"Foundation's Edge" by Isaac Asimov

This is the fourth book in the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, and the first after the original trilogy, published several decades later. The Foundation is in its 500th year of the Foundation Era, the Seldon plan is going great, the second foundation is destroyed, and a new empire is to rise in 500 years from the Terminus core. But is it all so great? Trevize, a councilor on Terminus thinks that the second foundation still exists and guides the Seldon plan, and exactly because the plan has been so successful, he shows it as a proof that the second foundation is influencing it. The mayor of Terminus exiles him to act as a bait for the second foundation, along with a historian searching for the mystical Earth, Janov Pelorat. At the same time on Trantor, the traditional seat of the very alive Second Foundation, Gendibal, the youngest but the most ambitious Speaker at the table shocks the council by saying that there is another force that makes sure that the Seldon plan goes as planned and maybe wants it for some own purpose. He shows a changed mind of a Hammish woman, Novi, which was beyond the skill of anyone in the Second Foundation.

Gendibal follows Trevize and Pelorat in their search for Earth, which they think is the planet Gaia, in the Seyshell sector. It turns out Seyshell sector was settled directly from Earth, by humans who hated robots, which were used in all the earlier extraterrestrial settlements. They formed a planet Gaia, by working on their telepathic abilities and becoming one conscious being, together with all the humans on the planet, all the animals, life forms and inanimate objects like the planet itself. Here Travize has to decide a stalemate among the first foundation, second foundation and Gaia, on which will depend who will rule the universe. Travize decides on Gaia, mostly because that was the only reversible choices, the other two including a destruction of Gaia. Towards the end Travize discovers that some of the humans on Gaia may actually be robots from the pre-imperial past of humanity, who, now thousands of years old, are still trying to guide humanity as helpers and teachers.

"Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson

This is the first novel by Neal Stephenson, his second being "Diamond Age" which I already reviewed some time ago. "Snow Crash" does the same for virtual environments and language development as "Diamond Age" did for nano-technology and social identity. It is a very in-depth and ingenious follow through of current trends into a possible future. The book is centered around the hacker Hiro Protagonist, half african-american, half japanese, and his sidekick, skateboard courier, the 15 year old Y.T. (yours truly). The world of tomorrow is a world where nation states fell apart and the US government sold most of its property and army, and is only holding on to few buildings with ridiculous bureaucracy. The mafia is a franchise of Pizza parlors and pizza delivery is an extreme job. The world has its virtual meeting place, The Street, a VR world that Hiro helped create, in the center of which is the hacker pub the "Black Sun".

Hiro learns that one of the most powerful people on the planet, owning the main religious franchise is using Summerian technology from 8,000 years ago to give the people knowledge of the universal language that all people spoke, before Enki, Summerian god, created the language virus that created the many different languages in order for other language viruses which could be used to control people don't spread. Add to this surveillance-technology wearing "gargoyles" and an Aleutian native american with low urge control and a nuclear warhead in his motorbike whose fuse is connected to ECG signals from the Aleutian and you have a complex mess that is a pleasure to untangle. Oh, and don't forget the enormous "Raft" anchored by a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and consisting of thousands interwoven vessels transporting people from poor Asian countries to the US.

"Minority Report" by Philip K Dick

This is more of a short story than a novel, but was still the base of the Tom Cruise movie. Luckily, the book is quite different from the movie, for the better. There is not emphasis on technology like in the movie, but instead Anderton is the top cop (Police Commissioner) in the city who came up with using deformed mutant pre-cogs to form the pre-crime unit, where crimes are seen before they happen. Anderton is extremely successful with the project, almost cleaning all crime in New York City (the movie is in Washington DC), where the action happens. He gets assigned a "helper" from the headquarters whom Anderton suspects is after his position. Soon Anderton receives a note from the pre-cogs that he is going to kill an army general that he never met.

