Doktor Sleepless Volume 1: Engines of Desire HC Review

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Doktor Sleepless Volume 1: Engines of Desire HC ReviewSo the Doktor is a weird scientist that has stuff going on in the background, somehow he is a form of someone that used to live in the city, and also somehow he is not all of the mad genius controller the fate of the town as he may think he is, but overall, it is a good story so far.
The other characters are not well developed as of yet, but the Doktor and his side kick "Nurse" partake in some witty banter.
The art is good, but anything really special though, but the town itself is beautifully created and described. The townsfolk are shown to be sort of bitter and nihilistic at the fact that the future was not what they were promised. One tag on a building is says "Where's My Jetpack?!" I found that humorous.
The writing is good, typical Warren Ellis and his use of main charismatic, not-so-good main characters. Some of the speeches that the Doktor gives shows a wonderful spark of genius. Oh, did we mention that he hosts his own radio show that the lower-class seem to take as gospel? It is a good show...I think I would listen to it.
Overall, this is a good book if you want to know the story so far. One of the problems with the comics is that he produces to many covers for each issue, making us collectors pay more to own them...it is annoying...
Get the book if you like comics, anti-heroes, dark futuristic stories, mad scientists, or Warren Ellis.Doktor Sleepless Volume 1: Engines of Desire HC OverviewWhere is the future we were promised? Doktor Sleepless, a renegade mad scientist recently back from the supposed dead, will not rest until he tears the city of Heavenside apart in search of that answer. Aided by a sultry and murderous assistant known only as Nurse, he's outraged that the widescale application of his science has not advanced society, but been abused and twisted. From his tower above, he broadcasts intrigue and revolution to a populace of beautiful Shrieky Girls, angry Grinders, and the conspiratorial authorities. Only Sing Watson, his old flame, truly suspects how dangerous things are about to get! The good Doktor has just the prescription for all of society's ills... whether you want it or not! Warren Ellis presents DOKTOR SLEEPLESS, the thematic successor to his critically acclaimed TRANSMETROPOLITAN.

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The Eternal Prison (Avery Cates, Book 3) Review

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The Eternal Prison (Avery Cates, Book 3) ReviewWhile I thought that The Electric Church was one of the best recent science fiction works I've read, I felt that the follow-up book, The Digital Plague, was less than fulfilling. Jeff Somers has returned to form, however, in the third installment of the Avery Cates series, The Eternal Prison.
Avery Cates is back in The Eternal Prison, which takes place soon after end of the digital plague from the second book. The cops and the army are fighting it out for control of society. Cates, the anti-hero hitman, gets pinched by the cops and thrown into Chengara, a prison specially developed for "people of interest" like himself. Cates has to use all of his wits to stay alive, and staying alive means breaking out.
The action moves along briskly in The Eternal Prison and avoids most of the exposition that slowed down The Digital Plague. Cates always has a new set of associates, since being a Cates associate tends to dramatically reduce life expectancy, but some old familiar faces also are in the mix. The new characters are woven into the story well and are, for the most part, more interesting than most of the new faces from The Digital Plague.
Probably the best thing about this entry in the series, apart from Somers' pacing, are the changes in Avery Cates. He's famous, he's tough, but as things continue to slide downhill, Cates begins to wonder if fighting is even worth the bother, especially if things look like they'll turn out the same way in the end. Or, if he goes on, for what purpose? Cates works through the questions in Cates fashion, simply but directly, without Somers turning him into some fountain of metaphysical mess.
It's a great installment, a return to the tight pacing of The Electric Church, and the central character is revitalized as something more than a stereotype. The Eternal Prison is definitely worth your time and money.
The Eternal Prison (Avery Cates, Book 3) OverviewAvery Cates is a wanted man.After surviving the worst bioengineered disaster in history, Cates finds himself incarcerated - in Chengara Penitentiary. As Chengara has a survival rate of exactly zero, the system's most famous gunner must do some serious plotting. And a betrayal or so later, he achieves his goal. At a price.All he has to do now is defeat some new personal demons, forge some unlikely alliances, and figure out why the people he's killed lately just won't stay dead.

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The Terminal State (Avery Cates) Review

