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WWW: Wake (WWW #1)

3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 · rating details · 3,470 ratings · 530 reviews

"One of the foremost science fiction writers of our generation"(SF Site) comes to Ace with a trilogy of the Web's awakening.

Caitlin Decter is young, pretty, feisty, a genius at math-and blind. Still, she can surf the net with the best of them, following its complex paths clearly in her mind. But Caitlin's brain long ago co-opted her primary visual cortex to help her navig...more

Hardcover, 354 pages

Published April 7th 2009 by Ace Hardcover

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Apr 23, 2010 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2009, science-fiction

Good science fiction speculates on things that are theoretically possible given some of the conditions and advances of our current level of technology. In many cases, the advances may be years or decades away from becoming reality, but in the case of Robert J. Sawyer’s new novel, “WWW: Wake,” part of his speculated future has become a reality far too quickly.

It’s disconcerting to pick up a novel that speculates on the future and find one plot element concerning an outbreak of a new form of the f...more Good science fiction speculates on things that are theoretically possible given some of the conditions and advances of our current level of technology. In many cases, the advances may be years or decades away from becoming reality, but in the case of Robert J. Sawyer’s new novel, “WWW: Wake,” part of his speculated future has become a reality far too quickly.

It’s disconcerting to pick up a novel that speculates on the future and find one plot element concerning an outbreak of a new form of the flu virus. In fact, the virus that breaks out is the H1N5 in the novel, possibly some distant cousin of the current virus that is creating a global scare and a potential world-wide pandemic.

Of course, I shouldn’t be shocked that Sawyer has done has homework and is able to predict things that could happen in the near future. He’s had a long, distinguished career of doing just that and his new novels are always those I look forward to reading next.

“WWW: Wake” is no exception.

The start of a new trilogy of novels, the story follows several different threads. One is the story of teenager Catlin Decter, who has been blind since birth. A new technology could possibly open give her sight for the first time by making use of the power of the Internet. But there’s something lurking out in cyberspace, building itself up and slowly becoming more and more aware of itself.

Stir in a story about China’s dealing with an outbreak of the H1N5 virus by removing the affected areas and shutting off communication with the outside world for several days and a plot about a highly intelligent hybrid primate and you’ve got a lot of ground to cover in this first installment. And make no mistake, this is clearly a first installment. Sawyer introduces a lot of threads and a lot of fascinating ideas in the course of his story and while he does wrap-up most of the immediate plot threads in this novel, he still leaves you hanging in the end, wanting the next installment immediately, if not sooner. There’s not a character in peril type of cliffhanger here, but instead there are several intriguing points that Sawyer leaves the reader to mull over and consider as we wait for the next installment.

But while the book is full of big ideas, those ideas are grounded in identifiable characters. The main focus of the story is Catlin and her journey from lack of sight to her new ability to see. Sawyer ably puts the reader inside the mind and experience of Catlin, making us see how she works within the world while being blind and how she must learn to adapt to a world where she can see. Catlin’s story will have you feeling her joy, her frustration and her curious nature in how she relates to the world. And a revelation about her father half-way through the story is ably set up and paid off in the course of this first installment.

The only real criticism I can come up with this one is it ended too soon and left me eager for the next installment. And that next installment cannot come soon enough…(less)

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May 26, 2009 James Scholes rated it 2 of 5 stars

I started reading this book because of the talk about it on Twitter. At first I scanned through the text, thinking it was a joke. Being visually impaired myself, I was overwhelmed by the attention to detail as far as the main character being blind was concerned. The author has obviously done his research into JAWS, Braille Displays, etc, and once I started actually reading the novel I managed to put aside my original opinion in favor of adopting a different view. It occurred to me that the amoun...more I started reading this book because of the talk about it on Twitter. At first I scanned through the text, thinking it was a joke. Being visually impaired myself, I was overwhelmed by the attention to detail as far as the main character being blind was concerned. The author has obviously done his research into JAWS, Braille Displays, etc, and once I started actually reading the novel I managed to put aside my original opinion in favor of adopting a different view. It occurred to me that the amount of detail regarding blindness had been used by the author in place of the amount of detail he could have included if he had chosen to write about a sited character.
Once I had adopted this view, I did not find it hard at all to start enjoying the actual storyline. When I do read mainstream books, this is the type of book I read, so the plot appealed to me. And once I'd started reading, I couldn't stop. Not because I was astonished at the quality of writing, or at the huge variety of vocabulary used. In fact, not even because of the plot, as I still believe the storyline to be decidedly average. But it was the type of book that I had to read in large chunks, otherwise I would have lost interest very quickly. And that is why it has only received a 3 star rating from me. 4/5 star ratings will be reserved for books that, for lack of a better phrase, blow my mind, and really make me want to read them, no matter how long the duration between reading sessions is, or how many chapters I read during said sessions.
Many people chose to be offended by the portrayal of visual impairment in this book. And while I see there point for the most part, the fact remains that this is a work of fiction, and that no matter how much research the author may or may not have completed before writing this text, he will never be able to accurately portray blindness from the perspective of a blind individual. He is not blind, and has grown up in a sited world. No amount of Googling or interviews can change that.(less)

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Apr 25, 2010 Lisa Vegan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, novel, speculative-fiction, reviewed, gr-groups-buddies

This was an incredibly fast read, and I really enjoyed the story.

I loved the premise. I loved all the subplots, event though some of them are abruptly dropped, at least in this first book; it is a trilogy. All the parts of this book did make sense to me though and they did all converge well.

