a premise in the book about how a future society looks, then fails to show us a society that works in the way the premise described.
   
   Second, this is not really much of a science fiction novel, it reads more a like a cheap detective story. The aspects of SF are just kind of pasted on to the story as special effects.
   
   Third, it's always distracting when the author lets their political leanings show through in their books. The author is British, big surprise, his leftist leanings show through in his adoption of the secession of the USA into three states, the center of which is Jesusland, a bigoted, racist, backwards, hate-spewing nation based on religion and the Republican party.
   
   I was hoping to enjoy this as I see the author has a whole series of books I thought I could enjoy, but after this, I don't need to waste my time.

5 comments about The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book).

1. I eagerly paid full price for this book upon the recommendation of the one person whose opinion I respect in the whole wide world -- my brother. I'm sorry to say he let me down.
   
   This book does have several things going for it. First, its storyline either consciously or inadvertently mimics that of Lewis Padgett's classic "Mimsy Were the Borogoves," which is one of the finest sci-fi short stories ever written. Also, the future world it envisions is internally consistent, logical and interesting.
   
   The most important character, Nell, is fully developed. Some other reviewers have critiqued the characters as two-dimensional, and to a certain extent they're correct, but the principle character was written confidently and well. The book also avoids most of the faux-60s self-affected hippie language/lifestyle and bewildering stream-of-consciousness rambling that unfortunately identifies its particular sub-genre, notwithstanding the first couple of chapters.
   
   But...the book doesn't really go anywhere or say anything clearly. That's its main failure. The author has something to say about ethnicity and culture, and he says it, but his message is curiously muddled (if humanity is to break down by ethnicity, as opposed to territoriality, then why are the Fists so intent on reclaiming the historical territory of China?). Is the author merely attempting to fast-forward the Boxer Rebellion by 150 years? An interesting concept, but one that seems curiously disconnected to the other events in the book. The Fists don't even show up for real until the last 50 pages.
   
   Is Stephenson attempting to discuss the relationship of culture and technology? Another interesting concept, but while he states that theme clearly in several places throughout the book (e.g., Finkle-McGraw's observations on the Rodney King riots), he seems to be implying that the McGuffin of the Seed technology, which supposedly will vault the Han Chinese ahead of other ethnicities, can be essentially imported from the West (i.e., from Hackworth and the Drummers/CryptNet). How is that different from the quotidian status quo?
   
   The only level that this book "worked" on for me was that of self-actualization. That's the same reason I loved "Mimsy Were the Borogoves." But that theme is somewhat lost in the rest of the book.



2. This is my first taste of Stephenson and I was pleasantly surprised. The book is very imaginative and the author is obviously extremely creative. His writing skills are suberb and he really succeeds in drawing the reader into this fascinating story.
   The story is very funny, interesting and even exciting in parts. It's a real page-turner and I could hardly put it down. The only flaw is the techno-babble (although sometimes he is making fun of technology by using excessive techno babble) which I tended to skip over.
   All in all highly recommended for all those interested in sci-fi, be it hardcore or not.



3. Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" is divided into equal-length "Part the First" and "Part the Second," which require two opposing ratings:
   
   Part the First -- 5 stars, for a brilliantly-imagined and peopled alternate world
   Part the Second -- 1 star, for a shallow, badly-acted, pulp-SF collection of cliches
   
   In the Part the First, we learn how a near-magical, interactive Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is stolen from its rightful owner -- the brilliant nanotech artifexer John Hackworth, from a neo-Victorian community situated on an offshore island near Shanghai -- and ends up lifting its unintended recipient, the underprivileged girl Nell, out of her dismally violent family life. Here, Stephenson weaves the same magic as Lewis Carroll did in Alice in Wonderland, incorporating a biting, subversive children's story into an engrossing adult book. Stephenson artfully limns the social conventions of both western and Chinese cultures, capturing elaborately witty dialogues, devious social strategies and intricate psychological perspectives with near-perfect fidelity. His 22nd century world is a completely convincing, multi-threaded, total-immersion experience, which nearly compels the reader to keep turning the pages.
   
   But in Part the Second, it all goes wrong. A fundamental premise of good science fiction is that there should be a single factor requiring suspension of disbelief; the rest of the fictional milieu should be solidly anchored on ground familiar to contemporary readers. In "The Diamond Age," the nanotech matter compilers, working from atomic feeds, are the "suspension of disbelief" item. Though violating every principle of energy conservation, once accepted, they conduct the reader into a beautifully articulated, internally consistent set of consequences for the boldly-sketched characters.
   
   Unfortunately, from the first pages of Part the Second, the veiled sexuality of John Hackworth's neo-Victorian world is suddenly exchanged for crude biology-text descriptions of sexual excretions. These occur in the realm of the Drummers: semi-sentient, merged-minded humans living in underwater dirt-dauber nests, who spend their time in darkened caverns either fornicating or pounding on the walls. This ham-handed lurch into a bizarre netherworld is unerotic, tasteless, and incidentally disqualifies many teenaged readers who might benefit from the book's arcane vocabulary and bold neologisms. But worse, it's a blunder. As a plot device, the Drummers are silly, absurd; they fatally puncture Stephenson's carefully-crafted illusion, letting the air out of his 22nd century fable. But they are hardly the only defect of Part the Second.
   
   In Part the First, brief excerpts quoted from the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer provide a window into the unconventional education which young Nell is receiving. However, in Part the Second, probably thirty pages are devoted to a discursive, repetitive shaggy-dog story involving logical mechanisms. Young Nell, improbably transformed into a computer geek, debugs a dozen different versions of the same Turing machine. This lengthy lacuna apparently sets up the geek-insider joke of crowning her as "Princess Nell, Duchess of Turing." The snarky title of nobility is so devoid of significance that it is never mentioned again.
   
   As the conclusion approaches, all semblance of social artifice, conversational subtlety and psychological insight is dumped overboard. It almost seems that Stephenson either lost interest, or was racing the clock to meet a publisher's deadline. In any case, the lovingly-detailed characters from the early part of the book gradually shed their human qualities, in a manner which parallels that of Nell's four childhood pets. In a convention obviously borrowed from the cartoon strip Calvin & Hobbes, her wise, didactic "night friends" revert into mute stuffed animals in the daytime. Similarly, by the end of the book, the major characters have degenerated from complex, thoughtful human beings into plastic super-hero action figures. In the chaotic conclusion, all that holds the reader's interest is whether they will collide with each other, trip over the props, or whether the whole stage setting will explode, providing the ultimate copout ending for a lazy author (and this is very nearly what happens).
   
   In particular, the long-foreshadowed encounter between Nell and her beloved Primer narrator and surrogate mother, Miranda, is disposed of (on the penultimate page) in six slapdash paragraphs, without a word being exchanged. It actually angered me: I waded through 500 pages, for THIS as a payoff? What a ripoff! What an insult!
   
