Tuesday, February 22, 2005
book seven
Distraction
by Bruce Sterling
My friend Scott sent me this book, as part of his Bookcrossing release. I picked it from the list of books he was getting rid of because I've read Sterling's writing in Wired magazine and enjoyed it. And Distraction definitely proved that he is a creative thinker... but the book itself, not so good. It's set in the United States about 50 years in the future. Some of the elements of this future society are interesting, from a "what if?" perspective. For example, the US economy has collapsed due to the Chinese posting American intellectual property free for the pirating on their web servers. And the two main politcal parties have fractured into 12 or 18 or some large number of smaller parties.
I think my main problem with the story, though, was that the main characters were too cartoonish. The protagonist is a political operative named Oscar, who has a "personal background problem", which turns out to be that he is a cloned, vat-grown human. But apart from his personal background problem and his overwhelming ambition to succeed, he's not very interesting.
On the other hand, I did read it all the way through without wanting to give up, so it couldn't be that bad!
by Bruce Sterling
My friend Scott sent me this book, as part of his Bookcrossing release. I picked it from the list of books he was getting rid of because I've read Sterling's writing in Wired magazine and enjoyed it. And Distraction definitely proved that he is a creative thinker... but the book itself, not so good. It's set in the United States about 50 years in the future. Some of the elements of this future society are interesting, from a "what if?" perspective. For example, the US economy has collapsed due to the Chinese posting American intellectual property free for the pirating on their web servers. And the two main politcal parties have fractured into 12 or 18 or some large number of smaller parties.
I think my main problem with the story, though, was that the main characters were too cartoonish. The protagonist is a political operative named Oscar, who has a "personal background problem", which turns out to be that he is a cloned, vat-grown human. But apart from his personal background problem and his overwhelming ambition to succeed, he's not very interesting.
On the other hand, I did read it all the way through without wanting to give up, so it couldn't be that bad!
Labels: book reports, science fiction
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Are you a "Once I pick up a Bbook I am goin to read all of it" kinda person? Or can you stop half way through?
# posted by 
: February 22, 2005 4:15 PM
: February 22, 2005 4:15 PM
I usually read all the way through, but I have put down books that were pissing me off or simply boring. The last one I questioned was Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell - it is a LONG book and I wasn't sure if I wanted to commit to finishing it. But I did.
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