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Blood Stone Profile
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Initiate

Registered: 06-2004
Posts: 24
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Robert J Sawyer's WWW trilogy...


I've been a facebook friend of Robert J Sawyer's for a long time, mostly because I like to read about how fabulous his lifestyle is. emoticon Anyway, I decided to get his WWW trilogy, given that the last book in the trilogy was about to come out.

Book 1: Wake
Book 2: Watch
Book 3: Wonder

The premise:

The main character (Caitlin) is a blind American girl, living in Canada, who is given the miraculous gift of sight by a scientist. This allows her to see the architecture of the web at first (through a bit of jumping the shark), and then after an upgrade or two, actual sight.

Another main(ish) character, is an Artificial Intelligence called WebMind, which emerges of its own accord from the world wide web. It begins to communicate with Caitlin, who, through a miraculous network of scientist connections across the world, becomes its chief spokesperson.

There are some scientists studying apes, and the chinese government trying to shut china off from the outside world, and US government trying to stop WebMind.... blah blah blah...

Okay, I bought into it for the first book, out of the novelty of the idea. (I like the idea of human-technological integration) By the middle of the second point, Sawyer had begun to lose me, with how this 1 fairly insignificant girl was somehow connected to all these 'celebrity scientists'. Soon WebMind was talking to the UN by means of a Bonobo holding a loud speaker.

*record scratch sound*

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

The fact is that as a concept novel, the first novel (Wake) is certainly interesting. It explores some interesting ideas, and draws the metaphor that everyone suffers from some kind of blindness (whether it's physical blindness, inability to empathise with others (an autistic character), Blindness to outside ideas (the chinese), and so on).

The second book revolves around the secretive branch of the NSA called Watch (a ridiculously contrived acronym that sounds very governmenty, in a cheesy kind of way) who set about trying to shutdown, kill off, etc WebMind. This provokes an entirely unnecessary discussion on whether you can kill artificial persons. (i.e. AIs)

The third book is about WebMind trying to disprove the Big Brother philosophy from 1984, and show that he can be an altruistic dictator of the web. He addresses the UN, using the aforementioned Bonobo.

At this point I decided that I was entirely sick of Sawyer jumping the shark, and stopped listening to the book (I had decided to use a credit to 'buy' the third book).

I did enjoy reading the first book, as his views of the world through the eyes (virtual or real) of his characters were unique, and interesting. The second and third books lost me because I had no sense of how much time had passed at any given time. (I believe the span of the three books covers several months, although I got the impression that only a few days passed during the second book) Perhaps it was that I listened to the third book that confused me, but I found it completely absurd and implausible in the extreme that any of the events could happen the way they did. (according to the Author this is supposed to take place in 2012)

In some ways this felt like a throwback to the idealistic cyberpunk novels like Gibson's neuromancer, Spook Country, Stephenson's Snowcrash and Diamond Age (the latter in particular). The books which were written while the net was still young allowed us to dream of the possibilities that might lie just around the corner. I don't think that the world is ready for Sawyer's vision of next year. I think it takes a far too idealistic view of the current legislative view of the internet. Ultimately the internet hasn't really evolved a great deal. We're still looking at webpages, however dynamic they might be.

I was disappointed. I had hoped after the first book that it would be better. (I enjoyed reading his books Factoring Humanity, Calculating God, The Neanderthal Parallax books and various others)

At the end of the day, he crossed a line, which just completely turned me off, and I could not suspend my disbelief any longer.

My recommendation is read the first book, and the second book. And the third if you really must.

---
Dare I disturb the Universe?

Where possums lurk, and ferrets imagine, this is where the magic happens!
4/19/2011, 1:11 pm Link to this post Email Blood Stone   PM Blood Stone
 
QS2 Profile
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Shepherd

Registered: 03-2006
Posts: 2138
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Re: Robert J Sawyer's WWW trilogy...


I wonder if there is much use in it for me still... I think Accelerando which I have read, covers a certain amount of the same topics already as well.