   After all the pointless sound and fury of its botched anticlimax, "The Diamond Age" can be seen clearly as a damaged jewel: a priceless diamond that was ruined on the grinding wheel by a master cutter who let his attention slip. Probably the best hope, should it adapted for film, is that a sensitive screenwriter can be found to excise the obscene graffiti, puerile indulgences, and malicious vandalism strewn through the latter part of the book by its own misguided or demotivated author.



4. I go back and forth with whether I liked this book or whether I liked this book a lot. With the exception of Stephenson's endings, I tend to find his werks very strong overall; these are compelling reads with digestible but thought-provoking questions and scenarios and some rather scintillating characters that are one part Jungian archetype and two parts original. Diamond Age shares those qualities with the rest of his body of work and yet somehow seems a bit... deficient?
   
   It's clear that Diamond Age is the successor to the Snow Crash world, each critical variable accelerated along every axis. And that's where its strengths emerge; it's a bit more of a long-form treatment of the subject matter, takes a more delicate approach (e.g., Nell's story), and goes unafraid into some areas where you felt he might have tip-toed in some previous werk. But at the same time, when you put this one down, the classic Stephensonian termination shock gets a bit hyperbolic. There's a lot of slack-jawed: "But... What next?"



5. Diamond Age is a fascinating read although it loses steam half way through. Stephenson writes about the future with nano technology as if hes been there. The characters are well written (more believable than Snow Crash) and there is a lot of insight into differences between cultures (philes). Stephensons background in Geography and Physics is quite evident here. I would give it 4.5 stars and it would be even better if the plot was cleaned up a little as it starts to drag and become convoluted in the middle. Still worth the read.

5 comments about Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International).

1. Another split story line from Murakami (do I see a pattern?). This is my second by him (Wild Sheep Chase was the other). This has a much higher speculative fiction feel to it. This isn't a bad thing.
   
   The main character's battle within himself of whether to play life safe or not is told in alternating chapters each taking a side. The characters are very exaggerated and quite funny. I've always liked librarians but have never met one like this.
   
   Murakami has been added to my "must buy authors" list.



2. This is the 5th book I have read by Haruki Murakami and it may be my favorite. It is definitely abstract and belongs to a world of it's own. The first 20 or 30 pages were tough to get through, but after that I couldn't put it down. Certain aspects of this book are similar to Kafka on the Shore which is an all time favorite of mine. Do your self a favor and buy this one.



3. This book was just a mind-blowing read through and through. It's like packaged brain damage. In a good way.



4. Imagine if Raymond Chandler had collaborated with David Lynch, maybe with Philip K. Dick throwing in a few cents every now and then.
   
   That gives you some idea of what Haruki Murakami's "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" is like. Split into two different, barely-intertwined narratives, Murakami's quirkily bittersweet novel is a bizarre sci-fi mystery and an exploration of the human mind's limits... right to the world's end. It's a brilliant, bittersweetly intricate novel, and one of Murakami's best.
   
   The protagonist is just doing his job -- he's a "shuffler," with a chip in his brain -- when he visits an eccentric scientist and his precocious granddaughter. But then he gets sent an animal skull, which appears to be a unicorn's. And even weirder, corporate agents are invading his home and tearing it apart.
   
   At the same time -- in alternating chapters -- we are told the story of a man who arrives at a walled city surrounded by unicorns, at the End of the World. He becomes the Dreamreader at the library, finding memories hidden in skulls. But he soon discovers that this city is a prison of sorts -- and that after surrendering his shadow, he faces losing his soul.
   
   Meanwhile, the original narrator -- who may also be the second -- is called in by the granddaughter when her grandfather disappears. Turns out the whole world may be about to end. The two brave an underground cavern riddled with voracious, monstrous INKlings, only for the narrator to discover that the greatest danger is in his own mind -- and it offer a terrifying, glorious possibility to him.
   
   Not many serious authors could write about computer chips, unicorns, sci-fi corporations, the intricacies of brain "circuitry," and sewers full of nasty Japanese hobgoblins who like rotting meat. All in the same book, and without making you shake your head and groan "Aw, come on!".
   
   But amazingly, that is not what makes "Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World" a work of genius. Rather it's that "Hard Boiled Wonderland" and "The End of the World" are two separate books -- one is written in angular, wry prose in a grimy urban landscape, with moments of horror woven in. And one is written in flowing, soft, almost dreamlike prose in a pale, almost idyllic world that may or may not be real.
   
   In both stories, Murakami weaves intricate, detailed webs of words, evoking subterranean chases from flesh-eating kappas and mildly comic encounters with thugs, as well as the poignant emptiness of the End of the World city. And he explores the whole concept of the mind being infinite, and that time does not exist in our dreams.
   
   As both plots wind on, Murakami intricately twines them together. Hints, phrases, a shared lover, and the whole question of unicorns -- these tie together the two alternating plots, first in tiny ways. As the final quarter of the book unfolds, Murakami paints a complex vision of just what is going on for our unlikely heroes -- and reveals just where the End of the World is.
   
   And it's even harder to tell at first if there is are two narrators, or if one of them is dreamed, in another time, or on another planet. The Shuffler and Dreamreader seem like very different men, but similarities start to pop up between them -- such as their dual attractions to pretty young librarians -- but Murakami successfully keeps you guessing until he reveals what the Shuffler and Dreamreader truly are.
   
   "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" is a masterpiece of modern fiction -- a sci-fi mystery that looks to the horizon of the human mind, written as two intertwined stories. Definitely outstanding.



5. Admittedly, this isn't a book I'd have picked up for a casual read, but once I got past the first 100 pages, I couldn't set it down. The book has many layers to it and is one that I'm sure I'm going to revisit a few times. Its a great book for a book club or to read with a friend. It was a hard read, a very cortically driven story but Murakami is an incredibly gifted author and this book highlights his skills. Its a book that will capture your imagination and plays with your mind, in the most enjoyable and unexpected ways. I felt quite bewildered though the first half of the book. The second half felt more like a 'tempo run'. The climax, to my complete delighted surprise, brought peace where I'd been expecting the exhilaration of victory.

5 comments about Neuromancer.

1. I would have been far too young to read 'Neuromancer' when it was first published. My entire life has included, if not revolved around, the emerging technologies that inspired Mr. Gibson. This perspective profoundly shifts my understanding of 'Neuromancer.'
   
   'Neuromancer,' winner of the three major prizes for Sci-Fi, gets great (and deserved) credit here on Amazon for originating the 'Cyber-punk' sub-genre. As someone who reads and enjoys Sci-Fi from time to time, this is really less important to me than how 'Neuromancer' reads now. To figure that out, we must look at 'Neuromancer' as what it is - a work of Science Fiction.
   
   Like all (or at least most) Science Fiction, the characters and plot of 'Neuromancer' are merely vehichles that allow the author to provide a vision of the future, critiquing the present society from which the author extrapolated his vision. Mr. Gibson's present (when he wrote 'Neuromacer') is far different from the one that readers now inhabit. Paying attention to the divergences was by far the most interesting part of the novel.
   
