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0374214913
| 9780374214913
| 0374214913
| 3.72
| 209,516
| Sep 26, 2012
| Oct 02, 2012
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liked it
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I interpret this book to be a satire of (1) secret societies based upon hidden wisdom from the past, and (2) modern computer analysis techniques opera
I interpret this book to be a satire of (1) secret societies based upon hidden wisdom from the past, and (2) modern computer analysis techniques operated by nerds who end up being just as gullible as those in the first group. Our protagonist is an unemployed San Francisco computer programer who takes a job at a 24-hr book store in order to pay his rent. It’s a strange bookstore with few customers who can be divided into two groups, (1) normal people who wander in while waiting for the bus who are usually disappointed to find a limited selection of popular books, and (2) a small group of regulars who show up with algorithmic regularity at all hours of the day urgently requesting a particular old book from a strange collection high on the shelves in the back. It doesn’t take long for our protagonist to figure out that those strange books they’re checking out (they don’t pay) are written entirely in code. He has a connection to the inner workings of Google and scans one of the books and then using computer analysis breaks the code. This reveals a small subset of secret knowledge. The big code is elsewhere. The action then shifts to New York City where a secret society has for generations been dedicated to breaking the code left by 15th century printer Aldus Manutius. It is believed the code will reveal the secret to allow members of the society to live forever. Our protagonist with his friends from Google see the challenge of a code that needs to be broken and they throw all of Google’s super-computing power at the code and they do in several hours what would have taken thousands of secret society members working for thousands of years. So what did all that super analysis discover about the code? Well, I’ll let you read the book for that information. I found this to be an enjoyable easy to read book filled with snippets of humor (at one point a Google programer buys a NY Times newspaper and doesn’t know how to operate it so goes back to her phone). ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 07, 2024
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Apr 10, 2024
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Apr 01, 2024
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Hardcover
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1797163639
| 9781797163635
| 3.86
| 16,221
| Nov 07, 2023
| Nov 07, 2023
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really liked it
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The condition of the world at the beginning of this novel is much as it is today, only more so. Wealth has been concentrated into three major media te
The condition of the world at the beginning of this novel is much as it is today, only more so. Wealth has been concentrated into three major media tech companies, AI and facial recognition is ubiquitous, climate conditions are spiraling out of control, social media is designed to encourage social fear and polarization, possibility of another pandemic is real, and it seems civilization may be headed toward imminent collapse. Things are so bad that the world’s richest people recognize the need to build secure hide-away bunkers in remote locations of the world where they can hide in case civilization does indeed collapse. There is a small group of tech savvy cultural Marxist (but they are also deeply embedded within business management) who develop a plan to hack the worldwide web and tweak business practice in such a way that will change the direction of world events toward healthy social conditions, equitable economics, and improved world climate. Furthermore, their plan will be executed in such a way so as to keep their behind-the-scene actions a secret. This small group of do-good hackers first do a dry run as a proof of concept test to see if the approach will work. They devise a temporary internet worm that will make very minor unnoticeable changes in a random number of social media messages world wide. These changes will be made in the direction of making the messages slightly less abrasive to cause less polarization. Sure enough, after a couple months some parameters that measure political polarization and social divisiveness trend in a more peaceful direction. This gives them confidence to proceed with their plan. But in order to execute their save-the-world plan they need to get the world’s three richest billionaires out of the way. Murder isn’t an acceptable option so they come up with a plan to make them disappear in a manner such that they don’t realize what happened. Exactly how this is accomplished is too involved to explain in this review, and explaining it would be a spoiler anyway. The narrative has several parallel story lines with multiple chronologies that jump forward and backward in ways to make reading this book a challenge. There is one jump backward in time near the end of the book that explains something that’s already been read about, which I found to be a bit irksome. I mention this to warn potential readers of the book that the plot does not unfold as clearly as I have described it in this review. The book manages to converge some divergent views, including some Bible lessons with some survivalist cult teachings. In the end expectations of social justice are combined with advanced technology to achieve a happy ending. Yes, a happy ending but there's a warning about the need for constant vigilance in the last chapter. Below is