Havent posted in a while but here is what I have read lately:
Idoru: William Gibson (freakin awesome - almost as good as Pattern Recognition)
Burning Chrome: Gibson (short stories) 5 out of 6 - the definitive voice of modern sci-fi
Malice Box: Martin Langfield (wannabe divinci code) - yawn
Lies, Inc. Philip K. Dick (one of his earliest, previously out of print) not his best work but still better than 90% of whats in print on the genre.
The Penultimate Truth: P.K. Dick - Classic Paranoid mindbending. Great Stuff.
Reading now: Midnights Children - Salman Rushdie - only 100 pages in but looks promising
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Thursday, December 06, 2007
CHOKE by Chuck Palahniuk
Awesome they are making Choke into a movie!
This is a great book, its typical Chuck P - crazy.
In the present day setting of the book, Victor is now a man in his mid-twenties who left medical school in order to find work to support his mother who is now in a nursing home. He cannot afford the care that his mother is receiving so he resorts to being a con man. His "con" is to go to restaurants and midway through his meal, he forces himself to choke on his food. When some good Samaritan comes over to perform the Heimlich maneuver, he spits the food out and thanks them for saving his life. He keeps a detailed list of everyone who saves him and sends them frequent letters about fictional bills he is unable to pay. The people feel so sorry for him that they give him money, send him cards and letters asking about him how he's doing, and even continue to send him money to help him with the bills.
While growing up, Victor's mother taught him numerous conspiracy theories and obscure medical facts which both confused and frightened him. It is because of this and his constant moves from one home to another that has left Victor unable to form lasting and stable relationships with women. Victor therefore finds himself getting sexual gratification from women in sexual addiction support groups.
Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.
"Art never comes from happiness." So says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.
Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."
Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just barely. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better.... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels
This is a great book, its typical Chuck P - crazy.
In the present day setting of the book, Victor is now a man in his mid-twenties who left medical school in order to find work to support his mother who is now in a nursing home. He cannot afford the care that his mother is receiving so he resorts to being a con man. His "con" is to go to restaurants and midway through his meal, he forces himself to choke on his food. When some good Samaritan comes over to perform the Heimlich maneuver, he spits the food out and thanks them for saving his life. He keeps a detailed list of everyone who saves him and sends them frequent letters about fictional bills he is unable to pay. The people feel so sorry for him that they give him money, send him cards and letters asking about him how he's doing, and even continue to send him money to help him with the bills.
While growing up, Victor's mother taught him numerous conspiracy theories and obscure medical facts which both confused and frightened him. It is because of this and his constant moves from one home to another that has left Victor unable to form lasting and stable relationships with women. Victor therefore finds himself getting sexual gratification from women in sexual addiction support groups.
Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.
"Art never comes from happiness." So says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.
Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."
Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just barely. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better.... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Snow Crash: Neal Stephenson
I read this book a few years ago, and read it again a few weeks ago. Its a great look at the direction of the western world. The ancient sumarian language stuff is also great.
From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.
One of the added pleasures of the success of Stephenson's recent books (Cryptonomicon, etc.) is this better-late-than-never audio version of his third (and arguably best) novel, which continues to be a paperback bestseller. Snow Crash (1992), which helped earn the word "cyberpunk" a place in history, is set in the not-too-distant future where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the U.S. is a vast, mall-like patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and young Hiro Protagonist (yes, that's the hero protagonist's name) uses his computer game wizardry and pizza delivering skills to combat a deadly new designer drug (and computer virus) called Snow Crash. Actor/writer Davis is the ideal choice for bringing Stephenson's crackling, poetic language to life, and the author-approved abridgement sacrifices none of his hilariously skewed, eminently believable vision a stew of concepts from Sumerian myth to Japanese anime of the commercially sponsored fate that sits waiting in a giant shopping mall, coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Based on the Bantam Doubleday Dell paperback.
I came to _Snow Crash_ on the recommendation of a few people who had read it (they called it "great!" and "hilarious!," and knowing that Neal Stephenson is sometimes listed as a "cyberpunk" writer along with William Gibson et al.
I had liked William Gibson's books, so I gave _Snow Crash_ a try.
_Snow Crash_ is primarily about Hiro, a young man who delivers pizzas and collects information for the Central Intelligence Corporation (freelance), for a living. He lives in a storage unit with a cult-hero rockstar named Vitaly Chernobyl. He owns a futon, two awesome Japanese swords, and a laptop computer, where he stays "jacked in" to the "Metaverse" a lot of the time, where he is the world's greatest swordfighter.
Hiro witnesses a crime while interacting with others in the Metaverse. One of his friends is deliberately exposed to a dangerous block of text, which fries his brain (in the real world), and renders him a vegetable. Hiro and his friend Y.T. (15-year old skateboarding female, and knee-slappingly funny smartaleck) set off to find out why, and save the world in the process.
