End of the thirtieth century. The last few humans eek out an existence in the jungles of earth. Meanwhile super computers teeming with intelligent software, embodying the essence of the majority of the human race twiddles its collective electronic thumbs, until a disaster threatens to overcome the planet Earth, forcing them to launch themselves into the universe to find a nice planet where freaks of nature and astronomy won't get them.
The best I can say of this book is there is possibly a passable 500 word short story in there somewhere... Only I'm not inclined to be that generous. The truth is I HATE THIS BOOK!
So much so it now sits at number two on my list of All Times Worst Books Ever!- The other is a major fiction award winner too!
If you are still awake after the introductory 5 page thesis on how a computer programme can become corrupt during copying, you will find the pace steps up a gear and comes to an absolute dead stop.
Then you realise that the characters can be him, her or it, often three or four times in the same sentence, making the head spin.
Other than having broken two of the fundamental rules of story-telling and stamped on their remains- What is wrong with it?
It is the concepts behind the whole thing. Okay some other books use them too, just most hide the impossibility of the imponderables better!
While I would not totally disagree the majority of the human race would quite happily not notice being reduced into a computer glyph or Java Bean. On the whole, they are not the people who you would want to be sole survivors of the memory of the human race. Let us face it, for most of the human race watching Big Brother on TV is the height of our spiritual and academic enlightenment (Incidentally proving that education for all beyond the 11+ is an international waste of resources). These people are not the ones that are going to launch themselves at multi-dimensional quantumn physics and this book is full of it.
Having found the few percent of people who do like the idea of becoming immortal and are of use, then weeded out the ones with megolamaniac tendencies we hit the next question.
Living in a bunch of supercomputers distributed around the solar system, why be worried about one small lump of mud. Comes to that why worry about having a planet at all?
Who maintains these damned computers?
Computers are not the most reliable things, supercomputers even less so and they still require a bit of string attached to a wall socket somewhere!
If you can find an answer, then perhaps it might solve the next question of who actually builds the space ship that is going to take them to the stars?
The best I can say of this book is there is possibly a passable 500 word short story in there somewhere... Only I'm not inclined to be that generous. The truth is I HATE THIS BOOK!
So much so it now sits at number two on my list of All Times Worst Books Ever!- The other is a major fiction award winner too!
If you are still awake after the introductory 5 page thesis on how a computer programme can become corrupt during copying, you will find the pace steps up a gear and comes to an absolute dead stop.
Then you realise that the characters can be him, her or it, often three or four times in the same sentence, making the head spin.
Other than having broken two of the fundamental rules of story-telling and stamped on their remains- What is wrong with it?
It is the concepts behind the whole thing. Okay some other books use them too, just most hide the impossibility of the imponderables better!
While I would not totally disagree the majority of the human race would quite happily not notice being reduced into a computer glyph or Java Bean. On the whole, they are not the people who you would want to be sole survivors of the memory of the human race. Let us face it, for most of the human race watching Big Brother on TV is the height of our spiritual and academic enlightenment (Incidentally proving that education for all beyond the 11+ is an international waste of resources). These people are not the ones that are going to launch themselves at multi-dimensional quantumn physics and this book is full of it.
Having found the few percent of people who do like the idea of becoming immortal and are of use, then weeded out the ones with megolamaniac tendencies we hit the next question.
Living in a bunch of supercomputers distributed around the solar system, why be worried about one small lump of mud. Comes to that why worry about having a planet at all?
Who maintains these damned computers?
Computers are not the most reliable things, supercomputers even less so and they still require a bit of string attached to a wall socket somewhere!
If you can find an answer, then perhaps it might solve the next question of who actually builds the space ship that is going to take them to the stars?