an excerpt from near the end of the book in which one of the protagonists explains why they had to execute their plan quickly. As it turned out in the end, all the bad things listed in this excerpt did not happened because of the success of their plan. We had to do it quickly, rip the band-aid off quickly. Eventually all of these things would have gotten solved or the human race would have totally collapsed and the planet would have righted itself one way or other, but doing so slowly would have been horrific to live through—hundreds of years of misery, rising seas and famine and drought, refugees from one war bringing so much pressure onto another country that it created more wars, civilization boiling itself down into enclaves, new diseases coming from the bats and the insects displaced when we cut down more and more trees. We were circling the drain, hundreds of years of horror before we could start again....more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 14, 2023
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Nov 17, 2023
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Aug 27, 2023
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Audiobook
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B00005NZJA
| 4.02
| 284,546
| Jun 1992
| Dec 31, 2000
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liked it
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This book explores advances in technology while also introducing some novel theories about the neuroscience of religion. In this review I'll first say
This book explores advances in technology while also introducing some novel theories about the neuroscience of religion. In this review I'll first say some things about the technology, and then at the end of this review I've included excepts that explain the the book's theory of religion. I don't plan to say much about the plot, so check with other sources for a description of the plot. This novel is credited with first coining the term "metaverse" according to Wikipedia. Its thriller plot was obviously designed to demonstrate the ultimate advances in technology and metaverse that were conceivable in 1992 when this book was first published. I can imagine the author intending to describe where the metaverse would be thirty years in the future. It is now thirty-one years since the book was published, so did he get anything right? Let's just say that much of what he describes will remain thirty years in the future. The author describes the virtual reality of the metaverse as a place to go when doing so in real life isn't convenient or possible. That sort of reminds me of how today we find it more convenient to meet by Zoom instead of meeting in person. But in this book instead of viewing Zoom video of others in the meeting, their avatars are meeting in a virtual room. One bit of impressive technology described by the book was an intelligent "plank" (a.k.a. skateboard). It anticipates the rider's center of gravity and inertia vector and makes sure they don't fall off. Bumps and rough surfaces are not a problem because its wheels automatically conform as needed to the surface. For example, it's possible to skate down stairways. It's also possible to "poon" (i.e. sticky harpoon with leash) cars driving on the freeways and tag along at high speed on the skateboard. There's no mention of what happens in case of extreme deceleration until near the end of the book when we learn that the riders apparently wear a full body airbag that inflates when needed. I was surprised how much of the book's story involved religion, its history, and how it functions in the human brain like a virus. The villains of the story's plot are utilizing these truths to take over the world. I think the book's theories of how religion works on the brain are mostly bogus, but I found the concept interesting so I've included two quotations below from the book on the subject of religion. The following is a quotation in which the protagonist Hiro is discussing religion with an old girl friend, Juanita. This quote describes religion as something that tends to go viral which fits with the book's theory of the neuroscience of religion "How can you say that? You're a religious person yourself."The following quotation provides a full explanation of the book's theory of neuroscience of religion. It explains religion to be a meta virus with a long history. The Reverend Wayne and L. Bob Rife referenced near the end of the quotation are the arch villains in this novel's plot. I've made lots of cuts to shorten the text, but this excerpt is still very long so I've placed it within this (view spoiler)[ "We've got two kinds of language in our heads. The kind we're using now is acquired. It patterns our brains as we're learning it. But there's also a tongue that's based in the deep structures of the brain, that everyone shares. These structures consist of basic neural circuits that have to exist in order to allow our brains to acquire higher languages.” ...(hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 19, 2023
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Apr 25, 2023
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Apr 19, 2023
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Audible Audio
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1491523190
| 9781491523193
| 1491523190
| 4.42
| 1,156,512
| Sep 27, 2011
| Feb 25, 2014
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it was amazing
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Robinson Caruso in space! That is the phrase that came to mind while trying to describe this book. Mark Watney is abandoned on the planet Mars and has
