If I had to be honest I would have to say I dislike the book, however, if I had to be completely honest, the good points of the book are lost within its pages.
Initially the attribute that caught my attention was the alliteration within the paragraphs, which in the preceding content quite honestly annoyed me; some alliteration is good, almost fun, but persistent attempts at tongue-twisting my brain were not so witty in my mind. An example, of course, follows:
"Trilobites and ostracoderms, mostly, with a silvery smattering of teleostean fish, a slimy slither of sea-slugs, and crusty clusters of shelled moluscs ..." (pg 3)At the moment I cannot find the other example in a few paragraphs later, nevertheless someone else can do it for me if they want.
Having said the above, I want to now focus on constructive parts of the book, ideas that should have been expanded, and some questions I have for whoever is reading this and wishes to answer.
Something very amusing to me was the relevance to what is called Legacy code/programmers/systems. In short, Legacy basically means "Old", so in our times, Legacy code would be something written in COBOL, I am assuming in the time set in the book, they mean C++ or Perl. Just as amusing was the way some of those old programmers acted, which is based on our times as well, how they subscribed to a fanatic sense of almost worship for Windows, Linux, or the Mac OS, or all of them is true today and in the book.
Additionally, the references to scientific definitions such as the quantum pool, the pH levels, and electrical potentials (or voltage) were enjoyable but could have been lost to the reader who isn't into science.
The way Macleod sees the future and past (although still essentially the future) is much more personal than perhaps someone who is not him could see; this is of course the case with any author, but I believe the job of a writer is to help the reader see what she/he sees through their eyes. I think that he has some sound ideas, but the reading is difficult to follow in some places because of the amount of information given and the lack of the same with other things such as the saurs; to me saurs imply reptilian in appearance, although they seem to have hands, the lack of "dino" makes me think of dinosaurs but not really. However, he could have done a better job at describing them, unless he wanted them to be as quiet and unseemingly non-present as their own character is described in the book.
The latter brings me to my questions, does the author seem to have something against a Social Democracy? Or is that his view of how humanity will progress politically? Also, is it implied that they smoke/do drugs/etc because they have the medical expertise to elongate life anyway? So they don't care, or is humanity just very indulging to begin with?
Those are my questions and my opinions about the book, it is actually getting increasingly easier to follow and even a bit more interesting, so I shall see what happens.
7 comments:
you seem to be with me on the book, and i also noticed the alliteration. i find it kinda clever, and at the same time irritating because i tend to lose track of what the sentence is trying to convey.
it seems we have the same view of the book, not great so far, but seems to be getting better as it goes.
I agree, the science concepts and programming jokes are quite funny. Also, I think the drinking, smoking, etc. is the author indulging, not necessarily humans.
I have to agree with you in that MacLeod's views of the future may be too personal - there are a lot of political issues that he takes for granted, assuming that the casual reader will know exactly what he's talking about.
About your question regarding the use of drugs, I would say that the author implies that the life extending technologies have been lost so the drugs, alcohol, etc. may just be part of their lifestyle.
i kind of think this whole confusion on the book is relatively unanimous. in all the blogs i see the same sort of complaints: the semi-future is interesting, the far future is vague, confusing, and kinda poorly written. but, this book won like a peabody. there's gotta be a reason for it.
but, like your blog mentioned and mine forgot to mention, the way it handles the whole hacker thing is pretty cool.
True, the writer is not helping us to interpret the story from his point of view, but maybe that was not his intention. It could be that instead of wanting us to see what he sees, he want's us to see it for what it is and interpret it in our own way. I find it ironic that a socialist government would be so lenient with drugs, they are supposed to be the more oppressing group after all. It might just be a reference to the fact that we're slowly but surely getting closer to legalizing the stuff, and a reminder that while our own government is full of kuso right now, it could be a hell of a lot worse.
That section in the story is the only thing that was able to pull me closer and make me want to read the rest of it. Mainly since I knew what all of those terms meant and hearing them I could see clearly in my mind what the author was trying to convey.
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