After the first several pages, I completely enjoyed Caitlin Decter, an almost sixteen year old girl who has been blind since birth, and then gets an opportunity to have an operation that might allow her to se...more

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Apr 28, 2010 Porter rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. The ideas it deals with are fascinating, and the main character was both interesting and compelling, as was her storyline.

In comparing it to Little Brother by Corey Doctorow, the latest book I've read which also features a tech-savvy youth as the protagonist, it seems like Doctorow was trying too hard to be hip.

The one complaint I have about this book is that it's not a novel -- it's just the beginning of one. (This book is the first of a planned trilogy.) This book...more

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Mar 27, 2012 Matthew Bennett rated it 4 of 5 stars

Any book that is speculative, has interesting characters, complex and well written as well as being impossible to put down should get five stars. "Wake" is layered with complex symbolism and ideas, but its also exciting and the characters are very compelling. Time and again Sawyer leads you to crave some sort of resolution and manages to keep you in that state for hundreds of pages without losing interest but he doesn't always go the conventional way and simply give you what will satisfy you. In...more

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Nov 30, 2009 Ben Babcock rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: from-library, 2009-read, artificial-intelligence, canadian-author, didactic-fiction, science-fiction, hugo-nominee

Seldom does a book live up to blurbs like "Unforgettable. Impossible to put down," as Jack McDevitt says of Wake. Usually, such claims are empty hype, even when the book is good. Not so with Wake. I agree wholeheartedly with McDevitt, for I was 100 pages into the novel before realizing it was 2 AM and I should probably get some sleep. There's no way that Wake could be mistaken for "an action-packed thrill ride" or any of those other tired blurb clichés floating around in the critique pool, but "...more

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Jul 02, 2010 Alan rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Comfort-seekers

Robert J. Sawyer is a prolific author known for writing popular, workmanlike science fiction, and WWW:Wake is no exception. His work is also not especially adventurous... and this book is no exception there, either. I enjoyed reading this novel (although be warned: it's the first in Yet Another Series), but it was something of a guilty pleasure.

Sawyer's take on the well-worn theme of a nascent artificial intelligence could have been entitled When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was Web 2.0—already a familiar riff...more Robert J. Sawyer is a prolific author known for writing popular, workmanlike science fiction, and WWW:Wake is no exception. His work is also not especially adventurous... and this book is no exception there, either. I enjoyed reading this novel (although be warned: it's the first in Yet Another Series), but it was something of a guilty pleasure.

Sawyer's take on the well-worn theme of a nascent artificial intelligence could have been entitled When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was Web 2.0—already a familiar riff for anyone familiar with 20th-Century sf by the likes of David Gerrold (When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One), Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), William Gibson (Neuromancer), Thomas J. Ryan (The Adolescence of P-1), D.F. Jones (Colossus et seq.) or any number of other works. Sawyer's newer take on the trope does seem fairly plausible, perhaps because it does take into account some more modern aspects of network architecture, cellular automata and the like, but he really doesn't break any new ground here.

And his kitchen-sink approach to the novel's backstory isn't much help either. Frequent Wikipedia-like paragraphs on Julian Jaynes, and others on Stephen Wolfram, to name two, are jarring interruptions. Sawyer doesn't seem to have been able to resist showing off the research he did in order to write this book... which is fine, I suppose, but it should have been saved for an afterword or annotated bibliography, rather than shoehorned into the narrative.

Nevertheless, I am a sucker for the theme, familiar though it is, and I quickly found myself warming to Sawyer's protagonist Caitlin, a teenaged girl with a bent for math and a fish-out-of-water appeal as she finds herself transplanted from Austin, Texas to Toronto. Caitlin's also blind, but in a unique way that turns out to be amenable to a computational fix. The side effect of the fix—and Sawyer does a fairly good job of portraying this, actually—is that Caitlin becomes able to visualize the Web directly, in a way that sighted people can't. This gives her an edge when detecting the anomalies that turn out to be the awakening Web.

I'm damning this book with faint praise here, and I probably shouldn't—if you like this sort of thing, you will definitely like this book; it's a well-done example of its type. But... I couldn't help wanting more out of WWW:Wake than a few hours' entertainment... and that's all I got, this time.(less)

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Sep 20, 2010 Alex Telander rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2009

From an author who has written a number of books and has won just about every award a science fiction author can comes one of the most original and fascinating novels to be published in a long time. It’s one of those books that has just as much right to be on a fiction shelf with other literature classics. WWW: Wake is the first in a trilogy about a blind girl, Caitlin Decter, who undergoes new and theoretical surgery in Japan to bring back her sight. With an implant in one eye, signals are sent...more

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Jan 05, 2009 Kristopher rated it 4 of 5 stars

I grabbed an ARC of this the other day and am pleased to say that I enjoyed it immensely. My first Robert J. Sawyer experience was calculating god, and to this day it is one of my favorite quick reads - it's crossed the country in countless carry ons.