   Mr. Gibson's future must have dazzled readers in 1984. The Cold War got hot, then ended - perhaps not in the way that readers may have wanted. Technology has infected every part life, including the brain. Cyberspace, virtual reality, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, orbiting resort 'islands' and bionic enhancement were wild flights of fancy.
   
   But here I am, sitting at my 'deck,' jacked into the matrix. Hackers want to steal your identity, not do an end-run around Soviet defenses. Purely man-made genomes are in the news and Lasik eye surgey ads run on the radio. Heck, Amazon even knows what kinds of books I like.
   
   Gibson's future is also a purely wired world. Our orbiting space resort doesn't have wireless. Nobody has cell phones.
   
   So a few of Gibson's projections veered slightly from the path that reality has taken. Others haven't. 'Neuromancer' gives us a world of violent terrorists, unchecked multi-national companies running government, and the a world of weakened superpowers.
   
   The plot is classic Noir in cyber punk clothes. As with most Sci-Fi, the characters are rather flat. The writing paints a vivid picture of the future, which is the whole point of the book, so the thinness of the plot and character seems less of a problem.
   
   As long as you remember that the 'future world' of Mr. Gibson's novel is both the star and the point of the work, you will find 'Neuromancer' a fun read.



2. Adapted from ISawLightningFall.blogspot.com
   
   The first time I tried to read Neuromancer, I stopped around page 25.
   
   I was about 15 years old and I'd heard it was a classic, a must-read from 1984. So I picked it up and I plowed through the first chapter, scratching my head the whole time. Then I shoved it onto my bookshelf, where it was quickly forgotten. It was a dense, multilayered read, requiring more effort than a hormone-addled adolescent wanted to give. But few years later, I pulled the book down and gave it another chance. This time, William Gibson's dystopic rabbit hole swallowed me whole.
   
   Neuromancer is basically a futuristic crime caper. The main character is Case, a burnt-out hacker, a cyberthief. When the book opens, a disgruntled employer has irrevocably destroyed parts of his nervous system with a mycotoxin, meaning he can't jack into the matrix, an abstract representation of earth's computer network. Then he receives a suspiciously sweet offer: A mysterious employer will fix him up if he'll sign on for a special job. He cautiously agrees and finds himself joined by a schizophrenic ex-Special Forces colonel; a perverse performance artist who wrecks havoc with his holographic imaginings; a long-dead mentor whose personality has been encoded as a ROM construct; and a nubile mercenary with silver lenses implanted over her eyes, retractable razors beneath her fingernails and one heckuva chip on her shoulder. Case soon learns that the target he's supposed to crack and his employer and are one and the same -- an artificial intelligence named Wintermute.
   
   Unlike most crime thrillers and many works of speculative fiction, Neuromancer is interested in a whole lot more that plot development. Gibson famously coined the word "cyberspace" and he imagines a world where continents are ruled more by corporations and crime syndicates than nations, where cultural trends both ancient and modern dwell side by side, where high-tech and biotech miracles are as ordinary as air. On one page you'll find a discussion of nerve splicing, on another a description of an open-air market in Istanbul. An African sailor with tribal scars on his face might meet a Japanese corporate drone implanted with microprocessors, the better to measure the mutagen in his bloodstream. When he's not plumbing the future, Gibson dips into weighty themes such as the nature of love, what drives people toward self-destruction and mind/body dualism. It's a rich, heady blend.
   
   That complexity translates over to the novel's prose style, which is why I suspect my first effort to read it failed. Gibson peppers his paragraphs with allusions to Asian geography and Rastafarianism, computer programming and corporate finance. He writes about subjects ranging from drug addiction and zero-gravity physics to synesthesia and brutal back-alley violence. And he writes with next to no exposition. You aren't told that Case grew up in the Sprawl, which is the nickname for the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis, a concreted strip of the Eastern Seaboard, and that he began training in Miami to become a cowboy, which is slang for a cyberspace hacker, and that he was immensely skilled at it, et cetera, et cetera. No, you're thrust right into Case's shoes as he swills rice beer in Japan and pops amphetamines and tries to con the underworld in killing him when his back is turned because he thinks he'll never work again. You have to piece together the rest on your own.
   
   Challenging? You bet. But it's electrifying once you get it.
   
   I've worked by paperback copy until the spine and cover have split, until the pages have faded like old newsprint. Echoes of its diction sound in my own writing. Thoughts of Chiba City or BAMA pop into my head when I walk through the mall and hear a mélange of voices speaking in Spanish and English and Creole and German. Neuromancer is in me like a tea bag, flavoring my life, and I can't imagine what it would be like if I hadn't pressed on into page 26.



3. Neuromancer is THE archetypal cyber-punk sci-fi. Fast paced, sometimes funny, sometimes (very) dark - not always clear but nevertheless - one cannot put it down. A true immersing experience in the genre.



4. Cutting edge for its time, inspiration of many books and movies (Matrix anyone?), artificial intelligence conspiracies, Rasta in space. Need I say more?



5. There's a new foreword in this edition by the author which, sadly, has a rather glaring typo. Considering this is the 20th anniversary edition, I had expected a little bit more from the editors than this, especially considering they were only adding what, 3 pages of content at the beginning for the foreword? How can you not at least get those few pages right? The editor that handled this should be ashamed of himself/herself and fired on the spot. This tainted my entire experience because I found a hideous typo before I even got into the book. I hate typos and in an anniversary edition of the book, it is a true shame.
   
   Lousy editing on this edition, no doubt about it. Can't believe this wasn't caught and I hope someone lost their job over it.

5 comments about Halting State.

1. This is a near-future novel. It definitely qualifies as SCIENCE fiction. There was nothing fantasy about it. It seems a natural extension of our rapid expansion in a number of areas of IT hardware and software. If you are reasonably familiar with the current state of the art of IT, you'll end up loving Halting State. If you've ever stayed awake until the wee hours pounding out code or playing some computer game, you'll wonder why you didn't write this book.
   
   You'll probably find the book more accessible if you have a bit of computer gaming background. I don't. You also have to get used to some Scottish dialect, some imaginative extensions of today's IT terminology, and some strange applications and hardware. The concept of alternate `spaces' takes a while to get used to so you may get lost at some point. Stay the course. It will be worth it!
   
   You also need to get past a novel written completely in second-person singular. The reasons for that flow from early Dungeons & Dragons scenarios but it took some getting used to, especially since `you' are three characters. Again, stay the course. It all comes clear in the end. I rated it four stars because there's no ramp-up. The author just dumps you into 2018 and turns you loose.
   
   Initially, I found the Halting State difficult to follow and almost put it down on my pile of `mistakes' after reading the prologue and three chapters. That would have been a mistake. It's a learning experience. By the fifth chapter, I was hooked, hated putting it down, and wanted more when I finished the last page. You need to read this book!



