The Unincorporated War Review

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The Unincorporated War ReviewI read the first book in this eventual trilogy and was very impressed. "The Unincorporated Man" is the story of Justin Cord, a businessman with terminal cancer, who gets himself frozen in the 21st century and is eventually revived in the 24th. Here he finds himself in a world where everyone becomes a legal corporation at birth and spend their lives trying to attain a majority of their own shares. The human race has by now expanded to inhabit the whole solar system all the way to the Oort cloud. The concepts are very well thought out and the science fiction is definitely of the hard variety with sound extrapolation of today's science several hundred years into the future. There is also a good villain, the evil Hektor Sambianco. This book reminded me in some ways of "The Space Merchants", the classic fifties novel by Frederick Pohl and C M Kornbluth of a future world dominated by big business.
The first book ends with Justin refusing to play the incorporation game, seeing it as slavery by another name. He is exiled to the outer solar system where he becomes somewhat of an anti incorporation messiah in the outer planets which leads to a war with the incorporation dominated inner solar system. This is where The Unincorporated War takes up the story and it's quite a different book in many ways being mostly dominated by epic space battles which I have to admit became a bit tedious after a while. It's also more verbose with plenty written about religious philosophy and I think could have been shorter. Interwoven in the story are the attempted manipulation of humanity by the avatars, self aware artificial intelligences who inhabit the future internet. Still, it's refreshing to see a well researched hard science fiction story like this and the authors deserve a lot of credit. The Unincorporated War has a cliffhanger ending and it's not clear how the story will conclude. Regardless of my slight reservations, I will definitely be buying the third book.
I've decided to give this four stars but if fractional stars were allowed it would probably be a strong 3 1/2. I didn't write a review for The Unincorporated Man but if I had it would have been a 5.The Unincorporated War Overview

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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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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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Avatar Book One of Two (Star Trek Deep Space Nine) Review

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Avatar Book One of Two (Star Trek Deep Space Nine) ReviewIn May 2001, Pocket Books published Avatar, a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel, in two volumes. It's written by S.D. Perry, who has previously contributed two stories to The Lives of Dax and has written the novelizations of Timecop and Virus. Under the name Stella Howard, Ms. Perry has written an original novel based on the series Xena: Warrior Princess.
Avatar begins three months after DS9's finale, "What You Leave Behind," and focuses on Colonel Kira's command of the station. A surprise attack by what's left of the Dominion kills hundreds of Starfleet and Bajoran militia officers as well as civilians. As well, an ancient Bajoran text is discovered that incites religious controversy among the populace - one of its prophecies is that the birth of the son of the Emissary (Kasidy Yates' unborn child) will require the death of 10,000. What that actually means will be revealed at the end of the second volume, but several of the more conservative elements of Bajoran religious hierarchy have their own interpretation of it.
We meet again a former Enterprise officer who becomes the station's new chief of security, and are introduced to three new characters - Commander Tiris Jast, a Bolian senior officer who commands the Defiant; Shar, the reticent Andorian science officer; and Elias Vaughn, a longtime Starfleet officer at a crossroads in his life.
I found both volumes of the novel hard to put down. In the post-TOS era, Deep Space Nine has always been my favorite and I'm glad to see the "8th season" begin with a well-considered blend of action, characterization and thought-provoking issues of religion, culture and society. Pocket Books is taking up the threads of themes begun in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine quite effectively and I look forward to further adventures in this series.Avatar Book One of Two (Star Trek Deep Space Nine) OverviewA new era begins in the annals of Deep Space Nine...Star Trek's grittiest and most challenging series may have reached its climatic conclusion on the television screen, but all-new adventures on the frontiers of Federation space continue between the covers of Pocket Books. In the aftermath of the Dominion War that brought the Star Trek universe to the brink of ruin, space station Deep Space Nine - the galaxy's nexus of military and scientific intrigue, situated as it is on the wormhole that links two quadrants - once again becomes a flashpoint of impending Armageddon when a surprise attack cripples the station, killing the First Officer and threatening the fragile peace. Colonel Kira and the surviving crew of DS9 - along with four controverisal new officers - are all that stand against the outbreak of a new conflict and a doom fortold by the Prophets to coincide with the birth of Captain Benjamin Sisko's child. Meanwhile, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise make a startling discovery, one that will determine the course of an entire civilisation and profoundly affect the lives of the crew of Deep Space Nine...

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