Anderton tries to find the general, after escaping from his house, thinking his wife is in on the conspiracy. The "helper" becomes the Police Commissioner and there is a search organized to find Anderton. The general finds Anderton and persuades him that indeed there is a conspiracy against him. Anderton goes back to the police station and finds the minority reports on his future murder act, and realizes that all three reports differ. When escaping with a helicopter from the roof he realizes that the three reports are sequential, showing different potential future. He also finds out that the army general organized the whole thing trying to discredit the pre-crime and get more funding for the army.

Anderton goes to a public event for the general the next day and kills him, proving the original majority report right, and sacrificing himself to save pre-crime. He realizes the paradox, that he as a Police Commissioner had access to the future information and thus can modify his actions. This would not be valid for any other person and pre-crime could continue to function properly.

"The Game" by Neil Strauss

Very interesting book, claims to be pure documentary, directly from life, but it is more like "docutainment" as not everybody can meet Tom Cruise, Courtney Love and Britney Spears. It is the story of how story of how the lovable geek who never gets laid, Neil Strauss, transforms into the playboy and ladies' man "Style" which is his nicknam e in the "seduction community." Strauss goes undercover in the "community" to learn how to be a pick-up artist, that is to get women to like him and have sex with him (and threesomes, and what he calls MLTRs - Multiple Long Term Relationships). Apparently there is a body of knowledge, and with some effort and courage, every regular joe can learn the precisely scripted questions and answers and clear sequence of steps. The gurus of the seduction community claim that anyone can transform himself into mini Warren Beatty, or mini-whatever seduction guru is teaching the course.

Strauss tells us in the book about all the interesting and flawed characters who become pick-up gurus from "Average Frustrated Chumps" (AFC) in the lingo of the community. Mystery always wants to be the center of attention, TylerDurden seeks power, Papa wants to prove himself to his father, etc. The first 50 pages of the book are almost like a manual for the first steps of pickup, as Strauss learns them, and is probably the best written part, because it draws the regular reader in, because it seems that it is written for him, but later when all kinds of celebrities start to pop in and even live with Strauss (Courtney Love). Also the Holliwood Lifestyle (literally) with a mansion off Sunset Boulevard, while dedicating yourself full-time to bettering oneself and picking up women (or trying to) all the time, is not really possible for people who have to work for a living.

The actual community still exists online albeit less vivacious than when Strauss was there in 2003, but all the forums and the PUAs are still there. The book continues for a way too long though, and becomes overindulgent at certain times . It shows a lot of drama in the PUA community and Strauss concentrates on the colorful characters of the PUAs, and especially the mPUAs (master pick-up artist, or guru). The book is organized in the steps of the Mystery method, created by Mystery, one of the original mPUAs, and follows his theory of how groups interact or "social dynamics". And PUAs and mPUAs are not exempt from in-fighting and competing amongst each other, stealing girlfriends and badmouthing each other in the the online forums when it comes to get students as pick-up and teaching pick-up becomes a profitable business as well.

"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexander Dumas

This book was a required reading in my middle school (abridged version). I have also read it as several comic books, a couple of movies and other media, but I've never before read the UN-abridged version, all 1400 pages of it, and I didn't even know what I was missing! Most of the abridged versions concentrate on Dantes' years in prison, and omit most of the lengthy affairs and side stories from the later parts, which are the bulk of the book, the prison being about 100 pages in all. The later story is just like all the other Dumas novels, masterful description of high (haute) Parisian society, with love affairs, infidelities, illegitimate children, impostors, hidden agendas, histories, and many, many stories within stories which go on for dozens of pages at a time. A very arduous task for the modern reader who is used to short sentences, jumping right in the middle of the action, sensory and visual details and twists and turns at every junction. Victorian literature is definitely none of that, but for the patient and distinguishing connoisseur, the pleasure await!

I read this version as an audio book (as most books I read nowadays), from Books on Tape, and the quality of the narration is amazing! The voice changes and is consistent across different characters; narrators part is done perfectly, and the translation is amazing, using exotic 19 century English words and manner of speaking, which only adds to the authenticity. Dumas, as always, develops the story through dialogs, of which is an undisputed master. Some not-so-covered references to homosexuality and drug use are splendidly presented in the unabridged version, while moralistic editors have always removed them from the abridged versions, which are very confusing to say the least, because the book abounds with a humongous amount of characters, with multitude of long (french) names, which are very hard to keep track of even in the unabridged version, and totally impossible to sort out in the abridged ones.

