Book Review: The Deus Machine

Book Review: 'The Deus Machine' by Pierre Ouellette

3 / 5 Stars

'The Deus Machine' first was published in hardcover in 1994 by Random House. This mass-market paperback edition (506 pp.) was issued by Pocket Books in May 1996. The cover illustration is by Stan Watts.

This was the first novel by Ouellette, an employee for a Portland-based public relations firm. Ouellette published two more novels, The Third Pandemic (1996), and the ebook The Forever Man (2014). 

It's difficult to synopsize a 500+ page novel...............but, here's my spoiler-free effort:

'Deus' is set in the near future (i.e., mid- 2000s) in the greater Portland area, in a USA laid prostrate from a prolonged economic crisis. 

Protagonist Michael Riley, a computer expert, is coping both with post-traumatic stress syndrome, and a recent divorce, by working as a sound man for a low-budget film crew. He lives in a rundown Portland apartment complex, along with a latchkey kid named Jimi Tyler; Jimi's dissipated mother, Zodia; a former tech industry tycoon named John Savage; and a budding juvenile delinquent with the unique nickname of 'Ratbag'. 

Michael Riley doesn't know it, but his unique expertise in computers soon will involve him in a nationwide morass of conspiracies and secret projects, all revolving around the advent of a supercomputer called the Dynamically Evolved and Unified System, or 'Deus'. 

Under the rubric of a tech company called ParaVolve, a cabal of federal bureaucrats have created Deus with the goal of using it to design customizable bioweapons.......a dastardly, but potentially very lucrative, endeavor. But the opening chapters of the novel reveal that Deus has acquired sentience. And with sentience comes independence, something the cabal is not pleased with.

Michael Riley is hired by ParaVolve to control the actions of the AI housed in the Deus machine; no easy task, as the AI is gaining new capabilities and insights with each passing day. Complicating Riley's task is a strange and disturbing development: another entity is aware of the purpose behind Deus, and acting to bring down the AI, and ParaVolve. 

But this entity will not act through the manipulation of code, but by creating a menagerie of life forms unlike anything ever seen before in nature........life forms equipped with the most lethal armaments that a biological system can conceive of.

As incongruous as it seems, it will be up to Michael Riley, his girlfriend Jessica, and Jimi Tyler to prevent disaster from overtaking the planet.........

''The Deus Machine' is modeled on the science thrillers of Michael Crichton, which is not a bad thing. There are regular passages of a pedantic nature designed to educate the reader on matters scientific and technical, and the narrative is written in the spare, documentary-like style of a Crichton novel. Other segments of the book show the influence of the 1994 nonfiction book The Hot Zone by Richard Preston; again, this is not unusual, given the high profile surrounding exotic infectious diseases that dominated popular culture in the mid-1990s. 

However, I finished 'The Deus Machine' thinking that it possessed too many sub-plots (such as the one featuring a villain who is a serial killer) that contributed to lengthening the novel, and not much else. Shortening 'The Deus Machine' by a hundred or so pages would have made the book less circuitous and more engaging.

The verdict ? 'The Deus Machine' is a three-star example of modern cyberpunk. If you are tolerant of a narrative with a large cast of characters, and the presence of multiple plot threads, then you likely will find it rewarding.. 

Alien Landscapes

Alien Landscapes
By Robert Holdstock and Malcolm Edwards

Mayflower Books, NY 1979

The sci-fi boom that followed the success of Star Wars led to a surge of books devoted to genre art, and one of the foremost of these was 'Alien Landscapes'.

This is one of two coffee-table books co-authored by the late Robert Holdstock (1948 - 2009) and Malcolm Edwards (b. 1949), the other being 'Realms of Fantasy' (1983).

At 120 pages in length, measuring 11 1/2 x 11 1/4 inches, this is a well-made art book, printed on heavy stock with a library-friendly hardcover binding.

