Review Summaries

• The novel is distinctive less for spectacle than for its portrait of boredom in an overextended life and complicity in exploitation. The ethical implications of the setting linger.

Reviews

• What A Mess

  I picked up this book because I'd recently been going back and reading the Phillip K Dick winners (the annual award for best Sci-Fi in paperback.) This is the 2006 winner and, having just read such GREAT novels as Vacuum Diagrams, Altered Carbon, and Life, I had high expectations. 120 pages in I was ready to put the book down and move on to something else. This book is a mish-mash of clichés, boring stock characters that I found totally unredeeming, and painfully heavy-handed symbolism. There is a germ of a good idea here that I found, at times, enjoyable but it was not worth reading the entire novel. Since there is a summary on the website and in other reviews, we already know who Nasir Deepra and Sheeba are. Nasir is vain and in lust with Sheeba. His friends are bored zillionaires who booze and drug themselves for entertainment. Sheeba is naivé and flakey. Fine. But their personalities are stock and assembled out of such painfully obvious clichés. None of them are painted in a way that is fresh or interesting. Nasir carries a mirror in his pocket which he is constantly pulling out to check his hair with. Anything Sheeba says to him throughout the course of the novel is GUARANTEED to be misinterpreted (there is never ONCE a moment when he doubts himself for going completely the opposite direction with what she says to him.) He gets jealous whenever anybody talks to her in the same way a six year old might. His friends go on benders for days at a time and approach death as though they were watching a cartoon. Sheeba is a physical therapist and is always spouting new age hippy jargon. I found it hard to believe that any of these people could function in ANY society, let alone live for 200+ years, run trillion dollar companies, and "SURF" wars. I'm all for anti-heros (see Altered Carbon) but nothing about the way these characters are written was new or fresh or interesting - and since the book takes 100 pages to get going you're forced to spend 2-3 days with these people that you wouldn't want to spend 10 minutes with in real life. I kept waiting for things to get better and for some actual character development to occur. Sheeba (who might have saved the book had it been written from her perspective) experiences an instant and (as such) inexplicable change "off camera." Nasir's friends never change and by page 336 Nasir himself writes "By now you may have asked yourself...why you keep browsing this memoir. The narrator...has no redeeming traits." 336! Thats 39 pages from the END! Then...he changes. Completely unmotivated. There is no indication as to whether his change is caused by the horrors that he created (to which he'd been completely oblivious to up to that point,) or a (avoiding a spoiler here) third party has caused it. But the change is virtually instant. It occurs in two or three sentences. After spending over 300 pages with these dull idiots I thought, at least, I'd be treated to torturous introspection or grandious revelation. But the pivotal moment was almost arbitrary. Adding insult to boredom was the symbolism, again heavy handed and obvious. Without being too specific, HEAVEN, BLOOD, IMMORTALITY, THE GARDEN. Ugh. There were one or two people that I actually liked in here but their page real estate was too small to be any kind of saving grace. Again the book might have been a LOT more fun if it had been written from Sheeba's perspectve. Then again maybe not. If you're interested in reading some really good sci-fi, check out the last five Philip K Dick winners but...you might want to skip this one.

• Interesting, but heavily flawed.

  Many of the concepts of War Surf offer amazing potential: The very idea of a hyper-capitalist society, where castes not unlike the traditional Indian castes are formed, but according to one's rank in the corporate hierarchy; the idea of a caste of the super rich trying to fight boredom, the ultimate foe in a life of leisure, by 'surfing' war sites. Unfortunately, these ideas are embedded in a plot that seems like it was designed as a tool to get from A to B. Ok, that might actually be the basic definiton of plots. What I mean, it's a badly designed tool. Characters act inexplicably, hair-raising coincidences are common, in short, it is evident to the point of being painfl when and where the author did not or did not yet want to get to the next step in the plot outline. And as much as I liked the ideas, I could not bear that ham-fisted handling of plot.

• Jeux de guerre .. au 23e siècle .... prix Philip K Dick 2005 ....

  Jeux de guerre .. au 23e siècle .... prix Philip K Dick 2005 .... Ce roman se déroule dans un univers high-tech .. sans être un manuel du futur pour autant . Les acquisitions des bases Tech de cet univers sont diffusées à merveille .. un délice .. Il est bon de préciser que ce récit est dans la mouvance cyberpunk et que le style m'a fait penser ( un peu ) à Richard Morgan . On accompagne le personnage principal et on reste au plus près de lui car tout est rédigé à la première personne . On perçoit tout par ses 5 sens ( améliorés ) ! Les protagonistes sont vraiment de chair et de sang ... De fortes personnalités ( sexy et réactives ).. Un univers doté d'un passé dense et riche . Des divisions de classes excessivement marquées ( avec de lourds contentieux ) et une géopolitique compliquée . Nasir a du mal à se situer dans un contexte qui se modifie ( départ vers l'orbite terrestre ) , alors qu'il encourt de grands dangers . Nazir risque d'être victime de son goût pour l'adrénaline et le " warsurf " car on lui veut du mal à cause de certains passifs . Pour qu'il puisse s'en rendre compte il serait nécessaire qu'il soit moins esclave de ses passions et plus réceptif aux signaux , qui sont là pourtant ( tout près de lui ) . Ce personnage principal à de lourdes responsabilités dans les souffrances des classes dites et pensées comme " inférieures " . Curieusement on ( je ) ne peut(x) pas à trouver quiconque antipathique dans ce roman , car il y a trop de nuances et surtout d'intimité nuancée , ambigüe et complexe , avec l'ensemble des personnages . En effet beaucoup d'intimité avec les personnages donc ! et il devient très difficile de juger tout ce petit monde . Le style est exceptionnel car dense , rythmé et solide et on est obligatoirement aspiré dans cette réalité de science-fiction militaire intense et palpable . Il y a des implications métaphysiques et religieuses qui sont traitées sérieusement sans êtres des fatras abscons ou ridicules . Excellent ..

• super chouette

  how to tell you of the profundity here ... well, it's pretty good and it goes somewhere, and I think it's worth checking out (x a gazillion)

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