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The Terminal State (Avery Cates) ReviewAvery Cates can't seem to get a break. He's somewhat like Indiana Jones in the sense that he is the reluctant hero and things keep adding up and working against him... just Avery seems to come out worse for wear at the end of every adventure. The Terminal State is the fourth book in the Avery Cates series which is authored by Jeff Somers.
The book is an excellent fast paced read into a Noir/ Cyber Punk/ Sci-Fi world that is great fun to read about but we really don't want it to ever happen to us. Society has collapsed and the SSF (police) who are basically machine avatars are on one side of the fight while the army fighting them is on the other side. Humans and Avery Cates in particular are caught in the middle. Once again Avery is forced back on the rail and things are set in motion that are out of his hands but the ride is worth every penny of the price of admission.
Avery gets pressed and forced into the army. While he is given all sorts of nifty augments life just doesn't get better for our hero... if you can call him that. You see, Avery Cates isn't a good man. He's rather selfish and in it for himself. He says freely what others only think and does what ever he wants. He does live by a code that may be twisted but it is also one of the reasons Avery Cates is a hero.
The writing is witty and clever and Jeff Somers has Avery saying some of the best lines I've read in any book. The futility of the situation leads to lines that will just crack you up and make your day brighter. Just for an example of style, think of Jeff Somers as the love child of William Gibson and Douglas Adams. Now that is not bad company to be in at all.
You should definitely read this series if you like Noir/ Cyberpunk/ Sci-Fi and when you do start with the first book or you may get lost. One of the great things that Jeff Somers does not do is use three or four pages to remind readers of what happened in the last book. Sometimes it is a couple of sentences and nothing deeply descriptive which in my opinion is a good thing. I know authors do it so books can be read out of order but it just annoys me. If you are reading the series you should start at number one and keep going.
The three previous books were also 5 out 5 Stars so pick them up and check them out. I've put them in order below:
1) The Electric Church
2) The Digital Plague
3) The Eternal Prison
4) The Terminal State
I will now be anxiously awaiting the 5th book due in 2011: The Final EvolutionThe Terminal State (Avery Cates) OverviewAvery Cates is an army man.Between the army's new dental plan and a set of first class augments, he's been given a second chance - albeit a quick one.When a corrupt officer decides to make some money on the side by selling new recruits, Cates finds himself in uncharted territory.Sold to the highest bidder, his visions of escape and revenge quickly come to an end when he realizes who's bought him - and for what.Because the high bidder is Canny Orel himself.And he wants Cates to do one last job as the System slides into chaos.Cates will have one shot at getting back at Canny - but this time, Canny is holding all the cards.

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True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier Review

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True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier ReviewWhen I was starting out as a PhD student in Artificial Intelligence at Carnegie Mellon, it was made known to us first-year students that an unofficial but necessary part of our education was to locate and read a copy of an obscure science-fiction novella called *True Names*. Since you couldn't find it in bookstores, older grad students and professors would directly mail order sets of ten and set up informal lending libraries -- you would go, for example, to Hans Moravec's office, and sign one out from a little cardboard box over in the corner of his office. This was 1983 -- the Internet was a toy reserved for American academics, "virtual reality" was not a popular topic, and the term "cyberpunk" had not been coined. One by one, we all tracked down copies, and all had the tops of our heads blown off by Vinge's incredible book.
*True Names* remains to this day one of the four or five most seminal science-fiction novels ever written, just in terms of the ideas it presents, and the world it paints. It laid out the ideas that have been subsequently worked over so successfully by William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. *And* it's well written. *And* it's fun.
In my grad student days, we loved to sit around and discuss the implications of Vernor's ideas. Sixteen years later, I do research at MIT, and it's still fun to sit around and talk about how Vernor's ideas are coming to be.
(Amazingly enough, Vinge has done this not once, but twice: *Marooned in Realtime* contains ideas even more interesting than *True Names* -- all in the setting of a murder mystery that takes place 50 million years in the future.)
Vinge has subsequently written other, very popular and enjoyable books, such as *A Fire Upon the Deep* and his just-published *A Deepness in the Sky*. However, it's always been very frustrating to me that *True Names* has been essentially impossible to find. It's always out of print, and you have to know one of the elect who snapped up copies back when it was marginally possible -- and these copies are now jealously guarded. I won't let people read mine outside of my home. (The same goes for *Marooned in Realtime* -- seminal work; out of print.)
So I am really, really delighted that *True Names* is now back in print. I note that it is now fashionable to write books "explaining" the Net and the near-term future of our society to the layman -- books such as Negroponte's *Being Digital,* Gate's *The Road Ahead*, or Dertouzos' *What Will Be*. These books are a waste of time. If you would like to explore the implications and likely future of the computer revolution, I would recommend three novels, instead: *True Names* (Vernor Vinge), *Snowcrash* (Neal Stephenson), and *Neuromancer* (William Gibson).
Vinge and Stephenson are not only excellent writers, they are trained, competent computer scientists. *Neuromancer* is the best-written of the three; *Snowcrash* is the funniest and hippest; *True Names* -- well, *True Names* is the source.
-OlinTrue Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier Overview

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d20 Cyberscape : A d20 Modern Supplement Review

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d20 Cyberscape : A d20 Modern Supplement ReviewThis is a pretty good supplement that gives the rules for cybernetics and cybernetic attachments for characters in a modern or future game. It goes from basic skill upgrades to flying. It has a bunch of different ways it helps to balance the upgrades by exp penalties, having to take feats, etc. So it's definitely worth getting for the cost.d20 Cyberscape : A d20 Modern Supplement OverviewNew rules for running a d20 Modern or d20 Future™ campaign with a cyberpunk twist.This new rules supplement provides everything players and Gamemasters need to create and run campaigns featuring cybernetics in the post-modern realm of cyberpunk fiction. Building on the d20 Future cybernetic rules, d20 Cyberscape includes rules for installing cybernetics and playing cyborgs, as well as new advanced classes and enhancements. d20 Cyberscape also features rules for magical and psionic cybernetics and virtual reality networks.