One could argue that the main character, Edmond Dantes, is not developed fully, looks mostly as a caricature, first of a perfect young man, and later of a bitter old avenger, with not enough depth, psychological detail and motivation. That might be true, but many of the 'second tier' characters are developed marvelously and entice with their depth and uniqueness. As the mores of the time dictated, most of the book is about nobility, counts and barons and generals and marquises, however Dumas is still widely read today and recognized as a master because he tried to infiltrate the everyday Paris life and everyday people in his books. Dantes is a regular sailor before he becomes the Count. Mercedes is a weaver. Donglar is ship accountant. Catarouse is a tailor. There are bandits, shepherds, brigands, and wonderful little snippets of everyday Paris life in the 1840s.

Overall, an amazing reading experience for the patient and distinguishing readers!

"Starship Troopers" by R.A. Heinlein

This is not a science fiction novel! Although Heinlein is one of the 'Great Three' SF writers, and has written many other excellent SF books (like 'Moon is a harsh mistress'), 'Starship Troopers' is more of a military, moral and ethical discourse, and that's what makes it amazing. You will find very little of the space ships, interstellar federations, amazing and imaginative technologies, but a lot of discussion on how democracy should be overhauled, who should have the rite to vote and why, how the judicial system should be working and how criminals should be punished, and mostly about the aim and meaning of the army, and being in the army, and becoming a man, a good man, through the training, suffering and service in the army. As you might have noticed so far, the book is completely different from the movie, which just took a few scrapes from the book and developed them into something completely different.

The book starts with Juan Rico's graduation from high school. His two friends Carmen (an occasional girlfriend) and Karl (a math genius) enlist in the military, and Rico does the same, despite his fathers cutting all communications with him because of this. Unlike the movie, Karl is never heard of again, until the end of the book when we learned he died in bombing of his base on Pluto, and Carmen is seen only once again for a short time, with her head shaved. There are no other female characters in the book.

Rico is sent to the north of the Midwest (Earth is united under the Terran Federation), where the boot camp is situated, below the Canadian Rockies. He goes through a grueling training, taxing both his body and his beliefs to the maximum, but eventually rebuilding him into a better person. He is in the 'Mobile Infantry' (probably a pun on the 'Mechanized Infantry' today) which consist of soldiers wearing Mech-suits, powered, armed, extremely mobile, which puts humans on the same fighting level with the 'Bugs' and the 'Skinnies', the other two races in the known universe humanity is at war with. Most of the book happens in the boot camp and describes, in painstaking detail, the life of the privates (everyone is a volunteer, as two years of military service grants 'citizenship', which in this universe is the right to vote and be voted for), their physical suffering and moral decisions, as well as the moral and law codes of the military and the reasons for them.

Here Heinlein discusses how our modern world can be improved, from social organization point of view. He says that democracy is flawed. Everybody should not have the right to vote, only volunteers who have been to the military and have been trained and impressed with putting the group before the individual should vote. He is proponent of physical punishment for crimes as deterrent; doesn't believe in 'reforming' criminals, but in deterring them from crime with violent punishment from the earliest age. He doesn't believe in 'juveniles' benefiting from being treated more softly than adults, and proposes their parents be physically punished (whipped) together with the delinquent children.

Rico eventually gets onto space, being shot onto planets in tight, one-man capsules, vulnerable to enemy fire. On the ground the power suit ('Marauder' for the regular MI soldier) gives enormous freedom and power of movement, coupled with amazing fire power and seamless integration with the natural musculature of the soldier. He eventually meets his father in one of the planet bases, who joined the army after his wife was killed by an asteroid directed to earth by the 'Bugs'. Here Heinlein goes into father-son relationships, military tradition and how it is related to the filial connections.

