“…what mattered very much to Richard was what an imaginary dwarf would encounter once he hefted a virtual pick and began to delve into the side of a mountain. In a conventional video game, the answer was literally nothing. The mountain was just a surface, thinner than paper Mache, with no interior. But in Pluto’s world, the first bite of the shovel would reveal underlying soil, and the composition of that soil would reflect its provenance in the seasonal growth and decay of vegetation and the saecular erosion of whatever was uphill of it, and once the dwarf dug through the soil he would find bedrock, and the bedrock would be of a particular mineral composition. It would be sedimentary or igneous or metamorphic, and if the dwarf were lucky it might contain usable quantities of gold or silver or iron ore.”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (SEP 30, 2011)

Neal Stephenson’s ReaMde, a play on words for the ReadMe file that accompanies many computer programs, is above all a wild adventure/detective story set in the present day. As one would expect from this author, current technology features prominently. The cast of characters is international, offering windows into such diverse types as Russian gangsters, Chinese hackers, American entrepreneurs, Idaho survivalists and second amendment fanatics among many others. A video game, T’Rain, is central to the tale. Most of the characters are addicted to the game; much of the detection is done by playing the game or by mining the data kept by the game. ReaMde as a story is something like a prolonged session of T’Rain. T’Rain is a play on words for terrain.

Reamde is a computer virus that hijacks data by encrypting it so it is unreadable. Victims get a computer message including a file named ReaMde, that they mistakenly read as ReadMe. ReadMe files are text files with important how-to information and are commonly bundled with downloaded computer programs. The victim opens the file, but instead of getting a text message with useful information, they activate the virus. The victim is told that they must pay a ransom in virtual currency within the T’Rain game in order to receive the encryption key that will free their data. The virtual currency is worth a fairly inconsequential sum in real money, something like $75. The action starts as a consequence to Reamde hijacking credit card data that has been sold to Russian gangsters. The gangsters kidnap the seller and his girlfriend, who just happens to be the niece of the founder of T’Rain, the computer game in which the ransom must be paid.

T’Rain is a game played on the Internet with thousands, maybe millions of players at any given time. The game play consists of the interaction of this massive cast of characters in an incredibly detailed world. ReaMde is played out in much the same way with a very large cast of fascinating characters. They include:

Richard Forthrat, billionaire founder of Corporation 9592, the parent company of the computer game, T’Rain, a game distinguished by the incredible richness of its simulation of an entire world, its underlying physics and 4.5 billion year geophysical history;
Zula, his niece, an Eritrean refugee with a specialty doing computer simulations of the geophysics of volcanoes, a skill she is employed to use to enhance the virtual richness of T’Rain; Ivanov, the Russian gangster who purchased the credit card data from Zula’s boyfriend and kidnaps the two to start off the adventure; CIA and M16 operatives, gun nuts, fundamentalists of all stripes from Christian survivalists to Islamic jihadists.

The story flows remarkably smoothly for all its complexity, and is immensely readable. All the ends tie together and the action never flags, just like an addictive video game. This is a great entertainment for anyone in tune with modern computer technology, gaming or just plain interested in a good adventure story. One wonders how an entire world’s physics could be simulated in such a game. The story itself is like the computer game that is itself a part of the story, raising the idea of recursive games within games. How could a game with such virtual complexity be supported? This is the only part of the tale that is science fiction in that even the much simpler complexity of atmospheric or ocean physics is beyond the reach of current technology.

