The Synthetic Librarian

Tomorrow Now: envisioning the next 50 years is a non-fiction book by Bruce Sterling. Sterling is known for his science fiction novels and for his writing in Wired magazine. I have greatly enjoyed some of his novels but am not familiar with his magazine writing (I have never enjoyed Wired or things like Wired). The book was an easy read but not particularly interesting or informative.

Sterling organizes the book around a quote of Shakespeare regarding the life cycle of a man and dedicates one chapter to each phase of the cycle. This approach is ineffective and confusing. For each stage he tries to pick out one or two trends in technology or society that might be molded onto the metaphor provided by the Shakespearean quote. One would think that if the metaphor of the book was stages of human individual development, from birth to death, then the author might envision the next 50 years as being divided into similar stages. Not so, each stage is used as the seed for brainstorming and not as a coherent theme for the book. Readers are thus left wondering, “where is he going with this?” at each stage.

While the title promises some serious futuristic forecasting, most of the book discusses current trends. We get more “now” than we get “tomorrow” in this 50 year forecast. I have found Sterling’s fiction to contain very interesting scenarios for future developments but I didn’t get that from this book.

Still the book is full of interesting quotable little bits and his predictions are reasonable and well informed. Some chapters provide some entertaining insight into Bruce Sterling’s personal world, so if your a big fan this would be a must-read book. I would recommend this if your looking for an easy read or if your a Sterling fan. Otherwise I would suggest the now aging Release 2.1 by Esther Dyson or Database Nation by Simson Garfinkel as similar but more interesting.

I just finished reading Eastern Standard Tribe a novel by Cory Doctorow. It is a science fiction story set in the not too distant future. It is told in first-person from the perspective of Art, a UE (User Experience) consultant who is also a member of a “tribe” of chatters who allie with one another based solely on the timezone they live in. Hence the title Eastern Standard Tribe (EST). The story revolves around the work Art does for a ficitional future version of the Virgin corporation, his involvement with EST, a girl he meets, and an insane asylum in which he ends up.

The novel begins in the middle of the story, with Art explaining his current dilemma. Art is stuck on the roof of an insane asylum in his underwear. He then flashes back to the beginning of the story where Art explains how the whole mess began. After that the novel progresses by moving these two threads forward in alternating chapter. This method works effectively enough, with only the occaisional confusing inter-chatper transition for the reader. It is especially effective because Art is a member of EST; he lives his life on eastern standard time. But Art is physically in England with a day job. He lifestyle demands that he rarely sleep for more than an hour or so and he is living in the kind of blur known only to insomniacs. The back-and-forth flashback story telling puts the reading in touch with the feeling of never ending flow of events that the protagonist must feel.

The story is very entertaining and keeps the reading involved. It has only a few rough spots. The beginning is a bit confusing because it almost reads like commentary by the author. I was sure I reading an introduction to the text for the first 10 minutes, and then realized I was reading the actual first chapter. The end seems to drag out a bit but not painfully so. There also seems to be a missing chapter (how does Art get from the English train station back to North America at the end?).

I found this a bit reminiscent of the work of William Gibson but not overly so. Gibson’s style is more sophisticated. He weaves multiple characters and plots together chapter after chapter. This novel splits one plot into two halfs and weaves them back together and focuses on a single character but the effect on the reader is similar. You get the sense that you are re-meeting the character over and over. Another similarity to Gibson’s writing is the character is a lowlife/underworld figure that is still sympathetic partly due to a “super-power.” Art considers himself a double-agent trying to ruin business outside his beloved EST time-zone. He has two super-powers the first of which is his ability to argue and the second is his ability to identify new “user experiences” that can immediately become reality (probably the biggest stretch of science fiction in the entire story).

The novel is unbalanced in the portrayal of both of Art’s most defining qualities. At the beginning Art is a great arguer and set on his double-agent lifestyle. As the novel progresses we lose, in both the past and current threads of the story, the sense that he is good at argueing and that he is determined to sabotage the GMT time-zone. Instead he becomes a savior of the end-user confounded in most argument and reduced to clumsy neurolignuistic programming. This lack of change in character is quite continuous and not at all confusing probably due to the story being told in the two threads (past and current).

Overall this was an enjoyable novel. I take away no profound lessons or insights, but I do wish people would adopt Doctorow’s single word for phone, laptop, computer, email, etc. He calls it simple “comm.” As in, “can I use your comm?” or “did you comm him?”

Eastern Standard Tribe is available from your local public library, bookstores, or for free from Cory Doctorow’s website.

I recently re-read Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I read this cold-war spy novel several years ago but I had thought it was a different novel. As I re-read it this time I kept thinking, this has a remarkably similar plot to a novel by Len Deighton. I spent many hours searching for information on how two novelists could write such similar novels. In the end it turned out that my memory was faulty and I had just read Le Carre’s book twice.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is the tale of a aging spymaster, set during the cold-war, whose luck has turned bad and seeks revenge against his nemisis. The protagonist is Alec Leamas, head of Britain’s Berlin desk. He runs a ring of spies who operate out of East Berlin. But Alec has a problem: as the story begins, the last of his spies is killed off. Alec’s nemisis is a Russian/East German named Mundt who has uncovered and killed each of Alec’s assets one-by-one. Alec’s bosses give him the opportunity to get revenge by becoming a double-agent. What unfolds is an interesting plot where the reader is never quite sure who is on who’s side.

The first time I read The Spy I believed I was reading a Deighton novel, and I remember at the time thinking about how rough it was compared to his others. It lacked the details that build a rich world in which the reader can get lost. After a second reading this is true, but of course I now see that it isn’t a rough Deighton novel, it is just a different author. The Spy is a novel that is essentially narration. The characters, even the protagonist and villians, are flat. For example, to convey that the protagonist is strong, Le Carre simply states that he is strong, that he has a strong neck and body. At times it reads more like a screenplay than a novel.

The saving grace is plot. It is intriguing and worthy of this book’s reputation.

The Spy is considered by many to be Le Carre’s best novel, while I have not read his other novels, I would guess that reputation is based on two strengths. First, the plot is a great example of the type of intrigue esponiage fans expect. As a reader you are never sure who is on what side, and you develop a healthy sense of paranoia which is both rewarded and invalidated at times. Second, the novel conveys that “cold-war espionage” feeling common to dramatic works from this genre set in post-world-war-II Europe. There is a certain feeling that the reader gets about the people and politics in Europe due to the tensions surrounding the division of Germany. Overall I liked the novel but it doesn’t rank as high as similar works by Len Deighton. I’d be compelled to see the movie version.

Note: Both the novel and movie are available from the Edmonton Public Library.