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  1. MiniMe: the Acer Aspire One review

    May 22, 2009 by Cas

    I wrote most of this sitting on the train into London, whilst zooming across the country to spend the afternoon celebrating my brother’s birthday with a BBQ. Yes, we British are trying a BBQ on a May weekend – you wondered why the weather had taken a turn for the worse?

    How am I writing a post if I am on a train? One of the multitude of notebooks I own? The PocketCalculator hauled out for a trip? Neither. I am typing this (with a few typos!) on my teeny-tiny new netbook, an Acer Aspire One with a 9” screen, 16GB solid state HD and running Ubuntu Linux.

    I LOVE my MiniMe! It is just so, so… Dinky, to nick someone elses term. Plus it does all I need it to. Before I start my review properly, I should outline what prompted my decision to get a netbook/ultra-portable.

    I have taken to doing writing during my lunch break at work, as I just never seem to get around to it in the evening. For a while I was taking in the PocketCalculator, but I never felt comfortable- it was heavy to lug around, and I was acutely aware that, if it broke or got nicked, I would need to shell out near one and a half grand to replace it. I just can’t afford that. So I started to think about netbooks. Really, really light and portable machines I could just use for writing. I wanted to avoid Windows if at all possible and all that lugging around made the thought of a solid-state hard drive appealing.

    So after looking at lots of reviews online, I was leaning towards the Dell Mini 9, if only because people have successfully made them into Hackintoshes (i.e., running OSX), but they were pricy…

    Which is where a recent trip back to Somerset came in very handy indeeed. Taunton is blessed with a Comet, a Curry’s, a Staples and a PCWorld all in a row. All four the main suppliers of computing technology offline. Result. I wandered around, played, asked questions, pondered, and at the end of an hour, the Acer Aspire One was the only (and best) choice.

    It ran Linux. Check.
    It had a solid state option. Check.
    The keyboard didn’t feel too bendy when typed on. Check.
    The screen was crystal clear, far more clear in fact than my PocketCalculator. Check.
    It came in a colour other than black (blue). Check.
    It had WiFI and a good smattering of ports (3x USB, screen, headphone, mic, sd/microsd/etc). Check.
    It was light and had an approximately 3 hour battery life. Check.
    The trackpad was really, really responsive. Check.
    It was the cheapest of the lot. Result!

    169.99 GBP (In Comet. The Windows/larger spinning hd options cost more)

    So does it do all I want it to? How has the first few weeks with the MiniMe gone?

    I love it. I adore it. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I should point out, I have ONLY been using it for writing. I have yet to connect it to the Net, but it has done everything else so well I can only imagine that it would do that perfectly too – after all, that is what it was designed for.

    You boot it up and are greeted with a customized homescreen divided into CONNECT (Mail, Firefox, address book, Messenger, RSS reader and more), WORK (the OpenOffice suite, of which the Word-clone behaves almost identically to a stripped down Microsoft Word), FUN (lots of games, but the demo versions are all crippled so tend to stop after a certain number of moves. Annoying. You can upgrade to the full versions, but they cost and I am trying to keep the distraction down) and FILES (self explanatory).

    You then navigate to what you want to do et voila.

    It’s not as speedy as modern PCs, but then what can you expect from a stripped down processor and Flash storage? It is perfectly fast enough if you get over the desire for instantanteous programme opening.

    The screen works well in bright environments (e.g., on a train with the sun streaming through the window), but I’ve yet to try it outside on a bright, sunny day. I’ll update when I have had the joy of writing in the park.

    The keyboard is perfectly responsive, if a little ‘clicky’. The spacebar doesn’t always trigger, but that is more down to getting used to the much smaller footprint of the keyboard. Your early typing WILL look like a brain-injured spider has tap danced on the keyboard, but I adapted pretty rapidly.

    Here’s a tip if you are in OpenOffice and it is refusing the UK localisation of your keyboard, despite what the global settings might be: go to TOOLS > OPTIONS > LANGUAGE SETTINGS > LANGUAGE, and in the LOCAL option, choose English (UK). Your keys will behave as they should do once more. It’s amazing what you pick up whilst BBQing a cows-worth of steak at your brother’s 30th party.