From the getgo this is a funny book. Sure, the vision of the near-future is dark, a little alarming, and at times depressing (there are NO general laws in _Snow Crash_, for example, and private corporations run everything, even the police, just as an example). That's what cyberpunk is like. But the HUMOR is one thing that sets Neal Stephenson aside. Hiro Protagonist? Come on, that's FUNNY, PEOPLE! One reviewer called it an 'odd' name. Yes, it's odd, and it's absurd, and it's funny! Did this author mean it is an unusual choice for a character name? I don't know. I hope not. It would be an odd choice for a character's name in a Jane Austen novel, sure. But this is cyberpunk, or something like it. Among this genre's leading inspirations are the works of Thomas Pynchon, and "Hiro Protagonist," as a character name, would fit in perfectly among his merry bands of misfits, especially in _V._ or _Gravity's Rainbow_.
Repeatedly reviewers are slamming Stephenson for his use of Sumerian myth, exploration of Sumerian culture, etc. in the book... calling it inaccurate, poorly connected to the rest of the story, and, (my personal least favorite), BORING. I tell you, besides the great sense of humor, the Sumerian-myth link is what sets this novel heads above so much other cyberpunk. I don't care if it's inaccurate (this is FICTION, see?). Stephenson "traces" computer/textual viruses and biological viruses quite nicely back to Sumerian times, and he links them to one another, biological virus to digital/informational virus (a debt to another pre-cyberpunk luminary, William Burroughs, who said "Word is Virus?")-- it's all very well connected to the metaverse/here-and-now portion of _Snow Crash_'s plot.
This is a funny, riproaring tale. I raced through this nearly 500-page paperback in half the time I read most books of this length. I enjoyed it beginning-to-end. My only complaint with the book was that, at times, it too much resembled a Hollywood action movie, what with all sorts of incredible stunts being performed, by boat drivers, skateboarders, swordsmen, etc.
I say, if you like William Gibson or Thomas Pynchon, or if any of this review makes _Snow Crash_ seem a bit appealing to you, give it a chance. I enjoyed it 10 times as much as I thought I would.
Snow Crash is Neal Stephenson's third novel, published in 1992. It follows in the footsteps of cyberpunk novels by authors like William Gibson and Rudy Rucker, but differs from its predecessors in that it includes a heavy dose of satire and black humor.
Like many postmodernist novels, Snow Crash has a chaotic structure that might confuse readers unfamiliar with the genre. It contains many references to history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, geography and philosophy. Set in a world with a political-economic system that has been radically transformed, the novel examines religion along with its social importance, perception of reality versus virtual reality, and the violent and physical nature of humanity. The book also reflects ideas from Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976).
Stephenson explained the title of the novel in his 1999 essay In the Beginning...was the Command Line as the term for a particular software failure mode on the early Apple Macintosh computer. About the Macintosh, Stephenson wrote that "when the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set — a 'snow crash.'"
From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.
One of the added pleasures of the success of Stephenson's recent books (Cryptonomicon, etc.) is this better-late-than-never audio version of his third (and arguably best) novel, which continues to be a paperback bestseller. Snow Crash (1992), which helped earn the word "cyberpunk" a place in history, is set in the not-too-distant future where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the U.S. is a vast, mall-like patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and young Hiro Protagonist (yes, that's the hero protagonist's name) uses his computer game wizardry and pizza delivering skills to combat a deadly new designer drug (and computer virus) called Snow Crash. Actor/writer Davis is the ideal choice for bringing Stephenson's crackling, poetic language to life, and the author-approved abridgement sacrifices none of his hilariously skewed, eminently believable vision a stew of concepts from Sumerian myth to Japanese anime of the commercially sponsored fate that sits waiting in a giant shopping mall, coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Based on the Bantam Doubleday Dell paperback.
I came to _Snow Crash_ on the recommendation of a few people who had read it (they called it "great!" and "hilarious!," and knowing that Neal Stephenson is sometimes listed as a "cyberpunk" writer along with William Gibson et al.
I had liked William Gibson's books, so I gave _Snow Crash_ a try.
_Snow Crash_ is primarily about Hiro, a young man who delivers pizzas and collects information for the Central Intelligence Corporation (freelance), for a living. He lives in a storage unit with a cult-hero rockstar named Vitaly Chernobyl. He owns a futon, two awesome Japanese swords, and a laptop computer, where he stays "jacked in" to the "Metaverse" a lot of the time, where he is the world's greatest swordfighter.
Hiro witnesses a crime while interacting with others in the Metaverse. One of his friends is deliberately exposed to a dangerous block of text, which fries his brain (in the real world), and renders him a vegetable. Hiro and his friend Y.T. (15-year old skateboarding female, and knee-slappingly funny smartaleck) set off to find out why, and save the world in the process.
From the getgo this is a funny book. Sure, the vision of the near-future is dark, a little alarming, and at times depressing (there are NO general laws in _Snow Crash_, for example, and private corporations run everything, even the police, just as an example). That's what cyberpunk is like. But the HUMOR is one thing that sets Neal Stephenson aside. Hiro Protagonist? Come on, that's FUNNY, PEOPLE! One reviewer called it an 'odd' name. Yes, it's odd, and it's absurd, and it's funny! Did this author mean it is an unusual choice for a character name? I don't know. I hope not. It would be an odd choice for a character's name in a Jane Austen novel, sure. But this is cyberpunk, or something like it. Among this genre's leading inspirations are the works of Thomas Pynchon, and "Hiro Protagonist," as a character name, would fit in perfectly among his merry bands of misfits, especially in _V._ or _Gravity's Rainbow_.