Rico excels in his tasks and eventually 'goes career', meaning signs a professional contract for 20 years (As opposed to 2 for privates), and goes through officer school which process is also described in detail. Eventually, towards the end of the book, he takes part in the raid of 'Planet P' where the 'Bugs' have a base, and helps capture a 'Brain Bug', the thinking caste of the 'Bugs' and bring the war closer to the end. At the end of the book he has been promoted to Captain. He is the 'old man' now, and his platoon is called 'Rico's Roughnecks', the same platoon he served in as a newly trained private.

The book is amazingly clear and strong presentation of the military view of the world, democracy, morals, ethics, justice, duty and honor. This is the only fiction book that is a required reading at West Point, and several US generals have stated (they have all read the book), that power suits like the 'Marauder' are the future of the US army.

"Second Foundation" by Isaac Asimov

This is the third and last book in the original Foundation Trilogy, published in the 1950s. The book is divided into two parts, just like the previous one, the first detailing the search for the Second Foundation by 'The Mule' who became undisputed ruller of the Galaxy (Milky Way) in the previous book, and the second, after the downfall of the Mule, gives an account 50 years in the future about the search for the Second Foundation by a group of scientists from Terminus, the First Foundation. The book becomes slower and less exciting in the second part, as most of the plots and twists have happened already, and this was to serve as a conclusion of the Foundation saga (some 400 years into the 1000 years of barbarism predicted by Hari Seldon, before the second Galactic Empire rises).

The first part of the book details the search for the Second Foundation by Capt.Pritchard, now converted by the Mule into an unquestionably loyal soldier, and another rising star of the political scene at Kalgan, the seat of the 'First Citizen' of the Galaxy, the Mule. The Mule follows both of these people as he trusts no one. Pritchard's companion discovers what he thinks is the planet where the Second Foundation is, while they are doing research at the Imperial Library on Trantor, and they head off for 'the other end of the galaxy' as Hari Seldon described the place where the Second Foundation is to be found. Once there the Mule catches up with them, having them followed the entire time, and destroys the planet they were intending to explore and uncovers Pritchard's companion as a Second Foundationer.

However, the second foundation is on their tracks as well, and the 'First Speaker', the leader of the Second Foundation, converts the Mule to abandon his search and live the remaining few years of his life in peace. In the second part, we are now 50 years in the future, and the grand daughter of Beida who stopped the mule in the 'Foundation and Empire', Arcadia, is now 14 and her father is developing ways to discover the Second Foundation, one being sending one of his collaborators to Kalgan to look through the Mule's files in his palace. Arcadia catches a ride on the ship and gets introduced to the ruler of Kalgan, who also carries the title 'First Citizen' though he doesn't rule the galaxy, but a handful of planets around Kalgan and has grand plans of conquering the Foundation and the galaxy with his fleet. However his mistress is placed there by the Second Foundation and she gets Arcadia out of Kalgan on onto Terminus from where she sends a message to her father who figures out that the Second Foundation is on Terminus, and finds a traitor among his group who then confesses and about 50 second foundationers are rounded up.

All of this is an elaborate plan of the second foundation who have planned this since Arcadia was born 14 years ago and converted her to give those exact clues to her father, and sacrifice 50 people in order to hide the real location and purpose of the second foundation, to form the ruling class of the Second Empire which Hari Seldon expected to be the next step of the human evolution where humans develop a form of hive mind, being emphatically connected to everyone else. All in all, a good reading, but slower and not as exciting as the previous couple of books. Asimov wrote two more sequels to the trilogy, but then ran out of ideas for the future of the Foundation, so instead wrote several prequels to the trilogy, where Hari Seldon is the main character, partly autobiographically modeled on Asimov himself.

"Foundation and Empire" by Isaac Asimov

This is the second book in the original Foundation trilogy. It is divided in two parts, the first titled 'Foundation and Empire' deals with the last remnants of the still powerful Galactic Empire, and its attempt to defeat the Foundation which ultimately fails and spells the final doom for the empire, which is going to be sacked (it's capital city-planter Trantor), and reduced to a mock-empire comprising of a dozen agricultural worlds ruled from the new imperial seat Neo-Trantor.