Robinson Caruso in space! That is the phrase that came to mind while trying to describe this book. Mark Watney is abandoned on the planet Mars and has to figure out how to survive with the limited equipment, stuff and debris left behind by the departing crew. I was surprised how much technical and scientific detail the author went into to explain the various actions taken by Watney in order to survive. I was also surprised how much the book ended up being a glamorization of the virtues of being an engineer—mechanical engineer and botanist to be exact. This is my favorite quote: "… Even if it's got a bigger problem, he's an engineer!" … he added, "Fixing things is his job!" (pg 94)Truly, engineering couldn't hope for a better advertisement of their profession. Mark Watney is portrayed as a very likable nerd capable of solving any problem with alacrity. It's nice to have a technical person portrayed as a hero instead of detective, lawyer, or physician as is usually a case in these sorts of thrillers. I might add that just about every conceivable problem is anticipated and avoided, or the problem occurs with explosive unexpectedness and consequently dealt with. Whenever things appear to be finally under control in the book's narrative the reader knows that another seemingly impossible situation is about to happen. The only reason I finally decided to read this book was because it was a book group selection. Prior to that I had decided not to read this book in spite of the fact that many of my Goodreads.com friends had given it high marks. I simply assumed it was just another science fiction story. I associate science fiction with my younger years when I could become excited about inexplicable levels of technical development—time travel for example. But The Martian in contrast is carefully based on technology that either exist today or technology that could exist based upon current scientific knowledge. I'm sure there are those more knowledgeable than me who can find plenty of details in this book to criticize, but for me it had sufficient logical detail to draw me into the story without reservation. The need to make quick life saving adjustments in response to unexpected problems as portrayed in this fictional story reminds me of the real life situation faced by the Apollo 13 astronauts. Many of the problems they faced (e.g. limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water, and critical need for makeshift repairs to the carbon dioxide removal system) have their parallels in this fictional story. Both stories are a reminder of the dangers resulting from having human life depend on complicated electromechanical equipment manufactured by the lowest bidder. Both this fictional book and Apollo 13 illustrate why sending humans into outer space is a waste of energy and resources. Advances in robotic technology is such that they can out perform humans at almost any task (e.g. driverless cars?). And the one great advantage robots have in exploring a planet like Mars is the fact that they don't mind being left there never to return to earth. I am so enthused by this story that I have decided to watch the movie. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 13, 2016
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Sep 16, 2016
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Sep 15, 2016
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MP3 CD
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B00M4OO96Q
| 3.96
| 2,497,620
| Oct 19, 1953
| Oct 21, 2014
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liked it
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This is a classic science fiction imagining of a future when the forces of anti-intellectualism have completely taken control of laws and regulations.
This is a classic science fiction imagining of a future when the forces of anti-intellectualism have completely taken control of laws and regulations. Former college professors are now wandering hobos with nothing to do other than memorize past written literature and look forward to a time in the future when they may be able to restore it to the printed page. That appears to be an unlikely goal because the current political situation as described in the book calls for all books to be burned. Indeed, our main character is a fireman at the beginning of the book whose job is to burn any books that can be found. In other words, the roll of the fireman has completely been turned around. Three thoughts occurred to me while going through the book. First, I thought the idea of burning all the books to be an unlikely dystopian plot. But then I remembered that many books that have been banned. Here's a link to a Wikipedia article that contains a list of books that have been banned by governments. Second, it seemed strange that they were burning all books since that would make advances in technology and science almost impossible. But then I remembered that some recent occurrences in the political world have been attributed to anti-intellectualism which includes denying facts based on science. Have you heard of climate change deniers? Some believe the Brexit vote was a reactionary and xenophobic response to modern economics. Some think the same is true for the popularity of Trump. Those could all be called current signs of anti-intellectualism. Third, I noticed that the assumed roles of husbands and wives as described in the book provide clue as to when the book was written. The book was published in 1953 when most husbands had jobs outside the home and their wives did not. That was the situation for the main character in this book, and it stuck me as being rather strange. If the book had been written in the past twenty years I'm pretty sure that the wife in the story would have had her own job. Surveys generally show that about 1 in 4 adults in the USA have not read a book in the past year. So theoretically, if all books were burned a quarter of the population won't miss them. As long as that portion of the population remains less than 50 percent in a democracy books should be reasonably safe. The following is from PageADay Book Lover's Calendar for December 1, 2018: Arguably Bradbury’s greatest work, Fahrenheit 451 is the story of Guy Montag, a fireman in a dystopian future where books are outlawed and mindless mass media is everywhere. Guy’s job is to burn books—and the houses of people who harbor books—to prevent the spread of intellectual thought. When the normally obedient Guy begins to question the values of his society, he faces a very difficult decision-submit, or revolt. It’s a story that will make you very grateful for your own book collection. FAHRENHEIT 451, by Ray Bradbury (1953; Simon & Schuster, 2012) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 06, 2016