2. I'd almost given up on Charles Stross, but HALTING STATE(2007), a very-near future SciFi Tech-Adventure, turned out to be quite good. GLASSHOUSE(2007) had an excessively violent theme, and was too "far out" tech-wise - but HALTING STATE takes the bold step of dabbling in very near future tech trends, and the computer and software-related tech is definitely interesting.
   
   The book is set 10 years in the future, mostly in Scotland, and revolves around on-line gaming that has become so close to real that it blurs the lines with reality - with crimes taking place within games having to be investigated by the police... and the crimes turn out to be intertwined with international terrorism and all the intrigue that entails.
   
   There is also the typical America-Bashing and Catastrophic Global Warming hype that has come to be expected from most modern SciFi writers. But these themes get tossed in almost as an afterthought, as if the writer doesn't really believe in the "agenda" any longer, and is just going thru the motions... it offers little distraction in this otherwise excellent book.



3. I've always tried reading sci-fiction without much success. I picked up Halting State on recommendations from BoingBoing just to give it a look-see and I'm fantastically surprised. I'm not a hacker or gamer but the speculative nature of the book isn't so far fetched as to make it impossible to believe or pin down. Stross also writes a great character-driven story with believable sketches that bring the story to life so you're not tripping over the geekiness of the science that is believable and hopefully, not too far away.



4. One of the best books I have read on what the future will probably be like. A little slow to get started, but after a few chapters you get used to the lingo and it just explodes from there. Great book and great vision!



5. Taggart 2030.
   
   
   Or, it seems a bit like that at times, especially with Sergeant Smith and company.
   
   The second person thing didn't really worry me at all, I had read the first two or three chapters on the web, so once you get used to it after a few pages I found I wasn't really noticing it at all, and just reading it the same as any other novel.
   
   An in-game raid on a bank in a MMORPG leads to an investigation, that has intelligence, financial and communications implications.
   
   A near future setting where people are even more wired, and physical reality has a virtual overlay where things can be tagged, or have information added to them like a wiki, and people use this via mobile phones and glasses. The police, for example, use CopSpace.
   
   Gaming is more prevalent, with people also taking part in large scale LARP and what they call ARG - co-ordinated by computer and phone - one of which, amusinglyg enough, is called 'SPOOKS'. No mention of games of Hustle or Life On Mars though, maybe firing up the Quatro would be frowned upon by law-enforcement. :)
   
   For some of the flavour :
   
   "..They're guarding some loot I need to get my hands on. About a quarter of a million lines of source code, squirreled away among the skeletons and treasures guarded by a fiercely large Shoggoth; if you want to keep your data secure, there's nothing quite like sticking it in a record in a holographic distributed database that's guarded by Lovecraftian horrors."
   
   or
   
   "The traffic looks like game-play to GCHQ or CESG or NSA or whoever's sniffing packets; looking in-game for characters run by Abdullah and Salim holding private chat about blowing up the White House garden gnomes won't get you a handle on what's going on because they're not using the game a sa ludic universe to chat in, they're using it as a transport layer! They're tunnelling TCP/IP over AD&D!"
   
   There are three main characters, a game developer, a forensic accountant, and a police Sergeant, with stories told in three different threads, as their investigation leads into something rather nastier going on in real-life.

5 comments about Spook Country.

1. I've loved Gibson from the start, but without a doubt, by "Pattern Matching" his prose had risen to remarkable.
   
   In "Spook Country", he still has such a wonderful turn-of-the-phrase. Yet sadly, although there are numerous outstanding passages, the whole is less than the sum of the parts. The characters are too distant and too opaque for us to care much about what happens to them. And worse, at the end of the book, everything is still up in the air. Presumably there will be another volume to bring some closure to this story.
   
   Some reviews I've read have compared Gibson to Thomas Pynchon. Certainly the atmosphere of paranoia and the setting of a baffling, ominous world are similar. But with that, this novel also has a dollop of the Pynchon's major flaw: thinly drawn, detached characters who are interesting only as oddities or archtypes, but are not engaging.



2. Much has been written about the similarities between the works of William Gibson and Don DeLillo, Certainly, as I read both Pattern Recognition and Spook Country, I couldn't help thinking of White Noise: Text and Criticism (Viking Critical Library), one of the great books of the past 50 years. Gibson captures the same sense of lurking dread DeLillo masterfully describes, but could never be accused of being a mere imitator. Here, as in his other novels, Gibson has his own way of drawing us in and pulverizing our emotions. I found this a compelling story, maybe not as gripping as Pattern Recognition, but nevertheless a marvelous story.
   
   So, why all the negative reviews here? After reading many, which I did because I was so perplexed by the response to a book that had received considerable acclaim, I reached the conclusion that there is a core of Gibson fans who want him to write Neuromancer over and over and over again. Well, I loved that book as well, but I think Gibson has grown as an author, and his recent works are just as gripping but are not as rapidly paced as his earlier work. There's less adrenalin rush here, but much greater psychological depth. Gibson continues to grow as a writer, and when that happens some readers will be left behind, like the pop music fans who show up at a concert begging an artist to play their hit single with a bullet from 20 years earlier when the artist wants to share new work with the audience.



3. After reading Pattern Recognition (I'd give that 5 out of 5 stars), I couldn't wait to read Spook Country.
   
   Hollis Henry, a former member of a 90's alternative rock band, is trying out a second career as a journalist. She's been sent out by Node, a magazine that she isn't sure exists, to do a piece on "locative art" (think geocaching meets VR). One of these artists introduces her to Bobby Chombo, the man who runs the servers where said art is hosted. The problem is he's extremely paranoid and her boss insists she find out why.
   
   There's also Tito, a runner for a really small organized crime family. And he's being tracked by a guy named Brown, who's a covert operative of some kind with a strong sense of nationalism. But rather than get in Brown's head, we get his prisoner, Milgrim, an Ativan addict who speaks Russian. We meet other characters along the way, but the story focuses on Hollis, Tito, and Milgrim.
   
   The story starts out slow. It took about 100 pages before it picked up. There wasn't any sense of danger looming over the characters nor was I able to determine what they were after that was so important. The three main characters are mild. Hollis seems capable of some decent snark but Gibson never really lets her loose. Tito's utilization of his Santeria faith is compelling when there's action, but it's sorely underutilized. He's a mushroom most of the time. Milgrim's Atvian experiences are intriguing but his objective seems to be avoiding a beating from Brown.
   
   There are some minor characters which try to save us from this mild mannered and mellow trio. Chombo isn't one of them. He's annoying. But most of the characters in the novel get along so well that there's hardly any conflict.
   
   We do find out what everyone is after. It's partly based on reality. I remember reading about the item in question in the news, but it never really seemed to garner the attention it deserved. I don't want to spoil it, but it concerns the Iraq War. The premise is believable, and what the characters set out to do seems cool but there's never any real danger. The plan is so well executed that when the story's climax comes along, I was left saying, "Oh, that was it."
   