ReaMde is like a video game, and recalls the serialized adventure stories from the pulp era with its intensely interconnected series of adventures and adventurers. The characters are all fascinating. They each embody an adventurer or geek type possessing exceptional luck, physical and/or technical prowess. Each spin of the adventure dial is within the realm of possibility, but there is no sense that this is realism. What we have is great escapist literature with a gaming twist. In short, just about perfect for the geek-gamer audience.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 508 readers
PUBLISHER:	William Morrow (September 20, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Neal Stephenson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Our reviews of: Anathem Quicksilver The Confusion Snow Crash

Bibliography:

• The Big U (1984)
• Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller (1988)
• Snow Crash (1992)
• The Diamond Age (1995)
• Cryptonomicon (1999)
• Anathem (2008)
• Reamde (2011)

The Baroque Cycle

• Quicksilver (2003)
• The Confusion (2004)
• The System of the World (2004)

Non-Fiction

• In the Beginning… Was the Command Line (1999)
• Some Remarks (August 2012)

Written as Stephen Bury (with his uncle J. Fredrick George):

• Interface (1995)
• The Cobweb (1997)
• Artists’ Multiples, 1935-2000 (2002)

“In a little boy’s innocent voice, the machine delivers a death sentence: ‘The air in this hermetically sealed laboratory is evacuating. A faulty sensor has detected the unlikely presence of weaponized anthrax and initiated an automated safety protocol. It is a tragic accident. There will be one casualty. He will soon be followed by the rest of humanity.’ ”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (JUN 26, 2011)

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson tells the apocalyptic story of a near future when one machine gains true intelligence and determines to honor life by wiping out human civilization. The machine intelligence takes over the robots that are central to civilization; the automatic cars, the robo-nannies and cleaning bots; all of them become the enemies of humanity. Most of the few people who survive are herded into concentration camps where some are surgically altered to become part machine. Needless to say the machine parts are all under control of the original rebellious machine. Robots start evolving, building new robots in response to human resistance.

The robots have greater intelligence, superior strength and speed than people. Humans have a killer instinct when it comes to survival, and a wild kind of creative imagination. Most of the surviving humans retreat from the machine-centered civilization that betrayed them, although one robotics worker creates an enclave of machines who fight on the side of humanity.

Many who are knowledgeable about machines and machine intelligence think it only a matter of time before there are machines that are intelligent. The test for intelligence is called the Turing Test after the brilliant English computer pioneer who said that a machine could be considered intelligent if it could pass for human in a blind conversation. The rebellious machine in this story clearly does pass the Turing test.

The theme of intelligent robots and intelligent machines has a long and distinguished history. H. G Wells had a robot-like machine in The War of the Worlds, published in 1898. Karel Capek coined the term robot in his play R.U.R. about rebellious robots. Isaac Asimov, a pioneer sci-fi writer, and a PhD scientist wrote convincingly about robots more than a half century ago. I, Robot is the classic in his series on the theme. He coined the “Laws of Robotics” that said in essence that robots would serve humans first, then their own interests, all under the prime directive not to harm a human. Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick was the basis for the movie Blade Runner.

The structure of the novel is a series of interlocking short narratives as recorded by the rebellious robots. Each narrative features heroes in humanity’s struggle to resist the robotic onslaught. Not all of the heroic characters are human, some are humanoid robots who have been awakened to sentience. The human heroes are varied, including soldiers, urban guerillas, a worker in a robotic factory in Japan, members of the Osage Nation, and a girl with machine eyes, among many others. All of these heroic characters are fiercely determined for humanity to survive, something that distinguishes them from the robotic enemy.

There are a lot of interesting questions raised here. Can machines someday become intelligent? If so, what form might that intelligence take and could that intelligence rebel against humanity? If there were to be a robotic rebellion is there any chance that humanity could survive? What about machine/human hybrids and chimeras? Could machines, even if intelligent, be creative, evolve, and have passion? There is compelling argument by Damasio and others that intelligence requires passion; that dispassionate intelligence is an oxymoron because there has to be a caring something that values one thing over another. The Nobel laureate, Gerard Edelman in Neural Darwinism expounded the view that machine intelligence can only derive from a machine evolving in interaction with its environment; a machine that can make mistakes and act to build a different machine in response.