The second part is called 'The Mule' and deals with the rise of a powerful mutant whose mutant powers are unknown until the very end, but who conquers most of the know galaxy using them. The second part is weaker than the first, as you can see who is the mule (which should have been the last-page twist) in the first third of the story (there just way too many clues and pointers). This book as a whole in itself reads as somewhat weaker that the first one, maybe because the first one was actually five independent short stories (minus the first one, which was written especially for it), and each one of them had a twist at the end, more or less exciting and surprising (Asimov seems to like twists).

The first part "Foundation and Empire" starts describing the Galactic Empire in greater detail, although in its last days, still strong and glorious, with many of the functions intact, especially on the Core Worlds and Trantor. Descriptions of Trantor and the Galactic Fleet with their humongous, gigantic spaceships, huge armies, generals and the ensuing space battles are a pleasure to read. The end is a little bit of a letdown, since nothing really was 'done', history just adjusted itself by itself, because of the socio-economic-military conditions, and the strong general was defeated by his own strong emperor, the last one in line.

The second part was interesting conjecture, and an exercise in creative thinking on the part of Asimov, that a single individual with incredible powers could sway the course of history, or at least for a certain period, and derail the mathematical precision of succession prediction by even such advanced science as psychohistory. Hiding who the mule was until the very end was not really an effective plot device because there are too few characters, and the mule must be one of the main ones. Still entertaining though.

"I don't want to talk about it" by Terrence Real

I read this book on a recommendation, and I found it very valuable, but not in the self-help paradigm which the title would suggest. The author is a Harvard-trained psychotherapist specializing in family therapy, and both his vast knowledge, clinical experience and a very bitter personal experience growing up as a boy and having to learn first-hand that 'boys don't cry' and 'a real man shows no pain' despite the circumstances. The main value of this book is in the fact that for the first time clearly and succinctly states that men are just as depressed and just as vulnerable and just as oppressed by the society growing up, as women are. Enough of the bullshit about 'the stronger sex', about men being somehow more able to control their feelings and less prone to being emotional, depressed or irrational. That is all baloney! Real cites studies that show during the first two years of development of babies, that is before they start understanding they are of one sex or another, male babies are actually more emotional, more sensitive and more vulnerable than female babies. It is only through the oppression of the societal stereotypes, often in the hands of well-meaning, but hopelessly ignorant, parents and relatives that the societal stereotypes for men and women are forced upon the children. The children are literally chiseled, with all the blood, gore and pain to accompany it, to fit into the societal stereotypes, and being forced to castrate entire segments of their personalities and sensitivities and their full self-expression, just because 'the society' has its own ideas of how exactly men should look like and act like.

This book is a great addition to the fledgling Men's movement, and goes a long way to show grizzled feminists that the man's side of the story is no fairy tale, and is just as full of pain, denial and oppression, albeit in a different manner, than the woman's side. Real goes on to show how socially 'adapted' men, who look great from a distance, and seem to have everything under control and going great for them, are actually internal wrecks, who medicate themselves with intoxicants, relationships, workaholism and abuse. The book shows how covert depression in men is much more dangerous than overt depression in men and women, as covertly depressed men numbed their senses to such an extent that they are not even aware that they are depressed, and would never admit to it in a million years.

The only critique of the book would be that, although it provides plenty of case studies and personal experiences of the author, it leaves little material to men/readers to work with. I guess it was never imagined to be a self-help book in the strictest sense of the word, but more of a 'realization' book, intended to make the male reader realize his problems, and then seek professional help. Recommended to all men, and the women who love them, out there.

"Foundation" by Isaac Asimov

So, I finally got around to reading this seminal work (actually a trilogy) in science fiction, and literature in general. The vision of Asimov is breath-taking! Thousands of years, hundreds of parsecs, millions of light years, galactic empire (all human), psychohystory... what else could one ask for? The book has very interesting plot twists and surprises, but the vision itself is what is astounding. It consists of five shorts stories, all of which excepts the first have been published before. With the first story 'Psychohistorians' Asimov establishes the universe and the underlying theme of the entire series, and then adapts his previously published stories (already in a similar universe) to fit the Foundation timeline.