   William Gibson founded the cyberpunk sub-genre of science fiction, but there's really nothing in this novel that comes across as sci-fi. It's been said that the world has caught up with Gibson's vision and I have to agree. There's nothing here to chase away sci-fi phobic readers. But will they want to read it? Gibson's prose continues to be efficiently rendered, sparse yet beautiful. But as it's presented here it amounts to an ornately decorated cardboard box. A middle of the road Gibson novel is still better than most of the schlock out there.



4. I am a great admirer of William Gibson as an innovative writer and I think I own every one of his books. His earliest novels were stunning in their inventiveness. Even his next-to-most recent book, Pattern Recognition, was absorbing, moving, and interesting.
   
   However, in Spook Country, Gibson falls a bit flat. It's hard to identify with the characters, there is a bit too much product placement happening, and in the end there's not much going on in a nevertheless complicated plot. It's boringly trendy at times and never quite builds up the sense of menace and tension a book of this genre needs.
   
   I don't regret buying and reading the book, though I should probably have waited for the paperback, but it's not quite up to Gibson's own high standard. If you're a die-hard fan of his go ahead and buy it - if not, wait a while for a paperback version.



5. I read some of the reviews in here and just can't get my head around the fact that it's apparently not clear that this book is not Sci-Fi. People say the book is "dated" from the get go and contains "old tech" like, uh, GPS location devices? Hell yeah, surprise it's set in 2006, fer god's sake. Anyone who wishes to see a rerun of Neuromancer (a book written >20 years ago, which makes it contemporaneous with Jules Verne's "20'000 leagues", basically) is advised to scuttle forthwith to other authors (Charles Stross maybe?) I don't suspect Gibson will return to the genre either (but what do I know). Now this book, (John le Carré, reloaded?) is something that a future archeologist might find of use when writing a paper on the subconscious of Western Civilization of the early 21st, a subconscious aware that things are no longer Right, and that the system, having accumulated byzantine baggage and too many errors, might soon veer into decidedly interesting directions. Maybe we should all drop Rize and reflect calmly on past heresies. The story? Well, it's the usual Gibson stuff; so we have a Heist going, we have Art Objects pulling things along (we had those since Mona Lisa Overdrive, right?), we have an interesting set of Santeria deities (not necessarily of and in objective reality), we have synchronicity, a whole lot of product re/placement and artifact examination (the utterly mundane may have a story to tell, like a pay phone in a David Lynch movie), we have protagonists mainly occupied with their indecision, uncertain knowledge and fleeting visions of bigger fish. You can look the rest up in Cyberspace, I mean Wikipedia. Does it hold water? Yes, I actually wanted to know whether the Heist could be pulled off or would fail due to some freak accident. Good enough. Still, some threads may need trimming (what's with the Hook?!), additional noir could be injected, the end could be better (but Gibson and Ends do not meet well). 3.5 stars? Let's give 4.
   
   Random thought: Gibson's next novel surely will be about artful arrangements of pieces of the Apollo 11 lunar lander inexplicably turning up in Swiss bank vaults rented by recently disappeared Russian mobsters, which leads to dark hints about the inner workings of the USUK total surveillance societies.

5 comments about Cryptonomicon.

1. This is the first book by Neal Stephenson I have ever read, or I should say I have ever attempted to read. I got to page 400 and had to stop. I probably should have put the book down after 100 pages, but after so many glowing reviews and endorsements, most notably from the New York Review of Books, I thought I would give it as much of a chance as I could. What a mistake.
   
   Maybe I should even go back farther in time - I purchased the book thinking it would be an incredibly fast read, something in the same vein as a Dan Brown or Stephen King book. I was sadly disappointed to find that all of the people who said that this 1000-page monstrosity would be a quick read were terribly, terribly wrong (I also found at least two other people who thought the same thing and I wish I had listened to them when they told me to stop).
   
   The book bounces back and forth between World War II and the present day, between grandparents and grandchildren in an all-over-the-map techno-thriller that is simply too dense to be readable. The pacing can only be described as plodding. I find Dickens a quicker read.
   
   I think I may have started reading this with the wrong-mind set and maybe I should give it another go in a few years. But for all those looking for a nice-light read, stay away. And for those looking for something that makes you think or something where you can enjoy the texture of the language, stay away as well. Go out and pick up some Virginia Woolf or even some Dickens. It will be time much better spent.



2. Have you ever hated yourself for finishing a book? For a long, long month, I resisted my own desire and my wife's urgings to drop the book. I should have listened. The book badly needs editing, the characters are shallow, and the author's (very) high opinion of himself stains the pages. There are two crypto-analytic themes to this book: World War II codebreaking and the struggles of a modern day cryptographic computer company to turn profitable. By page 500 (of the 910), I had no idea how they related; by page 700, I had an inkling but no longer cared. I only finished because I felt some undefined need to do so.
   I would guess that by the time Stephenson wrote this book, he had enough critical and financial success that he was able to demand no restraints from his publisher. Consequently, the writing meanders and much of it is irrelevant. Stephenson dedicates three pages to description when three paragraphs (and sometimes only three sentences) will do. Worse yet, many of these wanderings are completely unrelated to the story, such as discussions of Captain Crunch and wisdom teeth. By page 300, the reader can see when these airy insignificances arise, and to continue, he or she must painfully wade through them.
   Most of the characters in the book share the exact same personality: gruff and cynical. The exceptions are academics, who are portrayed as wimps with no grasp on reality, and East Asians, who all have a personality similar to the characters from Shogun. Otherwise, a World War II Marine shares the same personality as a modern day billionaire-investor who shares the same personality as a modern day entrepreneur. An example of the same-flavor feel of Stephenson's characters: One character (Enoch Root) was an Army Priest during World War II and dedicated himself to peaceful causes afterwards. By the time one of the modern characters encounters Root, in a jail cell in the Phillippines, Root (who must be at least in his mid-eighties) has been running a Church in the Phillippines for a number of years. Nevertheless, Root describes the goddess Athena as a virgin who was "leg-f***ked [] once but did not achieve penetration." This same character uses the word "dissed," just like any modern fifteen year old boy. Character development, needless to say, is non-existent in this book.
   On the plus side, Stephenson has encyclopedic knowledge and an expansive vocabulary. Even this becomes a turn-off, however: Stephenson's writing reflects a man who thinks of himself as intellectually beyond the realm of mere mortals. Perhaps he is different in real life, but he comes across as the geek in high school who justified his social-ineptitude by the fact that he got great grades (especially in math!). That same geek who got great grades lost many arguments because he lacked intellectual and logical skills outside of "book learnin'."
   Stephenson is like that: For example, he ticks off a long list of German and American technological advances during World War II, but then concludes that the Allies won because America stood for technological advance while Germany stood for mindless warfare. In another story line, Stephenson's modern day protagonists set out to create a data bank near the Phillippines that is protected by the most advanced cryptography in existence. These protagonists are some of the most brilliant computer code-writers and cryptographers in the world, and they are attempting to set up a company which hides information so well that even governments cannot access it. These same brilliant people are shocked to discover that criminals are keenly interested in the project. Again, Stephenson has incredible knowledge but weak logical skills.
   Why give the book two stars instead of one? There are some redeeming aspects of the book: I liked the aspects of cryptography and analysis, a subject to which I have never paid much attention. Any book that I can learn from cannot be all bad.