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Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) Review

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Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) ReviewI came to _Snow Crash_ on the recommendation of a few people who had read it (they called it "great!" and "hilarious!," and knowing that Neal Stephenson is sometimes listed as a "cyberpunk" writer along with William Gibson et al.
I had liked William Gibson's books, so I gave _Snow Crash_ a try.
_Snow Crash_ is primarily about Hiro, a young man who delivers pizzas and collects information for the Central Intelligence Corporation (freelance), for a living. He lives in a storage unit with a cult-hero rockstar named Vitaly Chernobyl. He owns a futon, two awesome Japanese swords, and a laptop computer, where he stays "jacked in" to the "Metaverse" a lot of the time, where he is the world's greatest swordfighter.
Hiro witnesses a crime while interacting with others in the Metaverse. One of his friends is deliberately exposed to a dangerous block of text, which fries his brain (in the real world), and renders him a vegetable. Hiro and his friend Y.T. (15-year old skateboarding female, and knee-slappingly funny smartaleck) set off to find out why, and save the world in the process.
From the getgo this is a funny book. Sure, the vision of the near-future is dark, a little alarming, and at times depressing (there are NO general laws in _Snow Crash_, for example, and private corporations run everything, even the police, just as an example). That's what cyberpunk is like. But the HUMOR is one thing that sets Neal Stephenson aside. Hiro Protagonist? Come on, that's FUNNY, PEOPLE! One reviewer called it an 'odd' name. Yes, it's odd, and it's absurd, and it's funny! Did this author mean it is an unusual choice for a character name? I don't know. I hope not. It would be an odd choice for a character's name in a Jane Austen novel, sure. But this is cyberpunk, or something like it. Among this genre's leading inspirations are the works of Thomas Pynchon, and "Hiro Protagonist," as a character name, would fit in perfectly among his merry bands of misfits, especially in _V._ or _Gravity's Rainbow_.
Repeatedly reviewers are slamming Stephenson for his use of Sumerian myth, exploration of Sumerian culture, etc. in the book... calling it inaccurate, poorly connected to the rest of the story, and, (my personal least favorite), BORING. I tell you, besides the great sense of humor, the Sumerian-myth link is what sets this novel heads above so much other cyberpunk. I don't care if it's inaccurate (this is FICTION, see?). Stephenson "traces" computer/textual viruses and biological viruses quite nicely back to Sumerian times, and he links them to one another, biological virus to digital/informational virus (a debt to another pre-cyberpunk luminary, William Burroughs, who said "Word is Virus?")-- it's all very well connected to the metaverse/here-and-now portion of _Snow Crash_'s plot.
This is a funny, riproaring tale. I raced through this nearly 500-page paperback in half the time I read most books of this length. I enjoyed it beginning-to-end. My only complaint with the book was that, at times, it too much resembled a Hollywood action movie, what with all sorts of incredible stunts being performed, by boat drivers, skateboarders, swordsmen, etc.
I say, if you like William Gibson or Thomas Pynchon, or if any of this review makes _Snow Crash_ seem a bit appealing to you, give it a chance. I enjoyed it 10 times as much as I thought I would.
ken32Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) Overview

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I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life (New Riders) Review

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I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life (New Riders) ReviewI agree with all of the comments already made about this book. Anyone who follows virtual worlds has seen far too many superficial, sensationalized, and often factually incorrect media reports about who goes on in them. This book is the complete opposite of that. It's a deep and thoughtful discussion of how they can affect people for better and for worse. It gets beneath the caricatures to examine the whole concept of identity in physical spaces, virtual spaces, and the gray area between the two.
Anyone who has spent time in virtual worlds will be able to relate to much of what is said from their own experiences and observations, and those who have not spent time in virtual worlds would benefit from reading this book before dismissing them.
The content alone would make the book well worth reading, but as others have already mentioned, it's also beautifully presented. In fact, the book itself is analogous to the phenomena it describes: an attractive setting with a lot of interesting things happening inside.I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life (New Riders) OverviewWhat is an avatar? Why are there nearly a billion of them, and who isusing them? Do avatars impact our real lives, or are they just videogame conceits? Is an avatar an inspired rendering of its creator'sinner self, or is it just one among millions of anonymous vehiclesclogging the online freeways? Can we use our avatars to really connectwith people, or do they just isolate us? And as we become more like ouravatars do they become more like us? In I, Avatar,Mark Stephen Meadows answers some of these questions, but moreimportantly, he raises hundreds of others in his exploration of avatarsand the fascinating possibilities they hold. His examination ofavatars through the lenses of sociology, psychology, politics, history,and art, he will change the way you look at even a simple onlineprofile and revolutionize the idea of avatars as part of our lives,whether first or second.

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