    Yes, my brother is now 30. Holy crap, that means I am 27 this year. That’s “late twenties” territory… Eeek.

    The trackpad is hyper sensitive, and it is very easy to accidentally brush it with your thumb and *bam* you’re suddenly typing in the middle of the paragraph above. Another foible is the page up/page down keys, right next to the arrow keys and under the right hand shift. It is very, VERY easy to trigger these by mistake and again, *bam* your cursor plays a game of “where’s wally?” I’m not the only AspireOne user to note this either, but it’s just a case of getting used to it, and being careful where you place your fingers.

    What else? I got a LapJack sticker to cover the lid and give it some protection – the lid shows fingermarks just as soon as you look at it. The Acer is a common enough machine that most sticker websites have a template for it. There are also several different cases on the market if you want to give your baby a little more protection when you hurl it in your bag.

    I will admit, at a price less than a new iPod, I am treating it in a remarkably cavallier fashion, slinging it in my handbag with narry a thought. But that is what I brought it for at the end of the day! The same person who taught me the trick of the language settings whilst grilling a cow, also taught me the trick to get into the command prompt (notoriously tricky on the Acer) but I’ll be damned if I can remember it. I blame large amounts of Somerset Cider…

    But in the end, what is my verdict on the machine? That’s easy – I love it, I adore it, it is my writing soulmate! So there are a few niggles, but they are tiny, teeny niggles. It does exactly what I want it to do, no more, no less, and I didn’t have to read a 500 page manual before I could set it up. What else can you ask from a piece of technology in this day and age?

    Category Review | Tags: | 6 Comments

  2. Review of Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier

    July 18, 2008 by Cas

    The Book:
    Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier

    The Facts:
    Pages: 320 (paperback)
    Published: 1st ed – 1936

    The Blurb:
    Her mother’s dying request takes Mary Yellan on a sad journey across the bleak moorland of Cornwall to reach Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience. With the coachman’s warning echoing in her memory, Mary arrives at a dismal place to find Patience a changed woman, cowering from her overbearing husband, Joss Merlyn.

    Affected by the inn’s brooding power, Mary is thwarted in her intention to reform her aunt, and unwillingly drawn into the dark deeds of Joss and his accomplices. And, as she struggles with events beyond her control, Mary is further thrown by her feelings for a man she dare not trust…

    The Review:
    I first read Jamaica Inn when I was 11 or 12. The precious brat I was, I had finished the book the rest of the English class were reading, so Mr Priestley suggested I read this one while everyone else caught up. I remember enjoying it and I also remember bits freaking me out, but that’s it, so when I saw a copy in a charity shop, I figured it was time to revisit the book.

    I’m glad I did.

    It is a lot darker the second time around and, when read with adult eyes, the treatment Joss Merlyn gives to Aunt Patience is even harder to swallow. The darkest bit of the book comes in the middle, where you realise along with Mary quite how trapped and helpless to the situation she is. I was eager to get to the end, but forced myself to fully appreciate the plotting which is as tight as a drum. Not for a second does du Maurier let up with the gothic horror on the windswept Cornish coast. The half-remembered plot had me going “don’t trust him!” to Mary a few pages before the secret villain is revealed (ooh, how that shocked me the first time round).

    The one bit that slightly annoyed me is the ending and Mary’s fate. Not to give it away, but for such a strong female character, I’m rather disappointed at the way she chose to end things.

    Would I recommend Jamaica Inn?
    Definitely! I loved this book the first time around and I loved it when I read it again over a decade later. I definitely took more from it the second time around. Some books you read and can’t understand why they’ve become “classics”, but Jamaica Inn isn’t one of those.

    Four mugs of tea.

