I picked this up because the Goodreads sci-fi group is reading it this month and I've been bogged down in 1Q84 for two months and wanted something a b...moreI picked this up because the Goodreads sci-fi group is reading it this month and I've been bogged down in 1Q84 for two months and wanted something a bit lighter. This fit the bill well. It's solid 1970s sci-fi and I'm sure I would have been blown away by it if I'd read it in the 1980s or something. Reading it today, after having read a bunch of books that probably took all of this book's tricks, well... I just think it would have seemed a lot more groundbreaking 30 years ago. Still, it's full of surprises and novel ideas about both technology (those tachyon things are amazing -- like nuclear power to the Nth degree) and society. I could probably discuss the gender politics alone of this book for hours, going as it does from a heterosexual norm to a homosexual norm to heterosexuality being a pathology to sexual preference being engineered and changeable at the whim of the individual. Crazy. Oh, and did I mention the part where female soldiers have a duty imposed by law to be "compliant" and have sex with any male soldier whenever he wants? Yeah. Right. But that was just a phase. The novel covers many centuries so it's able to fly through lots of social change in a very short number of pages. It kind of makes the head spin....
I just also read the introductions to the book which help give it more historical context. It's obvious when you read this why it's considered such a classic, but context always helps. It's especially interesting to think about the parallels between the enemy described here as the "enemy" of today (as Shrub called it, "terrah"). There are similarities to the enemy in "1984," too -- faceless and poorly defined but horrible and terrifying. See, e.g., the description on page 139, which it would be difficult for me to quote here due to the limits of kindle books. As Haldeman notes (and this is paraphrase), the most important thing about the war for people on earth was that if the war ended, the economy would collapse. Obviously, the military industrial complex was a huge force in the American economy in the 1970s an it's role only grew bigger in the 80s. How big is it now? Still very significant, obviously. Have we begun a new forever war? I'm sure those National Guard soldiers who have been deployed again and again over the last ten years feel very much that we are. So sad, especially considering that they don't have the sweet conciliation of being able to remain young despite the years of conflict.
I enjoyed this book a lot and read it very quickly because Steve Jobs was such a fascinating person who lived an incredible life, plus I've been an Ap...moreI enjoyed this book a lot and read it very quickly because Steve Jobs was such a fascinating person who lived an incredible life, plus I've been an Apple fanboy since I first played with an Apple IIe in fourth grade, so... I'm sad that Steve Jobs is gone. It's like there's a light that has gone out, an intense laser-beam of hope that tomorrow, or next year, something insanely great would come along for us all to marvel at and play with and enjoy. (All of "us" who have enough disposable income to afford all of Apple's toys, that is.)
Yet, even as I enjoyed this book, I'm struck by the feeling that even after 571 pages, I don't feel like I really know who Steve Jobs was. Yes, I know more about him and his life than I did before I started the book, yet he still remains something of an enigma. Was he a tortured tyrant, a brutally honest genius, or just really lucky? It's kind of hard to say.
Ok, that's not entirely true. He definitely had more going on than just good luck. He was clearly very smart, and had an ingenius knack for finding and seizing upon those things that would appeal to the masses. So the book fills in a lot about his taste and his often cruel honesty in expressing it. He was complicated, and hard to understand, and hard to know, and I guess the book captures that because. At least that is what the book conveys. And frankly, the book makes Jobs kind of hard to like, even though I've always liked him, or the idea of him.
I guess I'm conflicted because Jobs comes off in this book as a bit of a Howard Roark figure. A selfish asshole. Something of a self-made man. An uncompromising hero who won't ever settle for second best and would pretty much go to any lengths to get what he wanted. So all of that seems heroically admirable in a sort of rugged individual ideal way, even as I now the reality of it sucks for everyone other than Steve Jobs. The people who worked with him all had to suffer a lot of abuse, as did his family. He showed almost no concern in his life for the plight of anyone other than himself. Yes, he seemed to want to improve the world by introducing great technology into the world, and he claimed that the profits from that technology were only incidental to his purpose and only really valuable insofar as they allowed him to make more and better cool things for the world. So he's like a sort of selfish tech philanthropist asshole who put a computer in my pocket that I love.
Steve Jobs: The man I hate myself for loving (or something like that).
Oh, and I also read this on my iPhone because it seemed the most appropriate thing to do. The Kindle app for iPhone is a wonderful thing.
