Articles

Affichage des articles du décembre, 2014

Mindclones- David T. Wolf

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There aren't too many science fiction books that are quite so positive about near future sciences that may well allow the 'cloning' of the human mind. I got the strong impression that Wolf is contemplating/dreaming a life for himself as an artificial intelligence when his body gives up the ghost, the 'soul'. We see the dream of a 'heaven', a life beyond the disposal of our corpses, a continued existence in the digital world. We see Wolf's hopes for adding the other senses, than just easily achievable hearing and sight; namely touch, sensation, sentient feeling to his future non-biological self. He guards against the evil inside us all by allowing the earliest freed mind, his Adam, to set strong moral parameters to all future behaviour patterns. Wolf seems to be considering his own moral architecture as the ideal, as seen in the many personal 'political' imperatives he works into the plot. The book comes through to me as being deeply unreligi...

Kings of delusion- E.J. Findorff

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This is an exciting fiction thriller, set in real life, real time events. The book has an important sub-text that explores the collapse of social norms in a population under extremes of stress. The backdrop to the plot is the catastrophic environmental disaster inflicted on the City of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. This is a classic modern thriller read, with the expected adrenaline surges sure to hit most readers at the end of every chapter. There are also many of the twists common to the 'Whodunit' genre, in this story that centres on paedophilia, depravity, the treatment of the old, the struggles of the poor and corruption in high and low places. Extra poignancy is given to the plot by the author's personal life experiences in and around the streets of that most exotic of cities. The great many real characters on which Findorff has based his fictional ones have helped him weave such an exciting and disturbing story. This work is less scary in a bloodthi...

Prunella Smith: Worlds Within Worlds- Tahlia Newland

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Wow- Four main themes, plus what could be a heap of short stories in one of the most innovative and original works I have read in a long time. I couldn't possible pin point this work to a genre, as the metaphysical, the fantasy, the thriller, the speculative, and the literary combine and melt into each other. This is written on four levels of consciousness- the self disguised, the self as another, the self as omnipresent, and the self in a parallel existence. If that sounds heavy- it isn't. Really well written books are open to most readers, not just to genre, academic and literary world toffs. This is a brilliant general readers book. I have almost never read a novel in one sitting, I am a very slow and precise line reader, but I came very close to doing so this time. Newland's vision, writing in the first person as the writer Prunella Smith, worked for me on so many different levels. I forget most books within days, sometimes less. I won't forget this one. S...