Well in any case, thanks for the interesting review Stone. I'll keep it in mind if I ever see the book in a store or some such. emoticon
4/19/2011, 2:34 pm Link to this post Email QS2   PM QS2
 
David Meadows Profile
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Squire

Registered: 09-2003
Posts: 693
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Re: Robert J Sawyer's WWW trilogy...


I read Wake serialized in Analog magazine a few years ago and thought it had some very neat ideas. I had no idea it was part of a trilogy, and you haven't really inspired me to read the rest of them!

I find Robert J Sawyer to be a very good "ideas" person. But sometimes it's a mistake to sustain a good idea over too many books, because you find that either the idea is too thin to sustain repeated poking or it turns out to be absurd once you reach its logical conclusion. (Not just speaking of Sawyer here but of SF in general; this is why I usually prefer SF in short stories.)



---
Review: Magnum, Newcastle 14.04.11
4/19/2011, 2:44 pm Link to this post Email David Meadows   PM David Meadows
 
Reythia Profile
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Knight of Honor

Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 1883
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Re: Robert J Sawyer's WWW trilogy...


Thanks for the review, Blood. Or Stone, as QS put it. Actually (total aside here), which nickname would you prefer? (I already call Meadows 'Meadows', unlike everyone else, which has become tradition for me, but I could at least start calling you by the 'right' name!)

ANYHOW. I haven't actually read these books, or even heard of them. So really, thanks for the review.

Meadows, you wrote:
quote:

But sometimes it's a mistake to sustain a good idea over too many books, because you find that either the idea is too thin to sustain repeated poking or it turns out to be absurd once you reach its logical conclusion. (Not just speaking of Sawyer here but of SF in general; this is why I usually prefer SF in short stories.)


I tend to agree. Or rather, I think there's a particular (large) sub-genre of scifi that's this way. My friend John classifies scifi as either "idea stories" or "people stories", which is probably the best division I've heard of. For "idea stories" like the ones Blood/Stone is talking about here, I agree, one story seems to be about it.

That's not to say you couldn't take a scifi story universe which you built using one really great idea and turn it into a really good set of novels -- but if you succeeded at that, you'll have had to convert your series at least partially to "people stories" rather than solely "idea stories". Otherwise it just gets old.

---
  -- YAR!
4/19/2011, 8:48 pm Link to this post Email Reythia   PM Reythia AIM MSN
 
Blood Stone Profile
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Initiate

Registered: 06-2004
Posts: 24
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Re: Robert J Sawyer's WWW trilogy...


Ehh, I generally answer to Stone. It's a version of a slightly dated Pen Name I was thinking of using. Now it's more like a contraction of "getting blood from a stone", which writing occasionally feels like. emoticon

Yes, I do find RJS a high concept writer in a lot of his books. It's something I'm struggling with for my fantasy series planning. (Part of the problem is a few of the characters suffer from the amnesia-cliche) But it would help if I remembered who they were at least. emoticon

---
Dare I disturb the Universe?

Where possums lurk, and ferrets imagine, this is where the magic happens!
4/20/2011, 7:30 am Link to this post Email Blood Stone   PM Blood Stone
 
Reythia Profile
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Knight of Honor

Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 1883
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Re: Robert J Sawyer's WWW trilogy...


quote:

Blood Stone wrote:
Now it's more like a contraction of "getting blood from a stone", which writing occasionally feels like.


Haha!! Indeed. And "Stone" you are now. emoticon

quote:

Part of the problem is a few of the characters suffer from the amnesia-cliche


Amnesia-cliche? I've never heard that term. What do you mean? Just that they're always talking to each other about what happened in the past, to inform the reader?


---
  -- YAR!
4/20/2011, 2:38 pm Link to this post Email Reythia   PM Reythia AIM MSN
 
Blood Stone Profile
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Initiate

Registered: 06-2004
Posts: 24
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Re: Robert J Sawyer's WWW trilogy...


It was a bit of a confabulation on my part. I merely meant that characters having some form of amnesia is a cliche.

I acknowledge that it is a cliche, but I have a really good reason to use it! emoticon

---
Dare I disturb the Universe?

Where possums lurk, and ferrets imagine, this is where the magic happens!
4/20/2011, 9:16 pm Link to this post Email Blood Stone   PM Blood Stone
 


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