Category Archives: Books

Novel Review: Pattern Recognition

Cayce’s first footage had been waiting for her as she emerged from the flooded all-genders toilet at a NoLiTa gallery party, that previous November. Wondering what she could do to sterilize the soles of her shoes, and reminding herself never to touch them again, she’d noticed two people huddled on either side of a third, a turtlenecked man with a portable DVD player, held before him in the way that crèche figures of the Three Kings hold their gifts.

And passing these three she’d seen a face there, on the screen of his ciborium. She’d stopped without thinking and done that stupid duck dance, trying to better align retina to pixel.

“What is that?” she’d asked. A sideways look from a girl with hooded eyes, a sharp and avian nose, round steel labret stud gleaming from beneath her lower lip. “Footage,” this one had said, and for Cayce it had started there.

Published in 2003, William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition has been called his best novel since the original cyberpunk trilogy. Does it live up to its reputation?

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2005 Hugo Nominees

I haven’t had time to do reviews of the nominated novels this year, though I reviewed Iron Council back in September, and I’m hoping to review Charles Stross’s Iron Dawn before the end of August. Meanwhile, you can find the entire list of nominees here and the winners, posted at the link below.

In addition, my thoughts on the nominated short stories follow, along with links to each.

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Galapagos

And people still laugh about as much as they ever did…. If a bunch of them are lying around the beach, and one of them farts, everybody else laughs and laughs, just as people would have done a million years ago.
–Galapagos

Vonnegut wrote his best novels in the 1960s; his work started to founder in the 1970s. Critics often called his 1985 novel, Galápagos a comeback. Uneven but often brilliant, it would prove one of his last really good books.

In short: the future of humanity falls in the hands of the people who most likely would have been voted first off the island.

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Cat’s Cradle

The first sentence of The Books of Bokonon is this:
“All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”

My Bokonist warning is this:
Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book, either.

For July, my ongoing reviews of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s best novels features Cat’s Cradle, a very funny book about the end of the world. As it’s divided into many very short chapters, it also makes good summer reading—- despite the fact that it may induce actual thinking.

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The Legion of Time

Summer’s here, and the time is right for dancing in the street, lounging on the beach, and coding in the basement. (Or meeting other people who write stuff online, which is how I spent last weekend). It’s also the traditional time for lighter reading, and fans of SF might want to delve into the genre’s past, into the world of swashbuckling pulp adventure fueled by mind-bending concepts.

Jack Williamson ranked among the best of the Ray Gun school, and he continued to develop as a writer; he continues to this day. He has written and co-written more than fifty novels and, along the way, he coined the terms “genetic engineering” (Dragon’s Island), “terraforming” (Seetee Ship) and, in this novel, Jonbar Point.

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