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Aug 09, 2016
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Aug 08, 2016
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Audible Audio
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0061373877
| 9780061373879
| 0061373877
| 4.17
| 540,972
| Sep 16, 1996
| Oct 23, 2007
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did not like it
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This book is a journey down through the cracks of the structured "normal" world into a nightmarish dark fantasy world that seems to be partially free
This book is a journey down through the cracks of the structured "normal" world into a nightmarish dark fantasy world that seems to be partially free from regular Newtonian physics. This "neverwhere" reminds me of some of the stuff that shows up in Harry Potter books and Lord of the Rings. One difference with this book is that the author is doing all that's possible to gross out the reader. (e.g. The bad guys eat slugs and bite off the heads of pigeons.) It's a story of a young adult male representative from the normal "above" world accompanying a sexy looking female pixie resident of the "underside" world who has supernatural powers that allow her to open locked doors. This young pixie happens to be an orphan who's parents were murdered by evil inhabitants of this strange underworld for mysterious reasons. Their quest (ordeal) is to search through this dark and slimy underworld is to solve the mystery of why her parents were murdered. At another level the story can be seen as a portrait of a troubled mind. I kept wondering if this guy was going to wake up to find it was all a bad dream. One reviewer has suggested that its an image of a Freudian repressed mind. One recurring theme seems to be facing one's worst fears. There is one place in the story that it sounds much as a mind experiencing a psychotic break. There are things suggestive of symbolism or metaphor, some more than suggestive. (e.g. There's a crucifixion, and guess what follows.) The world described here certainly isn't heaven, so it must be the other place. Indeed the story involves the keys to heaven's door that turn out to be the keys to the other place. I'm a fan of neither science fiction nor fantasy. This is not the sort of book I would choose to read on my own. But one of the benefits of belonging to a book group is that they sometimes select books outside my usual areas of interest. Occasionally this results in my being exposed to a book that I enjoy. Not this time. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 28, 2011
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Jun 04, 2011
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May 28, 2011
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Audio CD
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4.24
| 113,374
| May 1999
| Aug 20, 2008
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it was amazing
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Aspire for fluency in geek speak? Is "Big Bang Theory" your idea of reality TV? Then I recommend this Moby Dick of nerd novels. Jay Clayton in his boo
Aspire for fluency in geek speak? Is "Big Bang Theory" your idea of reality TV? Then I recommend this Moby Dick of nerd novels. Jay Clayton in his book
Charles Dickens in Cyberspace
calls this book the “ultimate geek novel” (pg. 204-211) and draws attention to the “literary-scientific-engineering-military-industrial-intelligence alliance” that produced discoveries in two eras separated by fifty years, World War II and the Internet age. That's a good concise summary of the book. Stephenson writes with a fascinating droll humor that lets the reader forgive him for explaining cryptography and mathematical problems in excruciating detail. This book offers an insight into the world view seen through the eyes of a genius. Everything that might be a beautiful sight or interesting view to others will appear to be an example of hidden intervals or patterns to the mind of a genius. This is a turn of the century (20th to 21st) book that strives to pattern itself after a 19th Century novel in that the author uses hundreds of words in those locations where a dozen words would be adequate to carry the plot forward. However, the writing is so entertaining that the reader wishes that even more words would have been used. Stephenson repeatedly branches out on multiple subjects in independent essays that could easily be lifted from the book and used with slight editing for a standup comedy routine. However, the comedy routines would probably go over best in a college town where some physicists or mathematicians are present in the audience. My tech-geek friends read this book over ten years ago, and they all recommended it to me. It wasn't available in audio format at the time, and I didn't want to invest the time required to read a book this big (928 pages, 42 hours audio). So I never got around