This is a Kindle Single so it's a quick read and highly recommended for anyone with any interest in social justice, civil rights, racism in America, o...moreThis is a Kindle Single so it's a quick read and highly recommended for anyone with any interest in social justice, civil rights, racism in America, or just U.S. history. It contains a short and fascinating account of the prison riot at Attica Prison in upstate NY in 1971, as well as some interesting comments on how that uprising fit into the cultural and historical context of the time. Because this Single is so short, the attempts to connect the Attica uprising with the problems of today and the current fact of massive incarceration in the U.S. are definitely the weak points of the piece. While I tend to agree with most of Jones' observations and conclusions, the short space doesn't allow him to support his claims with detailed data, leaving this more of a conversation-starting polemic than a solid argument for change. That said, it's short and fascinating and well worth the low price of admission. (less)
A pulpy, implausible, page-turner. Complete mind candy of the nonstop action variety. Seven identical twins with the same fingerprints? A cell phone t...moreA pulpy, implausible, page-turner. Complete mind candy of the nonstop action variety. Seven identical twins with the same fingerprints? A cell phone that can launch nuclear weapons against anyone in the world? All of the action happens in about 24 hours? The lead character gets her shoulder dislocated first thing then spends the rest of the day fighting with people and falling out of 100-story buildings? Not likely, of course. Impossible, really. But if you just want to give your brain a little thriller vacation, this is fine for that purpose. (less)
I received this novella free from the publisher as a Goodreads promotion and had enough time yesterday to read the whole thing. It's almost not accura...moreI received this novella free from the publisher as a Goodreads promotion and had enough time yesterday to read the whole thing. It's almost not accurate to call this a novella because it pretty well fit's Edgar Allen Poe's definition of a short story — a work that you can read all in one sitting. It's a fast, fascinating, and entertaining read, especially if you like post-apocalyptic settings and science fiction. The story is set sometime in the future after environmental pollution has killed off most of humanity. The exact state of things is left unclear. At one point we're told that it was the internal combustion engine that was solely responsible for the environmental collapse, and while we're told in the second sentence that mother earth had killed off the human race, there still seem to be a whole lot of humans running around. Some of those humans are genetic mutants with various special powers (think: X-men) and there seems to be something of a war between them and regular humans. Sound familiar? Yeah. But this weakness of seeming a little derivative is also the story's strength. McCracken has created a fascinating future world in a very short space and it's different enough from other similar stories that you only want to know more about this place and maybe spend a little more time here. Instead, the story rushes along, sometimes a little obviously and ham-fistedly, to a quick conclusion. That conclusion is ultimately not very satisfying because, while the story has done a great job creating multiple conflicts and characters that you will care about as a reader, it doesn't do a very good job of resolving them. In the end, I'm left wondering what the heck happened, and why. Although the main "villian" appears to explain his motives at the end, that explanation is muddled and vague, not to mention we've already learned to be so distrustful of this character's double-dealing that we can't believe a thing he says. So what the hell is this story about? What is it trying to do or say about the future or its characters or the environment or capitalism and our corporate oligarchy? (Because it does seem to want to say something about these things, really.)
Bottom line: This is a fine story. I'm glad I read it. It contains some neat ideas and sketches an interesting fictional world. That said, it would be much better if it were expanded a bit, not so rushed, and if it actually took some sort of clear position on the conflicts it raises. Read it for a quick little PA/sci-fi lark, but don't expect too much. (less)
What's not to like about the idea of a journalist with a good job leaving home with nothing but the clothes on his back to hitchhike across the countr...moreWhat's not to like about the idea of a journalist with a good job leaving home with nothing but the clothes on his back to hitchhike across the country and never touch money? It's a great premise and McIntyre had a good adventure with it. The book is full of stories about the people McIntyre met on the trip and most of them are pretty positive, uplifting, and inspirational. It's great to read this book and see that kindness still abounds in the U.S. It's also nice (and not that surprising) to see that most of the people who seemed the most kind to McIntyre were those who had very little to give.McIntyre's musings about his own search for meaning in life don't really seem to go very far or reach any sort of conclusion, but that's ok. He also acknowledges that he was shown a lot of kindness because he's a clean-cut white guy who was able to shave and shower regularly on his trip s he had a "safe" look that made people more willing to take a risk on picking him up. So the book was satisfying in that it's an uplifting adventure story that may even help restore your faith in humanity a bit. That's pretty great. There's a lot about religion and poverty and race that's mixed in throughout with the different people and stories McIntyre encounters and all of that is actually pretty sad and brings down the overall uplift potential of the book. I guess that just means it's a more accurate picture of American society, full of both great people and really mean and/or really ignorant and misguided ones. (less)
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