    PS: The Amazon links I am using here affiliate links. All I get out of these reviews is the joy/horror of reading new books and sharing them with you :)

    Category Review | Tags: | No Comments

  3. Review of Monster Island by David Wellington

    January 23, 2008 by Cas

    It’s not often you can say you’re reading a book because of a conversation you had with your brother over Christmas about how you would survive the Zombie Apocalypse. (If you’re curious, we decided that for long term survival a katana would be the weapon of choice). I was making the argument that why would you want to be the last human on earth? Pulling in themes from I am Legend (the book), I argued that I saw no point in fighting for the remnants of humanity when, even if a handful were to survive for a short period, ultimately in a pandemic of zombieism, the monsters would win and become the norm. Surely, I said, the worst thing about becoming a zombie was loosing all sense of self afterward? A zombie with a brain now…

    Brother Dearest mentioned a book he half remembered. I googled “zombie retain consciousness” and got to Monster Island:

    The Book:
    Monster Island by David Wellington

    The Facts:
    Pages: 378 (paperback)
    ISBN: 978-1905005475
    Published: 1 May 2007
    Price: £7.99
    Publisher: Snowbooks

    The Blurb:
    As the shambling zombie masses cover the globe, advanced nations quickly succumb to the feeding frenzy. Complacent first-world citizens are no match for the mindless, fearless undead. Civilization’s only hope rests in war zones like Somalia, where fighting for survival is the norm.

    From this quarter emerges an unlikely group of heroes. A small army of girl warriors are crossing the world to find the supplies necessary for their survival. They are guided by Dekalb, a former UN inspector, chosen for his knowledge of America.

    The zombie plague has taken out this once-powerful nation, and the insatiable undead now fill the streets of New York City. One amongst them is different. Though driven by the same hunger, his mind is alive, and he’s discovering the advantages this difference can bring. Dekalb will soon learn that if there’s anything more dangerous than a flesh-hungry zombie, it’s one with a plan.

    The Review:
    Dig a little deeper on the web and it turns out that Monster Island was first written as a serial novel in blog-format. This shows in the writing from the start, where the chapters are short, as are the sentences. The action starts from the first page, as the Statue of Liberty looms through the fog, and it continues pretty much unabated till the final page. It’s clearly written to be read on the web and on the screen, grabbing your attention and never straying too far from the styalistic path. It would be rather two-faced of me, a blogger, to take issue with this style, so I’m not going to take issue with it.

    Apart from the fact I don’t like how it translates to the printed page and book-form.

    The book grated on me pretty quickly and kept grating upto the last page. I found the flat two POV narration irritating, with the constant flip-flopping between Dekalb and Gary jarring. All the time as I was reading and jumping from one crisis to the next I had a niggling desire in the back of my mind for more flesh on the narrative bone. Give me some characterisation, I pleaded. A plot-twist you don’t see coming from the first page. A chapter longer than seven sides – yes, I counted. The longest is the final chapter which wraps everything up, and even that’s only eight sides long. Perhaps I’m jealous? Brevity is a technique I’ve never mastered and it does have it’s place, but to me the constant flipping between narrative voices and action simply meant I never fully got into the story. It read like a modern music video: styalistic, dramatically shot and fast cut; all flashing lights and swooping camera angles, with scantily clad beauties and a thomping tune to distract you from the lack of content.

    Still, I enjoyed it. I loved the concept of intelligent zombies. The most convincing section of the book was the section which detailed (all to briefly) the spiraling collapse of civilization. Moments of brilliance shone through the book and one of the main supporting cast, Ayaan the gun-toting school girl, was touchingly drawn. It kept me entertained through two hours of having my hair cut/coloured. I wanted to get to the end to find out what happened (I’d guessed correctly). I even felt a little sad that I had reached the end and that certain characters met the fate that they did.

    Would I recommend Monster Island?
    Probably not. It’s telling that there are two other books in the sequence (Monster Nation and Monster Planet) and that I don’t want to read either of them. It’s also telling that I’m probably not going to pick the book up again any time soon for a re-read. I don’t begrudge the money I spent on the book exactly, but looking back I’d rather have read it in it’s free form off the web.

    Two mugs of tea and a biscuit – bits of the book were good and I appreciate it for the authors experimentation with the free-web/pay-print model, but on the whole I think I’ll give the zombie genre a miss for a while. Shuffling undead work on the screen but it takes a better author than Wellington to make them scary on the page.

    PS: The Amazon links I’m using here affiliate links. All I get out of these reviews is the joy/horror of reading new books and sharing them with you :)

    Category Review | Tags: | 4 Comments

  4. Review of Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

    July 14, 2007 by Cas

    Time to review a book I think.