Repeatedly reviewers are slamming Stephenson for his use of Sumerian myth, exploration of Sumerian culture, etc. in the book... calling it inaccurate, poorly connected to the rest of the story, and, (my personal least favorite), BORING. I tell you, besides the great sense of humor, the Sumerian-myth link is what sets this novel heads above so much other cyberpunk. I don't care if it's inaccurate (this is FICTION, see?). Stephenson "traces" computer/textual viruses and biological viruses quite nicely back to Sumerian times, and he links them to one another, biological virus to digital/informational virus (a debt to another pre-cyberpunk luminary, William Burroughs, who said "Word is Virus?")-- it's all very well connected to the metaverse/here-and-now portion of _Snow Crash_'s plot.
This is a funny, riproaring tale. I raced through this nearly 500-page paperback in half the time I read most books of this length. I enjoyed it beginning-to-end. My only complaint with the book was that, at times, it too much resembled a Hollywood action movie, what with all sorts of incredible stunts being performed, by boat drivers, skateboarders, swordsmen, etc.
I say, if you like William Gibson or Thomas Pynchon, or if any of this review makes _Snow Crash_ seem a bit appealing to you, give it a chance. I enjoyed it 10 times as much as I thought I would.
Snow Crash is Neal Stephenson's third novel, published in 1992. It follows in the footsteps of cyberpunk novels by authors like William Gibson and Rudy Rucker, but differs from its predecessors in that it includes a heavy dose of satire and black humor.
Like many postmodernist novels, Snow Crash has a chaotic structure that might confuse readers unfamiliar with the genre. It contains many references to history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, geography and philosophy. Set in a world with a political-economic system that has been radically transformed, the novel examines religion along with its social importance, perception of reality versus virtual reality, and the violent and physical nature of humanity. The book also reflects ideas from Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976).
Stephenson explained the title of the novel in his 1999 essay In the Beginning...was the Command Line as the term for a particular software failure mode on the early Apple Macintosh computer. About the Macintosh, Stephenson wrote that "when the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set — a 'snow crash.'"
Zombie Survival Guide: Max Brooks
Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack
1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don’t need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.
Solanum
The guide attributes the zombie outbreaks described to a virus known as "Solanum". It is said to be neither water-borne nor airborne; the only means by which to become infected is through direct fluid contact, in which case the virus is 100% communicable with a 100% mortality rate. Solanum converts the brain of human victims into a specialized organ that needs no oxygen, water, or food to survive, and it renders body tissues toxic, significantly slowing the decomposition rate.
In this outrageous parody of a survival guide, Saturday Night Live staff writer Brooks prepares humanity for its eventual battle with zombies. One would expect the son of Mel Brooks to have a genetic predisposition to humor, and indeed, he does, and he exhibits it relentlessly here: he outlines virtually every possible zombie-human encounter, drafts detailed plans for defense and attack and outlines past recorded attacks dating from 60,000 B.C. to 2002. In planning for that catastrophic day when "the dead rise," Brooks urges readers to get to know themselves, their bodies, their weaponry, their surroundings and, just in case, their escape routes. Some of the book's more amusing aspects are the laughable analyses Brooks proposes on all aspects of zombiehood, and the specificity with which he enumerates the necessary actions for survival-i.e., a member of an anti-zombie team must be sure to have with him at all times two emergency flares, a signaling mirror, daily rations, a personal mess kit and two pairs of socks. Comic, though unnecessarily exhaustive, this is a good bet for Halloween gag gifts and fans of Bored of the Rings-esque humor. 100 line drawings.
Let's face it: at one time or another we've all faced a zombie scare we aren't prepared for. And yes, the local constabulary usually cleans things up with a minimum of fuss, but what happens when things go wrong and the cavalry doesn't arrive? That, my friends, is the day that Max Brooks' "The Zombie Survival Guide" saves your life. With several millennia worth of field experience distilled into a manageable 254 pages, everything you need to know to survive the coming war with the undead can be found in these pages. Your life and the lives of those you love are at stake, act now and be prepared!
OK, so that paragraph was obviously tongue in cheek, but hopefully in conveys some sense of what Brooks' remarkable "The Zombie Survival Guide" is like. While obviously a parody of both the horror genre and civil defense/survivalist manuals, it maintains an "all-business" demeanor, never once cracking the façade to reveal the underlying humoristic intent. The result is a book that is, when taken as a whole, a funny, incredibly thorough work of satire. However, at the same time, page-by-page, it is a rather accomplished addition to zombie horror.
Starting with zombie physiology and then moving on to weapons, tactics, long-term strategy and history Brooks has produced a manual which has a thoroughness that belies the absurdity of its subject. Point by point he discusses the pros and cons of rifles, machetes and flamethrowers, then considers the optimal defensive positions for various types of outbreaks. After an extensive discussion of survival in a zombie doomsday scenario, he lays out zombie outbreaks through history, and what their implications are. Throughout, entries are extensively cross-referenced and alternative courses of action are always weighed for potential risks and benefits.