The idea of Psychohistory, that the future of large masses of population could be predicted with mathematical precision, is definitely original and thought-provoking. Hari Seldon, the founder of psychohistory figures as a living person only in part of the first story, his other appearances being in the form of hologram with messages left for the Foundation people after they've gone through one of the many 'Seldon Crises' he predicted. Using his own psychohistorical mathematchial methods, Seldon predicted with 98% probability that the Galactic Empire, in existence for 12,000 years, will come to an end in the next 500 years. With the same methods, Seldon discovered that 30,000 years of barbarism will ensue before another empire arises. To shorten this period down to 'only' 1,000 years of barbarism, Seldon organizes 'The Foundation', an organization that will catalog all available knowledge and publish it in the form of Encyclopedia Galactica, thus shortening the period of barbarism.

Unbeknown to all, Seldon did not care much about the encyclopedia, but wanted the 'Encyclopedists', the scientists and learned men that are going to write the encyclopedia, and their planet 'Terminus', to become the nucleus of the new galactic empire and thus shorten the interregnum of barbarism. This was to be presented to all on the 50th anniversary of the Foundation, when the first edition was supposed to be published, and also the time of the first 'Seldon Crisis' where the scientists and their families and support staff populating Terminus are faced with their first major independent decision and all-threatening situation.

The other stories in the book describe several more 'Seldon Crisis' or turning points where the very existence of the Foundation and the future of human civilization with that is in danger and also parallels major developments in the past of the human civilization, especially the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, which was inspiration for Asimov in writing this book. The first crisis emphasizes the importance of managing your enemies instead of trying to defeat them directly. The second crisis shows that it is always much easier to control people and entities through religion and spiritual means, than through direct force and confrontation. The third crisis shows that at a certain level of civilization development religious control becomes undesirable as most civilizations start to see through it and its real purposes. At this time control through trade, supply and demand, and simply - money, is to be introduced.

Different characters realize the different Seldon Crisis and they are always universally opposed by the old regime and the old timers who want to keep the status quo, however the changes cannot be stopped and are always implemented according to Seldon's original plan and psychohistorical predictions, ultimately for the greater good of a species, even if to the detriments of certain (powerful) individuals. Amazing book, and very captivating, even without ANY trace of sex, love or amorous interest and with great emphasis on non-violent resolution of conflicts (Seldon's favorite quote is "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent").

"Conan the Invincible" by Robert Jordan

I wanted to read the original Conan books, the source of all the comics, graphic novels, games and movies I have thoroughly enjoyed as a teen and adult. Somehow I stumbled on the Conan books by Robert Jordan and decided to start my reading with them, wrongly assuming that he is the original Conan author. Only later I will learn that Robert E. Howard was the inventor of Conan, back in the 1930s, and he only wrote a set of short stories, never completing a real novel, before he killed himself. Then the Conan intellectual property was lent to many authors, who all tried to write Conan stories in Howard's style, never really succeeding completely. Jordan is probably the closest to Howard's style and vision of Conan the Cimmerian. Jordan wrote his Conan books in the early to mid '80s, before he started his magnum opus, The Wheel of Time series, which brought him worldwide fame.

Conan the Invincible is Jordan's first Conan book, also having as a side-main character the beautiful, violent, and scantily-clad (often naked) Karrella, the Red Hawk, brigand and leader of a gang of thieves, who appears in many other Jordan's stories. The book is very easy reading, entertaining, Conan-like, with the usual dose of evil wizards, demon-gods, snake-men, drinking, sex, debauchery, treasures and adventures. It is about the evil wizard Amanar, who learned a lot from the Wizard Circle, but chose to dabble in dark magic that even the other wizards (all wizards/sorcerers are evil in Conan Universe) were afraid to touch. Somehow his soul trapped in a jewel (for protection) was given to a king and he sends his snake-men, the Sitha, to retrieve it. Unbeknown to him, the Wizard Circle is angry that Amanar ran away with most of their knowledge, and have sent one of their own wizards to find Amanar's soul and destroy it, and to this effect this wizard hires Conan, the best known thief, far and wide, to do the actual work.