    Before I go any further, I must point out that this is one of the books given to me free to review by Penguin Books. The only impact this has had is that it meant I got to read some books I might not otherwise have stumbled across. Nor are the Amazon links I’m using here affiliate links. All I get out of these reviews is the joy/horror of reading new books and sharing them with you :)

    The Book – Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
    cover image

    The facts:
    Paperback, 400 pages, ISBN 9780141322919, pub 05 Jul 2007, £5.99, Puffin

    That last – Puffin – is a bit of a flag. Puffin is the childrens/young adult imprint of Penguin so if you’re an adult-book-snob, this won’t be for you.

    The blurb:
    “I’m Annabel. I’m the girl who has it all. Model looks, confidence, a great social life. I’m one of the lucky ones. Aren’t I? My ‘best friend’ is spreading rumours about me. My family is slowly falling apart. It’s turning into a long, lonely summer, full of secrets and silence. But I’ve met this guy who won’t let me hide away. He’s one of those intense types, obsessed with music. He’s determined to make me listen. And he’s determined to make me smile. But can he help me forget what happened the night everything changed?”

    The review
    As I’ve already said, Puffin books are aimed at the younger end of the market and I’d probably pitch Just Listen to the 15+ girl market, give or take a few years depending on maturity. The writing isn’t so simplistic or childish as to put adult readers off, but it has been pitched to its intended audience and you might find it takes a little while to get used to the style.

    From the blurb it’s fairly self explanatory that this book wants to give you a view from the other side, a sneak-peak into the life of the popular girl. To be totally frank, this immediately set my back up and set me out to loathe the book from the start – the ‘popular’ girls made my life unmitigated hell at school, so why would I want to read about them for fun!? Even ten years on, empathy is a bit much to ask for. The opening of the book didn’t exactly endear itself to me either. Far too much scene setting and overly conscious ambiguity. Oooh, look, little miss popular has a secret and her life isn’t so great after all!

    I got all that from the blurb.

    But I stuck to it because, well, I was curious as to what exactly had happened to bring about Annabel’s fall from grace, and I’m glad I did. Somewhere about chapter three or four I found I was getting caught up in the story and I didn’t put the book down till I’d finished it with a lump in my throat at three in the morning. Personally, I’d have stopped the book one chapter earlier but I can appreciate why the author felt the need to wrap all the loose ends up with a pretty bow.

    I never totally warmed to Annabel and the villain(s) of the piece lack any subtlety of character, but the supporting cast are total gems. If anything, the middle sister, Whitney, made the book for me and I’d willingly read more about her. As for the plot, yes it is a little predictable in the grand sweep, but I will admit to being knocked by the main plot revelation. Either kids books have got a LOT darker lately, or my own segue to sci-fi/fantasy in my early teens spared me some fairly gruesome YA fiction!

    Would I recommend Just Listen?
    For the intended audience: yes, though a qualified yes. I might be being overly prudish, but I’d suggest that parents of younger teens read page 263 to 265 first, if only so they can be prepared for questions that might arise.
    For older readers: maybe. It depends on your own personal taste and tolerance for highschool girls and all their neuroses. I enjoyed it but I’m not convinced I want to read it again.

    Three mugs of tea.
    (More about the rating system used can be found on the about page).

    Category Review | Tags: | 13 Comments

  5. In Her Shoes

    April 26, 2006 by Cas

    Just saw In Her Shoes and it had me blubbing like a little baby by the end. I am so pathetic. A nice, predictable, well done film. Three and a half penguins.

    Category Mini Meadow, Review | Tags: | No Comments

  6. coComment – Cas’ first thoughts

    February 6, 2006 by Cas

    Well, I finally got me an invite. I went from having no invites whatsoever at midnight last night, to having ten when I checked my mail this morning! The codes people kindly sent me, but that I didn’t use (well, there’s only one of me!) can be found at the end of this post. Please feel free to use one!

    There’s not much I can say about this that hasn’t already been said. Simply put, it is a third-party way of keeping track of all the comments you make across various blogs (currently only on the big six platforms – Blogger, MSN Spaces, MySpaces, TypePad, WordPress, Xanga).