to reading it. Then about a year ago it became available on Audible.com. So as usual, I've made it through a famous book about ten years after it's been read by everyone else. I highly recommend readers of this book refer to the Wikipedia article on this book. It explains which characters are fictional and which are historical, and it helps explain the nature of the various story lines within the book. I can see how this book was even better when read at the height of the dot-com and fiber optic cable bubble. Techie geekie things were newer then, and it appeared that we were entering the utopian age of Aquarius that would lead to perpetual prosperity. Does anyone remember the promises made that the new information age would be free of recessions and business cycles? Since ten years have elapsed since it was published, the reader can detect some signs of the book's age by noticing that there are no smart phones, iPads or iPods (it was the zenith of the CD Walkman era). Windows NT was new then. It was pre 9-11 so the emphasis in the book is on the inconvenience of customs inspections over that of security checks prior to getting on board. Most of the book can pass as plausible historical fiction. But there are a few Stephensonian inventions that definitely belong in a science fiction novel. Below are some of the imaginative examples: Qwghlmian -- is a fictional language that allegedly hails from some fictional British islands in the North Sea. It has 16 consonants and no vowels making it nearly impossible to pronounce. To complicate things further, there are two mutually non-comprehendible dialects of the language, Inner Qwghlimian and Outer Qwghlimian. Confusing the mid-glottal with the frontal glottal can, in one instance, completely change the meaning a sentence. Rocket propelled submarine -- This book has the WWII era Germans advancing in submarine technology parallel with their development of jet engines in airplanes. Supposedly this quiet and new generation of hydrogen peroxide propelled submarines could stay below water for days. RAM made from plumbing -- A character in this book constructs a digital computer with addressable random access memory (RAM), and it was made from plumbing parts and other primitive stuff. It happens during WWII which was the pre-transistor era, thus he used drain pipes filled with mercury with electrical level sensors that created the binary signals necessary for a functioning digital computer. (If a computer like that were made today, EPA would declare it to be a Federal Superfund Site for toxic cleanup.) Some quotations I found interesting: A comparison of atheists and church attendees: "… the post-modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz. society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor…. Whereas people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation…. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability." A paraphrase of the fine print on a typical investment prospectus: "Unless you are as smart as Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss, savvy as a half-blind Calcutta bootblack, tough as General William Tecumseh Sherman, rich as the Queen of England, emotionally resilient as a Red Sox fan, and as generally able to take care of yourself as the average nuclear missile submarine commander, you should never have been allowed near this document. Please dispose of it as you would any piece of high-level radioactive waste and then arrange with a qualified surgeon to amputate your arms at the elbows and gouge your eyes from their sockets. This warning is necessary because once, a hundred years ago, a little old lady in Kentucky put a hundred dollars into a dry goods company which went belly-up and only returned her ninety-nine dollars. Ever since then the government has been on our asses. If you ignore this warning, read on at your peril — you are dead certain to lose everything you've got and live out your final decades beating back waves of termites in a Mississippi Delta leper colony. Still reading? Great. Now that we've scared off the lightweights, let's get down to business." The difference between physicists and engineers: "There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won’t fall down or airplanes that won’t suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don’t want to hear about anything that makes no … sense. … The engineers love … their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists … want to think they understand everything." Link to Darwin8u's notes: https://www.goodreads.com/notes/38897... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 03, 2011
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May 11, 2011
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May 03, 2011
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Audible Audio
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1415916292
| 9781415916292
| 1415916292
| 3.85
| 728,077
| Apr 05, 2005
| Jan 01, 2005
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liked it
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I may be the last person to have finally gotten around to reading this book, and surely I'm the only person who hasn't seen the movie. The plot has be