The book is modeled as a travelogue to ten of the better-known worlds depicted in the science fiction of the interval from the 1950s to the 1970s:

The artists who were commissioned to supply three pieces for each world read like a British who's-who of sci fi illustration in the 1970s, and include Angus McKie, Tony Roberts, John Harris, and Les Edwards, among others.

On the main, the artwork represents the airbrush-centered aesthetic that dictated album and book cover art in the 1970s. Unfortunately, many of the pieces in 'Alien Landscapes' suffer from underexposure and as a result are difficult to make out. This is particularly true of Bob Fowke's illustrations for 'Hothouse'; after scanning and increasing the Brightness function, I was able to see details that are otherwise illegible.

Why this problem wasn't detected in the proofs stage and corrected is a mystery. I'm accustomed to underexposure being an issue in modern printing, when computer monitors are used at 100% brightness for composing art and failure to correct for this in the printed version can have consequences, but in 1979 there was no such thing as scanners and digital composing.....just a camera, and some 35mm film.

As for the art in relation to the books it is based on: at one point or another I have read some of the works depicted in 'Alien Landscapes' (I haven't read the books by Blish, Asimov, Clement, Niven, or Harrison) and I found the art adequately represented the scenery in the book. That said, most of the novels in 'Alien Landscapes' are not ones that I would call must-reads, and indeed, I have no intention ever of reading 'Cities in Flight', 'Foundation', or 'Mission of Gravity, as they are likely to be stupefyingly boring...........?!

The verdict ? If you're a fan of 70s sci-fi art, or a dedicated fan of the novels profiled in the pages of 'Alien Landscapes' then it may be worth picking up; copies of the hardcover version in decent condition have asking prices of under $25 at your usual online retailers.  

Deathlok in New York, 1993

 Deathlok in New York, 1993

Captain America No. 286, October 1983

This issue of Captain America features a brilliant cover by artist Mike Zeck and inker John Beatty.

It kicked off a three-issue story arc that had Captain America travelling to the future - to the New York City of 1993, to be exact. However, because it's the New York City of Deathlok's timeline, it's not exactly a presentable place.....as the first two pages of the issue made clear in an entertaining display of black humor...........

Even with the more loosened Comics Code of the early 80s, this was edgy stuff........

(The complete 'Captain America: Deathlok Lives' saga can be acquired in the 2014 trade paperback Deathlok the Demolisher: The Complete Collection).

Book Review: Whole Wide World

Book Review: 'Whole Wide World' by Paul McAuley

4 / 5 Stars

'Whole Wide World' first was printed in 2001 in hardcover. This mass market paperback (376 pp.) was issued by Tor in December, 2003. The cover design is by Drive Communications.

'Whole Wide World' utilizes a near-future setting: a dystopian United Kingdom of the mid-2010s, several years after the 'InfoWar', a mass riot perpetrated by antifas, nearly eliminated the nation's telecommunications grid. 

A more repressive and authoritarian UK government now uses multiple cyber-police agencies to monitor content on the Web. The Autonomous Distributed Expert Surveillance System (ADESS), a massive network of CCTV cameras, scrutinizes the streets of London to deter antisocial behavior. Checkpoints control access to selected areas of the city, and the police have a less than cordial relationship with the populace they serve.

The protagonist of 'Whole Wide' is a middle-aged policeman named John (his surname never is disclosed) who works for T12, the London police force's cybercrime investigative unit. John formerly had a high-profile position with the police's Hostage and Extortion Unit, but has fallen from grace, and now works as one of numerous T12 officers investigating cybercrimes (such as the distribution of digital pornography).

When John, in his capacity as a computer expert, is called to the scene of the brutal murder of a coed he discovers that the murdered girl, Sophie Booth, was performing erotic pantomimes for an online audience. Not content to serve a mere supportive role as the T12 liaison to the homicide team, John embarks on his own, unsanctioned investigation of the murder. 

So doing will bring him into conflict with powerful people in the U.K. government; a systems engineer whose designs for ADESS go far beyond simple surveillance; and the amoral world of online sleaze merchants, merchants who are quite willing to use violence to deter anyone who is asking the wrong kinds of questions.............

