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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
This was one "messed up" book. I liked it and I didn't like it all at once. It's a post-cyberpunk novel and it's really the story of Nell, a young disadvantaged girl (a thete -- person without a phyle) living in a futuristic version of Shanghai in a world that no longer has countries but has people groups, also known as tribes or "phyles."
John Percival Hackworth, a scientist, is part of the Victorian phyle and he creates an interactive primer, the likes of which have never been seen before, for a little girl but not before making a copy for his own daughter. When it falls out of his hands and into Nell's he is forced to create one more.
The story follows Nell as she uses the Primer, and to a lesser degree, two other girls who receive similar books, named Elizabeth and Fiona. The Primer reacts to its owners environment and teaches them what they need to know to survive and grow.
The difficulties I had with this story were more of a stylistic nature. I found some of the dense description to be unwieldy and actually unclear. His murky descriptions of things in this futuristic world left me unable to visualize things and at times I wasn't really clear on where the various characters were in the world and how they got there. The terminology is to be expected with a sci fi book and so I wasn't surprised by the vast number of words I needed to add to my vocab in order to navigate the Stephenson book, since all books of this genre do this, but there were times when it just became a bit much.
The book plays with the notion of education, the role of a teacher/mentor, with communication and the idea of a "group-mind or hive-mind." It explores nanotechnology, seed technology, artificial intelligence and its failures and the sociology of a world without countries.
It's an interesting book and while I didn't love it, it still proved to be a good book club choice simply for the discussions that emerged.
John Percival Hackworth, a scientist, is part of the Victorian phyle and he creates an interactive primer, the likes of which have never been seen before, for a little girl but not before making a copy for his own daughter. When it falls out of his hands and into Nell's he is forced to create one more.
The story follows Nell as she uses the Primer, and to a lesser degree, two other girls who receive similar books, named Elizabeth and Fiona. The Primer reacts to its owners environment and teaches them what they need to know to survive and grow.
The difficulties I had with this story were more of a stylistic nature. I found some of the dense description to be unwieldy and actually unclear. His murky descriptions of things in this futuristic world left me unable to visualize things and at times I wasn't really clear on where the various characters were in the world and how they got there. The terminology is to be expected with a sci fi book and so I wasn't surprised by the vast number of words I needed to add to my vocab in order to navigate the Stephenson book, since all books of this genre do this, but there were times when it just became a bit much.
The book plays with the notion of education, the role of a teacher/mentor, with communication and the idea of a "group-mind or hive-mind." It explores nanotechnology, seed technology, artificial intelligence and its failures and the sociology of a world without countries.
It's an interesting book and while I didn't love it, it still proved to be a good book club choice simply for the discussions that emerged.
Loved the premise and 90% of the book but it unraveled for me at the end.
Interesting read. The best part was the technology. That and Neal Stephenson definitely has a way with language. Every so often, you hit a perfect sentence that just makes you grin. I agree with the reviews that say that it finishes up a bit too quickly though. Didn't care for the weirdo sex fetish hive mind cult. Seemed like an unnecessarily complicated way to spread nanotech. Wouldn't a sneeze or a handshake work?
Another brilliant book by the brilliant Neal Stephenson. One of the things I like is that this book exemplifies the way that Science Fiction as a genre has moved beyond the old 'ray guns, robots and rocketships' kind of stuff to be more about how our society will evolve. It is a great story about how society might be influenced by certain technological advances.
Really not as bad as everyone says it is. Is this one of those too-cool-for-school things to hate on? I found it enjoyable, if a bit uncomfortable at times.
I really enjoyed this book. I thought it had a Blade Runner feel that turned into part Ender's Game part Ready Player One. The first act took a while to get going and I did wonder for a while where the story was going to go. I think I enjoyed the middle the most because as much as I can't believe I'm writing this, I thought the ending was a little rushed and could have used more pages. Or maybe just a different last act. A good book, but not a great one mostly due to how things were resolved. I didn't feel a strong attachments to the characters and I wasn't blown away by the ideas in the book. An entertaining read filled with action and things to think about, but in the end I liked the world the book created more than the story it told.
I really enjoyed this book the first time I read it a few years ago and I think I liked it even more this time. Stephenson's universes blow my mind.
Weird but very, very good.
The writing style of this book is quite interesting. The reader is kept somewhat distant. This helps not to get confused by the many changing perspectives. The story is astonishingly creative. Not unusual for science fiction I suppose. Unique even for that, in my opinion. And an ambiguous ending. Very thought provoking.
The writing style of this book is quite interesting. The reader is kept somewhat distant. This helps not to get confused by the many changing perspectives. The story is astonishingly creative. Not unusual for science fiction I suppose. Unique even for that, in my opinion. And an ambiguous ending. Very thought provoking.
Stephenson tends to get bogged down in unnecessary details, it's true. But, he keeps that to a minimum (well, compared to, say, Cryptonomicon), and the story is interesting. There are times when it veers wildly off course, but it's worth slogging through the goofy parts.