Until now I haven't been as fond of his other works. I always find his ideas fascinating, but I don't click with his characters - and since his novels are very much character pieces as well as imaginary voyages into the unknown that creates a slight...more

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May 26, 2013 Bayla rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: math, non-white-characters, paranormal

Caitlin is 16, a math genius, newly moved to Canada, and blind, and she wants nothing more than to be able to see. So when a Japanese doctor suggests an experimental procedure that might allow her to do so, she and her parents jump at the chance. What they get is not quite what they expected (view spoiler)...more

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May 23, 2013 Adam Thole rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It made me think of many things that I had never thought about before. For instance, I never really sat down and thought about what it would be like to be blind. At least not to the extent that this book made me think about it. I also never really thought about Helen Keller that much, but I am now amazed to think about what it would be like to live both deaf and blind. Another amazing thought is what it would be like to see if you had been blind your whole life. As mu...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Helen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: canadian, fantasy, fiction, science-fiction

Never would have thought I'd enjoy a book about the internet but this was absolutely fascinating, although I wish he hadn't named the cat Schrodinger because that cat never existed and didn't have a name. It's like calling a monster Frankinstein. This is the first in a trilogy and I am not sure I want to read the third one because there are some very dark areas this scenario could go to. Caitlin Decter is a blind teenager who has moved to Windsor, Ontario from Austin, Texas with her parents. She...more Never would have thought I'd enjoy a book about the internet but this was absolutely fascinating, although I wish he hadn't named the cat Schrodinger because that cat never existed and didn't have a name. It's like calling a monster Frankinstein. This is the first in a trilogy and I am not sure I want to read the third one because there are some very dark areas this scenario could go to. Caitlin Decter is a blind teenager who has moved to Windsor, Ontario from Austin, Texas with her parents. She is mathematically gifted and her parents have made sure she has every tool possible to minimize the role her blindness will play in her future. They are contacted by a researcher in Japan who has been working on neurological structures involved in blindness. Caitlin has a rare situation wherein her irises react opposite to logic - opening wide in bright light and closing in low light. He connects her to a computer by way of an implant behind one eye. It doesn't work the way they had hoped until Dr. Kuroda realizes that Caitlin processes digitally. I got confused at this point and decided to just accept what was written. She gained sight in the one eye but it was blurry until Dr. Kuroda examined her and said she was myopic and needed glasses. The passages dealing with the gaining of sight are really well done, clear, intense, and comprehensible. You don't think about the fact that you don't notice everything that passes in front of your eyes, it's prioritized by your brain as relevant or not. If it weren't you'd be overwhelmed by the input, as Caitlin almost is. As she becomes more adept at dealing with the visual world Caitlin begins to see something strange in what she calls websight, a visual of the world wide web which she sees when her eyepod is set properly. There is a great deal of excitement over the fact of her sight, but there are warning notes as to what will appear in volume two as we know that Watch exists to keep an eye out for web based threats to the USA and the idea of an uncontrollable intelligence would not appear safe. We have also been following the development of a particular form of artistic awareness in a chimpanzee/bonobo cross named Hobo. The zoo where he was born is concerned that this might indicate a possible Planet of the Apes scenario and wants the research centre where Hobo is living to return him so they can castrate him. What will happen in the Japanese research facility where they are hoping to develop the implants into a wider application. Caitlin is angry that the university is looking to make money from the work, but really what is wrong? They put in major money to fund the study, the implants are expensive to produce and the surgery requires great skill. Shouldn't there be a return to enable more research? The questions are just set up in this book as well as the usual teenage situations as Caitlin learns to handle a visual world. Excellent read.(less)

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Mar 15, 2013 Smcleish rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Originally published on my blog here in August 2010.

J.K. Rowling aside, who is the most successful science fiction / fantasy writer of all time? One candidate would be Michael Crichton, who wrote more books turned into famous films than any other writer I can think of: Jurassic Park, Westworld, The Andromeda Strain. He's not an author I like very much, either as a novelist or screenwriter; although his books are really thrillers with SF themes, I tend to find them dull and have never actually ma...more Originally published on my blog here in August 2010.

J.K. Rowling aside, who is the most successful science fiction / fantasy writer of all time? One candidate would be Michael Crichton, who wrote more books turned into famous films than any other writer I can think of: Jurassic Park, Westworld, The Andromeda Strain. He's not an author I like very much, either as a novelist or screenwriter; although his books are really thrillers with SF themes, I tend to find them dull and have never actually managed to get to the end of any of them; the films work rather better, but even so are not my cup of tea. This is a view I appear to share with others in SF fandom; as a writer he was rarely nominated for an award (the only major one being the British Fantasy best novel nomination in 1995) despite his popularity.

The reason I bring up Michael Crichton is that I expected Robert J. Sawyer to be a similar writer. I first came across his work through the TV series of Flashforward, based on one of his novels. I watched the first two episodes, then gave up because (like Heroes) it seemed to be rehashing the same thing every week and neither moving forward at any speed in the overall story arc nor having interesting single episode stories. But the basic idea was interesting, and seemingly tailor made for TV adaptation, especially because the final episode was scheduled be shown on the date that everyone had seen on their vision of the future. While the plot meant that a TV adaptation seemed more appropriate than film, this seemed to me to be a very Michael Crichton style idea. So I didn't really think of reading any of his novels.

I'm not entirely sure why I added Wake to my list of books to read after giving up on Flashforward. I probably saw a favourable mention in a blog somewhere, or a review on SF Site. (A bit of checking reveals that it is because of its nomination for the 2010 Hugo: one of a large number of awards and nominations.) But I am glad that I did. It turns out, you see, that Sawyer is not at all like Michael Crichton as a writer. Wake is more like Neal Stephenson or Charles Stross: someone who knows about computers and has interesting ideas about their future which they discuss through science fiction. (He is one of the most enduring online presences in science fiction, as his home domain name, http://www.sfwriter.com/, suggests.)