Daniel Wilson holds a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon and is exceptionally well informed on the subject of robotics. Every aspect of robotics depicted here exists today or is under development. The philosophical questions are addressed, but not in any pedantic fashion that would take away from the rollicking good story, and Wilson proves himself to be one hell of a good storyteller. Robopocalypse moves along compellingly. The plot is clear and the action intense, well suited to the action movie of the same title Steven Spielberg is making based on the book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 103 readers
PUBLISHER:	Doubleday (June 7, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Daniel H. Wilson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi Genesis by Bernard Beckett Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick And on DVD: Terminator: The Sarah Chronicles

Bibliography:

• Robopocalypse (June 2011)
• Amp (2013)

Humor:

• How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion (2005)
• Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived (2007)
• How To Build a Robot Army: Tips on Defending Planet Earth Against Aliens, Ninjas, and Zombies (2008)
• The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame: Muwahahaha! (2008)

Children’s:

• Bro-Jitsu: The Martial Art of Sibling Smackdown (2010)
• A Boy and His Bot (January 2011)

Movies from books:

• Robopocalypse (2013)

“Frozen with fear and anxiety, he felt lost, displaced, and without any idea of what to do next. It was inconceivable. The perfect, organized, meticulously planned Charlie Giles might be the most out-of-control beast imaginable.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowksy  (JUN 25, 2011)

Daniel Palmer’s Delirious is a nightmarish tale in which Charlie Giles, “an electronics superstar,” suddenly loses his job, his reputation, and quite possibly, his mind. Charlie is no stranger to mental illness. His father was schizophrenic and his older brother, Joe, also suffers from the disease. Their mother has devoted her life to helping Joe become more stable, but Charlie has carefully distanced himself from his family and his past. He is a workaholic who made a small fortune from the sale of his start-up company, and is still putting in long hours to earn more money and accolades. One day, everything comes crashing down and he has no idea why. It seems as if he is committing a series of crimes, but he has no memory of having done anything wrong.

This plot, although familiar, works surprising well because Palmer fleshes out his characters and inserts realistic details into the story. The stage is set when we observe Charlie, who cares for his dog more than anyone else, pushing his employees mercilessly. He is a control freak who avoids feeling such “messy emotions” as compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. He prides himself on inspiring fear in his team; he believes that if his workers are anxious, they will produce at a higher level. Soon, the shoe will be on the other foot. Not only will Charlie learn what it is like to be stressed out, but he will also become all too familiar with panic and hysteria. Adding to Charlie’s burdens are serious health issues affecting his mother and brother. For the first time, Charlie sees Joe as a good and valuable person in his own right who deserves love and respect.

Palmer keeps the adrenaline rush going for close to four hundred pages. He masterfully describes Charlie’s horrible mental decline. Should he trust his senses or accept the evidence that condemns him? The author’s familiarity with computer software and music come in handy, since Palmer finds ingenious ways of integrating this knowledge seamlessly into the narrative. The roller coaster ride finally stops when we reach the shocking revelations and final confrontation. Although the ending is implausible in a mind-boggling way, strangely enough, it does not completely detract from the book’s entertainment value. Delirious is an exciting, mind-bending, and suspenseful thriller that explores the dangers inherent in our digital world; the crucial role that family plays in our psychological development; and the ways in which connecting with others helps us realize our full potential as human beings.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 27 readers
PUBLISHER:	Kensington; 1 edition (February 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Daniel Palmer
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:  The Discrete Charm of Charlie Monk by David Ambrose

Bibliography:

• Delirious (February 2011)

“The era of tanks and fighter jets battling on land and sky was drawing to a close. The wars of the future would be fought on small battlefields by tiny weapons striking from a thousand directions at once. The fight would take place inside computer networks, inside human bodies. Cyber-warfare. Swarms of semi-autonomous robots…. Biological weapons.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (MAY 30, 2011)

Paul McEuen, a professor of physics at Cornell, makes good use of his scientific knowledge in Spiral, a provocative and frightening techno-thriller. The story opens in 1946, with biologist Liam Connor witnessing a horrifying scene of destruction from the deck of the USS North Dakota. Liam is a prodigy whose expertise includes “saprobic fungi, the feeders on the dead.” At twenty-two, he already has an impressive résumé, having spent four years at Porton Down, “the center of British chemical and germ weapons research.” Connor is dismayed to learn that the Japanese have a top-secret biological weapon derived from a species of fungus. If unleashed, this mycotoxin could cause widespread devastation. Although World War II is over, some Japanese soldiers cannot live with defeat; they are determined to strike back.