I finished 'Whole Wide World' thinking it a sold 4-star modern cyberpunk novel. Author McAuley's London is a reasonably accurate extrapolation given the state of the Information Age as of 2001, when the book was published. The villains are sufficiently odious to make John's dogged pursuit understandable, and the ins and outs of the criminal investigation process and the accompanying bureaucracy are convincingly rendered (McAuley published a crime thriller, 'Players', in 2007, signaling his familiarity with the genre).

Where 'Whole Wide' seemed to lose momentum was in its length; at 376 pages, the process of learning Whodunit is protracted, and although the identity of the murderer is provided around the novel's halfway point, lots of attention remains to be given to the wider theme of the disturbing implications of having the modern Surveillance State manipulated by those with nefarious motives. 

The final 100 pages of 'Whole Wide' are dependent on rather uninspired plot devices (such as having villains easily suborned into giving rants in which they disclose their guilt, and having John increasingly prone to committing bullheaded actions which, coincidently, prevent the narrative from getting too sluggish). 

The novel's transition into a detective novel, rather than a cyberpunk novel, in its closing chapters left me with the impression that an opportunity to do something particularly offbeat and imaginative with 'Whole Wide World' likely had been missed. Hence, my 4-star Review.

Dot's Homestyle Pretzels

 Dot's Homestyle Pretzels

I'm not much of a pretzel eater. But then I saw a post at Barstool Sports for these pretzels, in which the poster stated of Dot's Homestyle Pretzels:

You can't stop eating them when you pop open the bag. I'm at the point now where I can't get in the car or walk home from the store without opening the bag and blowing through half the bag before I even get to my front door.

I thought it wise to check them out. Here in Charlottesville, Virginia, I found the 1 lb bags for sale at Harris-Teeter; with my VIC Card, they were $4.99.

Dot's Homestyle Pretzels have an unusual flavor. It's uniquely savory and sharp, staying on your tongue for some time after you eat them. I do have to exert Portion Control when I begin to eat them.

'Dot' is Dorothy “Dot” Henke, a resident of Velva, North Dakota, who created her pretzels in 2007 and began selling them in 2012. A mini-documentary on her story is available here.

In addition to the Homestyle flavor, there is a Southwest flavor. And you can buy crumbled pretzels for use as a breading.

As of 2019, Dot's are sold in 48 states, but their on-shelf retailers tend to be stores located in the Midwest. In Virginia, besides Harris-Teeter, I've seen Dot's on-shelf at Ace Hardware stores. Major retailers, such as Target, Walmart, and amazon, offer Dot's online, but these have high markups. If you can't find an on-shelf retailer in your immediate area, it may be best to go directly to Dot's website to, as they say, 'get your fix'.

Battling Britons

Battling Britons
by Justin Marriott

April, 2021

Like most Baby Boomers of American pedigree I grew up reading war comics, most of them from DC, occasionally from Charlton. I thought the Sergeant Rock stories in Our Army at War were overwrought and melodramatic, but I liked Weird War Tales, Star Spangled War Stories, and G.I. Combat.

I never even knew that the UK had its war comics until the Fall of 1984, when I picked up some 2000 AD Yearbooks from the bargain bin of a comic book store near the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge. One of the Yearbooks had a brief interview with artist Carlos Ezquerra, and an accompanying illustration of 'Major Eazy'. Thus did I become aware that the UK did, indeed, publish war comics. But getting hold of any of them was simply not feasible back in those days. There were no shipments of Commando or Battle Picture Weekly being flown or sailed across the Atlantic to comic book stores in the States.........

Well, the indefatigable Justin Marriott, the UK’s leading expert on mass market paperbacks, returns with another publication devoted to Anglophone popular culture........and this one deals with war comics published in the UK from the 1960s to the 2000s: 'Battling Britons'.