I may be the last person to have finally gotten around to reading this book, and surely I'm the only person who hasn't seen the movie. The plot has been so widely discussed I suppose there's no need for me to describe it. The surface story level can be called science fiction, but I'm pretty sure that fans of science fiction don't care for the book. And those who like the book are people who wouldn't normally read science fiction. The book contains an exploration of interpersonal and group relationships that is not usually found in science fiction. The plot is not realistic in a number of ways. However, the first person narrative makes the plot believable by telling it as a child growing up and not quite understanding her environment relative to the outside world. So the reader suspects the presence of an ominous threat behind the obscure descriptions of the planned roles in life. The reader's sole source of information is the voice of the clueless narrator so the reader can be no wiser than the narrator. By the end of the book, and upon reflection, the book's apparent strength is in its ability to make the reader wonder what its second level of meaning might be. In my opinion it is a parable about human life. The characters live the role that has been laid out for them in much the same way that we all do the best we can with what opportunities we've been given by our circumstances of birth. The characters in this book are ordained to not live a long life for the benefit of others. This has its parallels in the economic, class and racial divisions we encounter in real life. The contrasts in opportunities become even more obvious if considering global and international differences. In real life some die young and others live long due to hidden forces that are stronger than any one individual or group of people. Maybe it's the forces of society, maybe it's God, but fate is not fair. Some readers wonder why the characters in this book are so docile about their fate. Don't we all die? And we hardly have a choice other than to accept that fact in the end. The best we can do is live our lives to the best of our abilities. Those who protest this reality end up either in jail or a mental institution. The following review is from PageADay's Book Lover's Calendar for March 9, 2018: As a girl, Kathy attended Hailsham, a boarding school in the English countryside for “special” students. Now 31 years old, Kathy crosses paths with two of her former classmates, Ruth and Tommy, inspiring a walk down memory lane. As the three old friends recount their childhood adventures, they begin to arrive at the truth behind Hailsham—and what, exactly, made them so special. Eerie but totally captivating, Never Let Me Go is a story that will stick with you long after you read the last page. NEVER LET ME GO, by Kazuo Ishiguro (Vintage, 2006) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 13, 2011
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Feb 17, 2011
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Feb 13, 2011
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Audio CD
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0786183926
| 9780786183920
| 0786183926
| 4.19
| 4,771,475
| Jun 08, 1949
| Nov 01, 2004
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liked it
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This is another one of those classics that I have heard about all my life but never was assigned to me in school. Consequently I never got around to r
This is another one of those classics that I have heard about all my life but never was assigned to me in school. Consequently I never got around to reading it until now. It is a book that certainly caught on and introduced some adjectives into common usage such as “Orwellian,” “Big Brother,” “Doublespeak,” and even “1984.” It’s a dreary story which doesn’t offer much enjoyment to the reader. It is about a distopian setting so it should be of no surprise to find little enjoyment in it. At the time this book was written the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union had recently expanded into eastern Europe and China would soon become Communist. So the momentum of expansion appeared to be on the side of Communism. George Orwell wanted to show the down side of totalitarian governments and give a picture of what would happen if it was carried to its ultimate limits of control over people’s lives. Some people today want to label any governmental policy they don’t agree with as being “Orwellian” or in the sprit of 1984. I prefer to refrain from doing so myself. The story in the book is so extreme I think it’s a bit of a stretch to apply it to other situations which are less extreme. Which Dystopian Novel Got It Right: Orwell’s ‘1984’ or Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’? The following link is to a New York Times essay with that title: LINK ...more |
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1
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Mar 20, 2010
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Mar 24, 2010
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Mar 20, 2010
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Audiobook
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1572703024
| 9781572703025
| 1572703024
| 3.99
| 1,901,891
| 1932
| Jan 01, 2003
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it was ok
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The writing in Brave New World is rather ordinary, and as science fiction literature its technology is dated. Nevertheless, Brave New World remains a