After that long digression, I should at least say something about what Wake is about. There are three strands to the story, all of which are about cognitive awakening. The main one is the story of Caitlin, who was born blind and who is offered the chance to regain sight through an operation which connects her visual cortex to a hardware device which she nicknames the "eye-Pod". But as well as learning to see - and this is very interestingly imagined by Sawyer - she also discovers that connecting the device to the Internet means that she can "see" the structure of the Web. And part of what she sees forms the second major strand: in the background, there are what appear to be cellular automata, which begin to seem to be an emergent intelligence from the lost an corrupted packets which never expire (Internet communication is made up of packets with a "time to live" value, decreased by one each time they pass through a router; if this value is corrupted or they pass through routers with buggy software, this could lead to packets which never reach their destination and are never destroyed). The third strand is about a chimpanzee which begins to produce representational art: recognisable portraits of one of the people who look after it. This is not so closely integrated into Caitlin's story, but that may well be left to the second part of the WWW trilogy. A fourth strand, about a dissident Chinese blogger, has loose ends which will clearly be picked up later.

The theme is clearly the development of consciousness, and is heavily influenced not just by current ideas about how machine intelligence might arise but also by the writings of Helen Keller, on how it felt to begin to be able to connect with other people after living blind and deaf since childhood - unlike Caitlin, she was not born blind but became so following an illness as a baby. Another background influence is the work of Julian Jaynes, who controversially argued that the modern human consciousness did not come into being until very recently (3000 years ago or so), early literature describing individuals who did not act in ways commensurate with fully integrated minds. Caitlin, as a bright teenager interested in such topics because of her blindness, makes a good conduit for Sawyer to introduce the concepts he wants to discuss.

This is one way in which Sawyer achieves one goal of good science fiction writing. In a genre derided for clumsy "info-dumps", finding a naturalistic way to explain the clever ideas and concepts behind your writing is important to many authors. Readers do not want to see endless conversations in which the participants tell each other things they already know, for the benefit of the reader, or to have lengthy explanatory sections or footnotes. Sawyer manages to do this really well here, and the combination of interesting ideas and good writing makes for a fascinating and enjoyable reading experience. As the Hugo nomination shows, this is one of the SF novels of the year, and is deservedly so.(less)

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Nov 22, 2012 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

What if the World Wide Web gained consciousness? How could it happen and what might be the result? This is the essence of the new series WWW: and the first book in the trilogy Wake. As the title suggests the first book deals with the awakening of the Web. Woven around this process are three other stories.

The first, and key one in my opinion, is that of Caitlin Decter. She is fifteen years old and has been blind since birth. The cause of here blindness is a condition that causes her retinas sendi...more What if the World Wide Web gained consciousness? How could it happen and what might be the result? This is the essence of the new series WWW: and the first book in the trilogy Wake. As the title suggests the first book deals with the awakening of the Web. Woven around this process are three other stories.

The first, and key one in my opinion, is that of Caitlin Decter. She is fifteen years old and has been blind since birth. The cause of here blindness is a condition that causes her retinas sending a scrambled signal to the optic nerve so her visual cortex cannot interpret them. This leads to a Japanese scientist implanting her with a device that intercepts the signal, unscrambles it using a processor that Caitlin calls her "eyepod" and send it via Bluetooth to her optic nerve. At first, the process fails but because she is hooked the web via a wi-fi connection she sees "something".

The second story is set in China where an outbreak of human communicable bird flu has broken out in a couple of remote villages. In order to stop it from spreading, the Chinese government orders extreme measures and to prevent another Tiananmen Square PR nightmare, they execute a lockdown of all communication to the outside world; telephones, television and the Web. This sudden loss of a large part of "itself" triggers the self-awareness of the web. As a few resourceful hackers break through and the web is whole again, it strengthens this awareness.

The third story is about Hugo, a chimpanzee/bonobo hybrid who is adept at sign language. After researchers set-up a webcam meeting with Hobo and another chimpanzee so they can sign with each other, Hugo paints a portrait of one of his handlers. While animal art has been around for a while, it has always been abstract. This is the first time this level of ability has been shown. Tension occurs when this news gets back to the zoo who actually owns Hobo and they want him back to sterilize him. The excuse is the purity of the species, but there is more to it than that.

As you might guess, the something Caitlin is seeing is the newly formed consciousness of the web and eventually it sees the world through her eyes and the relationship develops. If I say anymore, the story will be ruined so I will leave that to you to find out.

The only two negatives I have about the book is the mystic nature of the Web's awakening, I would have liked more details, and the story of Hugo. It is very peripheral so far to the main story but I am hopeful it will become more integral in the next book.

This is the third trilogy from Sawyer and it may end up being his best. The first, the Quintaglio Ascension series was an excellent series dealing with sentient dinosaurs being the dominant species. The second was the acclaimed Neanderthal Parallax about a rift that connects a parallel earth where Neanderthals evolved into a highly advanced society, in some ways more advance than our own. The storytelling style is consistent with these and the many stand-alone novels he has written.

Sawyer does a superior job taking familiar concepts and making us look at them in a different way that challenges the reader to think what would it be like if this happened or we dealt with these issues in this manner. Often times he points out the vulnerabilities and dangers of the dogmas and rigid thinking of a society. I have no doubt the other two books in this series will do the same.

The other thing that Sawyer does well is to incorporate current developments in science or related fields into his stories. While the fictional search engine Jagster does not exist (at least I could not find it), the references to the A.I. work by Doug Lenat is real and provides a key element in the story. In some ways, much of Sawyer's work is not science fiction in the sense of space and aliens and the like but it is science and fiction with a psychological bent. Sawyer has dubbed the term PsiFi to describe some of his stories. Whatever you call them they are always entertaining, they keep you wondering where he is going and they satisfy immensely. My only regret is that I have to wait for the next two.