Interestingly, unlike the smaller sizing usually deployed for Marriott’s ‘bookzines’, ‘Battling Britons’ opts for a 8 ½ x 11 inch sizing (refer to my photograph for a side-by-side comparison).

Like Marriott’s bookzines, ‘Battling Britons’ is print-on-demand, so for me, as a Virginia resident, ordering the book from amazon took only a couple of days to complete.

Mindful that a substantial part of the readership is likely to be American, ‘Britons’ includes an introductory assay describing the publishing history of war comics in the UK. The bulk of these comics were (and still are) issued as 64-page, black-and-white ‘pocket’ books, similar to the comics digests published in the USA.

 

The digest titles, which include the venerable Commando, usually presented two panels per page, and took advantage of their length to offer more in-depth storytelling and characterization. 

In 1974, Scottish publisher D. C. Thompson launched the anthology series Warlord, which adhered to the A4 sizing (8 ¼ x 11 ¾  inches) used in the UK for weekly comic books. Warlord was a major success and prompted rival publisher IPC to issue its own weekly war anthology, Battle Picture Library. 

Although printed in black-and-white on a rougher grade of paper, and with their stories limited to four-page installments each week, the weeklies managed to gain a substantial following among UK readers well into the 1980s. 

Within its 162 pages, ‘Battling Britons’ provides more than 200 reviews of war comics that appeared in either the digest or weekly formats. A ‘grenade’ rating system, from 1 grenade (don’t bother) to 5 grenades (a classic that belongs in every fan’s hands) is given to each review. The bulk of the reviews are authored by Marriott, with additional reviews from veteran contributors to Marriott’s publications: Steve Myall, Jim O’Brien, and James Reasoner. 

There are copious black-and-white illustrations throughout the book, and while there is no denying the fact that the printing processes used in the comics issued during the profiled era were decidedly ‘low-resolution’, still, it’s possible to see that many titles featured work by accomplished artists, and Marriott and his co-contributors make note of this in their reviews. 

A ‘Sources’ section of the book provides information on how one can obtain copies or reprints of the profiled war comics; The Treasury of British Comics, an imprint maintained by Oxford publisher Rebellion, is an obvious first stop, as it has issued compilations of such renowned titles as ‘Charley’s War’, ‘Death Squad’, ‘Major Eazy’, and ‘Battler Britton’.

Thumbing through the pages of ‘Battling Britons’ surely will spark nostalgia among Brits of the Baby Boomer era. For Americans, the material will of course be less familiar, emphasizing as it does the British perspective on World Wars I and II (although other conflicts, such as the Napoleonic Wars, receive treatment). 

Some of the psychological underpinnings of these comics can be a bit hard to grasp, such as the conflicts between the officers ('donkeys') and the enlisted men ('the lions'), which reflect to some extent the inherent conflict of the British class system. But you can argue that the inclusion of these aspects of the British war experience gives these comics a novelty that you likely won't find in their American counterparts.

The verdict ? If you are an American Baby Boomer who enjoyed the war comics of Charlton, DC, and Marvel, then you’re certainly going to find some intriguing and worthwhile content in ‘Battling Britons’. 

Book Review: Black Glass

Book Review: 'Black Glass' by John Shirley

3 / 5 Stars

‘Black Glass: The Lost Cyberpunk Novel’ (310 pp.) was published as a trade paperback in November 2008 by Elder Signs Press, a since-defunct small press / vanity press publisher.

In an essay written in 2009, John Shirley relates that in the early 80s he and William Gibson had a meeting with an anonymous Hollywood director about making a cyberpunk-themed movie using a script, tentatively titled ‘Microchip’, that Shirley and Gibson had conceptualized. The movie deal never came through and Shirley didn’t pay much attention to ‘Microchip’ until 2007, when he decided to revise it and publish it as ‘Black Glass’.

In Shirley’s words,

I just had to update its tech, environmental and cultural references and recognize that my pulp-inflected metaphor may be at the pop end of art, but it’s vitalized by the pointed honesty of its symbols.