The writing in Brave New World is rather ordinary, and as science fiction literature its technology is dated. Nevertheless, Brave New World remains a classic. Why? It is one of the earliest books to ask whether technology can save us; Or rather, is technology good for us. The plot provides a forced choice between insanity or lunacy. A more likely prospect is that civilization will muddle somewhere between these two extremes in the future. Still, posing the question in this way certainly gets discussion started on how we make use of technology. Brave New World describes a world environment designed to maximize comfort and happiness at the expense of truth and beauty. The memory of history with all its instability is purposely forgotten. Science is carefully controlled to prevent change that might threaten stability. In the end everybody is happy and stability is assured. The exceptions to this happiness are the few sympathetic characters with whom modern readers can identify. What will be the fate of these few? What will be the fate of the Savage? What will be our fate? Therein lies this story's suspense. Here are some quotations from the book to ponder: But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." ...... ...... ...... ...... "What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?" ...... ...... ...... ...... "Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly--they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced." ...... ...... ...... ...... "All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy." "Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence. "I claim them all," said the Savage at last." ...... ...... ...... ...... "The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted." _______________ The following link is to an interesting comparison of the messages contained in Brave New World and 1984. https://delanceyplace.com/view-archiv... ...more |
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1593974760
| 9781593974763
| 1593974760
| 4.10
| 259,197
| Mar 1986
| Sep 01, 2005
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The story begins with Novinha, a pre-teen orphan with no friends who feels different from others and doesn't fit in with others of her age, asking to
The story begins with Novinha, a pre-teen orphan with no friends who feels different from others and doesn't fit in with others of her age, asking to be an apprentice xnynobiologist. She continues to play a central role throughout the rest of the book. The man named Ender on a distant planet recognizes a kindred spirit in Novinha and travels the 20 light years to speak for her dead mentor. So begins the book, Speaker for the Dead. This is the second book in the "Ender" science fiction series. Reading Ender's Game first isn't required, but certainly helpful in getting into this second book. But this book is very different from the first book. Speaker for the Dead is more mature in subject and theme than Ender's Game, which explains why my older self liked this book better than Ender's Game. But the child in me was wondering, where did the young Ender and those shootem-up computer games go? If all the extraterrestrial science fiction is stripped away, the remaining plot is a murder mystery with Ender filling the role of the detective who has arrived to learn the truth. But this basic plot is well disguised within a science fiction environment. The dominate conflict and mystery explored by the book is the relationship between the recently arrived human settlers and the native life present on their new planet. In many ways it is a speculative anthropological and societal look at what may be encountered if humans move to other planets. The time setting of the story is several thousand years in the future, 3,000 years after the story contained in Ender's Game. But Ender is still living thanks to the slowing of time caused by spending a lot of time traveling near the speed of light. Everything Orson Scott Card writes seems to have religious overtones. So it's probably no accident that the plot has a religious theme for those seek it. There's even a sacrificial death toward then end that has connotations of resurrection. Even after thousands of years with humans traveling throughout the universe, they are still very concerned about religion in the story and self identify as either Nordic Lutheran, Portuguese Catholic, Muslim, etc. The story even contains a Catholic monastery containing both men and women living together in chaste marriages. Hmmm, this is science fiction, so I guess anything is possible. The strangest entity in the story is a coalescence of awareness (non-human, and non-material) present throughout the universe who provides special communication to Ender. This entity goes by the name of Jane and comes pretty close to what most people think of as a personal God. She's a bit capricious, so in that regard she more like one of the ancient Greek Gods. She functions as the ultimate research assistant. The narrative contains no suggestion that Jane is the same thing as God, but the reader can put two and two together and ponder the possibilities. Her loyalty shifts to another person near the end of the book when Ender gets married. Yep, Ender gets married. So that's something to look forward to while reading this book. ...more |
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This book is generally credited with being the first science fiction novel. (That's assuming that The Odyssey doesn't count.) It's interesting to spec
This book is generally credited with being the first science fiction novel. (That's assuming that The Odyssey doesn't count.) It's interesting to speculate what it was like for a typical 19th Century person to read science fiction for the first time. It was a time when science (they called it natural philosophy) was beginning to explain many things that previously had been unexplained. A 19th Century reader could have easily thought that some of what was being described in Frankenstein could become reality some day. The limitations of science are more widely understood today, and most of us have become somewhat jaded from frequent exposures to science fiction. Nevertheless, Frankenstein continues to be an interesting story for the modern reader. Frankenstein is a story of creation with unintended consequences. The story is inspired by and refers to the earlier stories of Adam and Eve, Prometheus, Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. The book Frankenstein contains four different narrative-levels nested within each other, each exploring