Triggers
Posted: May 22, 2012 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: future, science fiction, thriller Leave a comment »
Triggers, by Robert J. Sawyer
In near future Washington, D.C., president Seth Jerrison is giving an anti-terror speech at the Lincoln memorial on the eve of a secret military operation. At a nearby hospital, researcher Ranjip Singh is conducting a memory modification experiment with a young Iraq War veteran. When a bomb goes off, no one dies, but a group of people, including the president and Secret Service agent Susan Dawson, are linked in a chain, each able to access the memories of another person. Dawson and Singh rush to find out who has access to the president’s highly classified memories. Parts of the books are thrilling; Sawyer is quite a storyteller. The reactions and interactions of the memory linked people are fascinating, but to me the ending was not quite as good.
While this is science fiction, I think thriller fans would enjoy this book. Find out more about Canadian writer Robert Sawyer here.
Brenda
Ready Player One
Posted: December 27, 2011 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: dystopian fiction, future, science fiction Leave a comment »
Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
Children of the 80s, this one is for you. Despite taking place in 2044 and mostly in a completely immersive online simulation called the Oasis, this is really a tribute to the culture (popular and otherwise) of the 1980s. The Oasis is the creation of Richard Halliday—a videogame programmer who used music, movies, TV, books, and videogames to escape his dysfunctional home. His expertise and desire to escape lead him to create an online experience that becomes the escape for most of the population. The glimpses Cline gives of America in 2044 are bleak—resources like gasoline have been depleted so everyone lives in cities since they can’t travel and the poorest people live in trailers that have been stacked to form dangerous towering units. The Oasis provides them with a nicer, more hopeful world. Part of that hope comes from the hunt for Halliday’s Egg. Before he died, he hid three keys and three gates in the Oasis and left clues for egg hunters (nicknamed “gunters”) to find the first one. Whoever finds all the keys and makes it through all the gates will gain control of the Oasis. Millions of people studied the things Halliday was obsessed with to try to figure out the clues. Teenaged Wade Wilson is the first gunter to find a key. His fellow competitors Aech, Art3mis, Shoto, and Daito meet him along the way and sometimes offer help and camaraderie while trying to find the keys themselves and fending off the evil Sixers that want to gain control of the Oasis for their own profit. The plot is familiar but the setting and Cline’s love of the 80s makes this a fun read. You don’t have to be familiar with all the references and the really important ones are explained but you may find yourself wanting to dig out your old cassettes or find Family Ties on DVD.
Ernest Cline has a mix tape with all the songs mentioned in Ready Player One but some of them are spoilers
His blog is also full of 80s geekery.
There’s also a pretty rad fansite set up to look like the channel Wade Watt’s Oasis alter ego Parzival runs.
Denise
Physics of the Future
Posted: October 7, 2011 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: future, science Leave a comment »
What will the future look like, over the next 100 years? Physicist Michio Kaku tries to answer that question, based not on science fiction, but on serious study and interviews with over 300 scientists. While not as fun as reading science fiction, this clearly-written book may inspire your imagination. With predictions for advances in energy, medicine, space travel, even contact lenses that help you use the internet, I’m most looking forward to riding in a magnetic car hovering above the ground.
Brenda