Note: This review is based on a serialization of the novel that ran in Analog magazine from November 2008 through March 2009.
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Oct 10, 2012 Robert Hamilton rated it 4 of 5 stars

In part 1 of this trilogy, a blind girl is given a retinal implant that helps her to see. Meanwhile an emergent AI begins to take shape in the background of the web and learns to see through our hero’s implant. As she learns about her world, the AI learns right along with her.

I don't think an AI could ever just emerge in the background the web. That would be like seeing a mouse emerge from a jumble of oily rags. But let's let give Sawyer a pass on that one or we don’t have much of a story. It’s...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Continuing down the current line of sci-fi related fiction that I've stumbled upon, I am thrilled to have come across WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer. Another story of where technology might take us, WWW: Wake is part thriller, part domestic drama, part Young Adult Fiction, and part expansion of Evolution as a theory that extends beyond our natural world, but extends into the cyber-world of our creation.

Unexpected events: cure for a common disease, foreign internet censorship, and primatology all...more

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Sep 15, 2012 Keith rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, fiction, ebooks, 2012

WWW Wake is the first book of Robert J. Sawyer's three book WWW series.. It must be admitted that it starts slowly. I imagine a reader who didn't know there were two books to come might start wondering how this was going to end. There is a large cast of characters, some occupying, at least in this book, less page time than others. Wake is the story of an emerging artificial intelligence but also how it effects the humans in the story. Central to the story is Caitlin, a Texas teenager recently re...more

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Jun 20, 2012 Maurinejt rated it 2 of 5 stars

I spent half of this book wondering why so many people loved it. Did anyone who nominated it for a Hugo actually read it? Honestly? Fess up, people. Seriously, it was that off. The most generous explanation I have is that maybe his other books are brilliant; I had never read Robert Sawyer so I had no preconceptions. When I love an author, I tend to make excuses for work that isn't good (unless it continues to be substandard, then I get irrationally angry with him or her). Maybe the good reviews...more I spent half of this book wondering why so many people loved it. Did anyone who nominated it for a Hugo actually read it? Honestly? Fess up, people. Seriously, it was that off. The most generous explanation I have is that maybe his other books are brilliant; I had never read Robert Sawyer so I had no preconceptions. When I love an author, I tend to make excuses for work that isn't good (unless it continues to be substandard, then I get irrationally angry with him or her). Maybe the good reviews came from loyal fans. WWW: Wake is about a blind American teenager. And neither the American, the blind, or the teenager part are very believable. One point that bothered me is that Caitlin keeps using the Canadian slang "washroom". Americans don't say "washroom", we say "bathroom". She was from Texas and just had moved to Canada; her speech patterns wouldn't have changed so fast, especially given the limited interaction she has outside her family. Some of the descriptions of being blind are plausible, but the basics are off-base. She ignores her tactile sense or smell, which both would have been paramount. She seems shocked later in the book by revelations of the items in her house, most of which I felt she would have explored by touch. From what I understand of the completely blind, they know where everything is in the area they inhabit, and spend a lot of time touching objects and even faces of loved ones if possible. I mean, why not? That's how they "see". For instance, Caitlin is shocked when she discovers there is a window on the stove. Wouldn't she have felt the front of the stove at some point and realized the texture changed, etc, and there was something of significance there? Smell is a sense rarely dealt with in the book (I don't actually remember it mentioned at all but maybe I missed it), again from what I understand it is very important to the blind because it helps them create a sense of place, and to recognize individuals. And she does NOT behave like a teenager. She behaves in the way every parent of a teenager wants their teen to behave, like a mini adult. She interacts almost exclusively with adults, she only cares about adult issues, and is obedient and thoughtful. Yeah, she is brilliant at math, but that doesn't make the rest of being a teenager go away. Teens are about exploring independence, and Caitlin spends entirely too much time playing mother-may-I with her parents; especially following her sheltered childhood coupled with her intelligence. It almost reaches the point where the book isn't really about her, that she's just adjunct to the super-smart and all-knowing adults around her. She also doesn't have any real friends. I think we are supposed to believe in the friendship between her and her "best friend", but Caitlin's parents are paying this girl $100 a week to essentially be her seeing eye person/friend. It seems a little sick to me.

And speaking of the all-knowing adults, let's talk about the massive, dry, and boring information dumps. Caitlin works with a colorless middle-aged Japanese researcher Kuroda who is trying to give her sight. He stays with her in Canada mostly to lecture her about how the web works so we understand upcoming plot points. It's REALLY tedious stuff. And I found myself wondering, what if the researcher was a twenty year old hot shot who really felt superior to Caitlin so there was this verbal fencing back and forth during the explanation? What if this was an older, jaded woman who is obviously grooming Caitlin for nefarious ends and the young girl is thoroughly charmed? Or, more simply, what if we were just told only the very necessary ideas without a lot of pomp? The explanations felt like someone's dissertation dressed up with field specific terminology, but actually the ideas are very easy to understand if they had been written to be understandable. Throwing a lot of fancy words at us doesn't make it impeccable science. I kept thinking about Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and how she handled the explanation of the tesseract. Yes, I am quite sure she had read the papers, and articles and knew all the terminology. But she chose not to use all that, and instead present her idea simply and well. To take the comparison a bit further, her main character was also a genius teenager. But Meg was definitely a teen first, mathematician second.