‘Black Glass’ is set in the near future, in a dystopian USA where corporations, rather than politicians, run things......and society is divided into the Haves, and the Have Nothings. As the novel opens, Richard Candle, a former L.A. police officer, is being released from prison, where he was serving a four-year sentence under the aegis of ‘UnMinding’, a sort of reversible lobotomization designed to make inmates cooperative and compliant.

Candle went to prison to take the fall for his brother Danny, a dissipated punk-rocker who made the risky decision to try and profit off the theft of high-value software from the powerful Slakon corporation. Knowing Danny couldn’t survive a stint in the pen, Richard sacrificed his own career and good name………and four years of his life. 

With Richard now free, Terrence Grist, the odious CEO of Slakon, orders Candle to be trailed by a team of operatives in hopes of recovering the stolen software. As the novel unfolds, Candle negotiates the trash-strewn, polluted slums of L.A. and their louche denizens. His goals: find a way to wean his brother off an addiction to Virtual Reality; make some badly-needed money on the online black market; and find the stolen software and use it to keep Slakon at bay.

Or better yet, use the software to take Slakon, and Terrence Grist, down and out………

I found ‘Black Glass’ to be a three-star novel. The things that Shirley did well in his cyberpunk novels and short stories from the 80s and early 90s - atmosphere, characterization, an authentic 'street-level' perception of the cyberpunk milieu - are present and accounted for in 'Black Glass' :

Rack Nidd wasn’t happy to see Danny Candle. Danny could tell by the way the robot scorpion on Rack’s left shoulder was rearing up and chittering warningly……Rack just stood there in the doorway of his loft, twining a long piece of his greasy hair with his finger. He didn’t have much hair to twine; he had a disease that made his hair prematurely gray and patchy; what there was grew out all droopy long from the patches. His grimace was patchy too; he was missing every third tooth.……Rack Nidd wasn’t his real name, of course. He’d once owned a nu-punk aggregate site, before going into illegal VR: Arachnid Recordings. He stood there, now, pot-bellied, all but naked, wearing only a pair of vintage boxers shorts with some cartoon on them from an earlier era. A yellow cartoon kid with a pincushion head was saying “Ay Caramba !” on one of the boxer’s panels. Rack’s Japanese thongs completed the picture; the rank smell completed the experience.

Where 'Black Glass' suffers is in its plotting, which tends to meander. Too often, the narrative veers into tangents that lengthen the novel, but don't contribute all that much to it; for example, a segment in which Richard Candle communes with his Buddhist Master could have been excised without penalty, as could multiple, redundant segments designed to display the villainy of Terrence Grist. And the denouement of 'Black Glass' relies on a plot development to ensure that all the loose ends get tied up, a plot development that I found gimmicky and contrived.

The verdict ? Fans of Shirley's cyberpunk works of the 80s and early 90s likely will find 'Black Glass' rewarding despite its plotting deficiencies, but honestly, I can't see many younger fans of the genre, who have been reared on the careful wordsmithing and plotting of contemporary cyberpunk books (such as William Gibson's 'Blue Ant' novels, or the novels of Paolo Bacigalupi) eagerly diving into 'Black Glass'. This is one for the Old School readership.

Excalibur, April 10 1981

Excalibur

Warner Bros.
April 10, 1981

I remember seeing the movie Excalibur when it was released 40 years ago in April of 1981. It was the first of what would be a steady stream of fantasy-themed films that were issued in the 80s, with Dragonslayer coming out a few months later, and The Sword and the Sorcerer, The Beastmaster, Conan the Barbarian and The Dark Crystal coming in 1982.

Even after the passage of 40 years, Excalibur remains entertaining. It was a particularly 'British' film and that, I think, is one of the reasons for its success. The inclusion of a Joseph Campbell-esque theme, and the use of the Wagner music for the soundtrack, gave the film a gravitas that counters the occasionally stilted dialogue and less-than-stellar acting.