The remarkable thing about all this is that Brooks has managed to infuse a tension, and urgency into his manual that makes for great reading. Part post-apocalyptic fiction, part "Night of the Living Dead" and part "Saturday Night Live" sketch, this is a book that should hold appeal across a broad range of genres. Thorough without being dry, creepy without being clichéd, and funny without relying on cheap laughs, "The Zombie Survival Guide" is undoubtedly one of the most original books I have ever read, and one that I enjoyed reading immensely. If you appreciate any or all of these genres, or if you just enjoy a well executed, original idea, this is definitely a book you'll want to check out.
And remember...Tomorrow may be too late, read this book today!
Jake Mohlman
The book is divided into seven separate chapters, plus an appendix.
The first chapter is entitled Myths and Realities. It lays down the specific ground rules that are referenced repeatedly in the book. The most important of these describes "Solanum", the fictional virus that creates zombies, along with detailing how it is spread, treatment of the infected, and why the zombie infection does not spread to non-human organisms.
The second chapter, Weapons and Combat Techniques, discusses the weapons at the reader's disposal and weighs them against the various threats that may be faced during confrontations with the undead.
The third chapter, On the Defensive, looks at options for an individual to stay in a stationary location. It focuses on remaining stationary in an undead siege.
The fourth chapter, entitled On the Run, explores dealing with attacks while traveling.
While chapters three and four emphasize avoiding the undead, chapter five, On the Attack, specifically deals with engaging ghouls to ensure their destruction.
The sixth chapter looks at survival during a doomsday scenario, a Class-4 outbreak would see battle for humanity's survival shift in the zombies' favor. Advice in this section is adapted from previous sections; recommendations for surviving a siege is repeated, though altered for relevancy to the long-term entrenchment a Class-4 outbreak represents.
The guide concludes with a fictional list of documented zombie encounters throughout history. The oldest entry is 60,000 BC, in Katanga, Central Africa, although the author expresses doubt to its validity. Instead, he presents evidence from 3,000 BC in Hieraconpolis, Egypt as the first verifiable instance of a zombie outbreak. The most recent entry is 2002, in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
The journal section also introduces a lead in to the next novel, World War Z, in describing how a group of zombies came to be in China, which is listed as the outbreak's source.
The Appendix takes the form of a sample "Outbreak Journal", with the fictional author noting a covered-up zombie outbreak being seen on the local news. The following pages are blank entries, presumably for the reader to use as a basis for their own journal; their inclusion furthers the overall feel that the book is a survival guide to a life-threatening possibility.
1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don’t need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.
Solanum
The guide attributes the zombie outbreaks described to a virus known as "Solanum". It is said to be neither water-borne nor airborne; the only means by which to become infected is through direct fluid contact, in which case the virus is 100% communicable with a 100% mortality rate. Solanum converts the brain of human victims into a specialized organ that needs no oxygen, water, or food to survive, and it renders body tissues toxic, significantly slowing the decomposition rate.
In this outrageous parody of a survival guide, Saturday Night Live staff writer Brooks prepares humanity for its eventual battle with zombies. One would expect the son of Mel Brooks to have a genetic predisposition to humor, and indeed, he does, and he exhibits it relentlessly here: he outlines virtually every possible zombie-human encounter, drafts detailed plans for defense and attack and outlines past recorded attacks dating from 60,000 B.C. to 2002. In planning for that catastrophic day when "the dead rise," Brooks urges readers to get to know themselves, their bodies, their weaponry, their surroundings and, just in case, their escape routes. Some of the book's more amusing aspects are the laughable analyses Brooks proposes on all aspects of zombiehood, and the specificity with which he enumerates the necessary actions for survival-i.e., a member of an anti-zombie team must be sure to have with him at all times two emergency flares, a signaling mirror, daily rations, a personal mess kit and two pairs of socks. Comic, though unnecessarily exhaustive, this is a good bet for Halloween gag gifts and fans of Bored of the Rings-esque humor. 100 line drawings.
Let's face it: at one time or another we've all faced a zombie scare we aren't prepared for. And yes, the local constabulary usually cleans things up with a minimum of fuss, but what happens when things go wrong and the cavalry doesn't arrive? That, my friends, is the day that Max Brooks' "The Zombie Survival Guide" saves your life. With several millennia worth of field experience distilled into a manageable 254 pages, everything you need to know to survive the coming war with the undead can be found in these pages. Your life and the lives of those you love are at stake, act now and be prepared!
OK, so that paragraph was obviously tongue in cheek, but hopefully in conveys some sense of what Brooks' remarkable "The Zombie Survival Guide" is like. While obviously a parody of both the horror genre and civil defense/survivalist manuals, it maintains an "all-business" demeanor, never once cracking the façade to reveal the underlying humoristic intent. The result is a book that is, when taken as a whole, a funny, incredibly thorough work of satire. However, at the same time, page-by-page, it is a rather accomplished addition to zombie horror.