I think the best thing I can actually say about the novel is that the actual idea was interesting. And there were bits throughout that worked. WWW:Wake suffers not from mundane plot or bad characters but from an overall laziness and lack of imagination.

(less)

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May 27, 2012 Lissa Notreallywolf rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: speculative-fiction, goned

I'd give this a 4.5 if I could because these books make me think, look up words, visit Wikipedia and I like the characters. Caitlin is blind from a ficititious disorder, but has her vision corrected by an implant in one of her eyes. Just as I was wondering if this was a rerun of Neuromancer, Sawyer drops William Gibson's name into the mix. Caitlin is fun and sassy. I think she has too few physiological headaches from having her sight repaired and her learning curve is somewhere in the Cray range...more

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May 04, 2012 Joe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Darn! Another one of those "It could have been great but came unglued in the middle and redeemed itself in the last two chapters", kind of stories. The last chapter was brilliant and inspiring.

But in the middle... headache fodder.

I'm a computer geek (35 years as an IT professional) and so I am well aware of the Author's credentials in this area. But here's the problem... Is the author lecturing us on the arcane and interminable subtleties of the Internet or is the aauthor telling a potentially g...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Bill rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Computer science students, young adults, sci-fi lovers.

Shelves: cautionary-tale, fiction, science, science-fiction, techno-thriller

Robert Sawyer hit a home run with this book - and with the other two books that make up a marvelous trilogy. "Wake" is followed by: "WWW:Watch" and "WWW:Wonder". It's the story of a teenage girl who is blind - but very bright. Caitlin's parents are warm and loving people who give the girl all the support she could possibly want. Into this tranquility is introduced a character who is born of the internet. Caitlin and her parents learn of a Japanese bio-engineer who wants to help Caitlin acquire v...more

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Jan 04, 2012 Michelle rated it 2 of 5 stars

Book was good, but I found the style a little difficult at times. If it was written for adults, then there was too much teenaged content. But as a teen novel (which it is, at least in our library system), I found it a little too complicated and advanced for what I would expect most kids would want to read. It was a strange mix, and seemed to flip flop from teen novel to adult content over and over again.

I was confused about why storylines were created and dropped. I realize this is the first bo...more

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Dec 30, 2011 Ariel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, ya

The premise of this story: a girl undergoes an experimental treatment to give her sight when she's never had it before. It's a successful procedure, for the most part - but in addition to the real world, Caitlin can also see the internet (there are medical explanations for this, I promise). Slowly, due to its uplink with Caitlin's mind, the internet begins to become sentient. What's even cooler: Caitlin purposefully helps it along. This book was incredibly entertaining - I really loved Caitlin's...more

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Oct 07, 2011 Robert Colquhoun rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm not much of a sci-fi reader but this author and trilogy was recommended to me so, I thought I would give it a go. I wasn't aware the author was Canadian, which makes it an even better choice (he who writes this review is from Toronto, Ontario, Canada).
I thoroughly enjoyed my first taste of R. Sawyer and I may very well come back and amend this to a 4 once I have finished the trilogy!!!
Not too far fetched (which I appreciate) and the characters are all very likeable (Caitlin, the ape, the Ja...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Algot Runeman rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the first book of a trilogy. While each book can stand alone, the full impact of the trilogy benefits from the books being read in order.

These books define what I think of when I say "Science Fiction." They have a young person's perspective of possibilities. In this case, the young people are represented by a sixteen year old girl from Texas who moves to Canada, a Bonobo-Chimpanzee learning sign language and a consciousness which emerges from the packets of data flowing on the Internet....more

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Jul 01, 2011 Roberta rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sciencefiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 28, 2011 Diana Sandberg rated it 3 of 5 stars

Gosh, real old-school sci fi, not fantasy; makes me quite nostalgic. Not that it isn’t quite up to date in subject matter - it’s all about the dawning consciousness of the World Wide Web and other technological immediacies. I gather that Sawyer is enormously popular and, indeed, one of the best selling authors Canada has ever produced. This book is highly readable but Sawyer is no Bradbury; it’s not art.

Like all old-school sci fi, the basic what-if scientific idea is the whole raison d’etre of...more

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May 17, 2011 Mike Finn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative-fiction

It has been a long time since I read a science fiction book with such joy as "Wake". This is science fiction as I want it to be: human, accessible, exciting, challenging, educative, serious, funny and fast-paced.

Of course, I fell in love with Calculass - the fifteen year old math genius who is given technology meant to let her see the real world for the first time. If she really had a LiveJournal blog, I would be a regular reader.

I loved the web-native view of the net, which captures what it fee...more

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May 16, 2011 Angela rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. It was okay for what it was, light science fiction for teenagers, and as such, the story moves right along and is entertaining enough. The main idea of intelligent life spontaneously arising out of all the connections in the World Wide Web was dealt with previously in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and it's interesting to compare this character Webmind to Heinlein's Mike. It is also interesting to follow the main protagonist on her journey to sight, although I wonder if a person fully...more It was okay for what it was, light science fiction for teenagers, and as such, the story moves right along and is entertaining enough. The main idea of intelligent life spontaneously arising out of all the connections in the World Wide Web was dealt with previously in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and it's interesting to compare this character Webmind to Heinlein's Mike. It is also interesting to follow the main protagonist on her journey to sight, although I wonder if a person fully blind from birth would instantly be able to process and recognize things the way she seems to. As bright as she is supposed to be, I trouble believing she would be so quick to learn facial expressions. I'm not even sure she could process other information in any meaningful way. I understand that some people deaf from birth have an awful time trying to process sounds if they get corrective surgery with similar implants past a certain stage of physical and mental development. It would certainly be great if people blind from birth could be cured with so few problems however.

