MARKET
FORCES
This one has turned into my
favorite Morgan book. It’s loaded with embedded testosterone, made me an animal
while I was reading it. Takes place in London now or soon. As far as I
understand this cynexcursion of Morgan’s into the next few years, Globalization
has led to Conflict Investment, where the savvy investor can buy a share in the
outcome of various regional and world conflicts. Back the Chechens in their
ongoing strife with Russia; choose THIS drug cartel in Colombia over THAT one:
the stakes are your invested capital. Your broker not only takes your money, he
uses the full resources of his Firm to influence the outcome of the conflict:
he may even switch sides, selling out his former side, if the move will lead to
greater good (er, Profit!) The next generation of stock brokers are the only
ones rich enough to afford gas (petrol, sorry!) and duel it out on the M-whatevers
(arteries leading into London) – in cool cars, driving each other off the road
in sanctioned challenges on their way ‘to the office.’
by
Timothy Powers:
1.The
Stress of Her Regard
The great English Romantic Poets,
Byron,Shelley and Keats, are revealed to have had something in common besides
their fantastic poetry....they share a muse that is in fact a stone Vampire
thousands of years old,related to the Hapsburg dynasty, and she is their jealous lover.
2.
The Anubis Gates
A credible time travel tale,
linking gypsy magic, ancient Egypt, and the squalid beggar gangs of 19th
century London. So visual, it's impossible to disbelieve. So fantastic,
it's equally impossible to accept!
3.
Last Call
A scary saga of LUCK...its
Posessor...and the good souls that must battle him against stiff odds.
Set(naturally) in and around Las Vegas from the twenties to the seventies.
by Neal Stephenson:
1.
Snow Crash
Stephenson's work is hard to
describe, because it embraces so many subjects! This one has a
Japanese/American Samurai Warrior/ Computer Hacker for a hero. Acually his name
is Hiro: Hiro Protagonist ! There's a (computer) virus being spread by
this 7 foot deviant Eskimo genius wielding an incredibly sharp blade made of
all natural ingredients. This virus is able to cross the information/biological
barrier, to "wipe clean" a person's mental slate, leaving their
mind's eye as empty and chaotic as the "snow" you can see on TV,
after the station signs off. Very dangerous.
2.
The Diamond Age
Set in the Pacific Rim of the near
future. England has regained its Empire, largely due to advances it has
pioneered in the science of NanoTechnology: tiny bacteria-sized machines that
can be "taught" to build almost anything, cheaply and
micro-miniaturized. (including more machines that can be taught to build...)
Starvation has been eliminated (machines can make food out of garbage) but poverty
has not gone away. In a poor section of Hong Kong, a young girl accidentally
finds a new kind of child's book. Originally designed for the richest of
children, it's a kind of interactive laptop PowerBook, which monitors its
'child', and grows and adapts to the child's development. Since it's linked to
the Internet, its info resources are limitless. Since itsprogrammed goal is the
protection and improvement of its child, amazing evolutionary changes begin to
transformthis street-smart orphan. The scope of the book keeps getting bigger
and bigger....
3.
Zodiac
Stephenson wrote this one before
Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, but it has cool stuff to it also. It's about an
ecological warrior, a young chemist, who takes on the big chemical companies
that are polluting the Boston (USA) harbor. It somehow approaches the surreal
heights of his later books while remaining quite down to earth in its locales
and characters. A great narrator's voice in this one.
4. Here's a 'book review' of his new
one, Cryptonomicon.
by William Gibson:
1.Neuromancer
A 21st Century Maltese
Falcon...complete with A heroine with razor-blades for fingernails, A
ganga-smokin I-Ree orbital crew, 2 immense networks striving to become One and
alive, A family of Super-rich clones...and A hero who's central nervous system
has been biologically booby-trapped to prevent him from body-surfin the Future
Net for stolen data-pearls.
2.Count
Zero
Three diverse plots collide,
fueled by technology and rockandroll
3.Mona
Lisa Overdrive
The West Coast, but there's no USA
anymore...
4.Burning
Chrome
(early short stories)
...some of which developed
into the above-listed novels
-Gibson's newer novels are cool
too, he's developed a Zen sparseness. But the denser earlier works are more
mind-blowing.-He's really a master at evoking a nightmarefuture with words that
you know, but ain't never heard put together before!