faltering efforts at creating something good. Narrative Level 1: Letters from seafarer Robert Walton to his sister Margaret Walton Saville forms the outer-frame for its particular story as well as for the other narratives. Robert Walton hopes to explore the polar regions and contribute to the human knowledge but ends up failing and nearly losing his ship. Narrative Level 2: The scientist Victor Frankenstein's tells his version of the story of the history of his creation, abandonment, and death struggle with the Creature. Victor Frankenstein strives to harness science to create new human life but in the end rejects his creation. Narrative Level 3: The Creature's version of his life gets told within Frankenstein's narration and describes the Creature's feeling of desperate loneliness and transformation from goodness to evil. The Creature wants to learn about his new world and fit in, but ends up taking revenge on those who mistreat him. Narrative Level 4: The Felix and Safie tale of heroism, injustice and love is told within the Creature's narration. Felix and Safie fight injustice, but in the end they are unjust in their treatment of the Creature. It could be supposed that the above nesting of narratives within each other could make the story hard to follow. But that is not the case. The story unfolds in a natural way that is easy to follow. This is 19th Century writing where the author makes things clear; none of that obfuscation that 20th Century authors are sometimes guilty of. It will come as a surprise to those familiar with movie versions of Frankenstein's monster that the Creature in Shelley's book can run faster, learn quicker and live off the land better than any human. The creature talks clearly and at length about his experience of feeling hurt and lonely. I see a parallel here with many of the inventions of the industrial revolution. Modern technology has made cars go faster, planes fly higher, and computers calculate faster than any human. But none of these modern inventions come close to being human. Dr. Frankenstein appears to have done a better job than God because his creation exceeds normal human capacities in many ways. It appears that the Creature's only shortcoming is his appearance. He's ugly. So ugly that he scares the daylights out of anyone who sees him. According to the Creature's narrative, he wanted to be a caring, loving and sensitive person. But he was so mistreated that he instead became a violent avenger. Could this be a lesson in the effect that the environment has on the making of the criminal mind? The following is a copy of a short review of Frankenstein taken from PageADay's 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die calendar for October 29, 2020: A Monster of the Imagination "We will each write a ghost story," said Lord Byron, as detailed in Mary Shelley's introduction to her now legendary Frankenstein. Two fo the we—Byron and his fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley—soon abandoned the assignment, while Mary, Shelley's 19-year-old wife, kept at it, seeking a theme that "would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror." She surely found it, and the philosophical, psychological, and ethical complexities in which she tangled her tale deepen its strangeness and wonder. Strange and wonderful it has remained for 200 years—as suspenseful a monster yarn, and as absorbing a human one, as any reader could desire. ...more |
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The little boy in me loved this book. If I had read this book while in grade school, and maybe even in high school, I would have been a real fan. Howe
The little boy in me loved this book. If I had read this book while in grade school, and maybe even in high school, I would have been a real fan. However, my older self now looks on the subject of team spirt and military discipline with a jaundiced eye. My current adult self now has to go past the first level of meaning of an enjoyable and trilling tale to look for the second and third levels of meaning. So I guess it could be called a parable about the human condition. I can understand why Orson Scott Card had the main characters be children. They make the best soldiers. They're malleable and trainable. And they're very enthusiastic about computer games and team sports. And so if war is ever lowered (or raised) to the level of a computer game, our best warriors will probably be preteens. So I have mixed feelings; It's a good story, but part of me is saying I shouldn't enjoy it so much. The audio version of this book had a long commentary at the end by the author in which he told about how he conceived of the story. In his commentary he said that he believed that the audio format is the best way to consume this book. This made me feel good since I'm an audio listener. One of my Goodreads.com friends recommended the book to me. I've known for a long time that my reading repertoire is deficient in science fiction. So I decided to listen to this book that was widely recommended and had won many awards. The following review is from PageADay Book Lover's Calendar for March 14, 2018: Ender Wiggin is a child prodigy—a brilliant problem-solver with maturity beyond his years. So it makes sense that the Battle School recruits him with the hope of turning him into a ruthless commander in the war against the Buggers, an alien race threatening the survival of humanity. Removed from his family and placed in training on an orbiting battle station, Ender must hone his skills to become the savior that the world needs—while also dealing with the usual growing pains. This sci-fi coming-of-age story is an enduring classic for readers of all ages. ENDER’S GAME, by Orson Scott Card (1985; Tor, 1994) ...more |
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