3. This is the first book I have ever failed to finish. This is out of thousands upon thousands of books, I read nearly continually. I've read long meandering epics etc. and loved them, but this one just did not have anything going for it.
   
   I only made it to page 300 and the entire time I was wondering when a plot was going to be presented to the reader, a central story. A REASON to keep reading beyond just reading about these completely separated characters in two different time periods. I kept thinking that the story was going to get started after the author introduced the characters a bit more, but at page 300 I realized that this was all the book was going to be . . . character introduction and lots of it.
   
   Maybe these characters all tie together in a wonderful and thought provoking way around page 1000 or so, but I'll never know because the author never gave me a reason to want to find out.



4. It was a struggle to finish this book. The book is an excellent 400 page novel crammed into a 900 page tome. I can't believe that the book wasn't heavily pruned by an editor prior to release.
   
   Some parts of the book are indeed very entertaining and funny. At other times, it's like reading the phone book.



5. I couldn't finish this book, finding I had no desire to read any more after I got about halfway through. There are several concurrent storylines, none of which have anything to do with each other except in the most peripheral sense. The book spends so much time plodding along, I found I had a surge of excitement when he finally got to the announcement of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. At last, something was happening! Unfortunately, the next page began "Three months later,". I was incredibly disappointed after hearing the rave reviews this book got, and now I am completely mystified how it received them.

5 comments about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

1. Coming off "Blade Runner", I expected the book to be a masterpiece, with deeper philosophical insight. I knew from the start the vast amount of differences from book and movie. And quite frankly, they are separate stories.
   
   I easily figured out by the end of the book the meaning of Deckard's electric sheep and why he was ashamed of it, his constant quest for real animals, and his sudden liking of the electric toad he finds at the end of the book, regardless of its authenticity, but really that was the only interesting philosophy and change of character that was neatly done and very expertly.
   
   The story is an absolute mess. Taking place over only one day, Deckard is given a bounty hunting job to take out six androids after Dave Holden is nearly killed by one after retiring two himself. Deckard almost immediately runs into Polokov (BR fans, think Leon Kowalski) and retires him. He then goes to find Luba Luft (BR fans, think Zhora), hears her music, and is raptured. Then he barges into her dressing room, forces her to take a Voigt-Kampff test, and she calls the police, leading to this really poorly executed attempt to get rid of Deckard and an android plot.
   
   According to the documentaries in the Blade Runner Final Cut, they claim there is a part in the book where Deckard is lead into this hidden world where people think he is an android killing people and convincing himself they are the androids, an implication that Deckard might be a replicant in the movie, as he may be an android in the book.
   
   This implication never existed. Deckard is taken to this apparently parallel police station where everyone but the bounty hunter Phil Desch are androids, and no one knows they are there. An entire building full of androids and no one even realizes it. There's some confused and awkward dialogue between Deckard and Garland, another of his targeted androids, leading to Phil retiring Garland. There's then some awkward interaction where Deckard thinks Phil is an android, and Phil waxes philosophical on life which is a bit nonsensical when left open and unrefined. Deckard builds on this with a realization of growing empathy towards androids.
   
   Some scenes compared with the movie are sloppily done, with a sense of the author not really wanting to do them, but rushing through them in a film-script summary sort of manner. For example, his giving the Voigt-Kampff test to Rachael Rosen (BR fans, think Tyrell), and when the results point to her being an android, there's a whole "Clue" climax back-and-forth with an "AHA! But Rachael was born on a space ship and wasn't raised with the same morals as humans. AHA! The Voigt-Kampff test didn't work! AHA! We recorded the session to screw your assignment, Deckard" and Deckard "AHA! One last question. AHA! You really ARE an android! AHA! You tried to trick me but failed!" Of course, not literally going like that, but it certainly progresses at that sort of reckless pace without giving the reader time to digest the events.
   
   Most events in the book progress like this, with much of the author's focus being on esoteric, rambling philosophy he doesn't bother to put a conclusion to. The religion of Mercerism, for example, isn't explained that it revolves around an apparently real person on an apparently real planet, who apparently needs no food or water, and apparently walks up and down a mountain while invisible "Killers" throw a rock at him every time he reaches the top, which you catch upon as the book progresses. People go to their empathy boxes, which tunes their brainwaves or something to Mercer's brain, and people can empathize with him. By the end of the book, the android 46-hour-a-day radio and TV performer Buster Friendly proves that Mercer isn't real, just an actor who filmed some esoteric footage of him walking up a hill and getting hit by a rock, and this suddenly becomes the basis of an entire religion. And for some never explained reason, Mercer appears in reality to talk to Deckard and others.
   
   The androids, specifically Roy and Irmgard Baty, and Pris Stratton, become almost insignificant. The author especially acknowledges this as Deckard easily and almost carelessly kills them one by one without any sort of fight. Deckard has this problem with killing Pris because she's identical to Rachael in model, and he's fallen in love with Rachael and had sex with her, and Pris will be the hardest of them all to kill because she looks like Rachael. Deckard blows her away in half a second without much thought, then ALL OF A SUDDEN "Oh my god, I did it, I overcame, the worst is over, etcetera etceteree." and happily goes on to kill Roy and Irmgard in about a page or two. He also proves to be a complete idiot with regards to his job, as he encounters JR Isidore (BR fans, think JF Sebastian), who tells him he's housing the androids and refuses to tell Deckard where his apartment is, so Deckard says forget it and goes to explore a THOUSAND ROOM APARTMENT BUILDING on his own to find the androids.
   
   Also, Deckard bought a goat with half his bounty money, and for some completely random and unexplained reason, Rachael comes and kills it.
   
   
   From the start, I had high hopes and expectations, seeing a clear theme emerging, now common in some science fiction, about computerization, materilization, the loss of emotions, and the empathy of androids and humans. By the end, it devolved into a random esoteric scribbling and rambling of a man thinking he's on to something philosophical, then goes for a bathroom break and forgets everything he's thought up, so he finishes up the book without concluding a damn thing but one; Deckard's empathy towards androids.



2. With very few exceptions, literary visions of the future are bleak and dystopian. Science fiction literature it seems wants to instill fear into the minds of its readers, or at least make the reader extremely cautious to the dangers of "technology run amok." It is difficult to say what motivates the authors to present the future in this fashion. But from the standpoint the marketplace it certainly is a formula that works, as is readily apparent by its wide readership. And the authors, these provocateurs of the amygdala, continue to put more of this anti-technological diatribe on paper.
   