    I’m a great believer in ‘conversation’, as opposed to one-way broadcast communication, and consequently the release of coComment into beta over the weekend got me excited beyond all common sense.

    I’ve had it set up most of the day now, and am still getting to grips with the finer points, but the following are my current thoughts (in no particular order).

    I’ve managed to replicate Josh’s problem with regards the ‘more articles from this blog’ – clicking on such a link for a Bright Meadow comment takes you to TechCrunch’s blog page – blog 277. Nor, it seems, am I the only one. Lots of the articles on the TechCrunch page are not, in fact, from TechCrunch.
    In the time it took me to write this post (with break to watch ‘Corpse Bride’ and go to the supermarket), the above problem seems to be fixed. If you are curious, Bright Meadow is now blog number 636.

    It still seems to be unable to pick up the title of the individual posts, but according to the help forums, this is a WP issue down to the sheer customizability of the themes! (Mildly ironic). They’re working on fixing it.

    I’m using the Greasemonkey script to make things run that little bit smoother – lovely, because I don’t have to remember to click the bookmarklet (I used it a grand total of two times with the bookmarklet before switching to Greasemonkey). On the whole, I have nothing against bookmarklets, but I only have so much real estate in my toolbar, and with RSI rearing it’s ugly head again today, the fewer clicks I have to make with the mouse the better!

    The “adding this comment to the blog” box doesn’t always disappear once the comment is added, forcing me to refresh. I have a sneaky feeling this might be because of a clash with my comment-preview plugin, because I haven’t noticed this behaviour on blogs without this functionality. Just in case it is this plugin that is conflicting, I’ve disabled it for now. Let me know if you all really want previewing back, because coComment is currently more important to me.

    Occasionally, the ‘expand’ option gets stuck, and it refuses to collapse a comment-stream. No biggy, I just hit ‘reload’.

    And one last niggle – you can’t cmd+click to force “view articles from this blog” to open in a new tab. You have to right click or ctrl+click to open up the context menu and do it from there (I’m on a Mac). All the other links you can cmd+click on, just not that one.

    A non-bookmarklet option for if I was commenting on a blog and I wasn’t on my own computer?

    The coComments box in my sidebar isn’t picking up new comments.

    At the moment, only comments made by registered coComment users show up on the coComment page, so you don’t necessarily get the full comment-picture. They are working on an “integrate” tool which will enable all comments made, regardless of who makes them, to show up on the coComment page. This would be lovely, especially considering the limited number of coComment users.

    If people are interested in getting coComment for themselves, I would suggest hightailing it off to the coComment website and registering your interest by submitting your email addy in the box provided. They got back to me within a few hours.
    Option two is to go to Laurent’s blog and ask him nicely. He got back to me again in a few hours.
    Option three is to use one of the codes below. Now, I can’t actually remember which one of these I used, so you’ll just have to do a bit of trial and error. I don’t have the volume of traffic of Scoble et al, so I imagine these should remain good for a little while at least.
    Option four is to trust in the serendipity of the Internet. Contrary to expectations, people do read and comment on other peoples blogs, even little ones like this one. You never know who is reading :)

    These ones have been lurking on another blog for most of the day, so might not still be valid:
    0856-7645-1274
    9256-8411-9892
    6385-9313-5550
    7452-6272-2669
    2754-4520-5864

    These ones should be ‘fresh’
    6071-3953-8099
    9002-6621-7835
    4653-5976-0105
    6239-2516-2822
    4183-8444-2243-1195-9648

    Thank you again Laurent and everyone who got me a code, or who pointed out where I might find a code. I’m having great fun playing with this :D
    coComment, comments, conversation

    Category Review | Tags: | 13 Comments

  7. Askimet redux

    February 5, 2006 by Cas

    One small issue I have with Askimet so far – it doesn’t tell you which post the spam is associated with. Not that I need to know this, but I am curious.

