Reviews

[hellomeow]

For the sake of levity, all the books that I have review will henceforth be moved into this thread.

Snow Crash written by Neal Stephenson

This book is amazing. If you have never read anything by Neal Stephenson, you should because he is easily the best writer of anything relating to physics, mathematics, computer science, historical fiction, science fiction, and also religious coercion that exists in modern times. The first work of his that I have read is Cryptonomicon which I should likely review later, but for now I am going to review Snow Crash, read the copy of the first book in the Baroque Cycle I have bought, and try to see if I can snag Zodiac some time next weekend hopefully.

This book has the best character names I have ever read in a science fiction novel, the main character is Hiro Protagonist, a freelance hacker, self-described greatest sword-fighter in the world, and also a member of the Mafia as a Pizza delivery boy; surprisingly he does not conflict against anyone named Villain Antagonist, but rather the villains in this novel would be the cult religious leader Lieutenant Bob Rife and homicidal mutant killer Dmitri Ravinoff, better known as Raven. The other main character would be a teenage girl who's real name is never given, but uses the alias Y.T. (meaning 'Yours Truly') who works as a Kourier who harpoons moving vehicles while riding a skateboard with pre-installed programs that help to ensure she always has a fairly steady thanks t self-adjusting 'smart wheels'. There is also Vitaly Chernobyl (who has his own band, the Meltdowns), the crippled mechanical engineer Ng, the half-robot dog Fido, the encyclopaedic AI program the Librarian, and a few side-characters of Sumerian mythology (of which there are supposedly only 10 remaining speakers of their language, however I have met one of those people and he is also very fanatical about this book).

Hiro Protagonist begins working as the 'Deliverator', who drives across the city at high velocities to ensure that every pizza delivered by Uncle Enzo's Mafia pizza service is always on time, lest Uncle Enzo himself formally apologize for the incidence of tardiness in person. After having lost his job thanks to the incompetence of the immigrant workers who make the pizza, Hiro finds himself unemployed again and now living in a U-Stor-It with his friend Vitaly Chernobyl, mindlessly surfing the Metaverse (which is basically a virtual reality simulation of which Hiro is one of the founder coders of) and promoting his friend's concerts to no benefit of his own. Soon word begins to spread in the Metaverse of a virus which infects programmers as a bitmap of binary data that latches onto the unconscious mind of the victim and cause them to transform into a pentacostal religious fanatic, chanting tongues and hymns in ritual glossolalia and becoming enslaved by L. Bob Rife.

The story itself sounds sketchy and bizarre presented by me, but Neal Stephenson has a surprisingly convincing and humourous writing style which tends to suspend disbelief and allow the reader to enjoy the story throughly, as he narrates every one of the characters thoughts and describes all of the events with stark clarity and detail, making the world that Hiro Protagonist lives in fully believable regardless of how much it differs from our own. Eventually the story draws out to explain more about computer science, linguistics, neurology, and the divulge in Sumerian mythology (which is oddly enough by Neal Stephenson's descriptions, easily related to computer science and religious proselytization), and there is plenty of action, violence, sex, romance, and descriptions of technology to appease any science fiction fan.

If you want to become acquainted with Neal Stephenson's work, or science fiction in general, I would recommend Snow Crash.

[hellomeow]

Note that this is a repost, as I said I want to post all of my reviews here.

I recently finished the Ender Quartet by Orson Scott Card, the awesomeness of each book decreases logarithmically by bases of ten. I will provide a brief review of each book in the series.

Ender's Game: This book was pretty entertaining, I read it all in one day and I enjoyed it because it was about child geniuses who were enslaved by monolithic galactic superpowers to destroy alien races that they didn't fully understand, and also goes on to show the relationship that forms between a computer program, Ender, and the queen of the alien race he destroys. If you like artificial intelligence, military fiction, science fiction, telepathy, alien races, or stories about children who end up controlling the media using the internet to make themselves anonymous, you will enjoy Ender's Game. Awesomeness 1000.

Speaker for the Dead: This takes place 3000 years in the future where Ender has been traveling from world to world at the speed of light and somehow being able to stop (makes no sense, but bear with us). He also has a jewel in his ear which communicates with the Fantasy Game which he used to play in the Battle School (The Ender's Game of namesake) which has evolved into a fully fledged sentient consciousness of itself and is connected to all of the databases in the 100 Worlds and capable of performing millions of tasks at once, basically the character of Jane is a living entity of the internet incidentally written in a time when the internet was mostly used by NASA and other government organizations or Usenet newslists before the time internet usage was widespread. Essentially there is a new alien race present and all of the characters of Ender's Game save for Ender, the queen, and his sister have been completely abandoned for the sake of introducing the new characters of the xenobiologist Novinha, her 5 bastard children, and her abusive and infertile husband, as well as the pequininos who are a newfound alien race (who primarily reproduce as larvae absorblings which are created when a small baby female is devoured by an adult male, which happen to develop into trees after they are eviscerated alive in ritual sacrifice) on the planet of Lusitania, which also speaks Portuguese; as if Ender's Game wasn't hard enough to believe. If you like stories of sex, violence, infidelity, romance, incest, alien races coming to peace with each other, creative fictional biology and an entire family of scientists, you will like Speaker for the Dead. Awesomeness 100.