   This book, first published in 1968, represents one of such works, but in spite of this it turns out to be very insightful into the current technological morass called the twenty-first century. All of the characters in the book, human and otherwise, represent many of the moods and concerns of the twenty-first century citizen. The devastating third world war of this book did not happen but the anxieties that some feel about technology are reflected in this book in the killing of the androids (the "andys") and the fear that the "empathy box" may change one's identity permanently. Indeed, the events in this book have their analogs today in the purposeful destruction of genetically engineered crops by some fanatical groups and the research labs that produce them, and also in the misguided legislation that has attempted to thwart developments in genetics and molecular biology. Those who carry out these activities evidently do not foresee their consequences to human health, and have no empathy it seems for those who may starve or die because of the lack of food or medicines brought about by genetic engineering (perhaps they need an empathy box of the sort described in this book to assist them in gaining insight into their actions).
   
   This story can still be enjoyed however by those readers who strongly advocate technological advance and are proud of human accomplishments in this regard. This is so because it is a kind of adventure story, and will make such readers salivate at the mouth when it discusses robotic ("electric") animals, human colonies on Mars, videophones, and hover cars. In addition, the author it seems had a rudimentary knowledge of cognitive neuroscience, at least at the level of what was available at the time of publication. And without conscious awareness perhaps, the reader can feel empathy for the androids, which must constantly face the prospect of execution or an irreversible four-year lifespan. Perhaps an update of this story is in order, but perhaps not. After all, this is the twenty-first century, and one need only pick up a technical journal or newspaper to read about technological developments that are much more exciting than what is contained in this story. And thankfully there is more ahead, much, much more.



3. I loved this book. It was so different from the film, Blade Runner, which was loosely based on the book and entertaining in its own right. It showed a post apocalyptic time that answered many of the questions the film posed. In this book Deckard has a wife and an android sheep which are props to show you how the people of the future think, function and feel. It is great entertainment with a thought provoking feel to it. Can people of the future really relay on things and ideas we have not thought of yet? I am now reading the follow up books.
   
   J



4. Philip K Dick did very well on this book. I was a little dissapointed though in the fact that the retirement of the Nexus 6 was straight to the point and quick unlike the movie Blade Runner where there was more suspense. But with the exception of that it is a quick read and brilliant.



5. If you think you know what this book is about because you've seen the movie Blade Runner, you are mistaken. Only the character names and some of the settings / situations were lifted from this book for the movie. As in most books, there is a lot more going on here. Because the movie is so highly engrained in our (real?) memories, it is difficult to talk about one without contrasting it to the other, sadly. That said, this is a classic that any SF fan (philosophy major, medical student, or engineer) should read.
   
   Blade Runner completely missed the invented religion / technology of Mercerism and the mood organ device. Later authors like William Gibson have PKD to thank for pioneering concepts such as these. How can a religion and technology be one?
   
   In the book, Mercerism combined with nuclear fallout explain why animals are so expensive (and coveted) in the future. Why does an electric sheep exist (pride, vanity, religious devotion)? The mood organ usage contains references to the cold war (and presumed imminent nuclear war) - husband and wife "dialing up" the desire to win an argument at all costs.
   
   The double yellow center line between human and androids is blurred often- taking the reader across into oncoming traffic. Did Deckard pass the VK test? Rachel and Pris are the same model android? What does it mean to have feelings? Why would an android seek revenge?
   
   This was my first Kindle novel purchase. I no longer have a desire to dial 888 on my mood organ (desire to watch TV regardless of what is on). I'm going to dial up more PKD, Gibson, and others instead!
   
   BTW, to get the "Hit me with a rock" reference, you have to read the book...

5 comments about Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book).

1. I first read this novel shortly after it was first published. This was prior to Amazon and ebooks. Back when you went to book stores and scanned spines of books looking for something worth more than the cost of the paper needed to convey the story to you. (I wonder how many more years before someone reading this reviews reacts: book stores????)
   
   In some ways this book is another take on "be careful what you create you flawed human race you". But what really made this book come alive for me was the rich universe that had been all too plausibly constructed.
   
   Sure there is plenty of obviously over the top material crusted over the proposed reality but I feel the author wanted to make the book commercially appealing e.g. he wanted something marketable, not a manifesto.
   
   In a future world where governments have become just another form of corporation and compete with other corporations for hearts, minds and dollars I find the message from the author that there is still hope for individuals to make a difference a wonderful inspiration of Stan Lee proportions.
   
   As I look back on seven years of Bush pushing us towards the future envisioned in this book I get fresh goose flesh upon a re-read. We are still very much at risk of allowing the creation of the future envisioned so many years ago in this novel.
   
   Personally I rank this book right up there with 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. And yes, when a pizza arrives at my door in less than 30 minutes I know there is still hope for our culture's survival...



2. This wasn't a great book, in fact, much of it was tedious for me, as I couldn't get into the whole Sumerian myth tie-in, and the metaverse wasn't nearly as compelling as William Gibson's cyberspace construct from Neuromancer/ Count Zero. Stephen Donaldson's dense prose reminded me more of the author of The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum?)
   
   However, much of the characterization was excellent, with a sympathetic female character, a protagonist Hiro who was kind of bland but likable, and a creepy but somewhat exciting villain. There was even a good "remora" type dog who saves the day. This may sound a little trite, but I'm female and get weary of the traditional point-of-view in a lot of science fiction.
   
   Book is a good buy for the money, very lengthy (300+ pages), but the paperback version is hard to read, using newspaper like material and muddy ink.



3. Five stars? From a guy who doesn't read much science fiction? Yes. Although I had to warm to the book at first, I eventually gave myself over to Neal Stephenson's genre-busting mix of thrilling narrative arc and thoughtful book of ideas. The eponymous hero, Hiro Protagonist, is a winner; the evil antagonist, Raven, is one for the ages as well. When Raven turns on someone with his glass knives in hand, the reader will take notice (or maybe even cover, if said reader be weak of heart).
   
   The book begins with a Mad Max-style pizza delivery scene, introducting Hiro and the strong female support, a kourier (delivery girl) named Y.T. who "poons" cars (attaches a magnet attached to a ski-style string leading back to her skateboard-type device) for speedy delivery. She's a 15-year-old, wise-cracking, firecracker of a foil for Hiro. Then Raven is inserted into the mix, and before you know it, Hiro is trying to solve a mystery that involves heavy research into the ancient Sumerian culture.
   
   The characters move freely between real time and the Metaverse -- an Internet society populated by avatars. Hiro is a master hacker, and he's going to need all of his talents to counter the likes of Raven. It's funny. It's intriguing. And it's hold-on-to-your-seat thrilling.
   