    Category Mini Meadow, Review | Tags: | No Comments

  8. Review of John Wyndham: assorted works

    January 3, 2006 by Cas

    John Wyndham
    The Kraken Wakes
    The Chrysalids
    The Midwich Cuckoos
    The Trouble With Lichen
    [rate 5]

    I’ve said over and over how great John Wyndham is an an author, which is why it saddened me so much when I reviewed “Stowawy to Mars” and it left such a very bad taste in my mouth. So, in order to restore the balance, I bring you Wyndham at his best: “The Kraken Wakes“, “The Chrysalids“, “The Midwich Cuckoos“, and “The Trouble With Lichen“. I’d also bring you “Day of the Triffids” but I seem to have mislaid my copy so haven’t read it recently enough to feel sure of reviewing it.

    The Kraken Wakes:
    The ostensible plot, of aliens trying to take over the world from deep under the sea, can be more or less put to one side, if not ignored in its entirety. Wyndham follows Wells in “War Of the Worlds” and never explicitly reveals where the ‘alien’ threat has come from, leaving you to make up your own mind, as it should be. Moving away from the alien causation, you have here an allegory for global warming, and a biting comment on the idiocy of the Cold War, and weapons of mass destruction. Themes include, but aren’t limited to the traditional Wyndham cannon of ‘fear of the other’, apocalypse, and benign military.

    The Chrysalids:
    The plot lays the ground for that of “A Canticle For Liebowitz“, and many others. You have, once more, the post-apocalyptic world, fear of the unknown, religious fanaticism, and racial tensions (the only black people are only found on an island of ‘deviants’). This is one of the more overtly sci-fi books that Wyndham wrote. It is set in the unidentified future (most of the other are in the near-present) in a post-apocalyptic world gone to hell in a hand-cart, where ‘mankind’ survives in a few small pockets including Newfoundland. Any genetic deviations are a sin against God, and destroyed the instant they appear, even children. So what happens when the deviations don’t have any physical manifestations, but are purely mental? Their scripture doesn’t define what is normal for the mind so, is telepathy a gift or a curse?

    The Midwich Cuckoos:
    Most people know this story from the film “Village of the Damned“. A small rural town suffers a ‘day out’ and wakes to find all the women folk impregnated… Nine months later lots of golden eyed children are born and start to cause all kinds of mayhem.

    The Trouble With Lichen:
    Immortality is just around the corner, apparently, as the result of a rare lichen. This is one Wyndham’s books that doesn’t resort to aliens in order to get the plot off the ground. Based totally in believable (at least believable in 1960) science this novel addresses how mankind my cope if they were faced with the possibility of immortality, or at least a vastly extended lifespan. One of the first books, to my knowledge, that addresses what might happen if people really could live to 300 and the social upheaval that would ensue. Asimov does similar, at around the same time, with his Robot Series (Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn etc, leading to the Foundation series) but sets it firmly in the fantastical future.

    Some general points:
    Love Wyndham. Always will, hence the five mug rating for all of them. Here are few random observations I’ve made on this latest read through.

    There is a repeat plot device of the outsider-reporter to whom events don’t totally happen. They are invariably reports from after the events (looking back, hindsight), and attempts to assume the authority of historical narrative. A way of gaining our trust as an impartial observer, but at same time displaying the unique knowledge of the insider. Yes, as a device it is fairly obvious, but it works for him.

    Women are, if not the main character (as in “The Trouble With Lichen“), then married to the main character, and shape what happens. Very much a partnership. In Kraken, it is the wife who realises that they may need to quit London in a hurry and lays in supplies. In Cuckoos, it is the wife who manages to keep the village calm. The women don’t seek the fame, and frequently outsiders assume that it is the men who have done the work, but the men themselves don’t claim any of the glory, and make it quite clear to the people that matter that it was the women who did good.

    The theme of the military as good, there to help. Undoubtedly a relic of WW2. Quite a marked difference to the sinister and evil overtones that the military is painted with in most modern literature.

    As an aside, there is also at least one Holmes reference in each book. More a little nod to Connan Doyle‘s creation.

    Amazing that on page 187 of Cuckoos, Wyndham in 1957 basically summarizes the plot of Independence Day and every other major sci-fi book and film since. Not sure if that’s a sign of how visionary he is, or how little pulp sci-fi has changed in the last fifty years.