Things don't go as planned, and Conan goes on a trek around the desert, meeting Karella on the way and her gang, and ends up in Amanar's magical fortress in the middle of the desert where Amanar is toying with them for a while, but makes a big mistake underestimating Conan, which leads to his doom. Conan is not yet 19 in this book, so it takes place at a much younger age than Howard's stories, or the novels of other Conan authors where Conan is usually in his 30s, 40s, even 50s. An entertaining, though not overly engrossing reading (don't expect Harry Potter or DaVinci's Code experience), but great to see a good perspective on Conan lore from yet another talented author.

"Neuromancer" by William Gibson

This is my second reading of this novel, this time as an audio book, the first being a .txt file printout when I was an undergrad. This is the seminal novel starting the 'cyberpunk' genre (which was already taking form at the time Gibson published it) and creating an entire subsection in literature. Let's be honest though, the book is hard to read. If you go on amazon, you will find dozens, if not hundreds, of negative comments complaining about jargon, density, unclear plot, unlovable characters, etc. etc. Newsflash: that's EXACTLY what the book was supposed to be. Some people even complain that the book is full of cliches. If they used their brains for anything else but mindless entertainment they would realize that this was the first book in the Cyberpunk genre (in 1984) and all of the things that are considered cliches today because they were repeated so many times over the past few decades were INVENTED by Gibson in this book. Saying this book is full of cliches is like saying 'The Lord of the Rings' is full of cliches.

This book invented terms and concepts we take for granted today, like cyberspace, jack-in, visual representation of computer networks and data, corporations ruling a technically advanced but morally and socially deteriorated world, also cloning, cryogenics, orbital resorts, black leather and chrome wardrobe were brought into the mainstream of science fiction after 'Neuromancer' became famous. The only problem is that we still today do not have enough special effects technology to make a movie out of it, though one attempt is scheduled for 2011, but may be shelved like many before it.

It is a very dense book. It is small, about 250 pages, while describing a whole new world, thus, by necessity, it is very dense. It is full of jargon which is not explained anywhere because Gibson invented it. The reader needs to be very careful, note all the references and new words and keep them in his mind at all time, as there are contextual clues later on where they become more clear. This is one of the beauties of this book, not for the feeble of mind and intelligence or imagination. There are no positive characters in the book. Everyone is an anti-hero, even the artificial intelligence Wintermute, which kills mercilessly and indiscriminately, including an 8 year-old boy in order to achieve its goal. There is very little to no moral fiber left in the world of the 'Neuromancer'; prostitution is almost a regular job (for both men and women), everyone is on some kind of narcotics, the world is polluted and dangerous and the rich are richer and more evil than ever.

The story follows the resurrection of a hacker, or 'cowboy', Case, who is saved from his last leg of life in Chiba City, coastal Tokyo suburb, and crime-capital of Gibson's Japan, by a brainwashed ex-special corps colonel Armitage, helped by a street-samurai, surgically-enhanced assassin Molly, with retractable razor-blades under her nails. Add to this a psychopathic performance artist who can materialize his thoughts holographically, a Rastafarian orbital space station, where the smell of ganja and the rhythm of Dub are the only constants, an illegal Artificial Intelligence with split personality disorder, cloned ninja assassins, and finally an alien artificial intelligence from the Alpha Centauri system which is only hinted at, and you get a milestone in science fiction and literature, a work which sole purpose is not entertainment, but expansion of the limits of the mind, something that all entertainment was supposed to do before the invention of reality television.