Starting with zombie physiology and then moving on to weapons, tactics, long-term strategy and history Brooks has produced a manual which has a thoroughness that belies the absurdity of its subject. Point by point he discusses the pros and cons of rifles, machetes and flamethrowers, then considers the optimal defensive positions for various types of outbreaks. After an extensive discussion of survival in a zombie doomsday scenario, he lays out zombie outbreaks through history, and what their implications are. Throughout, entries are extensively cross-referenced and alternative courses of action are always weighed for potential risks and benefits.
The remarkable thing about all this is that Brooks has managed to infuse a tension, and urgency into his manual that makes for great reading. Part post-apocalyptic fiction, part "Night of the Living Dead" and part "Saturday Night Live" sketch, this is a book that should hold appeal across a broad range of genres. Thorough without being dry, creepy without being clichéd, and funny without relying on cheap laughs, "The Zombie Survival Guide" is undoubtedly one of the most original books I have ever read, and one that I enjoyed reading immensely. If you appreciate any or all of these genres, or if you just enjoy a well executed, original idea, this is definitely a book you'll want to check out.
And remember...Tomorrow may be too late, read this book today!
Jake Mohlman
The book is divided into seven separate chapters, plus an appendix.
The first chapter is entitled Myths and Realities. It lays down the specific ground rules that are referenced repeatedly in the book. The most important of these describes "Solanum", the fictional virus that creates zombies, along with detailing how it is spread, treatment of the infected, and why the zombie infection does not spread to non-human organisms.
The second chapter, Weapons and Combat Techniques, discusses the weapons at the reader's disposal and weighs them against the various threats that may be faced during confrontations with the undead.
The third chapter, On the Defensive, looks at options for an individual to stay in a stationary location. It focuses on remaining stationary in an undead siege.
The fourth chapter, entitled On the Run, explores dealing with attacks while traveling.
While chapters three and four emphasize avoiding the undead, chapter five, On the Attack, specifically deals with engaging ghouls to ensure their destruction.
The sixth chapter looks at survival during a doomsday scenario, a Class-4 outbreak would see battle for humanity's survival shift in the zombies' favor. Advice in this section is adapted from previous sections; recommendations for surviving a siege is repeated, though altered for relevancy to the long-term entrenchment a Class-4 outbreak represents.
The guide concludes with a fictional list of documented zombie encounters throughout history. The oldest entry is 60,000 BC, in Katanga, Central Africa, although the author expresses doubt to its validity. Instead, he presents evidence from 3,000 BC in Hieraconpolis, Egypt as the first verifiable instance of a zombie outbreak. The most recent entry is 2002, in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
The journal section also introduces a lead in to the next novel, World War Z, in describing how a group of zombies came to be in China, which is listed as the outbreak's source.
The Appendix takes the form of a sample "Outbreak Journal", with the fictional author noting a covered-up zombie outbreak being seen on the local news. The following pages are blank entries, presumably for the reader to use as a basis for their own journal; their inclusion furthers the overall feel that the book is a survival guide to a life-threatening possibility.
UBIK - Philip K Dick
This is the first book I ever read by P K Dick (20 years ago! almost exactly) - It got me hooked and I have read about 27 since. i recently ordered this book again and have just started rereading it. Also a nother cool thing is that the edition I received is the original 1970s 1st edition paperback, (published theyear I was born). I guess I better get some UBIK.
Here are some reviews and other info from the web:
The novel takes place in the North American Confederation in an alternate version of 1992, wherein technology has advanced to the extent of permitting civilians to reach the Moon and wherein psi phenomena are widely accepted as real. The protagonist is Joe Chip, a debt-ridden technician for Glen Runciter's "prudence organization," which employs people with the ability to block certain psychic powers (as in the case of an anti-telepath, who can prevent a telepath from reading a client's mind) to enforce privacy by request. Runciter runs the company with the assistance of his deceased wife Ella, who is kept in a state of "half-life," a form of cryonic suspension that gives the deceased person limited consciousness and communication ability.
The company’s main adversary is Ray Hollis, who leads an organization of psychics. Hollis appears only briefly in the novel.
When business magnate Stanton Mick hires Runciter’s company to secure his Lunar facilities from telepaths, Runciter assembles a dozen agents for this task. The group includes Pat Conley, a mysterious young woman who has an unprecedented parapsychological ability to undo events by changing the past. Joe Chip is shown at several points to have sexual feelings for the defiant Pat Conley, who once gives the impression of reciprocating them.
When Runciter, Chip, and the others reach Mick’s moon base, they discover that the assignment is a trap, presumably set by Hollis. A bomb explosion apparently kills Runciter without significantly harming the others. They rush back to Earth to place him in half-life.
Afterwards, the group begins to experience strange shifts in reality. Consumables, such as milk and cigarettes, begin to expire prematurely. Also, the group sees Runciter's face on coins and receives strange messages from him in writing and on television. Most of these messages imply that Runciter is in fact alive, while the others are in half-life, or "cold-pac" as it is informally called. Group members who separate from the group are found dead, in a gruesome state of decomposition.