I have problems with a few of the other characters too. Dr. Kuroda does not seem Japanese. And if he has spent most of his life abroad and lost many Japanese traits, it's odd that he can be completely fluent one minute and then be asking for help with relatively simple vocabulary the next. His daughter didn't answer the phone the Japanese way (moshi moshi) either. This is the kind of thing that can be solved with a little basic research. As for Caitlin's father, who is supposed to be autistic, I imagine that means he is on the Asperger's side of the autism spectrum. But I've met people with Asperger's, and they're not colorless automatons by any stretch of the imagination. They just don't interact socially exactly in the same way we might expect. I imagine we are supposed to compare him to Webmind; the human has the robot-like personality, and Webmind is full of child-like wonder... But I just think Sawyer should have talked to a few people with Asperger's while he was writing the book. Neal Stephenson, by contrast, is great at creating characters with Asperger's, and he is so good at it that he never has to use the words Asperger's or autistic even once to let us know what he is talking about.

It seems like Sawyer concentrated most of his research on the Internet and technical developments related to it. That is the part of the story that is most successful.(less)

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Apr 28, 2011 Francesco Verso rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dal celebre scrittore canadese di fantascienza, Robert J. Sawyer, un nome divenuto un “marchio di fabbrica” della letteratura mondiale di genere - le sue opere sono state nominate e hanno vinto premi prestigiosi quali l’Aurora, lo Hugo e il Nebula oltre che essere state adattate per la TV in una popolare serie del 2009 - arriva Wake (Gollancz, 2009), romanzo che costituisce l’inizio di una trilogia incentrata sulla nascita della coscienza in un’Intelligenza Artificiale, in questo caso il World W...more Dal celebre scrittore canadese di fantascienza, Robert J. Sawyer, un nome divenuto un “marchio di fabbrica” della letteratura mondiale di genere - le sue opere sono state nominate e hanno vinto premi prestigiosi quali l’Aurora, lo Hugo e il Nebula oltre che essere state adattate per la TV in una popolare serie del 2009 - arriva Wake (Gollancz, 2009), romanzo che costituisce l’inizio di una trilogia incentrata sulla nascita della coscienza in un’Intelligenza Artificiale, in questo caso il World Wide Web.
Il seguito di questo primo romanzo, Watch, è atteso per il 2010 mentre la conclusione, Wonder, vedrà la luce nel 2011. Questa seconda trilogia dal titolo WWW (World Wide Web) – la prima Neanderthal Parallax è stata pubblicata su Urania nei numeri 1536, 1542 e 1547 – ruota attorno alle vicende di alcuni esseri “viventi”, ritenuti chiusi o almeno limitati, i quali, giunti alla scoperta dell’altro da sé, ne escono profondamente mutati: la quindicenne enfant prodige della matematica Caitlin Dector, non vedente dalla nascita, dopo un viaggio in Giappone per sottoporsi a un intervento all’occhio sinistro, riacquista la vista grazie a una tecnologia innovativa sviluppata dal Professor Kuroda; il primate Hobo, incrocio tra un bonobo e uno scimpanzé, si rivela capace di dipingere il profilo della sua addestratrice Shoshana; e infine il World Wide Web, grazie all’interazione con Caitlin, apprende tutta la conoscenza del mondo e acquisisce una consapevolezza di sé fino ad autonominarsi “Webmind”. Esiste anche una quarta linea narrativa, che vede il governo cinese “sigillare” il proprio spazio web dalle influenze esterne, ma Sawyer non approfondisce la vicenda e la lascia in sospeso per i prossimi due romanzi (si spera!).
Wake prende quindi le mosse dall’intervento di ricostruzione del collegamento mancante tra l’occhio sinistro di Caitlin e la parte del suo cervello preposta all’interpretazione dei segnali visivi. Oltre a restituire alla ragazza la vista “normale”, l’eyePod – come lo chiama lei, cioè l’interfaccia di raccordo che le viene impiantata sul nervo ottico - le consente di sperimentare un strano effetto collaterale, ossia una sorta di “retevisione” (websight nel testo) fatta di affascinanti geometrie e collegamenti virtuali. Grazie a quest’abilità – sinora unica nel suo genere - entra in contatto con un “essere” appena nato la cui conoscenza del mondo è limitata dalle sole connessioni web e racchiusa entro lo spazio virtuale della rete.
“Yes, indeed. My mind was inflating, my universe expanding.” Con questa efficace metafora, Sawyer intende mostrarci come l’intelligenza sia una proprietà emergente dei sistemi complessi e lo fa dimostrando nel minimo dettaglio il modo in cui ciò possa avvenire, non soltanto nelle cosiddette Intelligenze Artificiali, bensì in ognuno di noi e negli animali.
Gran parte del romanzo, in effetti, è incentrato sulla fase di apprendimento e successivo sviluppo da parte di Caitilin e Webmind del loro nuovo “senso”, lo strumento attraverso il quale la vita di entrambi migliorerà e subirà una forte scossa.
Se da una parte la loro esperienza della realtà ne uscirà arricchita sotto tutti i punti di vista, dall’altra Sawyer lascia intendere che, nel prosieguo della vicenda, potrebbe fare la sua comparsa qualcosa di meno affascinante, di più ambiguo e potenzialmente pericoloso. Le altre due linee narrative, infatti, concorrono a creare una certa suspense dovuta al fatto che il governo cinese, dopo aver sterminato migliaia di persone per arginare la diffusione dell’ennesima epidemia, decide di “blindare” il proprio spazio web, tornare alla vecchia politica di autarchia mediante drastiche misure di contenimento e votarsi alle imprevedibili conseguenze di tale strategia. L’altra vicenda coinvolge il piccolo Hobo e la sua fama di novello artista. Lo zoo da cui proviene lo rivuole indietro per sterilizzarlo poiché teme la diffusione di razze meticcie. Il vero motivo tuttavia è la conservazione della purezza delle linee genetiche animali, anche a costo della loro estinzione. Da queste premesse partirà un’accesa battaglia per la custodia legale del povero Hobo.
Sia dal punto di vista del contenuto che della forma, il romanzo di Sawyer ricorre spesso a riferimenti circa gli sviluppi della fisica, della matematica, della linguistica e dell’information technology, senza appesantire la lettura. In questo Sawyer si dimostra molto abile nel rendere delle materie complesse fruibili anche a quei palati che non masticano discipline scientifiche. L’uso di una lingua semplice, priva di ricercatezze stilistiche e lessicali, agevola molto il compito dello scrittore di veicolare un gran numero di informazioni in meno di 350 pagine. Ovvio che Sawyer descrive ogni passaggio nell’uso di applicazioni quali Wikipedia, Google, LiveJournal, Project Gutenberg, WordNet, e l’interessante Cyc (http://www.cyc.com/) vero e proprio sito web dedicato alla codifica di informazioni interpretabili da tutti, comprese le nascenti IA, ma lo fa con una leggerezza innata, quella appunto di Caitlin, una quindicenne sveglia e curiosa. La seconda parte del romanzo, ancora più densa di teorie e riflessioni, non procede con lo stesso ritmo incalzante della prima, seppure scorra bene, alternando le vicende adolescenziali di Caitlin, le sue prime cocenti passioni, con la crescita di Webmind, di converso più astratta e matematica, anche se non meno stupefacente.
Due parole sul finale: succinto ma evocativo, non è del tutto appagante, lascia molto in sospeso e lo fa di proposito, per incuriosire il lettore al prossimo volume.
Gli elementi per una trilogia “esplosiva” dunque ci sono tutti. Basterà attendere, ma nel caso di Sawyer, ne varrà la pena. Nel frattempo consiglio di dare un’occhiata agli aggiornamenti sul sito web della trilogia di WWW (http://wakewatchwonder.com/)(less)