Sixty-four years pass. Liam is eighty-six, still works hard, and has a delightfully puckish sense of humor. He is a legendary biologist who runs a laboratory in Cornell University, where he taught for half a century. Connor is a Nobel Laureate, “a pure genius” who has spent his life studying fungal taxonomy, genetics, and biotechnology. In addition, he dotes on his granddaughter, Maggie, also a gifted scientist, and his nine-year-old great-grandson son, Dylan. Suddenly, Liam is attacked by a vicious and merciless predator. Why would someone want to destroy this sweet and gentle man? The answer lies in a long-ago event that occurred on the USS North Dakota in the Pacific Ocean.

Spiral is fast-paced and engrossing novel. It is greatly enhanced by technical details concerning robotics, nanotechnology, and microbiology. McEuen conveys a potent and timely message about the misguided decisions made by heads of state who crave military and political supremacy. The characters are generally well-drawn and include a possible love interest for Maggie–physicist Jake Sterling, a veteran of the Gulf War and a colleague of Liam’s. Jake and Maggie are heirs to Liam’s distinguished legacy, but they face a menacing villain—eighty-five year old World War II veteran and billionaire Hitoshi Kitano. For him, Japan’s surrender was the ultimate humiliation, and he has vowed to bring America to her knees. Making matters even worse is Lawrence Dunne, the deputy national security advisor to the President of the United States. He is an intemperate foreign policy hawk who has a catastrophic inability to foresee the consequences of his actions.

McEuen chills us with scenes of excruciating torture and grisly deaths, and there are a number of violent confrontations between our heroes and a sadistic female killer. In 1969, Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain presented a terrifying scenario about lethal microbes from outer space that land on earth. Paul McEuen, in his electrifying debut, describes a different threat—this time from individuals so warped by hatred that they would use virulent weapons of bioterrorism to annihilate millions of human beings. Let us hope that this doomsday scenario remains merely a product of the author’s imagination.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 41 readers
PUBLISHER:	The Dial Press (March 22, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Paul McEuen
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman Lab 257 by Micahel C. Carroll

Bibliography:

• Spiral (March 2011)

“Now, flying toward the Sea of Japan at more than thirty thousand feet, heading into a possible war, Harry studied the laser assembly with the critical eye of a worried father. It’ll work, he told himself. We’ll make it work.

But in his mind’s eye he saw the rig in the desert explode into white-hot flames, saw Quintana being roasted alive, felt the agony of his ribs cracking as he slammed against the back wall of the control room.

It should’ve been me, not Pete. I should have been out there. I should have checked the oxy line myself, made sure it was clean.

He shook his head to clear the nightmare vision. Well, Harry said to himself, if she blows today it won’t matter where I’m standing. We’ll all be dead.”

Book Review:

Review by Ann Wilkes (JUL 31 2010)

In Able One, Ben Bova turns up the heat with the threat of war. A Korean faction takes out most of the world’s satellites by exploding a missile in orbit. Through unaffected, hardened military satellites, the government watches the Korean launch pad where two more missiles stand ready.

The Korean threat turns Harry Hartunian’s first airborne test of an experimental, anti-missile laser into the real thing. The Airbourne Laser, or ABL-1 (Able One), housed in the retrofitted body of a 747 Boing jet, is America’s best hope of averting a war with not just Korea, but by extension China as well.

The tension mounts as the various U.S. government division heads argue over the appropriate response to the threat. Meanwhile the macho U.S. President refuses to delay or divert his flight to San Francisco, which the civilian security advisor is convinced is the Korean’s next target.