The reality gradually shifts backward in time until the group finds itself in a world resembling the United States in 1939. They try to figure out what is causing these strange occurrences, prevent each other from dying, and find a mysterious product called Ubik, which is advertised in every time period they enter. Messages from Runciter indicate that Ubik may be their only hope of survival.
Ultimately, Joe Chip learns that Runciter, in fact, was the sole survivor of the explosion on Luna, and that his messages to the group are the result of his attempts to communicate with them while they are in half-life. The regressing world in which they find themselves is discovered to be the product of Jory Miller, another half-lifer whom Runciter encounters earlier in the story while communicating with Ella. Jory devours the life force of other people who are in suspended animation to prolong his own present existence. Of the group of anti-psychics and technicians, only Joe Chip eludes him, aided by the substance called Ubik. This substance, whose name is derived from the word "ubiquity", has the property of preserving people who are in half-life. Joe Chip is instructed in its use by Ella Runciter, who is on her way to a reincarnation.
In the living world, Glen Runciter encounters several coins showing Joe Chip's face. He suspects that this is "only the beginning [of other strange events]".
Nobody but Philip K. Dick could so successfully combine SF comedy with the unease of reality gone wrong, shifting underfoot like quicksand. Besides grisly ideas like funeral parlors where you swap gossip for the advice of the frozen dead, Ubik (1969) offers such deadpan farce as a moneyless character's attack on the robot apartment door that demands a five-cent toll:
"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."
Chip works for Glen Runciter's anti-psi security agency, which hires out its talents to block telepathic snooping and paranormal dirty tricks. When its special team tackles a big job on the Moon, something goes terribly wrong. Runciter is killed, it seems--but messages from him now appear on toilet walls, traffic tickets, or product labels. Meanwhile, fragments of reality are timeslipping into past versions: Joe Chip's beloved stereo system reverts to a hand-cranked 78 player with bamboo needles. Why does Runciter's face appear on U.S. coins? Why the repeated ads for a hard-to-find universal panacea called Ubik ("safe when taken as directed")?
The true, chilling state of affairs slowly becomes clear, though the villain isn't who Joe Chip thinks. And this is Dick country, where final truths are never quite final and--with the help of Ubik--the reality/illusion balance can still be tilted the other way. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk
Tung Yin review:
Although "Ubik" wasn't the first Philip K. Dick novel I read (having read just about all of them now, it's hard to remember which was first, but I think it was "Martian Time-Slip"), I would recommend it as the best starting point for someone trying to decide if PKD is your cup of tea. "Ubik" has all of the major elements of the typical PKD novel (to the extent there is any typicality): (1) questioning of the meaning of reality; (2) an almost pathetic sense of humor in the face of the unraveling of reality; (3) an everyman protagonist; and (4) extreme readability despite a somewhat pedestrian writing style.
The plot can be summed up like this: some humans have psychic powers, but rather than being seen as heroes (as is the case in most sci-fi), they're possible sources of invasions of your privacy. Never fear, however, because some humans have developed anti-psychic powers -- they block the powers of the others. A bunch of anti-psychics go on a mission, but something goes wrong and they barely get away with their lives. Almost immediately, they notice that something is not right. Phone directories are out of date, coffee is disgustingly stale, and so on. Time, it seems, is flowing backwards!
For readers who aren't aware, PKD was one of the most influential sci-fi writers, with his reality-warping stories. His interest in this topic can be traced, no doubt, to his youthful experimentation with narcotics -- an experience recounted largely in "A Scanner Darkly."
PKD was an incredibly prolific writer; he wrote something like 16 novels in a five year stretch in the late-1960s, including "Ubik." Many of his best novels were written during that stretch. If you like "Ubik," I would suggest in no particular order: "The Gameplayers of Titan," "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (made into the movie "Bladerunner"), "Dr. Bloodmoney," and "The Man in the High Castle." By the 1970's, PKD stopped writing as many novels, and they became more thematically complex, with increasing emphasis on religious spirituality.
Here are some reviews and other info from the web:
The novel takes place in the North American Confederation in an alternate version of 1992, wherein technology has advanced to the extent of permitting civilians to reach the Moon and wherein psi phenomena are widely accepted as real. The protagonist is Joe Chip, a debt-ridden technician for Glen Runciter's "prudence organization," which employs people with the ability to block certain psychic powers (as in the case of an anti-telepath, who can prevent a telepath from reading a client's mind) to enforce privacy by request. Runciter runs the company with the assistance of his deceased wife Ella, who is kept in a state of "half-life," a form of cryonic suspension that gives the deceased person limited consciousness and communication ability.
The company’s main adversary is Ray Hollis, who leads an organization of psychics. Hollis appears only briefly in the novel.
When business magnate Stanton Mick hires Runciter’s company to secure his Lunar facilities from telepaths, Runciter assembles a dozen agents for this task. The group includes Pat Conley, a mysterious young woman who has an unprecedented parapsychological ability to undo events by changing the past. Joe Chip is shown at several points to have sexual feelings for the defiant Pat Conley, who once gives the impression of reciprocating them.
