EST is Cory Doctorow’s second novel, and as with Magic Kingdom, the setting again is a world slightly more advanced than our own, but not unimaginable. The twist this time is that tribes exist throughout the world not based on race or religion, but instead on common way of life of a particular time zone, regardless of where the members actually live. While I find this an intriguing (and plausible) premise, the major effect is messing up sleep schedules. Thus, a considerable amount of time is explaining tribal life with little impact on the plot. What’s left of EST is sort of a love story, corporate sabatoge, and a debate of happiness versus inteligence. It was enjoyable enough to read, but I had higher hopes for this book.

I think this is a science-fiction book that approaches something we could imagine in our lifetime, and then pushes the envelope a little further. Basically people are fused with wireless technology, sort of a hyper-Blackberry type device implanted in your head, for communication and access to the internet 24/7 directly via the brain. This brain-computer interface allows also for memory back-up and transfer to another body, such as a clone of yourself, to achieve immortality in essence. Money as we know it is replaced by “Whuffie,” which is sort of currency of reputation. Society is already moving toward this lifestyle with cellular and wi-fi devices all over the place, and I can completely see somebody embedding them inside their bodies and making them CNS responsive. Immortality via clones I’m not so sure about.

A couple of interesting points from Down and Out:

Cory Doctorow’s site: craphound.com

I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide a few years back with the intention of reading the entire five part trilogy. I think I made it through the second part, but sputtered midway through the third. The recent movie version rekindled my interest, so I revisited the sci-fi classic. It’s probably the best book that destroys the Earth in the first 20 pages. There’s some cute humor, a few jabs at government and philosophy, and a unique creation story. I’m not sure if this was intended at all, but the theme that comes to me is not to take ourselves too seriously. If that’s the point, then maybe I should read it again.

The overall goal of the Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs, and Steel is an ambitious one, essentially to provide a history of the human species that accounts for the present state of nations. Why were Europeans able to conquer Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians, instead of vice versa? To a large extent, the book is a reaction to the idea of biological superiority and inferiority of different peoples. The result is a thorough summary and analysis of the major relevant factors on each inhabited continent. Here’s the history of homo sapiens in 200 words:

Humans evolve in Africa and spread, as hunter/gatherers, to all inhabitable pieces of land. Large mammals on Africa and Eurasia evolve to coexist with humans, while elsewhere the appearance of humans coincides with eradication of large mammals. Food production arises in a few select areas of the world. Eurasia (especially the Fertile Crescent) receives a disproportionate number of domesticatable plants and animals, which spread rapidly across the east-west (especially west) oriented landmass. Societies based on food production are capable of sustaining non-food producing people members and allow for dense populations requiring formalized governments and increasing the probability for inventions (e.g. ships, guns). These larger populations spread into hunter/gatherer lands where natives assimilate or are replaced. Food producing people also evolve immunity to diseases carried by their animals, which are then passed to susceptible cultures on first interactions (e.g. Europeans in the Americas/Australia). Europe’s fragmented nature leads to competition which drives technological advance and race to colonization, while China’s unity leaves decisions to promote these developments in the hands of a small few who choose isolation and technological stagnation.

The conclusion is that, in a general sense, the course of history was set in 8000 BCE simply by geography and environment, one that seems plausible to me. While I tired of the analysis of the merits of plant and animal species for food production, the book is a remarkably quick read for a scientific discourse.

Curious Incident is written as if its autistic narrator is the author. Most of what I know about autism is from reading Blink, so I know next to nothing. In addition to shaping the actions and relationships among the characters, this premise affects the structure of the book significantly. For example, the chapters numbered by prime numbers, sentences are constructed in a subject-verb manner, there are no similes, only occasional metaphors. It actually feels like the way I would write the first draft of a book where I’d get my ideas down on paper. Later revisions would add more descriptors and vary the sentence structure.

Curious Incident is a fast read that provides insight into how an autistic person processes information. The plot is generally a good one, and there’s even a mathematical proof in the appendix, if you like that sort of thing.

For information on autism see: Autism Society of America