I am looking to read the second and third novel of Gibson's "The Sprawl Trilogy", the Sprawl being an unified metro area from Boston to Atlanta, which although do not mention Case again, and have a minor role for Molly, still happen in the wonderful, intricate and disturbing universe Gibson has created. A final note: although the book is a gem of literature, that cannot be said for the science part. Since the beginning of science fiction there have been two kinds of sci-fi writers: scientists and all the others. Scientists sci-fi writers, like Asimov and Clarke, take meticulous care to base their fiction on actual scientific theories, research, probabilities and possible directions. Their novels are based on hard science, their speculations could actually be true and possible one day, like the geocentric orbit for satellites which was first proposed ('invented') by Clarke. The other kind of sci-fi writers, to which Gibson belongs, do not care much about the scientific justification behind their work or speculations, but only use scientific concepts and facts as a jumping board into developing fantastic stories, characters and plots, which have little to no base in present or future reality or scientific research. Although many concepts and words from Gibson's novels became commonplace today (cyberspace, jack-in, etc.), most of his proposed concepts are unfeasible and unworkable, beginning from self-conscious Artificial Intelligence or machine in general, which is a favorite plot of non-scientist sci-fi authors, but has no basis in any scientific fact or theory. To put it simply, Artificial Intelligence is a branch of computer science concerned with studying function derivatives, and the probability of any kind of program, machine or construct achieving self-consciousness through this technology is equal to a big, round ZERO.

"Snow" by Orhan Pamuk

It took me a long time to finish this book. One because I was studying for GMAT while I was reading it, and the GMAT practices took priority, but also because the book is quite slow itself, probably on purpose, like the slow falling of the snow in a quiet mountain meadow. The title of the book in Turkish is 'Kar', the city in which most of it happens is Kars, and the main protagonist nickname is Ka. Take note of that if you are interested in symbolism, as there is plenty of it throughout the book, not the least being mapping emotions and poems to the axis of a snowflake.

Pamuk has been accused of being overly intellectual, intentionally obscure, too philosophical, combining too many things into one novel, not paying attention to character or plot development; and while many of these things might prove themselves true in certain specific cases, "Snow" is a marvelously written book and righteously brought the author the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006. The book is about a poet returning from political exile in Germany, becoming a journalist for an Istanbul newspaper which sends him in the most remote northeast corner of turkey, the city of Kars, on the borders with Georgia, Armenia and Iran, it's glory days long gone and buried in the last century when it was one of the southernmost points of the Soviet (and before that the Russian) Empire.

The city boasts many architectural remains of a better past, but they, alike the current denizens, are out of maintenance, made into something else, hastily put together in a hope for semblance of something better, but failing miserably. Snow starts falling the day Ka arrives in Kars, and the entire books happens in the 3 days of a thick snowstorm when all the roads to Kars are blocked and the outside world is locked out. Pamuk has deep love of Turkey and the Turks, regardless of their origin, beliefs, status or social standing. We see marching through the book's pages people from the military with strict secularist views, Islamic fundamentalist which do not shy from murder in order to further their goals and the Glory of God, former Communists and present Socialists who are not really sure what political beliefs they hold currently, small-time merchants, business owners, Kurdish separatists, secret police spies, religious high school students and plenty of unemployed, bored, future-less, hopeless people who form the amorphous bulk of the citizenry of Kars.

Ka also has a romantic interest in Kars, his old love Ipek, who is more beautiful than ever. Her former socialist father, her Islamic fundamentalist sister, the enigmatic and charismatic Islamic terrorist Blue, his little cohort of followers and admiring women, the mayoral candidate of the Islamic party, the failed Ataturk actor and his fat wife, who turn to political and military coup to end his not-so-glorious acting career, make the cast of the novel motley and drawn from every corner of Turkish life. The novel is written from the point of the author, Pamuk, who finds the diaries of Ka and re-traces his story, both going to Kars and to Frankfurt, putting the pieces together as he discovers them, leading up to the murder of Ka in Frankfurt, and unsuccessfully trying to find Ka's notebook with the 19 poems he wrote while in Kars, the first writing he has done in many years, and his last before his death.

The book might not be the easiest read, and definitely not an easy-reading novel with Turkish setting, but for those willing to spend the time, it rewards the reader with deep insight into the complicated situation of being a Turk in Turkey, on the crossroads between east and west, the only secular Muslim country but with a strong religious Islamic movement, the remnants of an empire, still containing many peoples and elements from all the corners once that empire stretched to, trying to look to the west, but not willing or unable to leave behind its eastern past, unsure as of where it stands, but still chugging along the best it can. 'Snow' will be a rewarding adventure for any open-minded reader willing to give it a chance.