Postsingular - mindbending nanofuture galore
I have read a fiction book again. I have so little time that I am afraid to even start a nonfiction book normally because then I just loose days after days to get through it spinning out of this world into the one of the book trying to visualize it and make it a mind film. But this time was more an accident. I stumbled across the book two days ago as it was advertised as a new creative commons book somewhere on some website when I was searching for CC music. I have never heard of Rudy Rucker before nor of this book, but I thought as the november days are getting long and dark and grey and the watery goo creeps inside you it might be a good thing to have scifi book laying around to peek at at time of despair. Well yesterday when trying to sort it away into the filedungeon next door I made the "mistake" to open it and started reading the first page. - well I never put it aside except for the 6 hours sleep last night and I am through the 216 pages already.
The topic resonated with me as the whole postsingular world resonates with me as this is the wider topic of the one (vjlivecinemathingy) project that never got finished but might one day ;)
Here is my lowdown of the vibby book:
The book is grabbing and detailed yet the explanations are easy enough to understood by a nontechy person (I guess). The characters are great and its one of the few books that I read where I can somehow identify with more then one character at the time - you can become attached to some of the villains quite easily (and then eaten by inter-dimensional plants ;)
The books is not too long with its 218 pages so you not get the full out picture at points - I thought that this is better in todays world where I struggled a month to get through Neuromancer a second time.
I didn´t like the reference to a US president - note to US writers, mentioning a US president gets your international readers out of the loop(imagination) as some of them don´t think that the US will have such a leader role in a future where nanobots and singularity rules.
The ending for two of the main characters could have been a half page longer - the poor souls worked so hard the whole book through and then get chopped of with one sentence.
I didn´t personally like the metaphysical things - the worldly things and how the normal world changed into a singular world where grabbing and detailed enough to carry me much more uninterruptedly through the book but thats a very personal standpoint - I guess another person in this house will have a different take on this. Also I understand that at a point of singularity real and imaginative and spiritual all merge so yeah spirituality is a great thing - but a mirror world I personally never believed in and thought this made this book a tiny bit more unconvincing to me.
BUT in general this book is great - suspense to the end and more and more nitty gritty details of an unimaginable world unfolding before your eyes. If you like science fiction and a short two day mind trip that is better then sudocoke you might want to wish for this book to be under you christmas tree.
Amazon Hardover: Rudy Rucker "Postsingular"
CC Download (PDF, Text, and many more formats): http://www.rudyrucker.com/postsingular/
Update:> Rudy the author wrote an answer to some of my small nitpickies on his blog:
As for fALk’s remark that it might have been more interesting to stay on Earth than to gallavant off to the Hibrane—that’s a criticism that’s often leveled at me; there’s a similar pattern in FREK AND THE ELIXIR and in MATHEMATICIANS IN LOVE. I set up an amazing new world, then move off to another one.
Partly this stylistic quirk of mine is a product of the zeitgeist. We’re very distractable now, very prone to web-surfing to some thing new.
And I simply enjoy cramming a lot of stuff into each novel. It’s kind of like the heavy metal “turn it up to eleven” aesthetic. More!
Also, I’m a mature writer now, POSTSINGULAR is my 18th novel and 30th book overall. I’ve learned a lot of craft. So I can’t resist elaborating on the book by dovetailing in more than one world.
Yet another reasons why I hop worlds is that for me, each novel is transreally “about” my actually writing the novel. My getting into the novel is mirrored by having one of my characters get into a higher world. (In POSTSINGULAR I mirror this even more directly by having Thuy write WHEENK.)
As for Thuy and Jayjay’s love story, fALk—well, they DO get to have sex in the last chapter and IMHO, it’ s a fairly hot scene. And they’re still gonna be together in the second volume in this series, HYLOZOIC, which is “still a-building at Rucker Labs” (as Paul DiFilippo put it in his scifi.com review.).