   Readers will appreciate the fast-paced plot and the spectacular ending, but thinkers will be fascinated by the concept of language and mythology being intertwined with viruses that can infect not only computers, but human brains. Inventive and witty, Stephenson's prose is a muscular antidote to the MFA style writing you might be getting bored with (or even sick of) these days. If you missed its initial publication (as I did), there's no time like now to make amends. Go ahead. Treat yourself. Call it slumming, if you want, but SNOW CRASH is cool and worth the cold cash you might lay down.



4. I have no idea how I missed this gem. He uses concepts and coins words and phrases that did not exist until he wrote the book. The plot is absolutely ingenious, and even better.... plausible (if you are willing to stretch that imagination :))! I don't want to give any story away, just give my two cents that this is an important book to read in order to understand the cyberpunk genre and even more important to understand the direction of cyberpunk trends.
   
   One caveat - the grammar, phrasing, and vocabulary are typical cyberpunk.... if you are used to reading only the king's english - you might not enjoy so much! Otherwise, dig in!!
   
   I highly recommend this book!
   
   All the best,
   
   Jay



5. And it gets better every time! Bimbo Box has crept into my library of slang, and I was even part of Cybertown back in 2000-2001 that had been heavily influenced by this book.
   
   LOVE it. A must read for the digital generation.

4 comments about Little Brother.

1. I enjoyed this novel immensely. I want to make that clear from the start. There are many reviews that are going to talk only about how important and topical Little Brother is. They're going to talk about how this novel needed to be written. They're all right, but I think everybody should know how much FUN it is to read (even while you're being outraged by how possible it all is). I started reading it and didn't put it down until I was finished.
   
   Little Brother is the first-person narrative of Marcus, a 17 year-old with a talent for technology. Doctorow gets Marcus' voice just right. He alternates between street-swagger and vulnerability, between naivete and expertise. I found him to be an entirely believable contradiction, which is a pretty good definition of a teenager. At first, I found Marcus' love of explaining technology a little irritating, but I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized that it reminded me of my own poorly restrained tendency to try to explain computers to anyone who would listen (35 years ago). Nothing reaches you quite like seeing your own flaws in the hero.
   
   Marcus finds himself at the wrong place at the wrong time. Without revealing any plot details, suffice it to say that he comes to the attention of a law-enforcement agency with a broad remit and limited oversight. Deceit and mistrust test his family and friendships as he comes face to face with the conflict between personal safety and the responsibilities of a citizen.
   
   Cory Doctorow has managed to create a wonderful fusion of science fiction, action novel, political thriller, and whimsical romp. It's very hard to bring those elements together, but he has succeeded admirably. I haven't seen anyone pull this off since "The Long Run" by Daniel Keys Moran.
   
   Buy it. Read it. Buy copies for your kids. Once they start reading it, they'll finish it.



2. I was halfway through Little Brother last night when I went to bed. As I lay in the darkness, all I could think about was the book. The questions it raised, the insecurities it provoked in me.
   After about an hour of this I got up and went into the living room, sat down and finished it.
   
   Few times in my life have I encountered a piece of art that reflected the zeitgeist so clearly.
   This is a fabulously brave and important book, and you will hopefully learn a great deal by reading this.
   
   Cheers to Mr. Doctorow!
   This was like reading Ender's Game and the Diamond Age for the first time.



3. "Little Brother" takes Orwell's "1984", and updates it ala Stephenson's "Cryptomomicon", while taking me back to the young adult stories I remember and loved like "The Three Investigators".
   
   The near-future plot revolves around a group of high school students and the massive security and civil liberties crackdown that lands on San Francisco after a new "9/11" style attack occurs there. It begins with the teens being mistakenly held for military-style interrogation by the DHS, and does a good job (at a YA appropriate level - explicit, but not violently graphic) of describing the mind manipulation and power games that can be played in these situations.
   
   When they're freed, they discover that the Department of Homeland Security has used the event as an excuse for a massive surveillance crackdown in the Bay area, and they chronicle the resultant affect on civil liberties and free speech. Then they fight back, with all the powers next-gen l33t hacker kids can muster.
   
   It's fun, insightful, timely, and it's Doctorow's best work yet. It's sold as "Young Adult" fiction, so don't look in the SF section, but it's well worth reading by everyone.



4. Scott Westerfeld gives Doctorow's latest novel a blurb of "A rousing tales of techno-geek rebellion."
   
   I was kindly given an Advance Reader's Copy by the unparalleled force known as Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and now in return, its time for me to talk about the novel.
   
   Doctorow is more known these days for his often controversial and definitely iconcolastic positions on matters technological. Editor at Boing Boing, crusader against the excesses of Digital Rights Management...Doctorow definitely doesn't keep his head down.
   
   I haven't actually read any novel-length fiction of his until now, and I am glad that I did, even if I am not the intended demographic of the novel.
   
   Little Brother is set around 2010, in a US which has had a Republican return to the White House in the 2008 elections. The story centers around Marcus Yallow, whose original screenname of w1inst0n and the title of the book gave me immediate "spidey senses" of where this novel was going. We get a primer on Marcus' carefree life, and a lot of infodumping on technology--enough that the novel felt a bit like a throwback to SF novels of yore which would do the "as you know, bob" approach to science fiction.
   
   Marcus' SF becomes the target of a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11, and as he and his friends are cutting school as part of an alternate reality game, they are caught in the DHS dragnet. His anarchic and rebellious attitude do him no good, and he spends a short period in a "Gitmo by the Bay".
   
   Once released (and tellingly, one of his friends is *not*), Marcus becomes even more radicalized by the experience, enough that he is willing to challenge the DHS when San Francisco is put into a lockdown that would be the wet masturbatory dream of authoritarians everywhere.
   
   And therein lies the tale.
   
   Little Brother is written in first person, and so we get everything filtered through Marcus' perceptions, prejudices, attitudes and experience. While I suspect that Marcus' opinions may be very close to Doctorow's (although that's not guaranteed; I wouldn't make the assumption that authorial voice always equals protagonist voice), my meta-knowledge of Doctorow suggests that Marcus' radicalization and voice came very naturally to the author.
   
   Too, aside from the infodumps which slow down the book here and there, the novel sounds like a YA novel. The teenage protagonists sounded, to my ear, like teenagers. They are real characters in a near future world that readers in the same age group can identify with.
   
   I think Doctorow softpedals the confrontations between the teenagers and the security forces a little bit, having them result in mostly non violent confrontations. I suppose Doctorow did load the dice a little bit--a couple of shooting deaths at the hands of the DHS would have destroyed Marcus' movement, and would have turned the book into a parallel, rather than a counterpoint, to 1984. This book doesn't end completely happily...but Marcus makes a difference.
   
   It's a very good book, whatever you think of its politics and opinions, and it fits well as a gateway book. This is the sort of YA science fiction that could, and should, and must bring new readers into the graying genre of SF. And for the rest of us, too, its an indictment of the dangers of security theater, and security which does not make us any safer.
   
   I enjoyed it and commend it to the rest of you.