Time Recursion

A science fiction novel, written by Neal Stephenson in 1992, features a hypothetical near future, taking place in the early 21st century. During this time, United States of America are no longer controlling all of their territory, but a rather small and unimportant portion of it, whether all the other land is “occupied” by various  private organizations and individuals, resulting in high crime rates, a flourishing drug market, and less effective and numerous incompatible security systems. At the same time, there exists another world, which is until now undisturbed, and a virtual paradise and replacement for the one on Earth, the Metaverse.

The Metaverse is an enhanced version of the internet, an actual visual representation of everything that happens online today and even more. Each person has his own avatar, with which he is able to interact online, walk along the Street and even own buildings.

The story of the novel concentrates around Hiro Protagonist, a hacker and world’s best sword fighter and Y.T., a fifteen year old Kourier, who try to track down the creator of the Snow Crash, a virtual drug, that is able to crash the computer and your brain system simultaneously. (continue reading…)

When I was browsing through the books on the Sci-Fi shelf in the library last week, I came across an interesting combination of an action, thriller and science fiction book written by Stephen Coonts. At first I was a bit sceptic, because I usually like books that are mainly focused into the fictional and technological part of the story they describe, which was not the case in this one. Saucer is, from the beginning to the end a story of different countries and persons trying to get their hands this seemingly alien relic, no matter the costs involved. But let’s start at the beginning.

(continue reading…)

And now it’s time for a classic in the science fiction related novels. The Hitchhiker’s Guide is in it’s essence a science fiction comedy, a parody on humanity and our way of living. It represents our eternal struggle to understand and comprehend everything, but at the same time it shows that while we try to reach things that are beyond our power, we forget about what we can, or could improve.

The series is a “trilogy”, which consists of five books, named: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, “Life, the Universe and Everything”, “So long, and Thanks for All the Fish” and “Mostly Harmless”. In September 2008, a sixth book was announced to be written by Eoin Colfer and bearing the title “And Another thing…”. The release is scheduled for 30th of October this year.

The story, written by Douglas Adams, starts with the contractors arriving at Arthur Dent’s house to demolish it and making way for a bypass. Only a few moments later Vogon space ships arrive, to demolish Earth and making way for a hyperspace bypass. Arthur’s friend Ford Prefect, who turns out to be an alien from a distant planet somewhere near Betelgeuse, manages to hitch a lift for Arthur and himself on one of the Vogons ships, just in time before the Earth is destroyed. There, when the Vogons discover them, they are tortured with Vogon’s poetry, which happens to be the third worst in the known Universe, before they’re thrown into space through an airlock. At that time, they are, very improbably, picked up by a ship named Hearth of Gold, which is powered by an infinite improbability drive and was stolen by Zaphod Beeblebrox, the President of the Glaxy, who is on the quest to find the planet of Magrathea. And this is when their voyage, full of improbabilities and odd events begins. It puts them on a quest to find the Ultimate answer to Life the Universe and Everything, which turns out to be 42. And since they find this answer unsatisfactory, they are thrown on the pursuit of the Question to the ultimate answer, to finally comprehend its true meaning.

If you like reading fantasy books, you’ve probably already heard and read about the series named “A Song of Ice and Fire”, written by George R. R. Martin. I must confess that I’m a little behind the storyline, because I’ve heard about this series only one year ago, and have read just the first part named “A Game of Thrones” and the second one bearing the title”A Clash of Kings”, till now. This is mostly because I couldn’t get my hands on the second part for a long time, because of long queues in my local library, and also due to the fact that I had other things on my reading list for a longer time.

And now to the story. As those of you who have already read at least the first book know, the story is set in a fictional world, on a continent called Westeros and partially also on a part of a large eastern continent of an unknown name. The story itself, is actually composed of three main stories, featuring the civil war fought by the noble families, strugling for control of the kingdom, the threat from the misterious Others, from the far north and the journey of Daenerys Targaryen, the last remaining child of the rightful king, that was murdered fifteen years ago and who is now heading back to Westeros, to claim the throne.

This is just a small insight on the story, so you’d get an idea, what’s this all about. As far as I could find out, there are two more books available, which I definitely have to get my hand on as soon as I get enough time for reading. I also discovered that there’s a fifth book in the making right now, and should be released sometime in the middle of 2009. Another two are projected to be made, so there will be a total of seven books. There’s no telling when they’ll be written, but I guess we won’t have to wait too long. The series is already a success, and I bet the author is doing all in his power to release the books soon.

The story of Pastwatch is taking place in both the future, in a time when the remaining of the humanity has finally realised of all the mistakes their ancestors did, and in the past, in the time of the great discovery of Christopher Columbus. Pastwatch is nothing else then a sophisticated research organisation, that bases all of their work on a machine, that is able to browse through history, and enables their users to see and to learn from everything that happened in our past and make sure that all the horrible events are remembered and not repeated.

At this point we come across a Pastwatch researcher, that has devoted all her life to searching and finding the origin, the exact point in history in which slavery was adopted. Although at that time she can’t do anything to change the history, she finds the cause of the widespread slavery – the voyage of Christopher Columbus and the Conquest of America. And it is then, that she and her co-worker, found a strange conversation among two members of a tribe, that was just about to be attacked by the Spanish conquistadors. They were talking about them, describing how they see them watching at what was happening. Now it became clear to them, the machines Pastwatch developed were not only able to passively watch the past, but were also interacting with it.

… I guess that’s enough to give you a general idea about the storyline The book is very well written, combining the present situation with the past and describing into detail all the actions that were made. It’s obvious from my description what comes next, a voyage in the past to make changes that would make the world better. However all comes at a price. To change the flow of events means that the current time will be altered and will cease to exist. Everyone that you know, will never be born and some of the achievements could have never been achieved.

To cut it short… the book is a must read! Oh, and by the way: This only the first book, another two are planned to be published, though there’s no telling when.

Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan

Last week I’ve been walking among shelfs in our local library, trying to find an interesting book, so I could have something to read when I wouldn’t have anything better to do. Don’t get me wrong, I like to read, it’s just that lately, there’s so much other things to do, mostly with websites I manage, scouts and various other meetings plus school, so I don’t really have time to do anything else. And when I do have time, I usually spend it watching movies or playing a game I wanted to try for a long time (I’ll get back to this later in another post) or I simply go to sleep.

And so it happened that while I was searching a book shelf, specifically a shelf containing english science fiction literature, I stumbled upon an author that was previously unknown to me. It was Richard Morgan. And what a find! The mixture of hardcore cyberpunk, detective and crime fiction is just awesome! The story of Takeshi Kovacs, an Envoy born on Harlan’s World doing a detective’s job on the other side of the explored universe for a rich immortal men is very well written and at the same time mind boogling. The whole society, its technology, way of life, people’s prejudices and political corruption are so neatly and realistically presented, that you can’t help but to feel as a part of this world, and the story.

I don’t want to spoil the story for you, so I won’t go into details. All I want to say is, if you’re fans of science fiction, and if you liked Michael Crichton’s technically detailed novels, then you mustn’t miss this one.