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About Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer is one of Canada's best known and most successful science fiction writers. He is the only Canadian (and one of only 7 writers in the world) to have won all three of the top international awards for science fiction: the 1995 Nebula Award for The Terminal Experiment, the 2003 Hugo Award for Hominids, and the 2006 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Mindscan.
Robert Sawyer grew up in...more Robert J. Sawyer is one of Canada's best known and most successful science fiction writers. He is the only Canadian (and one of only 7 writers in the world) to have won all three of the top international awards for science fiction: the 1995 Nebula Award for The Terminal Experiment, the 2003 Hugo Award for Hominids, and the 2006 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Mindscan.
Robert Sawyer grew up in Toronto, the son of two university professors. He credits two of his favourite shows from the late 1960s and early 1970s, Search and Star Trek, with teaching him some of the fundamentals of the science-fiction craft. Sawyer was obsessed with outer space from a young age, and he vividly remembers watching the televised Apollo missions. He claims to have watched the 1968 classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey 25 times. He began writing science fiction in a high school club, which he co-founded, NASFA (Northview Academy Association of Science Fiction Addicts). Sawyer graduated in 1982 from the Radio and Television Arts Program at Ryerson University, where he later worked as an instructor.

Sawyer's first published book, Golden Fleece (1989), is an adaptation of short stories that had previously appeared in the science-fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This book won the Aurora Award for the best Canadian science-fiction novel in English. In the early 1990s Sawyer went on to publish his inventive Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, about a world of intelligent dinosaurs. His 1995 award winning The Terminal Experiment confirmed his place as a major international science-fiction writer.

A prolific writer, Sawyer has published more than 10 novels, plus two trilogies. Reviewers praise Sawyer for his concise prose, which has been compared to that of the science-fiction master Isaac Asimov. Like many science fiction-writers, Sawyer welcomes the opportunities his chosen genre provides for exploring ideas. The first book of his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, Hominids (2002), is set in a near-future society, in which a quantum computing experiment brings a Neanderthal scientist from a parallel Earth to ours. His 2006 Mindscan explores the possibility of transferring human consciousness into a mechanical body, and the ensuing ethical, legal, and societal ramifications.

A passionate advocate for science fiction, Sawyer teaches creative writing and appears frequently in the media to discuss his genre. He prefers the label "philosophical fiction," and in no way sees himself as a predictor of the future. His mission statement for his writing is "To combine the intimately human with the grandly cosmic."

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Quotes from Wake

“Not darkness, for that implies an understanding of light. Not silence, for that suggests a familiarity with sound. Not loneliness, for that requires knowledge of others. But still, faintly, so tenuous that if it were any less it wouldn’t exist at all: awareness. Nothing more than that. Just awareness—a vague, ethereal sense of being. Being . . . but not becoming. No marking of time, no past or future—only an endless, featureless now, and, just barely there in that boundless moment, inchoate and raw, the dawning of perception . . .” — 5 people liked it

“The sky above the island was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel—which is to say it was a bright, cheery blue.” — 4 people liked it

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