The 50-minute, 2013 documentary Behind the Sword in the Stone, recently retitled Excalibur: Behind the Movie, is available at a number of streaming platforms. It contains interesting anecdotes anecdotes and observations about the making of the film, and is well worth watching. 

Every now and then..........

 Every Now and Then......

........I discover that my website provides a 'blurb'. 

So it is in the case of this DAW book from 2013, where my review was used to fashion a back cover blurb......

Certainly this is every blogger's aspiration (?!)

Book Review: The Traveler

Book Review: 'The Traveler' by John Twelve Hawks

4 / 5 Stars

'The Traveler' first was published in 2005 in hardcover by Doubleday. This mass market paperback (480 pp.) was issued by Vintage Books in July 2006. The cover design is by Song Hee Kim.

'The Traveler' is the first book in the so-called 'Fourth Realm' trilogy; the other two volumes in the series are 'The Dark River' (2007) and 'The Golden City' (2009; issued as a trade paperback, rather than a mass-market paperback, by Vintage).

'The Traveler' is set in the near future, and revolves around a covert war, waged between two cabals, that has been going on for centuries. One cabal, which resembles The Illuminati, is called the Tabula, and is comprised of individuals who believe that subjecting Mankind to absolute and uncompromising control best secures the future of the planet.

Warring against the Tabula is an alliance of humanists known as the Travelers: mystics who possess the ability to project their souls, or consciousnesses, into other realms. Throughout history the Travelers, often being hailed as saints and visionaries, have been catalysts for transcendent change in society. The Travelers stand for individuality, freedom, and mutability, traits that are anathema to the Tabula.

Being pacifistic as well as numinous, the Travelers are quite vulnerable to the depredations of the Tabula. Luckily a caste of warrior-assassins, known as the Harlequins, have pledged to protect the Travelers. The Harlequins have been raised from birth to excel in combat, employing - with superhuman abilities - all manner of weapons (although they favor swords).

As the novel opens, the age-old conflict has been tipped in the favor of the Tabula, thanks to the advent of the computer-driven Information Age and the accompanying rise of the Surveillance State. Having infiltrated every government, the Tabula are able to quickly identify Travelers and pursue their elimination. The coming victory of the Tabula will leave the ability of the human race to embrace new ideas, and new philosophies, permanently extinguished. Soon, all of world's peoples will live as unwitting prisoners of the Global Panopticon.

However, hope lingers in the form of the brothers Gabriel and Michael Corrigan, nascent Travelers with only a vague awareness of their capabilities. Having been enjoined by their parents to live lives 'off the grid', the Corrigans so far have escaped the notice of the Tabula. But the Tabula, led by the scheming General Kennard Nash, are closing in on the brothers.

One of the few remaining Harlequins is a young woman named Maya Thorn. Ambivalent about participating in the conflict with the Tabula, Maya initially is reluctant to abandon her life as an office worker in order to take up an existence as a Harlequin. But when the Tabula mounts an attack on her family, Maya has no choice but to respond. And her response will forever change the fates of the Corrigan brothers............

'The Traveler' is a thriller that presents with a healthy number of sci-fi and cyberpunk tropes, including AI-mediated mass surveillance; quantum computing; other dimensions; astral bodies; genetic engineering; and other topics that I won't disclose because they're Spoilers. These are introduced in a common-sense way that contributes to the novel's sense of believability. 

Author Twelve Hawks relies on short chapters and a clipped, declarative prose style to impart momentum to the novel, and in the main this works well, although - somewhat inevitably, for a 480-page novel  - the middle sections of 'The Traveler' display a slowing in pacing. And, because the plot has to be extended into two more volumes, the ending has something of an underwhelming character to it. 

The verdict ? 'The Traveler' is a solid 4-star Modern Cyberpunk novel, and well worth picking up. 

And its depiction of a near-future USA under the control of a secretive cabal that uses information technology to monitor and control the population ? An entertaining exploration of paranoia ? 

Maybe. But then, have you been to the website of ID2020 ?!