When Runciter, Chip, and the others reach Mick’s moon base, they discover that the assignment is a trap, presumably set by Hollis. A bomb explosion apparently kills Runciter without significantly harming the others. They rush back to Earth to place him in half-life.
Afterwards, the group begins to experience strange shifts in reality. Consumables, such as milk and cigarettes, begin to expire prematurely. Also, the group sees Runciter's face on coins and receives strange messages from him in writing and on television. Most of these messages imply that Runciter is in fact alive, while the others are in half-life, or "cold-pac" as it is informally called. Group members who separate from the group are found dead, in a gruesome state of decomposition.
The reality gradually shifts backward in time until the group finds itself in a world resembling the United States in 1939. They try to figure out what is causing these strange occurrences, prevent each other from dying, and find a mysterious product called Ubik, which is advertised in every time period they enter. Messages from Runciter indicate that Ubik may be their only hope of survival.
Ultimately, Joe Chip learns that Runciter, in fact, was the sole survivor of the explosion on Luna, and that his messages to the group are the result of his attempts to communicate with them while they are in half-life. The regressing world in which they find themselves is discovered to be the product of Jory Miller, another half-lifer whom Runciter encounters earlier in the story while communicating with Ella. Jory devours the life force of other people who are in suspended animation to prolong his own present existence. Of the group of anti-psychics and technicians, only Joe Chip eludes him, aided by the substance called Ubik. This substance, whose name is derived from the word "ubiquity", has the property of preserving people who are in half-life. Joe Chip is instructed in its use by Ella Runciter, who is on her way to a reincarnation.
In the living world, Glen Runciter encounters several coins showing Joe Chip's face. He suspects that this is "only the beginning [of other strange events]".
Nobody but Philip K. Dick could so successfully combine SF comedy with the unease of reality gone wrong, shifting underfoot like quicksand. Besides grisly ideas like funeral parlors where you swap gossip for the advice of the frozen dead, Ubik (1969) offers such deadpan farce as a moneyless character's attack on the robot apartment door that demands a five-cent toll:
"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."
Chip works for Glen Runciter's anti-psi security agency, which hires out its talents to block telepathic snooping and paranormal dirty tricks. When its special team tackles a big job on the Moon, something goes terribly wrong. Runciter is killed, it seems--but messages from him now appear on toilet walls, traffic tickets, or product labels. Meanwhile, fragments of reality are timeslipping into past versions: Joe Chip's beloved stereo system reverts to a hand-cranked 78 player with bamboo needles. Why does Runciter's face appear on U.S. coins? Why the repeated ads for a hard-to-find universal panacea called Ubik ("safe when taken as directed")?
The true, chilling state of affairs slowly becomes clear, though the villain isn't who Joe Chip thinks. And this is Dick country, where final truths are never quite final and--with the help of Ubik--the reality/illusion balance can still be tilted the other way. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk
Tung Yin review:
Although "Ubik" wasn't the first Philip K. Dick novel I read (having read just about all of them now, it's hard to remember which was first, but I think it was "Martian Time-Slip"), I would recommend it as the best starting point for someone trying to decide if PKD is your cup of tea. "Ubik" has all of the major elements of the typical PKD novel (to the extent there is any typicality): (1) questioning of the meaning of reality; (2) an almost pathetic sense of humor in the face of the unraveling of reality; (3) an everyman protagonist; and (4) extreme readability despite a somewhat pedestrian writing style.
The plot can be summed up like this: some humans have psychic powers, but rather than being seen as heroes (as is the case in most sci-fi), they're possible sources of invasions of your privacy. Never fear, however, because some humans have developed anti-psychic powers -- they block the powers of the others. A bunch of anti-psychics go on a mission, but something goes wrong and they barely get away with their lives. Almost immediately, they notice that something is not right. Phone directories are out of date, coffee is disgustingly stale, and so on. Time, it seems, is flowing backwards!
For readers who aren't aware, PKD was one of the most influential sci-fi writers, with his reality-warping stories. His interest in this topic can be traced, no doubt, to his youthful experimentation with narcotics -- an experience recounted largely in "A Scanner Darkly."
PKD was an incredibly prolific writer; he wrote something like 16 novels in a five year stretch in the late-1960s, including "Ubik." Many of his best novels were written during that stretch. If you like "Ubik," I would suggest in no particular order: "The Gameplayers of Titan," "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (made into the movie "Bladerunner"), "Dr. Bloodmoney," and "The Man in the High Castle." By the 1970's, PKD stopped writing as many novels, and they became more thematically complex, with increasing emphasis on religious spirituality.
Behold the Man
The story begins with Karl's violent arrival in the Holy Land of A.D. 28, where his time machine, a womblike, fluid-filled sphere, cracks open and becomes useless. By interpolating numerous memories and flashbacks, Moorcock tells the parallel story of Karl's troubled past in 20th century London, and tries to explain why he's willing to risk everything to meet Jesus. We learn that Karl has chronic problems with women, homosexual tendencies, an interest in the ideas of Jung, and many neuroses, including a messiah complex.