Other Great Books:
by Greg Bear:
Blood Music
A biotech researcher
swallows his experiment...And NanoTech goes Nuts
Queen of the Angels
Voodoo and Psychotherapy go
head to head in LA and Haiti, 21st Century.
Shrinks can literally
"walk through your mind," but analysis of a mass-killer goes
haywire...
by Paul McCaulley
FairyLand
A young genius casts her spell
over the world from a London flat...unleashing a new race of bioengineered
"fairies"...The world will never be the same again.
by J.R. Dunn
Days of Cain
The Eternity time-travel police
hunt down a rebellious band of time-police officers, led by a lady Saint, which
has gone back to Germany in the 20th century to try to kill Hitler. (It's
against the Rules to mess with the past, even the Holocaust.) Who's side are
YOU on???
by Phillip K. Dick:
Through the Glass Darkly
A federal narcotics officer is so
stoned on LSD, that he doesn't even realize that he's investigating ...HIMSELF!
...
Classic Phillip K. Dick
portrayal of schizophrenia, his main theme, I think.
The Martian Time-Slip
The strange powers of an autistic
child brought up on the bleak Mars of the next century.
( also, almost anything he wrote!)
by Olaf Stapleton:
The Star Maker
A Scandinavian man, steps out
of his house to look at the stars, and is whisked away on a tour of all the
galaxies' life forms, past and future, as pure consciousness. He and his
tourmates witness the best and worst results of Life-Force's experiments. The
Creator is close at hand, but allows life to develop in its own way. Some races
evolve to such an advanced state that they can no longer be observed....others
go down to destruction through fear hatred and wars, and are gone
forever......Some races even MATE together, ending centuries of strife between
species...
(I must admit that this notion
inspired a great deal of my 2nd opera,"Sea of Simile." )
by Kurt Vonnegut:
Cat's Cradle
The Sirens of Titan
(those are my faves anyway)
by Robert Heinlein:
Glory Road
A footloose sabre-wielding hero gets
hired by the most cosmically delectable babe-boss you could ever dream of.
She's a galactic queen and the mission she has in mind calls for all his
courage,spirit and intelligence.
Between Planets
Twins are hired to be
the communications system for an interstellar rocket program: At the great
distances of many light-years between
planets, radio takes
too long to travel (at the speed of light, the nearest star would take 4 years
to contact, because it is 4 light-years away.) BUT, mental telepathy travels
instantly.....their powers are developed by the foxy and wise Dr. Arnault, and
one twin is on his way. The twist is that due to time
dilation, the twin on Earth ages, while the
twin in the ship seems to stay the same age...very touching, (especially to a
twin like me!)
Stranger in a Strange Land
Michael Valentine Smith was born on Mars to an
exploratory astronaut team that died soon thereafter. He was brought up by the
Martians, and is kind of "different" (in a very cool way.) Twenty
years later, he is brought back to Earth by the NEXT Mars mission. He
becomes the focus for everything that is good and bad about the world. A
commune of beautiful women grows around this Stranger, orchestrated by one of
Heinlein's best versions of his philosophizing older hero: Jubal Harshaw,
lawyer extraordinaire. Earth is about to evolve...
(good for young readers, or political
conservatives...
when I read back now, I wonder at some of his dogmas!)
by Arthur C. Clark
Childhood's End
My favorite book about enlightened alien invasion.
Much smoother than 2001, etc.
by Gregory Benford:
TimeScape
Fast forward fifty years: You can't even take a walk
in the country without
falling into a sinkhole, or catching Leukemia.
But it's worse... much worse: radiation, death,
eco-calamity, everywhere.
The only hope: particle beams, traveling
backwards in time, to warn the
people of OUR time, what will happen if
Bush-type leaders prevail....
by John Varney:
Millenium
The movie of this great book, starring Kris
Kristoferson and Cheryl Ladd
(talk about a cast!!!) had the coolest plane
crash that I've ever seen
(from inside the plane.) And that's only the
beginning. Future/Present again.
by Philip Baruth
The X-President
This great combination of political
novel, sci-fi, and serious page-turning satire, deposits us in 2055,
in a world where the US is
losing the Cigarette Wars, basically WWIII, to the super-Hacker Chinese
and all the "stan"
countries of the former Soviet Union. The NSC has been dabbling in time travel.
by Peter Hoeg:
Smilla's Sense of Snow
Shop at an online
bookstore
back
to TM home page
