Reviews and Comments

It's not a bad science fiction novel, but it's nothing you haven't seen before. The language is there to service the plot. The characters are there to service the plot. It's not a bad plot. It's the future. There's lots of technology, most of which you've seen before in other science fiction novels, apart from the biology based science which isn't really relevant. There's two groups of people that don't like each other. There's some politicians that try to work a deal, and some people who aren't politicians who get played. Eventually some bad things happen and they all run around and either shoot at each other or run away from the shooting. You can guess the rest.

There's a wide array of styles and directions here; the first stories especially pack a punch as you realize that every sentence and every phrase means something. The first story in the book took several readings for me to be sure I'd really got it.

Some of the ideas in the story have been done elsewhere, and I was (interestingly) surprised when reading first person accounts, because I kept getting the sex of the character wrong. I'd hear a man's voice in my head, and the character would be a woman, or vice versa. Bear doesn't see characters as subject to sex based tropes, and it shows in the actions of her characters as well, giving me some pleasant surprises along the way.

It's clearly a book written by someone who's used to writing articles. It tries to be funny and talk about experiences, but then interjects it with helpful little factoids in balloon quotes. And he gets really annoying when he talks about politics and Fox News... I get it, I can't take it seriously either. That doesn't mean it's funny.

And don't get me started on including recipes in the book. That's transparently obvious padding, and helps to further trivialize what's supposedly his life's work.

It's a novelization of a computer game, but it puts the fear of god into you in any case: Peter Watts has a talent for telling you exactly what you don't want to hear in ways that you can't help hearing.

Although I haven't played the game yet, I'm actually glad I read this first; this gives me far more of an idea of what it's supposed to look like from the perspective of someone jammed into a supersuit and told to be an unstoppable killing machine. Interesting way to point out that he doesn't really have a choice about it...

It's an okay pop science book. I didn't learn anything new from it, but it has a coherent thesis and follows it up with good studies and science. It does talk a bit about some strategies to avoid irrational behavior, but it's more about how people think they make logical sense when they are being led by social or emotional goals.

Great art. Interesting ideas. Lousy plot.

It's not a bad book, but it's severely outdated for modern software -- this book was written in 1988.

It writes for an audience that has never used computers before and expects them to work, and tries to educate them as to why it is that most software sucks and most UI is unintelligible. As such, it ranges from explaining menu bars and the issues with printer drivers to why it is that many bugs are considered "not worth fixing."

While it makes an interesting read, the only bits which could still be considered current are the organizational and psychological bits, which have been covered ad nauseum by more current books. As such, I'd have to say there's no real reason anyone should read this except for the sake of completeness.

Amazingly good.