For Hartunian, it is not enough that his team is now all that stands between America and WWIII, he also has a saboteur aboard. He’s convinced it’s one of his own team, but they could not have known that they were boarding anything other than a test flight. The part can be switched en route, but who would sabotage the test and why? And more importantly, will they do it again?

The pilot, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Christopher had been the object of one of those chiefs of staff’s impropriety. Colonel Christopher had refused to name Major General Bradley Scheib as the married Air Force officer she slept with and was shipped to what would have been a back-water mission in Alaska to test the laser. Now Scheib must watch as she risks her life, never letting on that she is any more to him than a military asset.

One of Bova’s main strengths is his ability to create believable, fallible characters. All the tension and drama of this tale wouldn’t mean a thing if the reader couldn’t identify with and care about the characters going through it. The laser technology was interesting, but what drew me into the story were the natural ways in which the characters dealt with the crisis before them. Able One is an engaging techno-thriller from an author who has made his name writing science fiction.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 9 readers
PUBLISHER:	Tor Books; 1 edition (February 2, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Ann Wilkes
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ben Bova
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Immortality Factor Mars Life and Titan and Venus

Bibliography:

• The Weathermakers (1967)
• Out of the Sun (1968)
• Escape! (1969)
• THX 1138 (1971) (with George Lucas)
• As on a Darkling Plain (1972)
• When the Sky Burned (1972)
• Gremlins, Go Home! (1974) (with Gordon R. Dickson)
• The Starcrossed (1975)
• City of Darkness (1976)
• Millenium (1976)
• The Multiple Man (1967)
• Colony (1978)
• Kinsman (1981)
• Test of Fire (1982)
• The Winds of Altair (1983)
• Privateers (1985) (features Dan Randolph, but is not a Grand Tour novel)
• The Kinsman Saga (1987)
• Peacekeepers (1988)
• Cyberbooks (1989)
• The Trikon Deception (1992) (with Bill Pogue)
• Triumph (1993)
• Death Dream 1994)
• Brothers (1996) (released as The Immortality Factor (2009)
• The Green Trap (2006)
• Able One (2010)
• Hittite (2010)
• Power Play (2012)

Watchmen

• The Star Conquerors (1959)
• Star Watchman (1964)*
• The Dueling Machine (1969)

Exile Series:

• Exiled from Earth (1971)
• Flight of Exiles (1972)
• End of Exile (1975)
• The Exiles Trilogy (2011)

Voyagers

• Voyagers (1981)
• The Alien Within (1986)
• Star Brothers (1990)
• The Return (August 2009)

Orion

• Orion (1984)
• Vengeance of Orion (1988)
• Orion in the Dying Time (1990)
• Orion and the Conqueror (1994)
• Orion Among the Stars (1995)
• Orion and King Arthur (June 2013)

To Save the Sun

• To Save the Sun (1992) (with AJ Austin)
• To Fear the Light (1994) (with AJ Austin)

Grand Tour of the Universe:

• Mars (1992)
• Empire Builders (1993)
• Return to Mars (1999)
• Venus (2000)
• Jupiter (2001)
• Saturn (2002)
• Tales of the Grand Tour (2004)
• Mercury (2005)
• Powersat (2005)
• Titan (2006)
• Mars Life (2008)
• Leviathans of Jupiter (2011)

Moonrise (part of Grand Tour):

• Moonrise (1996)
• Moonwar (1998)

Asteroid Wars (part of Grand Tour):

• The Precipice (2001)
• The Rock Rats (2002)
• The Silent War (2004)
• The Aftermath (2007)

Sam Gunn (part of Grand Tour):

• Sam Gunn, Unlimited (1993)
• Sam Gunn Forever (1998)
• Sam Gunn Omnibus (2009)

Nonfiction:

• The Craft of Writing Fiction That Sells (1994)
• The Story of Light (2002)

Related:

• Biography – Bova, Ben – Gale Reference Team (2006)