    Category Review | Tags: | No Comments

  9. Review John C. Wright: The Golden Age

    January 3, 2006 by Cas

    The Golden AgeJohn C. Wright
    The Golden Age
    The Phoenix Exultant (The Golden Age volume 2)
    [rate 3] and [rate 2] A great start, sadly disapointing end

    These were another impulse loan from the library. Basically I am working my way through the sci-fi/fantasy shelves and these were next. I found book one, The Golden Age mind-blowing. Original and full of new ideas. His take on the digital future is one that, whilst not brand-spanking new (rather similar in tone to Appleseed by John Clute, though not quite so brain-strainingly odd) is still different and fresh. It defines a futuristic civilization almost parochial in its outlook, being one of the few X-Century novels where the Einstein’s light-speed barrier has not been circumvented, leaving humanity constantly looking inward, trapped within their own minds as much as the solar system.

    Throughout The Golden Age you follow the fate of Phaethon (still not worked out how to pronounce it) as he realises the reality his living in is false, the result of a culture-wide amnesia, springing from some unspeakable deed he had done in the past. You struggle, as he does, to make sense of events, and to fit his fractured reality into what really happened. But, as you progress further in, you come to realise that perhaps what ‘really’ happened will never be known. You are forced to confront the nature of subjective and objective reality. It really does feel like a body-blow when you discover, along with Phaethon that everything he believes about his life is false.

    The end of The Golden Age left me wanting more, so I straight away started on The Phoenix Exultant, which was possibly a mistake. It just doesn’t fulfill the promise of the first book. Perhaps because I know there’s another whole book to go after this one, or whether the central premise of not trusting your own perceptions is now well established, but this has nothing new for me in it. Instead of rooting for Phaethon, you want to bash him about the head with a baseball bat for being so stupid. The one (yes one) female character is about much use as a chocolate teapot. And she’s supposed to be the strong version of one of the characters (characters can exist in multiple versions and bodies at the same time). The rest of the society is patriarchal and misogynistic to a fault. The threat of an external civilization seems shoe-horned in to give the author a reason to write book three. All in all, a huge disappointment. It is blatantly obvious that Phaethon is going to overcome the odds and be reinstated as the hero he feels himself to be, so why drag it out so long?

    I haven’t been able to find book three (The Golden Transcendence) at the library and I am not going to even spend 70p on requesting it from another library.

    Category Review | Tags: | No Comments

  10. Review of Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon

    January 3, 2006 by Cas

    CryptonomiconNeal Stephenson
    Cryptonomicon
    [rate 5] Definate definate desert island book. Gar!

    To say that Cryptonomicon is as important as Neuromancer by William Gibson isn’t, in my view, an understatement. Both books share themes that are genre busting and, like Neuromancer, Cryptonomicon has suffered because no one knew how to really market it. How do you classify a book that, amongst other things, is a historical detective story spanning 8 decades, a book about the invention of the computer, about code breaking, the birth of the CIA, Nazi gold, the Japanese invasion of Manilla, has mention of D&D, Imelda Marcos, crosses three generations, and has a love story intwined in it as well?

    As might be guessed from that rather broad spectrum of themes, Cryptonomicon is not a small book (918 pages including appendixes and footnotes) *1* Whilst this is a book coming from a base of cyber-culture, it isn’t science fiction. It steadfastly does not go beyond technology as is now, rather looks back to how we got here.

    Stephenson is an author who’s work I always enjoy reading, but who has improved with each book. There are recognisable characters from his other works in this book, and he continues his love affair with Far Eastern culture first detailed in Snow Crash, but unlike that work he doesn’t loose it in the last quarter of the book. The tension remains till the very last page and what I love is that it just ends with no attempt to indicate what happens to the characters.

    Pretty much the entire cast of Cryptonomicon’s characters appear in Stephensons next work, the Baroque Cycle, which explores the same themes of power, information, secrecy, money, and war, but in the 17th/18th centuries. Stephenson doesn’t do things by halves – the Baroque Cycle comprises three books all over 900 pages long – but I challenge you not to like an author who gets a ‘Lawrence Prodding Stick’ into a book essentially about computers, or the word ‘bop’ into a historical novel set in the 1700′s.

    Endnotes:
    *1*Got to love a novel with appendixes and footnotes :D

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