Xenocide: At this point the series begins to become unreadable in its lack of believability, poor dialogue and nonsensical plot devices. One example of this might be the fact that the reader is expected to believe that the monolithic superpower has genetically engineered a race of Asian slaves who are super-intelligent, but also have severe obsessive-compulsive disorder which makes them believe they must commit ritual acts of degradation and humility in order to quell the wrath of the almighty and righteous gods. Obviously, the goal in freeing this planet of enslaved Asians is to use the biologically engineered cure to a disease which is intelligent and self adapting to all forms of life (which it always kills or forces to live in an ecosystem where it is dominating) to restructure their DNA so that future generations will be super-intelligent, but not have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Throw in the story of a drunken physicist who ends up instigating a planet wide sense segregation and hatred towards alien races as well as the ethics of whether or not artificial lifeforms and genetically engineered and murderous lifeforms can be considered to be the partners of humans in living and creating newfound technologies, as well as some completely irrational physics involving transportation via the use of imagination and vast amounts of memory which consequently lead to newfound life and matter being spontaneously created, and you basically have Xenocide. This book was fun enough to read, but I don't think it is a worthy successor to either Ender's Game or Speaker for the Dead. Awesomeness 10.

Children of the Mind: At this point the story doesn't even try to make sense, Ender dies and has to use the body of his imaginary brother and sister to house the soul of his artificial intelligent best friend who is now considered a god by bizarre religious preachers on foreign planets, and in the end a plan to destroy her life is foiled by emotionally crushing the soul of his imaginary sister, and then transferring his soul into his imaginary brother so that his artificial intelligent friend can now live in his sister's body, and also have sex with his scientist friend who used to be crippled, but magically found himself a new body by wishing he had one. The story ends with Ender dead and everyone happy that the imaginary characters have a newfound youth and vigor and Ender can live on as his imaginary siblings. In many places the writing is very descriptive and provokes thought, but most of the time it just makes you wonder what the fuck you are reading. Awesomeness 1.

At the moment I am still somewhat addicted to science fiction, I have started reading Virtual Light by William Gibson (which I am skeptical of because I dislike his writing style) and also Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (who has the greatest narrative form I have ever read in a science or historical fiction writer). I'm also reading a crapload of comic books, and still nursing the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I am also thinking of purchasing the Shadow Series which was originally written parallel to Ender's Game from the perspective of the character Bean, but I may have to finish reading a bunch of other crap first.

[hellomeow]

Virtual Light written by William Gibson

William Gibson is another one of my favourite science fiction writers. I didn't particularly like this book however, mostly because it seemed to lack a cohesive plotline and the plot presented did not have many interesting ideas at all. The story mainly revolves around a fired cop named Rydell and a girl named Chevette who steals a millionaire sunglasses at a party with several drunken rich people. However, the glasses in question are not normal, and when worn they will display various information read from several databases, it can tell what make a gun is by seeing it, all the personal data on a person just by looking at them, and also be used for AI programs that are installed on it and viewed for a great deal of immersion, for example there is provided a scene in the book where the original owner of the glasses has sex with a virtual prostitute using the glasses, but then returns afterwards to conclude that he was only masturbating. There is plenty of interestingly described futuristic technologies and practices in use, however the book itself is very outdated as it was written in the 80s, and takes place in the year 2005 which is far more futuristic and technologically advanced than modern day. Overall, if you like cop dramas, stories of crime, technology, sex and murderous organizations, Virtual Light will provide a good read. However, keep in mind that this is not the best of William Gibson's work, and many of Gibson's writing descriptions and plot devices are difficult to follow given how he describes things with little clarity, leaving much as a practice in logical induction.

[Finn]

rofl i have also read all of those orson scott card books, though i don't agree with your deteriorating scores. I thought children of the mind was pretty sweet

This book was pretty entertaining, I read it all in one day and I enjoyed it because it was about child geniuses who were enslaved by monolithic galactic superpowers to destroy alien races that they didn't fully understand, and also goes on to show the relationship that forms between a computer program, Ender, and the queen of the alien race he destroys.

write a fucking longer sentence

[Hauskaz]

Mein Kampf written by Adolph Hitler

Awful book. Don't read it. One whole paragraph was a single sentence. I couldn't get past the second chapter.

[Finn]

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

awesome post apocalyptic book about a father and son, really cool barren atmosphere and strange writing style

read it

[hellomeow]

Apr 27, 2008 19:42:05 GMT -5 Finn said:

rofl i have also read all of those orson scott card books, though i don't agree with your deteriorating scores. I thought children of the mind was pretty sweet

This book was pretty entertaining, I read it all in one day and I enjoyed it because it was about child geniuses who were enslaved by monolithic galactic superpowers to destroy alien races that they didn't fully understand, and also goes on to show the relationship that forms between a computer program, Ender, and the queen of the alien race he destroys.

write a fucking longer sentence

Have you read the Shadow Series yet?

[1]

The Jester by James Patterson and Andrew Gross.

Amazing novel! Tyler, you would like this book. 400 pages of a little romance, lots of gore, and lots of sex. I checked it out from our school library and finished it two days later, all the reading done during school hours. But yes, quite a few hilarious things. A man, fucking a woman, a guy coming in trying to fight guy one, and the girl is like oshit I better run and the first guy is like NOPE, NOTHING GETS MY MEAT HARDER THAN AN OPPONENT'S ENTRAILS FALLING ONTO MY FEET. And it was quite disgusting, but a super good read!

[hellomeow]

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