Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)
Oh well, we all have lesser works. Abandoned 20% of the way through.
This is a light-hearted comedy in which a demon sets out to subvert the destiny of Earth for a millennium by subverting a fairy tale. His main foils are perverse circumstances and the useless demonic bureaucracy.
"Demonic quest as light comedy" is just fine, especially written with a light hand. You might expect darker comedy with a fox-headed demon pondering a snack on human remains, but it remains fluffy. Very fluffy.
I am just not sold. The circumstances are vaguely amusing, but the joke of transplanting human organizational dysfunction to Hell only holds up so long. The main character is not evil or sweet or misguided or anything enough to be compelling. A pair of minor characters are about appearances without substance: a bard who wants to take part in great tales without getting his hands dirty and a crone who thinks that looking vaguely witch-like is enough to be really evil. The story deals with them appropriately but fails to take the lesson to heart.
Amazon link
Monday, September 29, 2008
Thursday, September 04, 2008
After Life by Simon Funk
Rating - 4: worth reading multiple times (buy it)
This is the best science fiction story I have read in a long while. It takes the prescience of Rainbows End and applies it to different technology. It is a completely coherent vision of the future with several known and planned technologies implemented. It is also told in a compelling, non-linear style that makes multiple, partially integrated perspectives work.
I am not going to spoil a thing. I will, however, give you some keywords. If you read it and do not understand it, you should do some research and read it again. There is nothing here that should be outside human general knowledge, although it probably is for 90+% of the planet. We will catch them up.
Your easier introduction to concepts is Greg Egan's wonderful Permutation City, which you should ready anyway. "Upload" is your keyword there. Other terms you may want to consider are bootstrapping, recursive self-improvement, intelligence explosion, wire-heading, the selfish gene, and some others I will probably think of and edit in later.
As a bonus, the book is available free online. There are links there to pay for Kindle or a print edition, or to donate.
Go. Read it.
This is the best science fiction story I have read in a long while. It takes the prescience of Rainbows End and applies it to different technology. It is a completely coherent vision of the future with several known and planned technologies implemented. It is also told in a compelling, non-linear style that makes multiple, partially integrated perspectives work.
I am not going to spoil a thing. I will, however, give you some keywords. If you read it and do not understand it, you should do some research and read it again. There is nothing here that should be outside human general knowledge, although it probably is for 90+% of the planet. We will catch them up.
Your easier introduction to concepts is Greg Egan's wonderful Permutation City, which you should ready anyway. "Upload" is your keyword there. Other terms you may want to consider are bootstrapping, recursive self-improvement, intelligence explosion, wire-heading, the selfish gene, and some others I will probably think of and edit in later.
As a bonus, the book is available free online. There are links there to pay for Kindle or a print edition, or to donate.
Go. Read it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
