Mon, 02 Jun 2003
Zeitgeist, by Bruce Sterling
While at the library a few days ago, I was browsing along and noticed this book by Bruce Sterling. As a longtime subscriber to his Viridian mailing list, I'd almost forgotten that Sterling makes his living as a writer. So I picked this up and read it. Our protagonist is Leggy Starlitz, a band promoter among other things, who has a strong line into the cultural narrative of the times - the Zeitgeist, if you will. And the narrative draws him into one ridiculous situation after another. The metaphysics is kind of wacky, but the idea of having the cultural narrative being too strong to break out of is a fascinating one; to take an example not used in the book, when the evil villain is given a chance to repent, they always end up saying "No, I have chosen to be evil, and evil I will be!" Plus there's a couple laugh-out-loud scenes when the semi-antagonist taps into the narrative and pulls off a ridiculous James Bond escape sequence. Wacky stuff.
posted at: 23:58 by Eric Nehrlich | path: /books/fiction/scifi | permanent link to this entry | Comment on livejournal
Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson
I borrowed and read this while at a friend's house on vacation. It's got some interesting ideas. While I don't think much of Gibson as a writer, he's definitely a sharp observer of cultural trends. This book follows the adventures of Cayce Pollard, a "coolhunter" (somebody who hits the streets trying to observe new trends that advertising companies could then exploit), as she tries to track down the source of mysterious film footage that appears haphazardly on the net. The feel of the footage actually reminded me of the movie The Ring, but that's another story entirely. Worth a read, but not a buy in my opinion.
posted at: 23:52 by Eric Nehrlich | path: /books/fiction/scifi | permanent link to this entry | Comment on livejournal