Behold The Man won the 1967 Nebula Award. Moorcock is an acknowledged master of fantasy with social and psychological bite, and this extremely controversial novella may well represent the best the fantasy field has to offer in terms of pure literary firepower. Karl Glogauer travels back in time two thousand years, meets John the Baptist, and then seeks Jesus Christ himself. To quote the jacket copy, "What he discovers shocks him to the core." This is a devastating story- science fiction at its most abstract and symbolic. And absolutely unforgettable. I'm ecstatic to have this beautiful corrected 30th Anniversary edition, with foreword by Jonathan Carroll and an afterword by the author, as well as lush illustrations by John Picacio. It's an essential element of any library of the fantastic- be grateful Mojo Press cared enough to make it available again
If one studies theology (as I have done), one will find out that everything we know about the beginning of Christianity is built on guesses. Christianity is one of the major religious traditions in the world, but we hardly know how it started. As Moorcock explains in this book, all our knowledge of the beginnings of Christianity (including the New Testament) could be wrong. What would be the repercussions for Christianity?
The story of the book is as brilliant as it is simple. The protagonist of the story, Karl Glogauer, returns with a time machine to the year 28 AD, to find out all about Jesus. However, due to the rough "landing", he is wounded on arrival, and is taken care of by John the Baptist and his Essene sect. As the story progresses, it turns out that John and the other Essenes consider Karl to be the long-awaited Messiah. Karl eventually takes on this role, and dies on the cross. It turns out that Karl is the Jesus of the Biblical stories...
This sounds simple, but the book is a complex and multi-layered mixture of flash-backs of Glogauer's past. The book in a sense is a psychological analysis of Glogauer's struggle to find an authentic identity, to find himself. This struggle, in which religion plays a large role, is very realistic, but is as fascinating as is the SF-part of the story. This mixture of realism and fantasy makes this simply a brilliant book!
Behold The Man won the 1967 Nebula Award. Moorcock is an acknowledged master of fantasy with social and psychological bite, and this extremely controversial novella may well represent the best the fantasy field has to offer in terms of pure literary firepower. Karl Glogauer travels back in time two thousand years, meets John the Baptist, and then seeks Jesus Christ himself. To quote the jacket copy, "What he discovers shocks him to the core." This is a devastating story- science fiction at its most abstract and symbolic. And absolutely unforgettable. I'm ecstatic to have this beautiful corrected 30th Anniversary edition, with foreword by Jonathan Carroll and an afterword by the author, as well as lush illustrations by John Picacio. It's an essential element of any library of the fantastic- be grateful Mojo Press cared enough to make it available again
If one studies theology (as I have done), one will find out that everything we know about the beginning of Christianity is built on guesses. Christianity is one of the major religious traditions in the world, but we hardly know how it started. As Moorcock explains in this book, all our knowledge of the beginnings of Christianity (including the New Testament) could be wrong. What would be the repercussions for Christianity?
The story of the book is as brilliant as it is simple. The protagonist of the story, Karl Glogauer, returns with a time machine to the year 28 AD, to find out all about Jesus. However, due to the rough "landing", he is wounded on arrival, and is taken care of by John the Baptist and his Essene sect. As the story progresses, it turns out that John and the other Essenes consider Karl to be the long-awaited Messiah. Karl eventually takes on this role, and dies on the cross. It turns out that Karl is the Jesus of the Biblical stories...
This sounds simple, but the book is a complex and multi-layered mixture of flash-backs of Glogauer's past. The book in a sense is a psychological analysis of Glogauer's struggle to find an authentic identity, to find himself. This struggle, in which religion plays a large role, is very realistic, but is as fascinating as is the SF-part of the story. This mixture of realism and fantasy makes this simply a brilliant book!
Saturday, May 26, 2007
RANT
Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey (Hardcover)
by Chuck Palahniuk (Author)
I have read a lot of similar genre, P.K.Dick and others, this is my first Palahniuk book. I got it by chance in the airport last week.
Fight Club is one of my all time favorite movies and I was wanting to read some of this guys work.
I wasnt dissapointed, this is a great great great read! Palahniuk creates an awesome reality built out of the interviews in the book, the players are excellent, its super esdgy and mind bending.
I am going to hunt down the rest of his stuff too - this is one that you shouldn't misss - this guy is doing incredible work!
by Chuck Palahniuk (Author)
I have read a lot of similar genre, P.K.Dick and others, this is my first Palahniuk book. I got it by chance in the airport last week.
Fight Club is one of my all time favorite movies and I was wanting to read some of this guys work.
I wasnt dissapointed, this is a great great great read! Palahniuk creates an awesome reality built out of the interviews in the book, the players are excellent, its super esdgy and mind bending.
I am going to hunt down the rest of his stuff too - this is one that you shouldn't misss - this guy is doing incredible work!
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Read this book
I started a book group on myspace for book reviews and recommendations.
Cant wait for a Scanner Darkly to come out
Cant wait for a Scanner Darkly to come out
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Optimus keyboard
Optimus keyboard
I must have this
Every key of the Optimus keyboard is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at this very moment
please send me one right now thank you
I must have this
Every key of the Optimus keyboard is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at this very moment
please send me one right now thank you
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
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